Best yoga book in the world:Asana Pranayama Mudra Bandha

Asana Pranayama Mudra Bandha by Swami Satyananda Saraswati
Published by the Bihar School of Yoga, Munger, Bihar state, India
Available: Check the Yoga addresses label in this blog for yoga book shops in Mumbai – Chetana and Giri both stock this, as do all the major bookshops like Landmark. You may also directly place order with the yoga institute at http://www.yogavision.net. And if you are outside of India, then there are any number of internet bookshops marketing this. But the best price you pay for this is within India.
Cost: Rs 200

Why is this the best book in the world?

• It is simple and easy to follow. But nothing in instructional value is lost to accommodate this aspect.
  
• It is amongst the few yoga books that actually prepare you to self-learn.
  
• It appeals to both advanced students and rank beginners.
  
• It has poses and practices for different grades of students. If you notice, some books are actually directed only at advanced practitioners, while some are too simplistic to appeal to them. This book, however, can grow with your practice.
  
• It anticipates problems of beginners or those trying a particular pose (this includes advanced yoga practices).
  
• It does not lose focus of the most important aspect of yoga – health and therapeutic uses.
  
• It is fantastically indexed. Most yoga books don’t value this aspect. It is very easy to locate poses based on names, ailments, grades of students etc.
  
• It has index based on ailments, so if you have a special or common physical ailment, you know what asanas you must do. This makes it a very special book.
  
• It has therapy also for emotional ailments – like anger, anxiety – that is bypassed by most other yoga books, or covered only in passing.
  
• It has the most comprehensive and detailed list of contraindications, which means poses that is not allowed in certain ailments. This includes simple ones which some schools may not bother about, like ear infections. Or others like epilepsy, that most schools don’t seem to think warrants a warning.
  
• It also has the best list of do’s and don’ts that must be followed by a yoga practitioner.
  
• It has detailed scientific explanations behind practices.
  
• It has detailed metaphysical explanations behind the same practices.
  
• It also gets into the emotional, psychical impact of each pose, presenting this wisdom not as some intuitional guesswork (that a lot of good yoga books are guilty of), but with references to research and ancient texts.
  
• It has important details on preparatory poses for classic ones like padmasana.
  
• It also covers the breath sequence, the focus point or dharana of each pose in detail. This is often also given a miss by some classic yoga books.
  
• It has the best Sanskrit list of poses, explained and translated easily in English.
  
• Its asana index is simple and easy to follow. Even B.K.S. Iyengar’s best-seller Light on Yoga, it is rather difficult to follow the asana list because you must follow plate numbers of the photos and search amongst the pages to locate the particular pose. Here it is neatly tabled.
  
• It has the best instructions for pranayama practice. Most books don’t get into minor details of pranayama which can be rather dangerous. But this books guides you slowly bur surely in the learning process. In fact, instead of just listing the practices and instructions, it grades the learning process of each of the major pranayama, so you can actually learn from it gradually and with ease.
  
• The illustrations are not decorative but designed to be clear and easy to follow. In fact, several books in India and some abroad too are surely lifting the illustrations! I have even seen these illustrations copied on some yoga CDs.
  
• It also covers in a practical manner the most essential mudras and bandhas, and other related kriyas, so that your sadhana is made comprehensive.
  
• Despite being so inexpensive, nothing is compromised in terms of language, style or presentation. I have found great inexpensive books on yoga : great because they share some unknown aspect of yoga in an inexpensive format. But often, the style and language can be shabby because they are clearly unable to find good translators or illustrators. In this book, this unintended shabbiness is not there. Its language, style, scientific presentation are all intact. It is deliberately produced as an inexpensive product only to expand its reach. So some of us yoga practitioners, while shopping, may reach for the glossy books, with lush photographs and bypass this one. But that would entirely be our loss.
  
  Why I love it?
  I love it for all the above reasons of course. But I love it also because the Bihar school also represents the best of what Swami Sivananda stood for – sharing yogic wisdom, underscoring it constantly with a scientific reference point that makes it valid to the current world yet relating it directly to our spiritual goals. The last is never lost sight of. More power to them!