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Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Encyclopedic Work by a True Scholar and Practition
Review: Being a long time student of various yoga and related traditions, I humbly bow to the author for his vast and accurate knowledge of the subject. This work gives exceptionally unbiased, clear and insightful treatment of the diverse spiritual traditions. A result, I believe, of open mindedness and deep understanding. This is extremely rare for works in this category. Actually, there are no other books like it, period. The volume, clearly the distillate of many years of diligent study and practice, contains abosolutely no fluff, and everything is backed up by authoritative materials. In one easily understandable reference work, it makes available the many wisdom teachings spanning a great time period and geographical locations. Not only does it provide a bird's eye view of this vast and complex field, it also provides a rich historical context, which greatly aids our understanding. If I had access to the information contained in this book years ago, it would have saved me much grief and helped me to progress further and sooner. A must read for any serious student on the spiritual path.
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Summary: Most comprehensive overview
Review: For the keen on Yoga, this is a great resource. It is commendable that the Author has made an effot to compile the huge volumes of ancient Indian scriptures - many of which is a life-time study - into a single volume. With such an effort, there would many purposes served and some not served too well. You have the vedantas, yoga sutras, history of yoga, history and philosophy of various religions all in one place. Because of this, the reader could get a bit lost for there would be too much to understand. Nonetheless, I treaure this book; as a Yoga teacher, I find that I constantly go back to this volume. Secondly, the effort is commendable because these ancient texts are still not public as much as we want them to be.
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Summary: Maybe its just me !!
Review: I was looking for a book about the history, philosophy and evolution of Yoga in a simple and informative way. The reason I bought this book is mainly based on the customer reviews and average customer ratings of 5 stars. I am one reader who didn't like the book nor benefited from it in anyway. I am new at Yoga and this is my first read in Yoga. I wished that this book would give me insight into how this ancient tradition evolved over thousands of years, It didn't. The organization of the book is terrible, unnecessary details that deviates from the main topics are all around. In every chapter extracts from Hindu sacred books spans many pages which I didn't enjoy. This is more of a text book that is might be useful for research purposes than a book to read. I have tried numerous times to read the book but failed; I also tried to use it to write a paper on the History of yoga but got totally confused and find resources elsewhere more helpful.
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Summary: Yoga Traditions Made Easier to Comprehend
Review: The Feuerstein book was highly recommend to me by a wonderful yoga instructor I studied with. It really helped me to understand the path and how to understand these yoga traditions. This book will remain a reference for a lifetime.
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Summary: Reads like a college textbook
Review: This book reads like a college textbook. It is full of essay-like information, but it is not so engaging. The author, writer of Yoga for Dummies, is a yoga adept in a buddhist tradition, has a phd in Indian theology and sanskrit, he even translates some ancient texts into English for the first time in his books including this one. The book is seperated into a dozen chapters, each focusing on an aspect of ancient yoga culture, from the teacher-student relationship or one of the last chapter focusing on the rise of tantric yoga from which hatha is spawned. What you won't find here is instruction for yoga practice. I would say the information book is indispensable for persons with professional reasons.. yoga teacher, or other pedagogic purposes. But it is mostly dry... It is not an inspiring book.. Those just getting started in the history of yoga might benefit from lighter reading elsewhere.
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Summary: The most extensive and detailed work on yoga in English
Review: This extraordinary work represents a lifetime of devotion to yoga by its preeminent Western scholar. It is at once a distillation and compilation of all that Georg Feuerstein has gleaned in his extensive travels both academically and spiritually. It greatly broadens the usual scope of yoga to include its manifestation in other religions and goes back in time to the edge of the prehistory. Feuerstein understands that yoga is both an ancient practice, and, by itself, a profound and venerable religion. More than anything, however, it is a salient expression of the culture and philosophy, the lifestyle and history of the Indian subcontinent where it was the midwife of the great religions of Buddhism, Jainism, Taoism and of course that great body of belief and practice known as Hinduism. Feuerstein is in one sense a true believer. He has devoted his life to the study of yoga and attendant phenomena, in particular Hinduism and the broad Tantric tradition. One gets the sense that even here in this lengthy work, he knows much more than he is conveying; that there is a synergistic power in his extensive knowledge that allows him to know things that he cannot express. One feels his intense desire to say something that perhaps cannot be said, something spiritual and personal that can only be experienced. In another sense he is a hard-working scholar who reports on what he has learned without passing unnecessary judgments or drawing unwarranted conclusions, although he does interpret. He is, in this sense, the American expression of the great French scholar Mircea Eliade with perhaps a pinch of the Indian philosopher Sri Aurobindo, on the one hand, and the English tantrist Sir John Woodroffe, on the other, folded in. The book begins with a thorough definition of yoga and then an overview, and then its inescapable conjoining with Hinduism. This is "Part One: Foundations." Then Feuerstein looks at "Pre-Classical Yoga" and overviews the entire Vedic tradition including the yoga of the earliest Upanishads, culminating in its expression in the Bhagavad Gita. Then in "Part Three: Classical Yoga," he comes to Patanjali and the yoga of the eight limbs, the famous yoga of the aphorisms. Part Four is "Post-Classical Yoga" from the later Yoga-Upanishads from the Middle Ages in which the focus is on bhakti, technique, mantra and meditation. It is here that Western readers will find much that is new, or at least not readily available in English. And it is here that a non-dualistic yogic philosophy (as opposed to the dualism of Patanjali) holds sway. Part Five is on tantrism and "Yoga as Spiritual Alchemy." It is in this last part that the so-called "subtle body," with its nadis and pranas, its cakras ("psychoenergetic centers") and the mysterious serpent power of kundalini, is explored in depth. Here too we have the ritualistic practice of the five forbidden things from tantra yoga, the infamous "left-handed path." Here is Feuerstein's take: "Practitioners of the left-hand path (<vâma-mârga>)--vâma means both "left" and "woman"--know they are breaking profound social taboos, and their only justification for their conduct is that their goal is not sensual gratification but self-transcendence in the context of bodily existence." (p. 484) To me--and I have studied and practiced yoga for 28 years--yoga is first and foremost a profound psychology, a way of life that has evolved along with the human experience, from the prehistory to today, a guide on how to live that has come down to us in part (only in part: so much has been lost) as a philosophic and religious tradition. Feuerstein's book is at once a great reference and a heart-felt exposition on the power of yoga to transcend this world in which we are enveloped in the "food sheath," where we are both the eater and the eaten, but with our eyes on the stars. The book includes numerous black and white illustrations, passages from yogic works, and an extensive, selected bibliography. There is a chronology, a glossary and an excellent index.
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Summary: Most comprehensive overview
Review: This is by far the most comprehensive overview of the Yoga tradition available. Clearly the fruit of a lifetime of dedicated labor!
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