Yoga For You (Tips and Techniques For Everyone)

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Yoga for You does not offer pat instructions; rather, it is an intuitive guidebook drawing from several years of teaching experience. It is a form of sharing.

Yoga for You is a book for everyone committed to yoga from students to teachers. It provides tips to instructors, counsel to serious practitioners, and a unique perspective to those who self-train.

Covering a range of classical, intermediary and rest poses from the ever-challenging sirsasana (headstand) to the supremely calming balasana (child pose) this book places an emphasis on rectifying poor technique. The detailed lists of fine corrections, the cues on how best to progress, and the photographs to illustrate these points, make this book an invaluable guide.

Equally, Yoga for You sheds light on the tricks that can make a yoga class or a self-training session more efficient, with instructions on time management, asana sequencing and the best structure for practice sessions. Most of all, the keen insights offered by Prahlada Reddy, the head of the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Center in Toronto, and Shameem Akthar, an acclaimed yoga instructor, makes this book a must for all yoga buffs.

Prahl ad a Reddy is a senior and direct disciple of Swami Vishnudevananda. He heads the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Center in Toronto, and is the worldwide hatha yoga teacher for the teachers' and advanced teachers' training courses conducted by the Sivananda ashram.

Shameem Akthar is a certified yogacharya trained with the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centre, Kerala. Her columns have appeared in several prestigious publications such as Mid-Day, India Abroad, Savvy, Ute Positive and Rediff.com. She teaches and holds workshops related to yoga in Mumbai, where she lives with her husband, Saisuresh Sivaswamy and daughter, Jahnavi Sheriff.

I started teaching when I was 17 years of age. My initial difficulty while leaching was with Language, a difficulty that is not common to most instructors. But I have improved along the way.

Each instructor has a core belief mine is strung around patience, understanding and, of course, extreme discipline. My core belief has been that your Sadguru (in this case it is Swami Sivananda) is there to take care of you while you teach and practise. Trust him, and put your heart into trying to help people who attend your classes.

A good instructor is one who understands the weaknesses of difficult students — is aware of their ego and is accommodative. He must always sustain the feeling that he is only an instrument and is there to try to help those who challenge him.

An instructor is not someone who knows it all I believe by teaching you learn; this has been the motto of my life. I am convinced that my Guru led me into teaching yoga so as to help me see myself in my students, and grow with them.

Yes, instructors sometimes complain they have difficult days. But I have never identified with the title of a teacher. So there have never been emotional hurdles or blocks to my entering a class. Also! it is very important to maintain your own personal practice. You are only what you teach. And you teach only what you practise.

From years of teaching, I feel strongly that what people need is a form of instruction that relies on the scriptures, and comes with integrity of purpose. I believe this book draws out the purity of teaching and practising.

Also, it will help fine-tune yoga instruction. It is very important to take students from where they are physically, then guide them through corrections and work on their posture, so they acquire greater depth in pose. It’s important! though, to train in such a way that students do not become dependent on the instructor I believe this book recognizes this, and takes yoga instruction, including self-learning, to that special level where a pose becomes a tool for meditation.

My main belief has been to retain a purity of practice. Follow one teacher and one Guru. Try not mix your teachings with your personal input. You can never be a teacher without surrendering. Or a practitioner without making your practice an offering to a higher grace.

I see myself as a practitioner rather than an instructor. Every class is a meditative experience for me, and in every student I see my own aspirations on the mat. This book! which I am compiling using my asana guru Prahlada’s words and teachings, is an offering to all my teachers and all my students, This book also sums up why and how practice and teaching have been two sides of the same coin for me.