Educational, comprehensive, and informative - recommended for anyone looking to learn more about yoga, both physical and spiritual.

This book contains over 200 photographs with accompanying step-by-step explanations.

Total Yoga for You begins by giving a history of yoga. I was surprised that there are many types of yoga and all are not the same. The author states:

There are several paths of yoga and each one approaches the ultimate goal of self-realization by a different route. Although these paths may seem disparate, and sometimes contradictory, they are all based on the premise that human beings can, through their own efforts attain enlightenment or ‘”liberation” from the cycle of re-birth known as ‘samsara.’

The majority of the book is filled with detailed explanations and photos of yoga poses. The later ones build upon the earlier poses so that the reader can continue to excel as new techniques are shown.



I received an ARC from Watkins Publishing through NetGalley. This in no way affects my opinion or rating of this book. I am voluntarily submitting this review and am under no obligation to do so.

I would like to thank the publisher, Watkins Publishing and Netgalley for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review. I have been practicing yoga for quite some time and I love reading book about yoga. At this point in time, I am more interested in asanas( postures) and breathing techniques and meditation. That is quite a lot, so I am not into a deep study of The origins of yoga and types of yogas as such. I really appreciate the format of this book as it is quite comprehensive without going to deep into the theories but give you just enough to leak your interest and guide you to what may be your next topic to broaden your horizons. I really appreciate the descriptions of the partner postures. I guess this would be helpful if your partner is into yoga too.

A friendly and accessible at home guide to developing the yoga practice, and there's a good chance other folks less familiar with the subject matter might find the book far more helpful. Beautiful, concsise, and well put together.

I've been doing yoga off and on for about a year now. I'm currently making the attempt to get more serious about it. Reading this has definitely helped me prepare myself to follow through.

Total Yoga for you offers more than just a few posture exercises. There is information about the history of Yoga, the different Yoga forms, breathing in Yoga, and, of course, Yoga postures and sequences of postures/Asanas.

The postures/Asanas are probably what most people are looking forward to in this book. They photographs and accompanying texts and tipps provide a lot of information for a beginner of Yoga to understand what is important about the posture and which errors to avoid. Still, I would recommend, especially to beginners, to visit at least one Yoga class and use the book for self practice at home. The written information alone can be overwhelming. A Yoga teacher can help guide the way for self practice and might also be able to point out further adjustments to the individual practitioner's needs.

Great information on historical background, different kinds of yoga, and various yoga techniques. Highly recommended and wonderfully written.

I really like this book. The poses are well explained and demonstrated with photographs. The only issue I had was with the formatting on my Kindle. I can see it would work well as a paperback/hardback, as well as a digital version with a bit of tweaking as it felt felt disjointed and confusing from around 15% into the digital copy. Other than the formatting issue, I really helpful guide to yoga poses. With thanks to Netgalley and publisher for the digital copy in exchange for my honest review.

Found this book very interesting, the information about the beginning of yoga and the different types of yoga was so informative, the yoga postions or asanas were very well explained and the pictures great. Ideal for both total beginners and these with some experience.
I did yoga years ago and wanted to start practicing again, this is certainly the book for me.
Thank you netgalley

I was looking for an introduction to the theory and practice of yoga after having attended hatha yoga classes for a year. Tara Fraser makes a complex philosophy much less forbidding to the western novice reader. One leaves with the understanding that asana isn’t even a fraction of what yoga is. Her approach is gentle though - and encouraging. It’s ok to start with just asana. It will definitely help if you can start a regular self practice. If you introduce pranayama (breath work) and meditation here is how to do it. And so on. This gentle flexible encouraging approach has certainly helped me already and I think this will be a book I return to when I want to deepen my understanding of yoga.

The only downside for me was purely the formatting of the e-book, which needs a lot of work in terms of the colours of the text, labelling of diagrams and text boxes etc. Sometimes I had to guess whether what I was reading was the main text or a text book; the captions were sometimes pages away from the images they described.

(This review was possible due to a complimentary e-book via NetGalley - thank you.)

Total Yoga For You is a comprehensive guide for those who wish to get into yoga, and want to learn everything about the practice. The book goes through a in-depth history of the origins of yoga and then introduces the the philosophy behind yoga now The next section of the book contains large images of yoga poses that are very helpful. The descriptions are very informative and allow you to come into the pose quite easily. The poses that are taught progressively gets more and more difficult. I probably will not attempt the last few, however, it is nice to see how much potential there is to learn. It even has yoga poses with a partner! Which was something that I was really surprised to learn about. The last section has Asana sequences that are accompanied by mini pictures to refer to. The layout of the instructions and pictures make it easy to follow. Yoga Now is a very intensive and comprehensive book, great for someone who is very committed to learning and mastering yoga.

As a person with absolutely no experience in yoga, I found this book both interesting and  instructional.  I had no idea that there is more than one type of yoga - I mean, I have heard of yoga and hot yoga, but I had no idea that there were actually six different paths/branches/styles of yoga.  The section on chakras was quite interesting as well, but I had to take the section on fasting and "detoxing" with a very healthy grain of salt.  

The main section of the book is the postures section.  Each posture is accompanied by a photograph depicting the ideal.  A description of the philosophy behind each pose is followed by a very detailed, easy-to-understand description of how to perform each posture.  While I had hoped to find a section on yoga for asthmatics, I plan to give pranayama (breath control) a try.

This is a great book for a beginner as it covers all the history and different types of yoga. As this takes up a good chunk of the book it would probably be a bit unnecessary for the more advanced readers. The pictures, poses and sequences are beautifully described and the detail is very thorough. A great book overall.

A very comprehensive book for anyone interested in taking up yoga. The first three chapters, which constitute 40% of the book, are dedicated to explaining the history and theory of all aspects of yoga. There then follows a section on yoga postures. This section includes explanations of how to work with each posture and is accompanied by clear photos. A chapter on breathing techniques and exercises is followed by a chapter on meditation techniques. The final section deals with yoga postures performed with a partner.
If you are looking for a book just about yoga postures then this isn't the one for you, but for anyone interested in the wider aspects of yoga this would be an excellent book to start with.

I truly enjoyed this book and I believe it could be helpful to anyone from a beginner to an experienced level.

The author starts the book with the history of yoga,explaining the different existing styles and then she proceeds with illustrating the asanas (poses) and pranayama (breathing techniques).

I found the book very well researched and detailed.I particularly appreciated the description of the poses (accompanied by great pictures) and the variations offered.

I would recommed this book as a gift,as a first step to know more about the practice or to deepen existing knowledge of yoga.

"Total Yoga For You" gives a lot of background information on the history of yoga and how it can be used to live a better life. I like how detailed it was and that it also gave information on proper nutrition and breathing techniques. I wish that the part on proper postures was longer.

This book is a great read for a bigger as well as intermediate or advance reader. I loved the photos and poses with detailed techniques and descriptions. Very educational and great book to all who want to start or continue yoga.