The Truth of Yoga by Daniel Simpson

243 Pages
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Biroux, North Point Press
Release Date: January 5, 2021

Nonfiction (Adult), Health, Mind, Body, Spirit, Yoga

The book is divided into the following parts.

Part 1: Early Yoga
Part 2: Classical Yoga
Part 3. Hatha Yoga
Part 4. Modern Yoga

The author discusses the history of yoga. He details that yoga is not the ancient practice since there is no written history of it before the seventeenth century. The author does an amazing researching for this book. I found the information very interesting and believable. If you are interested in yoga and its history, you will enjoy reading this book.

Every yoga practitioner and teacher must read this book! And also anyone even slightly interested in learning more about yoga or yoga philosophy. This book contains great material distilled down to the essentials and easy to follow and remember. It is authoritative, approachable, and no nonsense, with appropriate references I can return to or dig more in depth into if I wish. Unique yoga book in an extraordinarily saturated market.

This book was a really beautiful in depth detail about the philosophy and practice of Yoga. Daniel did a great job going into very detailed information about the many limbs of yoga and how they came to be. This book is for an in-depth practitioner or someone who wants to know the deeper meaning to the practice more than just the movement.

This book is what I would consider a primer regarding the study of the history (and story) of yoga. The book is dense with information and the author frequently cites the texts he mentions. The author’s intent is to make the traditional philosophies accessible to modern practitioners, which I think he has accomplished. This is not a book you read to become an expert. It is a book you read to spark more interest to seek out the texts he cites throughout the book. One thing I do commend in this book is that it creates a timeline of a more linear view of the yoga traditions. I had initially feared this book would be full of opinion of what yoga is and isn’t. In fact, the author makes no assertions or claims of what yoga is and isn’t. I appreciate the objective tone of the book and how it contains a wealth of knowledge and research. The hefty notes section clearly shows the amount of research that went into creating this book.

I enjoyed the other perspective that this book brought to the table. In yoga training you feel like your teachers are the end all be all and that their way is the right way, but in reality there are more interpretations. This book shows us yoga from another angle. I liked learning other ways to look at the same teachings. Thank you to Netgalley and the author for an early copy of this book.