Light on life, B.K.S. Iyengar

Yoga practice is not only about physical well-being and stress release, it reunites body and mind, our different selves to the deity within us and the wholeness around us, to become one with everything. In the yoga tradition, spirit is not separate from body, they are one.

In this books, B.K.S. Iyengar, the founder of Iyengar Yoga who popularized yoga in the Western world, goes through the difficulties he encountered in his life and his inward journey to illustrate all the obstacles that a yoga adept can encounter on this path. He opened a way, showing the path so that each practitioner can better understand the way.

There are eight petals of yoga that reveal themselves progressively to the practitioner. These are external, ethical disciplines (yama), internal ethical observances (niyama), poses (asanas), breath control (pranayama), sensory control and withdrawal (pratyahara), concentration (dharana), meditation (dhyana), and blissful absorption (samadhi). We call these the petals of yoga as they join together like the petals of a lotus flower to form one beutiful whole.
As we journey through the interior sheaths (kosa) of the body, from the exterior skin to the innermost self, we will encounter and explore each of the eight petals or stages of yoga described in the Yoga Sutras. For the seeker of Truth, these stages remain as important today as they were in the days of Patanjali. We cannot hope to understand and harmonize the sheaths without the precepts and practices provided in the eight petals.

Light on life (edition Rodale, 2005, 282 pages), written by B.K.S. Iyengar (Karnataka, India, 1918).