49 Must Read Yoga Books

Autobiography of a Yogi is an autobiography of Paramahansa Yogananda (5 January 1893–7 March 1952) first published in 1946. Paramahansa Yogananda was born as Mukunda Lal Ghosh in Gorakhpur, India, into a Bengali Hindu family.

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The Yoga Sutras of Patañjali is a collection of Sanskrit sutras (aphorisms) on the theory and practice of yoga – 195 sutras (according to Vyāsa and Krishnamacharya) and 196 sutras (according to other scholars including BKS Iyengar). The Yoga Sutras was compiled sometime between 500 BCE and 400 CE, by the sage Patanjali in India who synthesized and organized knowledge about yoga from much older traditions.

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The Yoga Sutra is the living source wisdom of the yoga tradition. Using it as a guide, we can unlock the hidden power of yoga, and experience the promise of yoga in our life. The Yoga Sutra is as fresh today as it was 2200 years ago when it was discovered by the sage Patanjali. It is the first practitioner-oriented commentary which is fully grounded in a living tradition.

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Yoga is well known for its power to create a healthy body, but few realize the emotional and spiritual benefits. In The Secret Power of Yoga, world-renowned Yoga expert Nischala Joy Devi interprets Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, the principles at the basis of Yoga practice, from a heart-centered, intuitive, feminine perspective, resulting in the first translation intended for women.

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“All knowledge that the world has ever received comes from the mind . . .” In the quest for understanding one’s own mind, body, and soul, and to attain liberation, each man seeks spirituality as per his own means and understanding. Yoga, with its origin dating back to ancient India, has always been considered a pathway of achieving moksha. This edition combines the four paths of yoga as expounded by Swami Vivekananda in the nineteenth century. They include the three yogas mentioned in the Bhagavad Gita—Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, and Jnāna Yoga—and Rāja Yoga, which is based on Maharshi Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, and together they speak to the active, the emotional, the mystic, and the philosophical inside us. Complete with timeless universal wisdom, and not restricted to asanas and physical exercises, the yogic practices explained by Vivekananda become a way of life and hence lead to the realization of the Absolute.

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Stephen Mitchell is widely known for his ability to make ancient masterpieces thrillingly new, to step in where many have tried before and create versions that are definitive for our time. His celebrated version of the Tao Te Ching is the most popular edition in print, and his translations of Jesus, Rilke, Genesis, and Job have won the hearts of readers and critics alike. Stephen Mitchell now brings to the Bhagavad Gita his gift for breathing new life into sacred texts.

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This book was a seed planted by my mother in her constant belief and celebration of women’s wisdom, strength and intuition. That seed was later nurtured and bloomed with the birth of each of my children. Thank you, Stetten, Savannah, and Sam for guiding me into my Birth Wisdoms and sharing this Adventure of Life with me. I am deeply humbled by the sacredness of your lives being placed in my hands, and the gift of watching you soar into who you are.

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From internationally renowned yoga teacher Gurmukh comes a book on pregnancy unlike any other. Bountiful, Beautiful, Blissful is a treasury of wisdom, information, and inspiration for pregnancy and motherhood based on the spiritual and physical practices of Kundalini yoga, which Gurmukh has taught for the last thirty years.

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Yoga in breweries has swept the nation. Did you think yoga and beer could ever coexist? You bet your flexible butt they can! Yoga and beer is a lighthearted introduction to yoga and the delightfully palatable world of beer. Author Adrienne Rinaldi, known in the craft beer world as blogger BeerSnobChick, received her 200-hour yoga certification in 2012, since then she has hosted rocking yoga classes in breweries which concluded with a beer. Thus, Brew Asana(TM) LLC was born. Adrienne combines her enthusiasm for beer and yoga to create a unique and fun book that both seasoned and new yogis, along with craft beer lovers can enjoy.

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From the unforgettable teacher Jessamyn Stanley comes Every Body Yoga, a book that breaks all the stereotypes.

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Love yoga? Want to learn everything you can about it? In this accessible and engaging book, Amy Vaughn applies her decades of education and research to telling the story of yoga. From shamanism to Shakti, from the Vedas to vinyasa, you’ll learn about the history and philosophy of yoga while enjoying Amy’s straightforward and lighthearted style. This book is perfect for anyone looking to deepen their understanding of the yoga tradition.

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The Haṭha Yoga Pradīpikā (Sanskrit: haṭhayogapradīpikā, हठयोगप्रदीपिका or Light on Hatha Yoga) is a classic fifteenth-century Sanskrit manual on haṭha yoga, written by Svātmārāma, who connects the teaching’s lineage to Matsyendranath of the Nathas. It is among the most influential surviving texts on haṭha yoga, being one of the three classic texts alongside the Gheranda Samhita and the Shiva Samhita.

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Light on Yoga: Yoga Dipika (Sanskrit: योग दीपिका “Yoga Dīpikā”) is a 1966 book on the Iyengar Yoga style of modern yoga as exercise by B. K. S. Iyengar, first published in English. It describes more than 200 yoga postures or asanas, and is illustrated with some 600 monochrome photographs of Iyengar demonstrating these.
The book has been described as the bible of modern yoga, and its presentation of the asanas has been called “unprecedented” and “encyclopedic”.It has been translated into at least 23 languages and has sold over three million copies.

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You work your yoga body—now work your yoga mind! Living the Sutras brings the wisdom of classical yoga philosophy into your life in an accessible and relevant way. The Yoga Sutras, a foundational text of yoga philosophy and practice, written by the guru Patanjali over two thousand years ago, are made up of 196 aphorisms that offer potent teachings on how to deal with loss and pain, and guidance on how to lead a healthy and fulfilling life.

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Experience the rest of your life with restorative yoga, the supported poses and breathing practices that will help you heal the effects of chronic stress. In Relax and Renew, the first book exclusively devoted to this work, the author offers in-depth guidance in the Basic Relaxation Pose (Savasana), the heart of restorative practice. In addition, this book provides yoga sequences for busy days, including a fifteen-minute practice, yoga at your desk, and the Totally Invisible Relaxation; programs for back pain, headaches, insomnia, jet lag, and breathing problems; a special section for women during menstruation, pregnancy, and menopause; a guide to props; and resources for finding a yoga teacher, recommended books, magazines, newsletters, audio programs, yoga vacations, and more.

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Did you know that yoga practice can help lower your blood pressure, decrease inflammation and prevent age-related brain changes? Recent scientific research now backs up what were once anecdotal claims about the benefits of yoga to every system in the body. Science of Yoga reveals the facts, with annotated artworks that show the mechanics, the angles, how your blood flow and respiration are affected, the key muscle and joint actions working below the surface of each pose, safe alignment and much more.

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Skill in Action: Radicalizing Your Yoga Practice to Create a Just World will ask you to explore the deeply transformational practice of yoga, and to become a social change agent so that you can create a world that is just for all. This book explores liberation for ourselves and others, while asking us to engage in our own agency, whether that manifests as activism, volunteer work, or changing our relationships with others and ourselves.

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MC YOGI, the hip hop artist and #1 yoga teacher in North America, offers wisdom and inspiration for spiritual seekers in this enlightening memoir which recounts his journey from living in a group home for at-risk youth to becoming yoga’s modern day ambassador to the West.

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Teaching Yoga is an essential resource for new and experienced teachers as well as a guide for all yoga students interested in refining their skills and knowledge. Addressing 100% of the teacher training curriculum standards set by Yoga Alliance, the world’s leading registry and accreditation source for yoga teachers and schools, Teaching Yoga is also ideal for use as a core textbook in yoga teacher training programs.

Here is a comprehensive survey of the full breadth and depth of the 5,000-year-old Yoga tradition, emphasizing its potent philosophy and spiritual vision. Georg Feuerstein demonstrates that Yoga is much more than a system of physical exercises–it is a profound path of self-transformation that encompasses a range of teachings, practices, and sacred texts that can help us cultivate wisdom, balance, and inner freedom, as well as physical health.

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The first yoga text to outline a step-by-step sequence for developing a complete practice according to viniyoga–yoga adapted to the needs of the individual.

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The Journey Home: Autobiography of an American Swami is a 2008 auto-biographical account of a young nineteen-year-old boy, Richard Slavin’s journey from the suburbs of Chicago to the caves of the Himalayas and through this, his transformation to being Radhanath Swami, one of India’s most respected spiritual leaders and an ISKCON figure. Mystic yogi’s, gurus and an epic quest through spiritual India, is a concise description of this memoir. Within his autobiography, Radhanth Swami is seeming to weave a colorful tapestry of adventure, mysticism and love.

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This is the third edition of The Key Muscles of Hatha Yoga, with extended contents. There is a new cover, over 50 new pages with an expanded chapter on the breath and more biomechanics in yoga. 244 page book with over 650 colour 3D computer generated images of a human skeleton covering over thirty key muscles as applied to Hatha Yoga including biomechanics and information on the chakras.

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The Language of Yoga is a definitive guide to the asana (physical postures) limb of yoga. This edition contains more than 200 illustrated yoga postures with both English and Sanskrit names. Additional yoga-related Sanskrit terms and over a dozen common chants and sutras round out the content. Audio pronunciation guides help readers gain the knowledge, confidence, and precision of mastering the Sanskrit names and chants correctly. Written by a respected Sanskrit scholar, The Language of Yoga is a perfect tool to help edify and empower yoga students (and teachers) on their path to deepening their yoga practice.

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Lainey Morse didn’t set out to start a fitness craze, but she got one when her yoga-instructor friend asked her if she could hold a yoga class on Lainey’s farm. The appeal was immediately apparent, with word spreading quickly and waitlist developing almost overnight. Now, Lainey has people traveling from every corner of the globe — from Iceland to Australia — to experience goat yoga where it all began.

The Bhagavad Gita tells the story of how Arjuna, the great warrior, is seated in his chariot about to engage in battle, when he sees his own kinsmen and his revered teacher arrayed in battle against him, and feels that he cannot fight. It is then that Krishna, the Cosmic Lord, comes to counsel him.

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The remarkable benefits of yoga, which include improved flexibility, balance, muscle tone, endurance, and vitality, only hint at the extraordinary power of this deeply spiritual practice. When adhered to and practiced mindfully, yoga can unlock readers’ full creative potential, their capacity for love and compassion, and ability to find success in all areas of their lives.

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The first two limbs of the eight-fold path of yoga sutras—the basic text for classical yoga—are examined in this spiritual guide to the practice of yoga. Foundational to all yogic thought, they are considered to be the guidelines to the yoga way of living that free individuals to take ownership of their lives, direct them toward the fulfillment they seek, and gain the skills to choose attitude, thought, and action. The first five guidelines are referred to as the yamas—a Sanskrit word that translates to “restraints”—and encompass nonviolence, truthfulness, not stealing, nonexcess, and nonpossessiveness.

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Yoga instructor, licensed massage therapist, and anatomy teacher Kelly Solloway provides an entertaining and informative journey through the human body, focusing on the bones, joints, and muscles used in yoga. After an overview of helpful terms, Kelly covers the skeletal system, joints, and connective tissue, followed by the muscular system. Each anatomical feature is illustrated with a beautiful black-and-white drawing of a yoga posture, or asana, to color. Coloring the bones and muscles, and their names, will help you to remember their location and function, and 32 perforated flash cards enable readers to quiz themselves and study yoga anatomy on the go.

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Discover why Robert Downey Jr, Jennifer Aniston, and Russel Brand all set aside time off their busy schedules to engage in the life-changing practice of Yoga.

Yoga brings not only a suppleness to the body but also a sense of spiritual and physical well-being to those who practice it. Featuring over 170 postures from the main schools of yoga, The Yoga Bible is the ultimate, comprehensive guide to practicing yoga and finding a mental and physical balance in life. The book encourages yoga beginners and experts alike to find a yoga sequence that suits their personal needs and abilities.

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World-renowned yoga master Erich Schiffmann offers an easy-to-follow, exciting new techniques—the first to combine hatha yoga and meditation—to all who are seeking healthful beauty and inner peace.

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See inside every yoga pose! With clear, expert instruction and full-color, detailed anatomical drawings, Yoga Anatomy depicts the most common asanas to provide a deeper understanding of the structures and principles underlying each movement and of yoga itself.

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The definitive book of yoga therapy, this groundbreaking work comes to you from the medical editor of the country’s premier yoga magazine, who is both a practicing yogi and a Western-trained physician.

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For centuries, yoga has provided a path to physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. But modern lifestyles make it difficult to incorporate the practice. Yoga Body and Mind Handbook offers the best of both worlds—essential poses and meditations made easy so you can fit the full benefits of yoga into your busy life.

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Yoga for Beginners eases you into the inner peace you long for at an easy, step by step beginners pace. Through Susan’s gentle encouragement, you will learn how to improve your flexibility and relieve your stress. A broad range of yoga poses provide many options for the beginner to intermediate level student.

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For years, yoga books have asked readers to bend over backward (literally!) to conform to their physical demands. It’s time for the opposite–for readers to demand that yoga conform to their individual needs. It’s time for a yoga book to reflect the broader population that would benefit from a yoga practice geared toward them. It’s time for Yoga for Everyone!

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The author of Yoga Journal’s most-read column presents the first holistic guide to yoga A user-friendly guide illustrated with 240 two-color photographs and illustrations, Yoga Mind, Body & Spirit sets forth the tenets of this gentle yet rigorous exercise as no other book has. Integrating the teachings of every tradition, internationally renowned yoga instructor Donna Farhi reveals how yoga enhances the connections between the mind, body, and spirit. She outlines the seven simple movement principles that underlie all human motion and provides exercises to help readers understand how they can achieve all yoga postures. She also discusses the ten ethical precepts that are the foundation of all yoga teachings and explains how to incorporate them into a spiritually and emotionally rewarding inner practice.

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Yoga Rising is a collection of personal essays meant to support your journey toward self-acceptance and self-love. This follow-up to the groundbreaking book Yoga and Body Image features 30 contributors who share stories of major turning points. Explore how body image and yoga intersect with race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, dis/ability, socioeconomic status, age, and size as part and parcel of culture and society.

Yoga Sequencing: Designing Transformative Yoga Classes presents the essential principles and methods for planning and sequencing yoga classes. Addressing one of the most popular topics in the yoga profession, this book offers sixty-seven model sequences of yoga poses (asanas) that cover the broad range of yoga student experience, including multiple sequences for beginning, intermediate, and advanced students; yoga for kids, teens, women across the life cycle, and seniors; classes to relieve depression and anxiety; and sequences for each of the major chakras and ayurvedic constitutions. Each sequence provides guidance for teaching the different breathing (pranayama) and meditation techniques that give yoga its transformative power.

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Written almost two millennia ago, Patañjali’s work focuses on how to attain the direct experience and realization of the purusa the innermost individual self, or soul. As the classical treatise on the Hindu understanding of mind and consciousness and on the technique of meditation, it has exerted immense influence over the religious practices of Hinduism in India and, more recently, in the West.

Featuring one hundred key postures with detailed step-by-step instructions and photographs–from Silva Mehta, a disciple of Iyengar and cofounder of the the Iyengar Yoga Institute in Maida Vale, London; and Mira Mehta, founder of and teacher at The Yogic Path in London, who studied with Iyengar from childhood.

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Your Spine, Your Yoga is arguably the first book that looks at the spine from both the Western anatomical/biomechanical point of view and the modern yoga perspective. It is filled with detail, discussion, illustrations, and practical advice for spines of all types. This emphasis on variety is welcome and necessary: no two spines are exactly alike, and no two people have the same biology and biography. What your spine is able to do may be vastly different from what other yoga students’ or teachers’ spines can do.

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Asana Pranayama Mudra Bandha is recognised internationally as one of the most systematic yoga manuals today. Since it’s first publication by the Bihar School of yoga in 1969 it has been reprinted thirteen times and translated into many languages. It is the main reference text used by Yoga teachers and students of Bihar Yoga/Satyananda Yoga within the International Yoga Movenet, and many other traditions as well.

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In today’s world, women are challenged constantly. They have to juggle the roles of housewife and mother and answer the demands of a career in an unforgiving and competitive environment. In these scenarios they must constantly take care of their bodies, for health and fitness are the most important factors to succeeding and achieving their goals. A fitness and yoga expert, Payal instructs women how to look ahead when faced with the difficulties of puberty, pregnancy, obesity, early onset of thyroid, PMS and menopause. Her advice will guide women across all circles of life to shape their bodies into the body of their dreams, becoming what all women deserve to be: goddesses.

“Written by a experienced spiritual practitioner, the book gives an authentic overview of the subject in accordance with tradition, with an emphasis on the practical aspects …will certainly provide a useful overview of the yoga techniques while giving practical hints to their practice.” Prabhuddha Bharata. “The metods presented in this book follow the tradition from which all the four yogic paths of Raja, karma, Jnana and Bhakti stem out…Yogas are som well explained that even a lay reader will have little difficulty in grasping and understanding the techniques to control the mind…” The astrological magazine

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A pragmatic and succinct introduction to the purposes and benefits of yoga–philosophical, physiological, mental, and spiritual–and how practice affects the body/mind to realize those purposes and benefits

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This is the second volume in the Scientific Keys Series from Bandha Yoga. The Key Poses of Hatha Yoga by Ray Long MD FRCSC is a learning tool for fully understanding the muscular anatomy of Hatha Yoga and integrating this knowledge with experience of the poses. Synergistic muscles that contract during a posture are clearly shown in varying shades of blue based on how strong their action is during the pose. Antagonistic muscles which relax during the posture are shown in varying shades of red. In the text Dr. Long suggests we use a particular muscle as a focus during practice so that naming it and feeling its action become integrated in our consciousness.

BKS Iyengar’s translation and commentary on these ancient yoga sutras has been described as the “bible” of yoga. This new edition of the classic text contains a new introduction by BKS Iyengar, as well as a foreword by Godfrey Devereux, author of Dynamic Yoga.