Stephen Cope’s ‘Wisdom of Yoga’ touched and impressed me so much that I was inspired to give away a copy as a prize to help inspire another seeker on their journey. Reading this book is almost like reading a novel as you follow a group of five friends and seekers through day-to-day dilemmas in their journey of yoga, meditation and life. I have been studying Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra and other teaching of the yogic texts for many years in much detail and this book was able to simplify and allow me to comprehend many of the deeper ideas I had previously found less easy to understand or relate to my life. Stephen Cope shows the relevance of the teachings to modern society and everyday life using examples of friends, colleagues and students. He is a psychotherapist, yoga instructor, author and scholar in residence at Kripalu. Plus he’s somebody that I would love to study and practice under in the next few years.
This book has already been leant to family members and students as a great introduction to the transformations possible with yoga practice. Introducing the concept that yoga is so much more than the pretty pretzel shapes or intense stretching exercise that many may naively judge it to be. It is a useful guide in building a more graceful way of being in the world, and for helping build insight into improved relationships with others and with oneself. Working toward quietening the puppy mind of the practitioner and teaching acceptance and contentment. The book allows for deeper understanding of the connections between the ideas of more contemplative traditions of yoga and Buddhism and how they interlink with more Western psychological thinking. The book discusses the concept of karma and the effect of our individual tendencies toward specific bad behavior. This allows the reader to more easily understand, absorb and personally apply the concepts and ideas.
The characters in the book face the challenges of modern day society; addictions, family relationships, love, and the author has interwoven these with a fantastically simple analysis of the sutras. This allows even complicated yogic philosophies to be comprehensible. He analyses the individual’s stories, as they apply to particular emotions, behavior or mental states. He utilises them to illustrate concepts from the Yoga Sutra in a particularly thought provoking and inspiring way.
This is a great alternative, or in addition, to the often impenetrable translations or commentaries on the Yoga Sutra often read over and over by yoga students. Bringing the reader into direct involvement with their yoga and how it can be applied in their life. Commentaries and discussions can satisfy the intellect but, as my first teacher firmly told me, the only way to do yoga is practice. Not just intellectualizing ideas. The goal of yoga is this ‘Yoga chita vritti nirodha’ – the oneness that comes with the cessation of mental fragmentation. This book explains simply that to control the ‘puppy mind’… the modifications and constant fluctuation of the mind we need to learn to regulate rather than control.
The easiest way to review this book would be to say it is a mix of a novel and an interpretative guide to many concepts of the Yoga Sutra. However it is so much more; an inspirational guide to the Wisdom that is within us all waiting to be unveiled by practice and turning inward. Insightful and inspiring.
I am so impressed with Stephen Cope’s “The Wisdom Of Yoga” that I am giving a copy away in a competition on The Yoga In Cheshire Facebook page. All you need to do to enter is Like the page and answer the question. T&C’s apply. The competition closes on the 28th October 2012, so don’t delay and enter today!
