alan little’s weblog

prana journal

8th June 2004 permanent link

Michael Smith has a newish weblog, Prana Journal. He was kind enough to say nice things about me(*); now I’ve had time to read some of his stuff I can return the complement. He is making a serious, honest and open-minded attempt to document his encounter with yoga as it goes through the “hey, this stuff really is something more than a way to keep fit and look at babes” phase, and I will be following his adventures with interest.

I think I may have rather different ideas than Michael about how complementary weblogging and serious yoga practice really are, or can be. But that’s another of the perpetually unfinished items in my Drafts folder, sub-folder “Too Hard”.

Michael is thinking about a buying a new yoga book that I also have on my shopping list: Elizabeth Kadetsky’s First There Is a Mountain: A Yoga Romance. Links courtesy of Michael: excerpt from a different book, describing her experiences studying at the Iyengar Institute in Pune; article by her on Killing the Buddha about just how tenuous the evidence is for a continuous tradition linking modern yoga practices to classical and mediaeval traditions, but also how little that really matters; interview by her publisher and another one for MetroActive. While we’re about it, here’s her website and here are a couple of discussions of her book on my internet yoga home-from-home, ezboard.

Ms Kadetsky’s writing style is rather generic American journalese for my tastes, but I have the feeling her attitude is one I might be able to relate to. She’s appreciative of the real effects and benefits of yoga, hard-nosed sceptical about the actual history and origins of the way it’s currently taught.

(*) And to alter his original description of me “blogging from the louts position”, which I sincerely hope was a typo all along. If it wasn’t, watch those apostrophes Michael ;-)

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