Veggie Blog

As an avid golfer and certified yoga instructor, Katherine Roberts combined her passions to create the incredibly successful Yoga for Golfers program—a unique and integrated educational system providing instruction on how to improve flexibility, range of motion, and concentration on the course. It’s the fastest growing fitness program used by amateur and professional golfers worldwide. Now, in this groundbreaking book, Roberts makes her unique methods available to you.

Based on twenty years of expertise and guaranteed to work for golfers of all ages, handicaps, and fitness levels, Yoga for Golfers connects the mind and body to create a powerful training regimen geared to produce immediate results, including greater flexibility and strength for distance and accuracy off the tee, enhanced breathing awareness for better swing tempo, and improved overall fitness.

Katherine Roberts has twenty years of experience in fitness training, yoga studies, and motivation. Her highly successful Yoga for Golfers program has been featured in numerous magazines and newspapers, including Sports Illustrated, Golf, Golf Digest, and Self. She has appeared on ESPN, Fox Sports, ABC, and CBS and is the host of her own weekly show, “Yoga for Golfers,” on the Golf Channel. She lives in Cave Creek, Arizona.

Yoga and the Path of the Urban Mystic brings classical teachings alive and helps us move our rewarding experience of yoga beyond the mat and meditation cushion and into the whole of life.

For modern yogis feeling challenged in our efforts to remain deeply spiritual, contemplative, and centered amid the stresses and complications of urban life, this book serves as both inspiration and guide. Darren Main’s fresh, down-to-earth approach to the time-tested practice and philosophy of yoga shows us the way to apply the ancient wisdom of India to every moment and every breath so that even our busiest days can be powerful and mystical adventures, filled with all the wonder and magic that was once reserved for those living as monks and nuns. Yoga for the twenty-first century, this is the fulfilling and joyful path of the urban mystic.
“Darren Main explains how to turn [life’s] distractions into darshan, with humor, lightness, and love. He also explains the Yoga Sutra, the chakras, pranayama, and other esoteric yoga philosophies in a live and engaging way. His humorous style and delicious honesty create a thoroughly modern approach to this ancient science.” -The Bodhi Tree Review

The Yoga of Eating is a practical and inspiring manual that offers original insights on the physical and spiritual functions of sugar, fat, meat, and other foods; fasting, dieting, processing, willpower, and the deeper principles of self-nurture. This book appeals to a higher authority your own body and shows how to access and trust the wisdom your body has to offer.

As a young man in the mid-twentieth century, Swami Vishnu-Devananda was one of the gurus who brought Yoga to the West, many years before Asana practice became trendy. This book, originally published in 1960 when he was but 33 years old, has become one of the standard texts on Yoga. While several editions of this book have been released over the years, the body of the text remains the same. As a result, The Complete Illustrated Book of Yoga may be rough going for many modern-day readers, since it doesn’t have the friendly accessibility of books more recently written. Swami Vishnu-Devananda’s approach is both thorough and rather austere, and the many photos of him in advanced Yoga Asanas are both intimidating and impressive. In spite of all of this (or perhaps because of it), this book is required reading for anyone who is serious about exploring all aspects of Yoga.

Like other books on Yoga, a good portion of The Complete Illustrated Book of Yoga is devoted to Asana (139 pages of 363, to be exact), but actually this is the least useful section. B.K.S. Iyengar goes over the same terrain in a far more accessible manner. More important are the chapters that address Yoga philosophy, spirituality and Pranayama – all areas that many Westerners only superficially understand at best. The chapter on Yogic cleansing is also of interest, although it’s doubtful that many Westerners will be compelled to try it out (the descriptions of neti, or nasal cleansing, and cloth purification sound particularly unpleasant). Vishnu-Devananda is adept at delving into Yoga’s many facets and these chapters require contemplation from those who aspire to be Yogis, and not mere Yoga hobbyists.

Shoosh Lettick Crotzer’s Yoga for Fibromyalgia is the first yoga book devoted exclusively to managing the symptoms of this arthritis-related condition. Her comprehensive program of twenty-six illustrated yoga poses, breathing techniques, and guided visualization and relaxation sessions can be practiced regardless of age or yoga experience. She teaches how to use simple props—a chair, a blanket—to modify poses to support your body and your changing needs, and suggests how to use each pose to ease the effects of daily activities, such as sitting, driving, and gardening. The poses are modeled by yoga teacher Deirdre Carrigan who has fibromyalgia.

Fibromyalgia, which affects more women than men, is characterized by widespread pain in muscles, ligaments and tendons, as well as fatigue and multiple tender points — places on the body where slight pressure causes pain. Although mainstream medicine has yet to devise a successful plan for treating fibromyalgia, yoga offers sensible strategies for managing, and sometimes overcoming, the pain. Written by a yoga teacher and suitable for both yoga novices and veterans, this book is grounded in simple movements, breathing techniques, and guided visualization and relaxation sessions. Readers learn to reduce stress and manage fibromyalgia through eight sequences: four for pain relief, one to diminish fatigue and improve sleep, and three for maintaining body awareness and general flexibility. The author’s simple, supportive language and mixture of theory, practice, and the latest scientific data offer hope for one of the most challenging health conditions.