Veggie Blog

From Beryl Bender Birch, best-selling author and founding voice in today’s “vigorous yoga” movement, comes this inspiring guide for the serious yoga practitioner. Focusing on the “eight limbs” of Ashtanga Yoga, including breath control, concentration, and the moral precepts of yoga science, Bender Birch shows how our physical journey can take us into the deeper levels of spiritual practice.

Yoga poses, or asanas, are just part of a traditional yoga practice, although this fact has largely been overlooked by the masses who’ve taken up yoga in the past several years. In astanga yoga, for example, there are eight branches, or “limbs,” of yoga that each correspond to a body chakra, or energy center, which combine physical and spiritual activities to balance the energy of the body and mind. (The third limb encompasses the asanas familiar to most yoga students; the other limbs include pranayama, or mindful breathing; dharana, or concentration; dhyana, meditation; and samadhi, living joyfully.)