 | |
| Author | Tirumalai Krishnamacharya |
|---|---|
| Language | Kannada |
| Subject | Modern yoga |
| Genre | Instruction manual |
Publication date | 1934 |
| Publication place | India |
Published in English | 2006, 2011 |
Yoga Makaranda (Sanskrit: योग मकरन्द), meaning "Essence of Yoga", is a 1934 book on hatha yoga by the influential pioneer of yoga as exercise, Tirumalai Krishnamacharya. Most of the text is a description of 42 asanas accompanied by 95 photographs of Krishnamacharya and his students executing the poses. There is a brief account of practices other than asanas, which form just one of the eight limbs of classical yoga, that Krishnamacharya "did not instruct his students to practice".[1]
The yoga scholar Mark Singleton notes that the book is almost legendary among Pattabhi Jois's students, though "very few have actually seen it".[2] Singleton notes, too, that the book was "experimental".[3] The yoga scholar Norman Sjoman criticises the book's "padded academic bibliography" full of irrelevant works, and the perfunctory and ill-informed coverage of yoga practices other than asanas,[4] while another yoga scholar, Elliott Goldberg, comments that the photographs serve to demystify the asanas of their spiritual content,[5] and that Krishnamacharya was falsely claiming an ancient origin for his dynamic vinyasa system of yoga.[6]
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
Mohan 2010 p133was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Singleton 2010, p. 9.
- ^ Singleton 2010, p. 186.
- ^ Sjoman 1999, p. 66 (note 69).
- ^ Goldberg 2016, p. 218.
- ^ Goldberg 2016, pp. 240–242.