Claudia's Book Club ; Pranayama: The Breath of Yoga by Gregor Maehle

Claudia has been running an on line 'book club over at her blog ASHTANGA YOGA MOTHER EARTH, the first book up is Pranayama: The Breath of Yoga by Gregor Maehle. I read Gregor's book when it first came out but it really calls for a second reading at least. This is a perfect opportunity of course but for one reason or other, practice, my own reading, I haven't had a chance to sit back down with it. Besides I'm kind of settled in the approach to pranayama I learned from Ramaswami (although I tweaked it a little on reading Gregor's book the first time around), funny how you settle into one way of doing something.

Hopefully I'll catch up before she gets to the end of the book.

Claudia's Book Club :

Chapter One: How Many Breaths Do You Do Per Minute?
Chapter Two: Part I: Who Is An Expert In Yoga?
Chapter Two: Part II: How To Get Your Body To Be 16 Years Old Again
Chapter Three: Meditation is Useless Unless Both Nostrils Are Active

Chapter Four: Is Your Retention Really Pranayama, or Just Holding The Breath? 5 Checks

Keep up with each chapter here Claudia's Book club

Pranayama: The Breath of Yoga by Gregor Maehle

Book Description

Publication Date: June 11, 2012

In his third book Gregor Maehle aims at bringing about a renaissance of pranayama, the yogic school of breathing. For millennia pranayama was considered to be the quintessential yogic limb, yoga’s main motor for spiritual evolution. To show pranayama’s importance, Maehle supports his findings at every turn with hundreds of quotations from yogic scripture.With unprecedented detail, the author shows how pranayama is used to connect posture practice to yogic meditation and why it will accelerate progress in both. Also covered are: • how pranayama creates health and its use in therapeutic applications • mental and spiritual benefits of pranayama • the function of prana and the effects of pranayama • the effect of pranayama on brain hemisphericity and balance of the nervous system • the purpose of breath retentions and their precise technical application • in-depth guidelines for the practice of pranayama • illustrations of the major pranayama and kriya techniques • the use of mantra and digital counting during pranayama • the appropriate diet and postures for pranayama • the importance and use of bandhas and kriyas before and during pranayama • how to set free your breathing pattern through exercising breath waves • descriptions of the classical pranayamas such as Nadi Shodhana, Bhastrika and Surya Bhedana with detail never seen before • how pranayama relates to raising Kundalini • a workable order in which techniques are to be learned and put into sequence with other yogic limbs • pranayama as it relates to the stages of life. Gregor Maehle has been practising and researching all aspects of yoga since 1982. He lived for several years in India studying with a variety of yogic masters and sadhus. He has previously published Ashtanga Yoga: Practice and Philosophy and Ashtanga Yoga: The Intermediate Series, which have been translated into several languages.