First There Is a Mountain: A Yoga Romance
by Elizabeth Kadetsky
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Book Summary Information
Author: Elizabeth KadetskyEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2004-01-02
ISBN: 0316890960
Number of pages: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
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Book Reviews of First There Is a Mountain: A Yoga Romance
Book Review: Understanding of others rooted in and interwoven with an understanding of self
Summary: 3 Stars
Many 10 to 15 year practitioners of Iyengar Yoga categorize themselves as "rank beginners." What many Western students have to learn is that the practice of Yoga demands humility. There are cultural distinctions so foreign to the way in which we learn in the West, that one has to be open. Under a gifted and disciplined teacher, requirements include a deep surrender of the self. Kadetsky's study of the Iyengar's and her effort to delve into the richly complex background of Yoga in India are hampered by her own obstacles regarding self-understanding, humility and a surrender to discipline. She has skills of research, of following leads toward interesting discoveries in the evolution of Iyengar Yoga and the gradual refinement of the Iyengar family's present school and method. But, one reads this text feeling that she fails to see (or partially perceives) what some can gather from what she does not finish, from where she does not go. Her written experience is like watching someone encounter a breathlessly beautiful rose, which holds up the whole universe, inside and out, to the viewer. You can feel that she is drawn, entranced, yet torn by conflicting, unresolved problems of the self. She loves the beauty she experiences - even though eyes may be color-blind and the fragrance is barely registered. She knows this and exposes her limitations to all: as Iyengar pushes this realization into her, fully extending her into pashimotanasana - "the pose of the West."
Summary of First There Is a Mountain: A Yoga Romance
In her early 20s, Elizabeth Kadetsky found herself running for hours every day, eating like a bird, and suffering from an excruciating but mysterious pain in her chest. Only in her yoga classes did she find some relief. Through a teacher, she heard about a yoga institute in India where an aging patriarch took in Western students for instruction. She wrote to him and waited years for an invitation to study with the master. FIRST THERE IS A MOUNTAIN is a tale of spiritual longing that brought a young American woman to the yoga institute of the renowned B.K.S. Iyengar, the man who introduced yoga to a Western audience. Once there, she became a wayward protge of this mercurial and demanding teacher, piecing together his life's vision of the ancient Hindu practice and finding her place within yoga as a Western aspirant. In the damp, musty practice rooms at the institute, her exhausted body hanging from ropes or propped up by wooden blocks, she found a spiritual discipline unlike any other. Under Iyengar's tutelage Kadetsky learns the 'subtle wisdom' of the body, leaving behind a discordant childhood and starvation diets to discover a kind of peace. Part personal memoir and part exploration of the vast gulf between body, will, and spirit, FIRST THERE IS A MOUNTAIN is written with grace, reverence, and wisdom.General Books
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