The Yoga Sutras: One Woman's Personal, Practical, and Playful Perspective - Paperback

by Dana Baptiste (Author)

The Sutras have always been a source of questions rather than answers; a record of scientific findings rather than a list of commandments; a book about potentiality and possibility rather than morality and sin. Less a text that tells me I have no right to interpret them, and more a body of work that says everyone can (and should) apply these principles to their lives and be better for it. As Danielle Prohom Olson states, "All told, yoga could be described as spiritual technology designed to inhibit our autonomic systems. In other words, yoga helps us overcome the previous limits of our biology so that we can fully evolve as human beings." If yoga is the science, the Yoga Sutras is the study and the "how-to" manual. There are close to 1000 translations of the Sutras already out there, but none of them address the right we all have to individualize the information found within them. Lately, this has become a hot topic in the yoga world; a "cultural appropriation" issue. I don't believe that Truth can be "appropriated" - I believe wisdom should be available to all people, and if this text resonates with my soul, it belongs to me as much as it "belongs" to anyone else. It is in this spirit that I present my connection to this sacred text.