Yoga Guidelines

Reading list

Photo tour of studio

1) The Yoga Tradition, by Georg Feuerstein. $40. If you want a scholarly, indepth tome of the history and traditions of India, buddhism and yoga in all their vastness, purchase this.

2) The Bhagavad Gita, Eknath Easwaran, $15.The bible of India. Eknath Easwaran's commentary is invaluable. This is a great man and a wide knowledgeble thinker. Get Easwaran'a version of this text rather than someone else's from the library. You will not be disappointed. Buy this.

3) A Path with Heart, Jack Kornfield, $15. This is a guide for your life, spiritual or otherwise. Tap into this compassionate soul's life and thinking. Buy this.

4) The Yoga Matrix, by Richard Freeman, $45 audiotapes. For your car. Most listeners find his voice alone transport them to a deep place. The philosophical content is superb, accessible and sometimes his viewpoints are controversial within the yoga world. He gets excited about Saankhya philosophy, which practically no one can do.

5) Moving into Stillness, by Erich Schiffman $25 One of the outstanding yoga teachers of our time valued for his love and creativity within postures. Much of the book contains asana directions, which is okay sometimes, but I find I continue to look into this book for his originality, spirit and attitude.

1) The Art of Meditation, Jack Kornfield, 2 audiotapes. The most accessible, clearest there is. Buy this.

1) Yoga the Iyengar Way, Silva, Mira and Shyam Mehta $25 Great pictures. Easy to get high quality information out of. Mr Iyengar invented the field of precise alignments for the todays yoga world, although they keep changing.... Precise alignment considerations scarely existed before Iyengar. And if only those Iyengar yogis would just smile once.... Once. They are so freaking grim.

2) Jivamukti Yoga, David Life and Sharon Gannon. Another useful guide for philosophy and posutres . David and Sharon's hearts are in the right place. They get the deeper picture of yoga. I put this book in the Asana section because they have a number of "out of the box" vinyasa sequences and work in a similar postural way as I do, but personality wise we are very different.

1) Anatomy of Movement, by Blandine Calais-Germain $28 Remarkably full of good sense and chock full of accessible anatomical information. She is a ballet dancer, yoga teacher and anatomist.

My apologies that I havent' produced very much "product" over the years. It is a failing of mine. Hopefully, I will get my act together before I die and get my stuff out there. 15 years of teaching, 25 teacher trainings and I still avoid freezing a yoga thing in time.

Can someone help me with the creation of a collection of CDs? They would provide new material to the world, yoga sequences and meditation recordings that noone in the US has gone into. I have many of the pieces already in place, high quality recording equipment, and duplicating equipment. What I lack mostly is the will. I need a technical partner. Practically speaking, the next steps are to edit the sound, to design a cover, print, duplicate, package, market, distribute and PR it.

Two older tapes 1994 and 1995 are now out of stock.

1) 1998- Tom's Ashtanga audio tape $10. Useful for Sun Salutations and standing postures. Moves really fast through 60 postures, New York City style. If you know about Ashtanga, this is essentially "cut first series", which I no longer teach in its fundamentalist form. This tape got great reviews from Richard Rosen at Yoga Journal. If you want something with my voice, this is all I got, as of today Sept 15, 2003.

2) Ali Mc Graw. Yoga, Mind and Body. video. sequence designed by Erich Schiffman. Still one of the best after all these years.

3) Brian Kest's Power Yoga 1, 2, 3 videos. I like Brians' hip Californian style. I like his philosophical bias from a yogic standpoint. The sequences are physically modest and easy to practice at home with. It is enough of a practice to give you a physical experience without being absurd. He's safe, maybe not technically all there, but pretty solid.

4) Short Forms, by David Swenson. Very useful short Ashtanga like practice for busy people. David is a very sweet man. I miss him after all these years. Hey David, give me a call won't you?

5) Rodney Yee: Ubiquitous Rodney tapes can be found at any grocery store. They are okay.

6) Yeah, there are hundreds of yoga videos, CD and "product" out there. So far, I haven't found anything that I would say is thrilling and an absolute must.