Preliminary Reading for YTT 200

Dear YTT Participants,

A number of you have inquired about what you could read or study in preparation for the training. We have uploaded exerpts from three books - The Ashtanga Yoga Primer; Yoga Sutras of Patanjali Book I; and Yoga Sutras of Patanjali Book II. Reading these will give you a good introduction to the yoga philosophy we will be studying.

We also offer some online resources related to anatomy & asana as well to help prepare for the training. We hope you enjoy your explorations.

EXCERPTS (PDF format)

  1. Ashtanga Yoga Primer
  2. Introduction to Yoga Sutras of Patanjali Book I
  3. Introduction to Yoga Sutras of Patanjali Book II
  4. Yoga Sutras of Patanjali Book III

Online Resources

ANATOMY

The Bandha Yoga website is a fabulous resource. Explore it fully and see many areas of anatomy and yoga asana. At the bottom of the page you can click on yoga postures and see the muscles involved.

If you ever had any doubt as to the variety among our bodies, check out Paul Grilley’s online resources to view the different shapes and sizes of our bones.

InnerBody.com gives a beginner’s overview of each system.

ASANA

Yoga Journal is a great resource for finding postures by category (look under POSES), looking up Sanskrit words (look under BASICS for the Sanskrit Glossary), and/or investigating the anatomy of postures (look under PRACTICE for Anatomy articles).