Weight-Resistance Yoga: Practicing Embodied Spirituality

Transform strength training into a mindful, meditative practice

• Explains how to induce a calm, meditative state through the movements, breathing, and focus of strength-training exercises

• Contains illustrated instructions for 26 exercises to safely strengthen the neck, shoulders, arms, hips, knees, ankles, and torso

• Offers themed meditations on the embodied experience of the exercises to facilitate a mindful state during your session

• The perfect complement to a yoga flexibility practice

Applying the wisdom of hatha yoga to weight-lifting exercises, Weight-Resistance Yoga reveals how to transform a strength-training session into a mindful, calm, and meditative yoga practice. Through 26 fully illustrated weight-resistance exercises using machines, free weights, and the body itself--along with an emphasis on coordinated rhythmic breathing, stability, stillness, and full absorption in the body’s movements against resistance--fitness trainer Max Popov explains how to access the tranquility that dwells within each of us while safely, effectively, and efficiently strengthening your neck, shoulders, arms, torso, hips, knees, and ankles. To support the meditative state of this practice, the author includes 20 themed meditations on the embodied experience of the exercises.

The perfect complement to yoga flexibility practice, weight-resistance yoga allows you to fully inhabit your body, empty your mind of everyday preoccupations, and fill your soul with comprehensions of deeper realities, providing strength, calm, and spiritual illumination through your physical fitness work.

Max Popov is a fitness trainer and scholar of modern yoga. He developed weight-resistance yoga in the late 1980s by applying the teachings of yoga master B. K. S. Iyengar to the strength-training teachings of famed 1920s Indian bodybuilder K. V. Iyer.

ISBN: 9781594773907
Format: Paperback
Pages: 224
Publisher: Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
Published: October 11, 2011

“Very impressive and necessary. I’m excited by this unique blend of Western-style strength training combined with the flexibility and meditative side of yoga. Popov’s book is for all of us. It offers functional movement along with serentiy and mindfulness.”“Melding hatha yoga and weight training into a blended practice, Max Popov shows us how these disciplines are not only completely compatible but also how each brilliantly supports the other’s path of inquiry. By combining both, we go far beyond the individual benefits of stretching or strength and enter directly into the domain of a powerfully embodied spirituality.”“Bringing the yogic principle of mindfulness into all aspects of our lives is one of the ultimate goals of yoga. I recommend this book for anyone wishing to bring more spiritual depth to any physical exercise program.”“...if you’re looking for a link between the muscles and the spirit, Weight Resistance Yoga might be what you’re looking for.”“...the information provided is very valuable and explained thoroughly...this book is a treasure waiting to be discovered.”“Popov is a good writer and I like his exercise methods. He did an outstanding job with the weight resistance training sections of the book.”“In Weight-Resistance Yoga, author Max Popov blends weight training and yoga practice in a conscious manner. His attention to paying attention assures not only a well-sculpted form but also a finely honed mind.”“This more meditative form of weight lifting seeks self-liberation through the mindful movements of the joints against resistance.”