Yoga Sutras
Summer is slowly fading away here in Los Angeles and Autumn weather and pumpkin everything is in full swing. Fall also means Yoga Therapy courses at Loyola Marymount University are starting up again. This will mark year three of a four year program and one step closer to being a Certified Yoga Therapist. I'm excited for the knowledge and experiences this new year-long course will provide to me and my classmates.
The first yoga therapy class was anatomy for yoga therapists and the second was learning the systems of the body and how yoga therapy can be applied to treat clients. This year, we will be observing yoga therapists as they treat clients, putting what we've learning into practice. With this class, I'll have a clearer view of what my yoga therapy practice will look like and how I can use my strengths to best serve my clients.
Yoga Therapy courses aside, I'm revisiting a class I took my first year in the program, The Yoga Sutras. My first time was online and video based. I really enjoyed the class and my teacher and wished that it would have been an in-person class rather than watching pre-recorded video lectures. So when I saw that this year's class was a hybrid in-person/online version, I jumped at the chance to revisit the material. My copy of 'The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali' by Sri Swami Satchidananda had served me well during the first course...and I was a little surprised by all the notes that I had jotted down on the pages while watching the videos. I decide to up the ante this year and buy my teacher, Dr. Christopher Key Chapple's translation of the sutras, 'Yoga and the Luminous.' And then I remembered different teacher had recommended the book called 'The Unadorned Thread of Yoga' by Salvatore Zambito. Now while the two previous books contain a single translation of the text from Sanskrit, this latter book complies 12 translations and puts them side by side next to each aphorism. This illustrates the wide range of interpretations of the Yoga Sutras and also gives the reader more insight and meaning to each sutra. For any sutra you can find a translation that speaks to you in one place! It's been an interesting read so far.