Inspired Lives: The Best of Real Life Yoga from Ascent Magazine [Paperback]

Clea McDougall (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 4, 2005

Some books on Yoga will teach you a posture, how to hold a pose. Through compelling exposition, artful photography and enlivening illustrations, Inspired lives teaches how yoga and yogic principles become part of daily life. Inspired Lives presents dynamic stories in heartfelt prose that distills the essential teachings of yoga into the art of living life. The best of the first six years of ascent magazine, Inspired Lives features interviews with some of the foremost thinkers and writers about yoga and spirituality including Georg Feuerstein, bell hooks, Yann Martel, Arundhati Roy, Joan Halifax Roshi, Tenzin Palmo, Swami Radhananda, Noah Levine and David Sylvian. As well, Inspired Lives features regular ascent magazine contributors Sarah E. Truman, Lesley M. Neilson, and Sikeena Karmali, among others. With a foreward by Kausthub Desikachar and an introduction by editor, Clea McDougall, Inspired Lives presents a 'real life' portrait of art, politics, suffering and happiness, as experienced through the lens of yoga.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Showing up for your life I mean really showing up is the hardest part. But the stories in this book, and the people behind them, reveal that showing up is not only possible, it is essential. Warm, wise, beautiful, and deeply engaged, Inspired Lives will transform the way you see the world, and your life. --Karen Olson, author & former editor of Utne Magazine

In Inspired Lives, the experiences of the many distinguished contributors will stir readers to use their bodies, minds and selves in service to others, with love and dedication. --B.K.S. Iyengar

About the Author

Clea McDougall was the founding editor of ascent magazine. She now lives and works in Toronto.

Product Details

• Paperback: 300 pages
• Publisher: timeless books; 1 edition (November 4, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932018115
• ISBN-13: 978-1932018110
• Product Dimensions: 0.4 x 0.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #416,656 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Inspired Lives - a favorite!, August 11, 2006

By 

Anna (Toronto, CAN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Inspired Lives: The Best of Real Life Yoga from Ascent Magazine (Paperback)

This book is a collection from one of my favorite yoga magazines-- ascent, based out of Montreal, Canada. It's a large-format book with lots of pictures and illustrations. So like the magazine, it's beautiful. But I would be short selling this amazing book to talk only about the way it looks (I'd happily place it on my coffee table). The articles Inspired Lives features are truly intelligent and inspiring.

Some of my favorites include an interview with activist bell hooks, who takes her buddhist values into her life and work. She talks about love and healing in a very compelling, very real-world manner. Sparrow's "My visit to California" is lyrical and charming, and the comic, "Boy Priest" is delightful.

The thing that is really interesting to me about this book is the breadth and depth of the articles. People from many different traditions-- artists, musicians, nuns, swamis, poets, activists-- talking about the role of spirituality in their lives with an intelligence and sincerity that is refreshing in an age when irony is so often the response to the challenges of living in the world.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars an inspiring read, August 11, 2006

By 

Roxanne White - See all my reviews

This review is from: Inspired Lives: The Best of Real Life Yoga from Ascent Magazine (Paperback)

I am a long-time reader of ascent magazine, so I was delighted to find this anthology of the best articles from the first six years of publication. ascent has consistently published insightful, practical and intelligent articles about how to live a spiritual life in the world, and the most outstanding of these pieces are compiled here. Over the years, spiritual luminaries such as Tenzin Palmo, Georg Feurstein and Geeta Iyengar have graced the pages of ascent magazine, as well as other cultural figures such as bell hooks, Yann Martel and Arundhati Roy.

Some of my favourite articles are reprinted here, and I find myself revisiting them over and over again. Inspired Lives is a wonderful tool for reflection and a creative action plan for how to live an life of inspiration and compassion.