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Teaching Yoga: Essential Foundations and Techniques [Paperback]

Mark Stephens , Mariel Hemingway
4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)

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Book Description

May 25, 2010
Teaching Yoga is an essential resource for new and experienced teachers as well as a guide for all yoga students interested in refining their skills and knowledge. Addressing 100% of the teacher training curriculum standards set by Yoga Alliance, the world's leading registry and accreditation source for yoga teachers and schools, Teaching Yoga is also ideal for use as a core textbook in yoga teacher training programs.

Drawing on a wide spectrum of perspectives, and featuring more than 150 photographs and illustrations, the book covers fundamental topics of yoga philosophy and history, including a historical presentation of classical yoga literature: the Vedas, Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, Yoga Sutras of Pataljali, and the main historical sources on tantra and early hatha yoga. Each of the eleven major styles of contemporary yoga is described, with a brief history of its development and the distinguishing elements of its teachings. Exploring traditional and modern aspects of anatomy and physiology, the book provides extensive support and tools for teaching 108 yoga poses (asanas), breathing techniques (pranayama), and meditation. Teaching Yoga offers practical advice for classroom setup, planning and sequencing classes, as well as the process involved in becoming a teacher and sustaining oneself in the profession. The book has over 200 bibliographic sources, a comprehensive index, and a useful appendix that lists associations, institutes, organizations, and professional resources for yoga teachers.

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Teaching Yoga: Essential Foundations and Techniques + Yoga Sequencing: Designing Transformative Yoga Classes + Yoga Anatomy-2nd Edition
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Whether you’re already a yoga teacher, aspiring to be one, or just seeking to deepen your understanding and practice of yoga, Mark Stephens’ thoughtful, eloquent, and thorough book would be a valuable addition to your library… In Teaching Yoga, he covers all the basic topics you’d hope to find in a comprehensive teacher training class… Stephens’ deep understanding of, and appreciation for, the practice and fruits of yoga constantly illuminate his writing. That spirit gives force to his gentle insistence that all yoga teachers must look inside to find – and share with their students – their own authentic expression of yoga.”
Yoga Journal

“Mark Stephens’s all-encompassing tome for both new and experienced teachers [offers] an exhaustive overview of philosophy, history, yoga styles, and guidelines for practice... Authoritative and engaging, but never dogmatic, Teaching Yoga will help instructors fine-tune their classroom skills and empower their personal practice.”
Yoga+Joyful Living Magazine

Teaching Yoga by Mark Stephens is a great resource, not just for yoga teachers but for practitioners of all levels. It covers everything from yoga philosophy and history to the intricacies of the poses, breathing practices and meditation... The foreword is sweetly written by Mariel Hemingway and only serves to enhance this must-read for any practicing or aspiring yogi.”
—Wisconsin State Journal

“Mark Stephens, a teacher of teachers, has created a comprehensive and inspiring guide for yoga teachers and serious practitioners alike. In these pages, he offers us the fruit of his years of rigorous practice, his deep contemplation, and his understanding of what really matters in yoga. Filled with tips and secrets for finding the inner core of asana, gently but firmly puncturing myths, this book is a brilliant merger of traditional wisdom with contemporary rigor and insight. It should be on the shelf of everyone who loves the practice of yoga.”
—Sally Kempton, Yoga Journal’s “Wisdom” columnist and author of The Heart of Meditation: Pathways to a Deeper Experience

“Comprehensive, deeply insightful, and chock full of tips and techniques for teaching and doing yoga, Mark Stephens's Teaching Yoga will be required reading for yoga teachers, teacher trainers, and serious students alike. We heartily recommend this essential new contribution to the conscious evolution of yoga.”
—Joel Kramer, coauthor with Diana Alstad of The Passionate Mind Revisited: Expanding Personal and Social Awareness

Teaching Yoga is an urgently needed manual that will be a valuable tool in the arsenal of aspiring yoga teachers to add perspective and to hone their skills. It provides a wealth of foundational information, advice, tips, guidance, and grist for the mill.”
—Ganga White, founder, White Lotus Yoga Foundation, Santa Barbara, California, and author of Yoga Beyond Belief: Insights to Awaken and Deepen Your Practice

Teaching Yoga is friendly, well thought out, helpful, clear, and tremendously thorough. Many people will benefit from this gift, it being exactly what is needed to help a growing teacher teach at his or her best. I’m glad it is finally in print and it is coming out just in time for my next teacher training!”
—Erich Schiffmann, author of Yoga: The Spirit and Practice of Moving Into Stillness

“Mark Stephens is making a real offering to yoga teachers, providing practical tools and inspiration for the path that embraces all forms of embodied yoga. There are hard-to-find gems that make this a great resource, from the section of the mythological meaning behind the asanas to teaching cues for the core asanas and sequencing tools from vinyasa krama. Enjoy this great resource and dive deep into your own transformation of teaching yoga.”
—Shiva Rea, leading instructor of Transformational Prana Flow Yoga and Yoga Trance Dance

“Yoga teachers and their students will love this book. Mark Stephens untangles the complexities of yoga philosophy, history, and energetics, offers clear and compelling techniques for teaching and exploring asanas, pranayama, and meditation, and gives teachers a rich array of practical tools for planning and sequencing classes, working with diverse students, and teaching with integrity and authenticity. Teaching Yoga should be in the hands of every teacher and dedicated student.”
—Seane Corn, yoga teacher and founder, Off the Mat, Into the World

“Yoga luminary Mark Stephens has written a book that embodies Hatha yoga itself, offering a highly informative guide for all yoga teachers. Teaching Yoga answers our questions and addresses our controversies. This comprehensive and scholarly guide is now required reading for our teaching staff.”
—Mary Lynn Fitton, founder and director of programs, The Art of Yoga Project

“Dedicated yoga students and their teachers will find Mark Stephens's comprehensive book an essential and timeless resource. Filled with profound insights presented with clarity and intelligence, Teaching Yoga is a wonderful resource that beautifully models the practice of yoga itself; it unites many diverse threads of truth into a cohesive, vibrant whole. It has quickly become an indispensable part of my teaching library.”
—Daniel Stewart, cofounder and director, Rising Lotus Yoga, Los Angeles, California

“Fifteen years after starting a successful movement to bring yoga into inner city schools, prisons, treatment centers, and veteran’s facilities, Mark Stephens is back with a treasure trove of wisdom and insight drawn from years of training teachers for success in those settings as well as more traditional yoga spaces such as studios, retreats, and conferences. Teaching Yoga is destined to be a classic that every yoga teacher and student will consult for years to come.”
—James Wvinner, yogi and cofounder, Yoga, Tribe, and Culture

Teaching Yoga is a wonderful addition to the growing collection of books being created for yoga teachers… [Stephens’] writing is friendly, clear, helpful and thorough.”
—YogaBasics.com

“Teaching Yoga: Essential Foundations and Techniques is the first comprehensive guide written for practicing and would-be yoga teachers and their students, covering yoga's history, philosophy, and basic teaching methods. It follows the teacher training curriculum standards set by Yoga Alliance and blends traditional yoga with modern techniques and over 150 photos and anatomy illustrations. Any new age or yoga collection must have this!”
Midwest Book Review, Reviewer’s Choice

“Mark Stephens’ Teaching Yoga offers a fantastic primer for the beginning teacher or those interested in learning more about the many facets of the philosophy and practice of yoga. Stephens is obviously a seasoned student and teacher, and even though the book is written at an expert level, it is still accessible and easy to understand. Stephens’ text offers a great gift for coming generations: what a pleasure to have all of this information in one place.”
—CirclesOfLight.com

“Steeped in the knowledge of classical yoga and modern adaptations, Stephens manages to make the practice of yoga accessible to experienced teachers, new teachers, and students.”
A Garden Carried in the Pocket

This has to be the most comprehensive book on yoga I've ever read.  It is definitely more than just your typical 'how-to' yoga book… I have been thoroughly impressed.”
Kari, Reading For Sanity

About the Author

An esteemed yoga teacher and teacher trainer who has trained over 1,000 yoga teachers, Mark Stephens conducts classes, workshops, and retreats worldwide. The founder of Yoga Inside Foundation, L.A. Yoga Center, and the recipient of Yoga Journal's first annual Karma Yoga Award in 2000. The author of Yoga Sequencing: Designing Transformative Yoga Classes (North Atlantic Books, 2012), he lives and teaches in Santa Cruz, CA.

Foreword contributor Mariel Hemingway is an actress and longtime yoga practitioner and teacher.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 432 pages
  • Publisher: North Atlantic Books; Original edition (May 25, 2010)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1556438850
  • ISBN-13: 978-1556438851
  • Product Dimensions: 8 x 1 x 9.9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,951 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Yoga teacher and author Mark Stephens was born in Santa Cruz, California to native California parents, graduated summa cum laude from the University of California, Santa Cruz, completed seven years of post-graduate doctoral studies at UCLA and worked for over twenty years in Los Angeles as a community organizer, teacher, college instructor, public agency executive consultant, yoga teacher and yoga studio owner.

The founder of Yoga Inside Foundation, L.A. Yoga Center and Santa Cruz Yoga, Stephens has trained over 1,100 yoga teachers worldwide. His writings, interviews, commentaries, quotes and quips have appeared in Yoga Journal, Yoga International, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, People, Health, Huffington Post, Elephant Jounral and other online and print media.

Stephens is presently completing two new books - on the nuances of guiding students and on the transitional elements of yoga - while producing instructional materials for yoga trainers, yoga teachers and yoga students.


Customer Reviews

Highly recommended for hatha yoga instructors and advanced students. Jon Manjushri  |  29 reviewers made a similar statement
The book is well written and organized. Eva  |  15 reviewers made a similar statement
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
43 of 43 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars awesome reading! May 28, 2010
By mike
Format:Paperback
Okay, this is the best book out there for yoga teachers and teacher trainers, but what makes it truly amazing is that it's a great book for all of us-for students as well as teachers. Although I've been doing yoga for 12 or 13 years, I'm not interested in teaching yoga, but this book is filled with background information and insights to help deepen my practice. One of the things I like most about it is how the author has approached every topic like a scholar, asking probing questions, giving detailed references, and encouraging the reader to think rather than just accept what some guru out there says is the truth. Yet the book is also filled with spirit, giving me a real feeling for doing yoga at a deeper level. Anyone who is serious about going deeper with his or her yoga practice will definitely want to buy this book. And last but not least, it's a beautiful book!
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35 of 36 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Required reading for a yoga teacher August 29, 2010
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
With the increasing number of training programs for yoga teachers and the proliferation of yoga studios, many people, and especially yoga students, are demanding higher standards from their yoga teachers. There have been many debates as to whether or not it is advisable to have the yoga profession, and particularly the training of teachers, regulated. In 2007, the Consumer Product Safety Commission reported that in the previous three years, around 13,000 Americans suffered yoga-related injuries as reported by doctors' offices and emergency rooms. Many injuries are the result of teaching practices from incompetent teachers. Many teachers have not received proper training or do not have any certification; it is estimated that among the 70,000 yoga teachers in the United States, only three quarters have any sort of certification. Furthermore, while there are strict training programs that demand a minimum of 200 hours of training, others provide a diploma after a few days of exposure, or just by e-mail.

In the middle of such a situation, the arrival of Mark Stephens' book is more than a blessing. The author has trained more than 700 yoga teachers and is the Director of the Teacher Training Program at Santa Cruz Yoga (CA). He has studied various yoga styles (Iyengar, Ashtanga Vinyasa, yoga therapy, and Vinyasa Flow) and is well versed in yoga history and philosophy. The book includes various practical tables for easy consultation, numerous photographs, a rich bibliography, a very helpful list of yoga teaching resources (yoga websites, yoga associations, and institutes and research centers), a comprehensive list of yoga poses, and a summary of the yoga sequences followed by six major yoga schools.

The first four chapters present the roots of modern yoga and the physiological and mental components of yoga practices. Other chapters deal with teaching yoga poses, breathing techniques and meditation. Three excellent chapters (5, 6 and 10) give useful guidelines and tips for yoga teaching, such as options in conducting a class, the teacher's language and voice, the relationship between teacher and student (including how to deal with feelings of attraction), the use of props and music, how to organize the sequencing of a class, and many other critical subjects. In these chapters, Stephens shares with the readers the lessons he learned as a seasoned teacher. He properly illustrates his instructions with the philosophical foundations of yoga, based mainly on Patanjali's almost two-thousand year old Yoga Sutras.

Inspired by the idea that in yoga, like in travelling, what is important is the journey, not the destination, Stephens affirms, "Yoga is not a practice of attainment; it is an unending process of self-discovery and self-transformation," and teachers are just facilitators and guides. Through the entire book, he is guided by the idea that the role of the yoga teacher is to assist in the discovery of the inner teacher that all of us have inside ourselves; this is indeed the Socratic approach to teach. He also insists on the beneficial powers of adaptation and innovation in teaching yoga to better respond to the needs of every student. The last chapter is dedicated to the yoga profession; here, Stephens mentions some difficult topics such as regulations, teachers' fees, liability insurance, teacher's training and certification, how to start teaching as an apprentice, and other interesting subjects. Although he does not provide his personal views on many of these points, he raises them and alerts us to give proper consideration to them.

This is an excellent book, full of wisdom and information for anyone interested in yoga practice or in teaching. Nevertheless, the book could be improved by taking care of some caveats. It is desirable that in a revised edition the index would incorporate all the authors, as well as the yoga poses mentioned in the text. The name of the poses should appear with both the Sanskrit and English names.
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25 of 26 people found the following review helpful
By John
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This masterfully crafted and beautifully designed book is the most comprehensive text written on yoga wince B.K.S. Iyengar's Light on Yoga was published in 1966. It's also practical and resourceful, for beginning and experienced teachers. But unlike Iyengar, the Indian master, Mark Stephens writes as an American yogi steeped in Western culture yet completely absorbed in the wisdom of the East. This is also a work of scholarship, a rarity in a world of yoga long on bold assertions and short on evidence, careful reasoning, and even simple references. This books contains hundreds of insights into teaching and doing yoga. The author presents a well-balanced perspective on scores of topics, then encurages the reader to thnk on his or her own. This is a truly outstanding book on yoga that will become part of every yogi's library.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Book
This wonderful and in-depth book gives you a tremendous grounding in how to teach yoga in the Iyengar lineage. Read more
Published 9 days ago by Happycat
3.0 out of 5 stars Not great for a beginner
This text book is not very well organized. In that I felt that things that should have been in the glossary were not. There are no bold words for the ones that are. Read more
Published 17 days ago by N. Lee
5.0 out of 5 stars Invaluable resource
Will definitely use this as a resource to return to when looking for thorough, reliable information to plan my classes.
Published 1 month ago by Virginia
5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome!
This book is perfect for people interested in teaching yoga! It has everything you need to begin teaching yoga and even strengthening your own practice.
Published 1 month ago by Sarah Rachelle Stewart
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent yoga book!
I have been teaching for 17 years, and this book is still loaded with wonderful info to expand my knowledge, and freshen up my teaching!
Published 1 month ago by Diana
5.0 out of 5 stars Really helpful for beginner or seasoned teacher
This book has so much information to illuminate your understanding of teaching. It is clear and practical and easy to take small bits and incorporate into your teaching style and... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Cynthia Barber
5.0 out of 5 stars Helpful reference
This book answers all your questions on yoga history and teaching methodology. It has been extremely helpful for me and I know a lot of other yoga teachers who use it
Published 1 month ago by Whitney
5.0 out of 5 stars Great quick reference for teachers.
When I am stuck planning a class this book always gets me started. Great tool for teachers. Well written and nice description.
Published 2 months ago by Elizabeth Recchione
5.0 out of 5 stars Very good for new teachers
İt is very good explained and also for a start it is very good to have ready lessons for the new teachers.
Published 2 months ago by Asli Tamac
3.0 out of 5 stars Good Overview
The book is a good overview of yoga. However, throughout the book, the author uses the sanskrit names of the postures. Read more
Published 2 months ago by VA
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