“The Wisdom of Yoga” by Stephen Cope
Stephen Cope’s The Wisdom of Yoga is another book I was prompted to read after appreciating Dani Shapiro’s Still Writing and Devotion. Cope is a yoga teacher and a writer with a background in counseling. The book is a reading of some parts of the ancient Yoga Sutra by Patanjali, interspersed with case studies of Cope and other yoga practitioners he worked with.
The Yoga Sutra is about yoga the life pursuit, not yoga as we commonly understand it in the west, a form of fitness. It describes ways to be, think, and act. Cope’s investigations into the text are balanced with the real-world life issues of the people he describes and this makes the book read-able and enjoyable, where an examination of only the text would have been too dry and esoteric. I’m hard pressed to come up with a good excerpt of this book. Much of its loveliness is in its interweaving of quotes by thinkers, dreamers, and mystics through the ages. Perhaps it’s best to use the quote he starts with, because Cope’s book is looking back to the 3000 year old tradition of yoga through a 2000 year old text, but using it as a lens to examine the modern struggles of a handful of people. Past and present meet and merge.
There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. There is no one here but us chickens, and so it has always been: A people busy and powerful, knowledgeable, ambivalent, important, fearful, and self-aware; a people who scheme, promote, deceive, and conquer; who pray for their loved ones, and long to flee misery and skip death. It is a weakening and discoloring idea, that rustic people knew God personally once upon a time– or even knew selflessness or courage or literature– but that it is too late for us. In fact, the absolute is available to everyone in every age. There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less. Quote from Annie Dillard’s For the Time Being
I would say this is not for beginning yogins or as a starting point to learn more about yoga, but for those who have been on the mat a while and are interested in learning about the other 7 of 8 branches of yoga, and comparing and contrasting them with other traditions of meditation and practice in Buddhism and Christianity.
Edited to add: one thing I noticed about Cope and the other yogins he writes about on their path to learning. I don’t think any were currently married, and none had small children. It is easier, perhaps only possible?, to actively seek when one is less attached in the world.
June 10th, 2014 at 1:45 pm
You might like Duluth author Deborah Adele’s The Yamas and Niyamas: Exploring Yoga’s Ethical Practice as a down-to-earth guide with a mother and grandmother’s perspective. One of my favorite ways she described the yama of truthfulness in action was how she was completely herself when she first met her husband, because she thought he was gay.
June 13th, 2014 at 8:09 am
Ritalee–read it, own it! Some of my book group friends have taken classes with one of the authors, and we read it a few years back, but it bears re-reading. Perhaps I need to look into going north for some yoga. What do you think?
June 17th, 2014 at 8:57 pm
Wow, cool! Northern yoga is a great idea. Tonight my new class practiced on the shore of Lake Superior.