Season 3 Episode 2: My Top Yoga Books

In this episode I'm sharing with you my top yoga books. These are the books I come back and refer to, time and time again. Books that enlighten me, comfort me, inspire me, make me think and stir my soul.

These are the main books that have helped me along the path find deeper meaning and understanding, although it was super difficult to choose just these alone! There are so many more I could recommend, but then Id be here for hours!

Here are the titles:

• The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali with Translation and commentary by Swami Satchidananada
• The Bhagavad Gita With Translation and Commentary by Eknath Easwaran
• Be Here Now Ram Dass The Hanuman Foundation
• Awakening Shakti By Sally Kempton
• The Radiance Sutras By Lorin Roche PHD
• The Heart Of Yoga  By Desikachar
• I also mentioned another little book on the teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi called All Is One, and another great book I didnt mention which goes deeper into his teachings is Be As You Are with Daniel Goldman.

Grab a cuppa yoga my lovely yoga community and I hope you enjoy the episode.

If you have any comments, questions or anything you would like to hear about related to this podcast, I'd love to hear from you.

Please feel free to message me on Instagram or email me here: info@shraddhayayoga.co.uk

You can follow me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/shraddhaya_yoga/

Or why not find out how we can work together with Yoga & meditation classes, courses and 1:1 coaching here: https://www.shraddhayayoga.co.uk/

With love and light,

Helen xxx

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Hi everyone, and welcome. Welcome to season three, very exciting, episode two. Um, and in this episode, I'm gonna caveat this slightly. I am day two of my period, and my brain is not functioning it is greatest, let's just say it that way. So if I lose my words, if I there are big pauses, I do apologize. I feel the brain fog today. I'm feeling very slow, a little bit delicate. Um, but today I am going through my top seven yoga books. I was gonna try for five, and it was just too bloody difficult. Um, I have a great big bookcase full of yoga books, and it do you know it was surprisingly hard to choose. So I went for seven, and these are books that are really accessible and really great if you're just starting out and you want to go a bit deeper, great for the seasons yogi-like. Um, they're my favorites, they're the ones that I refer back to again and again and again. There are many more, but these are my top ones. So I thought it would be really lovely to share with you these books. Um, give you a rough overview of what they contain, um, their voice, what they can offer you in terms of learning, and um just love to talk about books really. We we don't read enough these days, do we? So I encourage you to go out and buy some books, and I will link everything in the show notes. Enjoy the episode, grab a cuppa, here we go. Hi everyone, and welcome. Welcome to episode two, season three, very very exciting. Um how are you? I hope you're having a really good week, a good start to your week. I'm recording this on a Monday, and I thought it would be a really great idea to talk about my top five yoga books. However, sitting and looking at my um bookcase full of just yoga books got a little bit tricky picking just five. So I've actually got six and I could have got ten. Um, I do have quite quite a decent little library which is always growing, and some of which I haven't read yet, um, some of which I've half read. So I'm picking the ones that I have read the most and that I refer back to again and again and again. So, all of these books I have read over time, some of them were part of my yoga teacher training uh course reading, others have been recommended by other teachers, some of them I've bought for myself. Um, and they're all good for different reasons. I think if you are fairly new to yoga and you want to dive a bit deeper, you cannot go wrong with essentially getting all of these books. They are amazing and they show really different facets. So I'm just gonna dive straight in and begin. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, it's a really incredible book to have, and if you want to know about yoga, had the yoga, this is the book to get. Um, so this is the copy that I got as suggested by Katya and my British Wheel of Yoga training. It's uh with translation and commentary by Sri Swami Sachidananda um by Integral Yoga Publications. I'm gonna put all of these in the show notes. So if you want to but go ahead and buy them or just have a little look, you've got all the info there. And what I really like about this one is the commentary is really lovely, it's um put in kind of Western thinking by Aswami. So someone who really really knows, I've got the book in my hand, so you can probably hear the pages, um, and he really explains it so so beautifully. So the book is um basically begins with the first sutra, which is now the exposition of yoga is being made, and so you get right in there straight away. Um there's an introduction, but that you go right in there, and then the uh the swami um basically explains what each of the sutras means, and it's just really really beautiful. It's not a book to read from cover to cover, it's a book to have on your night table, on your coffee table, and just dive into um so I'm just gonna read to you the second sutra Yoga Jitta Vritti Niroda. The restraint of the modifications of the mind stuff is yoga. So it gives you the written Sanskrit, which is really beautiful, it gives you the breakdown of the Sanskrit and what each of the words means, and then it gives you the English translation. Then the commentary from the Swami comes in. In this sutra, Patanjali gives the goal of yoga. For a keen student, this one sutra would be enough because the rest of them only explain this one. If the restraint of the mental modifications is achieved, one has reached the goal of yoga. The entire science of yoga is based on this, and then he goes on to explain it more deeply. So it's one of those, I would say it's kind of like a yogic Bible, because Patanjali was the grandfather of modern-day yoga. He systematized and and spoke about this, these are sutras that were spoken about thousands of years ago. Um, he didn't write them down, but it is thought that his uh scholars and students wrote it down upon listening to his word in the kind of uh very traditional um in the tradition of a guru speaking to his students. And so it's the first time that it a practical kind of guidebook for yoga and what yoga is was written down, and it's thought to be five or six thousand years old. So, really, really incredible. And if you want to start to know what yoga is really, really about, grab this book, and you might need to read it with a teacher on hand because some of it is is still really hard to grasp, but it will be a book that you come back to again and again and again. Okay, so that's my first recommendation. If you're gonna get any book, get the sutras, really, really amazing. My next one again was um a core syllabus book, a must-read, really, for anybody that's on a spiritual path, even if you don't practice yoga on any spiritual path. The Bhagavad Gita is just a beautiful story, and that's really what it is. It's an incredible story. Um, and it's one of the best known of the Indian scriptures, and I've got Eknath Iswaran, I think I've pronounced that correctly. Please tell me if I haven't, um, his translation, and again, this was recommended to me when I did my yoga teacher training. And I'm just gonna read uh the blurb at the back for you because it is really just sums it up beautifully. The Bhagavad Gita, the Song of the Lord, is the best known of all the Indian scriptures, and this reliable readable version has consistently been the best-selling translation. Didn't really need to know that, but it is a good book. Um the Bhagavad Gita opens dramatically on a battlefield as the warrior Arjuna turns in anguish to his spiritual guide, Sri Krishna, for answers to the fundamental questions of life. The Gita is not what it seems, it's not a dialogue between two mythical figures at the dawn of Indian history. The battlefield is a perfect backdrop, but the Gita's subject is the war within, the struggle for self-mastery that every human being must wage to live a life that is meaningful, fulfilling, and worthwhile. Really sums it up, and that's why I say, even if you're not um practicing yoga, and even if you're just searching for more meaning in life, and you're on any kind of spiritual path, the Gita is a really people call it the Gita um affectionately short name, is an amazing book, and basically it starts with uh Prince Arjuna, and he's on the edge of a battlefield, and he's absolutely beside himself because on the other side of this battlefield, waiting to begin this huge battle, is his brother, and he doesn't want to fight his brother, and they've got these vast beautiful. I mean, you can imagine it, these vast armies, you know, with all their armour and their swords glittering in the sun, and they're just standing and they're waiting, they're waiting for the moment for Arjuna to say, charge and start the battle, and he doesn't want to, so he's got this real kind of um, he's very torn, this moral dilemma. He knows he has to, he has to defend his territory, and uh won't go into the other details, but the person that he's fighting is his brother, he doesn't want to fight his brother, he doesn't want to kill his brother, and his um charioteer he starts speaking to, and it turns out that he's not just any charioteer, it's it's Lord Krishna who's come down to guide him, and the conversations are so real. I mean, considering this was written thousands of years ago, it's it's just really when you read it, you're like, oh my god, this is timeless, absolutely timeless, and absolutely applicable to any age, including our own. Um, and it makes sense, it really makes sense, and because it's such a beautiful translation, quite often you don't need to look it up. It's a fantastic book. Um, and it can be of really great comfort. I know a couple of times I've dipped into it, and there's a sense, a real sense of humanity in this book about the things all of us struggle with at different points in our lives, and how to choose the right path. Um, so that is an absolute must. You want to go deeper into your spiritual journey, discover the meaning of your life. It's a big claim, but the Bhagavad Gita is really one a must-read, absolute must-read. Okay, oh, it's difficult. Okay, the next one you've heard me talk about many times before, actually. I've referenced it quite a few times. I think I've even put it in the show notes. I'm gonna reference it again because it's amazing. Um, I'm moving around these books around, so you can probably hear me banging around in the background. This is the Heart of Yoga Developing a Personal Practice by TKV Desikacha. Desikacha, I think I've pronounced that correctly again. Anyone can say, Hey, you have not pronounced that correctly. Don't be shy, you can tell me. Um, again, this was suggested for my yoga teacher training, and this is probably my sixth copy because I keep giving it away to my students, to my clients and friends, and my nephew has a copy. Um, and I love that actually. I'm just like, you want to know about yoga? Read this book. What's so good about it? Um it's written by the son of a really incredible exponent of yoga, um Sri T Krishnamacharya. Again, I'm not sure I pronounced that correctly, um, who really changed the way people looked at yoga. And he Krishna Macharya decided to use yoga as a prescription. He saw that yoga treated dis-ease in the body when you used it like a prescription, and so he really just turned it on its head and used it to treat his patients so they would come with different ailments and different problems, which were of a mental, emotional, and physical nature, and he would prescribe them yoga practices, had the yoga practices, and he really did incredible groundbreaking work, which is still being used today. This is written by his son, who was uh one of his main students for obvious reasons, and what I love about it is it breaks it down, it makes it so real, it literally tells you how to start your own practice. It goes into all of the eight limbs, it actually has the sutras in the back because it's a key part for learning about yoga. Um, it breaks down all of the limbs in really, really practical ways. It's got diagrams about the asana. Oh god, it's got everything in here. Um, yoga, its concept and meaning, it's got the history of Krishna Machaya, things that darken the heart, what to do when you're having a difficult time, um Tantra yoga, the many paths of yoga. I mean, literally, it just for quite a small book, there's an incredible amount of really useful information, and so I think that's why I go back to it again and again and again because some of the yoga books are massive, like the the Hadda Yoga Prad Pradipika is you know, again, another Bible when you're studying yoga, but it's massive and it's not so easy to navigate. This book was really made for people like you and me that just want to open a page and go, okay, what is pranayama, and have it explained to you in such a way, and then have some practices that you can do right there in the moment, and more than that, understand what it is and how it works on all levels spiritually, emotionally, mentally, physically, energetically. So, the heart of yoga developing a personal practice, um, it's just so good. Honestly, it's so good. So, on the back of the book, on the blurb, it says, In the heart of yoga, Desikachar offers a distillation of his father's system as well as his own practical approach, so it's a blending of the two, which he describes as a program for the spine at every level, physical, mental, and spiritual. This is the first yoga text to outline a step-by-step sequence for developing a complete practice according to the age-old principles of yoga. Desikachar discusses all the elements of yoga, poses, counterposes, blah blah blah blah blah. So, literally, this is what you need. Get this book, even if if you've never read this book and you're like a hardened yogi who've been studying for a long time, I'd still recommend it because there's stuff in there that is a beautiful reminder of what it's all about, and I feel like the further you go down the path, sometimes you really need to come back to the simple meanings, the essence, the core of what it is. So amazing, amazing book. I wish you could see it actually, it's a nice book as well. Okay, moving on. So we've got three already in my pile. Um, again, this is one I've talked to you about before. The Radiant Sutras, 112 Gateways to the Yoga of Wonder and Delight by Lauren Roche, PhD. Oh my god, I adore this book. If this book was visual, it would we would never ever want to tear our eyes away. And this is how I feel when I read anything from this book. It is delicious. It is tantric, it is all about tantra, which is why it's so delicious. It is just a feast for your heart, a feast for your mind, the words themselves, the words, the descriptions. It's absolutely stunning. I'm gonna actually just read and my last uh episode, I read you a section. I'm gonna read you another one now. Okay. Number forty-nine. Tasting dark chocolate, a ripe apricot, a luscious elixir. Savour the expanding joy in your body. Nature is offering herself to you. How astonishing to realize this world can taste so good. When sipping some ambrosia, raise your glass, close your eyes, toast the universe. The sun and moon and earth dance together to bring you this delight. Receive the nectar on your tongue as a kiss of the divine. My God, the whole book is full of this gorgeousness, and it's so true, right? The sun and the moon and the earth danced together so that that fruit could ripen and grow and taste so fucking delicious. I just absolutely adore this, and basically it's uh it's based on the text known as the Vinyara Bhairava Tantra. Um, it's a translation of it, and Lauren brings basically his unique perspective of this tantric text. So that was one of the um are they called sutras? I'm just reminding myself if they're called sutras, the verses. Um yuktis, yuktis, sometimes verses. Um it's a different way of looking at yoga. A lot of people think tantra is all about sex. No, it's not, it's about sensations, it's about the sensual world, which of course is about the body, and of course is about sex, and but that's a minor part. It's more about your perceptions, your sense perceptions, and using your sense perceptions, your sensory body, your physicality to experience divinity. So, again, it makes it really practical. I think that's what I really love. Some of these yoga books are so um when you're diving into spirituality and consciousness, they can get really like, whoa, what are we talking about? And how do I apply that to my everyday life? And I always don't get me wrong, I love going deeper into consciousness, being, and all of that, but sometimes it can be very, very heavy, and it's always good to have something that's more practical and more earthy. We need a mixture of the two, and these books really, really this one in particular brings it right into your body and right into what you can experience in the everyday. Everyone has eaten a beautiful bit of dark chocolate, if you like it, or a luscious fruit, or you know, being imagine yourself in Greece, um, sitting in the shade of a vine, drinking beautiful wine by the sea, and then someone brings out a plate of delicious olives and cheese, grilled fish, meats. I mean, heaven on earth, and all of these things, and my mouth is filling up. I want to be there now. What this what this tantra is saying is that this is a way to express and experience divinity in our bodies in the here and now. Absolutely adore this perspective, and so it's really beautiful. And I have used it so many times just to for pleasure and to bring me into my body. Um, and also, if you're a yoga teacher, it's really beautiful for class inspiration, course inspiration, theme inspiration. It just gets your imagination going, um, and that's really amazing. And Lauren, if you're listening, um I really would love it if you come on the podcast because I would love to speak to you. It's amazing, really, really amazing. Um on the back, Judith Orloff says, if you are wild and longing for a more profound experience of love, this book is the perfect companion and teacher. If you're afraid to explore the inner reaches of your heart but long for that freedom, you can trust the magnificent journey the Radiant Sutras offers. You will be blessed by this book, it will forever change you in the most positive, surprising ways. Buy this book, absolutely gorgeous. Okay, so I think we've got four. Um, another really useful book for gaining knowledge. So when I first started um learning how to lead Kirtan with my teacher Nikki, she suggested um I get this book, and actually, loads of other people suggested I get it. Um, my friend Vic, who's been on here, a couple of other teachers. So I bought it before and I hadn't read it yet. Um, it was sitting waiting to be read. It is called Awakening Shakti by Sally Kempton, the transformative power of the goddesses of yoga. And you might think, hang on a minute, goddesses in yoga, and this is where people get a little bit kind of confused with um the ideas of Hindu religion and yoga, and yoga not being a religion. Um, a lot of the times, and why this is really good. Let me just use uh my story as an example. When I was uh learning to lead kirtan and studying mantras, you when you are chanting mantras to lead other people, and also in your own personal practice, that these are not just words, mantras are really um patterns of consciousness is one description. Um they are energetic portals. That's how I like to view them, energetic portals, and often the mantras are around deity, so gods like Shiva, goddesses like Kali, my Ishtadevita, um Lakshmi, Durga. Just flicking through the book, there are Radha, Sita, Saraswati. Saraswati is in front of me on my desk, as she is the goddess of music, knowledge, learning. She's a really good one to have when you're doing your learning. Um, and so, in order to really embody these mantras to really understand their vibration, to enter that portal. I'm going to be doing an episode on mantra very soon because I think it's really important to talk about that. Um really, you need to know roughly about what these deities, their properties, their what they what they represent, how they can help you uh in your practice, and this book essentially does that again in a really really practical, beautiful way. So she Sally goes into explaining all about Shakti, and then she goes into each of the goddesses, and I'm not going to go into Shakti now because again, that's a whole nother episode that I would like to do at some point because it's really important. But basically, Shakti is um a bit like prana, Shakti is a life force energy, kundalini Shakti rising up, and we can really channel this energy with these goddesses, and what's really beautiful is she'll take each goddess as a gorgeous illustration, and she will talk about. So, for example, chapter four, Lakshmi, goddess of abundance and good fortune, and then she'll have some little verses, traditional verses. So we've got here um the Maha Lakshmi Ashtakam, bestower of intelligence and success, oh goddess, giver of worldly enjoyment and liberation, with the mantra always as your form, goddess Maha Lakshmi. I bow to you. And then she's got it's lovely. She'll have little quotes which really kind of try and sum up what Lakshmi is all about. Rumi, let the beauty of what you love be what you do. There are many ways to kneel and kiss the ground. Um Lakshmi throws the spell of the intoxicating sweetness of the divine. To be close to her is a profound happiness, and to feel her within the heart is to make existence a rapture and a marvel. Grace and charm and tenderness flow out from her like light from the sun, and wherever she fixes her wonderful gaze or lets fall the loveliness of her smile, the soul is seized and made captive and plunged into the depths of an unfathomable bliss. And so you're like, okay, Lakshmi sounds pretty amazing. And as you continue to read, she gives an overview of Lakshmi, and then she talks in sections about practices you can use to invoke Lakshmi. Um she goes into the shadow side of each of the goddesses as well. So when um when it's out of balance, really, really good. She gives you contemplation exercises. I've done many of them before. She talks about the Lakshmi woman. Um Lakshmi is a blessing. Oh, there's so much here, it's just absolutely gorgeous. Being Lakshmi, so it's really um how to honour her, it's really practical, and it really brings them alive. Because I know when I first started, I um Nikki was saying to me, Oh, you know, we're gonna do this Shiva chant, and I was like, I don't know Shiva, I don't know who Shiva is, I have no connection. Now I do, it's developing and growing, but in the beginning I was like, I don't know. And if you don't know, when you are um training to be a kirtan leader, you are channeling that that Shiva you're channeling this mantra energy, you're channeling channeling. I can't speak today, not a great day to record a podcast. Um, you're channeling that energy. So if you don't know and you're not connected to that, how can you you can't be a channel? So this book was really helpful as for part of my journey, really, really to kind of intellectually understand, and doing some of the practices were very, very helpful. The Kali one for me was just the best. Um, so Awakening Shakti, Sally Kempton, that is a really good one, really good one. Um, particularly for the women, because it is all about goddess energy, but it's really good for the men too, like really, really good. Um, how many have we got? One, two, three, four. We're gonna go seven. We're gonna go seven. If you're still with me, uh, we're gonna go for seven. I again I could do a lot more. Right, we've got this is a real classic. Um Ramdas spoke to me in a song uh a few years ago. I didn't really know who Ramdas was, and this piece of music just came on my Spotify playlist, and like quite a lot of really cool musicians out there, they are sampling people like Alan Watts and Ramdas and some of their incredible teachings. They sample them and they put them into a song. Perhaps you've heard them. MC Yogi does this quite a bit, and this song came on. I didn't know who this voice was, I didn't even know who the artist was. And I sat in my car, even now I could feel it, and I just cried. I felt like this person was talking directly to me every single word, reaching from somewhere beyond time and space, just to me in that moment, and I just sobbed, and it was it was not sadness, it was a mixture of so many emotions, but it was a realization, it was an opening, it was an awakening, it was a knowing, it was all sorts of things, and as soon as the song ended, I was like, Oh my god! And I looked up who it was and who was speaking, and I just found out everything I could about Ramdas, and I found this amazing podcast, um, and which I still listen to now, and I've referenced before because I just love it, which is a collection of gosh, he did thousands and thousands of lectures and teachings over his years, but it's a collection of the edited um parts of his speakings, and I thoroughly recommend it. If you don't know who Ramdas is, he was a um psychiatrist, psychologist, psychiatrist, um in the 60s. Uh, and he was at Harvard, and he started doing all of these um really groundbreaking experiments with um LSD with one of his colleagues, and he actually got uh in the end he got the sack for it. But his um experiments with uh hallucinogenic drugs uh opened his mind and his heart, and he started his spiritual journey, and basically he just was like, Well, what is this? I need to find out more about this. Long story short, ended up going to India and um becoming the most amazing teacher, and just spent the rest of his years talking to people about yoga and his experiences and teaching and guiding people along the way, and he does so with no ego. In fact, he quite often would talk about you know how arrogant he was and all sorts of things, and in a really real, I think that's why I love him so much, really real, down-to-earth, human way, like absolutely funny, dirty, just human being to human being, and so do you if you don't know who Ramless is, the way he describes things are just profoundly again, just real and human and totally accessible. Um can if you can hear noise in the background, that's my little dozy. He's he's decided to leave the room. He's had enough of me talking today. Um, so I went away and listened to his podcast, and I bought, I've only got one of his books so far, and it is the classic um Remember Be Here Now, be here now, which is something that he used to say, and it is a work of art, it's a stunning book, it's full of all these amazing. I mean, I just want to tear it all out and put it up on my wall because they're really, really beautiful. The type is really cool, I mean, it's just absolutely gorgeous, and more than that, it really explains so much. So it's a real kind of coffee table book that you can dip in and out of. So I've just opened the page on desire. The first thing in my teacher's book, the first thing he ever wrote on his slate because he was silent was desire is a trap, desirelessness is moksha, liberation in um brackets. Desire is the creator, desire is the destroyer, desire is the universe, and that applies to the physical plane, the astral plane, the causal plane. Hell all are all the creations of desire. Oh, I missed a bit. Heaven, demons, and hell are all the creations of desire, all the manifestations of the divine mother are creations of desire. That's why Naga worked on getting Ramakrishna to go beyond his love for Kali. Give up even the desire to be experiencing the bliss of being it all, of being with the divine mother. Um so they're like these little kind of like um, they're kind of like posters that make you want to go, oh, what is that about? Um yeah, it's it's like a little uh I'll just I've just opened a page that's got penises on it. I've not seen that page before. Very beautifully linear drawn penises. You don't have to have that urge, that desire, that unfulfilled thing. Just let it be, just be, be, be, be more, more. What's holding you back? Your thoughts, huh? You've got to give them up. Just ego planning. What are you doing? Planning for the future. Well, it's all right now, but later, forget it, baby. That's later. Now is now. Are you going to be here or not? It's as simple as that. Big type exclamation. So you can hear his voice. It's it's obviously from his teachings, and it is just it's really cool, it's really quirky, it's very 70s. I'm not actually sure when it was published. I think it was published in the 70s. Um, part of the Hanuman Foundation. Um, and in the back is a section um written by Ram Das called Cookbook for a Sacred Life, and it talks about guru and teacher, readiness, eating, sleeping. It's basically another little guide um to how to live a spiritual path. It's a beautiful book, it's a bit bonkers, and again, but he was, and let's face it, we all are. Let's just face it, we all are a bit bonkers, and I absolutely adore it. There is something, or was I talk about him as if he's still uh alive because I think that his consciousness is obviously still with us, and I do I felt like he was reaching out to me, the message was reaching out to me from beyond. Um there's something so um I can't you think of my words today. There's something I feel an affection for him in his in his vulnerable naked truth, in the way he talks and teaches, in the the gritty reality of it. He did a huge amount of amazing work with um people with the dying and his thoughts uh teaching. Around death, I just think are so beautiful and really needed, like really needed. Um, so I will put the podcast again in the show notes, and of course, the details for the book. But if you if Ramdas is calling you, heed the call. Honestly, there are so many. Um, I got so many deep insights just from listening to his teachings. I've listened to some of his teachings when I've been feeling like my world is falling apart, and it's put me back together again. It's given me hope, joy. Um, and it really, really, his teachings really helped me when my dad died. Um, massively, massively. Uh, it does make me feel quite emotional. Um, so yeah, if you're not sure, if you've not listened to Ram Das and you're curious, make sure that it's the authentic podcast, it's so so good. Oh, okay. We are getting there. Um, my yeah, so my last book is All Is One. Um it's a dinky dinky little pocket size book. It's so cute, it's rather dirty and dogged. Um it is I love this little book. So I bought this at uh Ramana Mahashi's Ashram in Tiruvanamalai, which is in Tamil Nadu region in India. Tiru, um, as most people refer it to, is a big city, and it's known for Aranchala Mountain, which is a very holy uh mountain for Shiva. There's lots of myths and stories around that. Uh, it's known for Ramana Mahashi who resided at the Ashram, what became the Ashram. And there's also these massive, beautiful um, or a massive, beautiful temple complex, and these temples look very much like the Aztec pyramids, they're huge, and um, a really beautiful thing to do is to make the pilgrimage um up to Arantulas. Um, there's a shrine at the top for Ramana Mahashi, uh, where people go, and there's a small room where you can go and meditate, and the view um the walk is beautiful. It's done in silence, of course, because Ramana Mahashi was all about silence and self-inquiry, and so you make the pilgrimage. I did it with my teacher and our group, uh, barefoot in dressed in white in silence. Uh, I think it takes about 40 minutes, an hour from memory. There's monkeys everywhere, and it's it's very beautiful actually, it's quite shady, and you reach the top, and there's this gorgeous view, and you can see the temple, and then the shrine is there, and it's a really, really special place. You can you could just sit there for hours and in silence and meditation and soak up the energy, and that's a really special thing to do. Um, so this little book I bought. Sorry, you can hear Doisy in the background. I bought there's an amazing bookshop at the Ashram. Um tons and tons of books, and really good ones. And I bought two, and this is my favourite one, and it's like I said, a little pocket-sized book, and I'm just gonna read you. So, this this is um let's read the back. This booklet indeed packs much in little, incorporating as it does, ideas of immense use to spiritual aspirants at every level and of any faith. The value of this tiny book can be gauged from the fact that Bhagavan Ramana himself had gone through it and given chapter headings for the benefit of sadhakas, we are the sadakas, and that he urged a devotee to read it if he desired moksha liberation. It is hoped that spiritual aspirants will read this booklet of great merit with due care and derive utmost spiritual benefit by practicing its precepts. You can tell that's a translation, very big words, but basically, it it's um it is a collection of Mahashi's uh teachings. So let's read you the first one happiness. This is the very first one, happiness, identifying the self with the body in order to seek happiness. So this is Mahashi speaking. In order to seek happiness, it's like trying to cross a river on the back of a crocodile. When the ego rises, the mind is separated from its source, the self and is restless, like a stone thrown up into the air or like the waters of a river. When the stone or the river reaches its place of origin, the ground or the ocean, it comes to rest. So too the mind comes to rest and is happy when it returns to and rests in its source, the self. As the stone and the river are sure to return to their starting place, so too the mind will inevitably at some time return to its source. In other words, happiness is your own nature, hence, it is not wrong to desire it. What is wrong is seeking it outside because it is inside. So it's a really lovely little book that you can just throw in your handbag or bag, whatever, in your back pocket, and just open. So I used to like kind of taking it out on a walk and then sitting out and just reading it. Um, and it's for me as well because that was such a special illuminating time in India. Um, I really liked carrying that back with me. I bought another book as well, which I read bits of at the time and I need to dive a bit deeper into, but um, this one is special um because of the experience I had there. Really, really special. So it's a little cute book, um, which I don't know if you'll be able to get that online. Um, I think you might need to you might be able to actually on them on their website. They're very modern these ashrams now. So, but yeah, it's it's a really special one. Um, so that's my top seven books. I thought this was just going to be a quick podcast, but actually, there's so much to talk about when it comes to these beautiful books, and and there are there are loads more that I could share with you, and perhaps I do that in another episode. But I think as a starting point, if you have no yoga books and you want to start out, I would get the Bhagavad Gita. I would get the heart of yoga, and the heart of yoga includes the Patanjali's Yoga Sutras at the back, and those two books will just you you probably would never need to get another yoga book your entire life. You could just study them again and again and again and get so much wisdom, so much insight, deeper meaning and understanding because this is this is what these scriptures and these books do. The the heart of our practice should be the practice day in, day out. But when you want to get a deeper understanding, a deeper meaning, a deeper, go deeper into your journey, go deeper into the process, um, knowing what you know is when certain things happen, what that actually means, then these scriptures and writings and books can be a really amazing tool for self-exploration, self-inquiry, just taking you further along that path with comfort, guidance. You know, they're basically gurus and teachers on the page. Um, and if you don't have a really good teacher, if you don't have a guru, if you don't have that in the flesh, then these books can absolutely do that for you. And and if you're just starting, you know, stepping atto can really lead you into a beautiful, beautiful world that is beyond your imagination, really, and definitely worth the time. And for anyone that's in any kind of healing journey, um absolutely really really helpful as well. So, go buy some books, enjoy. Tell me what was your favorite, what are you leaning towards? Um, I'd love to hear from you. You can reach me by email um in the show notes, uh, you can reach me on Instagram. I would love to hear what your favorite yoga book is, and um have a beautiful rest of your day. Thank you so much for listening to the Be Still and Notice podcast. I really hope you enjoyed this episode and perhaps it even added something to your life. If you know someone that might benefit, please share this episode with them, and of course, a review would be so much appreciated. Please find all the information relating to this episode, including relevant links, in the show notes, and until next time, sending you so much love and light on your path to yoga.