Health, Healing, and Beyond: Yoga and the Living Tradition of T. Krishnamacharya

This affectionate, lively, greatly beloved classic recounts the life and work of the man most responsible for preserving and modernizing a five-thousand-year-old body of wisdom that today benefits millions around the world. Health, Healing, and Beyond traces the near-mythic labors of scholarship that equipped Tirumalai Krishnamacharya with an unparalleled mastery of India’s ancient traditions. It leads us through his years of discipleship to a legendary teacher in Tibet, his service to the Maharaja of Mysore in the last years of British colonial rule, and, following India’s independence, his efforts to adapt—even revolutionize—yogic practice for modern life. In its pages we watch Krishnamacharya’s thinking evolve over a lifetime—sweeping aside prohibitions against certain practices for women, innovating therapeutic treatments for a wide range of physical and mental disabilities, and searching for ways to make yoga available to each individual regardless of age, sex, race, culture, station in life, and belief or non-belief. Written by T. K. V. Desikachar, Krishnamacharya’s son, in collaboration with R. H. Cravens, Health, Healing, and Beyond is an indispensable guide to the philosophy, principles, and limitless possibilities of yoga.