As a young journalist, Elizabeth Kadetsky found herself running for hours every day, eating little, and suffering from a troubling and persistent pain in her chest. On a friend's advice, she applied to the yoga institute in India where the legendary B. K. S. Iyengar takes in Western students for instruction.
First There Is a Mountain is a tale of the longing that brings an American woman to the feet of the aging patriarch Iyengar, one of the first to share the esoteric secrets of yoga with the West. Kadetsky soon learns that the yoga she has practised for years bears little resemblance to what she finds at the institute. Here, earnest aspirants perform intricate postures and hang upside down from ropes to explore the boundaries between the physical and the sublime.
In Iyengar's vast library and archives, in travels to his birthplace, and in conversations with Iyengar himself, Kadetsky pieces together the unlikely life journey of her teacher. In the process, she discovers a yoga that is part legend, part sacred scripture, and part historical chimera. She explores, too, yoga's role in transcending India's caste system, in nation-building, and as an emerging cultural prize. Finally, she finds herself under Iyengar's touch, leaving behind a discordant childhood and starvation regimens, and reaching for the subtle wisdom of the body.
What began as a spiritual journey ends as something more: a memoir, a love story, a portrait of a country caught between a mythical past and an ambiguous modernity, and the biography of a man who pioneered the phenomenon of modern yoga. First There Is a Mountain is a beautifully written and moving portrayal of the endlessly fraught but utterly compelling dance of East and West.

ISBN : 0316890960
Author : Elizabeth Kadetsky
Weight : 0.6 kg