Meta Chaya Hirschl - Vital Yoga: A Sourcebook for Students and Teachers

[Meta Chaya Hirschl] offers an excellent overview of yoga styles, as well as sections on classical asana, advice on selecting teachers and classes, tips on becoming part of a community, and her take on applying yogic precepts to daily life via stealth yoga. For instructors, Hirschl offers sample yoga sequences and advice about the initial steps of opening a studio. As reference and inspiration, Hirschls beautifully illustrated compendium will best serve novice students and teachers, as well as those aspiring to change careers.

Publishers Weekly

Meta Chaya Hirschls contemporary journey through the wonder of yoga gently nudges superficial fads into perspective and shares refreshingly rel evant insights. Vital Yogas illustrations, poetic imagery, and key texts en rich the inner life of both the teacher and student of yoga: students will inhabit poses with feeling and energy, while teachers will gain pragmatic advice on teaching. This is an aesthetically beautiful book, but above all it is a book permeated with explorative joy!

Liz Lark,
yoga teacher based in London, author, retreat leader, and artist

A book with plenty of heart and lots of information.

Nicolai Bachman,
author of The Language of Yoga

Meta Chaya Hirschls enthusiasm and love for yoga shine throughout these pages. Modern and accessible, bridging to the ancient truths, she reaches out to those of us who are yogis and yet dont realize it, those of us who want to grow yet may have been put off by modern-day stereotypes about this ancient science.... [The book] also includes a therapeutic view of yoga, which may expand our view of health care for future generations.

Amadea Morningstar, MA, RPP,
author of The Ayurvedic Cookbook and founder of
Ayurveda Polarity and Yoga Therapy Institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico

The yoga of self-mastery through the breathless state, as practiced for eons in the East, particularly before the Dark Ages, is a very difficult science to investigate. For those looking for a more approachable and less intimidating introduction to the yogas adopted in the West, Vital Yoga provides numerous welcoming doors to a bevy of paths and practices.

Sankara Saranam,
founder of The Pranayama Institute
and author of God Without Religion

Vital Yoga supports yoga students on their search for inner freedom. Meta Chaya Hirschl blends her life experiences with the lightness that only wisdom can give. She takes the reader by the hand along the many paths of yoga tradition.

Rossella Baroncini,
yoga teacher based in Florence, Italy
and longtime student of Vanda Scaravelli

Having been a student of yoga for fifty years and teaching for twenty, and buying countless books on yoga, I finally stopped buying them, since it seemed there was nothing new to be said. When Vital Yoga fell into my hands, I read it cover to cover in one sitting. It is a gem! If a person could have only one book on yoga, Metas would be the one! It is an invaluable resource for both students and teachers (no matter how many trainings they may have attended).

Barbara Luboff,
yoga teacher based in Santa Fe, New Mexico

A SOURCEBOOK FOR STUDENTS AND TEACHERS

META CHAYA HIRSCHL

VITAL YOGA: A Sourcebook for Students and Teachers

Copyright 2011 by Meta Chaya Hirschl
See for image credits.

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or online reviews, no portion of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

The Experiment, LLC
260 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10001-6408
www.theexperimentpublishing.com

Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book and The Experiment was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been capitalized.

The Experiments books are available at special discounts when purchased in bulk for premiums and sales promotions as well as for fundraising or educational use. For details, contact us at info@theexperimentpublishing.com.

The contents of this book are for educational purposes only and are not intended as a replacement for diagnosis or treatment of any medical or psychiatric ailment. Individuals with such an ailment should first see their physician or psychiatrist for treatment and make use of yoga therapy only as an adjunct to such treatment.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Hirschl, Meta Chaya.
Vital yoga : a sourcebook for students and teachers / Meta Chaya Hirschl.
p. cm.
Originally published: Albuquerque, NM : Prajna Pub. Co., 2010.
Summary: A resource on yoga practices, including mantras, poses, breath work,
meditation, yoga therapy, a historical overview of yoga and yogic texts,
and wisdom of both historic and contemporary yogisProvided by publisher.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61519-040-9 (pbk.)ISBN 978-1-61519-144-4 (ebook) 1. YogaStudy and teaching.
2. HathayogaStudy and teaching. 3. Meditation. 4. Breathing exercises. 5. YogaTherapeutic use.
I. Title.
RA781.7.H57716 2011
613.7046076dc23
2011032905

ISBN 978-1-61519-040-9
Ebook ISBN 978-1-61519-144-4

Cover design by Alison Forner
Front cover illustrations by Jodi Call-Swedberg
Back cover illustration by Angela Werneke
Back cover photographs by Tina Larkin

Interior book design by Pauline Neuwirth of Neuwirth & Associates, Inc., based on an original design by Angela Werneke
Photography by Tina Larkin

Manufactured in the United States of America
Distributed by Workman Publishing Company, Inc.
Distributed simultaneously in Canada by Thomas Allen & Son Ltd.

First published by The Experiment in November 2011
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is dedicated to Betheyla, my teacher, who became my colleague and cherished friend. Betheyla embodied yoga, and I am profoundly grateful to have been in her presence.

Whenever I visited her in the hospital as she lay dying in the fall of 2007, after the usual discussion on the progress of her illness she wanted to know about my lifewhat my daughters were doing, how my yoga was going, what was happening in my love life, and how the current astrological array was affecting it all. She was as completely present, engaging, and interested as shed ever been. And when I looked into her eyes as we compared stories and ideas, Id stop seeing her shriveled body and instead see only her brilliance, which lit the way of many.

May her memory be a blessing.

If youd told me as I was walking the catwalk high in the night sky checking the release valves of the two-story fermenters as a twenty-three-year-old manufacturing supervisor for Miller Brewing Company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, that later in life I would not only be practicing yoga but teaching it, I would have had a great belly laugh over a few beers with my buddies after work.