Practical Lessons In Yoga The Only Yoga Book You Will Ever Need

The object with which this book is published is twofold. Year in and year out large numbers
of Europeans and Americans, men and women, came out to India to learn Yoga under an Adept and
practice the same in India itself. In the course of their endless wanderings and searches for such
Adepts in Yoga, these people had no other alternative but to resort to the Himalayan Ashram of
Swami Sivananda. But unfortunately owing to several causes these travelers could not remain long
in this country. They went back home learning something here and something there, in bits, but
nothing from one Yogi only, which alone could be said to be of some solid and practical utility to
them.

The Westerners, interested in Yogic practices, had naturally to take resort to books and
other literature on the subject, which were either unintelligible to them or, as was more often than
not, had been written by persons whose aim in writing books was, in ninety-nine cases out of every
hundred, to show off their learning rather than to teach Yoga and make the subject intelligible and
interesting to the public. This is the difference between books written by most writers and those by
Swami Sivananda. Moreover, unlike several others, Swami Sivananda Saraswati was a practical
Yogi, who fully realized the fruits of Yoga and was therefore best suited to write books on the
subject from his own practical experience. The present book has been specially designed by the
author keeping in mind the needs of the students of Yoga in Europe and America, who need a
practical but non-technical presentation of the subject in a language which is accessible to the
beginner in the path. We hope the book will amply serve this most sacred purpose in view.