Book review: Yoga body: Anatomy, kinesiology, and asana by Judith Lasater

I ordered this a few weeks ago and finally had the chance to look through the first few chapters and leaf through the rest. So my impressions are just that - initial impressions; they'll develop as I continue to read but so far:

 

1) well, I love almost anything Judith Lasater writes. I have a lot of respect for her knowledge and experience, and she writes with precision and clarity. This shows itself throughout the book.

 

2) I like the way it's organized - for each chapter, first she talks about structure, then about how that structure affects movement, followed by some practical things to do, as a student and/or as a teacher. More about this later.

The opening chapters cover general principles and terms, then the skull/spine, then the lower extremities, the trunk, and finally the upper extremities. I don't think this is intended to be a stand-alone anatomy book, and she does indicate that it would be useful to learn from other sources, and provides suggestions.

 

3) nice illustrations - clean, line drawn, with colour sparingly used to point out important structures or principles. It sounds silly, but the stick men are really very good - you can still see subtleties in the different ways they move.

 

Downsides:

 

I think they may have hurried this to press. There's a number of typo errors right off the bat - not a big deal but I think my eye has grown finicky from a lot of reading. It's more serious when they look like actual spelling errors - corcoid rather than coracoid process, for instance.

 

More serious yet - either the editors or proofreaders and/or the author seem to have missed some communication. For instance, right in the opening chapter, she talks about bony prominences to palpate. This is a really good chapter, by the way. But in the practical experience section, she gives locations to palpate that are not mentioned previously in that chapter, and there are no references as to where to find them elsewhere in the book. I can't believe that Lasater herself would be so imprecise, so I'm thinking this is an editing/organization issue.

 

I don't know how much of an issue this is, but she also makes a statement about the parasympathetic nervous system being composed mainly of the vagal nerve. (the vagal nerve *is* part of the PSNS, I'm questioning the "mainly").  I don't know if this is another issue of editing, or of a desire to keep things simple on her part,  but that put a little flag up for me too, since I start thinking "if she's going to be oversimplified about this, where else is it going to happen?"  That said, if I accept that she's deliberately decided to keep things simple for the sake of brevity and clarity - really, I can be OK with that.

 

I think this is useful, interesting book, full of Judith's considerable wisdom, with some technical oddities that  will hopefully be addressed in later editions.

But  my overall impressions are very favourable. I doubt many people would really find the things I mentioned a detraction. It fills a good niche - it seems to be heavily influenced by her PT background, which to me is a big plus and touches on many topics that interest me personally -  nerve compression, role of fascia, joint mobility, etc.

 

For those who already have anatomy books such as Anatomy of Hatha Yoga by David Coulter, Yoga Anatomy by Leslie Kaminoff or the Bandha Yoga scientific keys series, I think Lasater's new book still has plenty to add; it would certainly not be redundant on a yoga bookshelf.  Judith recommends using anatomy resources, but I'm not familiar with the one she suggests. However I think Andrew Biel's Trail Guide to the Body would be a useful companion as well.

Comments

[Sharon Frost]

Sophie, I agree with your comments!

[Peter]

hi Sophie, I love Judith books! I'm waiting eagerly for my copy of "yoga body" to arrive! thanks for your insight and observant eye with this book.

I enjoy your site too!! Peter

[sophie]

thanks Peter - I would be interested in hearing about your own response to the book as well!

[Emily]

Thanks for the review! I just came across it as I was researching different books on the Yoga Sutras. Amazon won't let me 'look inside'. So I did a google search and found your site, which is really enjoyable. I look forward to staying connected. Are you on Facebook or Twitter?

From one yogi to another...Namaste!

[Kids Spelling Games]

Thanks for the review, keep it up.