A Little Book of Theory & Principles & 500+ Pics on Cards

I’m very excited about Mark Stephens new book, Yoga Adjustments: Philosophy, Principles and Techniques, which offers an invaluable service to the yoga community -- teachers, aspiring teachers and yoga students. As yoga’s popularity grows, we need our yoga teachers to mature as well, and Mark has given them a superb guidebook for making smart, safe, clear asana adjustments that further our understanding and deepen our experience of yoga.  In this way, the benefits of Mark’s expertise extends beyond the yoga community by demonstrating how healthy environments can be created in which any body can practice yoga with confidence.  

Mark Stephens’ Yoga Adjustments is an important contribution to the ongoing evolution of yoga teaching and practice...[W]e all need to look intelligently at their mechanics, purposes and ethics. Stephens’ Yoga Adjustments is a wonderfully detailed resource for our investigation.

I love that Mark Stephens has covered not just the bio-mechanics of hands-on assists and the spectrum from technical support to subtle energetic direction but also the internal dynamics and ethics that the power of touch brings up in people of all walks of life. Mark offers practical insights, including the many dimensions of respecting a person’s process, injuries and tweaks and the important boundaries that are necessary for entering this territory that is often like being a “midwife of the embodied experience.” Mark brings understanding to the somatic power of touch and the role of hands-on assists in the unfolding of yoga…this is a book that will surely be serving teachers for a long time.