The Yoga Manifesto: How Yoga Helped Me and Why it Needs to Save Itself

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'Raw. Vulnerable. Open. Truthful . . . This is a book that will open up the floor for even more honest conversations about the side of yoga we don't often see.' - Angie Tiwari @tiwariyoga How did an ancient spiritual practice become the preserve of the privileged Nadia Gilani has been practising yoga for twenty-five years. She has also worked as a yoga teacher. Yoga has saved her life and seen her through many highs and lows; it has been a faith, a discipline, and a friend, and she believes wholeheartedly in its radical potential. However, over her years in the wellness industry, Nadia has noticed not only yoga's rising popularity, but also how its modern incarnation no longer serves people of colour, working class people, or many other groups who originally pioneered its creation. Combining her own memories of how the practice has helped her with an account of its history and transformation in the modern west, Nadia creates a love letter to yoga and a passionate critique of the billion-dollar industry whose cost and inaccessibility has shut out many of those it should be helping. By turns poignant, funny, and shocking, The Yoga Manifesto excavates where the industry has gone wrong, and what can be done to save the practice from its own success.

Reviews

The first yoga book I've read that has a punk rock attitude and does what it says on the tin. Nadia is a formidable storyteller taking us through the highs and lows of her personal journey. However, the most critical aspect is her fierce analysis of the appropriation of yoga. -- Sima Kumar, co-founder and CEO of The Other Box and founder of Sima Says
Raw. Vulnerable. Open. Truthful. Exposing the darker side of the industry provides us all with the pathway to reach the lightness that yoga brings. This is a book that will open up the floor for even more honest conversations about the side of yoga we don't often see. -- Angie Tiwari @tiwariyoga

The Yoga Manifesto is about equality and creativity and revolutionary hope and you definitely dont need to practise yoga to know these things matter.

Author Bio

Nadia Gilani is a writer and yoga teacher. She first discovered yoga after her mum took her to a class in the 1990s - over twenty years ago. She has been practising ever since. Nadia has extensive experience of working with people with different bodies and from all walks of life, from complete beginners to those who are more experienced, teenagers to the over-seventies, refugees and asylum seekers to domestic violence victims, people living with mental illness and those in recovery from substance misuse. Nadia is deeply committed to making yoga inclusive. Her teaching approach is contemporary, non-dogmatic and explorative, while maintaining a deep respect for the ancient Indian practice. Nadia's working background is in news journalism and communications, which she did for a decade before teaching yoga and meditation. The Yoga Manifesto is her first book.