Fifty Years a Yogi

Timothy Fox

5.0 out of 5 stars Yoga for real life

Reviewed in the United States on September 28, 2024

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Beyond popular hype, and more than just another feelgood lifestyle choice, this book shows yoga from the perspective of the author’s experiences as a person coming of age in the 70’s, during a time of social rebellion against all traditional norms, and illustrates how adherence to ancient, tested principles and practices of higher human functioning can serve an impassioned seeker of enlightenment even while they continue to live in the world with all of it's pressures, demands, and temptations.

At times this book is like an instruction manual for true and complete yoga, but it is also humorous: “…about fifty people spread our blankets on the dewy grass, silently yawning and stretching on a field that ends in a pond about a football field away. There’s no such thing as yoga mats to choke the Oceans for another twenty years. We each have a dorm-issued blanket to do postures on.” I’m ashamed to admit until reading that line I had almost forgotten yoga mats are a completely modern invention, for a tradition that practitioners have of course been doing for thousands of years with plain old blankets…how did they ever do it without cushy, plastic padding?

The importance of how we breathe is central to yoga, and the connection between the breath with spiritual development and mental health is an important theme that comes up repeatedly in this book, such as the line “breath retention exaggerates emotional problems.” There are wonderful, illustrative stories passed on in this book that the author personally learned from the masters of the lineage she is a part of, which is referred to as the Himalayan Tradition.

The author shares practical insights and sheds light on concepts of eastern spirituality, such as karma and reincarnation, for example. Karma has become a word that seems to be casually used in colloquial language by everyone from pretty much any culture nowadays, but the use of the word often seems to lack serious understanding of the real meaning. The author does a good job describing the meanings of concepts like karma in very practical terms and in the context of everyday life, such as, “Karma doesn’t need to be a long-drawn-out process that unfolds over lifetimes. You can see karma in progress in every moment.”

The book also made me wonder about how many people think of yoga as only some kind of physical exercise. The author points out, “Sitting still is essential to this discipline. All other things are done to this end, to get the body comfortable enough to be able to let it go just for a few minutes, hours, days, or eternity in blissful meditation.” The author states one of the masters in the Himalayan Tradition who she learned from predicted, I think accurately, that “Yoga will become a beauty cult in America…People will practice just because of the way it makes them look.” Nothing wrong with trying to look and feel your best I suppose, but this book is so good at showing the way the physical part of yoga fits into the much larger purpose, namely spiritual advancement and the development of the mind and soul.

The market seems saturated with voices about yoga nowadays, but if someone is truly interested in learning what the art and science of yoga is truly about from someone who has studied with masters and who has the lived and proven experience to demonstrate the results, this is a must read. And it is also full of humor, vulnerability, and surprise.