Ashtanga Yoga in Relation to Holistic Health/Paraddi Kusuma Mallapa and Ganesh Shankar. New Delhi, Satyam Pub., 2006, viii, 264 p., ISBN 81-88134-58-9.

    Contents: 1. Introduction. 2. Yoga: its origin and development. 3. The present study. 4. Patanjali's Ashtanga Yoga and Holistic Health. 5. Ashtanga Yoga and its relevance to human health. 6. Yoga and psychotherapy. 7. Conclusions and recommendations. References. Yogic practices. 

    "Patanjali's system of Yoga seems to have been based on scientific and keen observations made by the greater seer (Mahrishi Patanjali) himself. He must have observed that the reason alone cannot uproot the miseries and dispel ignorance, because working in the surface level of consciousness it cannot cope with the permanent dispositions (Samskaras) of the mind. It needed the whole man to rise up and awake and fight against the dispositions and permanent tendencies of the mind that are obstructive to his best welfare.

    The Ashtanga Yoga of Patanjali advocates regulated conduct, regulated exercise of the body and its vital processes, the methodical control of the will and slow but steady and gradual growth of reason, as the indispensable preliminaries in the form of Bahiranga Yoga and higher practices of Dharana (concentration), Dhyana (meditation) and Samadhi as Antaranga (Internal) Yoga to the full and perfect spiritual development. It is emphasized that the physical, the moral, affective (emotional and social) and the intellectual sides of life are developed simultaneously through adherence to the prescriptions and injunctions laid down in daily routine so as to attain all round progress. Regulation and control do not suppress, but expand and these are the only ways of expansion (of macrocosmic consciousness to macrocosmic level) and development of personality." (jacket)

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