Book Review: The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

In early 2019, with my 200-hour yoga teacher training on the calendar, I did the diligent-student thing and read the philosophy homework in advance: The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, in the classic translation and commentary by Sri Swami Satchidananda. Some of it went straight into my teaching. Some of it I argued with in the margins.

For the uninitiated: the Yoga Sutras are one of yoga’s foundational texts — 196 short aphorisms, compiled somewhere around two thousand years ago, that lay out what yoga actually is. (Spoiler that isn’t a spoiler: it’s mostly not the poses.) Satchidananda’s edition threads his own commentary between the lines, which is where most of the modern-day application lives.

What I Loved About The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

The framework holds up. The eight limbs put the physical practice (the part people pay boutique-studio prices for) at exactly one-eighth of the assignment, and that reframe made me a better teacher before I’d taught a single class. Breath, attention, conduct, stillness: the sutras treat the pose as the doorway, not the house. Years later, teaching my $5 community yoga classes, that’s still the idea I’m sneaking into savasana.

There are lines in here I’ve been chewing on for years — ideas about steadying the mind that predate every productivity book by roughly nineteen centuries and outclass most of them.

What I Didn’t Love About The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

Some of it feels dated, because it is. Parts of the worldview read like advice from a different century (they are, by about seventeen centuries), and the commentary doesn’t always bridge the gap to a modern practice. I found myself taking what served my students and leaving the rest, which I suspect is exactly what most working teachers do with this text.

Final Thoughts on The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

Three stars as a general read, higher if you’re training to teach. It gave me real things to reflect on and a framework I still use, alongside passages I closed the book on. If the mind-body thread is what pulls you, The Body Keeps the Score comes at it from the neuroscience side — the two make odd, excellent shelf-mates.

My final score: 3 out of 5 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Do I recommend this book? 👍 Yes — if you’re deepening a practice or headed into teacher training. If you’re happy just showing up to class, your teacher can read it first.

If you’re in San Francisco, come practice the slow stuff with me: I teach a community sliding-scale Yin class at Arise Yoga on Tuesdays at 3pm, starting September 15, 2026.

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