Book Review: The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

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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 at The Commons in Hayes Valley, 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.

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