Best Yoga Books for Maintaining a Healthy Lifestyle

best yoga books
Health is wealth, peace of mind is happiness and yoga shows us the way. You might do yoga for physical benefits or to rest your mind but yoga has a lot more to offer. It helps one to keep deeper consciousness and higher awareness, simply a peaceful approach to exercise. It can help you to reduce stress and anxiety, help you with digestion, balancing and core strengthening. It's a great way to maintain a healthy lifestyle. So if you want to elevate your knowledge on yoga get your hands on these amazing best yoga books.
Yoga Anatomy
Author: Leslie Kaminoff,Amy Matthews
Published at: 28/10/2011
ISBN: 1450400248

Yoga Anatomy is a great book by the world-famous expert and teacher in anatomy, Leslie Kaminoff and Amy Mathews covering the anatomy in yoga, suitable for advanced level practitioners. It gives an idea about musculoskeletal anatomy while also teaches yoga asana, vinyasa, proper standing, and sitting positions.

The most exciting part about this Yoga book is that it includes colorful illustrations showing the activated muscles, ligaments during each yoga pose and it also comes with a description.

A very informative book on how poses affect and tighten the muscles and which joints are affected in which pose. The book is divided into sections (i.e: standing poses, seated poses, etc.) which will help the reader to find specific content without reading the full book.

Overall, the book will come in very handy for yoga lovers, either for self-practice or for those who want to teach yoga safely with anatomically correct guidance.



Good Night Yoga: A Pose-by-Pose Bedtime Story
Author: Mariam Gates
Published at: 01/04/2015
ISBN: 162203466X

Good Night Yoga is a yoga-inspired bedtime story for your kids. Parents who are looking for a fun bedtime routine this book can be very helpful. The kids will love the colorful and soothing illustrations. If you're interested in yoga or you have high energy kids who move around a lot then this book can be an excellent solution for you. The book will give them an active, physical task while reading and calm them down for beds.

It is the best yoga books to read with a kid to inspire them to do yoga. There are beautiful asanas that look like the shapes of the universe which will bring the kids to close to nature. 

Though middle and upper elementary school readers may find it childish, it's a perfect one for preschoolers as they may find it fun to mimic the yoga poses of the story. In-fact, this can be a great family activity.



Yoga Sequencing: Designing Transformative Yoga Classes
Author: Mark Stephens
Published at: 18/09/2012
ISBN: 1583944974

A great book for the yoga instructors which will give them tips to sequence a particular class. But the newbies may find it a bit difficult to understand the book as it is an advanced book. It has a well-written description of asanas and the flows of poses.

This Yoga book has sequences to balance each chakra. Each sequence contains proper synchronizing and breathing and meditation techniques. one section of the book has all the poses in alphabetical order with a photo, the Sanskrit name with it it's English translation and the information about the poses. As it has English translation alongside the Sanskrit words, it becomes easy to understand the book. The breathing cues, age-appropriate asanas sequence of poses will give a new yogi the guidance to design a class.



2,100 Asanas: The Complete Yoga Poses
Author: Daniel Lacerda
Published at: 10/11/2015
ISBN: 1631910108

2,100 Asanas: The Complete Yoga Poses is a book that is perfect to learn more about yoga and its benefits, helping self practitioners and yoga teachers for sequencing a class. The book is sectioned into eight types of poses: standing, seated, backbends, inversions, prone, etc.

This book has 2100 yoga poses (asanas) which is a lot more compared to most other best yoga books. What is more interesting is each picture of the pose comes with a description, its Sanskrit name accompanied by its English translation. The pictures are very vivid and presented in an aesthetic way. The book also tells you which limbs and muscles are activated in a pose. As you turn the pages, the difficulty level of the asanas will gradually increase as it is categorized into "easy", " achievable with practice" and "stretch goals" sections.

The book helps one to see their progress and motivates them with practice.



Namaslay: Rock Your Yoga Practice, Tap Into Your Greatness, & Defy Your Limits
Author: Candace Moore
Published at: 25/10/2016
ISBN: 1628601124

Namaslay is a book for everyone. It can be an amazing yoga guide for beginners, yoga instructors or even for those who are eager to learn more about yoga. It's a mixture of author Candace Moore's personal life story and yoga manual. Candace's genuine, candid and genuine and relatable life struggle stories and how yoga helped her overcome it, this especially touches the soul of the readers. Namaslay covers more than 100 yoga poses and lets you get to the gist of how each should be done.

The book includes a description of asanas, how to use props, breathing sequences, clear pictures of her doing the poses and also do's and don'ts, all these will help you properly understand the pose. It also includes modifications for pose who cannot master the original pose. The book is divided by level of difficulty.

Candance has been so real throughout the book that you will feel like having a personal yoga teacher while reading this book.



Chair Yoga: Sit, Stretch, and Strengthen Your Way to a Happier, Healthier You
Author: Kristin McGee
Published at: 17/01/2017
ISBN: 0062486446

The book is what the title of the book says. You can easily guess this book is about easy yoga exercises which you can easily perform by just sitting on a chair. You do not need any fancy props and equipment to perform the exercises. So to say, it offers easily accessible yoga poses for couch potatoes. Office going people who are all time-bound to the desk, can also easily do the exercises. Doing this light and easy exercises are better than sitting lazy, doing nothing. 

In the book, the author beautifully described why it is important to do this easy chair exercises. The traditional form of mat yoga can be intimidating for beginners. But as chair yoga is easily accessible even the sedentary people can do it. Even it can help the injured persons to stay fit.

This book includes:

  • 100 yoga poses.
  • Separate chapters classified by body parts.
  • Step by Step instruction and clear illustrations.
  • Wide range of yoga movements that you can do on a chair.


Yoga Fitness for Men: Build Strength, Improve Performance, and Increase Flexibility
Author: Dean Pohlman
Published at: 08/05/2018
ISBN: 1465473483

Yoga Fitness for Men is a great book to achieve mobility and flexibility. The yoga exercises will help you to increase your gains in the gym and to reduce post-workout aches. It is both helpful for novice and advanced practitioners. As it contains modifications of the actual poses, beginners will find it easy to master.

The book includes:

  • 25 yoga workouts.
  • Over 50 postures.
  • Easy to follow step by step instructions with illustrations. Like, what you should feel and what you should not feel while doing a particular exercise.
  • Pre-made routines into three workout programs to increase your mobility, flexibility and athletic performance. 



The Yoga Anatomy Coloring Book: A Visual Guide to Form, Function, and Movement
Author: Kelly Solloway
Published at: 07/08/2018
ISBN: 1640210210
It's an excellent book for clear asanas anatomy. It's an adult yoga coloring book that will help you to remember the names of the bones and muscles, their location, function, and origins. Each asana is illustrated with a beautiful picture of color and detailed muscles, limbs, ligaments structure. This book offers you to see what muscles are activated in doing a particular asana. Though the book is not a step by step guide to tell you how to do the posture but what it does tell you is how to locate your weakness, tightness or discomfort. It tells you which activity to avoid if you have an injury. Another interesting part of the book is that Kelly has added flashcards on yoga in the back of the book so that you can test yourself.


Science of Yoga: Understand the Anatomy and Physiology to Perfect Your Practice
Author: Ann Swanson
Published at: 08/01/2019
ISBN: 146547935X
SCIENCE of YOGA is an excellent book on yoga anatomy which contains in-depth research. More than 30 key yoga poses are broken down in-depth with clear illustrations. The incredible full-body illustrations of each pose show which muscles are engaged in doing a particular pose, safe alignment, the angles and much more. Anatomy and physiology are just the beginning of the book. It covers so much more. It includes pictures of various asanas poses in seated, standing, inversions position. The author even beautifully described how the science of yoga works to build our body and mind together, how it helps us to stay fit. It offers modification of different poses for the beginners. The Q/A section at the end of the book covers topics from "stress", "cautions" etc. What is great about the book is that the author has also included a bibliography which is organized by chapter.


Teaching Yoga Beyond the Poses: A Practical Workbook for Integrating Themes, Ideas, and Inspiration into Your  Class
Author: Sage Rountree,Alexandra DeSiato
Published at: 14/05/2019
ISBN: 1623173221
Teaching Yoga Beyond the Poses is an excellent book for integrating themes, ideas, and inspiration to design a class. Coming up with a new theme can be a difficult task. But author Sage and Alexandra have made this easy in this book by adding 54 complete themes that the instructor can use in their own class. Emulation is an incredibly helpful starting point that can help one to find their own voice and own teaching style. That's why the final section of the book offers blank templates for teachers to design their own classes themes and notes. The ready-made themes of the book also include quotes, song titles and so much more. The new yoga teachers can find guidance through this book and the advanced yogis can take inspiration from the book. 


Thanks for reading this post. If you have any opinion don't hesitate to comment here. Also please subscribe our newsletter to get more updates.