Stephen Cope
4.13
2,133 ratings190 reviews
More than 100,000 copies sold!
Millions of Americans know yoga as a superb form of exercise and as a potent source of calm in our stress-filled lives. Far fewer are aware of the full promise of yoga as a 4,000-year-old practical path of liberation—a path that fits the needs of modern Western seekers with startling precision. Now Stephen Cope, a Western-trained psychotherapist who has lived and taught for more than ten years at the largest yoga center in America, offers this marvelously lively and irreverent "pilgrim's progress" for today's world. He demystifies the philosophy, psychology, and practice of yoga, and shows how it applies to our most human dilemmas: from loss, disappointment, and addiction, to the eternal conflicts around sex and relationship. And he shows us that in yoga, "liberation" does not require us to leave our everyday lives for some transcendent spiritual plane—life itself is the path. Above all, Cope shows how yoga can heal the suffering of self-estrangement that pervades our society, leading us to a new sense of purpose and to a deeper, more satisfying life in the world.
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358 pages, Paperback
First published October 5, 1999
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About the author
Stephen Cope
34 books127 followers
Stephen Cope is the director of the Kripalu Institute for Extraordinary Living, the largest yoga research institute in the Western world—with a team of scientists affiliated with major medical schools on the East coast, primarily Harvard Medical School. He has been for many years the senior scholar in residence at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in Lenox, Massachusetts, and is the author of four best-selling books.
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Craig Shoemake
55 reviews
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April 29, 2012
It is not often I use the “M word” to describe a book. No, I’m not talking about munchkin books or maleficient books. I’m talking about masterpieces. I am not certain if Stephen Cope’s bestseller is a masterpiece. Maybe it is, maybe not. Either way, it is pretty damn good.
This is one of those books that entertains and educates you in a visceral way right from the start. Large chunks are written in immediate narrative format–as in “he said,” “I said,” etc. It is Stephen Cope’s personal yoga story–a sort of “pilgrim’s progress,” if you will–as well as the yoga story of his many friends and acquaintances before and during his long and continuing stay at the Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
We meet a man, a practicing Boston psychotherapist, who for a variety of reasons was feeling unsettled and dissatisfied with his life and then, somewhat to his dismay, found himself joining a religious community to do…what? Much of the book is an answer to that and related questions: What did he want? Why? What was he trying to do at Kripalu? What was–is–the meaning of yoga? What is enlightenment? Is such a thing possible? Are there enlightened people in this world? And what happens when all the things we try to keep hidden are revealed for the world to see?
Stephen Cope furrows through all these questions and more. His sincerity, his intensity, his intelligence, make the book a gripping read. Its pages educate the reader even as Cope the protagonist is educated by his experiences in the ashram. Yoga philosophy is pondered over, its depths turned up, and its many connections to Western psychotherapy reflected upon, all in gratifyingly sober, lucid prose. This is no idealistic hippy’s tale, nor a wide-eyed New Age search for Reality. In point of fact, it is one man’s search for himself, even as he helps us understand that the discipline, the science, the art of yoga, is there to help us lay ourselves bare to ourselves.
“You will know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” This book is a testament to these words, but it goes beyond them for the “truth” as yoga reveals to Stephen Cope is an ever living, organic thing, the stuff of our lives, which we either enjoy and let go of or cling to and warp, eventually to destroy.
You will find yourself in this book. In one of the many personal portraits Cope draws, you will find your own symptoms and neuroses, your fears, dreams and failings. And when you do, you will know that yoga has something to offer you. There is so much teaching here, and it is given in such generous, gentle and wise ways. Most of all, I think the primacy of ourselves as bodily beings, as thinking, feeling, dreaming animals of earth, is borne out. The body really is our temple, and yoga is our puja, an act of adoration, discipline and feast. Cope nails it in what might be the defining statement of the book: “Because yoga asanas are not so much about exercise as they are about learning and unlearning, it is not the movement itself, but the quality of attention we bring to the movement that makes postures qualify as yoga” (230). If this is so–and I know it is–then any act, any breath, any thought done with full and alive attention, is yoga.
Bobby Fischer once said “Chess is life.” I would say “Yoga is life,” and Stephen Cope’s book has made this truth abundantly clear.
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David Guy
Author
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July 7, 2019
I picked this book up on a whim because I have been doing yoga and reading up on it, and I was intrigued by the title. Cope is a therapist who went to Kripalu (a yoga center in Western Massachusetts) and basically never left. He writes very well, and tells a lot of stories. There was something about the book I found vaguely annoying, maybe all the upper middle class angst of many of the people he was talking about. There was also a lot more psychiatric jargon than I was interested in; I'm nore interested in spiritual practice than in therapy. That having been said, the book has stayed with me, and the basic concept of a false vs. true self seems quite true to me. One can't do justice to it in a few words, but basically the false self is one that we create out of concepts; the true self is the one that is living our daily physical life, and that we too often avoid by going off into our heads. He also mentioned something that R.D. Laing said at a conference of Buddhists and therapists that keeps coming back to me: Human beings are afraid of three things. Their own minds, other people, and death.
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Anne Phyfe Palmer
December 21, 2015
As a yoga teacher, I figure I am supposed to read yoga books. However I find within three chapters of most books on the subject I am either distracted or bored, or I have already absorbed what I need from the author. That was not the case with this book, which I read daily and finished within two weeks. Yoga and the Quest for the True Self was recommended to me years ago, and I didn't even read it when my yoga studio 8 Limbs held a book group around it. But when a writer friend urged me to give it a chance, I finally relented, to my great advantage. Cope, a psychotherapist who has lived at Kripalu for several decades, uses a memoir framework to deliver some of the most personally valuable teachings about yoga I have received. I recommend this book to yoga practitioners of all levels. Be here now. Read it. Now.
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Saiisha
77 reviews
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October 12, 2016
I loved this book! I didn't quite know what to expect when I picked it up, but yoga has been dear to me all my life, and of course, the quest for the true self is central to yoga philosophy, so I had to read it. It's a well-written, well-researched book, but with none of the pedantic clinginess to theory - which is difficult to avoid when the author's trying to deal with a 4,000 year old philosophy, that has evolved and morphed over all those years.
But Stephen Cope brings a delightful fresh eye to yoga by bringing the reader along on his journey as a student of yoga. It's a satisfying journey to be part of, from the moment he decides to step into Kripalu Yoga Center, to how he integrates the different teachings into an understanding of his own in the end. I was surprised that he included the stories about the falling apart of Kripalu amidst the scandals of its leader, and then how the community came together to rebuild it again. I also appreciated the appendix about the metaphysics of yoga.
It was a valuable read. I took lots of notes. And I'll probably revisit it from time to time.
If you're interested in spirituality, philosophy, yoga, etc., join my Old Souls Book Club (https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...) for other recommendations and thought-provoking conversations!
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Dianne Lange
151 reviews
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June 2, 2012
This classic goes on my to reread, reread, and reread shelf. So many lessons in living, spirituality, psychology. Cope says it best: "Such a simple lesson. Such a dfficult lesson. It doesn't matter what you call it: Yoga. Buddhism. Christianity. Relaxation. Consciousness. As Ajahn Chah says, 'Teach the essence of freedom from grasping and call it what you like.' "
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Sunshine
96 reviews
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June 2, 2015
Absolutely transformational. Revolutionized the way I see yoga, myself, life, and relationships with people. There is so much to learn and so much more growth needed, but grateful for a read that deepened my spirituality and religious convictions and changed my perspective for the better.
And my notes from the book because it is a library book and I couldn't underline:
“Most of the branches of Vedanta hold one fundamental view in common: all individual souls are one with the ground of being, the Absolute. Because all beings are one with the great river of life, we are all, in effect, just a single soul. We are, in the classical dictum, ‘One without a second’” (page 42.)
“what we are seeking is already at the core of our nature. ‘We are that’ which we seek. We are already inherently perfect; we have already arrived; and we have the potential in each moment to wake up to our true nature. In the words of one extraordinary teacher whom we’ll meet later on in the book, ‘everything is already OK’” (page 42).
“When we begin to see clearly who we really are, according to this view, we feel a natural friendliness toward all beings. Beneath the surface of our separation, we feel the hidden,unseen threads that link us. We know that we’re exactly alike inside. We’re the same being. As author John Welch says, ‘We are each like a well that has its source in a common underground stream which supplies all. The deeper down I go, the closer I come to the source which puts me in contact with all other life’” (page 43).
“All mystical paths have taught that the union with God, or with the Absolute, subtly transforms the self. Each time we penetrate into samadhi, we have a small death-rebirth experience. Samadhi the world as we know it—its boundaries and categories. The deeper into union I penetrate, the less I am ‘I,’ and the more I am ‘we.’ For this reason, the merger with the One is known to create psychological upheaval and world-shattering shifts in perception” (page 43).
“This love is so overwhelming that you will lose consciousness of the conventional world. You will not be able to entertain the slightest feeling of personal ownership, not even toward the body, which is the most precious and jealously guarded possession of most persons. There will no longer be any instinctive notion that the body or the mind constitutes your being” (page 44).
“The word yoga itself means, literally, to be ‘yoked’—or to be in union. Eventually, repeated penetrations into mystic union transform the physical structure of the body, the personality, and the mind” (page 44).
“In Christianity, don’t you have this understanding: God is both—what do you say—immanent and transcendent? God is both here, within, right now, and is also everywhere? At the same time? It is the same God, the same Reality. Just our language has trouble capturing it. This is the wonderful thing about yoga. You find God right here, right now. In the body. You become a fully alive human being. You become jivan mukta—awake this lifetime. As a human being. Not in, what did you say? Transcendent realm with the angels. No. Not at all. You see, you are an angel” (page 48).
“‘Deep eternity,’ in Emily Dickinson’s phrase, is right here, right now. It is the subtle interior anatomy of the body—and the subtly interior anatomy of this entire world of form.
‘The goal of human life,’ says Ramakrishna,’ is to meet God face to face.’ But the magic is this: if we look deeply into the face of all created things, we will find God. Therefore, savor the world, the body. Open it, explore it, look into it” (page 55).
“When we pay close attention to the world of the many, we inevitably discover the One” (page 58).
“Gitanand was telling the story of a dialogue between a Vedic master and a Western student. ‘The student, confounded by the radically different worldview embodied by his teacher, asks, “Do we live in the same world?” Replies the teacher, ‘Yes, we do. It’s just that you see yourself in the world, and I see the whole world in myself.’ Yogis insist on seeing the world from the inside out” (page 70).
“We can experience the entire reality of the universe directly through a full exploration of the phenomena of our own bodies, feelings, minds. There is nothing that is ‘out there’ that is not also ‘in here’” (page 70).
“‘Disappointment,’ he said, ‘is a much more fertile ground for spiritual practice than dreams’” (page 89).
#1 of page 90-92
“In order for us to fully inhabit our bodies, we need certain kinds of responses from our environment. These include empathic holding, nurturing, mirroring, challenge, optimal frustration, and optimal disillusionment. Problems begin to happen in our developing sense of self when, as infants and children, our real emerging needs and capacities are not met with adequate mirroring, nurturing and sustaining responses. In the post industrial West, the problems of the disembodied sense of self are pandemic. The reasons for this are simple: Because of the breakdown of the extended family in the latter half of this century, we depend upon the depleted resources of small nuclear families, where hard working parents may already feel stretched and needy themselves. This nuclear family upon which we place most of our hopes is all too often an impoverished emotional environment for children. Overburdened parents feel fragmented, insecure, and in some cases terrified by the needs they feel they should be meeting but cannot. They’re hungry to get their own unsatisfied needs met” (page 91).
“The false self is born when the environment does not welcome the self to be as it is” (page 93).
“There is no telling precisely at what chronological age the self will come to one of these crossroads. One thing is certain: these times of meltdown are precious. A delicate window is opened into the very terrain explored and mastered by yogis and buddhas and seers of all kinds. In these times, the soul has a heightened potential to discover the real. There is a palpable longing for the mother, for matter, for the earth, and along with this an openness to the father, to the spirit, to consciousness.
In his commentary on the Yogasutras, Bhagwan S. Rajneesh identifies this meltdown of ‘me’ and ‘mine’ in adulthood as the entry point into yoga” (page 97).
“May we be protected together.
May we be nourished together.
May we work together with great vigor.
May our study be enlightening.
May there be no hatred between us.
Om peace, peace, peace.
Lead us from the unreal to the real.
Lead us from darkness to light.
Lead us from death to immortality” (page 100-101).
“‘Just being in my body makes me happy. I don’t have to do anything, or prove anything. What freedom!’ For the first time in her adult life, Amy had tasted the possibility of a life not lived in the head—or in the abstraction of the edo-ideal—but in the very real world of current direct kinesthetic experience” (page 106).
“The body likes living in reality. Stepping down onto the solid ground of reality always feels better than living in delusion. It may be painful, but there is life in it, energy in it, and, like the ground, it holds us up in a way that delusion does not. ‘Only reality is wholly safe’” (page 112).
“The genius of yogic practice is that it cultivates the capacity to experience a close-range, moment-by-moment inspection of reality. In fact, yoga teaches that living fully in the moment is the only doorway into the hidden realities of the Self” (page 113).
Amrit Desai:
“If you want to experience the joyous ecstasy that life offers, there is one commitment that is absolutely fundamental: the commitment to live in the moment. With that commitment as your guiding focus, whatever you do in your daily life is part of your transformational process. Your commitment to living in the moment becomes your vehicle for spiritual growth.
Living in the moment, however, is the most dangerous situation anybody ever faces in life, because everything you have ever avoided is revealed to you when you live in the moment. You get to face all the denied contents of your subconscious as the reappear again and again through the events of your life” (page 113-114)
“the goal of the reality project is not to disengage from the phenomenal world, but to turn to embrace it more deeply—to discover its hidden depths. And in order to do that paradoxically, we do not reject the vicissitudes of the embodied life. We no not reject suffering. Rather, we turn and go through the doorway of suffering. We turn to embrace our neuroses, our conflicts, our difficult bodies and minds, and we let them be the bridge to a fuller life. Our task is not to free ourselves from the world, but to fully embrace the world—to embrace the real” (page 115).
“Through the practice of yoga, the physical structure is said to be ‘baked,’ or refined, creating a form strong enough to tolerate and hold the powerful energies of the fully alive human being without being roiled or destroyed by them. Without the creation of this hard wiring, as Viveka saw, it was simply not possible to tolerate the subtle levels of awareness into which the quest would take him. Like Viveka, without the development of a compassionate and equananimous body and mind, we literally cannot bear what the seer reveals to us” (page 124).
“‘Laymen often think that the best way to deal with any difficult situation is not to deal with it—to forget it. But you and I have the experience that the only way you can forget is to remember” (page 130).
“do we uncover conflict or do we build up the self?...Both of these pillars of the reality project have to be developed in the context of relationship. We cannot become real in isolation” (page 139).
“My grandparents were most important self-objects for me, allowing me to relax into the stable, calm, nonanxious, powerful, and protective environment that they created with their care. Within the vast and safe container of their nurturing, I was allowed to discover my true self” (page 142).
“The truth is, however, that all the yoga postures in the world cannot create the opening of the heart. In their original context, yogic practices were completely submerged in a web of relationship” (page 142-143).”
“that which is damaged in relationship must also be healed within relationship, and character can only truly be transformed through relationship—not through solitary practice” (page 144).
“Ramakrishna always used the language of the mother and child in explaining his relationship with God. As he once put it, ‘One must have the yearning for God of a child when his mother is away’” (page 145).
“about the importance of other human beings in the ongoing creation of th self. He understood that only other human beings can initiate us into the Real. One of his most useful proverbs was this: ‘Company is more powerful than willpower’” (page 166).
“When we carry a heavy load of repressed, hidden, and unitegrated experience, we are constantly seeking out relationships that will help us hold this experience, to reveal it in the actual dramas of our lives, and, hopefully, eventually bring it to a more successful conclusion—to heal it” (page 182).
“Reality must be, in a sense, triangulated. It takes two sets of eyes, not just one, to accurately locate the third point in space. The ‘third’ becomes a powerful still point, constructed out of the interaction of two minds and hearts” (page 183).
“‘Sometimes, rest is the highest spiritual practice’” (page 241).
“Real healing happens in relaxation, and unless we’re relaxing, we are not healing” (page 242).
“What begins as an experientially grounded practice—one that asks us to take nothing at all on faith, indeed, asks only that we pay attention to the body—brings us finally and inexorably back to God. The physical is revealed to be spiritual. The spiritual is revealed to be physical” (page 268).
“You thought that union was a way you could decide to go.
But the soul follows things rejected and almost forgotten.
Your true guide drinks from an undammed stream” -Rumi (page 273).
people to look into:
Marion Woodman: student of Carl Jung
Sylvia Boorstein: psychologist and senior American teacher of Buddhism
Jacquelyn Small: pioneer in the synthesis of spirituality and addictions work
Tom Yeomans: poet, psychologist, and leader in field of spiritual psychotherapy
“‘This is so much that wisdom of Jung,’ continued Marion (Woodman). ‘If we allow ourselves to be ravished the by the irrational, we are compelled to face our own evil. Trust takes on a new dimension. In knowing our own darkness, we know what another’s darkness can release. We learn to forgive and to love. Then, we don’t know from moment to moment what will happen next. As your Pashupats clearly understood—this is God’s country, not ours’” (page 289).
“After long searches here and there, in temples and in churches, in earths and in heavens, at last you come back, completing the circle from where you started, to your own soul and find that He, for whom you have been seeking all over the world, for whom you have been weeping and praying in churches and temples, on whom you were looking as the mystery of all mysteries shrouded in the clouds, is nearest of the near, is your own Self, the reality of you life, body, and soul” -Swami Vivekenanda (page 290).
“In order to hear the teaching, we must slow down, cultivate awareness, and tune in. Most of all, we have to drop our hopes and dreams and preconceived notions of how it should be. We must look at how it is. We must look with a mind that lets go. Then we will see” (page 292).
“And the worst part is that at the same time that we’re leaning in toward the magic powers [of another], we will miss the real, more subtle, ordinary magic of transformation in our lives” (page 295).
“As I sat with myself…” (page 295). emphasis added, with not by
“Whatever transformation was happening was surely going to be by grace, not effort. Through letting go, rather than hot pursuit” (page 295).
“When all is said and done, most of the stages of spiritual practice are stages of grief work” (page 296).
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sipifalls
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May 19, 2021
This book is the opposite of enlightening. Written for a narrow audience of upper-middle class white people, it reads like a sustained advertisement for the Kripalu Center. It should be renamed "A Western Psychoanalyst Encounters Kripalu Yoga," as it is entirely tethered to 1) the author and his psychoanalytic worldview and 2) the institution of Kripalu.
The content is also unbearably superficial and contains distortions and inaccuracies. A good example of Western fetishism of Eastern spiritualities.
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Clif Brittain
132 reviews
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December 25, 2009
I wrote a totally brilliant review of this book that will reveal all the secrets of yoga. However, I was on a public terminal and the session timed out, losing the entire review. You lose.
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Kris Anderson
8 reviews
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July 14, 2012
This was the book that first introduced me to Vipassanna meditation which I eventually took part of in the sub-tropical alps of south central Mexico.
I'll call it the beginning to a new me.
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Harriette
56 reviews
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December 22, 2015
This book changed my life.
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From Australia
Elizabeth
2.0 out of 5 stars Western ideas of yoga.
Reviewed in Australia 🇦🇺 on 20 August 2019
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The author introduces Yoga to a Western audience. From one particular school of thought. He also interlaces modern psychological ideas throughout.
It wasn't what I was looking for, I wanted to read more first hand accounts, rather than the psychoanalysis of people.
It is well written, just not my cup of tea.
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Sydney S
4.0 out of 5 stars Surprisingly worth it!
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 4 November 2017
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I bought this book because I understood it to be a study of a typical Westerner's experience of yoga beyond exercise and mindfulness. However, I could barely get though the first few chapters with my constant eye-rolling over the long-winded privilege of someone who could take months off from work to pursue a deep yoga practice. How could I relate to this person and how could they write what I thought this book was going to be? Eventually I picked it back up and I'm glad I did. The author's background as a psychotherapist is nicely melded with yogic principles without being too direct about the psychotherapist lens. If you're well read in such things, you'll easily recognize tons of elements of emotional intelligence, various aspects of trauma and recovery (such as reconnecting to the body), even a bit of Internal Family Systems, and not to mention lots of completely relatable types of stressors most of us deal with regularly. All of these things you might read about or learn in psychotherapy are, apparently, well established in the practice, metaphysics, and ideology of yoga. The author's expertise may have originated in privilege, but this book has a lot to offer pretty much everyone. If you're not well read in some of the things I described, some of what he talks about may still sound fairly new-agey, but all I can say is read it, try yoga, and see what happens. I'm super new to yoga exercise so I can't speak to my own experience, but I can speak to the legitimacy of at least much the ideology discussed. My only criticisms (other than the beginning of the book) are that the yogic vocabulary, though explained, can still be pretty hard to keep up with, and the "crash course" chapter at the end doesn't do enough to hold your hand through that learning curve. It's definitely a book to read more than once to fully get the most from it.
48 people found this helpful
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A.M Nelson
5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best books I've ever read re. spiritual growth
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 18 October 2020
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This book surprised me. I picked it up in order to read about the mental aspects behind yoga, but it was so much more. This contains the best description of spiritual growth--what it looks like and feels like, and how it can look different for different people--that I've ever read. It also looks at aspects of healthy spiritual community vs. unhealthy spiritual community, which is applicable in different contexts (I've seen the same dynamics in church settings.) This book is much more in depth, well researched, and insightful than most "spiritual growth" books I've ever read. I'm at the point in my life where I avoid such books like the plague. But this one is excellent and helpful.
Cope gets criticized because many of the people in his books seem to have the luxury of time and money to pursue yoga/spiritual growth in a focused way. He works at a yoga retreat center after all. You don't have to take months off from life and live at a yoga center to pursue personal growth. The examples and principles are still helpful and still apply.
11 people found this helpful
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Miss M Wilkinson
5.0 out of 5 stars Fabulously enlightening book on the spiritual/psychological aspects of yoga
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 6 July 2019
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I don't normally leave reviews but I wanted to express just how much I've loved reading this book and what a vital tool I've found it on my yoga path. I've been practising yoga for several years to manage my physical and mental health, and because I never feel closer to myself or more at peace than when I'm in a posture or being with my breath. So I found the blending of a psychoanalytic and yogic perspective really exciting, and it answered a lot of questions about how best to use yoga as a tool for healing and to get closer to your true self. I found the section on developing one's equanimity practice to keep up with the insights gained in awareness practice particularly useful as I have found myself somewhat overwhelmed by the latter in recent times. So this book came at the right time for me and I would absolutely recommend it to anyone who loves yoga or is looking for a way to manage their suffering. I found the first chapter a little slow but after that I couldn't put it down so if you find that too then stick with it, it's so worth it :)
18 people found this helpful
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Ray
5.0 out of 5 stars Wow
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 22 November 2022
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I could read again and again. Inspiring words and thoughts. Helps you to understand where the true meaning is in life
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Bruce Kusko
5.0 out of 5 stars Arrived quickly, great condition
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 5 September 2022
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Book arrived quickly and was in like-new condition.
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Julia
3.0 out of 5 stars Wasn’t expecting perfect
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 2 August 2022
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And it definitely wasn’t, and it wasn’t in new or even good condition either.
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Ursa
1.0 out of 5 stars Unchecked, "unintentional" racism
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on 22 December 2021
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What truly ruined this book for me - and I'm rather shocked it hasn't been flagged - was what I believe was meant to be a sort of cute, humourous remark that one of Cope's friends says when he is about to embark on his journey to India:
"But if you come back wearing a towel on your head or any other item of weird non-American clothing, we're building a back door to the office suite".
Please, just take a moment and sit with that sentence. Do you feel how dehumanizing that is?
I am a POC and I couldn't gloss over this. I think it's very revealing and part of a larger afflication within the western yoga world where racism seems to go undetected.
I am heartbroken that someone like Jack Kornfield would endorse this book. And I can't get over how the editors allowed for this either. White surpremacy and racism are built into our systems and, sadly, this book.
4 people found this helpful
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Alexander John
5.0 out of 5 stars Must Read
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 28 April 2019
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This book helped me in a time in my life in which I really needed some direction with yoga and meditation. I finally got past doing yoga simply as a means to an end (for physical health reasons), and started viewing it as a spiritual practice. Another reviewer said he/ her rolled his/ her eyes at the idea of taking a year off of work to find yourself in practice... but that's exactly what some people need if they are single and working 50+ hours a week in a high-stress (high-paid) job. There's little point of making excessive amounts of money if it leads to a nervous breakdown.
Yoga can potentially help those with substantial depersonalization and derealization (DP/DR) issues. Giving up 90% of processed foods can help, too.
16 people found this helpful
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lit-lover
5.0 out of 5 stars Great for Yogis
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 1 February 2022
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I’m a yoga teacher, and I definitely enjoyed this read. Lots of interesting information and a pretty engaging story Cope tells about his own spiritual path. Easy to read and compelling. I’d recommend this book.
One person found this helpful
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