The Story of Yoga

From Ancient India to the Modern West

By: Alistair Shearer

Narrated by: Bruce Mann

Length: 18 hrs and 9 mins

Publisher's summary

How did an ancient Indian spiritual discipline turn into a more than 20-billion-dollar-a-year mainstay of the global wellness industry? What happened along yoga's winding path from the caves and forests of the sages to the gyms, hospitals, and village halls of the modern West?

This comprehensive history sets yoga in its global cultural context for the first time. It leads us on a fascinating journey across the world, from arcane religious rituals and medieval body-magic, through muscular Christianity and the British Raj, to the Indian nationalist movement and the arrival of yoga in the 20th-century West. We discover how the practice reached its present-day ubiquity and how it became embedded in powerful social currents shaping the world's future, such as feminism, digital media, celebrity culture, the stress pandemic, and the quest for an authentic identity in the face of unprecedented change.

Shearer's revealing history boasts a colorful cast of characters past and present, who tell an engaging tale of scholars and scandal, science and spirit, wisdom and waywardness. This is the untold story of yoga, warts and all.

©2020 Alistair Shearer (P)2020 Tantor

Great Survey on yoga

This is a great Survey on yoga but this narrator is … not good. I really had to force myself to listen. You have to play this at at least 1.65 speed.

Annoying narrator

The text was very interesting and comprehensive. The narrator sounded like Sam the Eagle from the Muppets. I had to increase the speed to x2 to tolerate listening to it

A Great Story

It took me a while to get into this audiobook. Although the story is absolutely AMAZING, the narration leaves much to be desired. The narration was so mediocre that I almost returned it. Then I sped the narration speed up to 1.65 and not only found it bearable at that speed, but quite enjoyable.

The narrator is not bad, just at normal speed it is difficult to bear.. moves too slow, which takes away from the marvelous story of the book.

Poor narrator, overall biased book

I was hoping for an overall deep history of yoga. Instead, there was a little historical background. Then there is a lot of current era, and recent decades information. Much of which was very biased, and a lot of which is controversial. But presented factually, which is problematic. The narrator for me was the worst. Multiple times in the book. It made fun of practitioners in in current times mispronouncing Sanskrit terms. For the narrator himself, at least 50% of the Sanskrit terms were pronounced incorrectly. Many names of Indian teachers, sages, and more we also mispronounced. It’s very difficult to listen to on a variety of levels. I wish narrators would work to pronounce correctly the terms in books they read for public listening.

Interesting Content, almost impossible to listen to

I think the content is likely very helpful and interesting but it was so hard to listen to the narration that it’s almost a waste. Get the paperback?