Kim Beyer

Easing Into the Classical Literature of India Kim Beyer

This combined volume offers Hatha Yoga instructors and studios, adult education classes and diversity-studies seminar leaders a set of five study guides, including Easing into the Bhagavad Gita, Easing into Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, Easing into the Dhammapada, Easing into the Mahabharata and Easing into the Ramayana. These classic texts form the core of India's spiritual backbone and are required reading in most Hatha Yoga certification programs. I've taught out of these books for years, and the feedback from students has been consistently positive. Each topic area includes a short essay highlighting one of ten great ideas, an original interpretive poem, five questions to take you deeper into the study and resources to further your inquiry. It's easy for class leaders to encourage students to work through the questions in dyads or in larger dialogue groups. The capping poem can be read aloud to close the section of study for that time or day or serve as examples for right-brained creative approaches to the material. Each section also works very well as an outline for one-day retreats and can serve as a primer for students of comparative religion, pointing them toward further in-depth research topics. Over the course of the coming years, I'll be adding titles about the Hatha Yoga Pradapika, Sri Shankara's Crest Jewel of Discrimination, and the Vedas as well as overviews of the writings of Sri Vivekananda, Sri Ramakrishna, Sri Aurobindo, Kabir and more. For general classroom and adult educational gatherings, be sure to check out the complete Easing Into Collection of titles. From Druidry to the Tao te Ching, these books provide thoughtful but brief introductions to some of the classics and traditions of the world. Watch for multi-media programs on Udemy.com coming soon. Enjoy!