Threads of Yoga

A new translation of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali for our present paradigm. Threads uses the lenses of contemporary philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience to "remix" the original stillness and insight of the old book with the best that our age has to offer. The author interweaves the refashioned verses with critical commentary and personal reflections from a decade of practice. "I don't know of any reading of the yoga sutras as wildly creative, as impassioned and as earnest as this. it engages Patanjali and the reader in an urgent, electrified conversation that weaves philosophy, symbolist poetry, psychoanalysis and cultural history. There's a kind of delight and freshness in this book that is very rare in writing on yoga, and especially rare in writing on the yoga sutras. This is a Patanjali for postmoderns, less a translation than a startlingly relevant report on our current condition, through the prism of this ancient text." -- Mark Singleton, author of Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice "This is a massively important work... finally a philosophical text rich in contemporary wisdom that can speak to the radical embodiment and deepening intimacy with ecology and relationship that modern yoga practice inspires. Matthew is not only the most stunning writer in prose working in the (underpaid) world of yoga discourse he's also one of its most fluent cultural critics. More importantly, what he does here is pave a new road forward for the future of Western spirituality: embodied, psychologically informed, with an aesthetic so potent it has the power to heal." -- Shyam Dodge, author of Wet, Hot & Wild American Yogi