"How to Draw YOGA Stick Figures"
A workbook by Mikelle Terson
"Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line
somewhere."
G.K.
Chesterton English novelist, poet.
"I love
this book. I recommend it for my teacher
trainees to help them learn how to illustrate a Yoga
sequence. It's simple, straightforward, and it has got
lots of valuable information between the sticks." Rod
Stryker, Master teacher, creator of Pure Yoga
"Two Mudras
up! Mikelle's book starts off as a "how to draw
book", but in the process, it becomes something more: a
code of symbolic grammar for yogis to express themselves.
She has done something unique by establishing rules for
quickly and unambiguously communicating postures."
Tom Gilette, owner of Eyes of the World yoga studio,
Providence, RI.
"This book is
destined to be a standard text in every
yogi's library." Brian Fulp, Himalayan Institute
Excerpt from
the book:
How this started:
At many yoga
conferences or training programs I attended, master
teachers would put their practice up on boards for people
to copy down. Quite a few students would get frustrated
and tense because they had trouble drawing the stick
figures. On several occasions, students noticed my notes
and sat next to me to see how I drew then. One day, I was
joking with a fellow teacher that I should write a book.
Well, here it is
About the Sanskrit Names:
Because there are
so many systems of yoga, postures are often called
different names in different systems. I've tried to
include the English names in the index so you can look up
a posture if you don't know the Sanskrit name. Many
postures, however, have no English name, or if they do, I
wasn't able to find them in my research. Postures
dedicated to sages usually do not have English names.
Sometimes you will
see a posture spelled differently in different places. One
of the reasons in that certain sounds in Sanskrit do not
translate into a one letter sound in English. For
instance, an "S" in Sanskrit sounds like "sh" and is
either written as "S" or "sh" as in Sirsasana or "Shirsasana".
Depending on the source, different choices were made to
spell the name more phonetically.
Also, there are
certain rules in Sanskrit that apply when particular
letters follow each other when two words are put together.
They are called the "Sandhi" rules. Sandhi means "to
join". An example of this is when an "A" is followed by a
"U" the two letters become a single "O" as in "A" + "UM"
= Om or "Pada" + "Uttanasana" = "Padottanasa".
Price: $
29.95
A Final Note:
I hope this
workbook is helpful to you. Have fun, and remember,
cavemen did this in their own way!
Blessings,
Mikelle