The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali - A Visual Meditation: Book Two: Sadhana Padah

An Absolutely Stunning Yoga Sutras Art Book Artist, Yoga practitioner, Sanskrit teacher, and internationally known psychic, Melissa Townsend brings us the second in her series of translations of the Yoga Sutras, combining gorgeous, powerfully evocative images for each sutra, with clear, accessible translation and commentary. Wry and warm, as well as knowledgeable, her writing brings an important yogic text into clear focus, while the artwork takes the book to an entirely new level. The paintings are profoundly beautiful: meditative, mysterious, visionary. "The power of Sanskrit is to open ever deepening awareness in the Heart of our Being. That inner beauty is revealed to us by Melissa Townsend in her extraordinary paintings."-Krishna DasBOOK TWO, SADHANA PADAH, "ON PRACTICE," is probably the most well-known of the 4 books comprising the Yoga Sutras. Book Two introduces the 8 limbs of practice, and contains the sutras about the yamas, niyamas, asana and pranayama."A Yogi without the Sutras is like spaghetti without the sauce. Melissa has done something great sharing her artistic gifts and pairing them with a Sutra. You can study the two matched pages, then close your eyes and allow them to work on the subtle consciousness."-Sri Dharma MittraHer inspired paintings convey the teachings in visual language. There is a sense of being invited in to the hidden structure of the Yoga Sutras. The book is beautiful and fresh.--Lorin Roche, Author, The Radiance Sutras

Melissa Townsend, whose Sanskrit name is Manisha, lives in San Francisco with her husband and son and their cat, a magnificent Siberian, who has no difficulty accepting love. She is an artist, writer, and an internationally known and published psychic and astrologer. She has been a serious Yoga practitioner since 1984, and teaches Sanskrit, which she has been studying since 2005. As well, she has studied numerous eastern and western spiritual and esoteric traditions, and often the languages associated with them, including the I Ching/Chinese, Kabbalah (Tarot)/Hebrew, and Buddhism. She graduated from Brown University, Phi Beta Kappa, Magna Cum Laude, after which she moved to New York City, where she lived for over twenty years. She attended her first yoga asana class in New York, with Dharma Mittra, her long-time teacher, and she's explored and practiced numerous other traditions of asana. Asana felt instantly, joyously familiar, but she found the chanting worrisome, and was secretly afraid that it might induce her to dress in orange and start handing out brightly colored books written in a strange language in airports. Little did she know that she would eventually spend years studying that strange language, ultimately creating her own - more subtly colored - books in it. In fact, most of the significant events in her life have taken her by surprise. She is grateful that something wiser than she is in charge of planning.