Yoga As Somatic Transpersonal Therapy: Volume 1 - Yoga
Many people practice yoga. Surprisingly few-teachers included-can say what it is for.
Ask, and you'll hear that yoga is a path toward inner union and peace. Ask what that means, or how the practice is supposed to get you there, and the answer usually runs out. This book begins where that answer runs out.
This is the first volume of Yoga as Somatic Transpersonal Therapy, a three-volume exploration of what yoga set out to do, how it works, and what it can be for a practitioner today. Before yoga can be understood as somatic therapy or transpersonal healing-the subjects of Volumes II and III-we have to understand what yoga itself means: what the traditions were trying to accomplish, what states they were aiming toward, and what kind of transformation they believed was possible. That is the work of this book.
It opens with the word itself: what yoga meant to those who coined it, both as a state of consciousness and as the path for reaching it. It then maps the yogic paths-and argues that the familiar division into Karma, Bhakti, J āna, and Rāja Yoga is not enough, offering a framework that better describes the actual landscape of methods. A history of yoga follows, from the earliest human traditions to the modern studio, told so that simple stories like "yoga is this" or "yoga was always that" become impossible to keep believing.
The core of the book unfolds the limbs of practice. The eight limbs of Pata jali are the map most readers know; here they are examined as one map among several-where they help, where they mislead, and how they came to dominate. The yamas and niyamas are treated not as a list of rules for daily life but as spiritual, metaphysical, and psychological mechanisms that move the practitioner toward union. Pratyāhāra, the withdrawal of the senses, is presented not only as a limb but as a complete path in its own right.
A detour into the mind-yogic and scientific at once-explains what actually happens when we meditate, why thoughts arise, why concentration is so hard to sustain, and how we become who we are. Then the inner limbs: concentration, meditation, and samādhi, each explained plainly, with techniques, and drawing on frameworks beyond Pata jali. Much of what appears here has rarely been put in print, and the chapter on samādhi addresses misconceptions that matter for any serious seeker.
after dealing with the question most yoga books avoid - do paranormal powers: exist, we will look into enlightenment: what it is, whether it is real, and what it is like to live it.
Throughout, the book does three things together. It presents yoga from the traditional lens, as it appears in the classical texts, revealing the mystical meaning behind aspects of practice that can seem mundane. Without detracting from that, it demystifies where demystifying is warranted, using modern science to illuminate hidden workings-including yogic claims that have been tested and disproven. And it begins the thesis the later volumes complete: that the path of yoga is a process of healing, and that this process aligns with the insights of modern psychology and neuroscience.
The author, Tomer Weiss, is a yoga teacher, therapist, and author who came to yoga through its spiritual promise-and spent years discovering that much of what he had been taught as ancient, traditional, or scientifically verified was none of those. This is the book he wishes had been available then: a reliable map, historical and experiential, traditional and modern, mystical and grounded.
It is written for the practitioner who senses yoga is more than posture but does not want to lose themselves in fantasy or pseudoscience; for the teacher who wants to honor the tradition without repeating what cannot be verified; and for the seeker who longs for depth and clarity at once.
Yoga does not need embellishment to be profound. Its real depth is already astonishing enough.
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