Yoga to Go: A Take-It-With-You Guide for Travellers

By Paula Carino

Now there's no excuse This handy, illustrated guide tucks into purse or pocket and makes it easy to do yoga anywhere. In a hotel room, on the job, even in the back of a station wagon: with these amazingly smart routines, created by an experienced instructor, it's possible to do yoga everywhere. This guide shows ordinary people on a business or pleasure-trip how to maintain the same positive habits that keep them centered and energized back home. Paula Carino has boiled down the thousands of asanas into a basic series of therapeutic postures easy enough for total beginners, and they're all described in detail and shown in dozens of easy-to-follow photographs. For extra inspiration, quotations from a variety of yoga practitioners reveal their strategies for taking their favorite form of exercise on the road.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 080698032X
• ISBN13: 9780806980324
• Release Date: April 2004
• Publisher: Sterling
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 1.12 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.1" x 0.3" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

A comprehensive yoga practice guide for travel or staying home, too

Author Paula Carino designed this book as a yoga guide for travelers, but it actually makes an excellent manual for those practicing at home as well. Rather than just focus on asana, the physical practice of yoga, Carino begins by reviewing all eight limbs of hatha yoga, discussing how the both the yamas (ethical practices) and the niyamas (moral observations) might apply to travel. However, the majority of the book does center around the third limb, the postures. All of the postures are beautifully demonstrated with full color photographs featuring yoga instructor Zelina Blagden as a model. Carino provides detailed, easy-to-understand instructions for each pose, beginning with simple seated and warm-up postures and moving through a full range of asanas including backward bends, forward bends, inversions, standing poses, spinal twists, and relaxation poses. The information she provides includes the Sanskrit name for each posture, breathing instructions for the pose, modifications to the pose, and benefits of the pose. Several different types of breathing exercises (pranayama) are also introduced. Once Carino has presented the postures, she moves on to Chapter 3, "Creating Your Practice." Here Carino combines the poses to form various routines which would be appropriate for practicing on the road (but which would work for home practice). For example, she offers a 20-minute "Morning Energizer" routine as well as a 30-minute "Good Night's Sleep" routine. She also suggests practices to address common problems experienced while traveling, including Headache, Nausea, Aching Back, and Colds. Finally, Carino suggests postures specific to the type of travel--eg, stretches for plane, car, or train travel. The last two chapters of the book are brief; they cover Eating Well on the Road and Travel and Meditation. Not only is this book an excellent source of information, but it is also extremely attractive: as mentioned above, it is filled with full-color photos as well as cute, colorful illustrations designating each chapter. In addition, it is printed on a thicker, clearly more high quality glossy paper (ironically, however, this makes the book rather heavy for its size and actually less suited to travel). Although I might not actually bring this book with me when traveling (it is a bit heavy and bulky for that purpose), it definitely has some great information for practicing yoga on the go, and I would recommend it for those practicing at home as well.

My wife is happy

I bought this for my wife after it was recommended by a friend and she is very pleased with the book. She now uses it every day with help doing yoga routines as well as assisting with sleep problems. Highly recommended.

Very helpful book.

I love to travel and having this book by my side is going to make every trip evenmore enjoyable. I am planing take this book on every journey I make.

Entertaining, doable, perfect for travel

The visual appeal of this book -- its small size, heavyweight paper, and crystal clear photos -- all add to the top-notch instruction and sage advice for yoga either on the road or at home. The book consists of five chapters, focusing on postures, routines, and advice for achieving optimal wellness while on the road. The poses are photographed clearly, and the best part is the modifications recommended for beginners. This is the perfect complement to a beginning yogi or yogini's library, and I certainly intend on taking the book with me when I travel. The recommended routines are simple enough to perform in a hotel room, while the book itself will inspire me to look after my health while traveling. Highly recommended.

an excellent addition to your yoga bookshelf

...And if you don't have a yoga bookshelf, this would be a good place to start. YOGA TO GO is a well-written, handsomely produced (and very inexpensive!) yoga manual that works well as a general primer for yoga novices, but which also has something new to offer the more experienced: specific advice for how to continue your yoga practice while travelling. That is, how to use yoga to counteract the usual array of discombobulating travel-related irritations (bad food, long hours in cramped seats, time changes, lost sleep, etc.). Carino's book also offers simple and sage advice on some peripheral topics -- such as how to eat well in places where the only options seem to be Burger King and Taco Bell; and how to meditate on a plane while the guy seated next to you drools on your shoulder. Carino's writing style is fluid and accessible and should appeal equally to those for whom yoga is a spiritual pursuit, and those for whom it is primarily an exercise regimen. This is Paula Carino's first book. I hope we can look forward to more from her.