Christina Sell – författare

There are dozens of books that tell you where to place your heel when you do yoga, where to put your arm, how to bend your waist...This is a book that teaches where to place your heart when you do yoga. There is more to yoga than postures, and Christina Sell draws on her own experience and that of her students to produce the first book on Anusara Yoga. A beautiful book about women in yoga, finding peace and acceptance and bringing that to their lives, their bodies and their practice.

The body as a temple is a common metaphor within many spiritual traditions. In this book, author and yoga teacher Christina Sell delves into the "how” and "why” of this widely accepted comparison. With the freshness of a memoir, she uses her first visit to an extraordinary temple in southern India as a structure upon which to build a treatment of basic yoga principles. Beyond the ordinary aims of yoga as a means of stretching and strengthening, or even for being happier or more cantered, My Body is a Temple is an instruction manual for dedicating oneself to a life of the spirit, in and through the vehicle of the human body. The temple of the Indian saint Yogi Ramsuratkumar (1918-2001) was still under construction when Christina entered for the first time in 2004. Yet, within it, she felt a deep peace, happiness and connection to ultimate "Sanctuary” within herself. Her own body was experienced as a receptacle for the saint's grace and an artefact of the Presence of God. "Could a life of yogic practice help me to abide more constantly at the shrine of my own heart?” she asked herself upon returning home. "Do the forms of yoga practice contain the necessary building blocks to construct a life that is a sanctuary, and a body that is a temple?” This book answers those questions. Students of yoga will appreciate that this metaphor embodies high ideals. The author argues that aiming toward this higher sphere elevates one's life, "unsticking” us from habitual, ordinary mind. Instead of simply performing the yogic postures (asanas) physically, she explains how to use exercise as prayer, affirmation, and an expression of Remembrance.