Yoga Urban

For modern yogis feeling challenged in our efforts to remain deeply spiritual, contemplative, and centered amid the stresses and complications of urban life, this book serves as both inspiration and guide. Darren Main's fresh, down-to-earth approach to the time-tested practice and philosophy of yoga shows us the way to apply the ancient wisdom of India to every moment and every breath so that even our busiest days can be powerful and mystical adventures.

In the fugue of deep meditation, Jaya Devi tumbles outdoors into a muggy south Florida dawn. Sliding on a pair of orange flip-flops, she cuts across a dirt path skirting the ashram lawn. She glances down as a fat black snake slithers up her bare leg, wrapping itself tight. Astonished, she pauses, exemplifying the yogi’s art of non-reaction, breathing and assessing. Here, we enter into the wild wisdom-experience of a modern yogi who uses each moment as fuel for personal transformation.

Vacillating between a desire to get high and a yearning for a substance-free life, she finds herself alternating between cocaine and yoga, dependence and freedom. Will she be able to let go of her self-abuse and find sobriety one day, and one breath, at a time? An addict who once disappeared into crack dens, she now seeks solace at yoga studios. As Jessica attempts to create a path to recovery “on the mat” and in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, she grapples with one unanswerable question: Is recovery worth it?

A new vampire is in town, and he's thirsty for some hot blood. He opens a free yoga studio downtown near the college campus where he begins his search. A yoga student becomes alarmed by the instructor's sudden interest in her neck at the same time a fellow student is found dead in a nearby alley drained of blood with two puncture marks on her throat. Now she senses this yoga instructor has followed her home and wants her blood next.