Yoga with a sensory integrative approach, is the subtitle of this book.  This is a very basic yoga book and would be best for parents, educators or others (who have little to no background in yoga) working with people with sensory issues.

It is very clearly written with delineations of practices for age groups.  My biggest pet peeve is always alignment, so I found page  48 quite annoying (Vrksasana Pose) where the author herself even mentions having the foot placed on the thigh or shin with no pressure on the knee or ankle – yet the photo is of a girl with her whole foot right on the knee area.  The same can be said of a picture demonstrating Virabhadrasana II, the center of gravity is not over the midline, the knee is extending too far forward – and through my work with children in this area, strengthening the core / support and body awareness, noticing tilting / leaning, etc. should be something you are working towards – the photo is bothersome.

Other photos are not necessarily showing "correct" extension or alignment, but again levels vary so that may be the case, and most do not seem as though they would be too detrimental, they look like they may take time to progress into a fuller expression of the asana.

There are also small summaries that include what can be done to modify the pose for certain difficulties and always an italicized sentence that tells what the pose is being used for "stabilizing and strengthening the spine", and so on. The photos seemed a little dark and grainy, as though they may have been taken with a low quality camera.

On another note the author is a pediatric occupational therapist (20 years), yoga practitioner (15 years), and yoga teacher (3 years). She definitely has knowledge to share, but it is doled out here for the reader with little experience to be able to augment their professional therapy.

Overall the book is well organized and informative, short and to the point but did not provide much new insight for me personally.  I could definitely see recommending this to clients whose children I work with on sensory integration through yoga as a way for them to continue practice and save cost on having me there as frequently.

I give this book 5 stars.

October 27th, 2008 | Tags: Book Review, Occupational Therapy, yoga therapy | Category: books, Daily Post, Review | Subscribe to comments | Both comments and pings are currently closed