Michael Stone is a teacher and student of yoga and Buddhist meditation. He is a psychotherapist at his private practice in Toronto. He founded a community of yoga and meditation practitioners in Toronto, called the Centre of Gravity Sangha. He is a single father to a son who enjoys skateboarding and being active. In Michael's early years he suffered from depression. This lead to committed practice of yoga in his everyday life and this book is to show people that they too can change their lives. Michael Stone wrote this book with hopes that it is used to help people live in the here and now and focus on the life around them. He believes this book of small essays will show people that yoga practices should not be done as a separate part of life,…show more content… It is difficult to pinpoint his main ideas, but his book is split in five sections. The first is "The here and now". Stone believes that the world is unbalanced, but we can live a balanced life through the use of yoga and meditation. The world is always changing, therefore the conditions and actions of life are changing. It is very appropriate that in chapter 1 he states, “The ground we stand on is always moving and new actions are always required. Every time we arrive at a new viewpoint, the conditions change and we must one again tune in to what is under our feet”. This is the very basis of Stone’s work, always be aware of your surroundings and live in today’s world, the…show more content… This is the integration of Patanjali's the 8 limbs of Ashtanga Yoga into everyday life through the community, friends, family, and the body. This especially includes asana, pranayama, yama and niyamas, as well as karma yoga. Patanjali offers these tools for various areas of life. They are not offered as an answer to life's problems, but as a way to bring yoga and meditation to the present. Everyone has difficult memories or emotions, but life would not be life without grasping all aspects, good and bad. Much as yoga is not yoga without understanding and practicing all 8 limbs of yoga. Following this path of understanding helps one open up to work through hardships, rather than around them.
The fourth section is called, "Grounded in the world". Stone ties the first section, here and now, to the second section, body and mind. Bringing all of the teachings of body and mind together and applying it to the present. Stone explains in chapter 18 that we need “yoga of our time, alive and responsive to contemporary life”. All of his ideas from the beginning chapters start to flow