This fully updated compendium of research, history, scientific theory, and practice amalgamates various evidence-based research findings and their practical implications for professionals who use yoga or refer patients to yoga practice. Chapters cover the implementation of yoga for various illnesses and conditions from paediatrics to geriatrics. The expanded second edition includes updated contributions from leading biomedical researchers and therapists, brand new research on telemedicine, chronic pain, and mental health conditions, and a new chapter specifically on the implementation of yoga therapy in medical systems and healthcare with a focus on international perspectives and public perceptions. This second edition takes now includes a more narrative tone, a 'How to Read the Book' section, and a significantly expanded index to increase accessibility.

Your Spine, Your Yoga is arguably the first book that looks at the spine from both the Western anatomical/biomechanical point of view and the modern yoga perspective. It is filled with detail, discussion, illustrations, and practical advice for spines of all types. This emphasis on variety is welcome and necessary: no two spines are exactly alike, and no two people have the same biology and biography. What your spine is able to do may be vastly different from what other yoga students' or teachers' spines can do. The human spine is unique in its structure and function. Primarily, it provides stability through the core of our body, allowing forces to be transmitted from the upper body (arms and shoulders) to the lower body (pelvis and legs) and vice versa. Secondarily, the spine allows tremendous range of movement. Unfortunately, in modern yoga practice we find the primacy of these two functions reversed, with flexibility prized over stability. This focus on spinal mobility comes at a grave cost to many students. Stability is lost, and when that happens, dysfunction and pain often follow. Just as all tissues and areas of the body need a healthy amount of stress to regain and maintain optimal health, so too our spine needs the appropriate levels of stress to remain functional throughout our lives. How we choose to exercise the spine makes a difference, though. Knowing the way the spine is built, specifically, how your spine is built, will allow you to tailor your exercises wisely to match your goals. Your Spine, Your Yoga is the second book in the Your Body, Your Yoga series and focuses on the axial body the core, from the sacral complex, which includes the pelvis, sacrum, and sacroiliac joint, through the lumbar and thoracic segments of the spine, to the cervical complex, which includes the neck and head. The structural components of each segment are examined: from the bones, to the joints, ligaments, fascia, tendons, muscles, and even the neurological and blood systems. The range and implications of human variations are presented, as well as the ways these variations may affect individual yoga practices. The sources of restrictions to movement are investigated through answering the question "What Stops Me?" The answers presented run through a spectrum, beginning with various types of tensile resistance to three kinds of compressive resistance. Whether the reader is a novice to yoga, anatomy, or both, or a seasoned practitioner with an in-depth knowledge in these fields, this book will be valuable. For the novice, there are easily understood illustrations and photographs, as well as sidebars highlighting the most important topics. For the anatomy geek, other sidebars focus on the complexity of the topic, with hundreds of references provided for further investigation. For the yoga teacher, sidebars suggest how to bring this knowledge into the classroom. Your Spine, Your Yoga can be used as a resource when specific questions arise, as a textbook to be studied in detail, or as a fascinating coffee-table book to be browsed at leisure for topics of current interest.

Making the Renaissance Man explores the images, objects and experiences that fashioned men and masculinity in the courts of fifteenth-century Italy. Across the peninsula, Italian princes fought each other in fierce battles and spectacular jousts; they seduced mistresses, flaunted splendour in lavish rituals of knighting and demonstrated prowess through the hunt, in ostentatious performances of masculinity and rule. Hardly frivolous pastimes, these activities were essential displays of privilege and virility; indeed, violence underlay the cultural veneer of the Italian Renaissance. Timothy McCall investigates representations and ideals of manhood and provides a historically grounded and gorgeously illustrated account of how male identity and sexuality proclaimed power, in a century crucial to the formation of early modern Europe.

Italian court culture of the fifteenth century was a golden age, gleaming with dazzling princes, splendid surfaces, and luminous images that separated the lords from the (literally) lackluster masses. In Brilliant Bodies, Timothy McCall describes and interprets the Renaissance glitterati-gorgeously dressed and adorned men-to reveal how charismatic bodies, in the palazzo and the piazza, seduced audiences and materialized power. Fifteenth-century Italian courts put men on display. Here, men were peacocks, attracting attention with scintillating brocades, shining armor, sparkling jewels, and glistening swords, spurs, and sequins. McCall's investigation of these spectacular masculinities challenges widely held assumptions about appropriate male display and adornment. Interpreting surviving objects, visual representations in a wide range of media, and a diverse array of primary textual sources, McCall argues that Renaissance masculine dress was a political phenomenon that fashioned power and patriarchal authority. Brilliant Bodies describes and recontextualizes the technical construction and cultural meanings of attire, casts a critical eye toward the complex and entangled relations between bodies and clothing, and explores the negotiations among makers, wearers, and materials. This groundbreaking study of masculinity makes an important intervention in the history of male ornamentation and fashion by examining a period when the public display of splendid men not only supported but also constituted authority. It will appeal to specialists in art history and fashion history as well as scholars working at the intersections of gender and politics in quattrocento Italy.

The definitive book of yoga therapy, this groundbreaking work comes to you from the medical editor of the country's premier yoga magazine, who is both a practicing yogi and a Western-trained physician.
Beginning with an overview of the history and science of yoga, Dr. McCall describes the many different techniques in the yoga tool kit; explains what yoga does and who can benefit from it (virtually everyone!); and provides lavishly illustrated and minutely detailed instructions on starting a yoga practice geared to your fitness level and your health status. Yoga as Medicine offers a wealth of practical information, including how to:
-Utilize yogic tools, including postures, breathing techniques, and meditation, for both prevention and healing of illness
-Master the art of becoming more in tune with your body
-Communicate more effectively with your doctor
-Adopt therapeutic yoga practices as either an alternative or a complement to surgery and to expensive, sometimes dangerous medications
-Practice safely
Find an instructor and a style of yoga that are right for you. With twenty chapters devoted to the work of individual master teachers, including such well-known figures as Patricia Walden, John Friend, and Rodney Yee, Yoga as Medicine shows how these experts have applied the wisdom of this ancient holistic practice to twenty different conditions, ranging from arthritis to chronic fatigue, depression, heart disease, HIV/AIDS, infertility, insomnia, multiple sclerosis, and obesity. Defining yoga as "a systematic technology to improve the body, understand the mind, and free the spirit," Dr. McCall shows the way to a path that can truly alter your life.
An indispensable guide for the millions who now practice yoga or would like to begin, as well as for yoga teachers, body workers, doctors, nurses, and other health professionals.