This list includes books that provide great instructions on how to do yoga poses, reference sources, yoga philosophy, and books with amazing aspirational photos. In other words, a yoga book for everyone!
1. Light on Yoga
© Barry Stone
B.K.S. Iyengar's classic 1966 book is still the gold standard for its encyclopedic illustration of hundreds of yoga poses and many breathing techniques. A must-have for any yoga practitioner's library.
2. Yoga Anatomy
Courtesy of Human Kinetics
A great choice for any yoga lover, this book's unique strength is its illustrations. Rendered through a process of photography, medical illustration, and digital media, each pose is shown from the inside out with the pertinent anatomy highlighted.
3. Light on Life
Iyengar’s most recent book, published in 2005. With this book, Iyengar intends to shed the same light on the spiritual and mental aspects of yoga as he did on the physical aspects in Light on Yoga many years ago. Subtitled The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, Light on Life promises to deliver the wealth of spiritual wisdom that Iyengar has distilled over his lifetime of practicing and teaching yoga.4. Art of Yoga
This beautifully produced coffee-table book features photographs of Jivamukti founders Sharon Gannon and David Life doing extremely advanced poses. This book is more inspirational than instructional, and lovely to look at.
5. Cool Yoga Tricks
© Barry Stone
This book is perfect for a beginner who wants to practice at home, because it offers creative adaptations of many poses using props such as chairs, blocks, blankets, and straps. Instead of showing super flexible advanced yogis in gravity-defying poses, it offers practical advice for real people. It is also ideal for yoga teachers, because it is full of ideas students will love.
6. The Living Gita
Sri Swami Satchidananda's translation and interpretation of the Bhagavad Gita makes the lessons of this ancient text accessible to modern readers. It's my favorite edition of the Gita.7. Babar's Yoga for Elephants
Introduce your children to yoga with Yoga for Elephants. This book offers a lot of good yoga information, even for adults. And the illustrations are priceless.8. Bountiful, Beautiful, Blissful
Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa is a leading Kundalini yoga teacher who is especially known for her prenatal yoga classes. The yoga in this book is gentle, but the anecdotes and advice for pregnant women is unique in the sea of books about pregnancy. It is empowering for anyone contemplating natural childbirth.