Thirumoolar's Ashtanga Yoga: A Therapeutic Approach to Good Health
by Dr Asana Andiappan
Endeavour Press $199
Bookazine
His eyes leap out at you, as he sits on the lime-green cover of his first yoga book in English: ankle behind the ears and hands clasped in the prayer position. His gaze is magnetic. The remarkable-looking 76-year-old is Asana Andiappan, or Doctor AA as he is known to his followers in the 155 countries where his daily yoga television shows are screened, and in the various yoga centres stretched across southern India where this yoga guru holds court.
As the vice-president of the Indian Yoga Federation, Andiappan is a big name in the yoga world at home, yet he's relatively unknown outside his country. And the language barrier hasn't helped.
In more than 50 years of teaching yoga, Andiappan has written 25 books in the Tamil language that dominates southern India. As yoga is being taken up increasingly in the west, he's decided to switch to English with this, his first translated work courtesy of the small Hong Kong publisher, Endeavour Press.