Elizabeth Kadetsky, First There Is a Mountain: A Yoga Romance

First There Is a Mountain: A Yoga Romance

Elizabeth Kadetsky

Little, Brown, Jan 2004, $23.95, 274 pp.

ISBN: 0316890960

As a relatively new reporter chasing a Pulitzer, Elizabeth Kadetsky did little to take care of her body properly though she ran a lot and practiced yoga. The problem was she was always on the run grabbing quick bites to eat that is when she even ate. Elizabeth physically felt poor but mentally worse as her life was journalism so anything outside that realm was a negative. Needing a change, Elizabeth, a yoga advocate, applied to attend a yoga school in India run by the renowned elderly Iyengar, who was one of the few experts to instruct Westerners.

Finally accepted as a student, Elizabeth learns that her yoga style is a westernized fake that is nothing like that taught by the Master. As a pupil, she begins to explore the boundaries between the physical, the mental and the transcendent spiritual bridge between the two parts that when in harmony make a whole. The reporter inside Elizabeth also explores her teacher's background and the sacred place of yoga in India as under Iyengar's tutelage she journeys beyond her past seeking her whole.

FIRST THERE IS A MOUNTAIN in a tremendous account of west meets east on eastern terms. Readers will feel the love that Elizabeth Kadetsky has for her mentor, her trek from yoga the exercise mechanism to revering religious like the yoga transcend journey of the mind and body, and finally an insightful look at the past and present of yoga diagonally crossing the caste system. The audience will understand why Ms. Kadetsky subtitles her journal "A Yoga Romance".

Harriet Klausner