Book Giveaway - Enlightenment for Idiots

Comment about your favorite yoga book and have a chance to win a copy of Enlightenment for Idiots.

After you make your comment with your first name included, send me an e-mail to Rama.Mama@live.com. There will be a drawing of all commenters, and I will e-mail you if you win to ask for your postal address. I'll do the drawing in two weeks, Aug. 7 and will announce the winner afterwards.

A few months after having Brijin, I finally read a fiction book again. For those of you who have small children, you understand how difficult it is to fit a small pleasure like reading a novel into your life.

To multitask, I read Enlightenment for Idiots; not only was it about yoga but was silly and entertaining like a beach novel. A perfect combo for this yoga teacher / gossip magazine addict (I actually don't have any subscriptions anymore, but my friends keep giving me their old copies of USWeekly and People. What's a girl to do? It's recycling.).

The author, Anne Cushman of Enlightenment, contacted me via this blog and said she'd give me a copy of her book to give away to one of you. So tell me about your favorite yoga book, fiction or nonfiction, now.

I'm also giving the copy of the book Cushman gave directly to me away at the grand opening of Yoga Patch at 7108 Wornall Rd., Kansas City, Mo., next Friday, July 31. Read more about Yoga Patch, the new studio I'll be teaching at beginning August 10 (see the schedule).

Enlighten Up is coming to the Midwest in June!

I wrote about the movie Enlighten Up over a year ago after discovering its trailer and am so excited it's scheduled to be released and will be playing in my city, Kansas City, beginning June 12! It will also be playing in Minneapolis and Omaha in June, for my college and hometown friends. View the schedule so you can see if it's playing in your town.

Basically, Enlighten Up is a documentary following a 29-year-old man who has never practiced any aspect of yoga before, and the film follows him over a period of six months to see how it transforms him.

If you're into yoga, watch it. If you're curious about yoga, watch it. And if you can't comprehend whatsoever why people spend 90 minutes "wasting" their time doing yoga, you DEFINITELY need to watch it.

Enlightenment for Idiots - really

I recently finished reading "Enlightenment for Idiots," which is a wonderfully fun fiction book for a yogini (or aspiring one!) to read. It's about a 29 year-old yoga teacher and writer (like moi, except I'm 31, but who's counting!) who is commissioned by a publisher to journey to India to write the book "Enlightenment for Idiots." Some surprises along the way that also highly resonated with a recent "adventure" in my life... but I won't completely spill the beans. :)

If you want to learn more about yoga, India and have lots of laughs while enjoying author Anne Cushman's prose, then this is a great novel to try. It was one of the first fiction books I've read since having baby (I'm such a nonfiction freak right now!). I think because it married my loves of teaching yoga and just plain silliness, it really struck home to me.

I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a witty and entertaining read, while also learning a little about India, yoga and enlightenment along the way.