How did a venerable Indian spiritual discipline turn into a 20 billion-a-year mainstay of the wellness industry? What happened along yoga's winding path from the caves and forests of the sages to the gyms, hospitals and village halls of the modern West?

This comprehensive history sets yoga in its global cultural context for the first time, leading us on a journey from arcane religious rituals and medieval body-magic, through Christianity and the British Empire, to Indian nationalists and the twentieth-century West. Yoga has now become embedded in powerful social currents including feminism, digital media, celebrity culture, the stress pandemic and the quest for authentic identity.

Shearer's revealing history boasts a colourful cast of characters past and present, in an engaging tale of scholars and scandal, science and spirit, wisdom and waywardness. This is the untold story of yoga, warts and all.

'Erudite, scholarly and engrossing.' - The Sunday Telegraph

'A clear-eyed, elegantly written and wonderfully informative history of yoga ... Shearer's remarkable book is a wide-ranging and rather sobering discussion on the nature of authenticity.' - The Spectator

'Shearer...writes with exquisite sensitivity about the teacher-student relationship.' - Hindustan Times

'Amid a sea of guidebooks, historian Alistair Shearer has provided a worthwhile counterpoint, [offering] advice as important as any guru's techniques.' - Financial Times

'A quick-witted and erudite chronicle of the Hindu practice that is now a lucrative staple of "wellness" in the West.'

- The Wall Street Journal

'This is a tale of what happens when East and West meet, and about a shift from the sacred to the secular. [Yoga's] journey west gives Shearer a compelling cast of characters.' - The Sunday Times

'This is a compelling history of how an amazing ancient art became an integral part of western life.' - The Irish Times