I knew absolutely nothing of Indra Devi until I heard about this book, which I went out to buy and then it sat on my shelf for ages. I knew that yoga in India as opposed to what happens in the West and particularly the US are not the same but I learned a great deal more from this egrossing biography. Devi herself seems a bit of a nightmare for a biographer but I was fascinated by all the strange twists and turns in her life, starting in Riga and crossing the world many times over. She seems to have been a master of reinvention and created whatever persona she most need at the time. She also seems to have been both an inspiration and a nightmare to those around her. I enjoyed learned about her and what her voyage was through life. I would suggest that not only she brought yoga to the West but it seems a shame is is somewhat forgotten while other names (mostly Indian men) linger. I was also fascinated by her connect to early Bollywood. I have wondered if both my love of Bollywood (and BollyX teaching) and my small yoga practice are just cultural appropriation with a dose of white privilege but I think I see it a bit differently now. Appreciation doesn't have to be appropriation and I see the difference playing out with Indra Devi.

When the woman who would become Indra Devi was born in Russia in 1899, yoga was virtually unknown outside of India. By the time of her death, in 2002, it was being practiced everywhere, from Brooklyn to Berlin to Ulaanbaatar. In The Goddess Pose, New York Times best-selling author Michelle Goldberg traces the life of the incredible woman who brought yoga to the West-and in so doing paints a sweeping picture of the twentieth century.

Born into the minor aristocracy (as Eugenia Peterson), Devi grew up in the midst of one of the most turbulent times in human history. Forced to flee the Russian Revolution as a teenager, she joined a famous Berlin cabaret troupe, dove into the vibrant prewar spiritualist movement, and, at a time when it was nearly unthinkable for young European woman to travel alone, followed the charismatic Theosophical leader Jiddu Krishnamurti to India.

Once on the subcontinent, she performed in Indian silent cinema and hobnobbed with the leaders of the independence movement. But her greatest coup was convincing a recalcitrant master yogi to train her in the secrets of his art.

Devi would go on to share what she learned with people around the world, teaching in Shanghai during World War II, then in Hollywood, where her students included Gloria Swanson and Greta Garbo. She ran a yoga shool in Mexico during the height of the counterculture, served as spiritual addviser to the colonel who tried tooverthrow Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega, and, in her eigthies, moved to Buenos Aires at the invitation of a besotted rock star.

Everwhere she went, Indra Devi evangelized for yoga, ushering in a global craze that continues unabated. Written with vivid clarity, The Godess Pose brings her remarkable story-as an actress, yogi, and globetrotting adventures-to life.

Michelle Goldberg is a journalist and the author of the New York Times best seller Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, which was a finalist for the New York Public LIbrary's Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism, and the Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World, winner of the J. Anthoniy Lukas Work-in-Progress Award and the Ernesta Drinker Ballard Book Prize. A senior contributiong writer at The Nation, she has also written pieces for the New Yorker, The New York Times, Newsweek, The New Republic, Glamour, and many other publications. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and children.

'The Goddess Pose, Michelle Goldberg's-yes, audacious-new biograpy of Indra Devi, is not just an investigation of one of the twentieth century's most fascinating and fearless iconoclasts, but a cellebration of female freedom and evrything it can bring: an appetite for adventure, fearlessness in the face of challenge, and, most important, discovery and assertion of self.'-Anna Holmes, founding editor, Jezebel

'In The Goddess Pose, Michelle Godldberg brings Indra devi, a complicated and incredible woman, to life in Technicolor brilliance, as she bops, Zelig-like, through some of the most importent events of last century-from the Russian Revolution to the rise of Nazism, to the JFK assassination. I'll never think of yoga the same way again-and neither will you. Even if you've never uttered the word 'namaste,' you won't be able to put this book down.'-Susannah Cahalan, New York Times best-selling author of Brain on Fire

'Whether yu're a student of yoga, a history buff, an armchair adventurer, or just a reader in search of an unputdownable story that happens to be true, you'll love this fascinating biograhy of one of the twentieth century's boldest, most inflluential women. Michelle Goldberg gets us as close to unveiling the mysterious Indra Devi as anyone is likely to get. Brava!'-Katha Pollit, author of Learning to Drive: and Other Life Stories

'Michelle Goldberg's masterful engagement with her astonishing subject-and with the diverse political, spiritual, and physical worlds she inhabited-is evident on every page of this terific book. The Goddess Pose is a surprising adventure from beginning to end.'-Rebecca Traister, author of Big Girls Don't Cry

Contents

Introduction
Part I Eugenia
Part II Jane
Part III Indra Devi
Part IV Mataji
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index

Indra Devi was the person responsible for making yoga popular. Born in 1899, she was a feminist from the get go. Well researched, the story was interesting. ( )

A fascinating discussion of the ongoing evolution of the speed and style of what we call yoga today, traced from its roots in Indian spirituality to influences by Dutch gymnastics instruction, to what Indra Devi brought to the Arden spa in the 1950s, to the contemporary fast-paced power yoga we see so much of today. What Devi brought to the spa (and what caused yoga to really catch on in the U.S.) was apparently yoga without the religious underpinnings; an empowering alternative to the housewives-on-tranquilizers age. Devi "turned a very male discipline into an uplifting ritual for the cosmopolitan, spiritual-not-religious woman."

More fascinating was Devi's life itself and the numerous lives and subcultures she influenced across continents and countries, from Russia to Weimar Berlin to Shanghai to Mexico. Devi lived a life she based on love and nonattachment - fiercely independent and at times possibly a little bit too non-attached. She refused to be tethered by past memories or experiences and would not let nostalgia interrupt her focus on living in her present. Far from a quiet zen master, as she grew older refused to 'get old' and couldn't retire because "there are always more things to do."

"If yoga isn't just exercise, if it isn't religion, and if it isn't, in its current form, even all that old, then what the hell is it?" In short, a fusion and ongoing evolution of an already-evolving yoga of 100 years, influenced by the previous traditional understanding of yoga. Its contemporary links to "the same cultural matrix of organic food, holistic spas, and biodynamic beauty products - things that seem to go together so naturally" are linked so strongly in large part due to Devi pushing her brand of yoga in the 1950s at spas, and gained traction only when the spirituality element was thickly veiled or taken out entirely.

But as Goldberg points out, there is no such thing as unchanging authenticity - yoga is a creative dialogue and so far from its beginnings that it shouldn't need to be thought of in terms of purity or corruption. ( )

This book was riveting from beginning to end and I say that as someone who likes but doesn't necessarily love nonfiction. The writing is so strong and engaging and Indra Devi's story is a fascinating one. Equally fascinating is learning about the history of yoga's immigration to the West (and back). It has made me think a lot about the yoga poses and how they've come to be. ( )