Leslie Kaminoff never expected his humble yoga book to make a splash in 2007. But that’s not what happened. The book, Yoga Anatomy, co-authored with Amy Matthews, sold out its first printing in a month and shot to Amazon’s Bestsellers list, where it’s been ever since. The book is in its eighth printing, is sold around the world, with over 200,000 copies in print.
This week, the second edition of the book has been released. We talked to Kaminoff, also the founder of The Breathing Project, about the book’s makeover:
Buzz: Were you surprised that your book has become such a classic?
LK: Yes, we had no idea how popular it would be.
Buzz: How is the 2011 version different?
LK: We’ve added some things that we didn’t add because of previous space and time constraints. Amy has always been the coauthor, and now she’s acknowledged. There are two brand new chapters, and a lot of new material based on the feedback we got. We tried to be clearer and make it easier to navigate.
Buzz: Do you think it’s even more relevant today?
LK: More and more people drawn to therapeutic work, whether students or teachers, so we’ve noticed quite a lot more demand for higher quality anatomical information than people get in their regular teacher training programs.
Buzz: What do you make of the book’s popularity?
LK: Anatomy cuts through a lot of the secular conversations that tend to go
on in all of the different schools of yoga. The one thing we all have in
common in our body. The function of the body is universal.
Buzz: What is your goal for the book?
LK: To be a resource for students and for anybody who works with the body. My greatest hope is for it to continue what it’s been, a success far beyond what anyone imagined.