About the author
Suzan Colón describes herself as Author, Speaker, Seeker.
Her writing has been featured in the Oprah Magazine and Oprah.com, Good Housekeeping, Jane, Latina, Details, Harper’s Bazaar, and Rolling Stone, the Huffington Post, and other websites. A former Senior Editor of O, the Oprah Magazine, she’s the author of several books on ways to do good for yourself and others.
Suzan trained in Integral Yoga – as a student, teacher and teacher trainer. She’s now a yoga and meditation instructor who admits to having trouble doing traditional meditation! Instead she practises other things that she’s found to be meditative and mindful: yoga, knitting, walking, drawing, etc.
Her most recent book is Yoga Mind: Journey Beyond the Physical.
How she came to write this book
This book came about after a single defining moment in the life of the author, when one of her friends became a paraplegic after breaking his neck in a diving accident.
Working with her dear friend Francesco every week for over a year after his accident, Suzan Colón came to regard Francesco as one of the best yoga students she’d ever had. He went on to become a yoga teacher, one of the best yoga teachers she’d ever had.
Up until that point, Suzan had viewed yoga as primarily a physical practice. She’d trained extensively in Integral Yoga, yet it was only following Francesco’s accident that she came to see yoga as ‘a wide and welcoming spiritual path, one that anybody….can walk – even if they can’t walk at all’ (page 7).
Developing a yoga mind beyond the mat became a priority for Suzan – and this book is a result of that journey.
How the book works as a guide
Yoga Mind is a 30-day programme designed to create subtle yet powerful shifts in awareness and attitude that lead to real, lasting change.
From the outset, the author makes it clear that whilst this book is rooted in yoga philosophy, it remains practical and down-to-earth. After all, she’s ‘an average woman living in the everyday world’.
She’s chosen thirty tools that she has found helpful and organised them into four sections – savasana: grounding and centering; savasana: mindful shifts; savasana: finding your balance and savasana: steadiness and easefulness. A new yoga tool is introduced each day for thirty days with information on how to apply it and an exercise to try.
You don’t need a mat or fancy clothing, a whole load of yoga experience or a big chunk of time. You don’t need to work through the tools in order. You just a notebook,a pen and an open mind and heart, that’s it.
What makes this book different?
Yoga Mind is not what you might expect from a yoga book.
The word ‘yoga’ often brings to mind impressive, unattainable poses. In this book, there are no asanas. None. Remember, Suzan is introducing her friend to yoga, her friend who is paraplegic. Yoga poses are not accessible for him. His accident causes Suzan to re-think her whole belief system about yoga – with Francesco and for him.
In this book, the author seeks to discover how yoga can revolutionise your life from the inside out. Digging deep into the spiritual philosophy behind yoga, she presents yoga as a complete collection of life lessons for wellness and well-being.
A book for our times
Recognising the need to cultivate resilience in these challenging times, Suzan Colón shows us how we can use yoga to achieve this.
Many of us know how beneficial the practices of mindfulness and meditation can be. We know the theory at least. Putting it into practice is so much harder. Carving out the time in our increasingly stressful world feels impossible to fit into our busy days. However, the tasks that the author sets out in Yoga Mind to increase self- awareness and inner balance can be practised any time, anywhere – in traffic, on the train, in a queue at the supermarket, and at home.
Why I love this book
Because this book is based around the real life story of the author’s friend Francesco’s tragic accident, there’s immediately a thread running through the book that grounds it in reality. The author herself is refreshingly honest as she wrestles with bringing yoga to her paraplegic friend. And then there’s a real sense of joy as she realises that the lessons she is learning with her friend go way beyond anything she has ever been taught before.
Although the exercises are focused on subtle shifts in the mind, each is grounded in everyday examples that transform something intangible into something I can understand. I respond well to a 30 day programme: it gives me something new to focus on each day and when I’ve completed the challenge (which is how someone like me views a book like this!), I can revisit the sections I’ve particularly found helpful – or tough!
As the reader, you cannot stop yourself becoming invested in Francesco’s progress. You’re willing him to heal in many different ways. Francesco sounds like an amazing guy. Despite his huge struggles, he seems determinedly optimistic. He has an interest in and love for others that shines out of him. You want to read on because you want to find out what happens to him. Suzan Colón is a skilled writer – her years of experience shine through the pages – and I love her writing style – easy to read, engaging, humorous, at times raw…but in a way, this book is co-authored by her friend Francesco. Without him, this book would never have been written.
Together they walk a path towards a yoga mind and invite us to join them along the way. I’ve read the book and wouldn’t say I’ve arrived yet – it takes more than a month to transform a mind – but I am inspired to keep revisiting the exercises in this book for as long as it takes.
It would be as much of a pleasure as it was the first time around.
