I have been a yoga student for 25 years, a yoga teacher for over 20 years, and was introduced to the Yoga Sutras during my first teacher training in 2007. I thought that they were obscure, confusing, and disconnected from my own experience of life and practice. In 2013, I met Dr. M.A. Jayashree in her living room in Mysore, Karnataka, India. She slowly and patiently, with much love and focus, started to teach me and other students to chant these short aphorisms. It was so difficult! Chanting the Sutras was like an asana practice for the brain. However, after years of working under her excellent tutelage, I grew from hearing to chanting to knowing by heart. With the sounds of the Sutras resonant in me, I was ready to return to their study. 

Sri Swami Satchidananda's commentary, along with other Sutras texts, gave me and some Virginia yoga friends a starting point for adding discussion to our weekly chanting sessions. Sunday morning “Yoga Church” at Ashtanga Yoga Charlottesville led directly to this book. We experienced great benefit from studying and discussing the Sutras and from bringing them to bear personally in our lives. My mind underwent a major transformation as the result of practicing what is suggested in the Yoga Sutras. My hope is that others will find, like I have, that this text is still relevant and powerful for helping us achieve the goal of Yoga -- direct, experiential knowledge of our truest selves.