Henry David Thoreau is a human race of many titles . In addition to being widely - revered as one of America ’s great author , he also sharpen his credential as an accomplished emancipationist , naturalist , and philosopher over the course of his abbreviated life sentence . But " yogi " is n’t a distinction many of us link up with the legendary author .
Thoreau ’s interest in yoga likely began in the program library of his supporter and workfellow Ralph Waldo Emerson . In the latter ’s blanket book solicitation , Thoreau ’s centre was caught by a Hindu text known asManusmirti . " I can not register a unmarried word of honor of the Hindoos [ sic ] , " he wrote , " without being elevated . "
He was peculiarly taken by what he key as " solitude and the pondering liveliness in general " and start commit himself to the practice of yoga while residing near Walden Pond in Massachusetts during his late twenty dollar bill . The area inhale Thoreau to write a collecting of wild-eyed and realistic essay plainly entitledWaldenin 1854 ( an annotated variation of which can be readhere ) .
The compendium record some of his successes in do yoga , although not without turn the head of a few of his neighbors . According to yoga historiographer Stefanie Syman , several of the local resident dismissed him as a “ misanthropical hermit ” after observing his antics , which often take posture cross - legged at the doorway of his cabin from sunrise to noon . To Thoreau , this was anything but the waste of time many onlookers rent it to be . In characteristic fluency , he enounce of the spiritual experience : “ This was not time subtracted from my life , but so much over and above my usual allowance account . I realized what the Orientals meant by contemplation and the abandonment of works . ”
