How Yoga Works: Healing Yourself and Others with the Yoga Sutra

Geshe Michael Roach was born in Los Angeles in 1952, and grew up in

Phoenix, Arizona. In 1975 he graduated with honors from the

Religion Department of Princeton University, and is also a recipient

of the McConnell Scholarship Prize from the University’s School of

Public & International Affairs. He has as well received the

Presidential Scholar Medallion from the President of the United

States at the White House.

Michael is the first westerner in the 600-year history of Tibet’s Sera

Mey Monastery, one of the largest in the world, to be awarded the

degree of Geshe (Master of Buddhism), after completing the required

25-year course and public examinations. In 1987, he founded the

Asian Classics Input Project, which trains and pays refugees to

digitalize the classic books of the East, and provides thousands of

ancient manuscripts online without charge.

The ACIP project led to the discovery and preservation of several

dozen ancient texts of yoga, and in 2003 Michael founded the Yoga

Studies Institute to translate, distribute, and teach these authentic,

ancient systems of yoga exercise. His novel about a young woman

who discovers and shares the deeper teachings of yoga, How Yoga

Works, is a bestselling classic found in many languages, in yoga

studios around the world.