Yoga for computer users: Healthy Necks, Shoulders, Wrists, and Hands in the Postmodern Age by Sandy Blaine focuses on using yoga to treat aches and pains that come from sitting in front of the computer before they turn into repetitive strain injuries. The book provides information on the individual poses, various routines for breaks, as well as some general advice on incorporating yoga into a daily routine and on preventing repetitive strain injuries.

Yoga for Computer Users gives instructions for a number of poses that can be done at the desk or in the office. Whether you’ll be able to do all of these at your desk depends on if you have an office or not. Space and co-worker tolerance are often at a premium in shared offices or open plan spaces. Enough stretches can be done in a minimum amount of space to make the book worthwhile even if all the space you have is your chair (I have been known to do stretches in stairwells so where there is a will there is a way–of course, I have also been known to ignore people who look at me funny).

The book provides sequences of yoga poses that you can use depending on whether you’re taking a coffee break or lunch break, relaxing after work or preparing to kick yourself into gear in the morning. While the idea of these sequences is good, they are presented as a list in the back of the book with only the pose name and the figure number, but no page numbers. This means flipping between the table of contents and the list of poses at the back of the book in order to find the instructions for each pose or flipping through the book trying to find the right figure number. Page numbers would have been a small but immensely useful addition to the list.

As for the poses themselves, each chapter is devoted to a different pose. The purpose of the pose, or the muscles that it stretches, are listed right under the chapter title making it easy to flip through and see what each pose is good for. Cautions and required props are also conveniently listed right at the beginning.

The instructions for the poses are given in prose, or paragraph, format. Since I find it incredibly hard to follow instructions and not lose my spot when I’m trying to arrange my body in various positions, I would have preferred an ordered list or bullet points as visual cues to remind me where I was in the text as I try to complete various poses. There are one to two pictures of each pose being performed, usually showing the end result. Some of the poses would have benefited from pictures of intermediate stages or arrows around the models to show the direction of movement especially for people like me who have difficulty visualizing from the text.

This utility and the challenge of exercise books lies in the ease of actually applying them to your life. Because of the way the poses were presented I found that I had to sit down and write my own numbered instructions in order to wrap my head around the mass of text presented for each pose (not everyone will find this as problematic as I did). Once I got past that (by making my own cue cards), I actually found the book quite useful and am intent on doing some of the stretches regularly.

Whether you use this book or something else, I highly recommend that you take breaks and stretch if you’re deskbound for much of the day. Take it from me that recovering from repetitive strain injuries can take years and is best avoided.

You can find this Rodmell Press Yoga Shorts book at amazon.com, amazon.ca, or amazon.co.uk.