Richard Hittleman's Yoga 28 Day Exercise Plan Book Review
Richard Hittleman's Yoga: 28 Day Exercise Plan is a 224-page paperback first published in September 1969 by Workman Publishing Company. It is a dated practice manual: twenty-eight numbered days, each introducing a few yoga postures with step-by-step photographs, a practice plan giving repetitions, and a short essay called Thoughts for the Day. Kevin Trudeau's fan club reading list carries it at number twenty. Read it if you want a structured, self-paced reading and practice schedule with nothing to decide. Skip it if you want current instruction, current photography, or a book that argues for its own claims.
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Still in print since 1969, and the format has never been improved on: one day, one page, one short list.
What This Review Does, and What It Will Not Do
This is a description of a book's contents, not health, medical, fitness or treatment guidance of any kind. Richard Hittleman's foreword makes claims about what a reader will experience in twenty-eight days, and several daily essays attach physiological explanations to particular postures. Those are Hittleman's claims, written in 1969. This review does not repeat them, does not evaluate them, and takes no position on any of them. What follows is an account of how the 28 day exercise plan is built and what is printed in it. Anything you decide to do with a physical practice is a matter for you and a qualified professional.
What Richard Hittleman's Yoga 28 Day Exercise Plan Actually Contains
The premise sits in the foreword. Hittleman writes that he created an accelerated method letting a student learn thirty-eight yoga exercises in four weeks, where the same material once took years of learning. Everything in the layout serves that claim.
What a Single Day Looks Like
Every day follows the same five-part shape.
- New exercises. One to three poses shown in numbered step-by-step photos.
- Additional movements. Variations layered onto poses learned earlier.
- Reviewed exercises. Everything from previous days, printed in grey so new material and repetition are distinguishable at a glance.
- The practice plan. The exact sequence and repetition count for that session.
- Thoughts for the Day. A titled essay on yoga philosophy, nutrition or daily habits, on the facing page.
The grey printing is the best design decision in the book and the one thing later manuals rarely copy. The accumulated routine never has to be held in your head. It is on the page, in order, visually demoted.
The 28 Day Exercise Plan, Week by Week
Days 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24 and 28 are review days: no new asanas, only the ones already learned. That gives the plan a rhythm of three days forward, one day consolidating, repeated seven times across the four weeks.
The postures arrive in a fixed order: Chest Expansion, Back Stretch, Cobra, Triangle, Simple Twist, Leg Over and Circular Motion, then Half-Lotus, the Complete Breath, Lion, Scalp Exercise, Backward Bend and the Modified Head Stand, then Abdominal Lifts, Side Bend, Locust and Head Twist, then Shoulder Stand, Plough, Bow and Rishi's Posture. Sanskrit terms never appear in the body of the book. They sit in an appendix, Sanskrit Names for Yoga Exercises.
The foreword's practical instructions are equally plain. Flat surface, mat or towel, clothing that moves, twenty to thirty minutes, ninety minutes after eating, twenty-eight consecutive days where possible. No props beyond the mat.
How the Book Is Organized
The first edition's contents list runs to fifty-nine numbered entries, because each day carries both a practice section and its own essay. Those titles give the flavour of the non-posture half: What is Yoga?, Life and Breath, Work is Not Exercise, How to Judge Your Progress, Yoga Nutrition in several installments, and Awakening.
The back matter holds two things: a set of Practice Routines described as a lifetime program, and the Sanskrit appendix. The photographs were taken by Al Weber, with Cheryl Fischer as the single model. One photographer, one model, one body, for the whole book.
Richard Hittleman's Yoga 28 Day Exercise Plan at a Glance
| Detail | What the record shows |
|---|---|
| Full title | Richard Hittleman's Yoga: 28 Day Exercise Plan |
| Author | Richard L. Hittleman, 1927 to 1991 |
| First published | September 1969 |
| Publisher | Workman Publishing Company, New York |
| Length | 224 pages, softcover first edition |
| ISBN | 9780911104219 |
| Structure | 28 numbered days, each with a practice section and a Thoughts for the Day essay |
| Review days | Days 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24 and 28 |
| Exercises taught | 38, per the foreword |
| Session length | 20 to 30 minutes, per the foreword |
| Equipment named | A flat surface and a mat or towel. No blocks, straps or other props. |
| Photographs | Al Weber, with Cheryl Fischer as the sole model |
| Back matter | Practice Routines as a lifetime program, plus Sanskrit Names for Yoga Exercises |
| Later editions | Bantam paperback from February 1973 |
| Position on the fan club list | Number 20 of 97 |
| Our rating | 3.5 out of 5 |
Who Richard Hittleman Was
Wikipedia's entry on Richard Hittleman records that he was born in New York on 7 March 1927 and died in Santa Cruz, California on 14 October 1991. He took an M.A. in Oriental mysticism at Columbia University, was a pupil of the Indian teacher Ramana Maharshi in the late 1940s, and was a friend of Alan Watts. He founded his first school in Florida in 1957, which makes his teaching career over thirty years long.
The television work made his name. Yoga for Health first broadcast in 1961, one of the earliest yoga series on American television, and in New York, according to the account Wikipedia quotes, it screened for more than four and a half years without a break.
His stated method was to start students on the most elementary Hatha yoga postures and move them gradually toward more advanced asanas and the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta. Read the 28 day exercise plan with that in mind and it stops looking like a product and starts looking like a curriculum. The postures are the visible layer. The daily essays are the syllabus.
Common Criticisms of Richard Hittleman's Yoga
The lineage the book implies is not the lineage scholarship finds
Mark Singleton's Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice, Oxford University Press, 2010, names this exact strand of teaching. On page 20 Singleton writes that "printed primers and television series throughout the 1960s and 1970s, such as Richard Hittleman's Yoga for Health (first broadcast in 1961), encouraged many to take up posture-based yoga in the comfort of their own homes." His larger argument is that yoga used as exercise is not the outcome of a direct and unbroken lineage of hatha yoga, though he adds it would go too far to say modern postural yoga has no relationship to asana practice in the Indian tradition. Hittleman presents his material as ancient. The scholarship calls it a twentieth-century construction.
Andrea R. Jain makes the commercial half of that case in Selling Yoga: From Counterculture to Pop Culture, Oxford University Press, 2015. Stefanie Syman covers Hittleman directly in The Subtle Body: The Story of Yoga in America, Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2010, pages 234 to 249.
The foreword promises more than the book supports
Hittleman opens by telling the reader what twenty-eight days will produce, and the current paperback's marketing copy pushes further still. Nothing in the 224 pages is offered as evidence for any of it. No study, no data, no mechanism beyond assertion. The book instructs. It does not argue.
The 1969 presentation is genuinely dated
One model, one photographer, one body, 1969. There is no adaptation for different bodies and no discussion of when a posture should not be attempted, a gap any current manual would fill. The Modified Head Stand arrives inside the first week, early by contemporary standards. Joe Hyams covered the television version for The Washington Post on 2 August 1961 under the headline "Hittleman's Taking Yoga to the Ladies," which fairly summarises who the material was pitched at.
The criticisms at a glance
| What the book implies | The objection | Who made it, or where it is documented |
|---|---|---|
| The practice is an ancient Indian inheritance | Yoga as exercise is not the outcome of a direct and unbroken lineage of hatha yoga | Mark Singleton, Yoga Body, Oxford University Press, 2010 |
| Home practice via book and television is neutral transmission | The 1960s primers and TV series were the mechanism that built Western postural yoga | Mark Singleton, Yoga Body, p. 20 |
| The tradition arrives intact | Modern postural yoga is a commercial product of counterculture to pop culture | Andrea R. Jain, Selling Yoga, Oxford University Press, 2015 |
| Twenty-eight days will produce stated outcomes | No evidence, no study and no mechanism is offered anywhere in the book | This review |
| The instruction suits any reader | One model, one body type, no adaptation and no discussion of when to stop | This review |
| The material is for everybody | It was pitched at a specific 1961 daytime television audience | Joe Hyams, The Washington Post, 2 August 1961 |
Is the 28 Day Exercise Plan Worth Reading?
As instructional design, yes, and that is the honest reason it has stayed in print. Hittleman specialised in introducing yoga to people entirely new to the subject, and the 28 day exercise plan is the cleanest expression of that skill. For anyone starting a daily yoga practice from nothing, the daily routines remove every decision. Open to the day you are on, do what is printed, read the facing page. The instructions are easy to follow. No app, no schedule to build, no classes to sign up for.
What it is not is current. Newer books have better photographs and far better guidance on adapting. If you want a 1969 curriculum with a reading attached to every session, this is that, and almost nothing else is.
Why Kevin Trudeau's List Carries a Yoga Book
It sits at number twenty of the ninety-seven books on the fan club list, directly after Napoleon Hill's Law of Success and directly before Rhonda Byrne. Richard Hittleman's Guide to Yoga Meditation turns up again much further down at number fifty-two. That placement is the interesting fact. A physical practice manual sits wedged between two of the most famous mental-training books on the list, which tells you the list is not sorted by subject.
The reason it fits is structural rather than physical, and it is easiest to see through the Teachability Index, which Trudeau describes as willingness to learn multiplied by willingness to change. Most books on that list only test the first factor. You read them, you agree, you close them. Hittleman's book cannot be consumed that way. It is twenty-eight consecutive days of showing up, and a reader either does day 11 or does not. There is no way to fake having done it.
That makes it the only item on the list that measures the second factor directly, which is probably why it is there. Set it against the Training Balance Scale, Trudeau's claim that most of what produces a result is not the visible action, and the pairing sharpens: twenty-eight days of low-stakes evidence about your own follow-through, before anything that matters.
The second connection is format. Trudeau's material on the THETA state is a mental practice done daily, and his account of the three parts of the mind describes what he says it works on. Hittleman's book is also a daily practice with readings attached, from an entirely different tradition. They make no shared claim about outcomes, and this review makes none either. What they share is a fixed session, done every day, with instruction on the facing page.
Where It Sits Next to the Global Information Network
Trudeau founded the Global Information Network in 2009 as a private membership club built around his claim that the most useful knowledge about wealth and success was kept out of general circulation. His own material, including Your Wish Is Your Command, is sequenced across many sessions rather than delivered in one hit.
Read alongside that, this is a training aid rather than a source of ideas. It contributes no theory. It contributes twenty-eight days of structure, the scarcest thing on a reading list of ninety-seven titles. Compare Maxwell Maltz's Psycho-Cybernetics, which also asks for a fixed run of consecutive daily sessions, or Bob Roth's Strength in Stillness, the modern and far shorter version. Hittleman's is the most demanding of the three and the least fashionable.
Who Should Read It, and Who Should Skip It
Read it if you want a self-contained schedule with no decisions in it, you are working the reading list in order, or you are interested in how yoga was taught to American beginners in 1969. Read it for the Thoughts for the Day essays, the part Hittleman clearly cared about most.
Skip it if you want current instruction, current photography, or guidance adapted to different bodies. Skip it if you want the book to justify its claims, because it does not attempt to, or if you would rather learn from a qualified teacher in person.
Our rating: 3.5 out of 5. Full marks for structure, for the grey-print review system, and for staying useful since 1969 without a redesign. Real deductions for the unsupported foreword, the single-model photography, and the absence of anything a modern manual would say about adapting or stopping.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Richard Hittleman's Yoga 28 Day Exercise Plan worth reading?
As instructional design, yes. It removes every decision from a daily practice: open to the day you are on and do what is printed. It is not current instruction, and offers no evidence for its foreword's claims, so treat it as a 1969 curriculum rather than a modern manual.
How is the 28 day exercise plan structured?
Twenty-eight numbered days. Each introduces new postures with step-by-step photographs, adds variations to earlier ones, reprints everything already learned in grey, gives a practice plan with repetitions, and pairs it with a titled essay called Thoughts for the Day. Days 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24 and 28 are review days.
How long is each session in Richard Hittleman's Yoga?
The foreword allows twenty to thirty minutes per session. It also asks the reader to work on a flat surface with a mat or towel, to wear clothing that moves, to wait ninety minutes after eating, and to do the twenty-eight days consecutively where possible.
What postures does the book teach?
The foreword says thirty-eight exercises across four weeks. Named postures include Chest Expansion, Back Stretch, Cobra, Triangle, Simple Twist, Leg Over, Half-Lotus, Lion, Backward Bend, Modified Head Stand, Abdominal Lifts, Side Bend, Locust, Shoulder Stand, Plough, Bow and Rishi's Posture.
Is Richard Hittleman's Yoga good for beginners?
It was written for complete beginners, and Hittleman was known for introducing yoga in an easy-to-follow way to people new to the subject. That said, the presentation is from 1969, uses a single model, and contains none of the adaptation guidance a current beginner manual would include.
Who was Richard Hittleman?
An American yoga teacher and author, born in New York in 1927 and died in Santa Cruz in 1991. He took an M.A. in Oriental mysticism at Columbia, studied with Ramana Maharshi in the late 1940s, opened his first school in Florida in 1957, and presented Yoga for Health on American television from 1961.
Which edition of the 28 day exercise plan should I get?
The Workman Publishing Company first edition of September 1969 runs 224 pages and is the one this review covers. A Bantam paperback followed in February 1973 with different pagination. The text is the same book; the page numbers and cover are not.
Why is a yoga book on Kevin Trudeau's reading list?
It sits at number twenty of ninety-seven, between Napoleon Hill and Rhonda Byrne, and Hittleman's Guide to Yoga Meditation appears again at number fifty-two. The likeliest reason is format, not subject. It is the one item that requires twenty-eight consecutive days of doing something, so it tests follow-through in a way reading cannot.
Richard Hittleman's Yoga 28 Day Exercise Plan Book Review: The Short Version
Two hundred and twenty-four pages, twenty-eight days, thirty-eight exercises, seven review days, one model, one photographer, an essay on every facing page. The design has not needed changing since 1969. The foreword's claims are asserted and never supported, the instruction is of its period, and scholarship disputes the ancient lineage the book implies. Read it as a schedule. Do not read it as evidence, and do not read it as medical guidance, because it is neither and this review makes no such claim on its behalf.