The book concludes with coverage of the rapid growth in yoga's worldwide popularity, the sex scandals affecting yoga gurus, commercialisation by companies such as Lululemon, and some of the many schools and hybrids of yoga. The book looks at the question of whether body-yoga is spiritual or secular, along with India's political creation of an annual International Day of Yoga. Illustrations The Story of Yoga is illustrated with 27 colour plates, in a group after page 236. They depict temple sculptures of yogis; early book illustrations, both western and from India; portraits of yoga gurus; and photographs of various practices, historic figures, and celebrities. The final photograph depicts the Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, sitting cross-legged in the street in New Delhi, leading thousands of people in a yoga practice on the first International Yoga Day in 2015. Publication history The book was published in hardback in 2020 by Hurst Publishers of London. Reception The Story of Yoga has been warmly received by reviewers in the western world. The Financial Times writes that the book explains how modern western forms of yoga "have overlooked its complex history". Shearer tells how yoga has both physical and mental effects, including injuries especially in those forms characterised by relentless drive. At its best, it can bring self-knowledge and calm, but the book denies that yoga offers any magical short cut to such a state. Mihir Bose, writing in the Irish Times, adds that in India, yoga has in his lifetime gone from being a fringe activity to a widespread form of exercise. Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Mich Brown called the book an "erudite, scholarly and engrossing study". It notes that Shearer explains that yoga is not a religion, but may slowly align the yogi with the principles underlying all religions, and that the Katha Upanishad calls yoga "this complete stillness in which one enters the unitive state", something that the review says may be a surprise to practitioners of modern Ashtanga yoga and other hot styles. It quotes Patanjali as saying that "The physical postures should be steady and comfortable" when all effort is relaxed, commenting "but nobody said it would be easy". Nicolar Barker, in The Spectator, recalled the recent history of academic research into modern postural yoga, with Norman Sjoman's 1996 The Yoga Tradition of the Mysore Palace and Mark Singleton's "controversial" 2010 Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Postural