Bending Over Backwards

In this intrepid and humorous travelogue, Carlo Pizzati embarks on a quest to find a cure for a backache that has tortured him for twenty years. Armed with his notebook and an indomitable spirit of adventure, Carlo travels from a posturologist's office in northern Italy to the rarefied mountain air of Boulder to seek a variety of New Age alternative cures; from a trance-dance venue hidden near the woods of Cinque Terre to an exorcist-shaman's den near Buenos Aires, who photographs demons and auras. Eventually, Carlo fetches up in India, to live and learn from the yogis at the Ashtanga yoga centre in Mysore. In India, as Carlo engages in strenuous yogic discipline, meditates atop hills, he has an explosive insight into his past births which leads to an encounter that will change his life forever. Along the way, our sceptical, suffering but always curious narrator discovers the ways in which spirituality and technology intersect. Wry, witty and wise by turns, this is a book about self-discovery, facing fears and failures, and undertaking an arduous journey with an open mind and heart.