See our other Year in Review Guides: Theravada/Pali/Insight | Zen and Chan | Tibetan Buddhism
Yoga | Personal Development | Kids Books
Kelly DiNardo
Kelly DiNardo is a journalist who started a consistent yoga practice while procrastinating on a writing assignment. Parked on a yoga mat, she cleared her writer’s block and developed a new passion. DiNardo was first certified to teach yoga through YogaFit in 2003 and went on to receive her 200-hour RYT through Living Yoga Teacher Training. In 2009, she opened Past Tense yoga studio in Washington, DC.
Off the mat, DiNardo is the author of Gilded Lili: Lili St. Cyr and the Striptease Mystique, which earned a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly. As a freelance journalist she has written for several national publications including the New York Times, O: The Oprah Magazine, Health, Martha Stewart Living, and National Geographic Traveler.
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Live Your Yoga$18.95- MixedMedia -
Living the Sutras$16.95- Paperback
GUIDES
We are very happy to share with you a look back at our 2022 releases in yoga including asanas, philosophy, history, and more.
Jump to: Books | Audiobooks | Forthcoming Books
Moon Path Yoga: Kundalini Practices and Rituals for Women to Align with the Lunar Cycles
By Sierra Hollister
Experience the powerful, revitalizing, feminine “lunar” energy at the heart of Kundalini yoga practice, through this beautifully-illustrated guide with over 170 asana, pranayama, mantra, and meditations for practitioners of all levels.
One of the oldest forms of yoga, Kundalini Yoga is a timeless tradition that includes powerful, specific teachings for anyone identifying as female. These “lunar” practices not only support well-being, health, and vitality through every stage of life, but also awaken and enhance Shakti—the divine feminine, creative life force.
Sierra Hollister helps women discover their unique moon cycle and offers specific sequences (kriya) for daily life, for mothering, for sexuality and relationships—as well as practices, breathing exercises, mudra, mantra, and recipes to provide support and balance.
Moon Path Yoga offers a comprehensive lunar rhythm practice that allows women of any age to awaken their innate divine feminine energy.
llustrated with over 125 color photos, this guide includes:
- Practice for Radiance, Vitality, and Grace
- Gestating: A Prenatal Sequence
- Meditation for a Calm Heart
- Meditation for Couples
- Sequence to Relieve PMS—or to Slow Down and Experience Gratitude
Yoga by the Numbers: The Sacred and Symbolic in Yoga Philosophy and Practice
By Richard Rosen
Numbers play a meaningful role in the philosophy of many spiritual traditions—and yoga is no exception. For example, the number one is the quintessential yoga number, representing unity and wholeness; number two sometimes stands for cooperative effort and other times for conflict; and there are twelve different names for the mantra OM, each one revealing a different aspect of this root sound.
With his distinctive blend of knowledge and humor, Richard Rosen unpacks the fascinating significance that numbers hold in the philosophy of yoga. He weaves stories and practices throughout, offering readers a hands-on way to explore the importance of numbers in their own practice.
He covers the numerical aspects of Indian philosophy, the subtle body, Shiva and Shakti, hatha yoga, preliminary and main practices, mantra, a lots more.
Yoga for Times of Change: Practices and Meditations for Moving Through Stress, Anxiety, Grief, and Life’s Transitions
By Nina Zolotow
Stay calm, steady, and composed through the ups and downs of life with yoga poses, relaxation techniques, meditations, and lessons on how to manage stress, grief, anxiety, and life’s transitions.
Yoga was originally designed to make you calmer, steadier, and more content, not just stronger and healthier. This guide offers many ways you can use yoga as a healthy coping mechanism when you’re confronted with the physical, emotional, and mental changes that life brings us. It includes both ancient and modern techniques, including yoga poses, breathing practices, relaxation, mantras, and meditation, that allow you to return yourself to balance when you’re experiencing challenges, and to fortify yourself for the future.
Nina Zolotow covers myriad topics related to change, including stress, anxiety, depression, anger, grief, being present, making peace with change, how to practice yoga when you’re experiencing physical changes, and how to practice meditation, breath practices, and yoga on your own, among others. Become more comfortable with life’s ups and downs by learning to live your everyday life the yogic way.
The Encyclopedia of Yoga and Tantra: Over 2500 Entries on the History, Philosophy, and Practice
By Georg Feuerstein
The ever-increasing popularity of Yoga and related practices makes a desktop reference like this indispensible. With over twenty-five hundred entries and extensive illustrations, this encyclopedia of key terms from the Yoga and Tantra traditions combines comprehensiveness with accessibility. Acclaimed Yoga scholar Georg Feuerstein has arranged and written entries in a manner that will inform rather than overwhelm the everyday reader, while at the same time it offers valuable references for professional researchers and historians of religion. This new edition includes information about contemporary Yoga teachers and also provides fuller descriptions and illustrations of Yoga poses and additional cross references.
Entries include:
- Descriptions of the many yogic āsanas
- The major and minor texts and scriptures
- Detailed discussions of the different forms of Yoga, including Bhakti, Hatha, and Jnāna
- The numerous gods and goddesses of Tantric tradition
- All the most essential names in Yoga and Tantra, from ancient adepts such as Patanjali and Shankara to modern masters like B.K.S. Iyengar and Krishnamacharya
- And much more . . .
The Parent’s Complete Guide to Ayurveda: Principles, Practices, and Recipes for Happy, Healthy Kids
By Jayarajan Kodikannath andAlyson Young Gregory
The traditional holistic health system of Ayurveda offers a wealth of effective lifestyle advice and remedies for the whole family. The Parent’s Complete Guide to Ayurveda is an accessible primer to pediatric Ayurveda, with simple, commonsense dietary, herbal, and self-care practices to both address various ailments and promote vibrant health and well-being in children ages 3–16.
Dr. Jayarajan Kodikannath, an Ayurvedic specialist, and Alyson Young Gregory, an Ayurvedic health counselor and educator, provide a wellness roadmap that parents can tailor to their children’s individual mind-body type, known as prakriti. This book first gives parents the tools to determine their child’s prakriti and then offers customized everyday diet and lifestyle guidelines based on traditional Ayurvedic principles for a healthy body and mind, including yoga, meditation, breathing practices, and daily wellness routines.
The advice offered in this book includes:
- How to prevent and manage common ailments and disorders with diet and home remedies
- How to encourage healthy habits around sleep, diet, exercise, and screen time
- Easy-to-make tonics, teas, and soaks to alleviate a number of conditions, including tummy aches, stress, colds, insomnia, sluggishness, and dehydration
- Ayurvedic perspectives on digestive, metabolic, respiratory, and emotional disorders prevalent in children today
Living the Sutras: A Guide to Yoga Wisdom beyond the Mat
By Kelly DiNardo and Amy Pearce-Hayden
In its highest form, yoga is a practice for your body and your mind. Living the Sutras brings the wisdom of classical yoga philosophy into your life in an accessible and relevant way. The Yoga Sutras, a foundational text of yoga philosophy and practice, written by the guru Patanjali over two thousand years ago, are made up of 196 aphorisms that offer potent teachings on how to deal with loss and pain, and guidance on how to lead a healthy and fulfilling life. Kelly DiNardo and Amy Pearce-Hayden offer an entrée to this yoga training for the mind and spirit by introducing a sutra or group of sutras on a related theme, providing a brief commentary, and writing prompts to allow you to reflect on and apply the meaning of the sutras to your life. The book is at once an introduction to the classical philosophy, a quick guide for students and teachers, and an active self-study that helps you to engage with yoga wisdom in a deeply personal way.
Forthcoming in 2023
And we have even more works on yoga coming out in 2023. So make sure you sign up for our emails so you do not miss them! Here is a sneak peek at our first 2023 release which you can pre-order now and take advantage of the discount.
An essential manual for yoga teachers and students to create a trauma-sensitive practice that benefits and supports all—and alienates no one.
People are turning to yoga for its stress-reducing practice and transformative philosophy. But for those who have a trauma history, the practice can be triggering. The Essential Guide to Trauma Sensitive Yoga offers an inclusive approach to yoga for teachers and students of all ages and abilities, especially those who have experienced trauma. Some of the themes covered include:
- How do the impacts of trauma show up in yoga spaces
- Suggested language for shifting power to the practitioner
- How to create an environment conducive to healing
- How to practice or teach poses in a way that includes all
- And much more
This book is beautifully illustrated with 260 photos of poses and sequences, modeled by trauma survivors who share stories of how yoga helps them heal. Land works with people of all ages, from young children to seniors, who are coping with a range of traumas including physical, emotional and sexual abuse, homelessness, genocide, and incarceration. She is a passionate advocate for making the benefits of yoga and mindfulness available to all.
Free Download | Live Your Yoga
6 Free Exercises to Cultivate Abundance & Joy
Cultivate greater abundance and joy with 6 free practices and reflections from Live Your Yoga by Kelly DiNardo and Amy Pearce-Hayden. This practice deck allows you to apply the wisdom of the Yoga Sutras on and off the mat to create a holistic practice that will support you in mind, body, and spirit.
This offering includes two themes from the deck—Abundance and Joy—with three corresponding practice prompts for each theme:
- The Explore prompts inspire you to break the cycle of limiting beliefs and let go of resistance;
- The Connect prompts offer tangible practices such as Breath Retention and Half Moon Pose to ground you in your life and find fullness in the present moment;
- The Replenish prompts provide mindfulness and meditation exercises to help you establish a renewed connection to abundance and joy.
You can pick a single card or put together a small practice. However you choose to use these cards, your creativity is a welcomed and encouraged part of the process.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD YOUR 6 FREE PRACTICE CARDS FROM LIVE YOUR YOGA.
The Approach | An Excerpt from Living the Sutras
Cultivating the Right Attitude
bhava-pratyayo videha-prakrti-layanam (1:19)
Samadhi is a natural state for someone
who is enlightened.
shraddha-virya-smrti-samadhi-prajna-purvakah
itaresham (1:20)
For the rest of us, we must use faith, passion,
mindfulness, quiet, and good judgment to
support our journey toward samadhi.
Our life is a reflection of our attitude, the energy of our mind. When we look at the world angrily, fearfully, cynically, it’s easy to get sucked into arguments, the blame game, jealousy, and gossip. But when we approach the world optimistically and confidently, we are open to happiness, have greater resilience, make better decisions, and increase our chances of success.
But what is an attitude for success? The right attitude, the one needed for a successful practice, is made up of five key elements: faith, energy, mindfulness, focus, and wisdom.
1. Faith (shraddha)
In yoga, faith isn’t a spiritual-based faith or blind faith in something. It’s faith that we are going in the right direction, faith in our path, faith that our practice will lead to a life of ease. We may not know where we will end up, but we have certainty, conviction, and courage in our journey.
Reflection
Having faith is an act of courage. Write down your personal definition of courage. How has that been shaped? Family, movies, experiences? How could your definition of courage support you in bringing the state of flow into your everyday life?
2. Energy (virya)
Would you expect your phone to stay charged if you didn’t plug it in? We need the same energy, fuel, and attention. In Sanskrit, virya refers to the power of a great warrior to overcome his enemies. It is the mental and physical energy, endurance, diligence, and enthusiasm we need in our practice. It is the idea that what we put in is what we get out. It is the commitment to show up and do the work even when journaling, meditating, or unrolling our mat is less appealing than snuggling on the couch and catching up on our favorite show.
Reflection
What in your life is more deserving of your energy now?
3. Mindfulness (smriti)
Classically, smriti is translated as memory, but it’s not reminiscences. Rather, it’s a call to reflect on a past positive experience to bolster us in the present moment and keep us mindful and aware on our path.
Reflection
List three challenges you overcame. What did you change within yourself to succeed?
4. Focus (samadhi)
By focusing on our physical, mental, and spiritual practice, we will shake off distractions and be able to develop deeper and deeper levels of concentration. Through focus, the state of samadhi will transcend our everyday, singular pursuits.
Reflection
Make a list of your distractions. Then choose a time or a task where you can be silent and distraction-free. Maybe it’s eating lunch, paying bills, or folding laundry without music or the television on in the background. Maybe it’s silencing your social media during breakfast or putting your phone out of reach while you’re in bed. What do you notice? How did your body or mind react?
5. Wisdom (prajna)
Each of us has a voice within us, but we don’t always hear it. Sometimes we’re too loud. Sometimes we’re not speaking the same language as our inner voice. Prajna isn’t the knowledge that comes from book learning. Rather, it’s the type of wisdom that helps us quiet the distractions and learn to listen, hear, and understand our inner voice, our intuition.
Reflection
If your eight-year-old self traveled forward in time, what would he want you to know about yourself right now? What advice would he give you?
If your ninety-year-old self traveled back in time, what would she want you to know about yourself right now? What advice would she give you?
tivra-samveganam asannah (1:21)
The state of samadhi comes quickly to the
sincere and diligent.
mrdu-madhyadhimatratvat tato’ pi visheshah (1:22)
The time necessary to reach the state of samadhi is based on the strength of our commitment to our practice—mild, medium, or intense.
Often we just see the highlight reel. The New York Times front-page review and inclusion in Oprah’s Book Club. The at-the-buzzer, game-winning three-point shot. The witty acceptance speech. We don’t see the butt-in-chair discipline, the hours of practice at the foul line, the years of failed auditions. We see the success but not the attention and effort.
Here, Patanjali tells us that if our goal is sincerely in our heart and we have truly committed, we will have success. How long that takes depends on the effort we put in—mild, medium, or intense.
In The Secret of the Yoga Sutra, Pandit Rajmani Tigunait lists three categories of effort: the first is someone who doesn’t put in much effort. He’s waiting for miracles and simple, easy solutions. The second person starts his practice but stops when obstacles pop up in his path. The third person cannot be stopped.
Are you willing to do the work? Are you looking for easy solutions? Do you balk under pressure? Or are you undaunted by obstacles and unafraid to invest the time and resources to achieve your goals?
Reflection
List your priorities. Which of these do you have to do, choose to do, or want to do? For which of these would you like to adjust the intensity of your effort? It can go in both directions and could be from mild to intense or intense to medium.
Kelly DiNardo was first certified to teach yoga through YogaFit in 2003 and went on to receive her 200-hour RYT through Living Yoga Teacher Training. In 2009, she opened Past Tense yoga studio in Washington, DC.
Amy Pearce-Hayden has devoted 20 years of study, practice, and teaching to classical yoga, ayurveda, tantra, and meditation.
Books Related to Living the Sutras
Living the Sutras | Free Yoga Class + Meditation Audio
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$16.95 - Paperback