Shanna Small Yoga

Spiritual Practice for the Real World

Where Ancient Wisdom Meets Everyday Life

Practical, actionable strategies from the yoga philosophy and yogic tradition.

In the yoga tradition, a householder is anyone actively engaged in the world, not secluded in a monastery or retreating to a cave. Householders navigate everyday life: work, relationships, responsibilities, and the realities of modern living. You might be an artist, activist, teacher, entrepreneur, caregiver, or simply someone figuring it out day by day. The path of a Householder is bringing spiritual practice into the heart of daily life. Householder yoga is where mess and magic meet.

October Theme

The Sacred Threshold

Protecting the Peace of Home, Hearth, and Heart

We live in two homes: the physical spaces where we sleep, gather, love, practice, and begin again, and the inner home we carry with us wherever we go. Both need tending. Both can become cluttered, noisy, and overwhelmed by what we allow through the door. And both can become places of refuge when we learn to protect their peace, establish loving boundaries, and become more intentional about what we allow to live there.

In The Sacred Threshold, we will explore the stories of Ganapathi through the life of the householder, using them to tend both the home around us and the home within us. We will move beyond the familiar idea of Ganesha as simply the remover of obstacles and discover a guardian of the home, an organizer of unruly forces, a keeper of wisdom, and ultimately, a guardian of the sacred threshold. His stories give us a way to think about what we protect, what we allow in, what needs to be put in order, and what becomes possible when there is finally enough peace within us to soften.

This module is for you if you want to:

Make your physical home a greater source of peace, rest, and refuge.
Create that same sense of home within yourself.
Protect your peace while still sharing your life with the people you love.
Establish loving boundaries around your space, time, energy, and attention.
Bring greater order to the responsibilities, relationships, thoughts, and demands that fill your days.
Create room for spiritual practice within the life and home you already have.

Together, we will explore:

Home: Ganapathi as guardian of his mother's peace and what his story teaches us about protecting both our physical and internal spaces.
Hearth: Ganapathi as Lord of the Ganas and the wisdom of bringing order to the many moving parts of our households, our minds, and our lives.
Heart: Ganapathi as the scribe of the Mahabharata and what it means to become capable of receiving, holding, and living wisdom.
The Threshold: Ganapathi at Muladhara, guarding the doorway to the realm of Shakti. We will explore what becomes possible when home, hearth, and heart have been tended and we are able to soften at the threshold rather than force our way through it.
Practice: We will bring the final teaching into the body through Supreme Release Yoga, beginning at the base of the spine and creating space for softness, release, and deeper awareness.

The world will continue to make demands of us. The people we love will still need us. There will still be meals to make, work to do, relationships to tend, and countless things competing for our attention. The answer is not to escape our lives in search of peace.

The Sacred Threshold is an invitation to tend both the home you live in and the home you carry within you, creating a place of refuge, order, and belonging where wisdom can take root and something deeper can begin to open.

September Theme

Coexistence: Bringing Light Into a Dark World

As householders, we still have to work, earn money, care for our bodies and relationships, experience loss and pleasure, make difficult choices, and deal with the consequences of our actions. The question is not how to get away from all of this, but how to move through it without becoming trapped by it.

Over four weeks, we will explore:

How to participate fully in the world without being consumed by it, including how we can work with money, roles, relationships, responsibilities, and social conventions while remembering what is ultimately true.
What karma actually means, including the traditional teachings on sañcita, prārabdha, and āgāmi karma, and why karma is much more nuanced than punishment, reward, or “you get what you deserve.”
How spiritual growth changes our relationship with karma, using the three levels of jñānis described in the Tripura Rahasya to understand why knowledge may deepen even while old patterns and consequences continue to unfold.
What duality really is, and why experiencing opposites such as light and darkness, pleasure and pain, good and bad does not necessarily mean they are ultimately separate.
How to develop greater freedom within ordinary life, so that spiritual practice becomes less about trying to create perfect circumstances and more about meeting the circumstances we actually have with clarity and skill.

Our final teaching brings us to the Divine Mother and the recognition found throughout the Devī Māhātmya: She is present in everything. The sacred is not confined to the parts of life we find beautiful, peaceful, or easy to understand.

Through teachings from the Tripura Rahasya, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Devī Māhātmya, we will explore how to live among the seeming opposites of this world without losing sight of what lies beneath them.

A Practical Guide

About the Community

This community is not for hermits or yogis living in Himalayan caves. It is for people living full lives with work, responsibilities, and a desire to grow without having to renounce it all. We’ll take big ideas from the Yoga Sutras, Bhagavad Gita, and other essential yogic texts, and break them down into real, relatable language. You don’t need to be a scholar. We’ll connect the dots and reveal how these teachings support each other, forming a powerful foundation for modern spiritual life. Most importantly, you’ll learn how to bring these teachings off the page and into your everyday choices. This is yoga for real life. No cave required.

What You'll Find Inside

✨ Clear & Rooted Teachings
Big ideas, made simple. I break down yoga philosophy so it is deeply digestible without watering it down.

🧭 Real-Life Wisdom
Learn how to bring yogic insight into the messy, beautiful reality of daily life.

🕸️ Connected Teachings
See how the Yoga Sutras, Bhagavad Gita, and other sacred texts speak to one another, revealing a path that’s both timeless and relevant.

🌱 Culturally Respectful & Spiritually Grounded
These teachings are shared with care, honoring the traditions they come from, and the lives we’re living now.

Who This Is For

🌿 You’re curious about yoga beyond the poses, but traditional texts feel overwhelming or complicated to decode.

🧘🏽‍♀️ You’ve been practicing for a while and want to go deeper or bring the heart of yoga into how you live, not just how you move.

✨ You’re looking for grounded wisdom to help you navigate real life with more clarity, balance, and purpose.

Whether you're brand new to philosophy or just ready for it to feel more real and relevant, this course is for you.

How It Works

Each month, we dive into a core theme from essential yogic texts like the Bhagavad Gita, Yoga Sutras, Vedas, and Devi Mahatmya, exploring how these teachings apply to real life, right now.

Here’s what’s included every month:

📚 1 Monthly Teaching + Guided Theme
Each month begins with a focused teaching that introduces the core theme. From there, the material is developed week by week through the month during Weekly Wisdom sessions.

🧘🏾‍♀️ 1 Monthly Practice
A simple, accessible practice aligned with the theme. This may include meditation, breathwork, or movement to support clarity, steadiness, and real-life application.

💬 4 Live Weekly “Yoga Wisdom” Sessions
Tuesdays at 11 AM EST on Zoom.
This is where the monthly theme is unpacked and explored in depth. Each session builds on the last and includes space for questions, discussion, and real-time application. You’re welcome to bring questions live or send them in ahead of time.

If you can’t attend live, all sessions are uploaded to the portal so you can follow along at any time.

📖 Organized for a Clear Path
All Weekly Wisdom sessions are housed within the monthly module and arranged in order, so you can follow the progression of the teaching from beginning to end.

📚 Full Library Access
You will also have access to the full library of previous modules. This allows you to revisit past teachings, explore topics at your own pace, and return to what is most relevant to you as your understanding deepens.

Spiritual Practice for the Real World

Where Ancient Wisdom Meets Everyday Life

Upcoming Yoga Philosophy Themes

October Theme

The Sacred Threshold

This module is for you if you want to:

Together, we will explore:

September Theme

Coexistence: Bringing Light Into a Dark World

Price

One Month Access

Monthly Membership

Yearly Membership

A Practical Guide

About the Community

What You'll Find Inside

Who This Is For

How It Works

I just joined at the beginning of the month, and you've given me more support and practical guidance about building a practice-centered/driven life in a week than I've been able to find in the 15 years I've been studying yoga. The space you've created is exactly what I've been missing. 💖

I just wanted to reach out and thank you for sharing your knowledge, passion, and humor with our community and teachers in training. I really appreciate your ability to take a text like the Gita, which can be challenging for most people, and make it accessible and relatable to the world we live in.