Everyday Yoga Book Review

Author: Meaghan

A couple months ago, we were contacted by VeloPress, the leading endurance sports book publisher and #2 publisher in running to review nutrition/diet, stretching/yoga, running and similar books. Since I hate yoga, but would like to stop hating yoga, I opted for the recently released “Everyday Yoga” book.

Here’s what they say about it: “Sage Rountree, America’s leading expert on yoga for athletes, shares her fresh, accessible approach to practicing yoga every day in her new book Everyday Yoga, a colorful, lay-flat guide to yoga poses and routines. Everyday Yoga: At-Home Routines to Enhance Fitness, Build Strength, and Restore Your Body will be available in bookstores and online in June.”

The book is broken up into four parts:

Part 1: introduces a menu approach to building everyday yoga. Literally, a menu… Roundtree relates yoga to macro and micronutrients, choosing yoga positions based on “hunger, taste and thirst.” You’re not comfortable doing a certain pose? Don’t do it. You have a hankering for backward bending? Choose a routine that incorporates those poses. She explains how thinking about yoga like a balanced diet is key. And it’s 100% the reason I kept reading…

Part 2: breaks down poses into warm-up poses, standing poses, mat workouts, and cool-down routines. Since my main focus is running, this again, is very easy to relate to and incorporate into my daily routine. The poses are displayed through full page visuals and accompanying text to help explain how to make each pose easier or more difficult (“sweeter or spicier”).

Part 3: explains how to combine the poses and routines from Part 2 into short and long practices. They’re structured based on what you want to accomplish and how much time you have. The short practices take about 10 – 20 minutes and the long practices are closer to an hour or more. Each practice targets a different area, so depending on what you’d like to focus on, you can choose a routine.

Part 4: provides sample weekly and monthly plans to help you determine a balanced schedule.

I personally love this book… way more than I thought I would. Am I now doing yoga every day? Not a chance. But I add it into my workouts on days that I can. It’s easy to understand and you don’t have to memorize anything. I like to take the book up to the roof deck, open it up to a page that looks interesting and figure out the poses on the fly. It’s perfect for someone who would like try yoga, but doesn’t have time to dedicate hours at a studio.