You are not broken. You are under-trained for emotional intensity.
Mandi Gardner is a relational nervous system trainer, Regulation-Based Ashtanga™ teacher, and the founder of Holistic Evolution Shala — a discipline for women who are done losing themselves in the conversations that matter most.
WHO MANDI IS
This is not a drop-in yoga studio. And Mandi is not a wellness influencer.
She is a nervous system trainer — one who has spent over two decades on the mat, twenty years working closely with women in an intimate service profession, and years integrating the science of trauma, DBT-based interpersonal effectiveness, and the traditional discipline of Ashtanga yoga into a single, teachable method.
Her work begins with one truth: insight does not override activation. Understanding your patterns is not the same as being able to stay steady inside them. Mandi trains the gap between knowing and doing — in real time, under relational pressure, in the moments that count.
ABOUT THE METHOD
Mandi began her yoga practice over twenty years ago. In February 2018, she found Ashtanga — and everything changed.
Where other yoga styles offered her calm, Ashtanga offered her capacity. The self-led Mysore method — practiced in silence, from memory, in daily repetition — trains something no class setting can replicate: the ability to stay with yourself when no one is guiding you. That is exactly what breaks down in hard conversations.
From that recognition, Regulation-Based Ashtanga™ was born. It is not yoga for flexibility. It is not somatic exploration without structure. It is daily nervous system discipline applied to the moments that shape your relational life — structured around the C.A.L.M. framework and integrated with DBT-based interpersonal effectiveness skills.
Body. Behavior. Identity. In that order. Every day.
YOGA EDUCATION & LINEAGE
Ashtanga is a living tradition. It is not learned from a book or a weekend intensive. It is passed from teacher to student — directly, devotedly, over years. Mandi honors that lineage with care.
Mandi completed her RYS-500 teacher training through Be Joy Yoga School (2014), with a focus on Hatha, Vinyasa, Restorative yoga, and Anatomy — building the anatomical and pedagogical foundation that underpins all of her teaching.
She completed her RYS-200 training through YogaLife at The Front Climbing Club (2022), with dedicated study in Ashtanga Mysore style, Vinyasa, Yin, Restorative yoga, and Ayurvedic Medicine.
Her Ashtanga lineage begins with Sarah Jane of The Front Climbing Club in Salt Lake City, Utah — the teacher who first introduced Mandi to Mysore style practice. Sarah Jane guided Mandi's practice for over fifteen years, offering the kind of patient, long-form mentorship that this tradition demands and deserves.
When Mandi was ready to learn how to teach Ashtanga, she sought a teacher equal to that responsibility. Since the summer of 2025, she has been studying under Angela Jamison — a teacher with over thirty years of experience who has traveled to India many times to study the practice in its homeland. Angela's depth, precision, and devotion to the traditional method are woven into everything Mandi brings to her students.
This is not a yoga certification Mandi completed over a weekend. This is a lineage she has been living inside for years.
THE BOOK: RISING
RISING: A Woman's Journey of Healing Through Rituals is Mandi's debut book — a deeply personal account of rebuilding identity, reclaiming self-trust, and discovering that the path back to yourself is not found through willpower or insight alone. It is built through ritual. Through repetition. Through the quiet act of showing up to your practice even when — especially when — everything feels uncertain.
RISING is for the woman who has done the therapy, read the books, and still finds herself collapsing in the moments that matter. It is both story and invitation: to stop waiting to feel better, and to start training steadiness from the inside out.
Read the story. Then train the method. (Click the book cover for link to purchase.)
HOLISTIC EVOLUTION SHALA — IN-PERSON PRACTICE
A regulation temple is coming to Herriman, Utah.
Holistic Evolution Shala will soon open its doors as an in-person Mysore-style Ashtanga shala — a quiet, devoted space for serious practitioners who are ready to train the way the tradition intended: self-led, in silence, in daily repetition.
This is not a drop-in studio (though you can do that). It is not a fitness class. It is a place where practice becomes identity — and where the steadiness you build on the mat becomes the steadiness you carry into every relationship in your life.
More details to be announced. If you'd like to be the first to know, join the list below.
WHY THIS WORK
For twenty years, Mandi sat across from women — first as a hairstylist, then as a yoga teacher — and heard the same quiet frustration, said a hundred different ways: I know better. Why can't I do better in the moment?
The answer was never more insight. It was never a better script or a different communication strategy. It was always the same thing: a nervous system that hadn't been trained to stay.
That is what Mandi teaches. That is what Regulation-Based Ashtanga™ is. And that is what Holistic Evolution Shala exists to offer — to every woman who is ready to stop collapsing and start training.
Stay connected. Without collapsing.
CREDENTIALSRYS-500, Be Joy Yoga School
RYS-200, YogaLife at The Front Climbing Club — Ashtanga Mysore, Vinyasa, Yin, Anatomy, Ayurvedic Medicine
Ashtanga Student of Sarah Jane, The Front SLC — 15+ years
Ashtanga Student of Angela Jamison — who has 30+ years experience, traditional lineage from Mysore, India
Trauma-Informed Yoga Educator
Founder, Regulation-Based Ashtanga™
Author, RISING: A Woman's Journey of Healing Through Rituals
Founder & Director, The Institute for Relational Nervous System Training
Current Teaching: Reflections Yoga & Wellness