Dr. Aparna Sadananda, Ph.D.

Aparna is a yoga teacher (E-RYT 200 and RPYT) with 15000 + hrs of experience teaching diverse styles of yoga (core, vinyasa, prenatal, restorative) and meditation in the DMV area. She is the founder of “Inner Stillness with Aparna” and her mission is to make the healing and empowering qualities of yoga and meditation accessible by integrating them with visual and performing arts.

Her program, Artful Meditations, is one of such offering where you can experience inner stillness at the confluence of visual art and meditation. This is also the session that we have planned for you today.

In 2020, when the pandemic socially isolated humanity, her virtual art-based meditations sponsored by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art (NMAA) and The Phillips Collection, created spaces to reconnect and build community, especially for the vulnerable populations. The former program is where I got introduced to her. And the program at the NMAA continues until today every Friday at 12 PM and is free to anyone who would like to explore meditation.

She was the meditation leader at the Reframing Care program- a wellness program for those experiencing dementia and their caregivers. Some of her current corporate collaborations include workplace wellness programs for The Phillips Collection and LinkedIn. She is the co-author of the chapter on mindfulness through receptive art in a book titled, “Building empathy through museums” slated to be released in early 2026.

A visual artist in Indian folk art, she holds a Ph.D. in cellular neuroscience from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, India in 2013.