The Weeks Well

Thank you for bearing with me while I’ve taken a short break. I’ve missed doing this podcast, and I’m so glad that Ty Powers, mindfulness guide extraordinaire, is the person to bring me back and round out this year.

It feels at once difficult and incredibly easy to describe Sarah Powers and her work. She’s yet another beautiful embodiment of the intention of this podcast. A multidisciplinary practitioner, teacher, innovator, woman, mother, and global citizen, she offers 35 years of some of the deepest and most committed messages of interpersonal insight on how best for our species to thrive. This, all while we learn to survive and face the consequences of climate change and the many distractions we have invented to look away from ourselves, each other, and the planet.

All of this has to do with the ground, as she describes in our conversation, of practice. One of the founders of Yin Yoga, author of Insight Yoga (2008) and Lit from Within (2021), and co-creator—along with her husband, Ty Powers—of the Insight Yoga Institute, her teachings are, in my mind, central to the importance and impact of modern yoga.

Share this episode and Sarah’s work with everyone you know. The sound of her voice alone is worth taking in. That’s before you get to the import of her message, her life’s work. Enjoy!

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Terms and references:

This conversation is one that I hope delights and inspires you. Always clear, succinct and, though he argues with this last point, original, Paul Grilley brought so much to the project that is The Weeks Well. I would call him—and Sarah Powers, who will be on the show in two weeks—the OG of Yin Yoga. In combining an East Asian word or concept with a South Asian word or concept, they have not only officially, through our industry’s nomenclature, broadened the definition and reach of yoga, they have underscored how yoga “is a thing in itself.”

We talked about the chakras as the multiverse, your body as something akin to a kind of clay you are working with, and, coolest of all for me, about how the body is a battlefield between higher spiritual ambitions and animalistic instincts you need to survive in this world.

Your sense of wellbeing is an even flow of energy. Learn more about what Paul and his many students and sub-students think about how to get there. Enjoy!

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Terms and references:

I learned about Tracee Stanley from Gail Parker. These are both names I hope you now know as you follow the conversations on this podcast and as we dive into what yoga lineage is and why or whether it matters. Tracee is the first teacher I’ve talked to who has come from the Himalayan Yoga tradition. I’m glad she’s the first and I am looking forward to more greats from that school. Tracee is an author, Tantrika, teacher and, as she underscored in our talk, a listener. She also strikes me as a nature goddess, as the images on her site show, and as she describes nature as the source of so much of her inspiration.

We talked about her experience identifying as a post-lineage teacher and how she dips in and out of teachings from elders and wisdom practices that continue to connect her to the experience of remembering. We talked about the “industrial overculture” that doesn’t want you to find your true self, because that wouldn’t be such a productive discovery, probably.  She wrote her first book, Radiant Rest, from her “yoga nidra nest,” and her upcoming book, The Luminous Self, is a summary of many practices she has learned, taught, and witnessed in her decades of teaching. Enjoy!

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Terms and references:

💡For the month of August, we're re-releasing a few of our favorite podcasts from the 2023 season so far. Enjoy listening (or re-listening!) to these talks and, as always, tell us your thoughts and send over guest ideas.

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Dr. Shyam Ranganathan holds an MA in South Asian Studies and an MA and PhD in Philosophy. He’s a strong voice on social media, and this is one of the few yoga handles that actually stops my scroll. That's for the same reason he kept me rapt in our conversation two months ago. We talked about his research on understanding how Non-Western traditions such as yoga are marginalized in a Western world and how BIPOC traditions of philosophy can help understand colonialism and inform our way forward and away from it.

We discussed how he approaches the practice of yoga, which he basically equates with the word 'Bhakti' since both words point to devotional practices; he describes yoga as being about devotion to individual and personal autonomy or sovereignty. Since so many of us don’t speak or study Sanskrit as a language or study yoga the way Dr. Ranganathan has, it strikes me that there is a lot to learn here. He offers a fresh perspective on pre-colonial yoga and how we can reclaim threads of it into our modern understanding of what we’re doing and how we’re practicing. I absolutely loved this conversation and hope you do too. 

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Terms:

1. Logos: an appeal to the audience's sense of reason or logic

2. Religio: A Greek term originally meaning an obligation to the Gods

3. Dharma: duty

4. Churning of the Milk Ocean: an event in Hindu mythology when the gods obtain immortality by consuming the elixir of immortality

5. Ishvara: in Hinduism, God understood as a person

6. Tapas: spiritual austerity

7. Svadhyaya: spiritual study

8. Samskara: mental impression

9. Puja: worship service

10. Virtue ethics: a philosophical approach that urges people to live a moral life by cultivating virtuous habits

11. Consequentialism: a theory that says whether something is good or bad depends on its outcomes

12. Deontology: the study of nature of duty and obligation

13. Bhakti: devotional worship directed to one supreme deity

14. Kaivalya: experience of absoluteness

15. Dharmamegha samadhi: cloud of virtue samadhi (contemplation); when you have lost even the desire for enlightenment

16. Brahmans: members of the highest Hindu caste

17. Asmita: ego sense

18. Vyasa: a revered sage in most Hindu traditions

19. Samkhyakarika: the earliest surviving text of the Samkhya school of Indian philosophy

20. Vrtti: modification

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References:

💡For the month of August, we're re-releasing a few of our favorite podcasts from the 2023 season so far. Enjoy listening (or re-listening!) to these talks and, as always, tell us your thoughts and send over guest ideas.

____

Have you ever thought about relaxation being a prerequisite to rest? Jillian Pransky does, and she says that relaxation is a prerequisite to listening. As we discuss here, it’s a process, and one that, thanks to science, we can now name and describe in detail. I would suggest that Jillian is part of a new cadre of experienced teachers exploring the art and practice of restorative yoga, which, yes, has its roots in Iyengar Yoga, but which is evolving beyond this original offering through such interdisciplinary health-span studies as the ones Jillian has been engaged in.

Jillian's teaching is most influenced by the Tibetan Buddhist nun Pema Chӧdrӧn. We go deeply into her experience as the yoga teacher for Chӧdrӧn's years of retreats at Omega Institute, when she "rewired her brain" to teach the way she does now. Like many, Jillian grew up ambitious, athletic, and professionally successful, and what she has found through years of practice is a sweet spot of nervous system and body-based regulation that comes from aligning the somatic layers of the body—these in the South Asian philosophy and practice are the physical, mental, emotional, breath, and bliss layers, or the koshas.

I can't recommend her Deep Listening enough, and I remain astonished that she was even able to use it as a title because isn’t that what all yoga practice is? I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did!

____

Terms:

1. Yoga asana: yoga postures

2. Guru/Shisya: spiritual guide or teacher

3. Tantra Yoga: a practice using yantra (a figure representing a particular aspect of the Divine) and mantra (a sound formula for meditation) to experience the union of the masculine and feminine within the individual

4. Chakras: seven energy points running from the base of the spine to the crown of the head

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References:

💡For the month of August, we're re-releasing a few of our favorite podcasts from the 2023 season so far. Enjoy listening (or re-listening!) to these talks and, as always, tell us your thoughts and send over guest ideas.

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Doug Keller's talks with me continue to be some of our most popular episodes. Here in his second episode, we explored what became a set of expanded precepts whose inclusion into modern practice could change yoga practice. ⁠Rather than the 10 yamas (restraints) and niyamas (observances)⁠ that nearly every yoga teacher at least touches on in a teacher training, he offered 20. These come from the Natha Yogis, who in the 9th-10th centuries carried on with these behavioral suggestions for living a good life and, in doing so, embraced the tradition in yoga of practicing, experimenting, sitting with those experiments, and practicing some more. I think it's time in modern yoga to consider what Doug and I explored here. We also got into politics and social issues! I hope this talk delights you as much as his first episode did!

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Terms:

1. Prakriti: the Nature

2. Upanishads: Hindu religious texts in Sanskrit that make up the Vedas

3. Mahavira: founder of Jain spiritual system

4. Vedas: the most ancient Hindu scriptures

5. Mahabharata: a Sanskrit epic poem, which includes the Bhagavad Gita

6. Pada: portion

7. Kleshas: obstacles; the kleshas are considered the cause of suffering and are to be actively overcome

8. Henry Thomas Colebrooke: a Sanskrit scholar and orientalist

9. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: a German philosopher who is considered one of the founding figures of modern Western philosophy

10. Ralph Waldo Emerson: an American writer and philosopher who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century

11. Henry David Thoreau: an American wrier and philosopher who was a leading transcendentalist

12. Neo-Vedanta: also called Hindu modernism, the Hinduism that developed in the 19th century

13. Swami Vivekananda: the first Hindu teacher to arrive in New England, taught Vedanta

14. Chakras: seven wheels of energy in the body located from the base of the spine to the crown of the head

15. Hatha Yoga Pradipika: a 15th-century Sanskrit text on hatha yoga

16. Western Esotericism: combines spirituality with an observation of the natural world while also relating humanity to the universe

17. Samadhi: contemplation; the final limb of the eight limbs of yoga

18. Jivanmukta: someone who has gained complete self-knowledge and self-realization and has attained liberation

19. Dharma: duty

20. Kama: pleasure, enjoyment

21. Kaivalya: a state of liberation reached by realizing that one's consciousness is separate from Nature (prakrti)

22. Natha Yoga: a variation of Tantric yoga; melded principles from yoga, Buddhism, and the Shaivism branch of Hinduism

23. Bindhu: a point or dot

24. Purusha: the divine Self which abides in all beings

25. Muktananda: the founder of Siddha Yoga

26. René Descartes: a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist

27. Tantra: a type of yoga using yantra (a sacred geometrical figure) and mantra (a sound formula) to experience the union of the masculine and feminine within the individual

28. Mukti: spiritual liberation

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References:

💡For the month of August, we're re-releasing a few of our favorite podcasts from the 2023 season so far. Enjoy listening (or re-listening!) to these talks and, as always, tell us your thoughts and send over guest ideas.

____

Seane Corn is one of the most influential people in modern yoga. Her journey in yoga teaching and service work started after her teacher training and at the moment she "niched" into a student group she believed she could help. When she met her students at Children of the Night, a non-profit serving girls between 12-17 who had been sex trafficked, she says they served her, rather than the other way around. Since then she has taken her career into many important areas of the yoga market: She has raised millions of dollars for the various organizations she has founded and/or served (see: Off The Mat Into The World), written a popular book (Revolution of the Soul), and continued to teach her heart out. Now, after 25 years of teaching yoga, she is starting a teacher training program. In this conversation, taped in May, we dove deeply into the shadow work she has done to evolve her practice—to drive her pain into purpose. Seane talked to me about how wonderfully adjunctive both psychotherapy and the map of the energetic body have been as she continues excavating and embracing the fact that a spiritual path means recognizing that we’re all capable of hurting and being hurt.

____

Terms:

1. Vagus nerve: responsible for the regulation of internal organ functions, such as heart rate and respiratory rate, as well as vasomotor activity, and certain reflex actions, such as coughing

2. Tantrika: relating to Tantra (a practice using yantra and mantra to experience the union of the positive and negative forces within an individual)

3. Prana: the vital energy

4. Chakras: seven energy points running from the base of the spine to the crown of the head

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References:

Dr. Jennifer Webb has been immersed in the study of psychology since her undergraduate days at Harvard in the 1990s. She got her Doctorate in Philosophy and Clinical Psychology from USC, and then she went on to Duke Integrative Medicine Center for her post-doc work. This is where she started intersecting professionally with yoga practice. At Duke, she learned how mindfulness is what she described as "the center of the wheel" for the work she was doing, which was to perform research and teach on weight loss and strategies for positive body image. This turned into a profound shift that she made—which she has been exploring for 17 years at UNC Charlotte where she is now an Associate Professor—around body positivity and loving and celebrating being the body you're in, versus trying to fix it and make it different.

I first met Dr. Webb through a research presentation she gave with Sat Bir Khalsa and me on media misperceptions of yoga. Seeing the numbers from Dr. Webb on how media has portrayed yoga as being either for loin-clothed men with long beards, or for thin, able-bodied white women in skin-tight athleisure wear is real. It's also encouraging to know that someone as smart as she is is contributing to so much change in the perception of yoga.

Dr. Webb has been diving ever deeper into the study of yoga and what component parts of it have efficacy for the populations she has been studying, so much so that she became a yoga teacher in 2021 through the first ever BIPOC-centered training through Integral Yoga. In this conversation, we talked about her past research studies, the most significant of which was with Curvyyoga.com. We also talked about how scientific literacy is one of the important aspects of society in today’s age of misinformation. Enjoy!

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Terms:

1. Randomized Control Trial: a study designed to measure the effectiveness of a new intervention or treatment by randomly assigning participants into an experimental group or a control group

2. Dialectical Behavior Therapy: a structured program of psychotherapy with a strong educational component designed to provide skills for managing intense emotions and negotiating social relationships

3. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: an action-oriented approach to psychotherapy in which clients learn to stop avoiding, denying, and struggling with their inner emotions and, instead, accept that these deeper feelings are appropriate responses to certain situations that should not prevent them from moving forward in their lives

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References:

James Fox started out in mindful meditation and yoga 30 years ago and soon after began teaching yoga to men facing life sentences at the San Quentin Prison. Soon after that, he founded the Prison Yoga Project, which is now all over the globe and is fueled by Fox’s dedication to teaching a trauma-informed approach in correctional facilities. The Prison Yoga Project’s reach is wide, in part because its approach is research based.

PYP’s and Fox’s classes not only address the standard self-regulatory aspects of any multi-modal yoga class; they even more profoundly apply a restorative justice model to help move students from the recognition of the harm they have done—not just to others but to themselves—to a place of empathy. This happens in many ways, but you will hear us talk most about the creation of community with them and for them. Fox talked about how to establish a practice in which everyone engages in pursuit of their highest good and their highest self. Indeed.

Enjoy the episode and as always, let us know if you have feedback, guest ideas, or anything else you want to chat about!

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Terms:

1. Restorative Justice Model: a theory of justice that emphasizes repairing the harm caused by criminal behavior

2. Raja Yoga: the system of concentration and meditation based on ethical discipline

3. Yamas: abstinence; the first of the eight limbs of yoga

4. Niyamas: observance; the second of the eight limbs of yoga

5. Pratyahara: withdrawal of the senses from their objects; the fifth of the eight limbs of yoga

6. Dharana: concentration; the sixth of the eight limbs of yoga

7. Dhyana: meditation; the seventh of the eight limbs of yoga

8. Asana: postures; the third of the eight limbs of yoga

9. Pranayama: the practice of controlling the vital force, usually through control of the breath; the fourth of the eight limbs of yoga

10. Ahimsa: non-violence or non-harming; one of the yamas

11. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: a form of psychological treatment that usually involves efforts to change thinking patterns

12. Dharma: one's duty

13. Sangha: community

14. Sympathetic Nervous System: the part of the nervous system that carries signals related to the "fight-or-flight" response

15. Parasympathetic Nervous System: the part of the nervous system that predominates in quiet "rest and digest" conditions; the main purpose is to conserve energy to be used later and to regulate bodily functions like digestion

16. Pada: part or portion

17. Victim Offender Education Facilitator: facilitators who work to help identify and repair the trauma as much as possible by creating an environment of trust, safety, inclusiveness, acceptance, and compassion

18. Moral injury: when one feels they have violated their conscience or moral compass when they take part in, witness or fail to prevent an act that disobeys their own moral values or personal principles

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References:

Dr. Shyam Ranganathan holds an MA in South Asian Studies and an MA and PhD in Philosophy. He’s a strong voice on social media, and his is one of the few yoga handles that actually stops my scroll. That's for the same reason he kept me pretty rapt in our conversation. Here we talked about his research on understanding how Non-Western traditions such as yoga are marginalized in a Western world and how BIPOC traditions of philosophy can help understand colonialism and inform our way forward and away from it.

We discussed how he approaches the practice of yoga, which he basically equates with the word 'Bhakti' since both words point to devotional practices; he describes yoga as being about devotion to individual and personal autonomy or sovereignty. Since so many of us don’t speak or study Sanskrit as a language or study yoga the way Dr. Ranganathan has–it strikes me that there is a lot to learn here. He offers a fresh perspective on pre-colonial yoga and how we can reclaim threads of it into our modern understanding of what we’re doing and how we’re practicing. I absolutely loved this conversation and hope you do too. 

____

Terms:

1. Logos: an appeal to the audience's sense of reason or logic

2. Religio: A Greek term originally meaning an obligation to the Gods

3. Dharma: duty

4. Churning of the Milk Ocean: an event in Hindu mythology when the gods obtain immortality by consuming the elixir of immortality

5. Ishvara: in Hinduism, God understood as a person

6. Tapas: spiritual austerity

7. Svadhyaya: spiritual study

8. Samskara: mental impression

9. Puja: worship service

10. Virtue ethics: a philosophical approach that urges people to live a moral life by cultivating virtuous habits

11. Consequentialism: a theory that says whether something is good or bad depends on its outcomes

12. Deontology: the study of nature of duty and obligation

13. Bhakti: devotional worship directed to one supreme deity

14. Kaivalya: experience of absoluteness

15. Dharmamegha samadhi: cloud of virtue samadhi (contemplation); when you have lost even the desire for enlightenment

16. Brahmans: members of the highest Hindu caste

17. Asmita: ego sense

18. Vyasa: a revered sage in most Hindu traditions

19. Samkhyakarika: the earliest surviving text of the Samkhya school of Indian philosophy

20. Vrtti: modification

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References:

One thing that I took away from my conversation with Patty Townsend is a dead ringer for something I took away from my talk with Jillian Pransky. I almost named these two episodes part 1 and part 2 because of the intersection of a few things: that of giving and receiving both friendship in and wisdom—love, really—in the practice.

It was a delight hearing about Patty's early days with Ashtanga, and then Iyengar, and then Tantra, and her other influential teachers, but what struck me most was her relationship with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, a movement artist interested in every type of healthy, holistic movement you can imagine.

Back to the friendship piece—Patty learned early on in her yoga career that there is no hierarchy in yoga, and no validity in the patriarchy to be sure. There is just co-creation, learning, and then more learning. Most of all, as she puts it: It’s not the mat, it’s the dishes and the children. I hope you enjoy this conversation with another maturing, great teacher who, in this case, has crisscrossed lineages to profound and inspiring effect.

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Terms:

1. Purusha: the divine Self which abides in all beings

2. Prakriti: the Nature

3. Sushumna: the main energy channel of the subtle body

4. Chakras: seven energy points running from the base of the spine to the crown of the head

5. Hatha Yoga: the physical aspect of Yoga practice, including postures (asanas), breathing techniques (pranayama), seals (mudras), locks (bandhas), and cleansing practices (kriyas)

6. Shiva: God as auspiciousness

7. Shakti: power, energy or force

8. Samskaras: mental impressions

9. Koshas: the five layers (or sheaths) of the subtle body

10. Sarvangasana: shoulder stand

11. Sirsasana: headstand

12. Marichyasana 4: a twisting pose dedicated to the sage Marichi

13. Santosha: contentment; the second of the niyamas in the Eight Limbs of Yoga

14. Viveka: discrimination of the real from the unreal

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References:

Have you ever thought about relaxation being a prerequisite to rest? Jillian Pransky does, and she says that relaxation is a prerequisite to listening. As we discuss here, it’s a process, and one that, thanks to science, we can now name and describe in detail. I would suggest that Jillian is part of a new cadre of experienced teachers exploring the art and practice of restorative yoga, which, yes, has its roots in Iyengar Yoga, but which is evolving beyond this original offering through such interdisciplinary health-span studies as the ones Jillian has been engaged in.

Jillian's teaching is most influenced by the Tibetan Buddhist nun Pema Chӧdrӧn. We go deeply into her experience as the yoga teacher for Chӧdrӧn's years of retreats at Omega Institute, when she "rewired her brain" to teach the way she does now. Like many, Jillian grew up ambitious, athletic, and professionally successful, and what she has found through years of practice is a sweet spot of nervous system and body-based regulation that comes from aligning the somatic layers of the body—these in the South Asian philosophy and practice are the physical, mental, emotional, breath, and bliss layers, or the koshas.

I can't recommend her Deep Listening enough, and I remain astonished that she was even able to use it as a title because isn’t that what all yoga practice is? I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did! Send feedback!

____

Terms:

1. Yoga asana: yoga postures

2. Guru/Shisya: spiritual guide or teacher

3. Tantra Yoga: a practice using yantra (a figure representing a particular aspect of the Divine) and mantra (a sound formula for meditation) to experience the union of the masculine and feminine within the individual

4. Chakras: seven energy points running from the base of the spine to the crown of the head

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References:

Shannon Crow started her podcast, The Connected Yoga Teacher, in 2017. She did so after taking multiple teacher trainings and finding herself disconnected from her fellow trainees right after the training ended. This disconnection was something she also found as she started getting to know yoga teachers out in the world: From competition to cults, she found that teachers were not able to discover their true selves in teaching. So, she decided to help teachers feel more connected and to define their niche which, she says, gets rid of the competition because a) niching helps you do what you are most interested in and passionate about, and b) it enables you to be more collegial with other teachers as you refer students to the teacher you know works best for them. Shannon is also now deeply engrossed in pelvic health, which is why she has started the organization Pelvic Health Professionals. In this inspiring conversation, Shannon and I explore how yoga teachers can teach to their passion, and she encourages listeners not to give up.

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Terms:

1. Bhakti yoga: yoga of devotion; a path containing practices to unite the practitioner with the divine

2. Mantra: a sound formula for meditation

3. Sadhana: spiritual practice

4. Mula bandha: the root lock located at the base of the torso

5. Endometriosis: a condition in which endometrial tissue grows outside the uterus

6. The eight limbs of yoga: the eightfold path described in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, including yamas (abstinence), niyamas (observance), asana (postures), pranayama (breathing practices), pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses), dharana (concentration), dhyana (mediation), and samadhi (contemplation)

7. Ahimsa: non-harming or non-violence

8. Koshas: the five layers (or sheaths) of the subtle body

9. BKS Iyengar: the founder of Iyengar Yoga

10. Guru: spiritual guide

11. Shishya: succession from guru to disciple

12. Baddha konasana: lying down bound angle pose

13. Savasana: corpse pose

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References:

How many black men in their late 40s do you know teaching yoga and wellness? I met Reggie about 10 years ago as he began his mindfulness and wellness journey at the age of 40. Our conversation here, about what it means to practice being well, had all the threads of love, health, grace, peace, and joy (words he used in an email exchange after our talk). It’s a different kind of talk than the ones I normally have on this podcast, and that's because Reggie's emergence into this practice has come from half a lifetime of pain, grief, disappointment, and other feelings he says are necessarily ones you can't shy away from.

Of note for me, as I continue to learn about the wellness and yoga world in Denver: Reggie found his practice here in Mile High at a yoga studio called Kindness Yoga. Incredibly, given Reggie's deep and subtle work in this world, this studio has closed because its white male owner was canceled in 2020. Growth in any industry is difficult, and social accountability in the early 21st century is particularly swift and deep (if you're willing to be accountable!), and I want to bring up this interesting intersection because the Kindness closing is something I've wanted to explore on this podcast as well.

Reggie and I discuss all kind of things in our talk: the racism, the microagressions, and the sorrow and grief that he has had to get through to begin teaching what he has to say. His organization Active Peace Yoga launched about a month before George Floyd was murdered, for example. Since then, he has been talking nonstop about activism, peace, and yoga in his lived experience in his body. Enjoy!

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Terms:

1. Asana: postures

2. Sadhana: a spiritual practice or way of life

3. Karma: the sum of a person's actions in this and previous states of existence, which help decide their fate in future existences

4. Ahimsa: non-violence or non-harming

5. Sadhakas: someone who follows a certain sadhana with the aim of achieving a certain goal

6. Bija sound: a single-syllable sound that can be used in meditation

7. Satya: truth

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References:

Seane Corn is one of the most influential people in modern yoga. Her journey in yoga teaching and service work started after her teacher training and at the moment she "niched" into a student group she believed she could help. When she met her students at Children of the Night, a non-profit serving girls between 12-17 who had been sex trafficked, she says they served her, rather than the other way around. Since then she has taken her career into many important areas of the yoga market: She has raised millions of dollars for the various organizations she has founded and/or served (see: Off The Mat Into The World), written a popular book (Revolution of the Soul), and continued to teach her heart out. Now, after 25 years of teaching yoga, she is starting a teacher training program. In this conversation, we dive deeply into the shadow work she has done to evolve her practice—to drive her pain into purpose. Seane talked to me about how wonderfully adjunctive both psychotherapy and the map of the energetic body have been as she continues excavating and embracing the fact that a spiritual path means recognizing that we’re all capable of hurting and being hurt.

____

Terms:

1. Vagus nerve: responsible for the regulation of internal organ functions, such as heart rate and respiratory rate, as well as vasomotor activity, and certain reflex actions, such as coughing

2. Tantrika: relating to Tantra (a practice using yantra and mantra to experience the union of the positive and negative forces with an individual)

3. Prana: the vital energy

4. Chakras: seven energy points running from the base of the spine to the crown of the head

____

References:

Eddie Stern has been a spiritual seeker and curious contemplative his whole life. He has spent most of his time in the Ashtanga Yoga tradition and was a student of Pattabhi Jois, but along with many in the school, he has worked hard to heal traumas and elected to expand his view of practice participation in the world for the greater good. He recently decided to get his Masters degree (but he skipped college; listen in for the full details), and his dissertation was titled "Can Yoga Reduce Anxiety and Increase Perception of Purpose in life?" This work speaks to the heart of where he sees himself participating in the world for the rest of the time he's got here. The actions he’s taking in the world—such as inventing and sharing the popular The Breathing App, putting on a multi-month program with Deepak Chopra, and actually wanting to get into the ring and debate what he feels are incorrect and frankly harmful academic theories that have been promoted about yoga—are inspiring and, it seems to me, a function of his tireless intellect and desire to "do the work." It was that part that inspired me the most. Enjoy!

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Terms:

1. Sangha: community

2. Ardha matsyendrasana: half lord of the fishes pose

3. Asana: postures, the third of the eight limbs of yoga

4. Pranayama: control of the breath, the fourth of the eight limbs of yoga

5. Pratyahara: withdrawal of the senses, the fifth of the eight limbs of yoga

6. Dharana: concentration, the sixth of the eight limbs of yoga

7. Dhyana: meditation, the seventh of the eight limbs of yoga

8. Kaivalya: experience of absoluteness, non-qualified experience

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References:

Kino MacGregor manages to walk a fine line between the scroll-stopping stuff of Instagram and the deep practice of belonging, discernment, and freedom in yoga. If you do just take her in on Instagram, I wonder if you look past her flawless yoga asanas and pictures of the far-flung places she teaches, and read what she writes about her practices and experiences. She says repeatedly that yoga is not about the poses, which she calls the "grammar" of yoga; it's about looking deeply inside and freeing yourself through sensation, experience, and love. The poses do teach you how to learn to be in and understand your body, but they, along with the myriad other practices of chanting, pranayama, meditation, deep relaxation, and more, teach you how to move from the dissociation of daily life to getting closer to your experience of God.

In this conversation, we talked primarily about: 1) the responsibility of yoga teachers to protect the practices and lineages, 2) how 200 hours of training prepares you only to know whether you want to teach or not, but not how to teach, 3) how deep immersive study is the only way NOT to appropriate these practices, 4) how Ashtanga Yoga can be an accessible practice, and 5) how devotion to teacher and your own practice, largely through tapas or burning zeal, is the only way you will grow in the practice. We covered a lot more, and I hope you enjoy!

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Terms:

1. Asana: postures

2. Mantra: a sound formula for meditation

3. Sadhana: spiritual practice

4. Tapas: spiritual austerity or burning zeal

5. Arjuna: a main character in The Bhagavad Gita (a Hindu scripture)

6. Samskara: mental impression

7. Vasanas: the impression of actions that remains unconsciously in the mind and induces a person to repeat the action

8. Viveka: discriminative discernment of the untrue from the true

9. Abhinivesha: will to live

10: Koshas: sheaths of the body

11. Anamaya kosha: one of the five koshas, the food body

12. Manomaya kosha: one of the five koshas, the mind sheath

13. Pranamaya kosha: one of the five koshas, the vital energy or life force sheath

14. Anandamaya kosha: the last of the five koshas, the bliss sheath

15. Pranava: OM, the sacred sound

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References:

Rob Schware and Chelsea Roff are doing so many interesting things in yoga that I don't know where to start in these show notes. First, they are disruptors in an industry that since its modern inception has served a small group of suburban and urban women and the cultural elite. Give Back Yoga Foundation, the organization they run together as Co-Executive Directors, is in the business of serving people in need: those working with addiction, cancer, eating disorders, and those in prison. Schware says, in fact, that he thinks yoga is only about service.

Second, before she started working with Schware, Roff went on a yoga strike to raise money for her first organization, Eat Breathe Thrive. She did this to raise $50K to fund a research study on a yoga intervention for eating disorders. This speaks to the heart of Give Back Yoga: Disrupting a marketplace with care and a family-based approach to service those in need, but also, with scientific research. Those at Give Back wake up every day aiming to deliver more yoga services to those in need with interventions backed by research, and Roff's Eat Breath Thrive is just one of several organizations that Give Back fiscally sponsors to do their work. The organization also has donated more than 35,000 mats to teachers to help get the communities they serve practicing.

Finally, Give Back has launched a university for teachers all over the world to educate them on best practices for teaching the communities their sponsees have taught them how to work with. Schware says they are drawn to teachers and professionals with a “fire in the belly;” that phrase could well have been the title to this episode. Enjoy! Check out all the links from Give Back below, and I hope you consider working with them!

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Terms:

1. Randomized Control Trials (RCTs): prospective studies that measure the effectiveness of a new intervention or treatment

2. Maitri: Sanskrit word meaning friendliness

3. Ahimsa: Sanskrit word meaning non-harming or non-violence

4. Bhakti yoga: yoga of devotion or love that unites the practioner with the divine

5. Samskara: Sanskrit word meaning mental impression

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References:

This episode is such a great reminder of how great a practice Integral Yoga is—how deep, earnest, and sincere its roots. Swami Asokananda embodies this practice in all of his being, in every syllable. My conversation with him here, which we recorded about a year ago and I'm releasing for the first time, is amazing for teachers and for anyone seeking to deepen or better understand their yoga practice. We talked about many things, including how the reward of teaching is the act of teaching itself and what a master class is. We also talked about how every practice can be a revelation if you let it happen and how silence can be the teacher. One thing I found so compelling is the idea of the information-silence ratio: the idea that a teacher in a yoga class is masterful when she/he/they knows how to balance the "ha" of the teaching and the "tha" of the learning ("Ha" meaning the sun or action side of the practice and "tha" being the moon or receiving side).

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Terms:

1. Prana: the vital energy

2. Asana: postures, the third of the eight limbs of yoga

3. Hatha yoga: the physical aspect of yoga practice, including postures, breathing techniques, seals, locks, and cleansing practices

4. Samadhi: contemplation or ultimate freedom, the final limb of the eight limbs of yoga

5. Apana vayu: energy in the pelvis and lower abdomen, one of the five vayus (subdivisions of the life force)

6. Parampara: transmission of knowledge from one to another

7. Rajas: activity

8. Guru: remover of darkness, spiritual guide

9. Shisya: a succession of teachers and disciples

10: Karma yoga: performing actions as selfless services without attachment to the results

11. Satya: truth

12. Hatha: “tha” is the surrender part, “ha” is the activation part

13. Bandha: lock

14. Kriya: action, practice

15. Mudra: sign, seal

16. Pranayama: breath control, the fourth of the eight limbs of yoga

17. Vinyasa: a method of yoga in which movements form a flowing sequence in coordination with the breath

18. Yin: a slow-paced style of yoga

19. Pratyahara: withdrawal of the senses, the fifth of the eight limbs of yoga

20. Yama: abstinence, the first of the eight limbs of yoga

21. Niyama: observance, the second of the eight limbs of yoga

22. Dharana: concentration, the sixth of the eight limbs of yoga

23. Dhyana: meditation, the seventh of the eight limbs of yoga

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References:

Richard Rosen wrote The Yoga of Breath in 2002, after he had been teaching for 15 years, and just before he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. He has a lot to say about the nature of the breath, and our conversation was the first of what I hope will be many on this podcast. He doesn't like the word "control" in the translation of pranayama; rather, he likes to call it cooperation. I love this idea! You can read about all this and more in his book (like below). We explored how shortened savasana has become since the “typical” yoga class made its entry onto the modern yoga scene, how the earliest recorded poses didn't include backbends, and how Westerners, who like being challenged, sometimes walk away from a 15-minute breath practice when given the chance. Starting at around 32:00/33:00, you'll hear a lot about yoga for Parkinson's. Please let us know if you work with people with Parkinson's or have the chance to share this with someone who does.

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Terms:

1. asana: poses

2. ujayi: a breathing technique sometimes referred to as "ocean breath" or "victorious breath"

3. viloma: a breathing technique where you pause briefly during the breath

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References:

Beryl Bender is an iconoclast. She coined the term "power yoga" in the 1980s and went on to write her first book Power Yoga. She took the Ashtanga Yoga teaching tradition and translated and made it accessible for westerners. She wanted the phrase to describe strength (versus just flexibility), appeal to men, and show that yoga could be a workout. In addition to later writing Beyond Power Yoga, her favorite of her books, she was also a Wellness Director way before it was cool. It is in this way that Beryl's career has occurred: She got her start way back in the 1970s in meditation, found yoga, integrated the two, and has been pushing the boundaries of what presence, stillness and practice mean. I just loved that she taught 100K runners in New York City a progressive yoga curriculum —and that not one person in any of those classes was injured. Talking to Beryl made me think so much more about what goes in to teaching yoga. Enjoy!

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Terms:

1. Dharma: one's duty

2. Karma: action and reaction

3. Raja Yoga: a system of concentration and meditation based on ethical discipline

4. Ashtanga Yoga: a style of yoga popularized by K. Pattabhi Jois

5. Jainism: an Indian religion focused on becoming liberated from the endless cycle of rebirth

6. Ahimsa: non-harming

7. Anekantavada: the second tenet of Jainism, it means relative thinking

8. Samskara: mental impression

9. Upanishads: the most recent part of the Vedas (the oldest Hindu scriptures)

10. Advaita Vedanta: a Hindu sadhana (path of spiritual discipline and experience)

11. Integral Yoga: a style of yoga brought to the west by Swami Satchidananda

12. Sivananda Yoga: a style of yoga founded by Vishnudevananda

13. Iyengar Yoga: a style of yoga developed by B.K.S. Iyengar

14. Yogas citta vrtti nirodahah: one of the Yoga Sutras, translates to yoga is the stilling of the fluctuations of the mind

15. Nirodhah: stillness

16. Tapas: spiritual austerity

17. Seva: selfless service

18. The Yoga Sutras: a collection of Sanskrit sutras on the the theory and practice of yoga

19. Rajasic: activity, restlessness

20. Svadhyaya: spiritual study

21. Ishvara pranidhana: worship of God

22. Kriya Yoga: a meditation technique focused on energy and breath control

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References:

Andrea Ferretti is a risk-taker and explorer. After my conversation with her, I would also throw in the word futurist. She's one of the first people I've talked to who legitimately seems to be pondering where yoga might go in the next few decades and beyond. Throughout her career, she has sought to work for fast-changing communications outlets describing health-span practices. She first wrote for women.com in the mid-90s, which led her to work as an editor at Yoga Journal. Then, inspired by the podcast Serial, she launched her own popular podcast Yogaland in 2015. In the last few months she has pivoted to long-form content on Substack. Andrea says this about her time at Yoga Journal, which feels a lot to me like a description of our conversation and even of all my conversations on Practicing Well: “We were just trying to speak yoga language and be authentic.” I loved this conversation and hope you do too.

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Terms:

1. Utthita triknoasana: triangle pose

2. Salamba sirsasana: headstand

3. Salamba sarvangasana: shoulderstand

4. Utthita hastha padangusthasana: extended hand-to-big-toe pose

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References:

I wanted to bring Barbara Benagh and John Schumacher back onto Practicing Well to take the conversation on yoga lineage further. They have been teaching yoga for decades—100 years between the two of them—so I brought them back to talk about what it means to be an elder in this craft. We discussed how teaching and learning have changed over the years, and how in their cases, their practice and teaching have both evolved. Both Barbara and John shared how difficult it is to teach yoga, to pass on these deep, truthful experiences, and to make that relevant for anyone. We also got into the business of yoga and where to place aging yoga teachers at a time when tastes between millennials and baby boomers (such as John and Barbara) are so different.

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Terms:

1. Kapalabhati: a breathing practice taught in hatha yoga for internal cleansing

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References:

As a model of 40+ years, Colleen Saidman Yee admits to being hyper-competitive and needing to be at the center of her classes and her universe. She found yoga in the late 1980s and has been teaching it since the 1990s. She owns Yoga Shanti in Sag Harbor, New York, where her husband Rodney Yee works for her as a teacher.

We sat down to talk about Colleen's journey, which included lying about her age as a model, drug abuse, and major back surgery that happened early in her career. Having fused professionally and personally with Rodney since 2003, she has continued to explore more and more intersectional modalities, such as shiatsu, that she applies in her classes. Colleen was a delight. Listen in and let me know what you think about the episode!

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References:

Anjali Rao, president of the Accessible Yoga Association, thinks of herself as a supporter and co-creator, someone who is focused on exploring the histories (plural) in yoga and the stories of people who’ve been obscured through religion, caste, capitalism, cisgenderness, and patriarchy. She wants to highlight these stories within the narrow confines of what many people think of as yoga practice, where there are major gaps in who can access yoga. 

Anjali thinks of Accessible Yoga’s role as one to create and expand on the definition of what "accessible" means at all. The organization wants to be disruptive and to go deeply into what they hope to influence as the un-commodification of yoga. Here we talk more about out her vision for Accessible Yoga and where she wants to take it in the context of all these changes in our definitions of yoga. 

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Terms:

1. Bhagavad Gita: a Hindu scripture that is part of the Mahabharata

2. Upanishads: the most recent part of the Vedas

3. Vedas: the most ancient Hindu scriptures

4. Arjuna: the hero of the Bhagavad Gita 

5. Parampara: passing on of knowledge from a teacher to student 

6. Dukha: suffering, pain, or unhappiness

7. Bhakti yoga: a spiritual practice within Hinduism focused on loving devotion towards a personal deity

8. Tantra yoga: a type of yoga that utilizes many different techniques, including mantra meditation, pranayama (breath control), etc. 

9. Mahabharata: one of the major Sanskrit epics of ancient India in Hinduism 

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References:

Gail Parker is a trailblazer, and the paths she's opening up are those not in the exterior world but of the interior body. Like most who visit with me on this show, she has been practicing yoga for many decades. She started yoga in Detroit the year after the riots there, and the peace she found in the practice was as immediate as it was thorough.

Gail's work is groundbreaking because it's specifically about how restorative yoga as a practice, like the practice of psychotherapy (she's a yoga teacher and a psychologist!), offers the opportunity to engage with trauma in a humanistic way. As in therapy, the long, gentle, gravity-based holding of restorative poses offer the chance to cultivate your own interoceptive awareness, which is awareness of what your body needs from one moment to the next. As you learn to recognize these messages and sensations, you open yourself up to what Gail talks a lot about in our conversation: the true Self, that's self with a capital S. After reading her groundbreaking book Restorative Yoga for Ethnic and Race-Based Stress and Trauma, my teaching—and thinking—have never been the same since. I hope this conversation is also transformative for you.

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Terms:

1. Yoga nidra: a form of guided meditation

2. Ayurveda: an ancient Indian medical system that relies on a natural and holistic approach

3. Vata: one of the doshas (a mind-body type) in Ayurveda; controls movement in the body, the activities in the nervous system, and the process of elimination

4. Pitta: one of the doshas; controls digestion, metabolism, and energy production

5. Svadhyaya: self-study and recitation of sacred texts 

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References:

For many in modern yoga, Cyndi Lee’s name needs no introduction. She started practicing yoga in New York with Sharon Gannon and David Life, who founded the Manhattan-based Jivamukti methodology. With both a BFA and MFA in dance, she soon decided to open Om yoga Center in 1998 (with just $800!), because the choreographed movements of the sun salutes she'd learned through Jivamukti made so much sense to her, and, to boot, the practice felt spiritual. She had fallen in love with yoga and wanted to share it with as many people as she could.

She was also falling in love with Buddhist practices, alongside people like Alan Ginsberg at Philip Glass's apartment in New York. That's just one of the threads that made this conversation so interesting. Cyndi has spent her teaching and business career weaving her yoga into Buddhism and vice versa. She has spent decades teaching—and training—students how to practice the "middle way." This is a choice, she says, that you must choose to live every day. Cyndi's intersectional lineage journey is one of the main reasons I wanted to sit down with her, and learning about where she has been, what she's doing online, and what she's most passionate about teaching right now did not disappoint.

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Terms:

1. Gom: Tibetan word for meditation

2. Jivamukti: a path to liberation through compassion toward all beings

3. Sangha: community

4. Dharma: one's duty

5. The Brahmavihara: the Dedication (May all Beings Be Happy…)

6. Theravada: a school of Buddhism that draws its inspiration from the Tipitaka, or Pali canon; focuses on self practice

8. Mahayana: largest Buddhist sect in the world; focuses on the bigger view that includes compassion

9. Vajrayana: form of Tantric Buddhism; advanced practices received in direct transmission from master

10. Prajna: best knowledge or best knowing 

11. Tadasana: mountain pose 

12. Sadhana: a daily spiritual practice

13. Prajnaparamita Sutra: "Without form, mind cannot be expressed; without mind, form cannot be made manifest." 

14. Upaya: skillful means

15. Maitri: loving-kindness or friendliness 

16. Boddhisattva: enlightened beings who put off entering paradise in order to help others reach enlightenment 

17. Vipassana: a technique of mediation used to see things as they really are

18. Jukai: to receive the precepts

19. Shanti Deva: an 8th century Buddhist monk

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References:

In the conversation on what yoga lineage is and why it matters, I knew that Richard Freeman, Mary Taylor and Barbara Benagh would offer a multidisciplinary, intersectional conversation that carries both deep respect for what has come before us and a passionate, insightful caring about what may be coming—not just for wisdom tradition practitioners but for the world as a whole. These three have contributed so much to modern yoga and offered what I see as a lasting legacy of wisdom, humility, and grace. In this conversation, we talk about all kinds of things: Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, how paradox is something that is loved by the yogic traditions, and how your mind goes into a suspension when you’re really deeply practicing in a wisdom tradition. This talk is deeply philosophical, lovingkindness-based, and community centric.

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Sanskrit:

1. Sankhya: a dualistic school of Indian philosophy

2. Hinayana: small vehicle; a sect of Buddhism

3. Mahayana: great vehicle; a sect of Buddhism 

4. Samadhi: liberation

5. Samyama: simultaneous practice of dharana (concentration), dhyana (meditation), and samadhi 

6. Nirodha: cessation of desire)

7. Citta vrittis: the thoughts that clutter the mind

8. Kleshas: the characteristics that cause suffering

9. Pada: part

10. Pragya: highest and purest form of understanding

11. Dharma: duty

12. Prana: breath, life force

13. Tadasana: mountain pose

14. Bhakti yoga: a practice within Hinduism focused on loving devotion toward a personal deity

15. Sri vidya: Hindu Tantric religious system

16. Rigvedas: ancient Vedic Sanskrit hymns

17. Upanishads: the most recent part of the Vedas (Hindu scriptures) 

18. Naga: race of half-human, half-serpent beings

19. Vaishnava: Hindu denomination worshipping Vishnu 

20. Vadriana Buddhism: a branch of Buddhism teaching that it's possible to reach enlightenment in one lifetime

21. Shankacharya: a Vedic scholar

22. Daiva: relating to Gods 

23. Shakti: primordial cosmic energy

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References:

It's difficult to separate the modern popularity of yoga from Rodney Yee. He was a guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1999 to talk about yoga after creating his landmark videos AM and PM Yoga a few years earlier. Overnight his videos and teachings sold worldwide as millions wanted to learn how to do yoga the way he taught it.

Jason Crandell has been called a “teacher’s teacher.” He talks about yoga being a mind-body-breath methodology that helps you more skillfully inhabit your body. The three pillars most important to him, “power, precision, and mindfulness” are the things you can find in all of his classes and trainings, and that have helped him form The Jason Crandell Method over the years.

I relearned through hosting Jason that the phrase “plumb the depths” is an old nautical term that refers to sailors determining the distance to the bottom floor by tying lead to the end of the rope and letting it go. This is what practice feels like to Jason, and we talked a lot about the meaning of that phrase in the context of teaching and training.

We also talked about how yoga is less “centralized and conspicuous” now that Covid has taken nearly all activities online, with yoga being no exception. As we discuss here, this shifts the role of the yoga studio, the large group class, the small group class, 1:1s, and trainings and advanced group work of all kinds. It was so fun to talk about how many passionate people Jason comes into contact with all day in yoga.

Enjoy this episode, and as always, I look forward to any feedback or thoughts for future guests or episodes!

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References:

If you had to label Doug Keller's yoga, you might be safe putting him in the Tantra category. He approaches yoga through both a physiological practice-based lens as well as a philosophical, academic one. Here he connects academic, historical yoga and what we can think of as modern "practitioner" yoga. Most important, Doug addresses how lineage and the assertion of authority run problematically in parallel. This talk is a Cliff’s Notes version of Doug's Yoga History and Philosophy course on Yoga International. Enjoy!

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Sanskrit:

1. Prakriti: un-manifested cosmic energy

2. Purusha: the true self

3. Pada: part

4. Tantra: yoga that seeks to experience the union of siva and sakti within the individual 

5. Siva: God as auspiciousness 

6. Sakti: energy 

7. Kundalini: the energy stored at the base of a person's spine

8. Chakras: energy vortices

9. Jnana yoga: yoga of knowledge

10. Karma yoga: yoga of action

11. Mantra: a word or sound repeated to help with concentration in meditation 

12. Laya yoga: yoga of dissolution 

13. Hatha yoga: practice of physical postures

14. Raja yoga: yoga of mind and body control

15. Sanyasi: a religious ascetic who has renounced the world 

16. Bandha: locks used to direct the flow of energy

17. Pranayama: breath control

18. Dharma: path to fulfillment 

19. Vedanta: Hindu philosophy based on the Vedas

20. Vedas: ancient Hindu scriptures

21. Bhakti: attachment or devotion

22. Shramanas: one who labors for a higher or religious purpose

23. Samkhya: dualistic school of Indian philosophy

24. Srtha: appropriate wealth

25. Karma: pleasure

26. Moksha: liberation

27. Shruti: heard knowledge

28. Smrti: what is remembered 

29. Puranas: a genre of Sanksrit sacred writings

30. Yamas: moral disciplines

31. Niyamas: individual disciplines 

32. Kleshas: mental states—ignorance, egoism, attachment, aversion, and fear

33. Ashtanga: eight limbed path

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References:

One of the most interesting aspects of this conversation with Judith Hanson Lasater and her daughter Lizzie Lasater was when Judith described the group yoga class a kind of disruption in the long lineage of yoga. The economic demands of teaching yoga in the west have necessitated it, she noted. We’ve gone from the intimacy of the original 1:1 contact between teacher and student to a worldwide industry of big classes and insta-influencers everywhere you look.

What of the 1:1 relationship you have with yourself in your practice? We talked about this and so much more. Aside from the depth of inquiry we all swam in during this conversation about current, modern yoga, it's worth repeating that Judith co-founded Yoga Journal, the Iyengar Institute of San Francisco, and the esteemed California Yoga Teachers Association. Now, nearly 50 years later, Lizzie is pressing on with her own presence, teaching, and writings to carry on her mom's lineage. In the meantime, Judith has written 11 books and—as I see it—has become a specialist in the art of restorative yoga.

I loved listening to Judith talk about the early days of American yoga in the Bay Area, to Lizzie talk about her own personal journey, and to both of them about what it really means to authentically teach a wellness practice like the one we’ve all embraced. I look forward to knowing what you think!

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Sanskrit:

1. Upavista Konasana - wide-legged seated forward fold

2. Sangha - intentional community

3. Parampara - direct transmission of learning and connection

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References:

I wanted to talk to Amanda Kingsmith, host of the popular podcast Mastering the Business of Yoga (M.B.Om), because she has a structured, fascinating, and very hopeful approach to the yoga industry and community. Her mission is for everyone in the world to be able to experience the benefits of a long, slow, steady breath, and she wakes up every day thinking about how to help yoga professionals be their best selves in teaching students how to do this very thing. Trained in business first and then in yoga, Amanda started her yoga career with an idea of helping her contemporaries put their best foot forward in auditioning for jobs, setting up their sites and marketing plans, and—vitally—managing their own self care while caring for others. She offers educational and other support for yoga teachers and studio owners, and I learned so much about how she has responded to the cottage-industry demands of her own yoga and wellness consultancy market. 

We talk a lot about where the industry has been, where it’s going, and why the online/hybrid yoga sphere has liberated yoga teachers to offer their services in ways they could never have imagined. I so enjoyed this conversation! Check it out and always let me know your thoughts! 

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References:

In the first episode of season two, I talk with Jivana Heyman, author of Accessible Yoga and Yoga Revolution. Jivana started his yoga teaching career supporting communities with disabilities, HIV/AIDS, MS, and heart disease patients. He coined the phrase "Accessible Yoga" after creating the Accessible Yoga Training in 2013 and, as co-founder of the Accessible Yoga School, wants yoga teachers at a basic level of training to be able to teach a spectrum of abilities in the same class at the same time. 

This is just one of the solutions he sees for changing the public perception of what a yoga teacher is. We talk about what, at heart, anyone is really practicing yoga for, and how Jivana wants to support those underserved and under-represented in modern yoga, which faces a fundamental problem in its lack of community. 

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Sanskrit:

1. Sangha: community of like-minded seekers

2. Viveka: discernment  

3. Karma yoga: performing actions as selfless service without attachment to the results 

4. Pratipaksha bhavana: a practice of substituting opposite thought forms in the mind 

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References:

Here I review the first season of Practicing Well, discussing my favorite episodes and guests. I also talk about the plans for the podcast in 2023, which will begin with two really different conversations, the first with the Accessible Yoga School's Jivana Heyman and the second with M.B.Om's Amanda Kingsmith. After the first season, which combined folks in what I call the three main "generations" of mindfulness and yoga practitioners, these two exchanges preface where I want to take the podcast and the many wellness practices that it explores.

There's lots to look forward to! Let us know what you think via audio message or email anytime! We look forward to growing these conversations with you.

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Sanskrit:

1. Sangha: intentional community of people

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References:

John Kepner, Emeritus Executive Director of the International Association of Yoga Therapists (IAYT), grew IAYT into the global standard for yoga therapy training and credentialing. He did it by accomplishing the things he says a professional membership needs to do—establish community via yearly member meetings, ground the profession in research, and publish a peer-reviewed journal as well as a professional member publication. In short, Kepner says, IAYT needed community, research, and standards, and he created all three. He did it working with hundreds of devoted professionals while "on the shoulders" of the giants who founded IAYT late last century.

Kepner believes passionately in integrating yoga therapy into the complementary and alternative medicine field and for yoga therapy to be a recognized and respected therapy. As a yoga therapist himself who was also a non-profit executive with an extraordinary administrative mind, he built IAYT, piece by piece, into the organization it is today.

This is a dense and fascinating conversation that includes many topics, ranging from our joint worry over the “race to the bottom” in yoga-teacher credentialing and training to how HSAs and FSAs are a real—if not the best—current way for yoga therapists to be remunerated for their work. This conversation is for anyone interested in the policy, leadership, and the professional future of yoga. Listen in and drop me a line to let me know what you think!

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References:

In this episode, I sit down with Joan White and Patricia Walden, two of the most senior practicing women yoga practitioners in the world. This episode continues a discussion the three of us began in 2021 about Iyengar Yoga, one of the most influential modern lineages in the world. You'll hear what it was like to study with—and be utterly devoted to—just one teacher, BKS Iyengar, and what the Iyengar Yoga system is like now in the wake of his passing several years ago. This is a deep dive into the experience of devotion to a "guru," or bringer of light, what is occurring through teachers most influenced by this guru, and how Joan and Patricia specifically have internalized all of this to continue sharing everything they've learned with their students and with yoga more broadly. If you love practice, you'll love this episode.

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Sanskrit:

1. Urdhva dhanurasana: wheel pose

2. Sirsasana: headstand

3. Trikonasana: triangle pose

4. Viparita dandasana: inverted staff pose

5. Kapotasana: king pigeon pose

6. Adho mukha svanasana: downward facing dog

7. Virabhadrasana 2: warrior 2

8. Purusha: inner seer

9. Anamaya kosha: the first of the five koshas (layers of the body), the physical body

10. Pranamaya kosha: the energy body

11. Manamaya kosha: the mental body

12. Vijnamaka kosha: the wisdom body

13. Ananandamaya kosha: the wisdom body

14. Pranayama: breath control

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References:

In this episode, I sit down with Stephen Cope, author of the The Dharma in Difficult Times, and Sat Bir Singh Khalsa, Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Stephen says that the genius of yoga in America right now lies in its ability to bring both psychology and neuroscience to yoga practice, and he believes that Sat Bir is at the forefront of this work. This conversation is about how science and modern psychotherapy are together modernizing yoga toward having its greatest impact so far in human history.

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Sanskrit:

1. Samadhi: contemplation

2. Dyhana: concentration

3. Sadhaka: a person who follows a particular spiritual practice

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Books and studies referenced:

Show notes:

In this episode, I sit down for an intimate conversation with the legendary Angela Farmer, known as the creator of the first yoga mat, who has been practicing yoga for 50 years and teaching for nearly as many. During that time, she has learned how to take her yoga journey inward and to listen to the needs of her body to cultivate a practice that she says has no name. Angela and her partner Victor van Kooten were essentially cancelled from the Iyengar Yoga community before we even had a name for "cancel culture." She discusses her experience in Iyengar Yoga, whose focus on alignment has greatly influenced modern yoga, and her journey moving away from it and compares learning deep yoga study to learning the scales of a musical instrument. Although the scales may anchor you in your practice, they are the structure you may eventually move away from as you being to listen to your deepest need to express yourself. 

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References:

What is yoga therapy and how does it address the whole person, whether that person is working with disease or wellness? In this episode, I sit down with four teachers certified by the International Association of Yoga Therapists (IAYT) to learn about the transformational relationships, whole-person care, and wellness paradigm that characterize the yoga therapy profession. In order of speaking, the guests are:

1. Lois Steinberg, Ph.D., Certified Iyengar Yoga Teacher Level 4, C-IAYT, Director Iyengar Yoga Champaign Urbana

2. Saraswathi Vasudevan, Founder and Director of YogaVahini

3. Diane Finlayson, Department Chair of the MS in Yoga Therapy program at Maryland University of Integrative Health

4. Molly McManus, Current Board President of the International Association of Yoga Therapists and Co-owner of Yoga North International SomaYoga Institute

The group discusses how:

1. they work with the western medical model.

2. you can change the way you think of the learning process itself through yoga therapy, and how working with yourself is the most fundamental thing you can do.

3. it's not about expanding the numbers of conditions but about taking in the complexity of the human being.

4. interoceptive information from the body informs yoga therapy, versus talk therapy, which is just about the mind.

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Also! This episode included some Sanskrit. We've translated most of the words used here:

1. Sankhya: a dualistic school of Indian philosophy

2. Ayurveda: an alternative medicine system that focuses on holistic healing 

3. Upanishads: the most recent part of the Vedas (the oldest Hindu scriptures)

4. Patanjali's Yoga Sutras: a collection of Sanskrit threads on yoga theory and practice

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Also referenced:

How well can an industry be when its teachers don't make much more per class than just one student pays for that class? In this episode, I sit down with AJ Schneider, founder of Beyond the Green Coaching, to discuss how money flows in the yoga industry and community—and how it doesn't. As a yoga student, former full-time yoga teacher, and former studio manager of the YogaWorks in Washington, D.C., AJ has experience with many sides of the industry, including observing longtime teachers offering classes for free. AJ points out that this not only devalues their services, but also makes it harder for those who come after in the teaching world to establish their own value. We discuss the hard realities of making a career out of yoga teaching, as well as what the post-Covid path forward looks like for yoga teachers and the business overall.

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Books and media referenced:

What is yoga in its postural form? Millions of people in the United States practice yoga every day, and their practice takes the literal form of yoga asanas, or yoga poses. These poses are also being innovated every day in the unregulated market of yoga teaching which has set a suggested standard of just 200 hours of training. Most yoga trainings take less than a month to complete.

In this episode, I talk with Matthew Sanford, a nationally-recognized spinal-cord-injured Iyengar Yoga teacher who was one of the first advocates for accessibility in yoga. Matthew offers insights for any serious yoga student or yoga teacher interested in what makes yoga yoga. He talks about how a yoga pose yokes together what you can control and what you can't, and he describes how adaptive yoga students tend to be better students than able-bodied ones. As an Iyengar Yoga teacher who is deeply aware of the subtle body—i,e., prana, a word that loosely translates as "life force" and has no direct English counterpart—he talks about bodily and energetic alignment as something that creates a sense of relief.

“Virtually every yoga practice is capable of generating a relaxation effect." This is just one of the points Sat Bir Singh Khalsa, Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, makes in our latest episode. Sat Bir and I explore the fact that yoga is a multifaceted mind-body modality offering basic strategies for coping with stress and emotion. Wee talk about how it is altogether different from a practice that the public perceives as a physical set of self-care exercises appropriate only for white, able-bodied women with time and financial resources.

As a researcher, scientist, and yoga practitioner, Sat Bir has devoted his life to bringing the scientific research on yoga to the public. He has done this the way any researcher would attempt to introduce new research in a virtually unknown field: He has conducted and begun to specialize his own research, established himself at a prestigious research school, and created professional connections—and symposia—with influencers within both yoga teaching and yoga therapy.

Here we talk about the recent Symposium on Yoga Research, held annually by the International Association of Yoga Therapists—what it is, why it's important, and where it could go. We also attempt to answer questions like: 

1. Could the growing field of scientific research on yoga have any impact on this unregulated industry of gig workers who, on average, have only 300 hours of training under their belt? 

2. How can yoga teachers reach the end user with scientific research most relevant for the condition they might be facing? 

3. How can the yoga industry reach doctors and other care providers with the right message and matchmaking in yoga for their patients? What is a yoga therapist and how might this care profession grow as the public becomes more aware of the efficacy of yoga practices for certain diseases? 

4. Has any scientific research on yoga reached the consensus-paper level in the medical community? (The answer is yes, and the research has been in oncology and chronic lower back pain).

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Books and media referenced:

In this episode, I sit down with Chris Parkison, founder of the DC Yoga podcast. Chris and I met through the DC Yoga podcast and since then haven't stopped talking about the yoga industry and community, our time as yoga teachers and yoga teacher trainers, and how to deepen the practice of yogic techniques of transformation. In this episode we get deep in talking about the Vedic concept of the koshas, or layers of the bodily experience and expression. We also cover:

1. Chris's archival work on the DC yoga industry

2. His long-planned trip to India and how going to the "source" impacted his practice and teaching

3. The importance of mysticism and how, without it in your body, you're unhappy and incomplete

4. How much of a teacher's own practice reflects what they share in a teacher training and/or their classes

5. Oranges.

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Also! This episode included some Sanskrit. We've translated most of the words used here:

1. Kriya: action

2. Koshas: the layers of the body

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Books and media referenced:

In this episode, I share my thoughts on 20 years of yoga teaching and 30+ years practice with three of my students who share their own intersectional yoga journeys of differing backgrounds, bodies, and ages. They discuss their individual paths to yoga and what teachers and types of classes work for them.

1. Eric is close to 70 and practices Iyengar Yoga for resistance training. He loves being his age and able to do many of, if not most of, the poses in class that students half his age cannot. He feels empowered by choices in yoga, knows that these practices are what keep him getting out of bed in the morning, and he vastly—vastly!—prefers in-person yoga to online yoga. I also enjoy making him laugh when he's upside down.

2. Lizzie, in her 30s, has had scoliosis since becoming a teenager and, until finding my classes, found that yoga was painful and not useful for her. Now, she not only sees the benefits of a practice modified for her body's needs but also values yoga as a way to still her mind, no matter what else is happening in the world.

3. Miah is in her 40s and has practiced alignment-based yoga for decades. She loves her body and also knows that it has particular needs for it being safe. She loves both online and in-person yoga classes especially because they cool her ambitious, competitive side while also challenging her to do things that would otherwise scare her to try.
All these students discuss what their practices are actually for and how yoga helps their lives. ____

Episode credits:

In this event, I sit down with three leaders in modern yoga, Gary Kraftsow of the American Viniyoga Institute®, Monique Schubert of Kripalu Yoga, and John Schumacher of Iyengar Yoga. In this first episode of Practicing Well, we talk about what yoga lineage is and why it matters. This episode covers:

1. The knowledge base, practical relevance, and teacher-to-student transmission endemic to yoga lineage

2. The community and connection held in tradition in yoga lineage

3. The original discovery of yoga lineages by the original yogis who "sat by rivers and in caves."

4. Multifaceted lineages such as Kripalu Yoga

5. The responsibility of yoga teachers to meet students where they are

6. How to trust the integrity of a system of learning and knowledge, and how the commercialism of yoga is less when the community connection is more

7. The imperfection of gurus

8. How, in yoga, "there is no place to hide" from your teacher or yourself.

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Also! This episode was Sanskrit-heavy. We've translated most of the words used here:

1. Sampradaya: the flow of the tradition

2. Parampara: the line that goes from teacher to student

3. Sangha: community

4. Guruji: what you call your guru

5. Guru: destroyer of darkness, bringer of light

6. Seva: selfless service

7. Svadharma: what you're here for in the phase of change and life

8. Householder: people who practice yoga while also trying to live ordinary lives in the world instead of living in an ashram

9. Antarayah: obstacles

10. Vyadhi: disease; it's one of the obstacles

11. Dharma: the teachings that lead us to freedom

12. Yamas: the first limb of yoga; social practices

13. Niyamas: the second limb of yoga; internal observances

14. Acharya: expert instructor

15. Satguru: fully realized being

16.Shloka: a phrase or sentence, like the sutras or the lines in the Gita

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References: 

Welcome🕊!

Practicing Well, a new podcast, is about how practicing being well = wellness. This podcast is about the modern practice of being your best self in your mind, breath, body, and brain. It helps you ground amid our bazillion distractions in modern life. You will hear conversations between people with a lifetime of practicing wellness and mindfulness, people who have a lot to say about the actual, dig-in dirty work it takes to discover the mental freedom, quiet, and internal bodily authority and autonomy—the peace—that is everyone’s birthright.

Hosted by wellness entrepreneur Kim Weeks, Practicing Well brings you conversations on the practices of wellness and yoga, how to understand the deeper study of yoga, and how to find out the best kind of yoga and mindfulness for you. In particular, we are asking these questions: What is yoga lineage? What is it, and why does it matter? How is the burgeoning field of scientific research on yoga and mindfulness the best way to validate yoga as a legitimate modality for both health and disease management? And, perhaps most vitally, what can we learn about the intersection of equity and wellness culture/industry? How many people are actually empowered with the resources to practice being well?

With Practicing Well, we hope to create a space for you to reflect on your own wellness practices for your body, breath, and mind. Practicing Well intends to curate impactful conversations, with actionable takeaways, for living an educated, embodied, wellness-practiced life.

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Episode credits: