A Return to Center with MARIE RUSSEL

The moment you realize you’re off center can sting and not because you drifted, but because you start judging yourself for drifting. I’m back after a few weeks away, and I wanted to record a short, honest reset about what the practice really looks like in real life: you tighten, you react, you lose the thread, and then you get to choose your way back. I talk about the familiar gap between awarenes...

The words “I am very holy” can feel like a comfort… or like a dare. It really depends on what life has asked you to walk through. In this episode, I share a grounded and very personal reflection on A Course in Miracles Lesson 35, and why this line can feel hardest to believe right after heartbreak, public doubt, messy relationships, or those quieter moments when we begin to lose trust in ourselves...

Ever notice how the smallest acts—drinking water, taking a breath, choosing a softer thought—are the first ones we resist when we most need them? In this episode, we explore the quiet mechanics of resistance and the deeper resilience that forms when we stop fighting our own becoming. Instead of pushing harder, we look at what happens when we bring fear, judgment, and attack thoughts into the light...

What if happiness isn’t a goal but our natural baseline waiting beneath the noise? We open the door to that quieter center by looking at desire as a compass—what we truly want to feel—and then practicing small, practical shifts that bring peace into ordinary moments. Through A Course in Miracles and embodied tools from yoga, we explore how to soften the inner critic, listen to the inner teacher, a...

When the inner critic gets loud, most of us double down on control, comparison, and self-judgment. We tried a different way: letting all things be exactly as they are, even for a breath, and watching how quickly clarity returns. From the yoga mat to the checkout line, we unpack the “not good enough” loop and offer practical tools rooted in A Course in Miracles and Ashtanga Yoga to bring you back t...

What if the most radical move right now is not to power through, but to come home? In this episode, we (me + my inner teacher) return to the mic with a clear, tender, and unsparing look at spiritual bypass, the long shadow of 2020, and the courage it takes to rebuild from love instead of fear. After stepping back from teaching, trainings, and the public eye, I explore the terrain from free fall to...

Start with the quiet truth: strategy can’t fix what fear is running. We open with Danielle Laporte naming meditation as her most powerful business move, not because it’s trendy but because clarity makes better choices inevitable. From there, we trace a path from performance to presence, where daily practice cleans up the inner noise so love can do the heavy lifting. We swap origin stories about di...

What happens when we stop averting our eyes and decide to meet the dark with a grounded, loving spine? That question became impossible to ignore after a weekend that left me rattled by headlines, cultural narratives, and the quiet ways fear seeps into our habits. I turned to two anchors—yoga philosophy and A Course in Miracles—and followed them to an uncomfortable, liberating place: look directly...

What if the fastest route to spiritual alignment runs straight through your relationship with your parents? We go there with honesty and care—naming resentments, reframing old stories, and practicing forgiveness not as a pass but as a path back to power. Instead of debating who was right, we focus on the only leverage that changes our life today: perception. That’s the heartbeat of Yoga Off the Ma...

What changes when we stop avoiding the dark and decide to look—calmly, clearly, and with love? We open this conversation with shaky news and heavy feelings, then move toward grounded practices that help us keep our eyes open without losing our center. Drawing on yoga philosophy and ideas from A Course in Miracles, we explore how avoidance quietly empowers fear, and how attention infused with love...

What happens when spiritual service meets the very real cost of doing the work? We go straight at the tension between worthiness, pricing, and integrity, using a Facebook post that sparked judgment as our doorway into a deeper practice. Along the way, we unpack how scarcity hides under the mask of compassion, why victimhood and entitlement are two sides of the same coin, and how receiving can be a...

In this intimate and insightful episode, we explore how our inner energies shape the way we show up in our closest relationships. The conversation begins with a moment of unexpected acknowledgment—a new friend noticing the radiant harmony between Marie and her husband. Their dynamic, she observed, carries a higher frequency, one grounded in mutual respect and a deep honoring of the divine masculin...

In a world that feels overwhelmed with problems—global health crises, economic instability, shifting education systems, uncertainty about the future—it’s easy to believe we’re drowning in complexity. But what if, beneath all the noise, we truly have only one problem ? In this episode, we explore a radically different way of approaching today’s challenges: through the remembrance that we are connec...

The Deeper We Go, The Lighter We Get: Love Lessons from Cancer (Part 2) In this powerful continuation of Love Lessons from Cancer , we explore what it truly means to heal from the inside out. Cancer is an intensely personal journey, and while no one can walk it for us, we can love each other through it. In this episode, we dive into the inner work that transformed a diagnosis into a doorway—one th...

In this episode, we explore the unexpected turning points that happen not in a yoga pose, but in the space between our thoughts. Our story begins with a book— “A Course in Miracles.” The moment it appeared, there was an instant pull. Even without fully understanding the text, something deeper was happening. The words on the page seemed to work behind the scenes, rearranging inner patterns, shiftin...

Fear can calcify in the body—or it can become a doorway back to love. Marie opens up about her breast cancer journey and the surprising ways yoga philosophy, A Course in Miracles, and evidence-informed practices reshaped her choices, biology, and beliefs. From the shattering grief of losing Larry to the unexpected arrival of Daniel, she traces how unprocessed emotion and nonstop hustle hardened in...

Greetings, I’m so glad you’re here. I’m your host, Marie Russel, and this is Yoga off the mat. In this podcast, I will explore how we can use the philosophy of Yoga & principles from A course in Miracles, to transcend some of the seemingly difficult poses, situations, relationships,  that we find ourselves in, off the mat. I’ll be sharing stories, tools, practices that I’ve learned, sometimes...