Finding Harmony Podcast

This morning it is our delight to present one of the most interesting people alive: The lovely Alyson Stover! With these people its always one near death experience after another and then some… Please enjoy your morning as our guest today entertains us with insider stories about DC, cross Atlantic ocean travel, Hollywood, big studio executive jobs, Ashtanga yoga in the 90s, and of course, harrowin...

Happy Mother’s Day! We are so delighted to share this conversation with you this morning. This is an important week and an emotional one. Pranidhi Varshney is the founder of Yoga Shala West , a community-supported Ashtanga Yoga studio in West Los Angeles. She is also mother to two children who she describes as “courageous and wise little beings.” The thread that runs through all her work is the de...

Buenos Dias, mis amigas! We hope you settling in to your Sunday morning. It is our honour to share with you all a conversation with our dear friend Emilia, who teaches Ashtanga Yoga in Miami. We met her many years ago on tour with Paramaguru R. Sharath Jois, and we are excited to talk with her again. We found out about her childhood in Bogatá and the impact of the Medellín Cartel on her family, an...

This is a lovely conversation! We’re pleased to introduce our dear friend from North England—our Yorkie friend Nicola Nixon! Nicola is finance executive who, very like everyone’s favourite adoptive mom, Mrs. Garrett (from the Facts of Life), is a Certified Nutritionist! There is something terribly reassuring for Jo, and Blair, Natalie, and Tootie that the one woman in their life who they can turn...

Our guest today is heroic. Not in the mud defending your country from oligarchic fascist kind of way, but no less important and no less difficult. Sara is an old friend whom we met in Mysore, India, back in 2005. Approximately five years after this first trip to Mysore, she gave birth to her oldest child, who is now just over 12 years old. All was typically normal… in a typical new mom, “this is i...

Quite a few years ago, Russell was tasked with helping out with a documentary film crew in Mysore. Not sure what his title would’ve been? Chief Gopher or Assistant Talent Manager? Basically, he was there to make sure the film crew interacted with the Jois family in a positive way. The whole point of the documentary was to promote SEVA, the work of helping others and devoting your life to selfless...

It is with great pleasure that we introduce you to our guest today, Kathleen Kastner. A devotee of Paramahansa Yogananda’s Self-Realization Fellowship, an adopted child of Kansas, Deepak Chopra’s personal trainer, a philanthropist, and a published author many times over. Her passion was fuelled by working with clients who were struggling with obesity and helping them lose weight. Through these exp...

During the course of this morning’s conversation we touched on the subject of authenticity. How does someone become real we asked? And it was said that Sunny Boy Williamson whispered this to John Lennon once about the Rolling Stones, “They’re plastic soul, John.” So, he called Paul, and named his album “Rubber Soul.” After a long time of practice and effort the Rolling Stones became real and they...

Oi ga vay and Jesus Christ! Happy Purim and Passover! Oh boy, do we have a special interview for you today! We have someone we have wanted to speak to ever since we first initiated this Podcast: The Inimitable Eddie Stern! But man, we had so many problems with this recording! Ha! Just booking the time, some unexpected delays, so we just jumped right in without any introduction. Then we stopped so...

We had such a good time talking to an old friend in Kathy Cooper. For Russell it reminded him of Anne Rice’s vampire Lestat’s recounting of his origins in New Orleans. Lestat wrote that at every corner he was continuously surprised to find another stronger older vampire coming out of the ground and shadows. Each time like pulling back yards of history. These Ashtanga yoga students from the 70’s ar...

Today we have the infamous Bull Fighting Manuel Ferreira on the show for you. We are delighted that such an old friend would agree to come on to tell us about his life and family growing up in Portugal. It’s literally true that he was a bull fighter, though perhaps just as a student and not so much a professional. He’s an interesting person to sit with as he has lived his life with so much joie du...

We are delighted to share with you this beautiful conversation with Niki Baratta, who may potentially qualify as one of the most interesting people alive! Niki comes from the U.K. (quite coincidentally, like many of our recent guests); However, she has a very unique story about creating herself, raising up in the world of fashion, to launching her very own line of jewelry, before moving into teach...

“From menstruation, pregnancy, miscarriage, pelvic pain, endometriosis and fibroids, every pelvis has a story, and more often than not, we’re quite disconnected from it.” - Leslie Howard - Have you ever heard someone say something that completely changed your life? Come sit with us on this beautiful Sunday as we join our friend Alexandra South in a deeply personal story of triumph and transformati...

The Finding Harmony Podcast has always been a play on words. How to find harmony in your life? Uncovering that point when one hits rock bottom and discovers yoga as the secret key to ending suffering… Sometime after everything else has failed. Its written right there in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra. The first one: Atha Yoga-Anushasanam. “Now, yoga is revealed.” The implication being that Yoga is first o...

Yan, like a good champagne, has a sparkling personality. We very much enjoyed chatting with her in Portugal about her life, Injuries with the practice, and learning to thrive despite suffering from an autoimmune disorder. Keeping in mind that the vast majority of yoga practitioners are female, we asked Yan what it’s like to be a female teacher in the Mysore room, and her personal experience with t...

In this week’s Finding Harmony Podcast episode, you’ll come to the confluence where Kundalini and Ashtanga yoga meet… In the heart of Sat Inder Khalsa: the Kwisatz Haderach. In this episode, we learn that in Frank Herbert’s Dune Universe, a Kwisatz Haderach would be a male Bene Gesserit, who would have access to the memories of both his male and female ancestors, as well as an ability to bridge sp...

Jens Bache is not your ordinary Ashtanga yoga practitioner or teacher. He came to yoga as a highly celebrated Engineer, in the middle of a very normal career trajectory, yet he was looking for more… Life had to have more meaning. He felt isolated and stressed. Then in 1997, on a work-study trip in Berkeley California, Jens Bache experienced yoga for the first time. “A daily yoga practice at home g...

What makes someone electric? In today’s episode we’re going to find out. Stan Woodman joins us in conversation. He has that beautiful esprit de corps that comes from overcoming adversity with a team in fellowship, even in the face of great tragedy there's still Love in the group. Good parenting does that. Stan has a confidence in him that he is loved and will always be loved. Not in an arrogant wa...

Dr. Elizabeth Ball is a unique teacher within our community. She's akin to the Neuroscientist Meditator or the Warrior Poet… A person uniquely situated to watch reality, as the seer residing in herself. She observes with awareness. As water gives life to the ten thousand things; yet does not strive to do so. She simply does. And so, with her PhD in immunology, Liz is uniquely situated to observe t...

Happy New Year, Thundercats! (That’s the name Russell’s come up with for “the Finding Harmony fanclub.” Shout out to Valerie Swift for setting this up! hint hint…. lol!) To start your year, here’s wonderful interview, with the one person who made Russell the most nervous to talk to! Yet, like all things, the experience of actually sitting down with Guy Donahaye was an absolute delight. Guy Donahay...

Merry Christmas! For this year-end special we have a little present for you all. Some Magic! We would like to introduce you to an incredibly interesting practitioner and teacher, Andrew Eppler. At one time, he was a kind of young-prince in the Ashtanga Yoga culture. Introduced to the practice by the late Cliff Barber as a 14 year old. He was Guy Donahaye’s first Ashtanga teacher in Oxford when he...

What does cooking, painting and yoga all have in common? Listen to this week’s episode of Finding Harmony with Tara Mitra to find out. Tara is a life long lover of learning, discovering new ideas, people, and places. It seems no accident that her mentor, Guru, and main teacher was named after the Hindu goddess of knowledge, music, art, speech, wisdom, and learning: Saraswati. Growing up in an abus...

The truly bizarre thing about living in an intentional ‘spiritually aspirant’ community (for decades) is that you share profound memories with a select group of folks who you know only incidentally. Yet, those shared memories are quite intense and emotional for both of you. You can imagine a professional athlete might feel the same or a developer in Silicon Valley. You watch from afar sometimes as...

New York, New York. If you can make it there you can make it anywhere. Today we interview Barry Silver, traveling artist, explorer of the mystic and esoteric realms. Although Barry is currently based in Mexico, we met him back in Mysore, India, as one of the “Cool Kids” from a thriving New York Ashtanga scene. At the time he was assistant to the revered Eddie Stern. And intimidatingly self-compose...

Sweden is famous for IKEA, ABBA, Minecraft… and Spotify! Today we speak with the lovely Lisa Lalér, who was born and raised in Stockholm in Sweden. We’re extremely grateful that Lisa opened up to us about her turbulent childhood and the trauma accumulated in her body which manifested as stiffness; so much so, that when she came to the practice of Ashtanga yoga she was praised as the stiffest stude...