Finding Harmony Podcast

We were engrossed in conversation with our dear friend, Certified teacher Karyn Grenfell, Founder of Ashtanga Yoga Melbourne, when she mentioned a hilarious old trick... Karyn recounted, while backpacking (back in the day, before cell phones and the internet) how she planned to meet a friend at a particular time, on a particular date, in a particular city neither had been to, on the corner of two...

Grab a coffee, brew your tea, crack a coconut, because this is a real “chai-stand” conversation! In today’s episode you’ll hear story after story about different people and events within our global yoga community, including celebrity encounters, and funny stories about our time in Mysore, both together and separately. Our guest is not a professional yoga teacher, but is someone known and loved far...

Similar to Ganesha the elephant-headed deity in India, Janus is the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, frames, and endings in ancient Roman mythology. He is usually depicted as having two faces. Susanna Finocchi, (our first Italian guest!) is a woman who knows these transitions well. Susanna expounds on the weirdness of being a Southerner in the North. You be...

Samhain or All Hollow’s Eve is an ancient festival of the northern Gaelic islands. It’s a celebration meant to honor the beginning of winter when the demarcation between this world the other is thinned. On this day the Aos Si (the Fairies! as they say) travel more easily into our world, and we must disguise ourselves or risk being taken by them! And so... to celebrate this day and these celestial...

It is probably no secret to you all that we (Harmony & Russell) enjoy watching television together (shhh…!). After finishing over 21 seasons of Hell’s Kitchen, we moved on to prestige dramas like The Handmaid’s Tale and Mrs. America, and our current obsession, Succession… and often you’ll find references to these narratives percolate in conversations with our guests. We’re in the Golden Age of...

We can not wait to introduce you to our guest this week: Michael Baidoo. Michael is very unique in that he’s what we might call a “CoVid phenomenon.” He is completely self taught through online resources, social media, and Zoom. And, he is amazing! It’s a delight for us personally as older, less awestruck, students (Harmony and Russell have been doing Ashtanga Yoga for over 50 years combined!) to...

Observe this seeming contradiction: The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever. Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans. - Jacques Cousteau - Today we are taking a deep dive into the ocean of yoga with Dr. Daniela Ceccarelli as our guide. We’re learning about coral reef ecology, the purpose of counting fish, a...

It is with great pleasure that we introduce you to our friend Anna Guryeva. She graces us a with a marvelous little window into the Russian soul. From the heart of Siberia, she reveals a path to joy. To see the beauty of the Russian spirit, one must understand the generational hardship of the people, and Anna’s narrative, though particular to her, shares this ancestral trauma. To know the horror o...

It is such a joy to meet a human being dedicated to evolution, self discovery, and insight. It’s our pleasure to introduce to you the accentless Englishman, now profoundly Canadian, Geoff Mackenzie! Citizen of the world, swimmer, rugby player, and avid skier… Mysore teacher and Yogic Health Coach. He tells us how his practice has evolved over these past few year, becoming less strict. He’s created...

Richard Freeman and Mary Taylor need no introduction. In this episode, we talk about the dissolution of our minds, bodies, and practices in the face of time. How do we let go of the physicality of the practice? We were curious after 50 years of yoga, how they’ve maintained their enthusiasm in the face of age. What we heard was extremely enlightening, and surprisingly heart-opening. Your whole body...

It is with great pleasure we introduce to you the contagiously ebullient Hanne Sydanmaa from Helsinki, Finland. We asked Hanne to share a bit about the birth of Ashtanga Yoga in Finland, which continues to this day to have the most practitioners per capita over any other country in the world! We tried, in our way, to get Hanne to open herself to us… So that you could see the Real Hanne, with her z...

If you ever wondered how gods are made, our guest today will tell you they start out as heroes. They become big enough to thrust out at Brad Pitt and decide the fate of thousands of women and children. Hector must have been like that… a giant like Priapus or Goliath standing in the way of Achilles. Probably a good sized lad. Maybe even 6 foot 4 and full of muscles. Our guest today is very much lik...

September is National Recovery Month. This national observance has been held every September since 1989, to educate and increase awareness around mental health and substance use disorders. It’s also a month to celebrate the people who have recovered and honor their strength in living healthy and rewarding lives. We are reminded of Malcolm X when he wrote in the forward to his autobiography that 't...

You know her as Lee. We know her as 이성은 It is with great honor and joy that we introduce you to our very special friend, Lee (this is her last name of course). In the Korean language the last name is introduced first before the first name. Why would that be? What kind of culture believes that family is more important that the individual? The answer is a Confucian culture. Or Kong Ja Nim in Hang...

It’s our pleasure to introduce you to Ann Svärdfelt. Many of you know here as her the proprietor of the Santosha Cafe. Her experience of Mysore is unique. She came to Ashtanga Yoga later in life, already with small children, and as a responsible adult. She stepped into the practice from a very different space than many of us, who were in somewhat of a state of arrested development, bugged out dro...

As you’re quickly becoming aware, We, in our little Ashtanga Yoga Land, have a culture. This word stems from the Latin meaning “to cultivate or to toil over.” And, this cultivation of the soil, slowly became a cultivation of the mind. This is were we get the word ‘cult’ from... which is to say, “cultivated, or inhabited.” In a way, our work in yoga, leads our mind to become inhabited. We become Se...

It is with great pleasure that we introduce you to our great friend Mariela Cruz. Mariela is one of those phenomenal human that you might find in an Alexandre Dumas classic like ‘The Count of Monte Christo’ or ‘The Man in the Iron Mask.’ Someone who’s heart-centered and gifted with supreme powers of intelligence, wit, and physical prowess! With 7 children, a lawyer, a gifted solo pianist, she also...

Today we’ve created a Venn diagram of interesting listening…. Here you’ll find the intersection of the dedicated The Last Kingdom fan (secretly in love with Uhtred of Uhtred; and Aethelfled her personal hero), mixing with a keen interest in True Crime Detective procedurals, along with a curiosity in what it might take to become a female weight lifter, or body building champion (and this may or may...

"By the practice of the limbs of Yoga, the impurities dwindle away and there dawns the light of wisdom, leading to discriminative discernment." “Dukham evam sarvaam vivekinaha.” For a viveki, a person with discriminative knowledge, everything is painful and also, simultaneously, full and sweet. As epic poet, Leonard Cohen wrote, “Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering Ther...

It is our great pleasure to introduce you to our old friend (and living legend) Certified Ashtanga Yoga Teacher, Alex Medin. Unfortunately this sentence doesn’t do him justice! He’s an excellent and exceptional student in so many walks of life: a boxer, ballet dancer, a Sanskrit scholar, entrepreneur, and humanitarian to name but a few. In fact, if there is one allegory to describe Alex, it's that...

It is with great pleasure to introduce you to our dear friend Mark Stephen Pomianowski, known only as Sparky. He is a kind of Bay Area legend, infamous for his sense of humor, and his constant confrontations with wild (and quite literal) death defying situations. “Sparx” (for short) was Russell’s Ashtanga Yoga student in San Francisco, as well as a great master of Chinese Medicine who helped cure...

In Norse mythology, Freyja (from Old Norse meaning "the Lady" is a goddess associated with love, beauty, fertility, sex, war, and gold. Freyja is the owner of the necklace Brísingamen, rides a chariot pulled by two cats, is accompanied by the boar Hildisvíni, and possesses a cloak of falcon feathers. Today we interviewed a woman, who in our opinion, most embodies this Freya sex goddess energy. Lon...

For a particular generation of Ashtangi, Dominic Corigliano represents that paternal “cool dad” who knows everything that’s going on in your family and is more than happy to tell you too much about it. He’s like that cool uncle who’s not condescending and knows about the dope hiding in your room. Dom may smoke it with you, but he’s also going to be real honest about the side effects. He’s the firs...

Sista Shree, born Regina French, in the First Nation State of Sequoyah (what is now referred to as Oklahoma— okla humma) is an embodiment of the benevolent magic Earth-Mother figure that we all need in our lives. She is a kind of blue-skinned Krishna who vibrates peace and love and makes all beings in her vicinity feel friendship towards her. For us, we’ve always felt a kinship with her - an immed...

Sitting with Adam is a bit like sitting with David Beckham — they are both from Essex you understand — and are whirlwinds of energy! When Adam isn’t practising yoga, he’s talking, recording his Keen On Yoga Podcast, writing his book, and after all that, asks “what else can I do today?” To which he cheerfully answers, “I know, I’ll cook for them!” Adam has a wonderful lightness to him. His nature i...