The Mentor Sessions

Teaching yoga involves far more than the hours we spend with our yoga students. Behind every yoga class we teach there is a significant amount of planning, relationship-building, scheduling, administration, marketing, and financial management. In this episode, I share the practical systems that have helped me build a sustainable yoga teaching career over the last two decades. Following up on our r...

As yoga teachers, we spend a lot of time talking about teaching techniques, sequencing, cueing, and professional growth. But there's another side of this work that often goes unnamed: the hidden labor of teaching yoga. In this episode, I explore the physical, emotional, mental, and administrative work that happens behind the scenes of a yoga teaching career. From building a business one class at a...

Have you ever been in a yoga class where the yoga teacher gives a long dharma talk about ahimsa, and then when the movement practice begins the teaching style feels very aggressive? Or maybe you have been that teacher yourself. I know I have! I think there are really subtle and beautiful ways to teach the movement part of yoga in a way that has the deeper philosophical teachings embedded within it...

In this solo episode of The Mentor Sessions, I'm sharing a more personal, behind-the-scenes look at my life right now and the things that are genuinely helping me stay grounded, connected, and functional during a very full season of teaching, parenting, and activism. After asking on Instagram what kinds of episodes you wanted more of, one request came up again and again: more real-life context abo...

You may not have known it, but if you teach public yoga classes you have taught someone who's life has been touched by cancer. In this episode, I'm joined by Tari Prinster, a true pioneer in the field of oncology yoga. Tari is a cancer survivor, author, and founder of Yoga for Cancer (Y4C), a methodology that has trained thousands of yoga and healthcare professionals around the world. We go deep i...

Yess Yoga is a yoga studio in Minneapolis one block from where Alex Pretti was murdered by Border Patrol agents in January of this year.  In this episode, I'm joined by Minneapolis-based yoga teacher and studio owner Lucia Yess. Our conversation is both heartbreaking and deeply inspiring as we explore what it means to truly live our yoga off the mat, especially in moments of crisis. Lucia shares h...

In this solo episode, I'm zooming out from the quick, in-the-moment burnout strategies I shared in Episode 171 and looking at the bigger picture. I want to talk about why so many yoga teachers are burning out—and what I've seen actually work instead. My core premise is simple: the career model most of us were trained into doesn't work for most people anymore. If you're exhausted, underpaid, and qu...

If you are feeling stretched thin by endless group classes, long hours, and low pay you are not alone. In this episode, I share six simple, actionable things you can do this week to start shifting out of overwhelm. These are not big, life-changing plans—just small, powerful adjustments that can immediately help you feel calmer, clearer, and more grounded in your teaching life. Burnout doesn't alwa...

In this expansive conversation, I got a chance to talk to yoga and Ayurveda teacher, mentor, and author Indu Aurora to explore what yoga truly is — and what it is not. We started by unpacking one of Indu's powerful statements: "The goal of yoga is yoga. Everything else is a side benefit." This conversation invites teachers to look beyond flexibility, strength, and stress relief — and into yoga as...

In today's podcast epsiode, I sat down with a yoga therapist, teacher, spiritual caregiver and a good friend of mine, Sarah Capua. We explored what it means to practice—and teach—yoga in a time of political upheaval, climate crisis, and cultural fragmentation. In this conversation, we reflect on power, misperception, collective responsibility, spiritual bypassing, and the role of yoga teachers in...

American yoga teachers have a unique role in fighting fascism. We are deeply practiced in the tools that help us (and our students) feel clear, steady, focused, calm and resilient. And if you read the teachings the way I do, we have a powerful directive to engage in direct social action.  Lovingkindness meditation says, "May All Beings Be Safe And Free" and that is not just a nice idea, but a mand...

I am so honored to be joined on the podcast by my teacher Cyndi Lee. As a senior yoga teacher, author, and Buddhist chaplain—Cyndi talks to us about what's being gained, lost, and misunderstood as artificial intelligence enters yoga, writing, and teaching spaces. Cyndi reflects on her five decades of practice and teaching. As the founder of Om Yoga Center in New York City, a global hub for yogis f...

In this episode of The Mentor Sessions, I'm joined by Lizzie Lasseter for a wide-ranging conversation about teaching yoga in a rapidly evolving world. Lizzie is a designer, educator, and second-generation yoga teacher with over 20 years of experience. As the daughter of Judith Hanson Lasseter, Lizzie grew up immersed in the Iyengar lineage, while also carving out her own path as a teacher, busines...

In this episode, we dive into a concept that is absolutely transformative for yoga teachers: the idea that yoga cannot be both healing and performative at the same time. If we're still teaching from a linear, hierarchical, aesthetic-based model of asana, we're unintentionally blocking the very healing we hope to support. This conversation focuses on how teachers can shift toward a non-linear, pers...

Today's conversation is a deeply layered one. I'm joined by my friend, colleague, mentee, and private student Geneva Jimreivat for a nuanced exploration of how I work with private clients who experience persistent, subclinical pain and hard-to-pinpoint movement challenges. Geneva is truly a multi-hyphenate in the movement world—she's been practicing yoga since childhood, completed her 200-hour tra...

In this episode of The Mentor Sessions , I share something a little different: a Dharma talk I recently offered in my monthly class for yoga teachers. These monthly gatherings are one of my favorite places to teach—intimate, thoughtful, and deeply rooted in practice—and this particular talk felt important to bring to the podcast. Over the last several months, as the political situation in the Unit...

Before this recent solo episode, The Purpose of Asana Ep 159 , was even released my friend Cecily Milne reached out to say she was so excited to listen to it and chat about it! We decided to record our conversation for all of you, so today we have Part Two!  In this episode Cecily and I dive into what makes asana unique compared to other movement practices, we discuss the nuances of teaching with...

Is yoga exclusively connected to Hinduism? What is the caste system and why would a western yoga teacher need to understand it? How much of yoga's complex history do modern yoga practitioners and teachers really understand? In this powerful and thought-provoking conversation, I welcome back Anjali Rao — yoga educator, activist, and author — to unpack the intertwined histories of yoga, caste, patri...

If you've ever dreamed of owning a yoga studio, or you are curious to hear what experts are saying about the yoga industry and its future-- this episode is for you! In my first "podcast swap" I had an awesome conversation with Michael Jay, a long-time teacher and yoga studio consultant who is also known as @YogaBizChamp. Michael is a Certified Business Consultant who helps yoga studios open with i...

If I were to ask you what the purpose of asana is, what would you say? Would you say it was to feel better in the body? To build strength and flexibility? To prepare the body for meditation practice? To help people connect more deeply to their breath and themselves? These are all beautiful answers!!  But if you gave a very specific movement cue or alignment principle when teaching asana, and I ask...

This is a vulnerable episode for me to share, but it was very important to me to record and release this episode because it highlights something I don't think we see enough: people in positions of power, privilege or leadership openly receiving feedback. Janie Ganga is a yoga teacher I deeply admire and have worked closely with for nearly a decade. In May of this year, they reached out to tell me...

Today we are going to talk about what it really takes to grow your business as a yoga teacher, what kind of support you need, the people you might hire to help, and how I suggest you go about doing that. And to help us out with this conversation, I have the Operations Manager of my own business, Jessica Gulley! Jessica Gulley is the founder of Juggling Logistics and a logistics wizard for service-...

I started teaching one private yoga client virtually in 2019 when she left Washington, DC for California. But other than her I had absolutely NO experience teaching online when everything changed on March 13th, 2020.  I was slightly ahead of the curve in understanding that the pandemic would be a life alternating experience and that we wouldn't be teaching yoga in-person for many many months.  I m...

I've been teaching yoga full time for 20 years, and most of that time I taught at least 15 private yoga sessions each week; for a decade that number was closer to 25 per week! I have a lot of experience in teaching private sessions! And when you've been doing something that often for that long, you start to develop some specific opinions... or, I certainly did! Today we are diving into some unexpe...

Social media can be a wonderful tool to help us connect with friends, communities or potential students. It can also be a black hole of despair and panic.  Some people say it is necessary to participate and post on social media to be a successful business nowadays. I don't think engaging on social media is a requirement for having a thriving yoga teaching business at all, but if you use it right i...