Yoga Inspiration

Join me for a metta practice in gratitude. Giving thanks on your spiritual journey is important. It's important to recognize your yoga teachers (and their teachers before them) for helping you uncover these gifts, and it's important to be gracious to the path itself for offering these gifts to us. So, get into a comfortable position and relax. Notice your breath and allow it to overwhelm your sens...

Ro Averin, founder of the UNLRN PRJCT , will be moderating our Ashtanga Intersections Panel — hear from them now on this special episode of the Yoga Inspiration Podcast! Ro has always been drawn to the deeper purpose of teaching and healing, and she discovered yoga at a young age. But you never know where your path can lead you. Ro's path has taken her on many journeys through academia and across...

I am discussing the deeper dimensions of yoga practice with one of my yoga students, Shakira Bouwer. Shakira is a fellow yoga teacher who has been practicing Ashtanga yoga for 13 years. For both of us, what keeps our own practices fresh and fun after all these years is creating a more accessible practice for our students.  Yoga is a mirror that all of us need in order to take a good, long look at...

The practice of yoga has less to do with your ability to do a headstand and more to do with your personal experience on this journey. After working with so many yoga students, I'm bringing their questions to the Yoga Inspiration Podcast and answering them here. It's a new style of episode, and I think it will be a great way to bring the yoga community even closer together.  I have been practicing...

If you live in the Florida area or plan on visiting, stop by and take a class at Pineapple Yoga. I had the pleasure of teaching and having a talk with the yoga students there about Ashtanga yoga, and I share some of the lessons I've learned that are real for me and other students practicing Ashtanga. The uniqueness of the Ashtanga practice is not the asanas, which are the same every time you step...

Kim Weeks and I are back. If you missed our chat on Instagram Live, catch up here on The Yoga Inspiration Podcast. I spoke with Kim earlier about Yoga Alliance. We continue our discussion of the Ashtanga practice, the intersection of spiritual practice and social justice, and how the dynamics of the yoga teacher and the practice are changing. The Ashtanga practice provides us with the eight full l...

This special installment of Meditations for Manifesting is all about the body. More importantly, it's about loving our bodies and accepting ourselves for who we are, flaws and all. It takes practice to become comfortable in your own skin again, and meditations in mindfulness can bring us a step closer with each breath. Your breath will be your anchor today. Let it bring you back when your mind wan...

My husband, Tim Feldman, and I share some very exciting news for the yoga community and your weekend plans if you're in the Miami area. This Saturday, December 4th, will be the official grand opening of our brand new space — The Miami Yoga Garage.  We have events planned all day, and everyone is welcome to attend — online and in person. Even if you've never taken a yoga class before, this is your...

I've always been vocal about my goals of making Ashtanga yoga more accessible, but I go even deeper at this Q&A with Yoga Alliance. I answer questions from yogis from all over who want to find out more about the Ashtanga lineage and what classes are like on OmStars and at the Miami Life Center. The practice of Ashtanga is hard, gritty, and anything but easy. So my focus is on inspiring students to...

I'm excited to introduce you to my guest because he is one of my biggest yoga inspirations. Jivana Heyman, author of Accessible Yoga and his latest Yoga Revolution , encourages yogis to bring their practice out into the world. Compassion is empathy combined with action, and Jivana is one of the yoga teachers who inspired me to follow this path. He started by teaching accessible yoga classes for th...

In this episode of Yoga Inspiration, I want to answer one of the most common questions and biggest worries yoga students have at all levels of practice: "How can I stay consistent in my practice?" The truth is, the yoga practice will end up changing your whole lifestyle. Not overnight, but the practice will slowly become a part of your daily ritual, just like brushing your teeth. Yoga requires six...

You probably recognize Lotta Sebzda from Instagram. Her posts and poses inspire yogis to continue their practice every day , but there's more to this yogi than you see on social media. Lotta has been practicing yoga for over two decades, and she's seen so many changes reverberate through our community. Over her 23 years of practice — 15 of which she has spent teaching — she's seen how social media...

It's been a pretty intense week, and I want to catch everyone up with the changes that are happening. Change is never easy, and I am now facing a lot of the grief and sadness that comes about when things are ending.  We founded the Miami Life Center 15 years ago, and so many family members, friends, yoga students, and visitors put so much work into developing this space and this community. The rea...

Yoga is more than a physical practice. The asanas can be made accessible for everyone, and yoga practitioners are responsible for creating a community that welcomes everyone to the yoga mat. But is yoga for everyone?  The spiritual readiness of the student is very important when it comes to taking the first steps on this journey, and not everyone is willing to wake up early every morning to practi...

Take a moment to appreciate your yoga practice. No matter where you are on your journey, take a moment now to appreciate how far you've come. The practice of yoga itself has come even farther, originating back thousands of years in a soulful intention of re-connecting with the universe and ourselves.  Take this moment now to remember a yoga class you took or a teacher you studied with which inspir...

Now that I'm back home, I'm checking in with my listeners. I really appreciate you tuning in every week, and I am happy to inspire you to get on the mat. You inspire me to keep practicing, too, and it's been so refreshing being a student again and practicing at Miami Yoga Garage. But with the latest Facebook and Instagram crash, I want to check-in and ask - what happened to you the day social medi...

When it comes to yoga, fitness, and anatomy, Leslie Kaminoff has seen it all. Just don't call him an expert. Because as any yoga student knows, the more you learn in this practice, the more you realize you just don't know.  Leslie started his yoga career down the street from Jane Fonda's first fitness studios in L.A. He was working at the Sports Medicine Institute when one of the studio instructor...

Take a moment to pause and think about the context through which you are practicing yoga. How long have you been practicing yoga? Do you remember where you were when you were first introduced to the practice?  For many of us, myself included, we often first engage with yoga through a colonized lens. We signed up for a class at our gym or borrowed a few DVDs from a friend back in the day and never...

I have often been criticized for making yoga political, but it is impossible to be a yoga teacher today and not be socially engaged. The definition of Ashtanga yoga is changing and being an Ashtanga yogi requires more from us than daily practice. I brought Wambui back on the show to discuss more of the indigenous wisdom of our practice and how the practice of ahimsa is playing out in the world bey...

I am happy to say I have been tested out of quarantine and I am no longer in the quarantine hotel in Norway. I have so many people to thank for their support and help during this time, especially my friends in Oslo, the Oslo City Commune, my host in Germany, and my fellow yogis at the Nøsen Yoga Retreat Center . I would have never been able to get my digital vaccination card or expedite my test re...

What do you do when things don't go your way? I'm supposed to be teaching yoga classes right now, but instead, I'm sitting in a quarantined hotel in Oslo, Norway waiting for a vaccine verification QR-code. It's been nearly a week, but I'm optimistic and decided to present a new flavor of Yoga Inspiration for you. This pandemic has not been easy for any of us. No matter if you're quarantined at hom...

Ashtanga yoga is more than the asanas, and it's important to understand the method of this practice as you take this step on your yoga journey. The traditional definition of the Ashtanga method comes from Patanjali's yoga sutras, and I'm taking a deep dive into his definition and how it applies to our yoga practice in this special episode of The Yoga Inspiration Podcast. The method of Ashtanga yog...

Meditative practice starts with the breath. We first recognize the neutrality and awareness of the touch of our breath, the way it feels in the nostrils and on our lips, and when our mind wanders we always bring it right back here. But as your practice evolves, you become aware of sensations. These sensations are two-fold: those of the conscious mind and those of the unconscious mind. The consciou...

If you've ever been at the center of an emotional storm, or a storm of thoughts we can call it, then you know how real these sensations can get. Those raw feelings of pain, hurt, anger, even embarrassment are all very real emotions...but they are impermanent. As you sit here now for this meditative practice, I invite you to pay attention to your thoughts about and the way you respond to these sens...

Is yoga just a physical thing? Is our value and our skill only limited to our physical frame? Or are we practicing to be a part of something greater than ourselves? To answer these questions and more, I invited fellow yoga teacher Shanna Small back to the show to share her perspective on our role as yogis and as yoga instructors. If you follow Shanna on social media, then you know the work she is...