Finding Harmony Podcast Episodes

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 experiences, she realized they needed more emotional and therapeutic tools and support them, beyond die...

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 made Gimme Shelter… and nothing has been more real since. This said, our guest today is not a Gree...

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 abruptly we lost the damn interview for weeks, only recovering the recording with a bit of techno...

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 are each one a surprise fascinating in their strength and wisdom. Is there no where else in history w...

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 vivre or alegria de viver as one might say in Portuguese. You may remember him mentioned by his ev...

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 teaching yoga and coaching woman. After attending fashion school she was invited into an internship at V...

“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 transformation. Today, our teacher is Alex South, a contemporary Dancer from Warwick, currently living in Tex...

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 of all, not being invented here. It’s being revealed. In the way that, say Indiana Jones, pulls back...

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 the unconscious bias towards women (or against women) that we all seem to continue to carry. Yan ha...

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 space and time with prescient ability... In other words, He would be Bene Gesserit, Reverend Mother,...

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 gave me the peace of mind I was looking for.” When he returned to Copenhagen he participated in hi...

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 way whatsoever, but as a man who loves all beings and naturally sees Love within them. Not many me...

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 the physiological process of becoming whole as she dips her toe into the water of serenity. Come sit...

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 Donahaye was Russell’s first Mysore style Ashtanga teacher in NYC, his mentor, and the last man certified...

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 was assisting Danny Paradise, as a 19 year old. Andrew has given us all an incredible gift. He has ...

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 abusive situation, she searched for different therapies to help heal from the past trauma. She found ...

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 friends you’ve known for 20 or 30 years develop “Google” or win an NBA championship; and yet, unde...

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-composed. Looking back at those times in the quiet suburb of Gokulum, Barry has shared with us new insigh...

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 student Maria Boox had ever seen! We spoke to Lisa about leaving her marriage to pursue her dreams, an...

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 streets... Months in advance! These days, we’re so inured to the constant flow of information and co...

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 and wide within our global yoga family. Joey Solano is an accountant. He is someone who finds gr...

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 become a kind of “in-between person,” neither here nor there, but like all these mythological figures...

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 beings, we present our friend and fellow Canadian, an Irish born lass, Emma O’Neill. She’s a lady ...

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 Television, but the real prototype of our time is the “Walk and Talk” by Aaron Sorkin, The West Wing, ...