Finding Harmony Podcast Episodes

Today our guest is South African born Michael Schabort, an indubitable ‘child of the wind.’ Michael is an interesting person, who ever so naturally goes with the flow. Someone who floats through space and time like a salmon swimming up river. There are bears. There are female salmon. But there is also the journey home. And the journey for the sake of journeying itself. We had the sense of speaking to someone with that beautiful combination of both water and air, a unique balance of a kapha-vata ...

We are delighted to share with you today a conversation— a chai stall chat, with a dear friend in the pranayama teacher Siobhan Fitzgerald. A woman who is presumptively Scottish, but we soon learn who is from nowhere and every where all at the same time. Russell and Siobhan are both affected by the same distinction of personality, say, that comes with the constant movement, the traveling of the nomad. A nomadic child can write off a person, never speak to them again. For often in their lives th...

So.. you woke up this morning and got on your mat and put your earbuds in and said lets do it. Lets do our practice and get it done! You did the best you could. Some days that’s ok, and sometimes it’s wonderful. Most of the time, as we all know, it’s a slog and you wonder just how these advanced practitioners do it, right? How do they maintain their practice? How do they perform at such a high level, and it all seems so effortless compared to what we’ve got to work with, maybe? The steel rod in...

We caught up with J Brown, podcast creator, and host of Yoga Talks for the last seven years. With tears shed all around, J shared with us the story of how he lost his mum as a very young man. It's a heart rending story. And, for all of us when our heart rends it is an opportunity for healing. To heal is a blessing. We just don’t often do it. I think for most of us when we are slapped in the face we take the wound, and we smoulder and burn. We thicken and take long stares. Our guest today chose t...

From skiing and horseback riding to fighting fires and then throwing herself fully into her Ashtanga Yoga practice, after being stuck in Marichyasana-D (a difficult twist in the Primary Series) for 4 years, she continued on with dedication and determination, to become a Fourth Series practitioner under the guidance of David Garrigues and Dena Kingsberg. Sarah Hatcher began her Ashtanga practice with an eclectic collection of teacher from which she continues to draw inspiration from. In this ep...

Armed with Pasasana as a superpower our guest today, Vikram Jeet Singh joins us to talk about the evolution of the asana practice and our attachment to the physicality of it and how we can begin to embrace a wider scope of practice. Mr. Singh is a natural intellectual and easily speaks to any subject related to yoga. He has a clear, disciplined mind and is a joy to sit next to in the inimitable fashion of parampara . There is an exquisite vibration of gentle being that comes with sitting next to...

“Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin Dance me through the panic till I'm gathered safely in Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove Dance me to the end of love.” Leonard Cohen Diana Christinson takes us on quite a journey. It reminds us of Leonard Cohen’s Dance Me To The End of Love, a sacred vision of love and life that reflects our Hero’s quest to find meaning in both. As a fellow student in Mysore, like so many of us, we know Diana by virtue of having been there togethe...

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, harrowing health scares. No good life is complete with almost dying a few times! “Water flows continually in...

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 desire to build community and live from the heart. Of all the things she is, a mom, a business owner, ...

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, and we talked about the American appetite for narcotics that sewed that destructive force in her life...

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 to is the lady that manages their diet. When you think about it… it’s so incredibly wholesome. Die...

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 insanely impossible” kind of way. But, then Rocco developed symptoms of autism. Doctors informed ...

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 service. Sevā is a Sanskrit word that describes the act of selfless service. Its meaning is said to...

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 d...

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 Greek...

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 technolo...

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 wh...

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 o r alegria de viver as one might say in Portuguese. You may remember him mentioned by his e...

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 Texas...

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 ba...

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 has ...

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 his f...