Mary Taylor is a woman who has been consistently practicing Ashtanga yoga for over 30 years - through pregnancy, injury, and more recently, a debilitating illness. What’s more, Mary didn’t enter the yoga room as the star student, but rather, as she says - the stiff student. Yet where her body was not as flexible, the yoga and her teacher, were. And in today’s episode, you’ll hear Mary explain her understanding of the Ashtanga yoga method and how it’s worked for her.

Of course, that’s only the beginning of our conversation. From there, Mary talks about the body’s holding pattern, especially in terms of trauma not fully processed - sharing within this, her own experiences with sexual abuse and how this manifested within her own body and psyche. Which explains why Mary was perhaps the first senior teacher within the Ashtanga yoga community to publicly acknowledge Pattabhi Jois previous sexual misconduct - even as she continues to hold love and gratitude for a teacher who changed her life and the lives of many. It was a brave and necessary dialogue to begin. But as you’ll hear Mary say, “I can’t be part of a world anymore where women can’t talk about abuses they feel and abuses they experienced. I can’t do that anymore. Because it almost killed me.”

The Ashtanga Dispatch Podcast is edited and hosted by Peg Mulqueen, along with Meghan Powell. The show is produced by Chris Lucas. Please visit www.ashtangadispatch.com to learn more about this episode and others.