Yoga Inspiration

What does it really mean to be a yogi? In this episode, Kino explores the heart of yogic life beyond postures and performance. A yogi, she reminds us, is someone sincerely committed to realizing the Self and who understands that cultivating sattva (clarity, harmony, and balance) is an essential step along the path.

Drawing from Patañjali's Yoga Sūtra and the teachings of the three guṇas (sattva, rajas, and tamas), Kino examines how our daily choices, from the food we eat to the words we speak and the actions we take, either cloud the mind or orient it toward truth. She also explores the eight limbs of yoga (aṣṭāṅga) as a practical framework for living a yogic life, demonstrating how each limb supports the cultivation of sattva.

This episode is a reminder that being a yogi is not about perfection. It is about showing up with sincerity, choosing clarity over confusion, and returning to the practice again and again. In that sincere effort lies the heart of yoga. Ready to deepen your practice? Explore thousands of classes, courses, workshops, and guided programs with Kino and our community of world-class teachers on Omstars. Practice with us at Omstars.com.

What does it take to build a successful yoga business while staying true to your values?

In this episode, Kino MacGregor sits down with business leader and longtime mentor Bruce Barkus to explore the intersection of yoga, entrepreneurship, leadership, and service. Drawing on decades of executive experience leading global companies and years of dedicated Ashtanga Yoga practice, Bruce shares practical insights for yoga teachers, studio owners, and wellness entrepreneurs looking to build sustainable businesses.

Together, Kino and Bruce discuss the realities of running a yoga business, from creating business plans and understanding financial metrics to building strong teams, developing company culture, and making strategic decisions for long-term growth. They also reflect on the lessons learned through Miami Life Center and Omstars, and the importance of balancing authentic practice with the demands of business ownership.

In this episode:

• Why yoga teachers need to think like business owners

• The importance of business plans, KPIs, and financial awareness

• Common blind spots that hold yoga businesses back

• Building community before opening your doors

• Leadership lessons from both yoga and business

• How to hire the right people and create a values-based culture

• Balancing service, purpose, and profitability

• Marketing, growth, and sustainable business practices

• Staying connected to your own practice while running a business

• Why success is built through relationships, mentorship, and support

Whether you're teaching classes, running a studio, building an online platform, or dreaming of turning your passion into a profession, this conversation offers practical guidance for creating a business that can support both your livelihood and your values.

Practice with Kino and worldclass master teachers on Omstars.

Yoga is more than flexibility or physical strength. At its essence, yoga is the training of the mind. In this episode, Kino MacGregor explores how yoga philosophy, breath, and daily practice help steady the mind, re-pattern habitual thinking, and cultivate inner awareness.

Drawing from the Bhagavad Gītā, the Yoga Sūtra, and the teachings of K. Pattabhi Jois, Kino reflects on the deeper purpose of practice beyond physical achievement. Learn how yoga helps us work with fear, emotional patterns, distraction, and the fluctuations of the mind while cultivating steadiness through breath, movement, and concentration.

As Pattabhi Jois often said, "Do your practice and think about God."

In this episode:

• Why yoga is a training of the mind • How practice reveals subconscious thought patterns • The relationship between breath, body, and awareness • What the Bhagavad Gītā and Yoga Sūtra teach about steadiness • How yoga prepares us for challenge, change, and letting go • Why the inner work of practice matters more than physical achievement

Practice with Kino on Omstars and explore guided classes, philosophy teachings, workshops, and live sessions designed to support a consistent and sustainable yoga practice.

Start practicing on Omstars.

What does it really mean for practice to deepen?

It is not a bigger backbend or a more dramatic shape. It is the quiet transformation that comes from showing up day after day.

In this talk, Kino explores how steady effort widens our capacity to feel the full spectrum of life. The highs may feel brighter, and the lows may feel deeper, yet the work is to meet both with awareness rather than attachment.

Think of the mind as a garden. When we tend it with practice, wisdom takes root. When we stop tending it, weeds of habit and reactivity return.

Kino shares a classical view of the path. Asana is a container where we willingly meet a small dose of discomfort and learn to stay. Breath gives us a way to regulate the field of mind and body. Concentration trains attention so we can see clearly. From this triad, wisdom ripens.

She also reflects on teachings that point to the universality of suffering and the freedom that comes from understanding its causes, along with the courage to respond with compassion, joy, and equanimity.

The episode closes with a reminder of the daily frame of practice: begin with devotion and end with peace for all beings. Keep coming back. Depth is not an accident. It is the natural result of consistent practice and a gentle heart.

To practice with Kino and other amazing teachers, head to Omstars and explore your practice with us.

Recorded at Nøsen Yoga Retreat in Norway, Kino and Tim explore the deeper benefits of traditional Ashtanga Yoga practice. Together, they reflect on Yoga as both a drop of nectar and an ocean, drawing on the Yoga Sūtra, the Bhagavad Gītā, and the Haṭha Yoga Pradīpikā.

From strength and vitality in the body, to balance in the nervous system, to the quiet of meditation, they share how tradition transforms practice into a path of peace, humility, and self-realization. If this conversation resonates, you can continue your practice inside Omstars. Explore full-length classes, guided series, and teachings from master instructors rooted in tradition. Begin your journey with a 7-day free trial and experience the depth of practice for yourself.

Srivatsa Ramaswami is one of the last direct students of the legendary yogi Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, often regarded as the father of modern yoga. He studied with Krishnamacharya for over three decades, receiving a deeply traditional education in āsana, prāṇāyāma, chanting, and classical yoga texts.

He is widely respected as a teacher and scholar of yoga, known for preserving and sharing the Vinyāsakrama method. His work emphasizes thoughtful sequencing, breath-led movement, and adaptation for the individual practitioner.

Through decades of teaching, writing, and lecturing around the world, Ramaswami continues to carry forward this living lineage with clarity, precision, and depth.

Continue your study with Srivatsa Ramaswami on Omstars!

Join our live Vinyasakrama class on Sunday, April 19 on Omstars.com.

Then deepen your practice in Ramaswami's 100 Hour Training, May 11–30, available online through Omstars and in person at Miami Life Center.

Avidyā: Lifting the Veil of Ignorance in Yoga

Ignorance is rarely felt as ignorance. In yoga, this root affliction is called avidyā, the veil that causes us to mistake impermanence for permanence, suffering for joy, and the non-self for the Self.

In this episode, Kino MacGregor explores the meaning of avidyā through the Yoga Sūtras, the Upaniṣads, and Buddhist teachings. Rather than a simple lack of knowledge, avidyā is revealed as an active misperception, a distortion that shapes how we see ourselves and the world.

Drawing on Patañjali's teaching that ignorance is the field from which all other afflictions arise (YS II.4), this episode unpacks how subtle and pervasive avidyā can be. It appears not only as confusion, but also as false certainty, attachment to identity, and the clinging to ideas that have not yet ripened into direct experience.

Kino also reflects on the Buddhist understanding of avijjā, where ignorance is defined as not seeing the Four Noble Truths. This points to the idea that ignorance is not a lack of information, but a blindness to reality itself.

Through classical teachings and contemplative reflection, this episode invites you to consider how perception shapes experience. Like mistaking a rope for a snake, avidyā projects fear and misunderstanding onto what is already whole.

Yoga becomes the path of undoing this misperception. Through steady practice, breath, and stillness, moments of clear seeing begin to dissolve the veil of ignorance, revealing a deeper truth that has always been present.

In this episode you will explore: What avidyā means in the Yoga Sūtras How ignorance functions as misperception rather than absence of knowledge The role of avidyā as the root of suffering Parallels between yoga philosophy and Buddhist teachings on avijjā The rope and snake analogy as a model of mistaken perception How practice gradually dissolves ignorance into wisdom

Practice with Kino on Omstars and continue your journey on the path of yoga.

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Grief is a powerful teacher. It doesn't ask for permission before it arrives—it simply comes, dismantling everything we thought we knew about love, faith, and permanence. It turns the familiar inside out, leaving us raw and exposed to the mystery of loss. In this heartfelt episode, Kino MacGregor, Tim Feldmann, Joseph Armstrong, Edgar Navarro, Frances Cole Jones, Heather Serna, and many others come together to share stories, memories, and reflections about SharathJi; their teacher, guide, and spiritual anchor. Together, they explore how grief becomes part of the path, how lineage continues through love and practice, and how the teachings live on even when the teacher is gone. As Elizabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler remind us, "The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not 'get over' the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again, but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same, nor would you want to." SharathJi's sudden departure left a void that words can't fill. When we lost our teacher, we also lost the reflection of who we were in his eyes. There was a certain refuge in being a student, the comfort of knowing that someone stood before us as a mirror, a guide, a guardian of our path. Now, that mirror asks us to see ourselves. The guidance turns inward. "SharathJi, there's so much left undone, so much left unfinished," Kino reflects. "So many questions we still wanted to ask, so many mornings we thought we'd share in the quiet rhythm of practice. We will have to walk on, sometimes and often along a lonely path, without you standing before us, but always with you in our hearts." Through shared stories and moments of remembrance, this episode is both a eulogy and an offering, a testament to the lasting presence of a teacher whose spirit continues to live through every breath, every bow, every act of devotion.

Yoga has never been a path of withdrawal from the world. It is a path of learning how to stand within it without losing clarity.

In this episode, we explore the yogic concept of viveka, the capacity to see clearly and discern what is essential from what is transient. Drawing from the Yoga Sūtra, the Bhagavad Gītā, and traditional teachings, we look at how viveka-khyāti, steady and luminous discernment, allows practitioners to act in the world without becoming overwhelmed by it.

Through the stories of Arjuna and Virabhadra, this conversation explores how clarity is restored in moments of confusion and how powerful action can arise without hatred, reactivity, or collapse. Yoga teaches that ethical action begins with perception. When the mind becomes steady through practice, discernment naturally emerges.

In a world that rewards outrage and confusion, the cultivation of viveka-khyāti becomes a radical and necessary practice.

If you want to go deeper into the study and practice of yoga, explore the full library of classes, philosophy, and courses available on Omstars, the practice platform created by Kino MacGregor. From daily yoga classes to in-depth workshops and trainings, Omstars is designed to support practitioners at every stage of the path. Share this episode with a teacher, studio owner, or mentor who would benefit from the conversation.

Start your practice at Omstars.com.

Episode Description

In this conversation, Kino sits down with Dr. Raj Balkaran to explore the deeper dimensions of yoga practice beyond physical postures. Together they discuss mythology, meaning, and the role of story in shaping how we understand and embody yoga.

Dr. Balkaran shares the origins of The Stories Behind the Poses and explains how myth functions as a living teaching tool rather than symbolic decoration. Through stories of Ganesha, Kurmasana, Hanumanasana, and the churning of the cosmic ocean, he reveals how yoga practice is fundamentally about removing ignorance, cultivating wisdom, and learning to meet difficulty with clarity rather than force.

The discussion moves through themes of inner transformation, the role of the teacher student relationship, the subtle and gross bodies, and why yoga continues to work on us even when we believe we are only practicing for physical reasons. This episode invites listeners to consider yoga as a lifelong inward journey, where practice becomes a way of refining perception, deepening responsibility, and remembering our connection to something much larger than ourselves.

Topics Covered

• Yoga as inner practice rather than performance

• Mythology as a teaching tool in yoga

• The story of Ganesha and the true meaning of obstacles

• Poison, difficulty, and transformation in practice

• Kurmasana and the still point within chaos

• Physical and subtle dimensions of yoga

• Teacher student relationships and authentic transmission

• Yoga as a lifelong journey rather than a destination

About the Guest

Dr. Raj Balkaran is a scholar of Sanskrit narrative literature, Hindu mythology, and yogic philosophy. He is the author of The Stories Behind the Poses and teaches internationally through courses, lectures, and retreats, bridging academic scholarship with lived spiritual practice.

Practice with Kino on Omstars

Continue the conversation on the mat. Omstars is Kino's online yoga platform, offering thousands of classes, workshops, and in-depth courses designed to support a sustainable, lifelong practice. Members can explore teaching, philosophy, strength, mobility, and mindful movement from anywhere in the world. Share this episode with a teacher, studio owner, or mentor who would benefit from the conversation.