Yoga Inspiration

Yoga is here to change the very foundation of the way you think. But that can only start when you change the way you inhabit your body. Join me in this episode for a special dose of daily yoga inspiration.

This special meditative practice will open your heart and change the way you look at yourself.

The society we live in teaches us to toughen up and put on a happy face. But the longer we live in society, the more we become hardened to the ways of society, and it's hard to let go of that, even as we practice yoga.

Yet the practice of yoga is designed to break this facade and give us a moment to establish a powerful emotional link with our bodies.

The body is the home of your spirit while you are on this earth, and it's important to understand the value of your body. This value extends beyond the shape and size of your body. Yoga reaches into the very space you inhabit.

If you've ever felt ashamed of yourself, at yoga practice or elsewhere, then you understand what it feels like to judge your own presence. It's important to feel your presence and tune into yourself without any judgments or desires. This pure act of feeling and awareness is where we begin our practice.

With today's practice, I'm asking you to open your heart to the idea of self-love and acceptance. Listen today and consider these three things as you practice along with me:

1. Think about the space of the physical body without judgment. If it hurts, let it hurt.
2. Experience the inner body, the space beneath the skin and thoughts of your conscious mind.
3. Experience the space around your body and feel the space you physically inhabit.

Open your heart and share the lessons you've learned on the yoga mat with me and my listeners. Send an email at [email protected] and tell me - what does yoga mean to you? You could be invited to guest spot on The Yoga Inspiration Podcast with Kino MacGregor!

Stay connected: @kinoyoga and @omstarsofficial

View my teaching schedule, blogs, etc on Kinoyoga.com

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On this episode of The Yoga Inspiration Podcast, I'm sharing the inside scoop on what yoga means to a lifelong athlete. Dusty is a professional gymnast and yoga student in Las Vegas who didn't take his first yoga class until he was in his 60s! Now it's been five years since he started and his experience is bound to inspire yoga beginners and expert yoga students both to get on the mat.

Because you don't have to be an athlete to practice yoga. Sure, being a lifelong gymnast has its perks when it comes to flexibility and core strength, but Dusty reveals that any kind of athleticism can't prepare a yogi for the mental and emotional workout the practice takes you on.

Unusual circumstances brought Dusty to the yoga mat. As a gymnast, he was always sustaining sprains and injuries - but then he broke both of his legs in a surfing accident. It wasn't the physical healing he was worried about. Dusty was more curious about the emotional impact an injury like this would have on him. He shares how his first yoga class inspired him to rethink his healing process and why he ultimately decided to turn taking care of himself and his yoga journey his top priority.

I've always been in awe of the work gymnasts can put in. But yoga taught Dusty things he never considered before. We're always quick to assume that someone as nimble as a gymnast can just hop on their yoga mat and do pose after pose after pose. In reality, yoga stretches a range of motion that a gymnast like Dusty never stretched before.

Dusty discusses what surprises him most about the differences between gymnastic training and yoga practice. It might surprise you to hear that a star athlete like Dusty couldn't even do child's pose at first! But all of this practice and learning made Dusty feel like a beginner again.

No matter how far along you are in your yoga journey, you will always be a yoga beginner. There are always new positions to learn, new mistakes to be made, and Dusty shares with me the things that yoga is teaching and re-teaching him every day.

Dusty even asks me what it's like to be a yoga teacher at the end of this episode. I must admit that self-reflection immediately makes me feel embarrassed. I still feel like a beginner. I relate to my yoga students and they inspire me every day to get back on the mat and keep trying.

What is your yoga inspiration?

It's something Dusty made me think about on this episode, and it's something I want you to think about as you listen today. Because you never know when inspiration will strike. You can't predict what the world has in store for you, and you never know where moments like these will end up taking you. Like Dusty says, yoga is timeless, and your yoga mat will be right here waiting no matter where you're at in your yoga journey.

If you're a practicing yoga student, please share a bit of your yoga journey with me! Send me an email at [email protected] and tell me - what does yoga mean to you? You could be invited to guest spot on The Yoga Inspiration Podcast with Kino MacGregor!

This episode of Yoga Inspiration is a special one! Not only am I interviewing two of my favorite fellow yogis - Henry and Veronica - but it's also our first ever LIVE podcast episode. I took the podcast to Omstars to share some inspiration in real-time and give people a chance to ask their own questions.

And there are some very important questions discussed in this episode.

Veronica shares her experiences battling with mental health on the mat. For her, it wasn't necessarily about attaining physical perfection or mastering the asanas. Veronica wanted to return to the home within herself and reconnect with her body.

Yoga is a spiritual experience, and Veronica discusses how being an empath impacted her yoga practice, her mental health, and inspired her healing journey.

Of course, she couldn't do this all by herself. Henry, her husband and fellow yoga teacher, offers advice on how to be supportive of a partner in crisis. He may not have come to the yoga mat for spiritual healing, but the practice teaches him a lot about how to help others (and yourself) heal.

Too often we want a clear cut explanation for why things are the way they are. Sometimes that's impossible to find. Life is chaotic, Henry says, and yoga teaches us how to sit comfortably with this uncertainty.

We all have the narrative in our heads that tells us that we can't or won't, and yoga can be the opportunity we need to prove ourselves we can. It can also be an opportunity to heal and find well-being.

But achieving mental, physical, and spiritual well-being is easier said than done. Many of us on this journey will need mentors to guide us on our way. Choosing a yoga teacher, a therapist, a doctor - or asking for help at all can be an intimidating experience on its own. Where do you start?

Finding a teacher or a mentor is a matter of asking yourself - what kind of person do you want to share your space with? Henry and Veronica provide amazing resources for those who need them and advice on how to choose. By aligning yourself with the core values that mean the most to you, you can find someone to help you grow as a person.

When is it appropriate to seek therapy for mental help?

Veronica and Henry have advice for that too. Veronica promised herself that if she found the help she needed, she would share what she learned with others. Tune in now for spiritual and mental healing and a glimpse into the subtle energy training that influenced Veronica and Henry's healing journey.

Share the lessons you've learned on the yoga mat with me and my listeners. Send an email at [email protected] and tell me - what does yoga mean to you? You could be invited to guest spot on The Yoga Inspiration Podcast with Kino MacGregor!

Contact Veronica Lombo

Instagram: @kaluluwaco

Website: https://kaluluwa.co

Contact Henry Winslow

Instagram: @henrywins

Website: https://henrywins.com

Cultivating gratitude is almost always on our minds during this time of year, but the concept of gratitude is multifaceted. There are so many different ways we can be grateful!

How do you express your gratitude?

There are no right or wrong answers here. I just want to encourage you to look at gratitude from a different perspective in this daily dose of Yoga Inspiration.

We are all grateful for those positive moments in our life, those big events and loved ones we've waited for. Unfortunately, our lives aren't made up entirely of amazing days. In fact, most of what you experience in life is neutral.

Think about that for a moment…

The brain innately reacts to every situation in one of three tones: positive, negative, or neutral. While positive experiences inspire feelings of attachment and joy, negative experiences can create patterns of aversion. But neutral situations garner no such reaction.

What does this mean when most of our daily experiences are neutral?

Well, depending on how you react to the positives and negatives in your life can influence the way you interpret these neutral experiences. Each reaction stimulates certain patterns in the mind, and I discuss how your mental habits can be changed for the better by teaching you how to skew your reactions.

How you react to any given situation is very important. Our reactions are our one true freedom.

We have the freedom to choose how we react, even when it feels like we can't control it. But that lack of control is just a habit that's set up shop in our minds. In yoga, we call this samsara. Samsaras are habitual reactions influenced by moments that happened in the past.

Yoga teaches us how to be present in the moment, which can help us recognize when past experiences are influencing our present-day reactions. More importantly, it can help us notice when negative past experiences are impacting our otherwise neutral day-to-day moments.

You have the power to skew those moments of neutrality toward a positive reaction. If you can interact with a neutral experience in a positive light, you can start to change your point of view on life.

I'm sharing ways you can do this on the yoga mat and in your daily life to cultivate a new way of thinking. Get inspired and learn how to cultivate a new path for these neutral moments so you can be grateful all year round for even the most mundane moments in your day!

Share the lessons - both positive and negative! - that you've learned on the yoga mat with me and my listeners. Send an email at [email protected] and tell me - what does yoga mean to you? You could be invited to guest spot on The Yoga Inspiration Podcast with Kino MacGregor!

This episode is a Dharma talk I shared with my students here in Miami. I discuss the intersection between neuroscience and yoga, and I hope you are inspired to break some of your bad habits after listening to this special episode of The Yoga Inspiration Podcast.

I may not be a scientist, but I love yoga, and I'm interested in the elements of yoga that can be studied and verified by rational, scientific means. Yoga has the power to retrain our brains and our bodies, giving you the power to lay the foundations for more evolution of consciousness.

To visualize this, I want you to remember the Native American proverb of the two wolves. As the story goes, there are two wolves living in each of us - the wolf of hate powered by anger, sorry, jealousy, and greed; and the wolf of love, powered by compassion, peace, love, and serenity.

These two wolves are in direct competition with one another in our subconscious. The wolf that lives is the one you feed. And as you practice yoga, you feed that wolf of love. You become kinder and more empathetic toward yourself and to others.

There is always a lot of talk about the negativity bias, how to work with stress, and what stress can do to our bodies. But when we focus on all of this negative energy we are completely overlooking the fact that there are equally strong physiological systems rooted in connection, empathy, and compassion.

The wolf of love is the state of calm and connection we all feel in our practice. The physical poses of yoga are designed to develop our empathy and our kindness, and it's important that you remember this as you listen to this inspirational episode.

The more you practice yoga, the stronger your mind becomes. With each asana, you're building a concentrated mind that will stop you from feeding into the reactive patterns you may be used to, and learning how to develop new, more compassionate ones.

Tune in now and learn to re-conceptualize the way you think about yourself and about your yoga practice. I want you to tap into our natural capacity for empathy! I'm sharing steps you can take to conquer your fears and self-doubt and learn to recognize that you have the power to change the way you think.

Share the lessons you've learned on the yoga mat with me and my listeners. Send an email at [email protected] and tell me - what does yoga mean to you? You could be invited to guest spot on The Yoga Inspiration Podcast with Kino MacGregor!

Tune in now to this special episode of The Yoga Inspiration Podcast and learn how to use yoga as a life hack.

If you've ever heard of jailbreaking a phone, then you know what I mean by life hack. Yoga practice can open you up to a new life of infinite growth and inner peace by teaching your brain (and your body) new ways of thinking.

Your tendencies toward self-hatred and negative thinking are not permanent states of being. The operating system of your brain can be updated, and you can become a conscious creator of the thoughts that you think and the emotions you feel.

Ancient years ago, yoga practitioners in India developed the practice to understand the operating system of the human mind. I'm talking about the science and technology of yoga. Think of your body - the operating system we exist in - as a type of technology, and the language that we use as a kind of code.

Of course, the language of the mind is words. But what about the language of the body?

A vast majority of our communication happens with our bodies, and almost all of our body language is subconscious. You could think of your body as your subconscious mind, and your body speaks best when your mind is silent.

Think about how quiet it is when you step onto your yoga mat. How that silence lets you step into and through your body with each asana...

Communicating with your body is key to using yoga as a life hack, and there are key times of the day when your yoga practice will hit it just right - like first thing in the morning!

Learning how to communicate with your body is the easiest way to make some serious updates to your subconscious mind and the way you think about yourself and the world around you. I'm sharing more yoga life hacks in this podcast to inspire you with another reason to get on your mat this morning.

Yoga has the power to change your brainwaves, and a few minutes on your mat every day is all you need to use yoga as a life hack. Practice with me today online at www.omstars.com.

Share the lessons you've learned on the yoga mat with me and my listeners! Send an email at [email protected] and tell me - what does yoga mean to you? You could be invited to guest spot on The Yoga Inspiration Podcast with Kino MacGregor!

If you've been following me on YouTube then you know that I love to teach strength poses in yoga. It might surprise you, but when I first started yoga I wasn't naturally strong. That's why these strength poses are so important to me and my personal yoga journey. In this episode, I'm taking you on my journey of strength to inspire you with you some of the most important lessons I learned on my yoga mat.

Remember back to my first episode - my very first impression of yoga was the headstand. I wanted nothing more than to be able to stand on my head. That's what I thought yoga was: a fitness class of perfect, physically fit people standing on their heads. I quickly learned that couldn't be farther from the truth.

The yoga path is for everyone, and this is why representation is so important in yoga. When the yoga journey is presented as one image or one particular shape or size or color of body, it starts to exclude those who really want to learn the practice. Yoga students start to think they have to pose a certain way or look a certain way to be a real yogi, and it can be really hard to find the strength to stay on your mat.

But you have the strength! We all have the strength to get back on our mats and try these poses again and again and again. I wasn't able to snap my fingers and be in a headstand. There were months of practice, of posing, of kicking yoga teachers in my attempt at inversion. And there were a lot of doubts. I doubted myself and my own strength and thought - there's no way I can do this.

That's when I turned to my yoga teacher. Yoga teachers - in fact, all teachers have the uncanny ability to believe in their students, even when that student doesn't believe in herself. That faith started as a tiny seed, a tiny voice that shouted "Yes I can!" through the doubt, and it eventually bloomed into the strength I use today, both on and off my yoga mat.

The lessons I learned of lifting myself into a headstand carry through to my daily life. I have the strength to lift myself up from negative emotions or cycles of self-doubt, and I've learned to trust in this strength as well. Don't sell yourself short just because you don't think you can be any stronger than you are right now in this moment. I'm here to tell you now that you are strong enough, you just need to put in the effort to see your strength. Are you willing to work for it?

What lessons have you learned on the yoga mat? Please share a bit of your yoga journey with me and my listeners. Send me an email at [email protected] and tell me - what does yoga mean to you? You could be invited to guest spot on The Yoga Inspiration Podcast with Kino MacGregor!

We're all on a quest for truth. If you practice yoga, then you'll recognize the term Satya, which means true essence or truthfulness. It is the goal of yoga to cultivate Satya, and I'm discussing this philosophy in order to bring some clarity to the modern concept of Universal Truth.

Satya is the ethical concept of the value of truthfulness. It's considered a virtue of the yoga practice and it guides us on our everlong quest for truth. More importantly, Satya is the opposite of falsehood and delusion, and it helps govern the very operation of our universe.

But what does truthfulness mean in our contemporary world?

What we're after are the answers to some of the deepest questions of life. The goal of yoga is to cultivate true knowingness and to understand what Satya means.

Satya exists in our individual actions and thoughts, and it can influence the way we interact with one another. By practicing yoga, we can move on from our individual biased truths and into the universal truths of this reality.

Universal truths - like gravity - are infallible. On the other hand, our individual truths are shaped by our experiences. They are often based on value judgments and opinions. We make most of these value judgments subconsciously, which can give people the power to take advantage of our relative truths.

What yoga is after is to find you a path out this relative truth through the practice of Satya. I share some ways to recognize your own biases in the echo chamber of our society and discuss the limits to the types of knowledge that yoga intends to teach you.

It's time to cultivate a path to knowledge and wisdom within ourselves. The yoga practice presents different ways to reach this knowledge and wisdom, and this universal kind of awareness is the kind of truth we're after through Satya. It's so much more than determining what's true and what's not. It's time to connect with the universal truth of what is and contemplate the very nature of being.

If you would like to share any lessons you've learned on the yoga mat with me and my listeners, send me an email at [email protected] and tell me - what does yoga mean to you? You could be invited to guest spot on The Yoga Inspiration Podcast with Kino MacGregor.

This podcast episode will air the week before the United States Presidential Election, and I'm dedicating this discussion to the importance of civic engagement.

I was inspired to do so by my yoga students and fellow practitioners, whom I keep hearing say that they believe their vote doesn't matter, or that it doesn't count. So many American citizens sat out of the 2016 election for that reason, and that disenfranchisement still lingers.

It seems like this time around, more and more people are giving up on the idea that their vote matters.

I come from a very political family. My mom was a lobbyist for the Teacher's Union, and she brought me to volunteer in elections when I was a little girl. I was involved with election campaigns long before I was old enough to vote, and the environment has always been at the top of my mind when it comes to political issues.

But this podcast isn't about political issues or political parties. In this episode, I am inspiring you to participate in your government. Yoga has the power to change the world, and that change starts from within ourselves and through our own actions.

The history of The United States is fraught with hard-won battles for the right to vote across generations. Choosing not to vote disregards those who came before and made the sacrifice just so we could have this right. I encourage you to do your own research and vote for what you believe in.

I'm providing resources here where you can check your voter registration and find local voting polls in your neighborhood -

• Turbovote.org
• iamavoter.com
• Vote.org

Check these out, vote for what you believe in, and try not to hate those who may disagree with you.

If you're a practicing yoga student, please share a bit of your yoga journey with me. Send me an email at [email protected] and tell me - what does yoga mean to you? You could be invited to guest spot on The Yoga Inspiration Podcast with Kino MacGregor!

This special episode of the Yoga Inspiration Podcast is going to feel like a conversation between friends. I have a lot of things on my mind since publishing my brand new book, Get Your Yoga On, and I feel like it's getting harder and harder for us to talk to one another with compassion.

Studies show that bad news travels faster than good news. And, unfortunately, the algorithms in our social media accounts are designed to capture our attention and draw us in.

This is why the bad news shows up at the top of our newsfeeds way more often.

Every time you react to these negative posts, the more the algorithm thinks that's what you like and will keep showing you more. This kind of persuasive technology is what I'm discussing in this episode, and I want to help my fellow yogis gain consciousness over the information we're consuming online.

Negativity bias is real. It's a biological inheritance from a time when it was really important to amplify negative experiences. This makes sense when it was protecting us from predators, but in this modern hi-tech world it means that our brain is going to remember the worst things without letting us focus on the moments that make us happiest.

I do not doubt that this is why we have so much negativity in the world right now. I know that if we took a moment, took a breath, before responding or reacting to a negative encounter - online or off - we might have a little more compassion for one another.

This is why shadow work is so important. Bringing up things that make you uncomfortable teaches you how to be compassionate toward yourself, which is a call for healing. It's a powerful thing to be able to recognize and forgive negativity in yourself, and even more so when you can apply this same compassion to others.

As yogis we are called to embrace compassion and love. The emotional labor of our practice teaches us how to use compassion to improve ourselves on emotional and spiritual levels. I am asking you now to apply this same compassion to those around you.

I'm ending this episode with a special metta practice designed to tap into this compassion. I see the good in you, and I see the potential goodness that can be throughout the world through us. Please take this metta practice to heart and grow your light big enough to embrace, understand, and help others through their own pain.

If you're a practicing yoga student, please share a bit of your yoga journey with me - the good and the bad. I want to talk with you about it so send me an email at [email protected] and tell me - what does yoga mean to you? You could be invited to guest spot on The Yoga Inspiration Podcast with Kino MacGregor!