Yoga Inspiration

We all start yoga practice for selfish reasons. Our minds are in pain, our bodies are in pain, and we are looking for something to escape our suffering. Conventional happiness doesn't always cut it. We want a way to truly heal ourselves that isn't through prescription drugs or any of our other vices.

I'm here to tell you today that there is no conventional path to happiness. In fact, there is no "right" way to happiness either, and practicing yoga can break this cycle you're in of finding - and losing - that sense of happiness and fulfillment.

Your yoga practice presents a different path for you, a spiritual path. The spiritual path of yoga leads us into becoming someone and something other than what we have assumed we are for our whole lives.

Wait - becoming someone other than you thought you were? Isn't that a heavy thought?

This concept can be very hard to process, but yoga gives you the tools you need to take on this spiritual concept and gives you the strength you need to confront yourself.

Patanjali called these tools tapas. Tapas is what you feel when your back muscles burn as you try to pull yourself up from the downward dog. Tapas is what you feel when your thighs and calves are burning for days after your practice. And if you can think of this burning as a purification, then you're one step closer to understanding this spiritual path you're currently on.

You will come across tapas numerous times during your yoga practice. I'm covering Patanjali's tapas in this episode because they are key to finding true peace and happiness.

How?

Tapas will help you break the shackles of your ego, which makes it possible to confront yourself on the yoga mat. Tapas give you the ability to turn your senses inward in order to give you that liberation that only happens when you break down everything you know about yourself.

Sounds nice, doesn't it? If only it were as easy! Unfortunately, nothing about our yoga practice is easy. I've been practicing yoga for nearly two decades, and I can tell you honestly that it doesn't get easier. But anything worth doing is never easy.

To make it easier for you, I'm sharing an in-depth discussion of the different tapas and how they manifest in our bodies, in our senses, and in our souls. You will learn new ways to enlighten your senses and redirect that power to the inner world, the one that's inside of you and so very, very important to your spiritual journey through the practice of yoga.

What are some of the lessons you've learned on your spiritual path? Please share some of what you've learned 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!

Grief is such a profound subject that impacts so many of us. Yet it is still one of the hardest emotions to talk about, even with our closest friends. This episode of The Yoga Inspiration is very important because Cynthia, a new yoga student, is opening up to me about her own journey through grief, pain, and healing by practicing yoga.

Who do you turn to when you're grieving?

Being vulnerable and opening up to someone is one of the only ways to truly allow yourself to heal. Vulnerability breeds generosity, love, and acceptance, and yoga allows you to open yourself up to these emotions without fear. Part of what yoga teaches us is that, through our pain and vulnerability, we are able to find that human connection.

When Cynthia's father was diagnosed with cancer, she looked for an opportunity to get healthier herself. She didn't want her daughter to go through what she went through, and she decided that yoga class was a great way to get fit and strengthen her immune system. But what Cynthia wasn't expecting was how yoga would strengthen her soul.

The story Cynthia shares on this podcast is one she hasn't really told anyone else yet. It takes a long time to process grief and finding the words to talk about these emotions doesn't come easily. Yoga gives Cynthia a different way to heal. Yoga practice is less of a physical practice for her and more an exercise of her soul and of her mind.

Your own yoga journey might inspire some emotions you aren't expecting. For Cynthia, her journey helped her find peace. Everyone manages their grief differently, and finding peace with it is a long and hard process for many of us. People say grieving gets better with time, but you'll hear on this episode that we don't necessarily believe that. We may get stronger, and we get better at withstanding the waves of grief, but it never really leaves us.

In order to process her grief, Cynthia learned not to judge herself for the sometimes ugly emotions she would feel. Once upon a time, a yoga teacher told Cynthia, "Don't judge the pose." In that same vein, Cynthia knows that she can't judge her own grief. Yoga teaches us that we must accept it and be at peace with it.

There is a kindness and a softness that comes through when you practice yoga. When you step on your yoga mat today, remind yourself that life is precious. It's sweet, and it's beautiful, but it is temporary. These moments we have are valuable, and they too shall pass. Cynthia's vulnerability on this episode is proof of that, and I hope that it inspires you to see the beauty in your life's tiniest moments.

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!

We all come to the yoga mat for so many different reasons. We may crave a healthier lifestyle, or we believe we're ready to take on the spiritual journey of yoga practice. But this yoga journey takes us through more than meditation and asanas. And one of the greatest gifts of this journey is truly meeting our bodies for the first time.

Meeting your body - more importantly, loving your body and being comfortable in your own skin - is the biggest blessing that comes from yoga practice. We spend so much time in our minds and outside of our bodies that we've forgotten how to actually be inside the body.

I want to share with you now that yoga is a tool that can reacquaint you with yourself and teach you how to be comfortable in your body.

What you're looking for is the sense of ease that comes from being at home in your own skin. You can't run and hide from yourself, even though we all may have tried at some point. But to find peace, you have to know peace within yourself first. I know this from personal experience.

I've been at war with myself before, and being at war is not where I want to be, or where I want you to be either. I want everyone to come into the yoga practice and become at peace with themselves. The more we're at peace with ourselves, the more we'll be at peace with one another.

What does it mean to you to be at home in your own skin?

You don't have to answer that question right now. Sit and listen to this podcast. Ask yourself - are you listening to your body?

The body doesn't speak with grammar or logic. Your body will speak to you through sensation and feeling. It's been speaking to you since you were born, but we've forgotten this ancient language. Coming to the yoga mat can help you remember.

The biggest mistake that so many yoga students make is failing to realize that they have the potential within themselves to love themselves and be comfortable in their own skin. It isn't easy, but it's not impossible. You have to learn to listen to your body and understand the language your body uses to communicate.

Yoga will take you on a journey to become best friends with your body. Are you ready?

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!

Welcome to a new paradigm of thinking! This episode of The Yoga Inspiration Podcast is all about Spiritual Bypassing - an important term I want every yoga student to get familiar with. Understanding this concept is integral to your yoga journey as it can be what's possibly holding you back from your spiritual growth through yoga.

Spiritual Bypassing was originally introduced by John Welwood in the 1980s to describe the process when certain concepts of the yogi's spiritual path are co-opted and used for avoidance, repression, and other negative mechanisms. All of the concepts that we learn about in yoga - the patience, the acceptance, the enlightenment - can be bypassed by our behavioral routines without us even realizing it.

Do you ever find yourself thinking negative thoughts?

We all do. Yoga teaches us that we can't have the light without the dark, but you should never feel guilty or be embarrassed by your negative thoughts. If you do feel guilty, then you are experiencing a Spiritual Bypass.

That's because it's hard to accept your shadow shelf, especially if you're stuck in a cycle of negativity. In the moments when you feel insecure, frustrated, even jealous, it can be hard to accept some of the metaphysical and spiritual concepts of yoga. These ideas that "everything is fine, just breathe" can feel ingenuine, even flippant. We can't pretend that problems don't exist, but we can take control of the way we feel.

The spiritual tools of yoga are meant to give you the confidence to go into the deepest darkness of our shadow selves with the understanding that nothing is permanent. I share the ways these tools work for me and how you can implement them into your own yoga routine. This way, when a Spiritual Bypass tries to tell you that nothing matters, you can practice finding that balance between the bypass and your spiritual path.

The middle ground between the Spiritual Bypass and the Path to Enlightenment is my main focus on this episode. Because finding that middle ground is not easy. There are still days when I get on my yoga mat feeling angry and insecure about my poses or my body. The trick is to recognize when you are bypassing your emotions and learning how to sit with them instead. I share these 3 tricks on this episode -

1. Tune into your breathing.
2. Listen to your body.
3. Practice non-reactivity.

I dive deeper into these 3 steps and ways I make them work for me and my yoga practice in hopes that I can inspire you to find a happy medium between your lightest and darkest self. You have to have faith in yourself and put in the work to build that strong foundation for yourself, otherwise your yoga journey will be anything but easy. It's time to take the concepts of open consciousness and apply them to the nitty-gritty of your real world. Are you ready?

If you're a practicing yoga student with an inspiring journey, 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!

This episode of The Yoga Inspiration Podcast is important for every yoga student, teacher, and yoga studio owner to hear. I'm very excited about the energy Davina Davidson brings with her to the yoga mat, and the perspective she shares with us today is something the yoga community needs to hear.

Davina is the founder of The Melanin Yoga Project in Houston, a project that focuses on creating a space where people of color can learn, ask questions about, and ultimately practice the benefits and teachings of yoga.

The reality is that there is not one singular black experience in the yoga community. There are unconscious biases built into the business standards of the yoga world that, quite frankly, do not create a safe space for POC yogis to learn or even teach their practice.

More than that, these biases greatly limit the opportunities yoga students and yoga teachers have to interact with diversity.

From Davina's point of view - as a successful black woman and as a yoga teacher - it is the responsibility of the yoga teachers and the yoga studio owners to start these inclusive conversations. As leaders, we need to be open to receiving feedback and constructive criticism. It's time to ask - what is your experience coming into the yoga space?

Davina and I discuss the different ways yoga teachers can engage with their POC yoga students and ask these kinds of questions. Not only to make sure that they and their yoga practice are doing well, but also to see where we, as teachers, can create more space and opportunities for them to get the most from our yoga community.

Doing this sometimes means having those difficult conversations. It's not easy to look inward at yourself and start unpacking unconscious prejudice you didn't realize you had. But if you can acknowledge the privileges you've been afforded, then you can recognize the areas where you can make a positive change.

We want to make a positive change on a bigger level. Davina says it's time to move past our individual experiences and realize we, as a community, have a systemic issue with race and blackness in the yoga world. We can still embrace ahimsa while taking actions that benefit the POC yoga community, and Davina shares with us further steps we can take to acknowledge race and turn them into teachable moments, not only for ourselves but for our yoga students.

Check out some of the resources Davina recommends for self-study:

• 13TH Documentary on Netflix
• Braving the Wilderness by Brene Brown

If you're a practicing yoga student with an inspiring journey, I want to hear your story. 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? I would love to have you as my guest on The Yoga Inspiration Podcast with Kino MacGregor!

Welcome to yoga class! As we navigate our new post-COVID world, I'm bringing you new opportunities to practice yoga online. This two hour class will give you the opportunity to meet me as a yoga teacher and follow me through one of my favorite ashtanga yoga flows.

Are you ready to transcend your mind and meet your true self?

The goal of yoga practice is to help you realize that you exist beyond your thoughts and your physical form.

For this reason, your yoga journey is important now more than ever. To meet you on this journey, I'm making myself more available online for yoga students everywhere. Please immerse yourself in the experience of this episode and practice some of the yoga sutras with me, like the ones I discussed in Episode 1.

There will be more opportunities like this and immersive experiences coming online as we move through our new normal way of life. Make sure you're following my podcast so you can stay up to date with all of the amazing yoga opportunities coming your way.

Our relationship with ourselves greatly influences our yoga practice. And some of us might think of ourselves as our thoughts, or maybe we think of ourselves as our physical bodies. On this episode of The Yoga Inspiration Podcast, I'm going to tell you that your sense of self is neither.

Your life is more than this material structure. It's hard to detach our self-identity from our thoughts, but the goal of your yoga practice is to help you realize that you exist beyond your thoughts and physical form.

We are not the body. We aren't even really our minds. Those things represent our smaller selves, the one that exists to please our ego and cling to the material world. Those cycles of suffering I've discussed in previous podcasts come from this limited view we have of ourselves.

When you think this way about yourself, you are glorifying the ego and moving further and further away from the teachings of yoga.

Are you ready to transcend your mind and meet your true self?

Working towards our liberation is no easy feat, but the yoga sutras are designed to help you transcend. On this episode I discuss three specific sutras from Patanjali's Three Ways of Knowledge:

1. Anumana, or intellectual knowledge, which is what you can think about and reach a seemingly logical conclusion
2. Agama, or devotional knowledge, which is the knowledge you don't understand but you take it to be true because you trust the source
3. Pramana, or experiential knowledge, is direct experience, and when we experience something we know it to be true even if we don't understand it logically

Ideally, these types of knowledge all line up and we reach a transcendent sense of self-knowledge. But of course, this is not as easy as it looks. Too often we reach incorrect logical conclusions, or devote ourselves to the wrong sources of information. I discuss ways we do this in our daily lives without realizing it and how it all influences our misconception of ourselves.

Can you remember a time when you came to an incorrect logical conclusion? Think about it.

You can use logic and still reach a wrong conclusion that looks and feels correct. Maybe you even confirmed this logic with a source you found on Facebook or YouTube, thus devoting yourself to a negative agama.

This is not an easy thought process to shift. It's harder than just turning around to get a new perspective. The challenge lies in breaking the habits of your mind to think beyond the physical and the mental. Shifting this thought process is a goal of the yoga practice, and we dive deeper into this concept as I answer questions at the end of the episode and discuss ways you can use these sutras in your daily yoga practice.

If you're interested in learning more about yoga sutras like these, stay tuned. There will be more opportunities and immersive experiences coming online as we continue to navigate the post-COVID world. Make sure you're following my podcast so you can stay up to date with all of the amazing yoga opportunities coming your way.

If you're a practicing yoga student with an inspiring journey, 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!

Ashtanga yoga doesn't have a reputation for being accessible, and I've spent my career trying to change this. Because if you don't see yourself in this yoga space, how will you ever feel a part of our community? That's why I invited yoga teacher Angelica Wilson onto the Yoga Inspiration Podcast.

Angelica's spent 8 years using her background as a dance instructor to create a more accessible space in the yoga community. As a dancer, she learned to teach classes for all ages, body types, and skin colors. This experience is something many yoga teachers lack, and Angelica shares how these experiences are key in creating accessibility in yoga.

Both dance and yoga give off the vibes of high ponytails, cinched waists, and light skin. This leaves very little room for diversity. We discuss ways the media perpetuates these images and how this deters many of us from ever stepping foot in a studio. Think about it - something as simple as a clothing brand can make you feel like you aren't dressed appropriately for yoga class!

All beings should be treated equally; this is one of our teachings and truths in the yoga practice. But as it turns out, this is not a truth in every yoga studio all of the time. Angelica shares her experiences practicing and teaching in different studios. In some instances she's treated like a student, in others like the receptionist. Each story comes with an interesting reflection on the unconscious biases we all have and the ways in which we can start unpacking them.

This reflection is important. Too often the instinct is to react defensively rather than to listen and reflect. Don't cut off your ability to listen. If you can't listen, then how can we trust you to reflect and make a positive change?

We have reached a point as a society where passive conversations and empty promises are no longer acceptable. There are steps we can take as yoga teachers, studio owners, and as simple human beings to bring about positive change, and Angelica shares a few with us on this podcast.

It's time to unpack and challenge our unconscious biases. More than that, it's time to hold those in positions of power accountable for perpetuating stereotypes and downright alienating people from practicing yoga. Change won't happen overnight, but when you actually take time to enact change in your own way of thinking and living, you'll quickly see how those positive changes influence the world around you.

If you're a practicing yoga student with an inspiring journey, 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!

This is a special episode of The Yoga Inspiration Podcast. It's shorter than you might expect, but I'm discussing the importance of ahimsa within our personal revolution. A cultural revolution is happening around us right now, and our yoga practice gives us the power to inspire change in not only ourselves, but in others.

Yoga practice is designed to break the cycle of suffering. When you sit quietly on your yoga mat, you may feel anger, fear, or hatred towards others, maybe even towards yourself. But you practice yoga to find and uproot these seeds of suffering within yourself so that you can be a better person.

Why not expand this healing cycle? When we take the principles we learn and practice every day on our yoga mats and bring them into our reality, we have the power to inspire that same change in others.

Right now, those privileged and in power are allowing themselves to be guided by fear and hatred. As long as these seeds of suffering are there, there will never be justice or peace. And as long as good people continue to turn away from the injustice we're seeing today, then justice will never be our reality.

But yoga justice is real. We have the power to inspire change in our community. We aren't just sending light and love with each pose. Our love is an action verb, and there are actions we can take as yogis to make sure those seeds of suffering don't blossom.

How are you using the values of ahimsa in your daily life?

There is no lasting change without behavioral change. I'm speaking today from personal experience. I do not claim to be an expert on race relations or sociological theories, but I do have over twenty years of experience on this spiritual yoga journey. And as a yoga practitioner, you and I both have the power and the responsibility to inspire change in our community.

What actions are you taking today?

If you're a practicing yoga student with an inspiring journey, 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!

Over the past twenty years, we have seen the yoga world morph and evolve. Yet we are still so far from where we need to be. It's a shame that it's taken us this long to recognize the need to support and uplift the black and brown voices in our yoga community.

I invited Shanna Small on this episode of The Yoga Inspiration Podcast to give us actionable steps we can take to make yoga more accessible amidst the Black Lives Matter movement and the powerful cultural shifts we are seeing today.

Shanna has been practicing ashtanga yoga for almost two decades. She started yoga because it seemed like a cute and interesting workout that just so happened to be sprinkled with spiritual teachings. It wasn't until she heard the yoga sutras for the first time years later that she recognized the true spiritual power of the yoga journey. Today, Shanna teaches accessible ashtanga yoga.

This is something I am personally excited about. I believe in accessible yoga classes that welcome people of all creeds, colors, and walks of life to practice the asanas and explore their own yoga journeys. Yoga class is supposed to be a place where people can come to practice, relax, and enjoy themselves. For people of color, this is rarely the case.

Think about it - when you do a Google Image Search for "yoga", what do you see? Think about what kind of message this is sending to yoga students and how it is also affecting their and your own yoga journey. If you don't see yourself in the yoga community, how will you ever truly feel a part of it?

This is what Shanna calls on us to recognize in this episode. The role of yoga right now - and our role as yogis - is long overdue. Remember ahimsa means non-violence, but it's not just attributed to one group of people. Ahimsa is the idea that, if harm is being done to any of our fellow human beings, then - as a yogi - it is our responsibility to be of service.

Shanna writes in her blog that this concept of Yoga Justice is more than just love, light, hopes, and prayers. Your hopes need legs, and your prayers require action. Right now is not the time to be passive. That's why we're sharing actionable steps you can take now as yoga students to start inspiring change. And you don't have to be confrontational. Be an ally by asking yoga studios - "Why are you so homogenous?" And inspire your friends to take classes with a yoga teacher you know is diverse and supports an accessible approach to yoga.

Change will start with you. This episode is meant to inspire you and equip you with the knowledge you may need to move forward with these changes. We're at a time now where we need to be spreading the true philosophy and spirituality of yoga - and we're ready to take it on!

If you're a practicing yoga student with an inspiring journey, 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!