Yulady Saluti – Be Kind All of the Time

Posted on January 27, 2023 by nativeyoga

⭐️ S-P-E-C-I-A-L ⭐️ E-P-I-S-O-D-E ⭐️ #💯

I am pleased to present to you…….. YULADY SALUTI!
It is with great pleasure I can bring to you yoga and running celebrity Yulady Saluti. Yulady is an inspiration and motivation to thousands of yoga practitioners and running enthusiasts. She is an Ostomate and Breast Cancer Survivor who has beaten the odds many times. During this podcast she shares her passion and enthusiasm for motivating the masses.

During this podcast she shares:

what got her started in yoga
the catalyst that got her started on her journey of healing and recovery
how she became addicted to drugs and found sobriety
getting past the fear of honestly telling her story
Yulady’s mission to share and spread kindness
what her vision is for the future &
how to find balance in your life

Follow Yulady Saluti on Instagram here: @yulady

You can listen to the full podcast here for free.

Todd McLaughlin

Welcome to Native Yoga Toddcast. I am so excited for today because it marks an anniversary. Today is episode number 100. Yes! I had the goal of getting here. And I’ve made it. I can’t believe it, and I remember after my first episode, which when I go back and listen to now I’m like, “Oh…. I’ve learned a little bit since then.” I remember thinking when I saw other podcasters that have 100 episodes and thinking, “oh my gosh,” I just gotta get started with one here. And then two, and then little by little, interview by interview, person by person here we are. It’s just been such an incredible experience for me. Every time I get a chance to interview somebody around the world who has passion for yoga and has learned something from their experience with yoga I get so inspired. I enjoy hearing their passion for bodywork and their ability to teach and to share. The stories that I’ve heard over these last 100 episodes, about overcoming challenge and the willpower that exists in us as human beings is phenomenal. The ability to jump hurdles and or to get knocked down and to come back up again and, just be here for each other and to listen and to foster open communication. For me, this is just an honor, a privilege, and I love it so much. Because of you and all of your feedback and all of your encouragement and support, we’re all here together still trucking along.

On that note, as a special guest for episode number 100. I am pleased to announce that today’s guest is you Yulady Saluti. There’s so much I could try to say to introduce you to you Yulady, but she’s going to tell you everything that you need to know. She’s incredible! She’s inspirational! And I love her passion and her honesty. So without hesitating. Let’s go ahead and begin…..

I’m so excited to have this opportunity to bring you Yulady Saluti to the podcast today. Yulady, how are you doing?

Yulady Saluti

I’m great. How are you? Nice to meet you.

Todd McLaughlin

I know, I’m so excited, because we tried to get this to happen for a little while now. So now that the moment is here, I’m just thankful. Thank you very much.

Yulady Saluti

No, thank you for being so understanding, of course, of course.

Todd McLaughlin

So I have a lot of questions for you. I’ve been following you on Instagram. And I find that you have a very inspirational message. And I guess to get started, the first thing I noticed on your Instagram, the very first thing you have written is Noli Stan, and so obviously that you’re your baby?

Yulady Saluti

Yes, that’s my granddaughter.

Todd McLaughlin

That’s your granddaughter! Okay. All right.

Yulady Saluti

So a little background on me. My husband and I have been together 20 years and we are a blended family. So when I met him, I had a daughter from a previous relationship. And he had three kids from a previous relationship. And then we have two together. So we’re like six altogether. And we’re a big family. So my my oldest, I call them all my kids. I hate this term stepchildren because I grew up with a stepdad myself and he hated when I called him stepdad. He said that and you know, eventually I was like, Yeah, I get it. I get it. So I call all of them my kids. So my older son Jerry got married during the pandemic to a lovely girl and they had a baby on last September. So I decided that I was going to turn my Instagram account into a Noli fanpage.

Yeah. She’s the best.

Todd McLaughlin

Can you share what it’s like to be a grandparent?

Yulady Saluti

Oh my god it is so amazing! I was just saying to my husband, because I was babysitting, how incredible this feeling is to be able to be with her. I babysat her for a few hours, all by myself. I just had her here it’s like, this cannot get any better than this. This also goes for people that have their own children. Like picture that feeling when you have your own baby and then magnified by like, 100. That’s the greatest feeling. And you just like I can’t believe I’m lucky enough to be part of like this. This baby is mine, like not mine. But like it’s it’s my baby. Because my grandkid is a different type of love than a child love. It’s like bigger. I don’t know if that makes it any justice. Does that give your question any justice?

Todd McLaughlin

Yeah, that’s a great explanation. It’s funny. I have a friend who was a grandpa and he used to always say, it’s double happiness. Double happiness because I’m so happy when they show up. And then when their parents come to pick them up on I’m even happier.

Yulady Saluti

You get you get to do all the hanging out and then I get to drive home and sleep all night.

Todd McLaughlin

Right, you get a full night’s sleep, and then have the joy the next day. Oh, that’s amazing. Yulady. That’s cool. Yeah, yeah, awesome. Well, you know, I mean, where do I even begin? How about can you talk about what got you started on the journey of yoga practice? I know you have a lot of talents. And I definitely want to go down the track of what you’re really passionate about right now as a runner. But I want to kind of start with what was your intro into yoga and how did your healing journey begin?

Yulady Saluti

Well, yoga is my, I guess, was my my number one passion. My first passion and probably will always be my number one passion. My husband and I would get out of work and our first thing was to get to our favorite yoga class, and it was this wonderful reward at the end of the day. And so, two weeks into it, I mean, no, two months into it, I got sick. I noticed that like, I just couldn’t handle any physical activity and not the heat, and the physical part of it. There was nothing like it and I was in and out of hospitals, and in a lot of pain. I mean, like maybe like 10 out of 10 pain in nobody could figure out what was going on. And I had to I have had a surgery. Two years prior to that and then another one a year later for these masses that they found in my colorectal area. So very high up into the rectum, like right where the colon the rectum meet. I didn’t have great health insurance. So I didn’t question anything. I said, Okay, let’s get a biopsy in. I went to get the biopsy. And that night, I got really I got really sick. And it got really, really infected. And I ended up with more pain and another surgery to fix it. And then another surgery and then that gave me like a year of relief. And that’s in that year is when I met my husband we met shortly after that we moved in together and then he and then that’s how I found yoga. So my yoga life took a pause for many years because I was sick for many years after that. And then I went to have children what happened in this part of my medical journey was I needed a colostomy bag, which is for those who don’t know what a colostomy bags is, they essentially pull your intestine out of your body and sew it to the outside of your stomach and you poop out of there. They cut the intestine out and they put it out so you don’t no longer poop out of your rectum you know your your don’t use that area anymore, you poop into a bag that you change all the time. Like a couple times a day if you need to. Yes. And I was very young I was in my early 20s, I was very uncomfortable. Having that, like, I didn’t want to share it with anybody and I kept it all very to myself. Many people that knew me, wouldn’t ever know that. I wouldn’t ever mention it. And I so that kept me from ever going back even when I started to feel better. Ever going back to a yoga class.

Todd McLaughlin

Do you feel like because of the fact that it would be noticeable through your outfit that that is why you didn’t want anyone to see you?

Yulady Saluti

Yeah. And also another thing, which I’m very comfortable with now, and it actually took me many years to get where I am was, when you have this, when you pass gas, you have no control over it, you know, because there’s no muscles holding. So it just comes in it makes the noise in same thing with poop it comes whenever you want to. So that always made me so uncomfortable. So to me that was like, “Oh my God.” Now it happens all the time and I’m with clients. And I’m like, “Oh, I’m sorry.” And it just we just laugh, you know? Yeah, yeah. So it took me a long time to get comfortable with it.

You can listen to the full episode for free here: https://nativeyogacenter.buzzsprout.com

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Dr. Michael Shea – Embodiment of the Senses Through Yoga & Meditation

Posted on January 13, 2023 by nativeyoga

Join my special guest, Michael Shea PhD, for a discussion titled Embodiment of the Senses Through Yoga & Meditation. During this conversation we discussed Michael’s new book titled, The Biodynamics of the Immune System: Balancing the Energies the of the Body with the Cosmos. You can preorder his new book on Amazon by clicking here.

Michael and I are pleased to announce the launch of our new course called All Levels Meditation & Yoga Course.Check out this new course by clicking here.

Visit Michael on his website here sheaheart.com

You can listen to the full podcast here for free.

Todd McLaughlin

Wow! I’m really excited to have Dr. Michael Shea again here in person at Native Yoga Center for today’s episode of Native Yoga Toddcast, which is titled Embodiment of the Senses Through Yoga and Meditation. Michael, how are you doing today?

Dr. Michael Shea

Well, it’s been a busy day because I spent the morning at the car dealership and looking at their giant aquarium waiting for the tires to be rotated and for an oil change to happen. So an entire morning at a car dealership gave me a really good opportunity to meditate on an aquarium.

Todd McLaughlin

Nice. Do you have any profound realizations in the process of staring at the fish?

Dr. Michael Shea

Always the profound realization is how wonderful space is, you know, when I get caught up and you know, not wanting to be where I’m at, at a car dealership, because I got better things to do, of just releasing my attention out into space. But in this case, it was the biggest aquarium I’ve ever seen. And just releasing my attention to the aquarium and then looking out into space as well.

Todd McLaughlin

That’s cool. You know, we have two really big announcements to share today. Number one, I’m so excited to have a copy of your brand new book called the Biodynamics of the Immune System: Balancing the Energies of the Body with the Cosmos. Whoa, that’s a lot.

Dr. Michael Shea

Yeah, he’s a big, thick steak if you’re a meat eater, but it’s also a big soy burger if you’re a vegetarian.

Todd McLaughlin

And so I’m really excited to have the chance to ask you some questions about your most recent publication. Also, you and I have created a course and today on the launch of this podcast are launching our course together called All Levels Yoga & Meditation Course. And so you know, I had a lot of fun filming this with you. And I’m excited to release it today. And it’s available on our platform nativeyogaonline.com. The link for that is in the description below for anyone listening would like to check it out. Michael, from us filming that course do you have any takeaways from the experience? What are you excited to share with people that are interested in taking that course.

Dr. Michael Shea

I think meditation in general, and yoga, is constantly evolving in our culture. And when you study yoga and meditation, because I’ve been studying it now for 45 years, something like that, is just realizing like it’s so highly nuanced. And the next teacher says, Well, have you tried this? And the next teacher well why don’t you try this to refine your practice? So there’s never really an end game. That’s the one thing I learned. But there’s a continual opening, you know, as long as you have that willingness to be open to a teacher and to a new class. And as I said, you know, earlier when we were just talking, before we started, I just like to stay with what I know versus what is trending and what’s current. I have to tell you just a short story. I’ve been studying all year with with a Lama from Tibetan medical background. But he was in Sikkim, and then in Bhutan in the summer, and he was broadcasting from there. And he was at a very high level. It’s called advisory on a tantric Buddhist conference in the capital city of Bhutan, in which all the heavy hitter Lamas from Tibet and that area of the world you know, we’re coming together for this conference, and the one thing he said is that because it was going on our planet these days, the veil of secrecy of all of these different meditation practices need to be lifted, and the secrecy needs to be taken away because we are in such an important time on this planet right now with the intensity of the polarization and duality. So, you know, one of the things I share in my book is, not necessarily sharing secrets, but sharing the techniques that can help. But I understand why some of that knowledge, some of the mystical knowledge, or the meditation knowledge, or yogic knowledge, in general, is secret. It’s just because teachers want to have you go through a progression. Because of your aptitude. Some students can’t go to the end game right away. They can’t, you know, go right out into space, you know, and stay grounded at the same time. So, at any rate, it’s exciting because I feel liberated in wanting to share more and more and that book is one vehicle of sharing more, in terms of what was formerly considered to be secret knowledge. And again, that veil has been lifted. I’ve never been good at holding secrets anyway, even my mother knew that.

Todd McLaughlin

There is a term in a book that you had given me a while back ago called the phenomenon of basic space. Can you explain that?

Dr. Michael Shea

Well, my teacher who was originally the Dalai Lama wanted all of his students to do Buddha scholarships. So I spent 10 years doing very intense Buddhist scholarship. And now I’ve even lost track of the question, explaining basic space and phenomenon. Yeah, see, I went into basic space just now.

Todd McLaughlin

I’ll pull you back in if you drift too far over there.

Dr. Michael Shea

I’ll thank you.

Todd McLaughlin

I’ll reel you in.

Dr. Michael Shea

Right, right. So it was because I want my answer to link to, you know, this discussion of, of yoga and meditation. And so as a scholar of Tibetan Buddhist literature, there’s really the two highest level people that you know, those are the writers you go for, in the Kyagu and the Nyingma, tradition, or sometimes it’s known as the Xhosa tradition. It is from the book The Precious Treasury of The Basic Space of Phenomena by Longchenpa. It’s also called Yoga. But he’s considered to be like the most incredible Lama that could give words to the ineffability of the infinite nature of our mind, and so forth, and all those things that we hear about and that we’re trying to achieve. And that’s one of his books. So that was recommended to me and I gave you a copy. And it basically explains the view of Tibetan Buddhism, before you get to meditation, it’s helpful to understand the view. And I think that’s also an important thing to understand about Buddhist meditation, you don’t just jump on a cushion and sit in cross legged position, and so forth. But it’s an understanding that there’s a view here, and the view is basically that all phenomena is infinitely equal. And we hear that as no self, you know, that we don’t have a solid self, and so forth, and that we’re all interconnected. And it’s described as being empty and other metaphors, you know, that are used, but he explains it the best. He explains it the best of how you rest into the element of space. And I’m talking about the element of space from Indo Tibetan point of view, you know, space, wind, fire, water, earth, and so forth. So how you rest your mind. That’s the sea, this is yoga and meditation, how do you rest your mind and body into the element of space where it all began?

Todd McLaughlin

So when you were talking about being at the Toyota dealership today, and staring at the fish tank, and being able to let your mind go into space, is there a way to explain a technique that allows one to achieve that release into space?

Dr. Michael Shea

Yeah, the basic technique is, well, again, you know, it’s relatively simple. And it’s one of these things it’s been secret for a while. It’s called looking into the wisdom of the universe, or looking into the center of the universe or looking into the center of space. All these are metaphors for the same thing, the infinite nature of the totality of life, and the universe. In general, so, but the technique is actually quite simple. And you know, you’re a yogi. And as a practicing yogi, I’m kind of a want to be yogi. I call myself a bogey, you know, kind of indulgent yogi. But the posture is always the first thing, you know, you said, You’ve got to embody your senses. And that means not labeling what you’re seeing, not labeling what you’re hearing, not labeling what you’re feeling, you come into a posture that allows you to sit still, and just be with your senses. Because you have to notice if you’re labeling a lot, oh, this is that, that is that, this is that. Labeling takes us into the head and out of our body and out of the experience of meditation and yoga.

You can listen to the full episode for free here: https://nativeyogacenter.buzzsprout.com

Listen to the podcast here on our Podcast website: Native Yoga Toddcast

Please email special requests and feedback to info@nativeyogacenter.com

Barbara Courtille – Helping Yoga Teachers become successful Yoga Professionals

Posted on December 23, 2022 by nativeyoga

I am proud to present to you this episode called Helping Yoga Teachers become successful Yoga Professionals with Barbara Courtille. Barbara has been practicing Yoga for 25 years. It is her longest and greatest love. Barbara said, “Making Yoga my professional career is the best thing I have done.” If you know that this is the life you want to create for yourself, she can help you to make it happen. Check out this episode to hear tips that Barbara shares to help yogis level up.

Visit Barbara on her website here: https://www.barbaracourtille.com
Follow here on Instagram here: @Barbara_courtille_yoga

You can listen to the full episode for free here.

Todd McLaughlin

Welcome to Native Yoga Toddcast, I’m so happy to have you here. Today, I have the chance to bring Barbara Courtille onto the show. Barbara is located in Sydney, Australia. She was kind enough to coordinate her schedule so the times could work where we could be on the other side of the world and join up here for a conversation. Please check her out at Barbaracourtile.com. Also on our Instagram page, @Barbara_courtille_yoga. And on that note, why wait any longer? Let’s get to it.

I’m so excited to have Barbara Courtille here today with me, Barbara, how are things going for you?

Barbara Courtille

Great, I’m really happy to be talking to you on the other side of the world, Todd, thanks for having me.

Todd McLaughlin

I know, I love the fact that we can communicate like this through a platform like zoom, and the spoken word of the podcast and that it’s really an easy way to actually go about communicating. I love it. It’s kind of amazing, isn’t it?

Barbara Courtille

Yeah. And I’m a big fan of podcasts. I listen to yours amongst many others, as my learning and keeping motivated and just finding out what people are thinking all around the world and connecting to other yoga teachers who are you know, my favorite people, basically?

Todd McLaughlin

I hear you! Can you give me a little bit of your background and relation to how you first fell in love with yoga?

Barbara Courtille

Yeah, I started back in the 80s. In the late 80s. When I was you know, in my early 20. I had a boyfriend who was a yogi. And I was more of an artsy kid. You know, I was into art. I always wanted to be an artist. And I did that for many years. But his thing was yoga and meditation. He traveled to India and he used to do Iyengar yoga and headstands and kriyas and all sorts of weird stuff to me back then. Yeah. And he’s the one who took me to my first yoga class, which was an Iyengar class. And that was not actually a great experience. Because my first class I was expected to do handstands and all sorts of things that my body was not happy to do. So I can remember the teacher who was an older woman, well, older, probably younger than me now, but at the time, she seemed to kind of shame me. You know, in the Iyengar way that they do. She would just say “get up, you can do this.” So it wasn’t a great experience, that first yoga class. So it’s kind of a miracle that I’m still doing yoga all these years later. And it’s basically my whole life.

Todd McLaughlin

That’s amazing. Was that in Sydney? You’re living in Sydney currently? Where did you grow up?

Barbara Courtille

My early years, I grew up in Paris till I was 10. And then I came to Sydney. So I’ve lived in Sydney, most of my life.

Todd McLaughlin

Nice. Was that first class in Sydney?

Was that first practice session that you had with your boyfriend and Iyengar teacher in Australia, or was that somewhere else?

Barbara Courtille

No, totally in Sydney. Yes.

Todd McLaughlin

Gotcha. And then from there, if you were not enamored, and you walked away from that sounds like maybe you saying, “What in the world was that?” What then was your next step? Or how long was it before you had another yoga practice experience?

Barbara Courtille

I think after that I did some meditation. And that didn’t gel with me as well. It was very strict Buddhist meditation. So I didn’t have a great start to yoga, but for some reason, I think I ended up in some what were then called Hatha classes. Back then you used to do them like in church halls or at you know, the community center or whatever it was available. It wasn’t like the fancy yoga studios like your studio. There was none of that stuff back then. And it was very much in people’s lounge rooms and all that. So I think I probably found some much more mellow, lovely kind of teachers that weren’t gonna ask me to do anything nasty like turn upside down. It took me many years before I could do a proper handstand with all the proper, you know, structure that you need for that.

Yeah.

Todd McLaughlin

Do you have a teacher that you can say that you credit your learning to or from? Or have you just learned from a whole bunch of different teachers along the way?

Barbara Courtille

I’ve learned from a whole bunch of teachers along the way. Yeah, I’ve never been a lineage kind of teacher either. I’ve explored different lineages. I think it’s just in my nature to try different things and find my own way.

So I’ve done a lot of Hatha Yoga, then I went back to the Iyengar yoga, believe it or not. Then I was into Jivamukti Yoga for a long time. And then I was more into vinyasa. Then I was into Yin. I was also doing sound healing. So I’ve done all this stuff, restorative yoga, and I just keep going and changing and learning as much as I can and incorporating what what resonates with me.

Todd McLaughlin

Wonderful. What does a practice session look like for you today?

Barbara Courtille

So this morning, I did some yoga in bed.

Todd McLaughlin

Nice.

Barbara Courtille

And then I got up and did a bit of asana practice, very simple. Plugging into the body noticing where our whole tension, which for me is generally in the upper body, so I do a lot of work on the upper body, opening the chest, opening the heart, I work a lot on the chakra system and the energy body. So I do some meditation to tune in some chanting to feel where the energy is flowing, where it might be stagnant, where it might be overflowing. And it’s from that observation that then direct my practice. So it will look different every day. But there are some things that tend to always be there, like the throat chakra is a bit of a weakness for me. I just had a little bit of manuka honey and did a bit of throat exercises before talking to you because it’s always a little bit weak. That part for me, yeah, the upper body, a lot of upper body, I’m quite strong in my lower body. I’m quite grounded, as by nature spend a lot of time in nature. I like to meditate in nature every day, if I can. If the weather’s good, so I’m lucky I live near some nature, Bush, we call it here in Australia. And so I’ll go and find a rock and I’ll do a bit of meditation. And that’s, that’s really my most nurturing practice meditation.

Todd McLaughlin

That’s cool. I noticed that you have a couple pictures or pictures of you practicing on a rock is that the rock that you’re talking about?

Barbara Courtille

That rock is called Swamis rock. It’s not where I live, but it’s where I go on retreat. So two or three or four times a year, if I’m lucky, I’ll go to the ashram which is not far from where I live. Maybe an hour away in nature. And that’s a particular rock where a swami here in Australia has been practicing for many, many years. So it’s got a lot of great energy.

Todd McLaughlin

Nice. Do I noticed that you are a yoga coach and mentor, when did that role come into play for you?

Barbara Courtille

I think it probably came into play fully when COVID came along. And when a lot of teachers suddenly had to become or realize that they were business owners, and that they had to find their own community, their own tribe and take charge of their own business or their own passion. Yeah, without relying on studios, or whatever they were relying on before that time. So that’s when a lot of yoga teachers, as you know, you know, kind of had a little bit of a pivot into becoming more business minded because they had to. Yes. So there was a lot of demand when COVID came along, when everyone was having, you know,

Todd McLaughlin

Yeah, that was pretty intense. Very intense. Wasn’t it? Amazing that now we can like talk like it’s past tense?

Barbara Courtille

Yeah, no, it’s great.

It’s really great to find wisdom. We survived on a lot of different levels.

Todd McLaughlin

I agree.

Barbara Courtille

I actually think yoga teachers did exceptionally well if we can put them all in a group because obviously, we’re all different within that group. And as a tribe, I think they, from what I’ve observed, did really well in terms of like pivoting and changing, keeping their spirits up and keeping the spirits of all the people around them up? You know, it was It wasn’t an easy task. So congratulations to all the yoga teachers out there.

You can listen to the full episode for free here: https://nativeyogacenter.buzzsprout.com

Listen to the podcast here on our Podcast website: Native Yoga Toddcast

Please email special requests and feedback to info@nativeyogacenter.com

Lindsay Gonzalez ~ Yoga, Surf & Breathwork in El Salvador

Posted on November 18, 2022 by nativeyoga

You can listen to the full episode for free here.

Watch the podcast episode on YouTube Here.

Todd McLaughlin

Welcome to the Native Yoga Toddcast. I’m so excited to introduce to you Lindsay Gonzalez.

Please check Lindsay out at her website, lindseygonzalezyoga.com. I’m gonna put multiple other links in the description below of places that you can find Lindsay. You can find her on Instagram, the handle @lindsaygonzalezyoga, you can also check out her yoga and surf retreat center in El Salvador Central America called Balance Surf and Yoga on a website called ElSalvadoryoga.com. They also have a website called sunzal.com. And there’ll be a couple of other links in there as well.

I’m so pleased to have this chance to meet Lindsey and to talk about her life down in El Salvador taking people surfing teaching them yoga, as a birth doula and in leading transformational breathwork workshops and classes. And so with that being said, also, if you all enjoy this show, if at the end, if you can write a quick review and or leave a rating and review. I really, really, really, really appreciate it. Thank you.

All right. So let me go ahead and let’s get into the discussion. Here we go. I’m so happy to have this chance to speak with you. This is Lindsay Gonzalez and Lindsay, you’re joining us from El Salvador. How are you today?

Lindsay Gonzalez

I’m doing well. Thank you so much for this connection.

I’m really appreciative of my friend Alexandra, who lives down in El Salvador. She recently wrote me and said, “You’ve got to come do a yoga and surf retreat down here in El Salvador.” She sent me your information which led me to be able to get in touch with you. And therefore I’m so appreciative for you to take time out of your busy schedule. Can you tell me how your yoga journey began?

Oh, so it’s actually come full circle in a way. I was a young girl just out of high school and I moved to Costa Rica, and kind of did it on a whim. I thought, I don’t know if I’m gonna go to college right away. But I know I need to go and get better at surfing. And so I bought a one way ticket to Costa Rica, almost over 20 years ago. Wow. And I lived on the beach with these two women that were just a few years older than me. But they were both yoga teachers from California. And they were they’re doing the traveller thing. And they had a little tiny yoga room set up. And we would invite all the local surfers over and they would teach yoga. I had come off of a life of being an athlete. I was really flexible, so they said, “Lindsay, you have to be a yoga teacher. You’re good at this.” That was the first nudge. And it’s interesting that I’m back in Latin America at this point in my life, still doing exactly what they nudged me to do.

Oh, that’s amazing. Yeah, very cool. So then I’m guessing in that 20 year period, you went back to the states and then had been traveling back and forth between US and Central America?

US and all over, really. I went back to the states and I said, Well, I think it’s time, I was 21. I said maybe I should go to college. So I went to college, but I ended up spending all of my time in the yoga studio, just down the road. And you know, being from the East Coast, you may have heard of Charm City Yoga? It was in Baltimore for a long time. And they recently were bought by YogaWorks. But I trained at Charm City 20 years ago with Kim Manfredi. She’s given so much love and respect over the last 20 years. She’s really been a guide in my life. Then I’ve always had this love of surf. So, you know, I was back and forth between Central America and the US and different states that I lived in in the US.

Nice. And how long have you been in El Salvador now?

It’s been about six years.

Wow. And both you and your husband, is it Adrian? You guys work together and manage the whole center together?

We do it all. Family life and work life.

Nice. Do you have children?

We do. Yes. Yeah, we have two little babies. Our son Luca is three and a half and our daughter, Olivia. She goes by Olivia Paloma. So she kind of has two names. But she’s one and a half.

Nice. Congratulations. Did you both meet in El Salvador or here in the States?

So funny enough, we met in Colorado, and he walked into my yoga class in the middle of winter. And I had just gotten back from leading a retreat in Panama. And I was telling my regular students about the event and how much I love visiting Latin America. He was just very kind and sitting in the back of the room. And he said, “Have you ever been to El Salvador?” And I said, “No, that’s the only place I haven’t been in Latin America.” And he said, “Oh, I should tell you about my project down there.” And we became friends. You know, it was a two year friendship before we before we started our romance. And he invited me down to El Salvador, actually, for a job. He invited me down to help him open and run the yoga retreat center, and really bring it to what it is now. And very quickly, we found that we would be great partners.

That’s amazing. Very cool story. So what is it like running a yoga retreat center in El Salvador?

Oh, gosh, it’s a lot of work. I think we have to prioritize time for surfing now, where before we did this, we would surf a lot. Yeah. But it’s, it’s really been such an amazing project to work on together. And now after being closed for about a year, we’re reopen. We have new rooms. We have a retreat here right now.

That is wonderful.

We have another small group of professional young surfers from Panama. So there’s a lot of life here, and a lot of good vibes. So it is a lot of work, of course, but the work is fun. I get to go surfing with the customers. So that was great.

That is amazing. That sounds like the dream job for sure. Your center looks really beautiful. It looks like it has an amazing pool and rooms. I saw from looking at your Instagram today that you have a new cafe opening that is inspired and Balinese style architecture and decor. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Yes, so separately of each other. My husband and I both spent quite a few years going back and forth to Bali for different reasons. I was there to teach yoga teacher trainings and he was there to go surfing. Years and years ago he had a small jewelry business with his mother and they sourced a lot of jewelry from Bali. So he was spending time there and then finally we got to go to Bali together and when we were there together on our last trip right before the pandemic, we said this is it. We have to take as many pictures as we can and we have to remember this feeling and bring it to Latin America and then create it. We did it in a Latin American way. But I think the Balinese style is beautiful with hardwoods and natural fibers and lots of very intelligent details that make the stay feel luxurious and rustic at the same time.

Nice. That sounds amazing. Did you find an architect and/or builder in El Salvador to build for you? Or is that something that you both were hands on with?

Very hands on! We worked with a local architect. And we had fun meetings where we would come to her with all of these ideas, and then she would put it onto paper. And a lot of times, she would say the builders have never done anything like this before. So we’re going to be able to teach them a new skill. And that was an exciting project, even in regards to like the thatched roof in one of our buildings. The thatch is done in a Balinese style versus a Latin American style. So very different, very challenging. But it works. And it’s beautiful.

Nice.

We’re so proud.

You can listen to the full episode for free here: https://nativeyogacenter.buzzsprout.com

Listen to the podcast here on our Podcast website: Native Yoga Toddcast

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Nona Mileva – Tapping into the Yoga Well

Posted on October 14, 2022 by nativeyoga

Check out this discussion I had with Nona Mileva. Visit Nona at her website wellyoga.net. Nona is a Certified Life, Wellness and Health Coach, Yoga Teacher and Educator, based in Jupiter, FL, United States. She works with a wide range of clients, from variuos backgrounds and age, via in person, phone or Zoom sessions. Her coaching is holistic. It entails all aspects of the client’s life – emotional, psychological, physical, spiritual , as it authentically reflects the most important human needs. She focuses on the therapeutic modalities and applications of Yoga as a practice and discipline that enhances health and wellbeing.

You can listen to the full podcast episode for free here.

Todd McLaughlin

I’m so happy to have Nona Mileva here visiting in Native Yoga Center. We get to do an in person podcast! Nona, How are you doing today?

Nona Mileva

I am good. Thank you so much for having me. Good to see you.

Same as well, I got to meet you, Nona, because you came into Native Yoga Center very enthusiastically inquiring about yoga teacher training a few years ago. You completed our 300 hour Yoga Teacher Training which brought you into like the RYT 500. realm. And you also are involved in teaching in Stuart at a place called District 108, in Stuart, Florida. Also at the Powerhouse Gym in Stuart. You also teach therapeutic yoga in some of the local retirement communities. You have recently completed getting your PhD in health psychology. And you’re currently working toward Yoga Therapy Certification. Which you said will be completed in December 2022. So you’ve been very busy…. And that’s something that I really admire about you is you love to study. You put a lot of time and energy into reading and studying. And you’re you’ve expressed a lot of interest and enthusiasm for the history and the philosophy of yoga. And so that’s why I’m really excited to have you here today. Because I can just pick your brain a bit and see what kind of like “Top hits” have made it onto your playlist for yoga philosophy and yoga history. And so on that note, what is something that you have read about and or practiced or studied recently that’s caught your attention that you’re excited about?

How I love how you you’re beginning this conversation? Thank you for the intro firstly. Yes, I have been busy. And this is just, what can I say, my mode of functioning, learning, being always curious about things and topics. So my latest educational conquests, so to speak, or interests have been since COVID. Which, as you know, was to some extent, a traumatic experience. Then from a different perspective, it opened new doors. It made us more creative, looking for opportunities to keep doing what we love doing, which for us is yoga, obviously if we are talking about it. I have begun studying and doing a yoga philosophy course, of course is online, with Professor Edwin Bryant. He’s one of the most renowned names among Hindu researchers and philosophers and translators in the field. He’s at Rutgers University in…. I think it’s New Jersey or New York. So what he started doing is to record all his lectures, and then putting them up online for free.

Wow!

Absolutely amazing, isn’t it?

Yeah.

Yeah. It always amazes me when people share their knowledge with such immense generosity. So that got me into the groove of daily or twice a week. Sit down through those lectures or just doing my thing and listening to them. And pretty much it’s all the six directionals, the schools of various philosophical discourse and the man is a very knowledgeable teacher and scholar. He knows a lot about everything. His focus is bhakti. He is initiated in this tradition.

So can you explain bhakti to us?

In the discourse of yoga, bhakti yoga is the yoga of devotion. It’s the kind of yoga that is being practiced as a devotional yoga. Practitioners direct their attention, their energy towards a benevolent worship of a deity. In this case, usually Krishna is the the subject of the affection. There is lots of mantra and chanting. There’s lots of dancing and singing, praising, praising the Bhagavan. So think of the Bhagavata Purana, those ancient texts. All the Krishna stories, by the way, they’re amazing, amazingly entertaining and interesting stories. If anyone really wants to learn more about them, just go read them. They’re with tremendous sense of humor also created so many years ago. Yeah, so we would sit through those, he would just open the texts, and to about 300 people there, either live or from the recorded lectures will be listening and then following the stories, he would stop you with comments. And this, this goes for every subject. Whether you want to learn about like Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, whether you want to learn about Vedanta sutras, or Nyaya but more the stories of Krishna. So that’s what I kept doing for about a year, then he started doing live svadhyaya sessions every Friday.

I’m imagining that there might be someone listening that doesn’t know any of the Sanskrit terms. So that’s why it might just stop you every now and again and let you define some of the words. So if someone’s listening, that’s like a brand new listener slash just coming into the yoga fold. There’s a lot of Sanskrit terms that once you start to learn them, it gets easier and easier. Once you learn one, you learn another and before you know it, you can listen to these really in depth conversations about the yoga history and philosophy and know exactly what’s going on. But in the beginning, it’s really common to feel like a “fish out of water,” or have no idea what they’re talking about. So on that note, can you define what svadhyaya is to keep everyone up to speed?

Yes and once you get to actually work with those terms, it becomes kind of a second nature. And you don’t think that yes, there are people who still haven’t gotten there. So apologies again. So the idea is the concept of studying. So it could be defined as a studying about the self. That’s the obtaining of self knowledge through a variety of practices. But it is it does become by itself a practice. It could be even a spiritual practice. So you get to define it as for example, spending time with the sacred texts. So you sit down and you study, you read the text from the Upanishads, or from the later Puranas, or you open Patanjali yoga sutras and this is your weekend. Yeah, this is your weekend. What are you doing? I’m doing yoga psychology, how I’m just staring at Patanjali, sutra number, whatever. Trying to figure it out to study is that concept of the bhaktis. For the wisdom, another, I’m drawing attention. I’m throwing another Sanskrit word in Sangha, which means pretty much your social group. Yeah. What is your community? Yeah, let’s hang together with like minded people. Yep. And do our thing. What is our thing? We’re reading the scriptures. Yeah. Or in my case, I’m listening to someone much more knowledgeable. And they read it. And he’s reading the scriptures. He’s commenting on them, we get to ask questions.

Was that the difference? So actually, let me back up a little bit. Is that something that anyone listening can go to Edwin Bryant’s

Website. And by the way, at the end of the podcast, I will be happy to provide you with all the resources and links and the names that I’m throwing in here. So you can post it through your audience and I’ll be so happy for people actually go there and look up at this stuff because there’s so much available in the way of information out there that we just are not aware of. Yeah. So EdwinBryant.org, very cool website. It’s connected to the Rutgers University. As a matter of fact, the last study I did with him was on the Bhagavad Gita. I think it was… I forgot which ones, my memories also don’ serve me always. But starting four weeks from now, we are he’s doing a six week or an eight week course on Bhagavata Purana. He loves the back story. So that kind of yoga, devotional yoga, the yoga of love there. There’s a lot of kindness and love and compassion about this concept. I just was even listening to someone who has devoted pretty much his life and passion to that. Yeah, I think it’s amazing.

It is amazing.

It obviously takes cultivating it over a long period of time. Little by little before you know it, you understand these stories a little better. It makes sense. And that’s cool.

So it sounds like the interaction process with that particular training method you enjoyed. Was that the first way you started listening to his philosophy teachings not interactive? And then that the svadhyaya ones was where you could maybe type in questions into the chat box. Is that how that was going down?

Yeah. So you can do either, you can buy the pre recorded lectures, the lectures for students. We are a neutral audience, we have no access to the direct communication, we watch the recordings. But because the content is all out there, you can watch it at any time you want to watch it. The Friday sessions are live sessions, but he also records them and then post them online. So if you miss a Friday because you really want to go for that happy hour Friday, then you can watch it or listen to it the next day.

Listen to the full episode with Nona for free on our podcast site here.

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Conversation with Eric Shaw ~ The Sacred Thread of Yoga Philosophy

Posted on October 7, 2022 by nativeyoga

Ever wonder if there is more to yoga than yoga postures? Join my guest Eric Shaw for a discussion around his new book called Sacred Thread: A Comprehensive Yoga Timeline: 2000 Events that Shaped Yoga History. Eric’s teachings and passions have been influenced significantly by his teachers, in particular Shandor Remete and Rod Stryker. You can visit Eric on his website at prasanayoga.com and you can purchase a copy of Eric’s new book on Amazon here.

During this conversation we discussed:

the history and philosophy of yoga
the timeline associated with modern yoga
the origins of yoga in relation to the archeological findings at Mohenjo-daro
Eric’s experience with Iyengar yoga
What yoga was like on the West Coast of USA during its peak
Yoga as a global realization vs. a cultural specific identity

and quite a few more topics.

You can listen to the full podcast episode with Eric Shaw on our podcast site here.

Todd McLaughlin

I am so excited to have the opportunity to join in conversation with Eric Shaw today. Please find him on his website, prasanayoga.com. You can click the link in the description to easily access his work. He is the author of a book called BKS Iyengar and the Making of Modern Yoga. And he has also just released a new book called Sacred Thread: A Comprehensive Yoga Timeline: 2000 Events That Shaped Yoga History.

Eric Shaw

Yeah, yes.

Thank you, Eric. And I’m so happy to have this chance to speak with you. I love yoga philosophy. And you’ve done a lot study. And on that note, can you fill me and the listener in….have you gotten your doctorate degree yoga studies?

No, I’ve done a lot of a lot of academic work. I started a doctoral program in 2004, finished my studies in 2011 and pretty much got the knowledge base that I desired at that time. I was able to parlay that into practical purposes. It’s kind of like I feel like it’s something I want to do that is like climbing Mount Everest.

But yeah, I didn’t get it done at that point in my life. I could talk all day about why it didn’t happen. Yet I did get a master’s degree out of it and I got a knowledge base. It was quite useful for me for writing work and lecturing work in the yoga world.

Nice. Well, when you had to write a thesis for your masters, what did you base your thesis on?

I based it on the life of BKS Iyengar. I did a very deep study of him. Partly because his followers were so prominent in the Bay Area where I was working in San Francisco. And because that system, according to my training was so alien to me. I was so confronted by it. Iyengar’s system, as everyone knows who studied it, it’s arguably the most comprehensive yoga system out there. You know, unless you went to some ancient system, perhaps as far as the modern systems go, it’s complexity, it’s philosophy, it’s understanding the body and the way that it’s set up structurally to function. The Iyengar view of function in yoga is very clear and vastly articulated. So the people who teach it, have a pedagogy, a pedagogical style, a teaching style, which is strangely aggressive. That’s to say, all those things were quite confronting to me when I arrived in the Bay Area in 2004. After training in Kripalu Yoga and other forms of yoga, which were much more meditative, and much more I thought holistic based. Pranayama based in spiritual aims. Here I was faced with this very physical culturalist yoga, which some people from that tradition might argue with me as characterizing it that way. But to me, it was so body centric and so awesomeness centric. That I think it’s kind of strange to say in the year 2022, because yoga has become more and more and more body centric. I mean, it’s been a processes happening for hundreds of years. But it seems like it’s only been accelerated. It’s come into the American context. But for me, that was difficult. And part of my working that out, to write this mono focal paper on my anger.

Wow! Let me back up so I can get a timeline of your history of practice. When did you start practicing yoga? What was your first introduction to the yoga world?

It’s kind of an interesting, funny story, given my history. My parents were ministers. And they were very open minded liberal ministers. They come from the west coast. So it’s very much different from the south where I’m living now. Yeah, yeah. Me talking about Christianity in this part of the world. But where I came from, they were liberals, they were, you know, anti war protesters. They were raging leftist. So I did get a political orientation in my Christian experience, but it wasn’t a right wing one, it was a radical left wing. So that was my background. And so there was a certain openness there to intellectuality at all levels. So when I told my parents I was an atheist, they didn’t bat an eye. When I told my parents that I was into Eastern traditions and studying Buddhism and meditation, they didn’t bat an eye, you know. So that became my practice very early on in my early 20s, and very much a life saving practice, because my mind was kind of out of control. And it may still sound that way. But meditation helped me control my life. And I dove right into meditation and have maintained that practice to this very day.

Got it.

So like, I did some early investigation in Buddhist traditions. And it wasn’t till the early 90s that I joined Siddha Yoga, which is the Hindu tradition, I actually did that in the midst of a time I was studying Christianity and a Religious Studies degree in many Minneapolis, Minnesota. But that kind of opened the Hindu world to me a little bit. And then when I started practicing Hatha Yoga in 2000, then I started to investigate Hinduism more properly and understand how different it was from the Buddhist tradition. How much richer, how much more embracing of the human experience and all of its aspects and even culture in all of its aspects. And so it was incredibly compelling to me, given my background and it pretty much became a gestalt experience for me, I just dove right into it.

Wow. You made mention of the appreciation for Iyengar tradition and Iyengar’s guru being Krishnamacharya. Did you investigate other practices with any other teachers under that lineage?

Yeah, actually with quite a few. I mean, the Bay Area, as I said, was a hotbed of strong Iyengar teachers. So it was easy to study with strong teachers who not only came to town to teach, but who were residents there. So my chief preceptor was Tony Briggs and he had a relationship to Shandor Remete, who was my primary teacher. A teacher I’d met actually was still in Portland, Oregon and before 2004 started studying with Matt Hewish at the time, who was a primary follower of Shandor. Strange to talk about Shandor in the Iyengar context, because few people even know that he studied with Iyengar. He actually stayed with him for 20 years, extremely long time and he was actually the president of the Iyengar Federation in Australia. But he made a jump to embrace of martial arts and Bharatanatyam yoga, or rather Indian dance and he integrated into practices that he claimed to have learned at the Chidambaram temple in India into a new form that he called Shadow yoga. He’s continued to evolve his forms and change the names of them, but I learned from him and his teaching was profound and very vinyasa based, very movement based. But he was an Iyengar teacher. And then Tony. Tony had worked with Shandor, or so that was my connection with Tony. But Tony was a classic Iyengar teacher. I mean, he was gonna put you in a pose and hold you there and break it down into all its constituent parts in which muscles are engaged, and released and yada, yada, yada. So that training and another with Ramadan Patel and other big names in the Bay Area helped me understand asana and the alignment perspective, which I feel is, is very, very important. I mean, it’s at so many levels. But then I also worked with Paul Grilley, who was into kind of destroying the whole alignment concept. So I got a lot of a lot of input around yogic philosophy and yoga practice in those years that are invaluable.

Amazing, just to touch upon what you just mentioned, I’ve enjoyed watching Paul Grilley’s work around anatomy and yin yoga, can you explain how Paul’s philosophy shatter that existing idea of alignment that you were studying? Can you tell me what that means? Or what that sounds like?

Yeah, yeah. And it’s a good story. I think for anybody who wants to be a serious practitioner of yoga, I think it’s important to understand alignment principles, particularly from the Iyengar perspective, but it’s also very important to understand their limits. And Paul has done the spade work, he’s done the deep work in defining those limits. And I’m just shocked that so few people know his work, because it’s utterly revolutionary. Even if you don’t have Iyengar as a conversation partner for it. So Paul Grilley, you know, he’s ostensibly known for his work in yin yoga. And that’s how I first understood him and met him in yoga was my actually my teaching practice early on, because he was one of the first major teachers I met in Portland, Oregon. I wrote a small profile for him for a local yoga magazine, and we got to be friends. Then he was in an early video company making videos on yoga, you know, and when DVD still existed. A group of people there in San Francisco, who I met and hung out with, and then Paul was a part of that group, and he came down to do yoga videos there. And so he wrote, when I was there in San Francisco, and he recorded his Yoga Anatomy DVD, in which he distills all of his knowledge around bony limits in the body. So it’s the skeletal structure of the body, which determines which poses you can get and in which you can’t. And that’s, I know, that’s a very black and white statement. But it’s actually quite true that the soft tissue, of course, creates limits that we can push through in the attempt to attain any given Asana. And that’s what Iyengar practices are based on. That there is a limitless potential to achieve anything in yoga. Paul Grilley’s work debunked that theory in a way showing that bone structure does create limitation as to how far we can push into a posture. What he really determined and demonstrated directly in that DVD by comparing different human bodies, that the length of your bones, the orientation of the bones, in a given joint, the way it spirals out of that joint, the way it engages with the next joint in the chain determines whether or not any given poses even available. And that’s for a yoga teacher, who is attempting to guide students of different shapes and sizes into positions, proposes knowledge that is absolutely critical. Particularly if you’ve been trained in Iyengar yoga, because it does not integrate that knowledge. In fact, it’s kind of philosophically opposed to it.

Listen to the full episode with Eric Shaw for free on our podcast site here.

Listen to the podcast here on our Podcast website: Native Yoga Toddcast

Please email special requests and feedback to info@nativeyogacenter.com
Please share this episode with your friends, rate & review and join us next time.

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Tag Archives: years

Yulady Saluti – Be Kind All of the Time

⭐️ S-P-E-C-I-A-L ⭐️ E-P-I-S-O-D-E ⭐️ #💯

During this podcast she shares:

Follow Yulady Saluti on Instagram here: @yulady

Dr. Michael Shea – Embodiment of the Senses Through Yoga & Meditation

Barbara Courtille – Helping Yoga Teachers become successful Yoga Professionals

Lindsay Gonzalez ~ Yoga, Surf & Breathwork in El Salvador

Nona Mileva – Tapping into the Yoga Well

Conversation with Eric Shaw ~ The Sacred Thread of Yoga Philosophy