Keen on Yoga Podcast

Simon Borg-Olivier is a polymath of the movement world. A forerunner of yoga in Australia and a teachers' teacher. He also holds two BSC's an lectures regularly for a number of University science departments.  This is his second time on our podcast, expressly this time to talk about the impact of breath upon movement in preparation for an upcoming workshop on breath at Keen On Yoga to accompany this podcast. In this conversation Simon gets quite technical as to how to utilise the diaphragm for the sake of connecting breath to the inner functioning of the body. Not exclusively referring to the yoga-model he synthesises modern science with the yoga-perspective in a way unique to him. Equally, he explodes yoga myths - such as bandha with a hard abdomen and how this actually freezes the diaphragm and hence the prana in the body.  All this is done with characteristic energy and lucidity and Simon himself in his early sixties is a living example of the power of a breath-based practice.

Liz Koch comes from an academic background as a teacher of sculpture. However, her speciality in this is the spacial element of sculpture. One day she happened upon a yoga class and realised this was what was actually being denied in the dissemination of yoga.  The space for one’s own experience of being, outside notions of alignment focussing on the rigid column of the spine. Soon after Liz was asked to writing for yoga journal, and these articles ended up turning into the book Core Awareness. This was really the first serious discussion of the psoas, published in the 90s when hardly anyone had heard of it. We covered this  in our 1st podcast together, episode 59. More recently, Liz has released Stalking Wild Psoas.  This is by way of an answer to the mistaken attempts in the yoga world after helped bring the psoas into general awareness here. Liz feels the yoga students are busy again dominating, essentially ­re-colonising their bodies. Here we spread out from the physical body.  We look at our attitudes to our own individuation to our socio-economic attitudes to the world, and others in it. Having reduced our own experience of ourselves to something we can isolate, know, control and often commoditise. This is why I really wanted to do a second session with Liz as the implications of her work on the psoas go deeper than the body. In embodying ourselves in this more visceral, non-linear manner, we notice the kind of narrative of repression and restraint we – generally in the West – have been living under. I found our talk highly inspiring. There is no time when we might not better look for other perspectives – non colonial established and patriarchal narratives on our own experience than now!

In this Keen on Yoga Podcast Adam talks with Bettina Campolucci Bordi, wellness guru, retreat chef and creator of Bettina’s Kitchen.  She is the author of Happy Food and her second book 7 Day Vegan Challenge, out now, enables anyone to include as many plant based recipes into their repertoire as possible. Over the last few years she has appeared on Saturday Kitchen, has had recipes featured in the Telegraph and Sunday Times, been endorsed by Jamie Oliver and Conde Nast. Born in Denmark to a Bulgarian/Danish mother and a Norwegian father Bettina spent her first 11 years in Tanzania and after that in Sweden.  In Tanzania she learned from her mother how to pick the best quality fruits and vegetables from the local markets.  They would also visit a farmer with just a few cows for fresh milk that her mother would magically turn into butter, cream and yogurt. Her father also cooked and would spend hours preparing his ingredients and making sure each element of the dish was cooked properly and just right.  From these experiences she learned that good things take time. Holidays spent in Bulgaria included time with her grandmother and auntie who were both amazing cooks.  She recalls sitting at the kitchen table at her auntie’s house watching her make pineapple upside down cake, creme brulee, stews, and breads baked from scratch. Other summers were spent in Sweden with her paternal grandmother in a tiny summer house in the woods. Also a keen cook with green fingers who had all sorts of wonders growing in her garden, cordials and pickling were her specialty. The Beginning of Bettina’s Kitchen Following struggles with personal health issues including PCOS and endometriosis, she soon discovered that what she ate made a significant impact on her physical health.  She found that she was able to manage her conditions and discovered a profoundly positive effect on her mental wellbeing, too. For Bettina, cooking is a way of inspiring people to include and cook with ingredients that can sometimes be daunting. Her aim is to show others how food can be inspiring, where it comes from and that cooking from scratch is the single most powerful thing you can do for yourself and your family. In 2011 she entered into the wellness industry running health retreats in Spain as a way to spread her message. She began sharing recipes on Instagram and slowly but surely people wanted more and Bettina´s Kitchen was born. Food Philosophy Everything Bettina does is aligned with her philosophy around food and wellness: that we should eat seasonally, locally and from farm to table as much as we can. We should support small businesses within our communities; we must use roots, shoots and all! Cooking waste free is particularly important to her; and above all the best plant food is fuss-free, simple, easy, inexpensive. Find Bettina Combining healthy cooking with travel and wellness worldwide and you can find her cooking on and training local kitchen teams with Reclaim Yourself Retreats. Reclaim Yourself speciality is introducing people to remote, magical places including Mongolia, Iceland, and Zanzibar. She also hosts retreats in her favourite place in the world, Bali as well as her Retreat Chef Academies where you can cook with learn from her experience.

Mariela Cruz is quite a force.  She has been a student of Sharathji Jois since 2003. She first arrived in Mysore to Gokulam and there was no internet so she simply knocked on the door and Pattabhi Jois opened and invited her into the family terrace.  That same day she met her Guru Sharath and he asked her to stay for one month only. Busy with children and family responsibilities back in her then country Costa Rica she was not able to stay but tasted the honey and could only think about going back to India.  Mariela's favourite quote is practice and all is coming. She feels our lives will be completely transformed because our minds are made new with our practice. Our lives in samsara will be completely dismantled yet something precious it’s on its way. She has been to Mysore many times and finished third series in November 2019 with her Guru. She has also assisted him in his shala. Mariela is a lawyer with 3 masters and was appointed Ambassador of Costa Rica to India 2016-2018. Since then she is lucky to live in India close to her Guruji. Mariela is the mother of Hernan, Adriana, Ariel, Gabriel, Gael, Theo and Matias. She is blessed beyond the beyond with the magic of “Seventh Series.” She has plenty of experience sustaining the practice of Ashtanga through pregnancies and post partum and the creativity to raise a family and yet hold the demands of practice. She loves playing the piano. Her favourite composers are Bach, Beethoven, Debussy and Chopin.

Wambui Njuguna-Raisanen is a Kenyan-American based in Finland, passionate about making wellness through yoga and meditation seamlessly engaged in equity and justice so that more people of the global majority can live well and thrive. Wambui is deeply inspired by spiritual teachers and communities that seek ways to apply the insights from wisdom traditions to situations of social, racial, political, environmental and economic suffering and injustice. She would like to see wellness spaces engage more in social justice and collective change and activist spaces learn to breathe deeply and practice sustainable self-care in the midst of dismantling systemic oppression. This is her definition of community care.  Creating wellness spaces that feel more welcoming, inclusive and accessible is of utmost necessity and importance to Wambui. Together with her massage training (Chavutti Thirumal) and meditation advocacy, she strives to work at the intersection of social inclusion, equity and wellness. Wambui has an easy-going, unassuming way and demonstrates a willingness to be vulnerable and “less than perfect”; which makes others want to exhale deeply and release the pressure of what a spiritual life should be. She shares her life stories and struggles, triumphs and obstacles with an openness that makes you want to examine and tend to your own seeds of greed, hatred and delusion with care, honesty and acceptance. To learn more about Wambui and her offerings, visit wambuinjuguna.com and  @wellnesswithwambui (IG).  

Tyson Yunkaporta is an academic, an arts critic, and a researcher who is a member of the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland. He carves traditional tools and weapons and also works as a senior lecturer in Indigenous Knowledges at Deakin University in Melbourne where he currently lives. His book Sand Talk was published in 2019 to resounding acclaim.  The paradigm-shifting book brings a crucial Indigenous perspective to historical and cultural issues of history, education, money, power, and sustainability - and offers a new template for living. As an indigenous person, Tyson Yunkaporta looks at global systems from a unique perspective, one tied to the natural and spiritual world. In considering how contemporary life diverges from the pattern of creation, he raises important questions. How does this affect us? How can we do things differently? In this thoughtful, culturally rich, mind-expanding book, he provides answers. Yunkaporta's writing process begins with images. Honoring indigenous traditions, he makes carvings of what he wants to say, channeling his thoughts through symbols and diagrams rather than words. He yarns with people, looking for ways to connect images and stories with place and relationship to create a coherent world view, and he uses sand talk, the Aboriginal custom of drawing images on the ground to convey knowledge.  In Sand Talk , he provides a new model for our everyday lives. Rich in ideas and inspiration, it explains how lines and symbols and shapes can help us make sense of the world. It's about how we learn and how we remember. It's about talking to everyone and listening carefully. It's about finding different ways to look at things. Most of all it's about a very special way of thinking, of learning to see from a native perspective, one that is spiritually and physically tied to the earth around us, and how it can save our world. 

Liz is an international teacher and author with 43 years of experience working with and specializing in the psoas. Educating both laypersons and professionals around the world, Liz is recognized by colleagues in the movement, wellness, and fitness professions as an authority on the “core muscle” of the human body. Stalking Wild Psoas is her passion and changing the language of body is her mission. Liz Koch is the creator of Core Awareness,™ a somatic approach to deepening the experience of the human core. Beginning with the core muscle, the psoas, Core Awareness™ focuses attention on sensation as a means for maturing and developing the proprioceptive nervous system, which is responsible for skeletal alignment, balance, and orientation. Liz is the author of The Psoas Book; Core Awareness: Enhancing Yoga, Pilates, Exercise & Dance; Unraveling Scoliosis CD; The Psoas & Back Pain CD; and she is a contributing author to Maiden, Mother, Crone: Our Pleasure Playlist and Stalking Wild Psoas: Embodying Your Core Intelligence. Her writing has been featured in Yoga Journal, Positive Health, Massage & Bodywork, Massage Magazine, Yoga & Health International, Midwifery Today, Vegetarian Times, and The Doula as well as numerous small health and wellness publications. Liz Koch is approved by the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork (NCBTMB) as a continuing education Approved Provider. The psoas is considered such an unknown muscle yet so important and powerful. Liz first discovered the psoas while attending a human potential class in Boston over 45 years ago. At that particular moment, the teacher, Robert Cooley, was fascinated with the psoas muscle. Having previously been a dancer, he was exploring how injuries and a lack of movement might be tracked back to the midline or core issues expressed in the iliopsoas complex. Between Liz’s in-depth inquiry and Bob’s encouragement, she eventually shifted my career from being a conceptual artist and sculpture instructor at the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts to the healing arts profession. While working with her psoas, Liz discovered that she had released years of back pain and emotional distress which awoke within her a deep sense of pleasure. She became passionate that people should know what an extraordinary role the psoas plays in recovering health and gaining a sense of wholeness. When she moved to California in the 1970s, her personal explorations of the psoas catapulted her into her current profession. She began by teaching courses on the psoas muscle for local community colleges, dance departments, and massage school programs. Her vocation not only evolved throughout the years but also expanded into wider spheres of influence which included being a keynote speaker at two international conferences as well as teaching both national and international workshops and retreats. What began as a personal journey has continued as the psoas is no ordinary tissue, but a profound segway into the rich interior and exterior world of awareness.  

David, at 78 looks back over his rich life, already having outlived his prognosis with a terminal form of cancer. This episode was therefore extra special for us; deeply poignant and touching at moments, joyous at others, and, if nothing else, seriously thought-provoking. After growing up gay in a Georgia, USA, where it was not a welcome choice at the time, he escaped from military school (where his step father sent him – to make him a man), by faking a broken-jaw in a compulsory boxing match he was forced to undertake. From then on, he pursued his main love of dance. Studying under the foremost disciples of Martha Graham in New York, he became a professional dancer and then a teacher , finally moving to Adelaide, Australia where he ran the dance department. After deciding to marry and have a family, he finally stumbled upon Ashtanga late in the day – at 48 years old. This makes him probably one of the oldest teachers ever to achieve certification. For many years he travelled and taught – he was one of the first teachers to go on the road, His teaching incorporates the lessons gleaned from his career as a dancer, choreographer, and, artist. More recently, needing to settle down, he headed up the Jois Yoga Shala in Sydney whilst still visiting Mysore each year for 3 months (up until last year), to study and assist Saraswati teach. David is a highly sensitive and thoughtful individual, quite unique to this modern age, and it has been a pleasure to spend this time with him. We, in fact, recorded this episode twice, after technical issues got in the way of our first attempt.

Shanna Small is a writer and Yoga teacher who speaks to the intersectionality of Yoga and social justice.  She has practiced Ashtanga Yoga and studied the Yoga Sutras since 2001. She has studied in Ashtanga in Mysore with Sharath Jois. Shanna studied Sanskrit, the Yoga Sutras and the Hatha Yoga Pradipika with Laksmish in Mysore, India.   Shanna finds joy in making the Ashtanga practice accessible for all.  She studied with Amber Karnes and Dianne Bondy and is Yoga For All certified. She is a regular contributor for Yoga International, OmStars and the Ashtanga Dispatch.     She teaches diversity and inclusivity, Yoga Sutras as well as accessibility trainings and workshops. She is a founding member of Yoga For Recovery Foundation, a non-profit that helps those recovering from addiction, trauma and systemic oppression.  Shanna is also certified in the Trauma Conscious Yoga Method. Shanna is a graduate of Georgia State University and holds a bachelor’s in business with a concentration in marketing. Before becoming a full time yoga teacher, Shanna was a recruiter and ad account executive. 

Dr. Robert Svoboda is the first Westerner ever to graduate from a college of Ayurveda and be licensed to practice Ayurveda in India. During and after his formal Ayurvedic training he was tutored in Ayurveda, Yoga, Jyotish, Tantra and other forms of classical Indian lore by his mentor, the Aghori Vimalananda. He is the author of twelve books including Prakriti: Your Ayurvedic Constitution and the Aghora series, which discusses his experiences with his mentor during the years 1975 – 1983. (Information on all of his books can be found here) Dr. Svoboda was born in Texas in 1953, and in 1972 earned a B.S. from the University of Oklahoma in Chemistry with a minor in French. After being ritually initiated into the Pokot tribe of northern Kenya as its first white member in June 1973 he moved to India, where he lived from 1973-80 and 1982-86, receiving his Bachelor of Ayurvedic Medicine and Surgery (Ayurvedacharya) from the University of Poona in 1980. In his final year of study at the Tilak Ayurved Mahavidyalaya he won all but one of the University of Poona’s awards for academic excellence in Ayurveda, including the Ram Narayan Sharma Gold Medal. The Aghori Vimalananda also owned thoroughbred race horses, and Dr. Svoboda served as his Authorized Racing Agent at the Royal Western India Turf Club in Bombay and Poona between 1975 and 1985. He later served as Adjunct Faculty at the Ayurvedic Institute in Albuquerque, NM, and at Bastyr University in Kenmore, WA. In the years since 1986 Dr. Svoboda has traveled extensively, spending three months per year on average in India. He often speaks on Ayurveda, Jyotish, Tantra and allied subjects in locales across the world.