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Have you ever been told to relax, and found you just couldn’t? Or taught a yoga class for nervous system regulation, only to find your students struggling to stay still and looking unsettled or bored? The first time I tried yoga nidrā, I spent forty minutes twitching and wriggling, waiting for it to be over, while my boyfriend (now husband) slept happily beside me.  In this solo episode, I share what that taught me about why calming practices don’t always calm us, and why nervous system regulation is about so much more than slowing down and long exhalations. In this episode, we explore: Why calming practices can sometimes make it harder to calm downMy first, very wriggly experience of yoga nidrā, and what it taught me about meeting yourself where you areWhat can help when you’re feeling wired: moving first, then gradually slowing downHyperarousal and hypoarousal, rajas and tamas, in plain languageWhy nervous system regulation isn’t only about slowing down, and how to gently build energy when you’re feeling flatWhen feeling flat calls for rest instead, and how yoga nidrā got me through having two kids under threeThe three guṇas, and why we need a little rajas and tamas tooWhy you don’t need to be calm all the timeA simple check-in: do you need to move, or to rest?For yoga teachers: what to do when students arrive wired, flat, or somewhere in between Learn to sequence your classes for nervous system regulation, whatever style of yoga you teach. The How to Teach Yoga for Nervous System Regulation masterclass is $29 (70% off) until Friday 6 November 2026: https://www.yogapsychologyinstitute.com/masterclass Get my free Spotify playlist for nervous system regulation: https://www.yogapsychologyinstitute.com/join This podcast is for general informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional advice or training. Please consult a qualified healthcare professional for personalised guidance or come and join one of our programs at the Yoga Psychology Institute for professional training. While we are grateful for our guests and sponsors, any statements, claims or endorsements made are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Yoga Psychology Institute.

What if protecting your energy didn't mean keeping the world out? When I was training as a psychologist, I was taught to imagine a stop sign as people shared their stories with me. Later, in yoga circles, I was told to surround myself with white light. Neither worked for me, and holding everything at bay took so much energy. What I've learned over the years is to let things in, to feel them, and then let them go. So when Michelle Cassandra Johnson (she/her) described the practice of becoming a transparency, it made a whole lot of sense to me. Michelle is an author, activist, spiritual teacher, racial equity educator and intuitive and shamanic healer, who has spent over 25 years working with communities and organisations. Her new book,You Are Protected, offers practical ways to tend to ourselves so we can keep showing up for others and for the world. Michelle opens our conversation by casting a circle of protection, and from there we sit at her grandmother Dorothy's kitchen table, where black coffee and a daily devotional became Michelle's first lesson in ritual. We talk about what honeybees can teach us about rest, why the crone archetype knows exactly when to say no, and the many allies we can call on, from ancestors and animal energies to the elements that live within our own bodies. When I first held this book in my hands, I wasn't sure how much of it would be relevant to me. Then I found it threaded with things already in my life: chanting, rest, the elements on my altar, the herbal teas I make, the candles I light. I just hadn't thought of them as protection before. If you hold space for others, in a yoga class, a therapy room, your family or your community, I think you'll find something here to take with you. In this episode, we explore: A circle of protection to open, guided by Michelle from the introduction of You Are ProtectedMichelle's grandmother Dorothy, and her daily ritual of remembering she was a divine being before going out into a world shaped by white supremacyThe transparency practice: being fully present with someone's story while letting it pass through you, and why our nervous systems aren't designed to carry everythingRest as protection, and what honeybees teach us about contraction, longevity and sustaining our energyThe protective allies in the book: archetypes, animal energies, saints and deities, energetic forms, the elements, ancestors and natural curiosThe crone archetype, discernment and the wisdom of saying noSimple ways to work with air, fire, water and earth for protectionWhat Michelle is chanting right now, including her devotion to DurgāRemembering that we are worthy of protection and careHow to use the book's invocations, or write your ownWhether protection comes from within us, from beyond us, or bothWhy openings and closings matter, from washing her hands between clients to watching a comedy after deep spiritual workA closing practice to imprint your own protective circle Connect with Michelle Johnson at https://www.michellecjohnson.com Join the final hybrid Mental Health Aware Yoga training today at https://www.mentalhealthawareyoga.com/hybrid Get my Spotify playlist for nervous system regulation at https://www.yogapsychologyinstitute.com/join/  This podcast is for general informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional advice or training. Please consult a qualified healthcare professional for personalised guidance or come and join one of our programs at the Yoga Psychology Institute for professional training. While we are grateful for our guests and sponsors, any statements, claims or endorsements made are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Yoga Psychology Institute.

Before I spoke with Dr Kelly McGonigal (she/her) on the podcast, I spent a day reading her new book on joy. That evening, when I walked into a yoga class and the teacher asked how I was, I heard myself say, ‘I am so good.’ It took me a moment to realise why. Kelly is a psychologist, author and educator. All of her books are based on classes she has taught at Stanford University, including The Upside of Stress, The Joy of Movement and her latest, Joy Is a Risk Worth Taking. In this conversation, Kelly defines joy as the human capacity to be uplifted by what makes life worth living. She believes we have this capacity for a reason. Being human is hard, and joy helps us keep going. We talk about why joy can feel like such a risk. And why, for many of us, myself included, there can be so much guilt about expressing joy when there is so much suffering in the world. Her response to that guilt gave me tingles down my spine, especially her story of two people in Ukraine who joined her online joy class and told her joy mattered more than ever. Listen in as we explore lowering your threshold for joy, what pain and joy have in common in the brain, and why joy, more than any other emotion, wants to be let out. In this episode, we explore: Sharing joy as a first practice, and why ‘positive empathy’ connects us as much as compassion for each other's painLetting someone help you as an underappreciated act of joyHow conversations about joy brought Kelly closer to her father during his final illnessKelly's definition of joy and its functions: a signal of what makes life worth living, a signal to others that they matter, and an energy that moves us toward connectionJoy as small and fleeting rather than peak happinessLowering your detection threshold for joy, and tracking one micro uplift a dayThe barriers that make joy feel risky, including fear of loss and guilt amid sufferingJoy as part of our moral responsibility, and why calling joy a privilege is dehumanisingHow depression can make joy harder to access, and why every practice in the book was tested with people who were strugglingHow pain and joy both work through the brain's meaning systemThe ‘champagne bottle’ of joy: why joy has more ways of being expressed than any other emotion, and how shared joy builds trust and closenessKelly's hope that her book helps people feel better about humanity Connect with Kelly McGonigal at https://www.kellymcgonigal.com/ Join the hybrid Mental Health Aware Yoga training today at https://www.mentalhealthawareyoga.com/hybrid  Download the free Patanjali’s Eight Limbs and Mental Health Aware Yoga ebook at https://www.mentalhealthawareyoga.com/8limbs This podcast is for general informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional advice or training. Please consult a qualified healthcare professional for personalised guidance or come and join one of our programs at the Yoga Psychology Institute for professional training. While we are grateful for our guests and sponsors, any statements, claims or endorsements made are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Yoga Psychology Institute.

Think of the last time you were so absorbed in something that the world fell away. A good book. Hands in the garden. Watching the ocean. For a little while there was no to-do list, no worry, no self-judgement. Just the moment itself.  These ordinary moments are doorways into the final four limbs of yoga, where we head inward. This is the last episode in our five part series on Patanjali's eight limbs. Now that we’ve moved through the yamas, the niyamas, asana and pranayama, we now turn fully inward, through pratyahara and on to dharana, dhyana and samadhi. These aren't limbs that we can force or achieve. They're what unfold on their own when the conditions are right. In this episode, we explore: Pratyahara, the turning inward, and why it can't be forced any more than sleep can‘Throwing the mind a bone’, and why a busy mind settles when we give it something simple to rest onWhat a Byron Bay heavy metal band next door taught me about pratyaharaWhy we never instruct our students to close their eyes, and how to offer the choice safelyDharana, dhyana and samadhi as the fruits of practice, rather than practices in themselvesWhy ‘I'm meditating’ really means ‘I'm creating the conditions in which meditation might arise’Why these deep inward states can be destabilising for someHow all eight limbs, in the end, point us home to ourselves and our own inner wisdomDownload the accompanying Patanjali’s Eight Limbs and Mental Health Aware Yoga ebook at https://www.mentalhealthawareyoga.com/8limbs Join the online Mental Health Aware Yoga training in September at https://www.mentalhealthawareyoga.com/online  Join the hybrid Mental Health Aware Yoga training today at https://www.mentalhealthawareyoga.com/hybrid This podcast is for general informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional advice or training. Please consult a qualified healthcare professional for personalised guidance or come and join one of our programs at the Yoga Psychology Institute for professional training. While we are grateful for our guests and sponsors, any statements, claims or endorsements made are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Yoga Psychology Institute.

Ask most people what yoga is, and they'll picture the postures. Maybe the breathing. And fair enough, it's what we mostly teach, and what most people think we're doing.  But in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, asana barely gets a mention. So what are the postures and the breath actually for? In this five part series on Patanjali's eight limbs, we've finally reached the two limbs most people think of as yoga - the postures and the breath. But in Mental Health Aware Yoga, these were never about achieving the perfect posture. They're tools for regulating the nervous system, and for coming to know ourselves from the inside. In this episode, we explore: Why asana barely gets a mention in Patanjali's Yoga SutrasSthira sukham asanam, steady and comfortable, and why this is quietly radical in a culture that prizes the hardest version of every practiceWhy how we invite our students to practise matters more than what we teachThe gunas as a practical map for reading the energy in the roomHow the Window of Tolerance and ancient yogic maps line up beautifullyA more useful question than "what's wrong with this person," and how it changes the way we teachThe breath and the mind as a two-way street, and how we can breathe our way toward calmWhy we invite students to slow the exhale rather than force it, and what to do when the breath feels unsafeA simple breath-led movement practice you can take into your very next class Download the accompanying Patanjali’s Eight Limbs and Mental Health Aware Yoga ebook at https://www.mentalhealthawareyoga.com/8limbs   Join the online Mental Health Aware Yoga training in September at https://www.mentalhealthawareyoga.com/online  Join the hybrid Mental Health Aware Yoga training today at https://www.mentalhealthawareyoga.com/hybrid  This podcast is for general informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional advice or training. Please consult a qualified healthcare professional for personalised guidance or come and join one of our programs at the Yoga Psychology Institute for professional training. While we are grateful for our guests and sponsors, any statements, claims or endorsements made are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Yoga Psychology Institute.

In this third episode on Patanjali's eight limbs of yoga, we’re exploring the niyamas and how they can support mental health in our yoga teaching. While the last two episodes were on the yamas, on how we engage with the world, in this one, we turn inward to the niyamas, on how we relate to ourselves. We look at the five niyamas not as a self-improvement checklist or an impossible ideal to measure ourselves against, but as practical ways of tending our inner world with awareness, clarity and care. In this episode, we explore: Sauca as clarity rather than purity and how it shapes the spaces we teach in and the way we tend to our own inner worldWhy cleanliness and purity can quietly tip over into shame, and the importance of ahimsa Santosha, contentment, and why choosing it is a quietly radical actThe science of gratitude, and how it can help to down-regulate the nervous systemTapas, the inner fire, and why it is never about self-punishmentSvadhyaya, self-study, and the discernment that only you can make about when to push and when to restIsvarapranidhana, surrender, and making this niyama accessible for those for whom the language of God feels difficultHow the niyamas keep our practice and our teaching resourcing rather than depletingDownload the accompanying Patanjali’s Eight Limbs and Mental Health Aware Yoga ebook at https://www.mentalhealthawareyoga.com/8limbs   Join the online Mental Health Aware Yoga training in September at https://www.mentalhealthawareyoga.com/online  Join the hybrid Mental Health Aware Yoga training today at https://www.mentalhealthawareyoga.com/hybrid  This podcast is for general informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional advice or training. Please consult a qualified healthcare professional for personalised guidance or come and join one of our programs at the Yoga Psychology Institute for professional training. While we are grateful for our guests and sponsors, any statements, claims or endorsements made are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Yoga Psychology Institute.

Welcome to the second episode in a special five-part pop-up series on Patanjali's eight limbs of yoga, exploring what each limb means for us as yoga teachers supporting our students' mental health. In the last episode, we explored ahimsa. In this one, we dive into the other four yamas - satya, asteya, brahmacarya and aparigraha. We look at how these four yamas can guide our yoga teaching, from finding our own yes and our own no, to letting go of the endless comparison that leaves so many of us feeling we're not enough. In this episode, we explore: Satya, truthfulness and why honesty is always held alongside kindnessBeing truthful with ourselves, and the quiet cost of saying yes when we mean noWhy you don't have to have all the answers to be a good teacherAsteya, non-stealing, and moving from comparison and envy toward appreciationCultural appropriation, and the questions asteya invites us to sit with as yoga teachersBrahmacarya as energy management, and being mindful of sexual energy and the power imbalance in the teaching relationshipAparigraha, non-grasping, and letting go of how we think our classes, our students and ourselves should beHow every one of the yamas points us back toward our own inner compass Download the accompanying Patanjali’s Eight Limbs and Mental Health Aware Yoga ebook at https://www.mentalhealthawareyoga.com/8limbs Join the online Mental Health Aware Yoga training in September at https://www.mentalhealthawareyoga.com/online  Join the hybrid Mental Health Aware Yoga training today at https://www.mentalhealthawareyoga.com/hybrid  This podcast is for general informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional advice or training. Please consult a qualified healthcare professional for personalised guidance or come and join one of our programs at the Yoga Psychology Institute for professional training. While we are grateful for our guests and sponsors, any statements, claims or endorsements made are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Yoga Psychology Institute.

Welcome to the first episode in a special five part pop-up series on Patanjali's eight limbs of yoga, exploring what each limb means for us as yoga teachers supporting our students' mental health. We're beginning where Patanjali begins, with ahimsa. Ahimsa is the ground everything else is built on, so it felt only right to start here. In this episode we look at what ahimsa asks of us as teachers, what real students told me helped their mental health in class and what harmed it, and how we can create a safe container for the people who walk through our doors. Everyone is welcome to listen to this episode, but for this special series I'm speaking directly to yoga teachers. In this episode, we explore: How Patanjali's Yoga Sutras still speak to our very modern mental health challengesWhy almost 80% of yoga students come to yoga for mental health reasons, and what that means for us as teachersThe yamas as conditions for safety and non-harming, rather than moral rules to live up toAhimsa, non-harming, and why it might be the most important consideration when supporting our students' mental healthWhat real students said helped their mental health in class, and what harmed it, in their own wordsPractical ways to create a safe container, including invitational language, predictability, consent, boundaries and scope of practiceAhimsa toward ourselves, and why the way we treat ourselves is part of what we teach Download the accompanying Patanjali’s Eight Limbs and Mental Health Aware Yoga ebook at https://www.mentalhealthawareyoga.com/8limbs Join the online Mental Health Aware Yoga training in September at https://www.mentalhealthawareyoga.com/online  Join the hybrid Mental Health Aware Yoga training today at https://www.mentalhealthawareyoga.com/hybrid  This podcast is for general informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional advice or training. Please consult a qualified healthcare professional for personalised guidance or come and join one of our programs at the Yoga Psychology Institute for professional training. While we are grateful for our guests and sponsors, any statements, claims or endorsements made are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Yoga Psychology Institute.

Your throat tightens in a conversation, a few seconds before you've worked out why. You feel a flutter of anxiety in your belly before your mind catches on to what’s happening. Your body is always talking to you, sending signals from the inside, all day long. That inward-facing sense has a name, interoception, and in this solo episode of A Grateful Life, I'm stepping out from behind the interview chair to explore it. Instead of introducing you to one of my guests, I'm sharing something we've been exploring inside the programs at the Yoga Psychology Institute recently. What interoception actually is, why so many of us have turned its volume right down, and how we can gently turn it back up. Whether you teach, practise, or are simply curious about the meeting place of yoga and psychology, consider this an invitation to listen inward, and to trust what you find there. In this episode, we explore: The continuum of embodimentThe spectrum of interoceptionWhy inner signals get muted, and why that disconnection is so often protectiveThe link between interoception and emotional literacyLearning to listen to the whispers of the body, rather than waiting until they're screamingSimple, practical ways to strengthen interoception in everyday lifeWhy yoga is such a powerful vehicle for exploring our internal worldHow teachers can gently support interoception in a class, always with safety and choice firstA small interoceptive practice to take away Join the hybrid Mental Health Aware Yoga training today at https://www.mentalhealthawareyoga.com/hybrid  Join the online Mental Health Aware Yoga training in September at https://www.mentalhealthawareyoga.com/online  Listen to the music for nervous system regulation playlist at https://www.yogapsychologyinstitute.com/join/ This podcast is for general informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional advice or training. Please consult a qualified healthcare professional for personalised guidance or come and join one of our programs at the Yoga Psychology Institute for professional training. While we are grateful for our guests and sponsors, any statements, claims or endorsements made are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Yoga Psychology Institute.

Some things are simple by nature and we tend to complicate them. Others are complex by nature and we dilute them. Indu Arora (she/her) is a Yoga and Āyurveda teacher, mentor and author who has been sharing yoga philosophy, yoga therapy and Āyurveda for over two decades, taught in the traditional guru-śiṣya paramparā of the Himalayan, Kashmir Śaivism, Kriyā and Sivananda lineages. I had the joy of studying Yoga Nidrā with her in Melbourne recently, and this conversation is what happened when we sat down together afterwards. Indu teaches that yoga is a work-in, not a work-out, and we spent time unpacking what that really means. Not the shape our body makes, but the journey inward, towards the breath, the mind, the internal organs, the deeper layers of who we are. She spoke about her mission to not complicate that which is simple by nature, and to not dilute that which is complex, and how so much of modern yoga has glamorised the physical while rushing past the philosophy that needs time to unfold. We went deep into Yoga Nidrā, and the way Indu shares it is quite different from how many of us have come to understand it. It is not a technique for better sleep, she says, it is not really about nidrā at all. It is about yoga. She draws on the many texts and traditions that describe it in their own distinct ways, and the invitation to let it be as spacious and layered as it truly is. We also talked about how to choose a teacher wisely, the red flags worth noticing, and the difference between what someone says and who they have actually are. Indu was also generous enough to share a practice with us at the end, so consider yourself warned. There's homework. In this episode, we explore: Gratitude as a daily practice, and how contemplating death can deepen our capacity to liveIndu's journey into yoga from age 16, and the rare opportunity to live and study with her teacherWhat it's like to learn yoga with no syllabus, where the focus is on ethics and morals rather than techniqueWhy ‘getting out of your own way’ is the real, ongoing work of a teacherThe pressure many practitioners feel to ‘know it all’ before they begin, and why comparison keeps us stuckNot complicating that which is simple by nature, and not diluting that which is complexWhy Indu describes yoga as a work-in, not a work-out, drawing on both the Yoga Sūtras and ĀyurvedaWhat Yoga Nidrā actually is, and the many texts and traditions that describe it very differentlyHow to choose a teacher wisely, the red flags to notice, and the difference between what someone says and who they have becomeA closing practice, Ātma Tattva Avalokanam, offered as an invitation for daily practice Connect with Indu Arora at https://yogsadhna.com/ Join the Australian 2026 hybrid Mental Health Aware Yoga training at https://www.mentalhealthawareyoga.com/hybrid  Join the online Mental Health Aware Yoga training in September at https://www.mentalhealthawareyoga.com/online Listen to the music for nervous system regulation playlist at https://www.yogapsychologyinstitute.com/join/ This podcast is for general informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional advice or training. Please consult a qualified healthcare professional for personalised guidance or come and join one of our programs at the Yoga Psychology Institute for professional training. While we are grateful for our guests and sponsors, any statements, claims or endorsements made are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Yoga Psychology Institute.

It starts small. A teacher who tells you rather than asks you. A little too much praise when you fall in line, a little too much silence when you don't.  Most of us have felt it and shrugged it off. Uma Dinsmore-Tuli has spent years mapping exactly where those small moments can lead, and what to do before they get there. Uma (she/her) is one of the world's leading voices on cyclical wisdom, yoga nidrā and the rematriation of feminine power, and the author of six books including, Yoni Shakti: A Woman's Guide to Power and Freedom through Yoga and Tantra.  In this episode, we unpack thirteen warning signs of abuse in yoga communities. Things like disrespect for other approaches, contingent flattery, secret teachings and the spiritual bypassing of sexual harm. Uma is clear that these aren't only present in the most extreme cases. The same small seeds show up in ordinary classes and trainings too. We also explore Uma’s nine calls to action, practical, doable things any of us can do when we notice harm. I was surprised to hear from Uma that I was the first person to ask her to speak about these nine calls to action. To me, these are so important.  This is a difficult listen in places. It's also an important one. In this episode, we explore: Why Uma added a new preface to the second edition of Yoni Shakti, and what it cost herThe thirteen warning signs of abuse in yoga spaces, including disrespect for other approaches, contingent flattery, secret teachings, isolation of dissidents, inner circles, discipline and punishment, unsustainable imbalances, ridicule and silencing, boundary and consent violations, prejudice and hypocrisy, claims of omniscience, abdication of personal responsibility, and spiritual bypassing of sexual harmWhy the need to belong can make people vulnerable to coercive communitiesThe link between institutional abuse patterns and colonisation, hierarchy, and controlWhy testimony is evidence, and what it means to believe survivorsUma's nine calls to action, including withdrawing financial support, asking questions, listening to survivors, refusing to keep secrets, naming names, and working to decolonise yogaHow to hold heart open, eyes open, even in spiritual and community spacesConnect with Dr Uma Dinsmore-Tuli at https://umadinsmoretuli.com Join the Australian 2026 hybrid Mental Health Aware Yoga training at https://www.mentalhealthawareyoga.com/hybrid Join the online Mental Health Aware Yoga training in September at https://www.mentalhealthawareyoga.com/online  Listen to the music for nervous system regulation playlist at https://www.yogapsychologyinstitute.com/join/  This podcast is for general informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional advice or training. Please consult a qualified healthcare professional for personalised guidance or come and join one of our programs at the Yoga Psychology Institute for professional training. While we are grateful for our guests and sponsors, any statements, claims or endorsements made are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Yoga Psychology Institute.

Every Monday morning, as the sun is coming up, I walk down my friend's garden path to her house for tea ceremony.  Gentle music. Incense. Bowls of tea. A handful of women from my little town, sitting together in silence. There is some kind of alchemy there I cannot fully explain. What I walk away with is always more than the sum of its parts. My guest today on the podcast has just written a book exploring rituals just like this. Tracee Stanley (she/her) is the author of the bestselling books Radiant Rest and The Luminous Self, and her new book, Living Ritual: Infuse Each Day with Purpose and Spirit, is out this August.  Tracee has been a student of Sri Vidya Tantra and the teachings of the Himalayan Masters for over thirty years, and she is devoted to sharing the wisdom of yoga nidrā, rest, meditation, self-inquiry and ancestor reverence. In this episode, we talk about ritual as something far bigger than incense and candles. We explore: The difference between internal ritual, external ritual, ceremony and rite of passageThe sandhyās, the sacred transitional points of the day in Hindu philosophy, and how to weave micro rituals into a busy, householder lifeA threshold practice for marking what you're leaving behind, what you're present to, and what you're walking towardsTea ceremony as a portal, including the five vāyus (subtle winds) and how different teas can be felt moving differently in the bodyRitual and rite of passage as tools for marking life transitions such as divorce, menopause or grief, and the value of sitting in liminal spaceReclaiming attention from devices, including Tracee's analog cocoon practice and her yearly six-week break from social mediaThe four aims of life (puruṣārthas), artha, kāma, dharma and mokṣa, reframed away from grasping and towards nourishment and supportTracee's own morning ritual, from mantra and chanting through to tea and mind mappingThis conversation left me thinking differently about the small transitions in my own day. I hope it does the same for you. Connect with Tracee Stanley at https://www.traceestanley.com/ Join the Australian 2026 hybrid Mental Health Aware Yoga training at https://www.mentalhealthawareyoga.com/hybrid Join the online Mental Health Aware Yoga training in September at https://www.mentalhealthawareyoga.com/online  Listen to the music for nervous system regulation playlist at https://www.yogapsychologyinstitute.com/join/ This podcast is for general informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional advice or training. Please consult a qualified healthcare professional for personalised guidance or come and join one of our programs at the Yoga Psychology Institute for professional training. While we are grateful for our guests and sponsors, any statements, claims or endorsements made are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Yoga Psychology Institute.

Before I met Jo, my mental image of aerial yoga was mostly circus-like. Beautiful, yes. Fun, sure. Relevant to the yoga teachers and therapists I work with? I wasn't convinced. Boy, was I wrong. Jo Stewart (she/her) is one of Australia's most experienced aerial yoga teachers. She founded the Garden of Yoga studio in Northcote, Melbourne, co-hosts the Flow Artists Podcast, and has spent years developing a genuinely accessible, therapeutic approach to aerial yoga, one that understands that different brains and bodies need different pathways into regulation, rest and inner awareness. Her first book, Eight Limbs of Aerial Yoga, is published by Singing Dragon and is out now. Aerial yoga, it turns out, is not what I thought it was. The hammock in Jo's practice is a prop, in the same spirit as a bolster or a block. For students who are neurodivergent, living with anxiety or PTSD, or who simply don't find stillness regulating, aerial yoga can open up a whole range of options, like gentle rocking, cocooning, deep pressure, spinning, or closing the world out entirely, while still practising alongside others. We also moved into territory I find myself returning to again and again. How do we reckon with the harm caused by influential yoga teachers while still practising within traditions they shaped? Jo explores this honestly in her book, and we unpack what it means to hold that complexity without erasing it. And then I turned two questions from the Samādhi chapter of her book back on her. How would you act if you were already enlightened? And what stops you? It was, as Jo put it at the end, a little bit like therapy. I'll take that. In this episode, we explore: What aerial yoga actually is, and how the hammock functions as a therapeutic yoga prop rather than a circus apparatus.Why stillness is not the only route to calm, and how the hammock allows for movement-based regulation in a group setting.The particular benefits for neurodivergent students and those with anxiety or PTSD, including options for deep pressure, vestibular stimulation, cocooning and visual control.The historical roots of supported inversions and fabric use in yoga, from the Indian thottil through Krishnamacharya's ropes to the Iyengar rope wall.The difference between circus and yoga, performance versus inner experience, and what aerial practice genuinely shares with both traditions.How to navigate the harm caused by influential but abusive teachers, and why Jo chose to name B.K.S. Iyengar's complexity directly in her book.The importance of teaching students to trust their own intuition over any teacher's authority.What it looks like to act as your highest self now, without waiting for the perfect moment.People-pleasing in helping professions, when is it genuine service, and when is it something else? Connect with Jo Stewart at https://gardenofyoga.com.au/ Join the Australian 2026 hybrid Mental Health Aware Yoga training at https://www.mentalhealthawareyoga.com/hybrid  Join the online Mental Health Aware Yoga training in September at https://www.mentalhealthawareyoga.com/online Download the music for nervous system regulation playlists at https://www.yogapsychologyinstitute.com/join/ This podcast is for general informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional advice or training. Please consult a qualified healthcare professional for personalised guidance, or come and join one of our programs at the Yoga Psychology Institute for professional training. While we are grateful for our guests and sponsors, any statements, claims or endorsements made are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Yoga Psychology Institute.

What does it take to leave behind everything you've built, cycle 8,000 miles across the world, with no clear plan for what comes next? I recorded this conversation live at the Bali Spirit Festival, sitting across from Charley Patton, co-founder of the iconic Yoga Barn in Ubud. After 16 years climbing the corporate ladder in America, Charley did something that many of us dream about and few of us actually do, he left. Not impulsively, but with intention, careful planning, and a custom-built touring bicycle. What began as a two-week stop in Bali en route to Cambodia became, slowly and irreversibly, a life. And out of that life grew one of the most beloved yoga spaces in the world. So often we look at a successful and established business, and don’t know about the real people behind the scenes and all the decisions, big and small, that led them there. And I loved hearing about Charley’s journey. We talked about the moment Charley realised his outside life no longer matched his inside life and how yoga cracked something open in him that made staying impossible. We talked about Bali's extraordinary spiritual culture, the 2002 bombings and how the Balinese community responded, the ethics of tourism and how to show up with humility on land that isn't yours.   We talked about what it really means to follow your dharma and why that might be one of the most practical and political acts available to us right now. In this episode, we explore: Charley's 16 years in corporate America, and the Sunday dread that finally made staying impossibleHow yoga first helped him survive, and then helped him see he needed to do more than surviveHis solo 8,000-mile bicycle journey through seven countries and the two-week Bali stop that never endedThe founding of the Yoga Barn - from a tiny by-donation space on the third-floor to one of the world's most well-known yoga communitiesBalinese spiritual culture, the significance of ceremony and offerings, and what the 2002 Bali bombings meant on a spiritual level for the Balinese peopleThe ethics of tourism and how to travel with consciousness, humility and an open heartThe question of congruence - are you living from the inside out, or wearing a mask every day?Joseph Campbell's hero's journey as a map for those standing at a crossroadsThe concentric circles of right relationship - with self, partner, family, community and the world Connect with Charley Patton at https://theyogabarn.com/ Find out more about the Bali Spirit Festival at https://www.balispiritfestival.com/ Join the Australian 2026 hybrid Mental Health Aware Yoga training at https://www.mentalhealthawareyoga.com/hybrid Join the online Mental Health Aware Yoga training in September at https://www.mentalhealthawareyoga.com/online This podcast is for general informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional advice or training. Please consult a qualified healthcare professional for personalised guidance or come and join one of our programs at the Yoga Psychology Institute for professional training. While we are grateful for our guests and sponsors, any statements, claims or endorsements made are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Yoga Psychology Institute.

What does it look like to say yes to life in the very week your father has died? I recorded this conversation with Bex Tyrer (she/her) at the Bali Spirit Festival in Ubud, exactly one week after her father passed away at the age of 98.   I wasn't sure we were going to do it. We'd been planning this interview for a while, but when I heard about her dad, I thought we'd postpone. It wasn't until the morning of the recording that Bex said yes, and what unfolded was an incredibly intimate and honest conversation. Bex is a yoga teacher and facilitator at the Yoga Barn in Ubud, where she's been a resident teacher since 2008. She holds an MPhil from Oxford University, has taught yoga in Bali's largest prison, in refugee camps in Palestine and in women's refuges in Kathmandu, and brings a rare combination of intellectual depth and embodied wisdom to everything she does. In this episode, we talked about what it's like to grieve a parent you've been saying goodbye to for a decade. About compartmentalisation, and the patterns we carry from childhood loss. About sitting beside someone you love as they slowly leave, and how music and eye contact can reach through when words can't. Bex shared the story of her father's extraordinary life, from working-class Scotland to the Australian outback to a care home nearly a century later, and the inheritance he left her that had nothing to do with material wealth. We also talked about death itself. The myth of Eos and the grasshopper. Reincarnation, synchronicity and signs. And how we can hold the closeness of death in order to allow for more life. This is a tender one.  In this episode, we explore: Bex's father and his remarkable life, from 1920s Scotland to Australia as a £10 pom Losing a parent at age 11, and the patterns of compartmentalisation that followedNot being greedy with your grief and what it means to share grief as an offering rather than keeping it privateThe myth of Eos and the grasshopperWhat yoga, mindfulness and embodiment practices offered Bex through the grieving processWhat might happen after we dieThe parallels between the end of life and the beginningThe "dance of life" exerciseChoosing life in the face of loss, the inhale as a yes to life and the exhale as giving life back Connect with Bex at https://www.instagram.com/bextyreryoga/ Find out more about the Bali Spirit Festival at https://www.balispiritfestival.com/  Join the Yoga Psychology Mentorship starting 28th May 2026 at https://www.yogapsychologymentorship.com Join the Australian 2026 hybrid Mental Health Aware Yoga training at https://www.mentalhealthawareyoga.com/hybrid  Join the online Mental Health Aware Yoga training in September at https://www.mentalhealthawareyoga.com/online This podcast is for general informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional advice or training. Please consult a qualified healthcare professional for personalised guidance, or come and join one of our programs at the Yoga Psychology Institute for professional training. While we are grateful for our guests and sponsors, any statements, claims or endorsements made are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Yoga Psychology Institute.