What happens when someone born inside the culture of Yoga meets the modern world with eyes wide open? This timeless conversation with my Gurubhai, R. Sriram, originally recorded five years ago, is as alive and necessary now as it was then.

Sriram grew up in South India, surrounded by music, temples, and traditional values. He also experienced Catholic schooling, English literature, radical theater, and many layers of spiritual and political questioning. This is a deeply personal account of growing up in the very society that Krishnamacharya and Desikachar came from, while still struggling to feel at home in it. We talk about what it means to be indigenous to this tradition, and how Sriram’s life became a bridge between ancient learning and modern experience.

When he met Desikachar in the late 1970s, he didn’t just begin to study Yoga. He entered a relationship that helped him live through the emotional and cultural complexity of his own story. Breath, practice, and shared understanding gave him a way to continue, to grow, and to teach. That path eventually took him to Germany, where he has taught since 1988 alongside his wife, the Indian classical dancer Anjali Sriram.

This conversation is a reminder that the teacher-student relationship is about being seen. It is about friendship, sincerity, and learning to live with all parts of who we are.

A Life Inside the Tradition – Sriram shares firsthand memories of growing up in the same world that Krishnamacharya and Desikachar belonged to.

Holding the Whole – His life shows how Yoga supported him through family customs, academic pressure, spiritual curiosity, and social questions.

Desikachar’s Openness – Sriram remembers how Desikachar welcomed real people with real conflicts and questions.

Voice and Breath – Chanting became a way to connect with his roots, express devotion, and care for his inner life.

Ongoing Search – This story speaks to anyone asking how to live in two worlds, and how to find peace without needing to erase anything.

Yoga in a New Culture – Sriram reflects on decades of teaching in Germany, how people first reacted to Yoga, and how that has shifted over time.

R. Sriram’s Website: https://www.yogaweg.de/r-sriram/

R. Sriram on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sriramsriramyoga/

You are the beauty. You are the intelligence. You are already in perfect harmony with life. You don’t need to seek it. You need only participate in it.

Learn more and access the course at https://www.heartofyoga.com

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There are times when the pain for the Earth is so strong it feels like it might break you. You may have felt it in your chest after seeing a forest cut down or watching the ocean poisoned. Rosalind talks about her years as an environmental activist and how being in constant contact with destruction led to exhaustion, grief, and a feeling of being stuck. She shares how Yoga became a way to meet those feelings, move through them, and reconnect with the energy to keep going.

Mark and Rosalind speak about allowing every stage of emotion to be felt — from numbness to fear, anger, pain, grief, and finally compassion. They talk about Yoga as a relationship with life, the body, and nature, and how that relationship can help us face reality without shutting down.

Eco Anxiety and Grief – Feeling sorrow and fear for nature is an intelligent response from Mother Nature

Natural Order of Emotions – Allowing numbness, fear, anger, pain, grief, and compassion to be felt brings healing and energy

Yoga as Relationship – Practice is about being with your own body and in intimacy with nature and life

Strength Through Feeling – Meeting and releasing emotions restores the energy to keep caring for the Earth

No Bypassing – Avoiding difficult feelings disconnects us from what is true and from our own humanity

Inner to Outer Change – Working with our own patterns and conditioning makes us more able to help create change for the Earth

Yoga for A Better World: https://www.heartofyoga.com/yoga-for-activists-1

You are the beauty. You are the intelligence. You are already in perfect harmony with life. You don’t need to seek it. You need only participate in it.

Learn more and access the course at https://www.heartofyoga.com

Support the Heart of Yoga Foundation.

This podcast is sustained by your donations.

What if real Yoga begins with feeling more alive, not just more flexible?

Ari is a Yoga teacher from Korea on a mission to investigate the depth of the Yoga tradition. She discovered a passion to bring the teachings of Krishnamacharya to Korea, along with her dear friend Ray and friends from the Gabbi community. This is a community of young people from Korea who are dropping out of corporate life and patterned conformism, in favour of finding their own path in life.

This conversation gets to the heart of the matter — what is Yoga, really? How can it be integrated into the lives of everyday people? The shift from conformity to autonomy is paralleled by the shift from yoga as performance to Yoga as intimacy with our own body and breath… the mystery of our own incarnation.

It’s a great interview because it is coming from the freshness of Ari’s own experience of Yoga, and feeling the breath and movement as one continuous intelligence. And it’s a good convo to listen to because both speakers are loving and respecting what the other has to offer.

Yoga Begins with You –The practice adapts to your life, not the other way around

Breath is the Guide – Let the breath lead the body and the mind will follow

Strength is in Softness – Inhale and exhale are a love relationship, each nourishing the other

Real Yoga is Personal – It doesn’t require tricks, brands, or poses; it requires honesty

Intimacy is the Path – Yoga returns us to real connection with life, with others, and with ourselves

Start Where You Are – A short, daily practice made just for you can change everything

Find Ari on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ari.yogatraveler

Support the Heart of Yoga Foundation: This podcast is sustained by your donations.