Finding Harmony Podcast

Moon Yoga

Today it is our distinct honor and pleasure to introduce Sharon Moon. This is a one of Russell’s most revered friends, colleagues, his mentor, and teacher. Russell met Sharon in 1998 when he was 23 years old (younger than her grandchildren are now).
Sharon was instrumental in pushing Russell towards studying the traditional method of Ashtanga Yoga in a real Mysore Room in NY. She has an enormous heart and has guided him over the years in his decisions. Sharon tells us about studying with David on the second floor of the the first Whole Foods Store in Austin, Texas in 1993!
Sharon shares with us an incredible story of her first harrowing marriage to an abuser, her subsequent unwanted pregnancies, what an illegal abortion was like in the 60’s, and how she made it out alive. Her next husband died in a tragic car crash that she witnessed firsthand. She spent the next chapter of her life getting strong, real strong, and cultivating deep inner healing on every level.
She recounts meeting Swami Satchidananda, her initiation into Paramahansa Yogananda’s Self Realization Fellowship, and attaining a double Black Belt in Taekwondo.
Sharon shares with us some of her experiences during her travels to Mysore, the UK, and Taiwan. But one of the most meaningful years of her life was the one she spent in the Kibera Settlements of Nairobi, Kenya, working for Russell as a yoga teacher, training new indigenous yoga teachers, and teaching 10,000 children a week. Something that Manju Jois, upon visiting her in Nairobi, catalyzed him to award her an Ashtanga Yoga Authorization on the spot.
Sharon is an interesting duality, a Texan, Jewess, street fighter, and a deeply maternal great-grandmother full of a giant well of loving kindness. We think you’ll enjoy this trip.
FIND OUT MORE ABOUT SHARON ON HER WEBSITE
The Finding Harmony Podcast is hosted, edited and produced by Harmony Slater and co-hosted by Russell Case.
A big heart of thanks to our friends, family, and students from around the world, who’ve generously supported this podcast through your comments, sharing, and financial donations.
Your contributions have allowed us to keep our podcast ad and sponsor free. Creating, editing and producing each episode takes a lot of time. It is a labor of love. And would not be possible without your kind support.
If you’ve enjoyed today’s podcast, please consider supporting our future episodes by making a donation. Every little bit goes a long way and we are immensely grateful for any and all of your support.
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Don’t forget to leave a review! ❤ And a 5★ Rating!
We love to read and respond to your comments - So drop us a note in the comments below and give us a shout out on IG!
Opening and closing music compliments of my dear friend teaching Ashtanga yoga in Eindhoven, Nick Evans, with his band “dawnSong” from the album “for Morgan.” Listen to the entire album on Spotify - Simply Click Here.
To purchase your own copy - Click Here.

Rogue Yogi: Escaping Samsara

We are delighted to share with you a conversation with our fellow podcaster Nathan Thompson: Poet, Journalist, Buddhist Practitioner, and self-taught Ashtangi, as well as the host of the Escaping Samsara Podcast.
Nathan is a peculiar sort of Englishman. In that he is entirely self made. He seems to have created a career for himself by weaving together a colorful tapestry, in the way that Americans used to (or were assumed to have done in the old days). The English, as Russell will tell you, have the distinct notoriety of being quite class bound. Karl Marx himself said there was no nation more bound for revolution than Great Britain, or words to that effect.
And yet, that is exactly what Mr. Thompson has done in remaking himself.
He grew up near London, surprisingly in an Evangelical Christian culture, with many other thousands in his familial community to gather in the happy-clappy spirit. However, coming down from these singularly peak experiences was humiliating in its own way. Russell pointed out that it resembled Peter Gabriel’s annunciation in Solsbury Hill. How do we live in the meantime? How do we just fold laundry after all that?
Subsequently, in his teens Nathan tumbled headfirst down the deep tunnel of drug use and sank into a pattern of addiction. After a decade of darkness, he found his feet again through the practice of Vipassana Meditation in the lineage of S.N Goenka, a tradition that both he and Harmony share a connection with. Nathan again forged his own path creating a career as a traveling Poet, which helped propel him on his ongoing spiritual quest to taste the nectar of pure, eternal, unadulterated bliss: the kind of thing you can fold laundry with.
A friend asked him to teach English and so you will hear how he moved to Cambodia with a nonprofit organization, and found himself living in a Buddhist Monastery. Here wildly, out of this little hut, he flourished as a Journalist and head of the Foreign Press Club of Cambodia.
Likewise, Nathan, taught himself the Ashtanga yoga practice in an idiosyncratic way, watching videos and trying all the postures from a single series all at one time. We touch upon the differences between being self-taught as a practitioner in this tradition verses having a teacher who will give you a pose and guide your practice, and how the desire to accumulate postures can become an addiction in itself.
One of Nathan’s favourite interviews on his podcast is with Ajahn Achalo, an Australian Buddhist monk living in Northern Thailand, who emphasizes the importance of cultivating Metta Meditation, so that you can call upon loving kindness whenever you need to.
FOLLOW Nathan & the Escaping Samsara podcast
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The Finding Harmony Podcast is hosted, edited and produced by Harmony Slater and co-hosted by Russell Case.
A big heart of thanks to our friends, family, and students from around the world, who’ve generously supported this podcast through your comments, sharing, and financial donations.
Your contributions have allowed us to keep our podcast ad and sponsor free. Creating, editing and producing each episode takes a lot of time. It is a labor of love. And would not be possible without your kind support.
If you’ve enjoyed today’s podcast, please consider supporting our future episodes by making a donation. Every little bit goes a long way and we are immensely grateful for any and all of your support.

Yoga and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

It’s American Thanksgiving this Thursday and we have so much to be grateful for. This conversation with Samantha Lucas reminds us all just how much we tend to take for granted every day and how an entire life can be forever altered within mere seconds.
From polyglot to major (major league) baseball fan to motorcycle enthusiast, Samantha Lucas has a plethora of interests that have taken her on adventures across the globe. Her Ashtanga yoga practice though, never became more valuable than when she was laying in a hospital bed, face to face with a questionable future of whether she would ever be able to physically practice again.
In the summer of 2016 Samantha suffered a catastrophic accident, losing her right leg below the knee. Nonetheless, Samantha has continued to practice and teach Mysore style Ashtanga yoga, finding strength and balance throughout the trauma and recovery. Depression was something that she had always struggled with; and yet, we heard the voice of someone who was completely focused on the process of recovery. A process that informs how she continues to seek improvement in her practice to this day.
Her philosophy is that this practice is for everyone and through daily, consistent practice, everyone can grow and find strength no matter what challenges one might face. She believes that yoga is experiential and one can only grow through taking action.
Truly focusing on the process of 'work without attachment to success or failure' is what Krishna advises Arjuna to attune his mind to when he becomes paralyzed with despair seeing the battle before him. Samantha’s personal approach to Ashtanga yoga as a vital practice with this same vision is an inspiration for all of us to keep facing our own struggles, no matter what obstacles we face. Something Samantha refers to as “inspiration porn.” We think you will be delighted listening to this incredibly upbeat Lady, who has a world of experience and hard-earned wisdom to share.
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The Finding Harmony Podcast is hosted, edited and produced by Harmony Slater and co-hosted by Russell Case.
A big heart of thanks to our friends, family, and students from around the world, who’ve generously supported this podcast through your comments, sharing, and financial donations.
Your contributions have allowed us to keep our podcast ad and sponsor free. Creating, editing and producing each episode takes a lot of time. It is a labor of love. And would not be possible without your kind support.
If you’ve enjoyed today’s podcast, please consider supporting our future episodes by making a donation. Every little bit goes a long way and we are immensely grateful for any and all of your support.
Don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review! ❤
Leave us a 5★ rating!
Opening and closing music compliments of my dear friend teaching Ashtanga yoga in Eindhoven, Nick Evans, with his band “dawnSong” from the album “for Morgan.” Listen to the entire album on Spotify - Simply Click Here.
To purchase your own copy - Click Here.

Music Is The Space Between Sound

This week we had the pleasure of sitting with one of our oldest friends, Andrew Hillam. It is always a surprising thing to chat in public and this conversation was no different. We expected that Russell and Andrew would slide into familiar scatological tropes but instead Andrew’s insular and introspective nature shined through.
We had a "quiet is the new loud" type of conversation with him on topics such as raising children in India, cooking in the flow state, and the comparison of playing music and chanting the shastras. Something that Andrew says creates a peculiar vibration in his skull.
If you’ve had the pleasure of tasting Andrew Hillam’s idlis then you know he has a special talent for cooking Indian food. However, that is not his only interest... Andrew is fascinated with all kinds of aspects of Indian culture. Besides being a Certified Advanced A Ashtanga Yoga teacher in the Mysore stye, he was a classical guitarist, who had previously pursued a PhD in immunology. if you can believe it! (He recommends wearing a mask by the way).
Andrew is eccentric in his obsessively charming pursuit of perfection.
For Andrew, diving deeply into Sanskrit chanting filled a space for musical expression and his love of sound. It contains both a devotional and philosophical layer that connects chanting to the practice of yoga. Chanting helps Andrew clear his subtle energy channels and increase that Sattvic quality (purity) within.
Finding Ananta (infinity) in the space of the center of the heart, which is a birth place of sound and filled with the substance of bliss. The Mantra rises up from our awakened center. This was the profound heart of our conversation, learning that Andrew believes it is the friction between consciousness and matter that creates reality. Thus, music or chanting, is an opportunity to resolve the inherent conflict of our manifest reality.
Yoga, says Andrew, is about relationship. God is what exists in all relationships, that’s where God lives between people.
The Finding Harmony Podcast is hosted, edited and produced by Harmony Slater and co-hosted by Russell Case.
A big heart of thanks to our friends, family, and students from around the world, who’ve generously supported this podcast through your comments, sharing, and financial donations.
Your contributions have allowed us to keep our podcast ad and sponsor free. Creating, editing and producing each episode takes a lot of time. It is a labor of love. And would not be possible without your kind support.
If you’ve enjoyed today’s podcast, please consider supporting our future episodes by making a donation. Every little bit goes a long way and we are immensely grateful for any and all of your support.
Opening and closing music compliments of my dear friend teaching Ashtanga yoga in Eindhoven, Nick Evans, with his band “dawnSong” from the album “for Morgan.” Listen to the entire album on Spotify - Simply Click Here.
To purchase your own copy - Click Here.

Développés with Shelley Washington

In Ballet, the term développé means to "unfold," or open outwards in a “developing movement.” In this episode we sit down with Shelley Washington where she gracefully unfolds different aspects of her journey.
When you are in Shelley’s presence you feel you are sitting with a star. Someone who is deeply reflective and her essence shines through in every way. We were also love crushed by her in Mysore, India, even more so, because of her enormous heart and generosity towards us.
In this episode, we spoke about what it means to be a star and how her remarkable career unfolded quite organically. Shelley touches upon how her parents and grandparents made conscious personal sacrifices to create opportunities for their children, knowing that growing up in America would mean being marginalized as an African Americans. She shares with us some of her experiences growing up in a military family in American during the 1950’s and 60’s and the incredible grit she cultivated, which sent her soaring onward to receive some of the highest accolades one can attain within the world of dance. She also shares with us how the practice of Ashtanga yoga shifted the way she now teaches choreography to other dancers.
At the age of 45, after a stunning career as a world class modern dancer, where she would train for 8-10 hours a day, Shelley accidentally ends up in a yoga class, and has to find an entirely new way to relate to her body and approach this new physical discipline. How her practice has evolved over the past 20 years will surprise you!
Read more about Shelley Washington on my website: HARMONYSLATER.COM
The Finding Harmony Podcast is hosted, edited and produced by Harmony Slater and co-hosted by Russell Case.
A big heart of thanks to our friends, family, and students from around the world, who’ve generously supported this podcast through your comments, sharing, and financial donations.
Your contributions have allowed us to keep our podcast ad and sponsor free. Creating, editing and producing each episode takes a lot of time. It is a labor of love. And would not be possible without your kind support.
If you’ve enjoyed today’s podcast, please consider supporting our future episodes by making a donation. Every little bit goes a long way and we are immensely grateful for any and all of your support.
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Don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review! ❤
And give us a 5★ rating!
Opening and closing music compliments of my dear friend teaching Ashtanga yoga in Eindhoven, Nick Evans, with his band “dawnSong” from the album “for Morgan.” Listen to the entire album on Spotify - Simply Click Here.
To purchase your own copy - Click Here.

The Only Way Out Is In

Whether it’s politics, pandemics, protests, or Ashtanga yoga, we’re all unavoidably immersed within a world of duality, or maya, meaning illusion, and it’s a game we cannot truly escape. Yoga however, teaches us to move through our lives as gracefully as possible, accepting the positive and negative, the accolades and losses, while rebalancing and reclaiming our sense of inner equanimity.
We speak to Prem and Radha Carlisi, who speak to us about their personal history and how they’ve grown into the people they are today, and some of the events and circumstances that shaped their positions within our global Ashtanga yoga community.
Prem and Radha very graciously spoke to us about their decisions to change their birth names, and introduced us to the story of their lives.
What shines through their epic hero’s journey is how to come terms with tragedy and disappointment. We spoke about the illusion of legitimacy… What can be seen as “the Game.”
Fear is our greatest controller. And understanding that we are all afraid… Afraid of loss, afraid of humiliation, afraid of the future; yet, when we choose to face and interact with these myriad situations we choose to get on the court and play the game.
Radha spoke to us about the disappointment she felt about being caught between two worlds that were growing further apart. Finding herself located somewhere between the “old school” and the “new school” these factions within the global community ultimately lead her to rescind her listing on Sharath’s “official list,” after her husband (and Certified teacher) was excluded from the updated listing of recognized teachers in 2018.
We are not the physical body, but we are so attached to it, and nothing demonstrates our attachments to this human birth more than losing something or someone we love. Prem, like anyone who has lived a full and adventurous life reaching the age of 65, has experienced several losses throughout his life, but nothing can compare to the awful, unexpected loss of his daughter. Prem shares with us his profoundly moving story about how the practice saved his life, and not only allowed him to forgive, but to befriend the one who was at the helm when the devastating accident took place.LEARN MORE ABOUT PREM & RADHA
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Don't miss out on downloading my free Yoga-Mythology e-book! Click HERE to get your copy!
Be sure to subscribe and leave a review! ❤ And give us a 5★ rating!
We love to read and respond to your comments - So drop us a note in the comments below and give us a shout out on IG!
Opening and closing music compliments of my dear friend teaching Ashtanga yoga in Eindhoven, Nick Evans, with his band “dawnSong” from the album “for Morgan.” Listen to the entire album on Spotify - Simply Click Here.
To purchase your own copy - Click Here.

The Art of Yoga

The Chinese have a curse “May you be blessed to live in interesting times.”
Today we spoke with Timothy Lynch, an artist, father, philosopher, husband, activist, and deeply connected human being. One thing we could all agree on was that these were certainly “interesting times!”
Timothy Lynch spoke to us about the personal sacrifice he made.
Like in a giant cyclical wheel, the bubble of energy expanded… Ashtanga Yoga was triumphant and golden at the turn of the millennium, and all things seemed to arise and live inside of her as within Krishna’s cosmic bosom.
Then, a decade after the death of Pattabhi Jois, the bubble exploded in the wake of #metoo. The chintzy shine was tarnished. The “now” big boss was humbled and, controversially, avoiding the proverbial elephant in the room. And, it was at this point that Timothy felt propelled to sacrifice his place within the lineage, and walk away from the official “authorized list” of recognized teachers. A very sincere and conscious choice, a stance taken as a personal protest to authoritarianism.
"We were all punks first," Timothy said. And so he reminded us of our punk ethos when he took his name away.
Throughout our conversation with Timothy, we were reminded of what Krishna says during his last teachings to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita:
sarva dharmaan parityajya maamekam sharanam vraja
aham twaa sarvapaapebhyo mokshayishyaami maa shuchah (BG 18.66)
“Completely relinquish all forms of dharma, come to me as your only shelter. I shall grant you freedom from all misfortune — do not despair!”
Timothy received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts in Painting in NY and quickly became a gallery assistant at the world renowned (actually) Pace Wildenstein Gallery. In the midst of this quite intense little job, which he describes as being akin to an emergency medical technician for paintings he came to Yoga.
We touched upon the ephemeral quality of the asana practice and how it can be seen as making art with your body, like dance or music, it appears and then it’s gone.
“Love is being able to see the qualities in someone else that they can’t see in themselves, and as a Mysore teacher it’s our job to support individuals to grow into a space where they can see themselves for who they truly are. “
Timothy publicly renounced his Authorization and liberated his consciousness to continue practicing on his own terms.
We’re all in this together and love is what will get us through in the end.
LEARN MORE ABOUT TIMOTHY
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A Round Table on The Advanced Practice

When we’re at home, most of us practice with a different intensity than we do in Mysore, whether it turns out to be more or less postures is another story. We spent an afternoon discussing what this looks like and why we do what we do with power couple Kate O’Donnell and Rich Ray from Ashtanga Yoga Portland Maine. We talked about Advanced Asanas and our relationship to them both personally, as well as collectively.
The first aspect we discussed is what sacrifices a person must make to practice Advanced Series on a regular basis, and barring those sacrifices, what then is Yoga and what is it for?
Not all people can do these complex advanced postures. And yet, all people can practice Yoga.
We discussed how exploring the minutia within a single posture can allow for the time and space to fully examine oneself within a posture, and how using asanas as benchmarks creates hierarchies of status (for better or worse). One thing we all seemed to agree upon is that all aspects of the body and mind can be examined in Surya Namaskar. Even simply examining your tongue might be enough to send your consciousness to other planes of reality.
Rich Ray has been practicing meditation and yoga for over 20 years. He trained as a resident monk for 4 years at a silent monastery. He taught yoga and meditation at state prisons in California and New Hampshire and started a meditation program at a women’s county jail in Boston, Massachusetts. He is the director of Ashtanga Yoga Portland Maine.
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Kate O’Donnell is the author of three Ayurvedic Cookbooks, including The Everyday Ayurveda Guide to Self-Care, The Everyday Ayurveda Cookbook: A Seasonal Guide to Eating and Living Well and Everyday Ayurvedic Cooking for a Calm, Clear Mind: 100 Sattvic Recipes. She is a nationally certified Ayurvedic Practitioner and the founder of the Ayurvedic Living Institute.
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Harmony Slater is a Certified Ashtanga Yoga Teacher, who has been teaching in the Mysore method for close to 20 years. Harmony is a strong presence in the Ashtanga community worldwide having founded two Yoga Schools in Canada. She has shared her experiences with the practice, pregnancy and childbirth in the books: ‘Yoga Sadhana for Mothers’ and ‘Strength and Grace: A collection of Essays by Women of Ashtanga Yoga.’
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Russell Case was the Founding Director of the Stanford Mysore Program for the last ten years. Prior to this he was the founder of the largest Mysore program in East Asia from 2005-2010, while living in Taipei, Taiwan. Since then Russell was project manager for the Jois Foundation collaborating with the child psychiatry team at the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford University in undertaking the largest and most comprehensive longitudinal study on the effect of mindfulness and yoga on school age children in history. Currently he is focused on cultivating a robust career as a painter because yolo.
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On The Other Side of Darkness with Todd Boman

We were blessed today to catch up with our dear friend Todd Boman. Todd and Russell were both born in the Pontiac Memorial Hospital in the 70’s. Probably right along side Madonna Ciccone, a neighbor. Todd has a unique story to share. Growing up in Michigan as a young gay male is its own peculiar hellscape. He understood immediately (and by that I mean junior high school) that being gay in the 80’s and 90’s likely meant death from HIV/AIDS. Surviving the darker side of this AIDS crisis in America was fraught with escapist behavior and that became yet another damned issue to try and survive.
Todd is here to tell you it gets better. The best thing you can have is good friends and mentors to teach you how to Live and Love.
“Yoga is having the skills to put your life into action.” - Todd Boman
We touched on themes of Addiction, Crisis, Recovery, Yoga, Mysore, and his particular fascination with Chicago Folk Designer Edgar Miller.
“You are never alone, even though you might feel like it.” Todd’s message to all of us managing addiction and mental health issues.
LEARN MORE ABOUT TODD
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Find Harmony and download your free yoga-mythology e-book HERE
Don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review! ❤ And give us a 5★ rating!
We love to read and respond to your comments - So drop us a note in the comments below and give us a shout out on IG!
Opening and closing music compliments of my dear friend teaching Ashtanga yoga in Eindhoven, Nick Evans, with his band “dawnSong” from the album “for Morgan.” Listen to the entire album on Spotify - Simply Click Here.
To purchase your own copy - Click Here.

Grass Roots with Robert Moses

We were absolutely blown away when Robert Moses related the current pandemic of the Coronavirus to a powerful transformative goddess, Ma Corona Devi.
In this way, we most certainly felt like it was a blessing of the Mother Goddess Corona Devi, that this esteemed teacher of yoga, Robert Moses, came on our podcast to share with us personal stories from his incredible lifetime on the spiritual path.
Starting with being born in South Africa into a Jewish family, growing up during apartheid, to traveling through Europe in the 60’s on an architectural tour in a secondhand VW bus plastered with Lakshmi posters, and moving to Israel to become a renunciate Swami with the International Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Organization.
He was first introduced to the method of Ashtanga yoga, as taught by Sri K Pattabhi Jois, by the pioneer Norman Allen, in 1982. Norman had called him gruffly out of the blue, after twelve years of living in India. The rules of the Sivananda “Yoga Ranch” were that Robert was to teach Norman, until it became clear that Norman had something different to teach Robert. Robert began practicing with Norman in a small loft in NYC, along with another pioneer, Beryl Bender-Birch, who was learning this novel style of asana — something that was completely foreign to North America at the time.
Robert Moses was the first person to show Derek Ireland Surya Namaskara, which started him on his journey to Pattabhi Jois in Mysore, and Derek in turn, taught John Scott and Hamish Hendry, propagating the Asthanga yoga community in Europe.
Robert Moses shares with us the wisdom he’s learned about holding strong to the middle path, staying true to oneself, and connecting to something greater.
I’m sure you will find this interview as historically fascinating and personally enlightening as we did.
If you are interested in joining Robert Moses for one of his Pranayama Classes, his course on Vedanta or Hatha Yoga, he will be beginning a new session of classes THIS WEEK!
Find all the details on his website.
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Find out more about Harmony Slater and Russell Case and their upcoming offerings at harmonyslater.com and download my free e-book on Yoga Mythology.
Don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review! ❤
Give us a 5★ rating!
We love to read and respond to your comments - So drop us a note in the comments below and give us a shoutout on IG!
Opening and closing music compliments of my dear friend teaching Ashtanga yoga in Eindhoven, Nick Evans, with his band “dawnSong” from the album “for Morgan.” Listen to the entire album on Spotify - Simply Click Here.
To purchase your own copy - Click Here.