In this deeply honest and sometimes difficult conversation, Melissa Matt, Kino MacGregor, Peg Mulqueen, Sarah Nelson, and Greg Nardi take a courageous step into the heart of Ashtanga Yoga's ongoing reckoning. This episode asks some of the most pressing and uncomfortable questions facing our community today:

Who decides what practice looks like? How are poses given, and what happens when power, hierarchy, and silence intertwine?

Drawing from recent events and decades of shared experience, the teachers reflect on accountability, lineage, and the urgent need for new models of integrity. The dialogue is raw, vulnerable, and imperfect but necessary.

Podcast notes

The Quiet Turning: Meditation, Yoga, and the Truth of Impermanence

One of the most frustrating instructions I ever received in a meditation class was deceptively simple: Close your eyes and quiet the mind. I remember thinking, if I could do that, I wouldn't be here learning how to meditate. Like so many others, I was searching for peace amidst the chaos of my own thoughts.

Fortunately, I stumbled upon an ancient method that didn't demand silence from the start. It welcomed me exactly as I was. And over the years, daily meditation has become a cornerstone of my spiritual path, a way not to escape my thoughts but to learn how to be with them, honestly and gently.

Many people believe they can't meditate because their minds are too restless. But that's precisely why meditation works. You don't need to be naturally calm to benefit from the practice, in fact, it's often those with the most inner turbulence who stand to gain the most. The very effort to sit, to observe, to try, even if imperfectly, is itself transformative. Every sincere attempt to concentrate, even for a moment, changes the texture of our awareness. Presence deepens. Stillness peeks through.

In this way, meditation becomes a necessary companion to the physical discipline of yoga āsana. While āsana strengthens and opens the body, meditation refines the mind. Both are limbs of the same eightfold path and thrive in relationship to each other. If you're immersed in a strong physical practice, I invite you to explore the quiet power of sitting. If you already sit, but haven't stepped onto a mat, consider how movement might deepen your awareness. It's in the meeting of stillness and motion, of breath and body, that yoga reveals its deepest gifts.

There is a turning that happens in every sincere moment of meditation: a turning inward, a turning away from distraction, and when we're ready, a turning toward truth.

Seeing the Dhamma in Impermanence

The Buddha's path is experiential, not theoretical. In the Saṃyutta Nikāya (SN 22.45), he says:

"Yo aniccaṃ passati, so dhammaṃ passati. Yo dhammaṃ passati, so aniccaṃ passati."

"One who sees impermanence sees the Dhamma. One who sees the Dhamma sees impermanence."

To walk the path is to see clearly—moment by moment—that all things arise and pass. This insight is not depressing, but liberating. It opens the heart to compassion, to presence, and to the letting go that leads to peace.

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What does it really mean to practice yoga not just once in a while, but again and again, across years, through resistance, joy, boredom, and transformation?

In this episode, Kino and Tim explore the deeper meaning of abhyāsa, the Sanskrit word often translated as "practice," but whose roots reveal something far more enduring: the committed, intentional act of returning. They weave this with the concept of bhāvanā, the inner cultivation of the heart and mind, drawn from early Buddhist teachings.

Through stories from the Ashtanga method and personal reflections on the power of repetition, Kino and Tim share how practice is not about performance or perfection, but about shaping who we become through presence.

This episode is an invitation to see practice not as a means to an end, but as the path itself. The pose is not the point. Returning is the point. Cultivating presence, breath by breath, day by day, becomes the living path of yoga. When we stop running and return to the moment, we remember, this is the place we never truly left.

Practice LIVE with me exclusively on Omstars! Start your journey today with a 7-day trial at omstars.com.
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Stay connected with us on social @omstarsofficial and @kinoyoga
Practice with me in person for workshops, classes, retreats, trainings and Mysore seasons. Find out more about where I'm teaching at kinoyoga.com and sign up for our Mysore season in Miami at www.miamilifecenter.com.