I had a chance to record this episode "live". And what a difference it makes!
You can listen on Stitcher - I-Tunes - Lybsin or click here if you are not sure
Kino is one of those teachers that barely needs introduction because she is super famous, he has a quarter million subscribers to her YouTube channel, 679,000 followers on Instagram, 43,000 followers on Twitter and another quarter million (almost) Facebook likes to her page.
She has also been on the cover of Yoga Journal many times.
She is one of those very rare teachers who has gone very deep down the asana route, currently learning the 5th series of Ashtanga Yoga which is the equivalent of performing an athletic feast worth of many gold medals in the olympics, and she is a pleasure to talk to.
Reading her book "Sacred Fire" her story feels like a fairy tale. She caught the yoga bug very early on and started traveling to India in her early 20s. Her ability in asana and her power to communicate and teach make her a great combination, so much so that she attracts massive numbers of students wherever she travels.
But it was not all fairy tale.
She also had to take a lot of heat from the "yoga police" which as you know by now, does exist.... I know... I can barely believe it myself but there is such a thing.
She has been bashed and criticized for her outreach and for trying to expand the circle of people she reaches with her passion, which is yoga.
Today the Miami Life Center is a vibrant store front on 6th street in South Beach. It is always full of people and great energy and there are great instructors always present, with assistants. They also have great workshops going on all the time.
And the best part about Kino is that she comes with Tim. Tim Feldman, who is also a very advanced and serious practitioner is her husband and together they created the center. I hope to have Tim on the podcast soon as well.
- Her beginnings with yoga... Her first class
- Kino meets Govinda, her first teacher of Ashtanga
- Her first trip to Mysore
- Meeting Tim and the love story
- The hardships of a long distance relationship
- Her first Vipassana Silent Meditation 10 day retreat, and her second
- Discovering body image issues around the legs and hips
- Opening the Miami Life Center - It was NOT easy
- The "yoga police" and how she deals with haters
- The stereotypes around women being more flexible and men stronger - Not necessarily true
- What took Kino a very long time to understand
DVD Ashtanga Yoga Primary Series
DVD Ashtanga Yoga Intermediate Series
DVD Introduction to Ashtanga Yoga
DVD Ashtanga Yoga Third Series
The Power Of Ashtanga Yoga The Primary Series [Book]
The Power Of Ashtanga Yoga II: The Intermedia Series [Book]
Sacred Fire: My Journey Into Ashtanga Yoga [Book]
Audio CD The Mantra Collection
Announcer: Welcome to The Yoga Podcast, keeping it real, with your host, Claudia Azula Altucher.
Claudia Altucher: Hey, it's me, Claudia. Thanks for listening to the podcast. I'm really grateful to all of you who've been giving me some amazing feedback. I wanted to give you a little – very quick intro to this special episode. I actually interviewed Kino in person and that was the first time I did this, because I've been doing ridiculous hours of waking up to interview people who are in Asia, Japan, Bali, Australia, and then some other teachers that are not so far, but it was never really – even though that Skype face-to-face, sometimes you are able to do it, it was different to do it at the studio.
And I was also in Miami, so I was practicing in the studio, and I thought that was something that was very interesting. We arrived about half an hour early, and opening the door, there was one of Kino's senior teachers. His name is Patrick Noland, and he recognized me from prior times that I've practiced at the Miami Life Center, and we started to talk, you know, sort of introduction. Kino was doing a final exam for some students on another room, so what I found curious that I wanted to share with you is the schedule that Patrick told me he had had on that day.
And I had it in a recording on my phone, but I apologize, I can't put it here 'cause the quality is really bad and I didn't want it to affect you, but he told me that on that day, he had woken up at 4:00 AM to walk his dog and then he taught, at 6:00 AM, a Mysore class all the way to 8:30 AM, then he was gonna practice his own practice – he does something serious, something really advanced. Then he was gonna go and – no, then he was gonna teach a led class. So instead of Mysore, a led class is very – he actually does the count and all the students go at the same time, and then, after that, he was going to drive to the other side of town to give a one-hour private lesson.
So I thought that was very eye-opening for all of us who are thinking, "Oh, I would really like to be a yoga teacher," because I think it may put things in perspective a little. I couldn't believe the level of activity that Patrick had on that day. But anyways, we chit-chatted for a little bit, and then Kino finished her class and exams, and we started talking. And so here she is, Kino MacGregor.
Claudia Altucher: Okay, so – yeah. Okay. So before we start, Kino, I just want to say that I'm a little jealous of you.
[Laughter] Actually, not a little, but a lot, and it happened because I started reading Sacred Fire, which is a book that it feels very confidential, like you tell a lot of little stories that are not in a proper, you know, Ashtanga book, and it felt like a fairytale, like a really good fairytale. So it's the good kind of envy, but – [laughs] – at the same time, it's envy.
So – but I want to introduce you to my listeners although you don't quite need that much introduction, but Kino MacGregor is an international yoga teacher. She is the author of two books, The Power of Ashtanga Yoga and Sacred Fire, and you have another one coming up, which we'll talk about soon. She's also the producer of six Ashtanga yoga DVDs. She's the co-founder of Miami Life Center, and the founder of the Miami Yoga Magazine. Now, the amazing thing about her is her YouTube channel has almost five million views, her Instagram account has 514,000 followers, and she has almost 40,000 followers on Twitter. Amazing.
Kino is one of the select group of people to receive the certification to teach Ashtanga yoga by its founder, Sri K. Pattabhi Jois of India, and she was – you received this before the age of 30, which is an amazing accomplishment. Welcome to The Yoga Podcast, Kino.
Kino MacGregor: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Claudia Altucher: I'm very happy that you not only joined me but you let me do it here in the Miami Life Center. You were just doing a final exam or something like that?
Kino MacGregor: There was a course, an intensive course, that we just wrapped up right before Christmas.
Claudia Altucher: Ah, okay, so that was the end of it and then – that was very interesting. We have some sounds of that, so…
Kino MacGregor: Yeah. Right.
Claudia Altucher: So as I said before, I'm a little envious of you. Yoga came so easy, in a way, and at the same time, not so easy. You were very young. You were 19 or so?
Kino MacGregor: I was 19 when I did my first yoga class, and it was not an Ashtanga yoga class; it was a Sivananda class, more focused on relaxation and sort of a restorative view of how to use the postures, and I did my first Ashtanga yoga class when I was 22 years old, and it was really then that I kind of committed to doing the practice more regularly.
Claudia Altucher: Right, and you said in this book that I find fascinating, Sacred Fire, that you were looking for every kind of exercise before that. You had done Zumba and aerobics, all kinds of things, but something clicked for you in the yoga right away. What would you say – what was it, do you think? 'Cause you went to a class and the instructor even said to you, "Do what you can," right?
Kino MacGregor: Yeah. My first Ashtanga yoga class, the thing that really sort of resonated for me was that the practice answered a searching, sort of a latent searching that I'm not sure I was aware of consciously. But when I did the practice, there was something that really settled inside of me, and it instinctively drew me back to keep practicing, and so that's really the first and probably most fundamental feeling to really go deeper into the yoga path.
Claudia Altucher: And then, at the age of 22, you find yourself in New York City, right?
Kino MacGregor: Exactly, yeah.
Claudia Altucher: And you were studying something in the university?
Kino MacGregor: Yeah, I moved to New York City after some years of sort of just partying and kind of losing yourself in youth and fun and this sort of thing, and I moved to New York City to join a Master's degree program from New York University, and I sort of thought, "Well, I'm gonna get my life back on track." That's sort of what I thought. I thought that I would go to graduate school and maybe get a Ph.D. and get some internships and sort of get a real job and that sort of thing. But when I moved to New York, what actually happened is that I joined a traditional Mysore-style class, and that, for me, really solidified my connection to daily practice. I never thought that I would do yoga every day. It's not something that I, "Oh, I'm gonna do yoga every day."
Claudia Altucher: I don't think anyone thinks that.
Kino MacGregor: No, yeah, I mean, some people are sort of all-or-nothing. Some people who are fitness-oriented people or they go to the gym every day or something like that, I never had any physical discipline before yoga, so it was never really like – I didn't have a daily fitness regimen or routine, not when I was growing up, or really anything. I would work out randomly or something like that.
So when I moved to New York and I joined the Mysore-style class, the teacher, he said to me, "This class meets six days a week. You can come at 8:00." And there was no option to come three days a week or drop in or something like that. It was just sort of like, "You're here every day or you don't do it." So I came every day, and after my first week, I could barely move my arms, and after about a month, I had changed my sleep cycle, and after three months, I wanted to change the way that I was eating. It changed everything about my life 'cause now I had this thing I did every day in the morning, and it required me to make different lifestyle decisions and different lifestyle choices.
And very quickly, after that first class, I got the inspiration to actually go to India, to go to Mysore. So I actually got that inspiration and I followed that dream, really, all the way to Mysore, to India, where I met ____, I met Sri K. Pattabhi Jois.
Claudia Altucher: But before that, I even want to point out the teacher that said to you, "This meets six times a week," he's just no ordinary teacher either, right? [Laughs]
Kino MacGregor: Right, no, this was Govinda. His name was Russell at the time, so Govinda Kai, and –
Claudia Altucher: He's an amazing teacher. He's awesome like you are.
Kino MacGregor: He's really awesome. He's really, really awesome. Yeah, for sure.
Claudia Altucher: So it's amazing, and you said he directed you to some books on – you had some struggles with food, like I think every woman in the planet. I know I do. He directed you to some books on eating, one called Conscious Eating, was it?
Kino MacGregor: Yeah, for sure. I remember, after I had been practicing for maybe a couple of months, I remember looking at what I brought for lunch for my internship, and it was just this sort of hodgepodge of things, and I remember that dessert was Mentos, and I thought, "This doesn't really seem so healthy," and I kind of read the ingredients, and I was like, "What are even the ingredients in this?" It was like sugar and Red No. 5 and Blue No. 2 and Yellow No. 20, and I thought, "That doesn't seem really good for me," and I went to my yoga teacher and I said, "What recommendations do you have for how to eat in a correct yoga lifestyle?" And he said, "Well, you could try to read this book called Conscious Eating.
So I read that book and it really changed the way that I thought about things, and one of the most important takeaways from Conscious Eating was Gabriel Cousens, he sort of did this research, they cited this statistic where he said that if we took all of the grain that feeds the livestock for all of the animals that are raised for meat production and consumption and we took that grain and we fed that to people, then world hunger would end today.
Claudia Altucher: Wow.
Kino MacGregor: So if we just simply redistributed that grain, then all the people who are starving in underdeveloped countries and all the people who are homeless and starving in our own countries, we would be able to feed them all, and I thought –
Claudia Altucher: Wow.
Kino MacGregor: I just really thought there was no moral and ethical argumentation for eating meat on even on that level. I care about the environment and I care about doing the right thing morally and ethically. And so pretty much after I read that paragraph, I pretty much woke up the next day and made the choice to vegetarian.
Claudia Altucher: Wow, radically, just like – and you haven't come back to eating meat ever?
Kino MacGregor: No.
Claudia Altucher: Wow, and you're fine? You never miss the protein or the –
Kino MacGregor: Well, I don't –
Claudia Altucher: I mean, you do some pretty intense yoga moves.
Kino MacGregor: Yeah. [Laughs] Yeah. I mean, I don't miss the protein. I make a concerted effort to eat the vegetarian sources of protein, and if I'm feeling really depleted, like if I'm doing a lot of asana, I'm doing a lot of teaching, I make sure to maybe take a protein shake or something like that, that's gonna help create sort of a balanced approach to nutrition. In the beginning, I really wasn't into that. I just kinda stopped eating meat, just kinda ate whatever for a little while, but I mean, there's a lot of argumentation about which is more health-related issue, and I really think that's a personal decision that you need to figure out between you and your nutritionist or your doctor or something like that based on every individual's health needs, 'cause some people have serious health concerns that maybe they need to eat a particular food or even a particular meat in order to sort of save their life, which is completely acceptable, but I don't have anything like that.
Claudia Altucher: Right.
Kino MacGregor: I feel really good eating the vegetarian diet. I try to do the extreme version, where I was vegan for a while, and I've tried to be raw vegan for a while, and that was really extreme, and I did not feel so healthy.
Claudia Altucher: It's hard.
Kino MacGregor: Yeah, it was really difficult and I really felt sort of – I don't know – a little too restrictive. It felt a little bit almost like an addiction on some level for me. Other people do it and they don't feel like that, but I did.
And so you asked me if I ever miss the protein. I don't miss protein, like, I haven't eaten meat for so long that even when I see it, it kind of – I start to think about it and makes me physically uncomfortable when I think about what that was and what that came from. Like, that was a being and it had a life, and then now it's sitting there, cooked, you know, like your thigh muscle was once attached to you and then it would be cooked and served to someone. Kind of trips me out.
But what I do miss – and this is gonna sound completely random – what I do miss sometimes is the fun experience of it, you know, like a community experience of not having to be like, "Oh, do you have a vegetarian option?" or, "Do you have this?" or, you know, or you walk by and you – like, on the 4th of July in the United States and you smell barbecue. You know, barbecued vegetables also smell good, but when you smell barbecued meat and that sort of thing, none of those smells bother me, but there's a community aspect that I think slowly is starting to shift, but 15 years ago, when I kinda made that choice or 14 years ago when I made that choice, it was really sort of like a flag in the North Pole, sort of staking out new territory.
Claudia Altucher: Wow.
Kino MacGregor: And there's more options and you're sort of less ostracized for making those choices now than maybe before.
Claudia Altucher: Than back then, yes. And so is it true, then, when you got to India for the first time, I believe you were 22 or something? 23? You had no hair?
Kino MacGregor: Yeah. So one of the things that I did in my first year of practice is, when I was practicing, it seemed like this was the first time that I really began to question all the choices that I'd made up until then. Before yoga, again, I had no physical discipline. I was either an academic, or when I wasn't studying, I was intensively partying. So I sort of had this party on the weekends, study during the week, and somehow it all managed to balance itself out.
Claudia Altucher: Typical New Yorker.
Kino MacGregor: Yeah, typical Miami Beach too, you know, Miami Beach.
Kino MacGregor: Yeah, something more typical East Coast, something like that. So what I did was, slowly, I realized, "Well – " so I was looking at my clothes and I thought, "Well, who am I when I wear these clothes? Is this me or am I trying to put on – am I trying to be the party girl or am I trying to be the studious girl or am I trying to be this girl or that girl?" So I gave away almost all my clothes and then I used to have so many different colors of hair. I used to have light blue hair, red hair, and then I had orange hair and strawberry-colored hair. I used to have all these crazy colors. I used to wear wigs and then cut it and grow it and cut it in weird ways and all these kinda strange things, and then, I don’t know, I was sitting there in New York after I practiced for a little bit, and I just kinda got fed up with just