The Uplifted Yoga Podcast

🎧 Also Listen to:

#401 – Who Has Your Attention? Attention Economy vs the Ancient Path

#415 – From Self-Improvement to Reverence (Bhagavad Gita Chapter 7)

#437 – The Forgotten Way to Learn Yoga Philosophy: Ancient Memory Practices (Part 1)

Hatha or Kundalini Yoga? How to Find the Style That Fits You Sep 16, 2026

Show notes

Hatha and Kundalini are both yoga, but they can feel completely different in your body.

In this episode, I break down some of the biggest differences between these two styles: how they use movement, breath, meditation, mantra, repetition, and the subtle body. Plus, why one style may resonate with you very differently than another.

If you've been Kundalini-curious, love a traditional Hatha or Vinyasa practice, or simply want to understand what all these different yoga "styles" are actually doing, this is a great place to start.

I'll explore:

🔹 How Hatha/Vinyasa and Kundalini approach movement, breath, and meditation differently

🔹 Why Kundalini often feels more repetitive, energetic, and meditative than a traditional flow class

🔹 How different yoga styles can reveal different patterns in your body and nervous system

🔹 Why there's no single "best" yoga style and how experimenting helps you discover what your system actually responds to

The most important takeaway? You don't have to choose your yoga style intellectually. Experience it in your body.

🌈 Join my FREE Find Your Style Challenge starting tomorrow, September 17th!

Practice different styles of yoga with me and discover what genuinely fits your body, energy, and life → https://www.brettlarkin.com/style

FREE Practice: 20 Min Kundalini Yoga for the Entire Body | KUNDALINI YOGA FOR HEALTH

Relevant Blog: What Is Kundalini Syndrome? (And Can It Happen To You?)

Relevant to Today's Episode:

🔮 Kundalini Demystified

📖 Yoga Life Book

🎧 Also Listen to:

#277 – Trauma Conscious Kundalini Yoga with Katrina Marie

#318 – What Is Somatic Yoga?

#412 – How the Chakras Relate to Polyvagal Theory + Your FAQ

Inside Somatic Coaching: How to Release Stuck Energy Sep 09, 2026

Show notes

Today's episode is another behind-the-scenes look, this time inside my Somatic Yoga Training and Embodied Yoga Life Coaching Certification.

This teaching explores how we move energy through the body using breath, movement, sound, and visualization. Inside EYLC, we work with different maps of the subtle body, including the doshas, polarity, Shiva and Shakti, and the relationship between movement and stillness.

In this clip, I explore why movement is not just something we do before meditation. Movement can help us express, discharge, and release what may be stuck in the body so we can access a deeper sense of presence, authenticity, and self-trust.

Inside this episode, I explore:

🔹 How vata, pitta, and kapha can help us understand different energetic textures

🔹 Why Shiva and Shakti represent the dance between stillness and movement

🔹 The three core ways we move energy: breath, movement, and sound

🔹 How somatic coaching helps clients move from talking about emotions to experiencing and shifting them in the body

The goal is not just to move so you can become still. It's to move what is blocking your truth, so you can sit more deeply in who you really are.

💗 Learn more about Embodied Yoga Life Coaching: https://www.brettlarkin.com/somatic-yoga-training-certification/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=eylc

💎 Experience somatic yoga in this Embodied Yoga Workshop: https://www.brettlarkin.com/embodiedyoga?utm_medium=social&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=embodiedyoga

FREE Practice: Yoga for Women for MORE ENERGY | Release Emotions

Relevant Blog: How To Incorporate Somatic Coaching Into Your Yoga Practice

Relevant to Today's Episode:

🎧 Also Listen to:

#384 – Do Less, Heal More: 7 Invitations to Resolve Trauma from Organic Intelligence

#385 – The 5 Vayus: How Energy Moves Through Your Body (Part 1)

#391 – Vyana + Udana Vayu: Energetic Expression, Circulation + Embodiment

The Forgotten Way to Learn Yoga Philosophy: Ancient Memory Practices (Part 1) Sep 02, 2026

Show notes

When was the last time you memorized something on purpose?

Not a password, grocery list, or directions, but a piece of poetry, a prayer, a mantra, a sutra, or a verse that you carried with you in your mind.

In this episode, I'm exploring why memorization was once the original way ancient wisdom was passed down, and why it still matters now. We'll look at how memorizing meaningful words can train your attention, support your nervous system, strengthen your brain, and help wisdom become something you can actually return to in real life.

Inside this episode, I explore:

🔹 Why ancient texts like the Yoga Sutras, Bhagavad Gita, Vedas, Psalms, and Torah were designed to be remembered

🔹 How memorization turns passive reading into active spiritual practice

🔹 Why sacred words can become tools for nervous system regulation

🔹 How memorization becomes a countercultural act in the age of scrolling and endless information

This is part one of a two-part conversation. For now, I'm planting the seed: What words, prayer, poem, mantra, or verse might you want to carry in your heart?

💖 Want to shift what you're practicing and paying attention to? Join the Uplifted Membership: https://www.brettlarkin.com/uplifted/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=uplifted

FREE Practice: Anti-Anxiety "Get Grounded FAST" Yoga Sequence (8-Min) - ALL LEVELS - Quick Yoga (10 Minute Yoga)

Relevant Blog: 15 Life-Changing Yoga Books To Deepen Your Yoga Practice

Relevant to Today's Episode:

🔮 History of Yoga

📖 Yoga Life Book

🎧 Also Listen to:

#370 – Yoga's Messy Origins: Understanding Yoga's Historical Context

#401 – Who Has Your Attention? Attention Economy vs the Ancient Path

#425 – How the Divine Speaks: Sacred Symbolism in the Gita, Bible & Upanishads Part 1

Stop Stacking Certifications: How to Integrate Your Gifts and Finally Use What You Know Aug 26, 2026

Show notes

So many of us think the next certification will finally make us feel clear, confident, or ready. But more information is not always the answer. Sometimes the real missing piece is integration.

In this restream episode, I'm talking about the certification trap, why your nervous system may be keeping you in "learn more" mode, and how to begin organizing your existing tools into a clear, repeatable method that actually supports your clients and your business.

We'll also look at why movement, somatic awareness, and embodied coaching can create a deeper kind of transformation than talking or mindset work alone.

If you're a yoga teacher, coach, healer, or wellness practitioner who has taken multiple trainings but still feels scattered, this episode is for you. Let's explore:

🔹 Why collecting more tools can sometimes become a freeze response

🔹 How embodied self-awareness differs from conceptual self-awareness

🔹 Why movement is essential for emotional release and somatic integration

🔹 The three pillars healers need to move forward

You don't need to do more. You need to do less, better. With structure, support, and a nervous system that feels safe enough to take action.

💗 Learn more about Embodied Yoga Life Coaching: https://www.brettlarkin.com/somatic-yoga-training-certification/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=eylc

💎 Experience somatic yoga in this Embodied Yoga Workshop: https://www.brettlarkin.com/embodiedyoga?utm_medium=social&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=embodiedyoga

FREE Practice: MORNING YOGA FOR TIGHT HIPS & LOWER BACK | Stretches for Flexibility - Unleash Your Creative Energy✨

Relevant Blog: Top Somatic Coaching Programs And How To Choose One

Relevant to Today's Episode:

#363 – How to Become a Magnet for Loyal Students & Own the Room with Confidence with Taylor Lorenz

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#299 – Strategies to Slay Imposter Syndrome and Share Your Gifts

#386 – Stop Selling Products—Start Selling YOU: Human Design for Visibility & Flow with Juliette Stapleton

The Shuniya Shift: Stop Using Kundalini Yoga to Fix Yourself with Bailee Buckendorf Aug 19, 2026

Show notes

What happens when healing becomes another thing you're trying to achieve?

In this episode, I'm joined by my friend Bailee for a tender conversation about grief, the feminine, Shuniya, and the power of not fixing yourself.

We explore grief not as something you "get over," but as a living process to be felt, held, and slowly alchemized. Bailee shares how her journey led her into deeper stillness, sensory awareness, sound, archetype, and the feminine mystery.

This conversation asks: What if there is nothing to fix? What if the next step is learning how to listen differently?

Inside this episode, we explore:

🔹 Why grief is not something we complete, but something we learn to live with and honor

🔹 How Shuniya, or zero-point stillness, can create space for healing to land

🔹 Why "am I doing this to avoid a feeling?" and "am I doing this because I think I'm not enough?" are powerful questions

🔹 How simple rituals, sound, sensory awareness, and intentional contemplation can support integration

My hope is that this episode gives you permission to stop treating healing like a race.

You do not have to prove your worth through how much you process, achieve, fix, or overcome.

Sometimes the most sacred shift begins when you pause, listen, and let what has already been planted finally land.

🐍 If this conversation stirred something in you: Download your FREE Feminine Kundalini Starter Pack: https://www.brettlarkin.com/online-kundalini-yoga-teacher-training/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=ku

GUEST EXPERT: Bailee Buckendorf | @rebuilding.roots

Bailee Buckendorf is a grief integration guide, contemplative writer, and founder of Sunia Shift. Her work weaves Kundalini yoga, archetypal practice, sacred ceremony, sound, somatics, and matriarchal wisdom to help people relate to grief not as something to fix, but as a source of knowing. Shaped by her own lived initiations as a widowed mother, ultra runner, and lifelong student of loss, Bailee supports individuals and groups through one-on-one containers, digital offerings, and seasonal experiences.

Book Mentioned: Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés https://www.amazon.com/Women-Who-Run-Wolves-Archetype/dp/0345409876

FREE Practice: KUNDALINI YOGA FOR EMOTIONAL RELEASE with Music 💜 Trauma Informed Yoga for Beginners 💜

Relevant Blog: The Best Somatic Exercises for Grief: Find Healing Through Movement

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💫 Yoga for Self Mastery

🎧 Also Listen to:

#281 – Grief as a Potent Healer with Kris Carr

#324 – The Importance of Emotional Processing and Regulation: DENT Model Trauma

#332 – 7 Ways to Release Anger & Grief Through Your Yoga Practice

Feminine Kundalini Energy: Light, Dark & Tantric Archetypes Aug 12, 2026

Show notes

Today's episode is another behind-the-scenes look, this time inside my 200-hour Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training.

This teaching comes from the Feminine Form Kundalini module, where we unpack what we mean by feminine energy. In yoga, tantra, and Kundalini, feminine energy isn't about gender or identity. It's archetypal energy, the Shakti current within all of us.

In this clip, I explore Shiva and Shakti, the light and dark feminine, and why both matter. I'll also look at how feminine energy becomes blocked, through over-control, disconnection from desire, difficulty receiving, and lack of boundaries.

Inside this episode, I explore:

🔹 Why feminine and masculine energy are archetypal forces, not gender roles

🔹 How Shakti and Shiva represent movement and stillness, life force and consciousness

🔹 The difference between light feminine and dark feminine energy

🔹 How feminine archetypes can deepen your Kundalini yoga practice

The feminine is not just softness. She is movement, desire, creation, destruction, renewal, and the living intelligence of the body itself.

🐍 Grab my FREE Feminine Form Kundalini Starter. It's a beautiful place to begin exploring feminine energy, Shakti, archetypes, and Kundalini practice in your own body: https://www.brettlarkin.com/online-kundalini-yoga-teacher-training/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=ku

FREE Practice: FEMININE KUNDALINI | Yoga for Women with Overwhelm & Fatigue 🥱 | ACTIVATE ADRENALS & KIDNEYS

Relevant Blog: Harnessing the Power of Kundalini Divine Feminine for Transformation

Relevant to Today's Episode:

🔮 Kundalini Demystified

✨ Yoga for Self Mastery

https://www.brettlarkin.com/uplifted/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=uplifted

🎧 Also Listen to:

#305 – Female Archetypes of Leadership with Anodea Judith Ph.D

#312 – Is Your Masculine/Feminine Energy Balanced? Shiva, Shakti & Polarity Within You

#352 – Redefining Feminine Energy in Yoga & Ayurveda with Katie Silcox

Vibhuti Yoga - See the Sacred Everywhere: Bhagavad Gita Chapter 10 Aug 05, 2026

Show notes

What if the world itself could become your meditation object?

In this episode, we explore Chapter 10 of the Bhagavad Gita, known as Vibhuti Yoga — the yoga of divine manifestation and sacred seeing. This chapter explores how to train our perception and helps us stop dividing life into "spiritual" and "not spiritual." The sunset, the breath, the body, the mountain, even impermanence, all can become doorways back to the sacred.

It also marks a turning point in Arjuna's relationship with Krishna. Until now, Arjuna has known Krishna as his friend, cousin, mentor, and charioteer. Here, he begins to realize that Krishna is not just wise, but divine reality itself.

Inside this episode, I explore:

🔹 What Vibhuti Yoga means and why Chapter 10 is about sacred seeing

🔹 How Krishna teaches Arjuna to recognize the divine shining through the world

🔹 Why awe, beauty, and attention can become spiritual practice

🔹 How your body, breath, and everyday life can become doorways into devotion

My hope is that this episode helps you look for the spark this week.

Not by chasing a mystical experience, but by letting ordinary life become holy again.

If this episode speaks to you, come practice with me inside Uplifted Membership, where we weave yoga philosophy, meditation, somatics, and embodied ritual into practices you can actually feel and live.

📖 Different translations explored:

Barbara Stoler Miller: https://www.amazon.com/Bhagavad-Gita-Krishnas-Counsel-Bantam-Classics/dp/0553213652

Godsong by Amit Majmudar: https://www.amazon.com/Godsong-Verse-Translation-Bhagavad-Gita-Commentary/dp/1524733474

Eknath Easwaran: https://www.amazon.com/Bhagavad-Gita-2nd-Eknath-Easwaran/dp/1586380192

Bhagavad-Gita As It Is by Swami Prabhupada: https://www.amazon.com/Bhagavad-Gita-As-Bhaktivedanta-Swami-Prabhupada/dp/0892131233

FREE Practice: Easy Kundalini Yoga for Women | Kriya to be DIVINE LOVE EMBODIED

Relevant Blog: What are Patanjali's Yoga Sutras?

Relevant to Today's Episode:

✅ 200-hour Online Yoga Teacher Training

📚 History of Yoga

#427 – What Is Bhakti Yoga? Krishna's Most Confidential Teaching (Bhagavad Gita Chapter 9)

🎧 Also Listen to:

#381 – Yoga Sutras of Pantanjali Explained – BOOK 3: Psychic Superpowers & Samadhi

#398 – [Meditation] Taking in the Good

Perimenopause, Cravings & Hormones: Your Body Isn't Broken, It's Speaking w/ Sema Özpekmezci Jul 29, 2026

Show notes

Do cravings, fatigue, or hormonal shifts have you feeling like a stranger in your body?

In this episode, I'm joined by Sema Özpekmezci for a grounded, compassionate conversation about chronic illness, women's health, perimenopause, hormones, and what it really means to listen to your body.

We explore how midlife changes can feel confusing and how symptoms like cravings, energy dips, mood shifts, and inflammation can become invitations into deeper self-understanding.

Sema also shares a powerful way to think about your hormones as the "CEO" of your body and why food, stress, blood sugar, sleep, and nervous system regulation all play a role in helping you feel balanced again.

Inside this episode, we explore:

🔹 Why perimenopause symptoms, cravings, and inflammation may be body signals, not personal failures

🔹 How hormones, stress, cortisol, and the nervous system influence women's health

🔹 Why chocolate cravings and blood sugar patterns can reveal what your body actually needs

🔹 How to respond to your changing body with curiosity, compassion, and practical support

My hope is that this conversation helps you stop fighting your body and start listening to it. Because your body isn't broken. It's speaking.

💗 If you want to keep exploring this connection between the nervous system, embodiment, and women's health, come practice with me: https://www.brettlarkin.com/ffy?utm_medium=social&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=ffy

GUEST EXPERT: Sema Özpekmezci | @semaozpekmezci

Sema is a certified Clinical Nutritional Therapist and Functional Medicine Health Coach. She is a Yoga and Mindfulness Trainer and yoga/meditation enthusiast. She believes that nutrition, mind, and spirit are inextricably linked to our health and overall well-being and spreading and explaining this is her life's purpose.

Connect with Sema and find her programs here → https://www.semaozpekmezci.com/

FREE Practice: Somatic Exercises to Reduce Cortisol & Get Out of Freeze Response | Full Body Somatic Yoga Flow

Relevant Blog: Yoga Teacher Training as a Mid-Life Wellness Sabbatical: Why More Women Are Using YTT to Reset Their Nervous System (Not Change Careers)

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📚 Healing with Somatic Yoga Book

✨ Yoga for Self Mastery

#366 – Is Trauma Actually In Your Hips? The Impact of Stress on Hip & Pelvic Health with Dr. Brianne Grogan

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#384 – Do Less, Heal More: 7 Invitations to Resolve Trauma from Organic Intelligence

Nervous System Science Every Yoga Teacher Should Know Jul 22, 2026

Show notes

What's actually happening in the body when yoga helps you "calm down"?

In this behind-the-scenes lesson pulled directly from the Uplifted 200-Hour Yoga Teacher Training, we explore the nervous system science behind yoga, and why practices like breathwork, inversions, mantra, repetition, and Savasana can profoundly shift your stress response.

You'll learn why yoga isn't just about relaxing, but about building awareness, resilience, and the ability to move skillfully between stress and recovery.

We explore:

🔹 How yoga activates the parasympathetic nervous system

🔹 Why slow exhales and vagal tone matter for emotional regulation

🔹 The nervous system effects of inversions, mantra, repetition, and Savasana

🔹 Why yoga isn't about avoiding stress, but responding to it differently

🔹 How yoga teachers help students build nervous system resilience through awareness

This episode is a special preview from inside our teacher training and offers a glimpse into how we blend anatomy, nervous system science, yoga philosophy, and embodied practice together inside the program.

🎓 Curious about joining the next cohort of the Uplifted 200-Hour Yoga Teacher Training? Learn more about our anatomy-forward, highly supportive online certification program → https://www.brettlarkin.com/online-yoga-teacher-training/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=200ytt

💖 Or, if this episode helped you understand your nervous system or yoga practice in a new way, I'd be so grateful if you left a quick review for the podcast. Reviews help more yogis discover these teachings and support the show tremendously.

✨ Leave a review here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-uplifted-yoga-podcast/id1097989571?action=write-review

(If the link opens the show page instead of reviews, just scroll down and click on "Ratings & Reviews" then tap "Write a Review.")

FREE Practice: Calming Restorative Yoga Sequence | Relax & Nourish your Senses (45-min) All Levels

Relevant Blog: Industry Expert Tips For Yoga Injury Prevention (+ Modifications)

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✅ 200-hour Online Yoga Teacher Training

🔮 300-hour Online Yoga Teacher Training