Fearless Self-Love

I had the immense pleasure of interviewing my friend and yogi colleague, Andrea Bachman. Andrea finished her yoga teacher training at A2 Yoga a year or so prior to me and we began to develop our friendship as I was in and finishing training. She’s been a friend and a mentor for me both personally and professionally, so I knew she would be a perfect person to talk with about the intersection of the many realms of our lives. Andrea currently works as a yoga instructor as well as an Ayurvedic (traditional Indian medicine) consultant in Ann Arbor, primarily out of Hygeia Center. You can find more information about her services on her website (shoutout to an upcoming cleanse she’ll be offering) and sign up for email updates. I was also very excited to learn that she has some videos of her teaching here!

Listen to our conversation on SoundCloud and check out these resources she’s shared:

• Free meditations by Tara Brach
• Ayurveda and Yoga podcast

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Compassion, Compassion, Compassion

Last night, I interviewed my friend Verónica Caridad Rabelo (I LOVE this photo of her). Verónica is a PhD student in the Psychology and Women’s Studies departments at the University of Michigan. Originally from New Jersey, she has explored mindfulness and meditation practices for quite some time. In fact, much of her academic research overlaps with these topics. If you listen to the session you will gain a deeper understanding of how she intentionally and gracefully acknowledges the intersections within her life. I was so impressed and inspired by the perspectives she shared with me as well as the accompanying sense of confidence, empowerment, and compassion. We talked more both before and after the interview, and probably could have kept going! The interview took place in Veronica’s apartment, so any thumps you might hear is one of her adorable cats, and occasional giggles are most definitely in response to said cat.

You can find our conversation, an audio recording (I feel like I can barely call it a podcast!) on SoundCloud here, and some awesome resources she shared with me below:

Self-compassion resources

Free guided meditations – in English and Spanish!

Types of meditation techniques

Verónica also blogs on Fulfillment Daily occasionally!

Cultural appropriation in the news

Great conversation about cultural appropriation on one of my favorite podcast series here. It’s focused on appropriation of Native culture, but still relevant and thought-provoking.