Transcript #008 - Yoga

#008 - Bala Machado - Healing with Yoga - Transcript

Amanda: [00:00:00] Welcome to Don't Step on the Bluebells, the podcast where personal healing and transformation take center stage. I'm your host, Amanda Parker, and I'm a fellow seeker on the journey of personal growth. Join me as I delve into the stories of gifted healers, guides, and everyday people who have experienced remarkable transformations.

Listen in as they share their practical wisdom to enrich your everyday life. And don't forget to hit subscribe and never miss a new episode.

/Welcome to today's episode of Don't Step on the Bluebells, where I'm thrilled to welcome Bernardino Bala Machado. Bala is a certified yoga instructor with the International Yoga Alliance, a trained physiotherapist, and a longtime scholar of Eastern spirituality.

Bala's rare mastery integrates advanced yoga training, sound healing, physiotherapy, and sociological study of India. I've had the incredible [00:01:00] pleasure of getting to know Bala at a retreat over the summer, where he was actually acting as a musician and singer, helping to facilitate a beautiful healing ceremony.

This is a man who has many traits, many practices, and teachings that he brings into all of his students and all the work that he does. And it's an incredible privilege just to listen to the insights and wisdom that he brings to the table, really pulling from this ancient philosophy, western medicine, and modern practices that help us integrate some of these teachings into our lives today.

I can't wait to share this episode with you all. Let's go ahead and dive in. Hello and welcome to today's episode of Don't Step on the Blue Bells. I'm here with the incredibly talented Bernardino Machado, who is going to be speaking to us about all things healing with yoga. So I will be calling him Bala since that's how I know him.[00:02:00]

And I'm really excited just to share just a taste of all of the wisdom and insight that Bala has accumulated. I know him from, yes, his yoga work, but also the incredible healing work that he does through singing, through his voice, working in sacred ceremonies, working with qigong. So this is a man who wears many hats.

I'm really, really grateful that you have agreed to be here today and to share. Just a piece of yourself with us all. Thank you so much for being here, Bala.

Bala: Thank you, Amanda, for having me. It's a real pleasure to be here with you and to have this nice talk.

Amanda: Yes, it is incredible. We first met, actually, earlier this summer.

You were... Leading, supporting to lead, and singing using your beautiful instruments, both the guitar and your voice, to guide us through this incredible, sacred [00:03:00] ceremony. And I really, in that moment, just knew, yeah, there was something really special and really powerful about who you are, just who you're being in the world in general.

And I also knew there's a lot of layers to this depth and... Just wisdom that comes through in everything that you do.

Bala: Well, thank you. I just try to enjoy everything I do. I think that's, that's the thing, no? And to be a little bit present. And, uh, this kind of things happens. Sometimes I feel how the things you do just from that space affects other people in different way.

And, and the funny and the ironic part is that when you're trying to do it, On purpose, it doesn't work. You have to be all the time, just like enjoying and being relaxed and doing any, anything you're doing. If you're singing, if you're doing yoga, just being present and then the magic started by itself.

Amanda: That's a really good point, um, [00:04:00] and I say this actually a lot when I'm working with coaching clients, but I also have to tell myself all the time, the more that I'm trying to do something, the more that I try, try, try and put pressure to accomplish something, the harder that it becomes. So it's amazing to just be present.

That's a really amazing reminder to bring us into the conversation of being present here in the moment and seeing what flows from there.

Bala: Absolutely.

Amanda: So, yeah, so, um, I would love to hear from you. Since we're talking about healing with yoga, what is your idea of healing? What does that mean to you?

Bala: Well, I have a more probably Buddhist approach to healing.

I see healing to overcome suffering. That is a different thing from pain. Because pain, we're bound to feel pain in this body. The same way we feel pleasure, we're going to feel pain. [00:05:00] It's inevitable. But suffering is all these stories, the narratives we build. the pain, so any kind of pain. So I think that, that healing comes when you start to live with reality, the way reality shows and all the way you wanted reality to show or you're expecting reality to show, because all these difference create the tension inside that ultimate, it creates disease in the body, but before that creates a lot of suffering in the mind.

So healing would be going in that direction, just relaxing and trying to be more. In the present moment, with reality, the way reality is happening, and not with the reality we want. And in this way, we overcome suffering. So, you will have pain, you will experience pain, but it's not going to be that bad as, uh, when we create the narrative.

Amanda: Oh my gosh, that's a really beautiful definition. So, healing is really helping us to break [00:06:00] free from that suffering that we feel when we have expectations or an assumption of what should be versus what actually is.

Bala: Yes, and there are many people that were working with this kind of associations between the psychological aspects and physical diseases, like Lewis Hay, for example, and she say that, and even they make the Chinese medicine says that, for example, the sadness storage in the lungs.

Or the anger in the liver. So, when we are not aligned with reality, we're having a fight with reality, and not accepting whatever is going on, and all these emotions start to build up in the body, and we resist, and we create narratives, and we hang to the narratives. Eh, all these tensions slowly, slowly start creating the disease.

So the process of healing is in a way the process of letting go, surrendering.

Amanda: And so I know, and I, we're going to dive into more of the work [00:07:00] that you do in just a moment, but how did you get to this point? So I know that you are a teacher of yoga. You actually help certify other teachers or other people who want to become yogis.

How did you end up here? Was there a specific turning point in your life? Has this been with you since childhood?

Bala: It's, it's a very interesting story because Uh, I've been interested in, uh, Hinduism since I was a child. I don't know why. My family were more Christians, but not really practicants. And, uh, I remember being fascinated by this image of the Hinduism.

And when I was about 17, I attended to my first class, yoga class at the university. I was a star at the university. And I was not a sport guy. I was a nerd. I hated sporting. So, I remember I had this, uh, Uh, work I need to do in the [00:08:00] first semester of sport, and I wasn't getting the grades because I wasn't going.

So I remember that the teacher told me, like, if you want to just get the basic grade, you have to come to the race that we're going to have in the university. And I asked, like, okay, if I win it, you give me the full. Right. Let's say, of course, because you're not going to win it. Even if you are in the first third, three people, so you're going to be like that.

So I was like, okay, my God, I really need to. To get ready for this race. Otherwise, I'm not going to get the great. I'm not going to pursuing the studies. So I have this friend that was doing the yoga. And at the moment that my friend told me, you know, there's a secret Hindu mudra from yoga. That is a gesture in the hands that if you do a running, you're going to have more energy.

And he taught me actually to do this is called Prana Mudra and supposedly this Prana Mudra brings more energy in the body. So I start running without preparation. I remember the day of the race and, uh, it was [00:09:00] a long race. It was like two hours. And every time I was feeling like super tired, I was doing the Mudra and running with the Mudra and I arrived the second.

So I got the maximum grade. I couldn't move like in four days afterwards. But I came back with my trophy home and everything. And my mother was like, But you're not really a sport guy. How did you do that? So, I started thinking like, Oh my god, I don't know if it was a suggestion. And I even don't care if it was a suggestion.

But there's something here. In this kind of secret knowledge. So I was studying sociology at the moment, and I decided to specialize myself in religion, sociology, Hinduism, specifically, and Buddhism and Jainism, all the Eastern religions. So I studied that actually at the university, and that was my, my degree.

And then years after, uh, I studied physiotherapy. So all my grades, my degrees were related to yoga in a way. The moment that yoga came to my life. I was [00:10:00] so fascinated everything I was bringing into the yoga space.

Amanda: That is so funny. So just to make sure, um, Someone might not be that familiar with mudras. Could you just explain what that is? The mudra? Because, yeah.

Bala: The word mudra, uh, means many things as the Sanskrit word, but it's a gesture that can be done with any part of the body, even with the whole body. The most famous mudras are the mudras with the hand, probably this one the chin mudra for meditation.

And there are mudras like this is the heart mudra, for example, and it says that helps people when they're having a heart attack. If they do this, they regulate and they have a better outcome when they go to the hospital afterwards. And there are like many stories about different mudras. The mudra I used was this one.

The Prana Mudra, that is placing the thumbs on top of the annular and ring and a small finger like this. And yes, like the piece, like the piece. [00:11:00] So yes, this is, this is it, uh, how to use them. Well, there are, there are many ways, but you're supposed to hold them and breathe for. Specific amounts of time and you can use it while meditating or as I was doing while running for example

Amanda: Okay, i'm going to keep that in mind if i'm ever challenged a physical activity that I don't really know how to do And just say okay, this is gonna um get me through that Okay, so it sounds like you Had a course that you were studying you were sort of moving forward and it was almost quite by luck that you stumbled into this world of like Eastern philosophy, you said it was religious studies, but probably at that time you weren't thinking about it as religion, I'm guessing.

Bala: No, that's the way I'm thinking about it now, yeah. Uh, the whole [00:12:00] idea of religion is very interesting because it's a mind construct. So this is why there are different religions. It's like the poetry and the love. The love is one. You can express it in different narratives the way you want. You can say love is sweet.

You can say love is painful and both of them are right. So the same with religion. It's just a mental construct. So that is trying to explain an experience that is beyond these constructs. And now I'm very interested is in what is beyond. What's the experience that gives the base to all religions? That is universal.

Amanda: Have you come to any conclusions yet?

Bala: Well, I don't know. This is funny because when you start coming into this space, it's more a change in perspective. So it's not like arriving into a place. It's not like getting something new, like I'm getting an object. Now I have this understanding. But what I've seen that happens, And even in the specific religions, I've been studying with the people that are really working [00:13:00] hard at the path is that the only thing that changes your perspective about things, but life stays quite the same.

Like, in the Zen Buddhism, they say before my enlightenment, I was chopping wood and carrying water. Now I got enlightened. I took wood and I carry water, you know, life doesn't change that much outside, but your perspective is different. So you start not to take into serious things. I think that's important because life is going to end.

This is a bubble and we're here for a very short amount of time and why to create so much unnecessary suffering for us.

Amanda: Well, it's also funny, the deeper that I go on my own spiritual journey, and this has been, I would say, consciously unfolding for about five years, I'm sure much longer, but there was a moment, for me, the introduction to Reiki.

And even within the coaching that I studied, there was like an introduction to your [00:14:00] intuition. And so for me, that was actually reconnecting to intuition and remembering, oh yeah, I have this wisdom within me, how interesting, but I just had never trained it before, never understood it. And the deeper that I go on that path of, I don't know if you would call it awakening, or just exploring, perspective shifting, the more that I find all these different modalities of healing or energy all come to the same point.

And it's just about what you as an individual are able to understand in that moment or the teacher that crosses your path, whether you believe that's by accident or fated or whatever, but it's really just about What opens the door for you to get to explore what's beyond the veil, if you will?

Bala: Absolutely. We just got stuck too much into words and concepts. And that's, that's the place where everything just stucks. [00:15:00] You know, you cannot move. But as you say, the... There's something that everybody just get there because it's the experiential part. The mind can create the narrative it wants about it, and it's going to be completely different from other person.

But experience is going to be the same, and that's the beauty of it. And going back to who you are, I think that's the main thing in all religions probably, and mostly in Hinduism. Is what is God? When you ask, what is God to say? That's not really important. Who are you? What are you? Because you're asking about someone else and you don't really know.

Who are you? What's your consciousness? Where are you coming from? Why do you experience this? What is this witness that is behind? And they say, when you find that you find God, but that we cannot explain into words. They're beautiful.

Amanda: Yeah, it is really beautiful and I think, [00:16:00] um, it's also potentially a contrast to how we perceive a lot of religion in 2023.

So there's a lot of misconception and we don't need to go down this rabbit hole too far. Um, but that is such a beautiful perspective of coming home to yourself, finding out who you are so that you can know. God or whatever you might believe on the other side, but It's not the perception that many people have and I think a lot of people are afraid To go down that path because of what we know about Let's say religious

Bala: Yeah, and I think that's because in making it like super short, it's again coming from the mind. So the mind wants to create an ideal and to start the search, you know, the consciousness is okay with whatever it's happening [00:17:00] now. So the religions, usually they tell you who you have to become, in which direction you need to change to become a person that is worthy of love of God or whatever.

But they never ask, where are you now? Who are you now? Who you really are now? And if these kind of things like thoughts or even actions are so important, really, in changing who we are, and that's another thing. So, of course, if you're... Your view is going to a specific direction. I need to become something.

I need to be in this way. This is going to take forever. It's just going to be circling around. And this approach is just more, let's find out first, who am I, but really. I am not the things I've done, for example. I am not the things I thought, because that changed a lot. I was thinking in one way when I was a kid, now I'm thinking differently.

But I've been the same. Before I had a name, before I [00:18:00] had a mind, I was a baby. I existed. I was just perceiving. There was consciousness perceiving. Who is this? Who am I? And that's the point where we should start going and that's why in all religions, the people that are really committed, they go away inside in seclusion.

They go into a cave, they go into a monastery because they need to see inside. So it's very clear, but all this, you know, stories we have around makes everything so foggy. But if you really want to go in that direction, you need to go in.

Amanda: That's really beautiful. Thank you for that perspective. I think that, um, actually it feels really soothing to listen to you talk about this, that there's, there's really a comfort in knowing that from going within, you really, that's where your wisdom comes from.

That's where the answers come from. And finding a way to get that space for yourself, whether that is going into a monastery or going [00:19:00] into the mountains away from people, or finding that, you know, in your everyday life, that you're able to carve out that space for yourself, that you are able to really connect on that deeper level within.

Bala: Yeah, absolutely. It's perfectly possible because what you're looking for, you're carrying it with you all the time. So no matter where are you, you're going to be able to connect with that. And it's not possible to everybody to go into seclusion. And I think actually there's a lot of work, spiritual work that can be done and have to be done in the context of family, in the context of sharing with people - in the context of being in society as well. The thing is, where is my focus? Where, where I'm, where I'm targeting, where I'm aiming. When I'm interacting, I'm trying to project an image. I'm trying to give something or I'm just checking inside. And this is very difficult to do properly because we have all these wounds from childhood about who we are and how we can be worthy [00:20:00] of love.

So we create this basic patterns in mind where we start finding love outside, finding love, doing a specific thing. So running away from a specific things and that creates a lot of confusion. And that's, I think that's the actual experience, spiritual work we need to do. It's very linked to the psychological world.

And at a certain point, when you start checking in yourself and dealing with your reality and working inside of you, Just start working with your body, doing yoga or whatever. You will start working with your psyche and seeing all these patterns from childhood, you will start meditating and creating spaces of silence and just connecting and listening.

So it's a very more holistic understanding of the path. And that's, at the end, the ultimate healing we're looking for to integrate all these shattered pieces all around of us and say, I am all of these. And it's okay. I'm everything. I don't need to be in a specific way or to do specific things to receive love.[00:21:00]

I am already love for who I am, you know? But it sounds easy. Not, not easy at all to do it in real life.

Amanda: That sounds like enlightenment to me.

Bala: Likewise. I feel the same.

Amanda: So, was this, I know that you grew up, so you spent your childhood in Venezuela, I know that you're now living in Spain, so you live in Madrid, um, was this path, yeah, I'm really curious, like, as a kid, was this a very strange path to follow?

Were there others around you who were following more of these Eastern traditions? What kind of items was this? How was that for you when you first started down this path?

Bala: Well, I just have, uh, weird tastes, that's all. I was this kid that was interested in weird things, and that's okay, kind of mysterious things.

I was interested in [00:22:00] the, behind this reality, what is it, what's beyond that, what is kind of things, ghosts and things that kids usually like, you know? And I was like really into that kind of things, the paranormal and... But actually that is just the idea that there's something more, something else than, than the reality that they were presenting to me at school and saying, okay, this is it, that this is all you can get.

And I say, no way, there have to be something else, you know, and, uh, But in the other hand, I was just a regular kid, just the nerdy, on the nerdy spectrum. I was more preoccupied of getting the grades and this kind of things and not really like super party or anything. I didn't do that in my youth. That's, that's funny.

That was different.

Amanda: So what would you say have been either some of or one of the biggest challenges that you faced to get where you are today.

Bala: Wow. I think that the main [00:23:00] teaching I got, the deepest one, is the continuous perpetual challenge all the time. It's surrender to abundance. That means surrenders to the moment to whatever is going on and not try to bring it in a specific direction or try to get a specific result.

And I know that this sounds super weird because you say how you can accomplish things in life. And it's more about the Bhagavad Gita is an ancient text of India. Very basic to yoga and they say, yours are the actions, but not the results. So when you work in life, do your best, but don't get too attached to the result.

If the result is not good, don't feel bad. Don't start like, you know, hitting yourself and making yourself miserable. If the result is. Awesome. Don't feel too proud about it. Probably you have a lot of work and other things come together to give you this result. [00:24:00] So it's more about what are you doing in the moment.

So I just go and do my best, whatever I'm doing. If I'm doing the yoga class, we're just pressing and trying to do whatever I feel is the best in the moment and just keeping in that space. Keeping in that space means that you surrender. What happens? When, for example, you open your hand and some pure sand on your hand, you will have a hip.

But in the moment you start grasping the sand, what happens with this hip? Start disappearing. The harder you grasp, the less sand you have. It's the same in life. When you receive love, say, Oh my God, I'm so loved. Now I want more love. Give me more love. Love me more. In this moment, you're grasping the log of it and it's with everything with money with everything.

So it's more like an attitude of trying and this is so difficult. I'm not there yet. I'm not embodied that yet, but I'm going into that direction of just really being relaxed and present at every moment and understanding that [00:25:00] this. Life is kind of a movie. It's an experience, experience we're having and we are super lucky to have it because we can live, how much, 90 years if we're like super lucky.

What is that in time? It's less than a spot, no? And Even though we have the opportunity to be here and whatever is going to happen is going to happen. The thing that you can actually change is your perspective about it. And this is, I think, what you do and what psychologists do. You cannot, when someone comes to you looking for help, you cannot really change what happened to this person.

If this person have a trauma, you cannot go in the time and relieve a parent or whatever. But you can change the way this person is perceiving that event. The narrative about the event, so every healing and every sickness happens, I think, in the mind because they're related to narratives. In the moment, you start [00:26:00] changing the narratives and your perception, the emotions that should can be stagnated inside you, this tension of the narrative start flowing and everything goes to balance.

That can be a little bit. I think it's more my perspective now about the process.

Amanda: It's, it's beautiful. And I know, um, especially in the work I do, I'm often meeting people who really want things to be different. They don't know what to do. Many people don't know what they want. They don't know what they're actually like working towards or what they should be working towards.

They just have these stories that they've either grown up with or instilled within themselves about. Working harder, doing more, putting more pressure, keeping going. And I think what I'm hearing from you is in those moments of what could be a high pressure moment, you know, someone wants to leave their job or [00:27:00] they want to start a new business or they, I don't know, want to change things in their life.

That's actually the moment to stop trying to have all the answers and figure it out. And to just let it go. I mean, I don't know if I'm able to relate this in the right way, but that is a piece of what I'm hearing. Like, the tighter that you try to grasp to the knowing and the certainty, the harder it is to connect to a path forward.

Bala: Yes. It's not really too much about what you do. It's more about from what space you're doing it. You can be doing the most beautiful work in the world and being completely miserable by doing it. So, and I saw this so many times with so many clients, say, yoga clients that comes. They have a lot of money, some of them, and they don't have the regular problems that people have, but they have different ones.

So I can see how the mind is all the time seeing, [00:28:00] okay, what is not working here? So I'm going to focus all my attention here. And usually when you check 90 percent of the words you have in a day never come to existence. And that's a fact. So we, we decide to place our main focus of attention in something that is harmful for us and probably will not happen ever.

Why? So it's more about that. And you just do whatever you need to do, because, for example, like, I'm maybe not happy in the place I'm living. So I work to get a new place. And that's good. And I started moving and I started to check in different places and what can afford what I cannot afford. But I don't go completely into this narrative.

Why me? Why am I living in this miserable place? What is so difficult to find a new place? It's all these things around that are the suffering. The pain is just okay. I'm not happy here. I need to move. So it's more about the perspective again. We are never going to be okay. In a perfect place, the [00:29:00] world has never been at any point completely happy.

There's no point in history where there were no thieves, no rapes, no assassinations, no corruption. You go to Jesus, come on. Actually. In many ways, we're better now than ever in history, at least while we're still killing each other for stupid things, but at least we're kind of trying to stop it before. So understanding that the reality is not going to be always.

No, actually, we can be sure that reality is not going to be the way we want, even for Steve Jobs. Come on. It wasn't the way he wanted. So just pick someone. Uh, so if we're not able to have the things outside set in the way we want, but we can set inside. How we relate to that, that is really worthy of doing it.

And this is the work of yoga, because when you [00:30:00] find the definition of yoga in the ancient text, that is the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, uh, yoga's citta vritti nirodha in Sanskrit means yoga, is the dissolving of the patterns of the movements of the mind. Citta vritti means the movements of the mind, like the movements of the moon, but the word vritti have to do as well with patterns.

with complex patterns. So Chittabhrithi is going to be the patterns of movement of the mind. So getting rid of that, even temporarily, and just being in a space of feeling and just being present and not running to any place, but just being here. That is what yoga is. And then probably 1000 years after, no, 800 years after the, the first half, yoga, text, uh, yoga, start developing a physical system that is the [00:31:00] yoga that we do know.

Now, if you're asking, okay, if yoga is something very mental, more like meditation, stopping the mind why we do poses and the poses came later, uh, as a way of preparing the body or preparing the body. For the meditation and for example in the hatha yoga pradipika is one of the first yoga texts Very important it says i'm going to show you this mudras and breathing And poses as a way of preparing yourself.

So you're going to be able to go into meditation. And that's what we're doing now in different ways. We are now in psychology. We're now in a personal work, trying to deal with the somatic trauma in our body, all this storage of trauma in our body that creates this reaction that are really physical when we're in different situations in life.

And with yoga, they were actually dealing with that. And now we can do it. And this is where you see yoga and why yoga [00:32:00] helps in that way. Because yoga stimulate, depending the yoga style you do and intention and the way you, uh, structure the class, you can actually, uh, generates a very vagus response, very interesting vagus, vagal response, and, uh, a parasympathetic response and start regulating the nervous system.

You can, uh, bring up ancient emotional. Impression storage in the body, and that happens a lot in yoga people are doing a post and then they start crying. See, why are you crying? I don't know. I just feel like crying. Sometimes you're doing yoga and you feel a lot of anger and you say, Oh, my God, I'm hating this class.

I'm hated teacher. And I want, but it's not related to what's going on. It's just. This was storage in the body and it's coming out was a storage fascia and that's something that we discovered a couple decades ago in physiotherapy that we can actually, uh, storage memories, emotional memories [00:33:00] all around the body in the fascia.

So when you have a trauma, when you have a very difficult or challenging situation, there's a part of your body that's going to record that. And this is the things where we need to get rid in order to regulate our nervous system and can be more relaxed as we were talking from the beginning and change of our perspective of life because we cannot have a relaxed perspective if we're feeling anxiety inside.

Or if you're feeling anger or you're feeling fear, this emotion is going to color or perspective about life. Absolutely. So the somatic way of working with that is yoga, but you can work with, for example, vibration and that's music. And that was related to yoga. There's called the Gandharva Vedas. It's the part in the Vedic religion that use the music as a tool for healing.

So of course we can use music and of course we're going to use meditation and breathing patterns and breathing exercises like pranayama. [00:34:00] And there's so much that has been studied now about that, like Wim Hof method or the Hoverman Lab. I don't know if you heard the work he's doing about, uh, How the breath affects the nervous system in a very good way and a very quick way actually to regulate.

So there's a lot of studies going on now about all these ancient techniques and it's so beautiful and we can just relax and see Okay, we're discovering this about this. They already knew it how we can do it better now in this moment.

Amanda: So beautiful This wisdom that you have and one piece that stands out, I mean a lot of things stand out, but one thing in particular that I'm wondering, so if someone is experiencing pain or suffering that they can't explain, is it possible to work through it physically?

Bala: So is it possible without having to go into the experience or the mental or the [00:35:00] conversation or anything? That they could do certain poses or things like that that would really help alleviate and release that experience from within their body absolutely, and Again, the focus the most important part is the tension.

Let me explain. The poses, what they're going to do is to, uh, make more evident the tensions in a specific parts of the body. They're going to bring it up. So when you grab your feet and you go down, you're stretching your back and all the tensions that are stored there, that you didn't feel before the class.

Now they're come to surface. So when you're stretching, you feel that, Oh my God, this is so tight. Why I'm having this? I didn't know I had this here. So when this come to the surface, The real work is not the pose. It's not the yoga. It's bringing the tension there and breathing. You start breathing and just hearing that part because that part is trying to tell you something.

It's making a [00:36:00] tantrum, that part of the body. And what we do usually is we start to think about why this part of the body is making a tantrum. Forget and neglect that part of the body or that sensation and stay in the narrative. And yes, this is happening because my work and you know, I have this my work with this person or the other person and you're just feeling anxiety.

And if you check with yourself, the feeling, the same anxiety you're feeling now, you felt it before with a different partner, with a different work, with a different situation when you were a kid. So just check that the emotion that is in the body has been all the time the same, and it's just being triggered by external events.

But the problem itself is not to be solved outside with the triggers, it's to check why I'm having this terrible fear or anxiety that gets triggered in different situations. But the problem is the fear or the anxiety, not the situation. And it's very easy to check. Yes, I had this before. If it's, for example, in a work, yes, but in a previous [00:37:00] work, I have the same anxiety.

It's not new or with our relationship or whatever. So you go there, you make the pose, the pose, bring the tension in the body, you breathe. And just allow your whole space for that sensation to be, and that's the difficult part because we are trained to run away from those sensations every moment. We have that sensation of anxiety.

We call someone. We go and have a drink. We go partying. We do whatever we need to do. We get any addiction. We can just get a cigarette or we just go for sex immediately or whatever. We just run away to not to feel that sensation. Of course, when this, uh, we can hide that sensation for a while, it comes back and we repeat again.

This is the circle. Circle. When you work with your body, just, you learn how to be with those sensations a little bit. And that's not easy. I have 20 years doing this and even five minutes or not of holding really, really intense [00:38:00] intentions feels impossible sometimes, but I know I've been checking how doing this work actually is what the ancient job is worth telling us to do.

And even the, the science knew what we're trying to do is just to have this sensation and go beyond the sensation and not, uh, Means To keep building narratives around it to hold it. So, this is the way we do it in yoga. We use the body to go into that. Of course, you can use the poses for many other things.

You can heal. If you have sciatic nerve, for example, pain, yoga is amazing if you do it properly. If you have back pain, if you have shoulders pain, you can heal many things with yoga. There are some poses even to lose weight. Like sarvangasana that stimulated the thyroid gland and help to lose weight, for example.

So you can do many things in terms of the superficial things with your body of healing [00:39:00] and even getting in better shape or whatever. But the work can go really, really deep if you want, because every time you go inside, you see what is more in the surface. But if you keep coming inside, you will find more and more things.

And at a certain point, the yogis say that this comes so subtle that you can feel the energy.

So it's not only the sensations that are mainly physical, but you can experience sensations and you see, okay, this sensation is not at all physical. Feels like energy, like magnetism, and it's real. I'm experiencing it. And then it comes the more subtle part of yoga. That in China, they develop like in a very beautiful way with qigong that I'm working or tai chi.

It's just different ways of relating with this energy inside of you. And I remember when we have our session together and at that time in the beginning, you cannot feel anything. After 30 minutes doing a specific movements, it's so clear that the energy is there.

Amanda: Yeah. [00:40:00] I'm also curious, um, because we're talking about yoga and anyone in modern society knows two things. Okay. One is that there are many kinds of yoga So for someone who's really new to the practice, they might not know like I don't know that I necessarily Know which one is best and i've tried a few, you know, I did Bikram. I know that's controversial um, I've tried Vinyasa I've done Kundalini yoga, but there's so many so Could you give me a little enlightenment here on when you say yoga, what are you talking about?

Bala: Yeah, that's, that's, that's the thing. And, uh, having a little bit of my scholar part about yoga. Because yoga is kind of, was in the past a kind of a token word. Could mean anything it's a yoga doesn't mean only union as the people say that yoga means union and say okay Yeah, yoga is union [00:41:00] between the body the mind and the spirit, but actually it's not really that yoga in the ancient text you can use the word yoga for saying and mixture of Specific chemist chemicals, for example, it's a yoga.

The conjunction of starts the in the in the sky is a yoga, uh, doing something tricky to get money from someone in ancient India was yoga.

Doing witchcraft was yoga. So, yoga was this kind of work that you cannot attach the specific thing and say yoga, yoga. And that was the beauty of it. I think that was, the yogis used that word because it's a slippery word. That you can say that thing, that thing, no? And, uh, of course what they found is the way of doing this process was absolutely bound to the nature of the people.

That wants to do the process. So [00:42:00] this is why there are so many styles of yoga, for example. Singing and dancing is a way of yoga, bhakti yoga. So you can just sing devotional songs and you're going to be doing yoga, if that's your nature. In the physical part, for example, you have different kinds of styles of yoga when you go to a studio of postures.

And this is more what the people think about when we talk about this. And you have a Bikram yoga, you have a shatanga yoga, for example. Don't understand that for like 10 years. It's like a really tough, uh, you have a gene yoga that is so nice and relaxing that you barely move and you have a younger yoga that is more about the perfection of the alignment of the body.

A little bit like a. You have jiva mukti, for example, you have power yoga. So which yoga is going to be the yoga for you? The yoga that goes better with your personality, with your nature. So a person that really needs to move, [00:43:00] that is really lethargic, more like tamasic, more like... I don't know if you know in Ayurveda about the doshas.

Or the kind of,

Amanda: uh, Well, we just had an episode recording with Suyogi who talks about the doshas, but feel free to share again.

Bala: So according to your nature, then the dosha in your body that, uh, goes out of harmony faster could be vata, could be pitta, could be kapha, or it could be a mixture of those. Some specific kinds of yoga are going to be more useful for you.

For example, if you're more kappa, you're more like, you don't really like to move for you. It's difficult. You need to ignite the sparks. So it's better to do a more, uh, jog of movement, more, uh, dynamic yoga. Uh, but if you're a person that you're already Moving a lot and too nervous probably is going to be good for you.

Just go to a yin yoga class or to a sleep yoga class as well that are awesome. I don't know [00:44:00] if you have those before So it depending of your nature All of them are tools that wants to find to help you find balance to regulate yourself So it's not like we have a an objective Goal and everybody's running towards that goal and you take different places.

Not the goal is actually to find your own balance. And being in that own balance in your own self. The sma, the swastika, the word swastika in Sanskrit, that is the, the sign that Hitler used actually comes from Ganesh. And it's the sign, the sign of life, and it's the most auspicious thing you can do. Of course, Hitler used it in the opposite way, and that was very clever and, uh, evil.

But, uh, the swastika, the swasta, that is the most suspicious word when I say swasti, to you, I'm desiring the best for you, means, swa means to dwell in yourself. To go into yourself, to remember who you are, [00:45:00] and in that space, there's no tension. There's absolute relaxation, because in that place, everything is okay.

In that place, you don't need to change anything in order to become someone, in order to be worthy of. In that space, everything is perfect, and you say, yes, I want to manifest now a different way of communicating. I would prefer to express a different work. But there's not this. It's pain and anxiety and psychological suffering attached to the idea that I'm not there and I need to be there sometime that is never going to come and that's the thing we work with.

Amanda: So that's really fascinating because you often hear people who love what they do and the reality is that you just need to find what's going to give the balance of how you normally are in the world. So it's an opportunity to find almost that counterbalance. So. I'm someone who tends to [00:46:00] have a lot of high energy, you know, I do spin classes, things like this, for exercise, so I'm continuously feeding that energy source.

Sounds like maybe yin yoga would be a really good way forward to also balance out that energy.

Bala: And you have to, to hear yourself as well because it's not super exact science, you know, uh, sometimes you have a, you are, for example, if you're a very nervous person and you have an override of energy already, you go to an Ashtanga class.

And then you relax. Absolutely. This is kind of the way of the nervous systems. This is one approach to the nervous system. For example, if I want to relax a muscle, we know that the deepest relaxation comes after the deepest contraction. So, if I want to relax, I really contract all the muscles and contract contract contract.

And then relax. It's going to come the deepest relaxation. So that's a way. It's not a [00:47:00] sudden instant. Sometimes you will say, okay, I know I need to calm down, but the way for me today to calm down, it's go in a crazy yoga class and give it all and sweat a lot. And that's the way I'm going to regulate.

That's the way I feel I need to regulate. Sometimes you're just talking the mind and you're having to say. No, I really need to stop now. It's the opposite. I want to go to a gym class, and I want to become a child, and someone take care of me. I'm just going to be there, lying down, and that's healing. So you really need to learn that nobody can, even if they want to, nobody can know completely what's going on inside of you and take responsibility for you.

These things we, we are going all around trying to find one person that's going to tell us exactly what you need to go, what you need to do, where you need to go. It's not really going to happen. Because nobody can know that it's just impossible. Nobody have lived the same life you have, [00:48:00] and that changed a lot.

Even the language. And the meaning of the words you use. So you're going to be impaired even talking to that person because the meanings of the words you use in exchange have different charges. For me, yoga, I know, means something completely different from other people that practice yoga or for you that are here.

So, that's with everything. So, it's more like starting to trust yourself. And find help. Of course, we all need. It's so useful to find help outside, to find a good coach, to find a good teacher, yoga teacher, to go to someone that actually can hold the space for us to do this process. The thing that is not realistic is to try to find someone that is going to tell us exactly what to do.

But it's so important to have this safe container for the process. If we don't have it, if we're on our own in the beginning, we're going to lose so much time and we're going to create a lot of unnecessary suffering.

Amanda: Oh boy. Yes, I know that one.[00:49:00]

So knowing that yoga is incredibly healing, have you had experiences maybe your own or something you've seen with a student or in class of, really remarkable healing or transformation as a result of yoga?

Bala: Yes, I saw many things. I saw people Uh, curing themselves for from cancer, for example, I had a student that have like a really bad hernia in the cervical area when they call me to give her class because, you know, I was physiotherapist.

So, it was like, okay, you're going to be able to know what to do. When I saw the image, I was like, oh, my God, what I'm going to do with this person have a union that was pressing the nerves and there was no space in channels, like, really a mess awful. And one year after she was doing headstand and now she says, perfect, you have a normal life.

And of course it wasn't easy. The process was very, [00:50:00] try to change things and try to even deal with the fear of pain because we need to go into pain and listen to pain when we're healing. Um, For example, in most of the physical disease I've seen, we have this fear of movement when you have pain, because if it hurts, I don't want to move it.

And because you don't move it, actually it goes worse. So we need to start, like, dealing and listening to the pain, and say, okay, I hear you, but I need to start moving you. If it's the shoulder, for example, I need to start doing something. This is like physical healings, emotional healings, a lot. I can tell you something, myself, for example, I've been...

Super scared of heights since I was a child, like, really, I couldn't go into a window of a building and go down. I feel this ice sensation coming up from my spine. That was like, really awful. And when I start doing, like, serious yoga in Greece, when I started having my first TTC, [00:51:00] teacher training and learning, I remember at a certain point, I was in Greece.

And I was doing these poses to, uh, face the fear, for example, the Pagasana, the crown pose, where you place your hands on the floor and your, your knees on the back of the arms and you lean forward and you try to stay in the, in the air. This is one of the pose to bring fears out, for example, or going back in drawback to Bridget's pose.

I was doing these kind of things and I noticed that One day I was in a rock where people were like jumping to the sea, very high rock. I said, actually, I can do this. And I jumped. And then I went to bungee jumping in India. And then last year I went to paragliding. And of course, I still feel the fear.

It's not that I'm not going to tell you, like, when I was paragliding, I was like, yeah, I don't feel anything, I'm so happy. But, but it's not paralyzing as before, actually it's kind of vigorizing. I remember I was in the [00:52:00] paraglide and the guy that, uh, was with me said, okay, take now and drive yourself. I said, no, no way.

I don't want to do this. I said, come on. And actually I did it. And it's more like you learn how to deal. With this kind of things when they come in a very easier way I am not sure if at a certain point they're going to disappear completely and I go to the conclusion for myself that I'm not Going to expect that if that happens going to be a blessing But what I'm going to expect is to deal with this in the best way every time it comes So notice, okay, the fear is coming, the anxiety is coming What am I going to do with this?

I'm going to let this drive my life. And the yoga was really helpful for me to heal this. And from a very somatic point of view.

Amanda: Also, from an awareness point of view, just becoming really deeply aware, it sounds like, was a part of that shift for you.

Bala: One of my first yoga teacher, Radha Warren, she's awesome.

She [00:53:00] can tell a person just by watching the person's practice for a week. So when I arrived there, she told me, like, you do your practice, I'm just going to see you. And then after a week, she come to me and she start, like, describing psychological treats I have. In such a really accurate way, like, like, okay, you're going to work with me.

You have to be okay when things doesn't go the way you want, because you really like to push when things doesn't go. And I just start like telling me things, say, how the hell you know this? Say, I saw you practicing. Every time you find a difficult poster. Oppose. I see how you react, how you deal with that.

If you breathe, how do you breathe? You're pushing. You are relaxing. I saw you when you were tired in this week, how you come to the space of the practice. I saw you when you are in. So the practice actually shows you many things about yourself. And when you learn, when you're in a position and you feel a [00:54:00] lot of pain or anxiety, and this is difficult and you need just to breathe and stay there.

And you manage to do that and, and you do it for a week and then you accomplish the post. And when you can do the post and then next week, you cannot again, and you get super frustrated because you get it. If you go to this process, then you go to the bank and it's close and you're going to don't have a bad.

Pay for that because you're training yourself to deal with uncomfortable feelings in the practice of yoga. And then you try to bring this to all the space in life is easy, no, but we need to do it. It's like I have a student that is asking me all the time, when is this going to end? Because I have this a lot of crying last year and then I feel like I'm just a better person and now I'm crying a lot again.

When this is going to end, if this is something that is a storage, when it's going to be out completely. And I say, I don't know, I hate to brush my teeth [00:55:00] every day as well, but I need to do it. I hate to take a bath, to shower every day, but I need to do it. I need to take care of this, I need to clean myself.

I cannot have a very nice shower and say, well, I need to shower again next week. So with our emotional and psychological part, and with our spiritual being as well, this is needed. Continuity. We need to keep working. It's not a matter of goal oriented mind. It's more a matter of changing perspective and living in a different way.

Amanda: This is incredible and I still have so many more questions, but I also want to honor that you have shared really so much wisdom, this feels actually like a master class in what actually yoga is and what's possible with it. So I'd love to hear from you, what are the different ways that you actually work with people?

Are you [00:56:00] teaching classes? Are you working one on one? What, what does that look like in your own practice?

Bala: Well, now I'm mostly working one on one sessions or with private groups. So I have people that have a couple of friends or families that just come together and ask me for a session. I'm living in Madrid.

So I can have a presential sessions like in person, but, uh, More than 60 percent of my classes now are online. So if anybody is feeling like they want to have a session, a yoga session, if they have any injury, physical injury, we can work with that because I'm physiotherapist as well, and we can try to change the perspective of what we're saying and not seeing the body just like a machine, but understanding that this reacting to our emotions and our thoughts and doing this kind of work of understanding ourself a little bit better.

So. I do online sessions. You can find me in Instagram as [00:57:00] ombalayoga, very simple. And just send me a message there and we can be in touch and plan a session. And as well, what I'm doing now that is super interesting and it's really exciting for me. I'm using The knowledge of my sociologist background, and I'm organizing travels to India every year.

So I'm bringing people to India and we go to India and we find and we learn about the religion and we learn about the philosophy in the place. And we learn all the secrets that usually tourists don't know. For example, I'm going to give you just a small piece. The Taj Mahal, the traditional story is that was built by Sahajan to his wife Mumtaz he loved so much and she died in the middle of the process and it turned into a kind of a tomb.

But that's not true. Actually, the Taj Mahal existed way before Sahajan. There's registers of his grandfather that was [00:58:00] Akbar, the emperor, talking about the Taj Mahal. So the Taj Mahal originally apparently was a Hindu temple. And Sahajan that was a Muslim, he started to destroy everything that was Hindu around, and he didn't destroy the Taj Mahal, but he changed it.

He destroyed some things, and this is why the Taj Mahal is not facing to the Mecca. That is unthinkable. If you are a Muslim, and this is why the Taj Mahal is near to a river, where the Muslim usually don't bury their dead next to a river. It's more Hindu thing, no? And there's a lot of evidence about that, and even there was a, a sue in the High Court of India about this subject.

And was like very delicate and was like covered by the media, you can find it because that could create a civil war in India, for example, if this goes out. So there's a lot of stories about things that happen, not only historical, but the yogis. Uh, we love, for example, this time we're going to the caves where the yogis used to meditate.[00:59:00]

And we're going to caves that actually have real yogis meditating. We have to hike in the Himalayas, and we're going to do that. There's a cave we're going this year that is called the Jesus Cave, because the Indian tradition says that Jesus, in those lost years, he went to India and meditated there. And they have the, the papers, registers about this guy that came from Jerusalem, that was called Joshua, that became a really, really great yogi.

He went back. And then he came back to India, he was crucified, but he stopped his heart the way he learned, and he survived. And he came back to India. And when some people read that, they say, oh my god, this is very similar to the story of, uh, Jesus, no? So it might be the same Jesus they're talking about.

Of course, we don't know. But, but this is the story. And we're going to that specific cave. We're going to different place. We're going to have a dip in the [01:00:00] Ganges, but in the Himalayas in a clean spot, we're actually safe to do it. We're going to temples that people usually never go that have a lot of energy and a lot of power.

There are places, for example, that we're going, there's a place where Indian tradition says that every afternoon, every night Krishna appears there. So the, after 6 p. m. They kick everybody out and they close the doors and they say that the people that actually try to go inside this space and so Krishna went blind and they have stories of people to say, yes, I went inside this real.

And there are some people, many people that say that if you go at night, sometimes you can listen to the flute. Playing inside the place and there's no one inside because Krishna had in the Indian tradition. He had a wife that is rather and it's more like a couple thing in the tradition. The priest, they put a bed for them and they set things so they can have a nice night.

And every morning the bed is completely undone and the things are eaten and [01:01:00] nobody come in. So it's kind of mysteries that we're going to explore. And I'm really, really enjoying to bring in people to India from this perspective, to these spaces that are not really super known, to try to meet the real yogis, to understand what are they trying to do, what they were trying to do, and that we don't need to do exactly what they're doing because maybe our goals are different.

Maybe we don't need to detach completely from the world because we have a family or we want to have a family and that's perfectly okay. But we can use those tools to live in a better way, to change the way we relate to reality and not create too many, too much sufferings in the process. Every time we resist, we create suffering.

But if we learn how to flow, how not to grasp, we can have more and more problems. And that's a little bit the idea of the trip as well. Bringing the people to different sacred cities, learning all the stories, learning all the traditions and ending up in Rishikesh at the end. [01:02:00] And it's going to be awesome.

Amanda: That sounds really unbelievable. I've been watching you tease that on Instagram. How can people sign up or get more information if they want to join you on one of these trips to India?

Bala: Yes, the same for Instagram. They can contact me, my email as well. It's Bala Machado, it's spelled B A L A, M A C H A D O, this is my name and my last name, @ gmail. com. So, uh, you can just send me a message and I will send you all the information.

Actually, we're doing like a very small group. It's going to be very private for this January. So if anybody feel like cold to jump in, just come because we're going to be like five people. Usually it's more like 14, 20 people.

This time it's going to be like very small group. So just send me a message and it's going to be quite cheap this time as well. Quite affordable the trip. So we're going to be staying in good hotels between [01:03:00] three and four stars for sure. But we're trying to do something like super cozy this time, very special.

And we're like inviting some people that are cold and we have the feeling that the universe is going to make us in touch with the people that really going to use this in a good way.

Amanda: I have a feeling you're going to have a few calls and emails in short order. It sounds really like a magical experience.

One other question that I want to ask, if people are maybe new to a lot of the information that you've shared, so not just about yoga, but about really that history and philosophy, and maybe they want to get started on their own, or even learn how they can go deeper, are there any, like, resources or books or teachers that have been particularly important for you on your journey?

Bala: Yes, I think the, as introduction, I think a beautiful introduction for yoga is the Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda. [01:04:00] It's said that was Steve Jobs favorite book, no? And George Harrison, the Beatle, was traveling all the time with many copies and was giving the copies away all the time. Um, was because of that book, I think, that, uh, the Western, they start to really get interested in the Eastern philosophy.

So this is one book I would recommend for a person that is like a total beginner, just to, to, to have stories about yoga, not really the contents of yoga, but more stories like an introduction about yoga. After that, for a spiritual practice, I would recommend The Power of Now of Eckhart Tolle. That book is just amazing.

It describes yoga as it is, without mentioning the word yoga at any point. Because what he actually is, uh, taking us to is to be present with outside the narratives of the mind, outside the voice of the mind. So, that's yoga, that's yoga's chittabhrithi nirodha, you know, stopping the movements of the mind.[01:05:00]

If you want to go like really deep into the, who am I philosophy, I will recommend you a book called I Am That from Sata Mahara. Uh, the name is really tricky.

Amanda: I'll link to it later. Don't worry, .

Bala: Yeah, but it's, it is, if you find it, it's a really nice book about the discussions of who am I? This what we were talking in the beginning of the podcast.

Who am I really? If I'm not really the titles I got, my degrees, if I'm not really my family relationship, if I'm not really a male or a female or even a human, what am I? This book is going to have a lot of information about that. And Ramana Maharshi's 20 Verses of Reality is a very deep one to, to eat, to have, but it's very good about the same topic as well.

There are nice versions of Indian texts. Texts that are very affordable, uh, and easy to have. [01:06:00] For example, the Bhagavad Gita, the version of Mahatma Gandhi, is very simple and very short and very beautiful, and it's a very nice book to read. The Bhagavad Gita is one of the most important books for the Hindu religion, it's kind of their bible.

It's not going to be accurate to say it's their bible because they have so many texts, but this is one of the core ones. And he said the conversation that Krishna, that is God, is having with a warrior in the middle of a battlefield, and of course, everything is metaphoric. The battlefield is the battlefield of the world and the tendencies, the habits, and they're, they're having all these conversations about, and it's really beautiful.

And there is where, where Krishna says to Arjuna. You do what you need to do, do your work the best way you can. But the results of the work, the fruits of the work are mine. So just do your work and don't concern if it goes wrong, you did your best. Don't give a second thought about that. Just be [01:07:00] very mindful of doing everything properly.

The excellence of action is the, is one of the definitions of yoga there in that book because I told you there are many definitions of yoga in that book. There are like three or four, I think, in the Bhagavad Gita.

Amanda: That's perfect. I'm going to link to all of these different resources, all of the books. I'm going to link to your Instagram, your email, everything so that people know exactly how they can get in touch.

Bala: And I'm writing my own book now. Ooh. I'm doing something really interesting. I always wanted. I wanted a book where the full story of yoga was. But, uh, this is very difficult because it's too complex, too scholarly, like, too academics. Um, there, we have so many voids and confusions in the way that nobody, like, dared to put a word about it.

So I was feeling just, uh, like, having all this background of sociologies and these studies about the history of India. [01:08:00] Just to make it a nice, uh, story of yoga book, where it comes from the very beginning, where all this come from, how was that culture in the beginning, where this come from, then what was yoga and more meditation, then when the postures stand, the poses start to add to yoga, and then where are we now?

And this is, I'm already writing it, and I hope soon, maybe in a couple of months.

Amanda: When can we expect to read that?

Bala: Yeah, I don't know when it's going to be ready. I already have chapter one and two, and it's going to tell the story of Buddha, and it's going to talk about everything a little bit just superficially, but about everything, the story of Buddha, and how actually that changed the mind of the people in the moment, because they were more like religious, ritualistic oriented, and Buddha was more meditative, and how he became like a kind of Martin Luther of the Vedic religion at the moment and open a new way of understanding things. And we're going to talk a [01:09:00] lot about that. All day. The search of the self is actually the oldest story that we are doing from the beginning to the end through yoga.

Amanda: That's amazing. I definitely, um, have the right person sitting here in this call with me today.

You are really a fountain of wisdom and I've learned so much from. This entire conversation, I can already tell you there's like a hundred quotes I want to pull out and showcase everywhere. Um, is there anything else you think, like any advice that you might like to give to someone who's just starting out on their journey?

Something that might be helpful for someone who really wants to begin, maybe they're not sure exactly how or when. What would you say to them?

Bala: All is well now. We have everything we need in our life, even in the moments it doesn't appear like. This [01:10:00] is no mistake. The universe, the reality, nature is taking so much trouble to keep this body alive, to keep all the thousands of millions of cells in your body doing complex processes in real time at every moment, just to keep you breathing.

So there's a lot of love behind and because the story we're telling ourselves of who we are and who we need to be, we're losing the amazing. miracle that we already are in this moment. That I think is the most important thing I could share. And if we are forgetful, because we're not awake yet, I like to sleep a lot.

So I get waking for a moment. Let me metaphorically of this, uh, We your health and you have all these tools and you have all these amazing people. You have Amanda as well She's an awesome coach and you have a lot of resource to [01:11:00] hold your space to go through this process of just Remembering and waking up to the amazing reality.

You already have in this moment, even though the external situation

Amanda: That is really beautiful Thank you so, so much for being here, Bala. I really value and appreciate your time and just the generosity that you have with sharing this wisdom with us all. You are truly an incredible fountain of knowledge. I know that your clients and everyone who works with you is super lucky.

I've also gotten to work with you, so I definitely know that they're super lucky to, to be in your very capable hands. So thank you. Thank you for being here.

Bala: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. And thank you for pampering me. I learned so much in the process of doing this podcast with you. It's incredible.

You are so excellent in everything you do, the way you lead, [01:12:00] and the way you are careful of the details. It's so beautiful to see. That's yoga as well. The excellence of action.Amanda: And on that note, thank you so much to everyone who has been listening to this beautiful conversation. You will get all of the information you need to get in touch with Bala and start taking your own journey a bit deeper in the yoga world and I am very happy to share this with you and can't wait to see you next time Thanks for joining us on this week's episode don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss a future episode To dive deeper into today's conversation, make sure to visit www. dontsteponthebluebells. com and grab your exclusive pod sheet. It's packed with valuable takeaways that will enrich your listening experience. Until next time, stay curious and keep exploring.