Episode 205: Let's Talk Yoga with Arundhati Baitmangalkar
Yogaland Podcast
Andrea Ferretti
4.8 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 11 August 2020
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
My guest this week wears so many hats! She's a yoga and Bollywood dance teacher, studio owner (Aham Yoga in Redmond, WA), and a brand new yoga podcaster! (Her pod is called Let's Talk Yoga.)
Arundhati hails from Southern India and moved to the states with her husband seven years ago. In her own words, "I've built a successful business as an immigrant, WOC yoga teacher with no business background, no Handstands -- just pure instinct and the free information I found on google. There are very few Indian, immigrant yoga teachers out there. And even fewer South Asian owned yoga studios."
I loved connecting with her and hearing her story. I'm also grateful to her for sharing openly from her perspective as a South Asian woman -- how does she feel about the word Namaste at the end of class? What are the things that feel different in yoga spaces in the West? And what are some ways that she's been made to feel invisible in yoga rooms in the past? Thank you, Aru, for leading with such an open heart!
Here are a few things we talk about:
* How she got her start in yoga after years as a professional Bollywood dancer, and how that blossomed into a thriving studio business
* The creative way she runs her studio that keeps her costs low, and her focus on the yoga
* Her thoughts on Western yoga students referring to each other as “yogi” and beginning and ending class with the word 'Namaste'
* A peek into her new podcast (Jason is one of her first guests!), and what we can expect to learn from her in future episodes
Show notes: http://www.jasonyoga.com/podcast/episode205
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey everyone, I'm Andrea Ferretti and this is episode 205 of Yoga Land. |
| 0:08.6 | Today my guest is Arundati Bait Mungalkur. She is a yoga studio owner, she's the owner of Aham yoga up in Redmond, Washington, |
| 0:18.3 | and she is launching a new podcast about yoga called Let's Talk Yoga. |
| 0:23.2 | One of her very first interviews happens to be with Jason |
| 0:27.1 | so you can head over there and listen to that one after you listen to this one. |
| 0:30.8 | Arundhati shares her story in this episode which is just a great story. |
| 0:36.1 | I'm excited for you to hear it. |
| 0:37.7 | And we also talk about her thoughts and feelings about different aspects of cultural appropriation. |
| 0:43.5 | This is obviously a topic that's important to our community |
| 0:46.6 | and has been for some time and I'm just truly grateful to Arundati |
| 0:50.3 | for having such an open open honest conversation about it. |
| 0:54.0 | And also, I just want to add that at the end of the interview, |
| 0:57.4 | after I turned the recording off, |
| 1:00.2 | she said something to the effect of no shame, no blame, we just do the best with the knowledge that we have and we move forward. |
| 1:09.0 | So I appreciate that spirit in her and I hope that you appreciate and learn from the episode. |
| 1:17.0 | Just a quick announcement before I start the interview that Jason's Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing |
| 1:22.2 | is going to be online September 22nd through the 27th. |
| 1:26.9 | So if you've always wanted to study with him, |
| 1:29.2 | this is a great opportunity to do so. |
| 1:32.0 | And I just want you to know these are not like big long Zoom meetings. It's |
| 1:37.1 | really great interactive content. It's hosted on our learning platform and then you also have live calls with Jason. So if you are interested |
| 1:45.1 | head over to jason yoga.com slash sequencing and you can get all the details |
... |
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