Lost Angels Yoga Club
In our 43rd episode we sit down with Spiros and Erica. On the surface this is an unlikely pair. Even in these pictures below you might think you’d find Erica more likely flipping through a Cosmo than a Tarot deck. While Spiro’s rough punk exterior seems more at home at CBGB’s or spinning dub records at a house party. What is perversely intriguing however, on speaking with these two, is how uniquely suited they are to each other.
What shines through their every interaction is intelligence and insight. With every topic we brought up whether it was Los Angeles, the criminal justice system, the State of Ohio, the Tarot, or the Trumpist identity, they brought a profound sense of layered self-aware contextual discernment to their own thoughts, which compassionately penetrated to the heart of each complicated issue.
This was truly one of the weirder interviews we’ve ever had the delight to showcase, if only to count the number of times Harmony and Russell were gobsmacked silent by revelations to cultural contexts and deeper meanings uncovered.
We delved deep into Erica’s story and learned that she has been practicing yoga since she was a teenager. The practice has been the thread that has stitched together her adult years. She trained as a social scientist in Medical Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley; and spent over a decade at the intersection of yoga and social justice teaching yoga, mindfulness, meditation, writing and art to incarcerated and at-risk teenage girls in the San Francisco Bay Area where she and Russell worked together on occasion.
Erica has written a guidebook on teaching trauma-informed yoga; and in collaboration with neuroscientists, artists, teachers and activists has crafted an extensive curriculum on teaching yoga in prisons and schools. She is also a certified massage therapist. Erica has had the great privilege to study with and continue to learn from Vance Selover, (whom Russell has slept in the same bed with on many occasions) Johnny Smith, R. Sharath Jois, and Saraswati Jois.
Spiros is a little harder to nail down. Not because he is Christian, but rather he is reticent and too humble to speak of himself. He is most fascinated by the nature of consciousness and speak eloquently on this subject, in addition to examining the culture and context of language, thoughts, and pretty much everything.
We did learn that he began studying yoga and consciousness in his teens and initiated a diligent daily practice in 1993 in Taos, NM, under the tutelage of a Western Magickal group focused on yoga, breathwork, meditation, and chanting. During this time he used psychedelics to steer explorations, discovery, and reality.
In 2001 Spiros moved to NYC and began studying Ashtanga Yoga closely with Eddie Stern, and concurrently with Pattabhi Jois during that same year. He continues to study with Pattabhi Jois’s grandson R. Sharath Jois, and his daughter Saraswati Jois. And for a few brief years, he ran a tea stall at Ashtanga Yoga New York & the Broome Street Temple in Manhattan.
The Finding Harmony Podcast is hosted, edited and produced by Harmony Slater and co-hosted by Russell Case.
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Opening and closing music compliments of my dear friend teaching Ashtanga yoga in Eindhoven, Nick Evans, with his band “dawnSong” from the album “for Morgan.” Listen to the entire album on Spotify - Simply Click Here.
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