15 episodes

Hi, I'm Claudia Azula Altucher host of The Yoga Podcast. I've been a seeker of yoga for 15 years, and have traveled through India, Thailand and the Americas seeking truth and what works.

I am also a writer and author of three books, including "21 Things To Know Before Starting An Ashtanga Yoga Practice", the co-author of the Wall Street Journal Best Selling book "The Power Of No", and the recently released "Become An Idea Machine".

I've written for The New York Observer, Positively Positive, Mind Body Green, Yoga Mantra and Health and many other popular websites for the past five years.

The Yoga Podcast is a sacred space where I talk with long-term, dedicated practitioners about living yoga with all of its eight branches, practicing, making money through it, teaching it with integrity, learning it with audacity and above all, understanding that nobody needs to be put on a pedestal, because the path to our own truth is lonely and personal, and we must choose the teachings that resonate within.

The Yoga Podcast Claudia Azula Altucher

    • Health & Fitness
    • 4.8 • 18 Ratings

Hi, I'm Claudia Azula Altucher host of The Yoga Podcast. I've been a seeker of yoga for 15 years, and have traveled through India, Thailand and the Americas seeking truth and what works.

I am also a writer and author of three books, including "21 Things To Know Before Starting An Ashtanga Yoga Practice", the co-author of the Wall Street Journal Best Selling book "The Power Of No", and the recently released "Become An Idea Machine".

I've written for The New York Observer, Positively Positive, Mind Body Green, Yoga Mantra and Health and many other popular websites for the past five years.

The Yoga Podcast is a sacred space where I talk with long-term, dedicated practitioners about living yoga with all of its eight branches, practicing, making money through it, teaching it with integrity, learning it with audacity and above all, understanding that nobody needs to be put on a pedestal, because the path to our own truth is lonely and personal, and we must choose the teachings that resonate within.

    James Altucher Interviews Claudia Azula Altucher

    James Altucher Interviews Claudia Azula Altucher

    Welcome! Something unusual for the Yoga Podcast, this time James Altucher (my husband) is interviewing me (the Yoga Teacher)

    And he is not holding back, he asks about personal things (very personal), about yoga, about what brought me to it, what it did to me, what it can do for you and how it influences every moment of my life

    There was talk ranging the whole gamut from Patanjali to Professor Krishnamacharya and his teacher, to  BKS Iyengar to Pattabhi Jois (founder of the Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga System) to BKS Iyengar to Paul Dallaghan, Jessica, Kino... everybody!

    And he asked me about the Periscope LIVE yoga class I offer for 30" EVERY FRIDAY - Why Periscope? Why should you go into it? How would you benefit from it? Will you like it? Is it for you?

    And we even talked about relationships, specifically our relationships, and the challenges that we face when working, teaching, dealing with children or step-children and god-children, to cooking and travel, to who packs the clothes and who wins at chess, every time!

    WHAT IS SPECIAL ABOUT ME

    I don't want to sound arrogant, I prefer to keep it on the humble side, and even that sounds arrogant, I feel I can win.

    So, ok, what is special about me is I keep it real, I have spent tens of thousands of dollars circling the globe in search of true teachings, good teachers of asana, pranayama, and on lots of meditation retreats.

    I also write books and one of them became a WSJ best-seller...

    Mostly I am into the flow of life, into living each moment and appreciating the subtleties and nuances of how life is always different, with every breath we take.

    Yoga is fundamentally a BREATHING practice.  And that is the most important part of the message for me.

    Hope you like it!

    Enjoy

    • 58 min
    Michael Singer: The Surrender Experiment

    Michael Singer: The Surrender Experiment

    Let me tell you what happened to me when I read “The Surrender Experiment” by Michale Singer, which by the way, JUST hit the NY Times Best-Seller… Of course.


    The Surrender Experiment, highly recommended



    It was a big surprise!

    Mostly because I did NOT read it.

    Instead… I EXPERIENCED it!

    It went something like this, in every chapter, and in an endless loop…

    – Wait. What!”

    – Oh C’mon! Seriously!?

    – And he surrendered to THAT?

    – Really?

    – And then THAT happened?

    – WOW…. wow wow wow

    Next chapter: Repeat… and on, and on, and on…

    I could not put it down, in fact,  I switched between reading and listening in audio.  He read the audio himself so it is very special, you are there with him, you feel what is happening, in every blow that life throws him over the past 40 years, and how he just “surrenders”

     

     

    But this was just the beginning…


    The book mentions all the things that happened to him, when he decided NOT to listen to the voice on his head anymore…


    All the things from someone building a property on his land (can you imagine?) to eventually building a company with billions of dollars in revenue. I kid you not. He was managing billions of dollars, and had a big part on Web-Md.

    I wrote to the Temple Of The Universe Contact page as soon as I finished the book. My heart was literally on fire!


    Temple of The Universe in Gainesville, FL



    I told them I wanted to see the Temple of the Universe, I wanted to see the house that was built for “Mikkie” by God, which he received through a “phone call from God” (you HAVE to read the book, that is an amazing story), I told them I was dying to visit, to please let us interview him.

    Then I sent one more email and said we would be willing to fly and meet them.

    In true SURRENDERING STYLE, both James and I let it go, and the next day they invited us over.

    In all fairness James had been trying on his own so they were getting it from both of us…

    And like magic, within a week, we were at the Temple of The Universe, living in one of the houses that Michael Singer had himself built (through the first company he created by surrendering called “Built With Love) and steps from the Temple of the Universe…


    We sang songs of all religions, from Our Father (which I don’t know in English so I had to recite in Spanish) to the Gayatri Mantra, to the Sri Atma Guita (in English) some simple songs, some Hebrew songs. It was beautiful… I cried, I released, I cleansed emotions, I loved it!  There is so much love in that place.


    In his previous NY Times Best Seller book, The Untethered Soul,  Michael speaks of “techniques”, but in the new one “The Surrender Experiment” he tells his LIFE, point by point.

    And it is excruciating at times, sweet at others, divinely organized ever.

    It is one thing when you hear someone speak “technique” like, for example:

    – Use death as your friend

    – When you get triggered, open your heart and let it pass up so it does not get stuck and become a samskara (blockage)

    – Realize that the voice in your head has NEVER given you good advise, in fact, quite the opposite

    All of that is nice, but when you see someone who determines, in full, to just surrender, and make life a “Surrender Experiment” the magic that enters is so HUGE, so bizarre, so coincidentally perfect, it is a miracle!

    Where is the line? We asked?  How do you decide when to surrender and when not to?
    You don’t follow the voice inside, he said, you just check: Will this hurt anybody? And if the answer is no, you do it…  With wisdom of course, but in true, deep surrendering style…

    Then you are free from the tyranny of the mind that is always switching from lust, to desperation, to not liking things, to having preferences… Then life becomes an adventure.

    And I think that is what I experienced, you know why?

    Because Michael had never even though of giving an interview ever in his life. He m

    • 1 hr 4 min
    Paul Dallaghan And The Paradise In His Thailand Center

    Paul Dallaghan And The Paradise In His Thailand Center

     Paul Dallaghan has a yoga retreat that I can only describe as the Richard Branson's Isand for yoga... 

    Any yoga "real thing" you'd like is there at his place in Ko Samui, Thailand (I've been to the place twice). For example: ayurvedic treatments, infrared saunas, pool, steaming showers, excellent food, exceptional yoga and pranayama instruction and amazingly beautiful accommodations by the ocean...

    And he is one of the most humble people I know.



    What We Talked About

    He drops a bomb on me. I get news about his life right off the start which I did not know.
    Paul does NOT get jet lag... and he gives tips on how to avoid it as much as possible
    His start in yoga in New York after business school
    Since he got clear that yoga was his thing, doubts melted away and he felt a surrendering come over him.
    Paul is one of ONLY two students of pranayama and yoga master Tiwariji (of the Kayvalyadhama Institute in India)  we talk about it and Paul says it all happened very naturally...
    We talk about how he met him




    One thing to notice is that every time he started building the beautiful retreat centers, he had NO money.
    How the amazing yoga retreat he maintains in Ko Samui Thailand came to be in a very organic way
    The daily contemplation practice that Paul does in 4 steps, to prepare for the day and practice
    And how this practice continues to be very useful and helpful for him after more than decade of practice
    Paul says:  This practice comes from a place where we acknowledge that: "I need help because I don't know anything... And then there is life... And dealing with it... And that is why we ask for help"
    The Gayatri Mantra and how it helps on clarity
    He proposes we could all meet together in 20 years and see how the practices helped each of us
    Paul notices as he sees students around the world a lot of tension in the upper part of the belly and why this is
    What took Paul a long time to understand...

    The beautiful yoga room at Samahita Retreat in Ko Samui Thailand

    About Paul
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    Paul's International Teaching Schedule

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    Transcript
    Claudia A. Altucher:   Hello, everyone. Welcome to The Yoga Podcast. I am over the moon to have this guest with me because I've been looking for him for over, I'm gonna say, seven to eight months, and he's just so busy, but I have Paul Dallaghan. He is the co-founder with his wife, Jutima, of Yoga Thailand and Samahita Wellness –

    Paul Dallaghan:         Ex-wife.

    Claudia A. Altucher:   Excuse me?

    Paul Dallaghan:         That's ex-wife.

    Claudia A. Altucher:   Oh, I didn't know. I'm sorry to hear.

    Paul Dallaghan:         [Laughs] Nothing to be sorry about, but yeah, go ahead.

    Claudia A. Altucher:   Oh, okay. So that's news, I guess. Last December, CNN named them as one of the top ten wellness resorts in Asia. He has been trained personally in a one-on-one capacity with Sri O.P. Tiwari, a true yogi master, master of pranayama, and head of the Yoga Institute Kaivalyadhama in India. And amazingly enough, Paul was also trained in advanced asana practice with the great Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, who's the man himself, the founder of the Ashtanga Yoga Vinyasa system as we know it. Both centers – I had the opportunity to visit it twice in the beautiful island of Koh Samui, and he is also, at the moment, on top of all of this and having two children, he has been taken by the Emory University in Atlanta in the USA in the field of biological anthropology, and he's following a Ph.D. program, bringing the yogic practices and philosophy to the scientific field. Paul, welcome. So grateful to have you on the podcast.

    Paul Dallaghan:         Yeah, thank you, Claudia.

    Claudia A. Altucher:   So it is 3:38. I guess there have been major changes in your life. I know you just returned from a teacher training in Thailand for a full month. Are you still in Koh Samui time or are you in Atlanta time?

    Paul Da

    • 1 hr 26 min
    Laruga Wakes Up at 2:45 AM For Yoga!

    Laruga Wakes Up at 2:45 AM For Yoga!

    Laruga Glaser couldn't help but being a yoga teacher... It kept calling her, even when she was kicked out of a yoga teacher training!

    What is Special About Laruga
    Even though she experienced hardships growing up, meaning abuse, which I can relate to, she learned through yoga to transcend and heal.



    I was taken by her presence and her pace.  She exudes stillness, and she is very friendly.

    As a teacher she has a heavy international traveling schedule as well as a Mysore program she runs daily in Stockholm.



     

    I also appreciated how she helps us all give ourselves a break when she says (talking about the brutal winters in the Northern hemisphere)...


    I do feel it is important to be sensitive to the seasonal shifts and adjust the rhythm of one’s practice during these times of external extremes, instead of trying to force the same pacing month after month


    What we talked about

    How she grew up in the United States and stepped into yoga by "chance"
    How Ashtanga picked her curiosity at a very young age
    The role abuse played in her life as she developed into her own
    How teaching came to her
    How she met her boyfriend in Mysore exactly four months before I met James!
    Her daily routine (she wakes up at 2:45 AM people!)
    How she teaches and what her schedule is like
    How she manages her energy
    The one thing that took Laruga a LONG time to understand...



    About Laruga:
    Website

    Upcoming Traveling Workshops

    Daily Mysore

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    TRANSCRIPT:
    Claudia A. Altucher:   Let me ask you something. It’s 4:00 PM in Stockholm, so I’m wondering: what did you do today?

    Laruga Glaser:           Oh, okay. Well –

    [Laughter]

    Yeah, my usual schedule is – I’ll – first thing in the morning, I practice – I’ll do my practice, which is quite early.

    Claudia A. Altucher:   What is “quite early”?

    Laruga Glaser:           My alarm come – goes off at around 2:45 AM.

    Claudia A. Altucher:   Oh, my goodness.

    Laruga Glaser:           So – but that doesn’t mean that I necessarily get up right away. It depends on – sometimes I hit “snooze” a few times to be perfectly honest.

    Claudia A. Altucher:   Well, you’re very allowed. Anyone who puts the clock at 2:45 AM is allowed to “snooze it” in my world.

    Laruga Glaser:           Yeah, sometimes I need a little bit of a buffer. Sometimes I do pop out of bed right away, but sometimes I’ll – you know, it’s a good way for me to kind of segue myself out of bed.

    Claudia A. Altucher:   So what time do you go to bed then?

    Laruga Glaser:           In a perfect world: 8:00 PM. That doesn’t always happen. Usually, I really start winding down between 8:00 PM or 9:00 PM, but the best time for me to be in bed is before 8:30 PM, really.

    Claudia A. Altucher:   Yeah, you need that. For me, too, only I don’t wake up that early. That’s very impressive to me.

    Laruga Glaser:           Yeah, yeah, that’s important.

    [Laughter]

    So –

    Claudia A. Altucher:   And then what did you do?

    Laruga Glaser:           Then – so I’ll do my practice, then it’s like I have to, very quickly, kind of shower and get ready to head to the studio to teach. So my commute isn’t too bad – it’s about, from door-to-door, it’s maybe about 20 minutes?

    Claudia A. Altucher:   Do you go by train, I guess? Or –

    Laruga Glaser:           Yeah. Twenty – twenty-five minutes, really, actually. So, yeah, I catch a train into the city center and make my way to Yogayama to teach. So I start around – a little after 6:30AM is when I start teaching. So my boyfriend leaves, actually, earlier to open the doors; he opens the doors at the studio at 6:00 AM. So some students like to arrive before I arrive to get started.

    Claudia A. Altucher:   Right, right. Yeah.

    Laruga Glaser:           So he’s a really big help for me because then it allo

    • 1 hr 1 min
    Yoga Podcast Episode #11 - I Had To Go!

    Yoga Podcast Episode #11 - I Had To Go!

    I had to go. Badly. But one of my three roommates was taking a luxury long shower in the only bathroom. What to do?! No oh no! The thought crossed my mind...

    Use the Indian bathroom?  Me?

    None of the four of us sub-leasing that house in Mysore, South India circa 2008 had yet opened THAT door.

    None of us had dared step into the vortex of how two thirds of the world do their business.

    But I had to. What was the alternative?

    So I did.

    I opened the door.... Slowly.  Would the walls be splashed? Would there be water in the pot next to it? Would it even be clean? Would I fall into an infinite tunnel of shit?

    No. Phew! Very clean.

    I went outside to refill the pot with clean water, grabbed some extra toilette paper, closed the door, and did what I had to do.

    Wait. What is this?

    Fascinating!

    Even though it was uncomfortable, everything was easy... It almost felt... Hm, what is the word? NATURAL, human, normal. DIFFERENT.

    Imagine my delight when I saw the episode of Shark Tank in which Bobby and Judy presented what they have come to call "Squatty-Potty" a company that created a stool so we can, IN THE WEST, squat easily...

    Here is the episode which is fun to watch

    Because I have this habit of calling anyone who helps me evacuate my intestines better I picked up the phone and gave Bobby and Judy a call and they agreed to go on the podcast that I do with lovely husband, "Ask Altucher".

    The four of us had a lot to talk about. Almost every illness out there starts in the intestines.

    Bobby shipped me two Squatty-Potties ahead of the podcast recording so I could try it myself, and I have to tell you, I noticed a few things right away...

    If you get put off by talk of how the body works, maybe skip these points...

    As a yogi, I am fascinated by this type of things

    1) It works JUST like the Indian toilette, only it is EASIER because my muscles don't have to hold me in position, my legs simply raise to the occasion

    2) It works.  It is the right position in which to do "our business"

    3) This is only for women... I know... But I noticed that I was able to empty my bladder to an extent I had never done before... I mean, it kept going and going... Like the pink bunny

    I will let you hear the episode and I hope you try it...

    • 37 min
    Julie Piatt The Plant Power Way + Yoga = Raise Your Vibration

    Julie Piatt The Plant Power Way + Yoga = Raise Your Vibration

    Julie Piatt is my woman crush... She is the embodiment of a yoga teacher, mother, musician, artist, supportive mother and wife, healer, and song writer.

    Listen to her for a few minutes and you will feel elevated.  She excudes calm confidence and centeredness.

    Ever since I spoke with her last week I have been doing the meditation she "downloaded" -  I cried on the first try, it touched something very deep within me.  Then I was able to just sing to the beautiful humming and mantras, and I plan on continuing for 40 days.

    Julie has just released THE PLANTPOWER WAY: Whole Food Plant-Based Recipes and Guidance for The Whole Family together with her Vegan Ultraman husband Rich Roll

    In this episode we talk about how what kept her going even when she was first married to Rich and he would eat so differently (he was a recovering alcoholic), what is like to UN-SCHOOL 4 children, why the plant power way is so powerful, how it healed her and how it can heal you and me too.

    Oh.... And I also ask her to marry me.

    The meditation she offers can be found here, at her husband's Rich Roll page 

    It's the best 9 dollars I ever invested, and I don't say that lightly.

    Find more about Julie at SriMati.com

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    And remember to subscribe to my newsletter so you can stay in touch!

    Claudia

    • 58 min

Customer Reviews

4.8 out of 5
18 Ratings

18 Ratings

~~natasha~~ ,

The best yoga podcast!

I have recently found this podcast and I can't get enought of it.
Claudia is a fantastic host and interviewer. She brings amazing guests that are superstars in the world of ashtanga yoga.
I love listening to these interviews on my way to the yoga studio. It is so inspiring.
I have only one unread episode left and I plan to listen them over and over again. There are so many great insights!
Claudia, please continue doing these amazing podcasts!
Thank you, thank you, thank you!

felizamor ,

Great

I just found this podcast from YouTube. Hope there is more to come

YogaWithLMH ,

Wonderful

I listen while walking or driving. It serves a great source of inspiration in between time spent privately on the Yoga mat, meditation cushion or in class. Any Yoga practitioner will enjoy as well.

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