The Uplifted Yoga Podcast

When was the last time you memorized something on purpose?
Not a password, grocery list, or directions, but a piece of poetry, a prayer, a mantra, a sutra, or a verse that you carried with you in your mind.
In this episode, I'm exploring why memorization was once the original way ancient wisdom was passed down, and why it still matters now. We'll look at how memorizing meaningful words can train your attention, support your nervous system, strengthen your brain, and help wisdom become something you can actually return to in real life.
Inside this episode, I explore:
🔹 Why ancient texts like the Yoga Sutras, Bhagavad Gita, Vedas, Psalms, and Torah were designed to be remembered
🔹 How memorization turns passive reading into active spiritual practice
🔹 Why sacred words can become tools for nervous system regulation
🔹 How memorization becomes a countercultural act in the age of scrolling and endless information
This is part one of a two-part conversation. For now, I'm planting the seed: What words, prayer, poem, mantra, or verse might you want to carry in your heart?
💖 Want to shift what you're practicing and paying attention to? Join the Uplifted Membership: https://www.brettlarkin.com/uplifted/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=uplifted  
 
FREE Practice: Anti-Anxiety "Get Grounded FAST" Yoga Sequence (8-Min) - ALL LEVELS - Quick Yoga (10 Minute Yoga)
Relevant Blog: 15 Life-Changing Yoga Books To Deepen Your Yoga Practice
 
Relevant to Today's Episode:
🔮 History of Yoga
📖 Yoga Life Book
🐍 Yoga for Self Mastery
💖 Uplifted Membership
💫 Somatic Certification
🎧 Also Listen to:
#370 – Yoga's Messy Origins: Understanding Yoga's Historical Context
#401 – Who Has Your Attention? Attention Economy vs the Ancient Path
#425 – How the Divine Speaks: Sacred Symbolism in the Gita, Bible & Upanishads Part 1
 
© 2026 Uplifted Yoga | BrettLarkin.com

So many of us think the next certification will finally make us feel clear, confident, or ready. But more information is not always the answer. Sometimes the real missing piece is integration.
In this restream episode, I'm talking about the certification trap, why your nervous system may be keeping you in "learn more" mode, and how to begin organizing your existing tools into a clear, repeatable method that actually supports your clients and your business.
We'll also look at why movement, somatic awareness, and embodied coaching can create a deeper kind of transformation than talking or mindset work alone.
If you're a yoga teacher, coach, healer, or wellness practitioner who has taken multiple trainings but still feels scattered, this episode is for you. Let's explore:
🔹 Why collecting more tools can sometimes become a freeze response
🔹 How embodied self-awareness differs from conceptual self-awareness
🔹 Why movement is essential for emotional release and somatic integration
🔹 The three pillars healers need to move forward
You don't need to do more. You need to do less, better. With structure, support, and a nervous system that feels safe enough to take action.
💗 Learn more about Embodied Yoga Life Coaching: https://www.brettlarkin.com/somatic-yoga-training-certification/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=eylc 
💎 Experience somatic yoga in this Embodied Yoga Workshop: https://www.brettlarkin.com/embodiedyoga?utm_medium=social&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=embodiedyoga
 
FREE Practice: MORNING YOGA FOR TIGHT HIPS & LOWER BACK | Stretches for Flexibility - Unleash Your Creative Energy✨
Relevant Blog: Top Somatic Coaching Programs And How To Choose One
 
Relevant to Today's Episode:
🐍 Yoga for Self Mastery
🌀 Somatic Yoga Life Coaching 
💫 Somatic Certification
🎧 Also Listen to:
#299 – Strategies to Slay Imposter Syndrome and Share Your Gifts
#363 – How to Become a Magnet for Loyal Students & Own the Room with Confidence with Taylor Lorenz
#386 – Stop Selling Products—Start Selling YOU: Human Design for Visibility & Flow with Juliette Stapleton
 
© 2026 Uplifted Yoga | BrettLarkin.com

What happens when healing becomes another thing you're trying to achieve?
In this episode, I'm joined by my friend Bailee for a tender conversation about grief, the feminine, Shuniya, and the power of not fixing yourself.
We explore grief not as something you "get over," but as a living process to be felt, held, and slowly alchemized. Bailee shares how her journey led her into deeper stillness, sensory awareness, sound, archetype, and the feminine mystery.
This conversation asks: What if there is nothing to fix? What if the next step is learning how to listen differently?
Inside this episode, we explore:
🔹 Why grief is not something we complete, but something we learn to live with and honor
🔹 How Shuniya, or zero-point stillness, can create space for healing to land
🔹 Why "am I doing this to avoid a feeling?" and "am I doing this because I think I'm not enough?" are powerful questions
🔹 How simple rituals, sound, sensory awareness, and intentional contemplation can support integration
My hope is that this episode gives you permission to stop treating healing like a race.
You do not have to prove your worth through how much you process, achieve, fix, or overcome.
Sometimes the most sacred shift begins when you pause, listen, and let what has already been planted finally land.
🐍 If this conversation stirred something in you: Download your FREE Feminine Kundalini Starter Pack: https://www.brettlarkin.com/online-kundalini-yoga-teacher-training/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=ku 
 
GUEST EXPERT: Bailee Buckendorf | @rebuilding.roots 
Bailee Buckendorf is a grief integration guide, contemplative writer, and founder of Sunia Shift. Her work weaves Kundalini yoga, archetypal practice, sacred ceremony, sound, somatics, and matriarchal wisdom to help people relate to grief not as something to fix, but as a source of knowing. Shaped by her own lived initiations as a widowed mother, ultra runner, and lifelong student of loss, Bailee supports individuals and groups through one-on-one containers, digital offerings, and seasonal experiences.
Book Mentioned: Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés https://www.amazon.com/Women-Who-Run-Wolves-Archetype/dp/0345409876 
 
FREE Practice: KUNDALINI YOGA FOR EMOTIONAL RELEASE with Music 💜 Trauma Informed Yoga for Beginners 💜
Relevant Blog: The Best Somatic Exercises for Grief: Find Healing Through Movement
 
Relevant to Today's Episode:
🐍 Kundalini 200-hour YTT
💫 Yoga for Self Mastery
💖 Uplifted Membership
🌀 Somatic Yoga Life Coaching 
🎧 Also Listen to:
#281 – Grief as a Potent Healer with Kris Carr
#324 – The Importance of Emotional Processing and Regulation: DENT Model Trauma
#332 – 7 Ways to Release Anger & Grief Through Your Yoga Practice
 
© 2026 Uplifted Yoga | BrettLarkin.com

Today's episode is another behind-the-scenes look, this time inside my 200-hour Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training.
This teaching comes from the Feminine Form Kundalini module, where we unpack what we mean by feminine energy. In yoga, tantra, and Kundalini, feminine energy isn't about gender or identity. It's archetypal energy, the Shakti current within all of us.
In this clip, I explore Shiva and Shakti, the light and dark feminine, and why both matter. I'll also look at how feminine energy becomes blocked, through over-control, disconnection from desire, difficulty receiving, and lack of boundaries.
Inside this episode, I explore:
🔹 Why feminine and masculine energy are archetypal forces, not gender roles
🔹 How Shakti and Shiva represent movement and stillness, life force and consciousness
🔹 The difference between light feminine and dark feminine energy
🔹 How feminine archetypes can deepen your Kundalini yoga practice
The feminine is not just softness. She is movement, desire, creation, destruction, renewal, and the living intelligence of the body itself.
🐍 Grab my FREE Feminine Form Kundalini Starter. It's a beautiful place to begin exploring feminine energy, Shakti, archetypes, and Kundalini practice in your own body: https://www.brettlarkin.com/online-kundalini-yoga-teacher-training/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=ku 
 
FREE Practice: FEMININE KUNDALINI | Yoga for Women with Overwhelm & Fatigue 🥱 | ACTIVATE ADRENALS & KIDNEYS
Relevant Blog: Harnessing the Power of Kundalini Divine Feminine for Transformation
 
Relevant to Today's Episode:
🐍 Kundalini 200-hour YTT
🔮 Kundalini Demystified
✨ Yoga for Self Mastery
💖 Uplifted Membership
🎧 Also Listen to:
#305 – Female Archetypes of Leadership with Anodea Judith Ph.D
#312 – Is Your Masculine/Feminine Energy Balanced? Shiva, Shakti & Polarity Within You
#352 – Redefining Feminine Energy in Yoga & Ayurveda with Katie Silcox
 
© 2026 Uplifted Yoga | BrettLarkin.com

What if the world itself could become your meditation object?
In this episode, we explore Chapter 10 of the Bhagavad Gita, known as Vibhuti Yoga — the yoga of divine manifestation and sacred seeing. This chapter explores how to train our perception and helps us stop dividing life into "spiritual" and "not spiritual." The sunset, the breath, the body, the mountain, even impermanence, all can become doorways back to the sacred.
It also marks a turning point in Arjuna's relationship with Krishna. Until now, Arjuna has known Krishna as his friend, cousin, mentor, and charioteer. Here, he begins to realize that Krishna is not just wise, but divine reality itself.
Inside this episode, I explore:
🔹 What Vibhuti Yoga means and why Chapter 10 is about sacred seeing
🔹 How Krishna teaches Arjuna to recognize the divine shining through the world
🔹 Why awe, beauty, and attention can become spiritual practice
🔹 How your body, breath, and everyday life can become doorways into devotion
My hope is that this episode helps you look for the spark this week.
Not by chasing a mystical experience, but by letting ordinary life become holy again.
If this episode speaks to you, come practice with me inside Uplifted Membership, where we weave yoga philosophy, meditation, somatics, and embodied ritual into practices you can actually feel and live.
https://www.brettlarkin.com/uplifted/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=uplifted 
 
📖 Different translations explored:
Barbara Stoler Miller: https://www.amazon.com/Bhagavad-Gita-Krishnas-Counsel-Bantam-Classics/dp/0553213652 
Godsong by Amit Majmudar: https://www.amazon.com/Godsong-Verse-Translation-Bhagavad-Gita-Commentary/dp/1524733474 
Eknath Easwaran: https://www.amazon.com/Bhagavad-Gita-2nd-Eknath-Easwaran/dp/1586380192 
Bhagavad-Gita As It Is by Swami Prabhupada: https://www.amazon.com/Bhagavad-Gita-As-Bhaktivedanta-Swami-Prabhupada/dp/0892131233 
 
FREE Practice: Easy Kundalini Yoga for Women | Kriya to be DIVINE LOVE EMBODIED
Relevant Blog: What are Patanjali's Yoga Sutras?
 
Relevant to Today's Episode:
✅ 200-hour Online Yoga Teacher Training
🐍 Kundalini 200-hour YTT
📚 History of Yoga
💖 Uplifted Membership
💫 Somatic Certification
🎧 Also Listen to:
#381 – Yoga Sutras of Pantanjali Explained – BOOK 3: Psychic Superpowers & Samadhi
#398 – [Meditation] Taking in the Good
#427 – What Is Bhakti Yoga? Krishna's Most Confidential Teaching (Bhagavad Gita Chapter 9)
 
© 2026 Uplifted Yoga | BrettLarkin.com