166: Do We Want AI in Yoga? with Lizzie Lasater
In this episode of The Mentor Sessions, I’m joined by Lizzie Lasseter for a wide-ranging conversation about teaching yoga in a rapidly evolving world. Lizzie is a designer, educator, and second-generation yoga teacher with over 20 years of experience. As the daughter of Judith Hanson Lasseter, Lizzie grew up immersed in the Iyengar lineage, while also carving out her own path as a teacher, business owner, and working parent of six-year-old twins.
Together, we explore lineage, embodiment, and the increasingly complex role AI is playing in the yoga world.
In this episode, you’ll hear:
how Lizzie’s work is intentionally structured around the rhythms of family life and nervous system regulation
the realities of parenting young children while teaching yoga
our discussion of hypermobility, joint stability, and the ways dogmatic alignment language can contribute to pain rather than healing
all about Lizzie’s use of AI in her business including how AI supports her writing process and assists with course notes and student learning
a discussion of what gets lost when editing is outsourced, the difference between processing ideas and producing content and the risk of generic, “flattened” language
some concerns about the future of AI and yoga
Learn More From Lizzie:
This episode is brought to you by OfferingTree, an easy-to-use, all-in-one online platform for yoga teachers that provides a personal website, booking, payment, blogging, and many other great features. If you sign up at www.offeringtree.com/mentor, you’ll get 50% off your first three months (or 15% off any annual plan)! OfferingTree supports me with each sign-up.
In this expansive conversation, I got a chance to talk to yoga and Ayurveda teacher, mentor, and author Indu Aurora to explore what yoga truly is — and what it is not.
We started by unpacking one of Indu’s powerful statements:
“The goal of yoga is yoga. Everything else is a side benefit.”
This conversation invites teachers to look beyond flexibility, strength, and stress relief — and into yoga as a state of realization.
Indu draws from classical teachings and the commentary on the Yoga Sutras to clarify that yoga is not simply a practice — it is a state of samadhi, a realization of the unchanging self beneath the ever-changing body, mind, and emotions.
We take a deep dive into one of Indu’s main areas of wisdom, Yoga Nidra and then finish the conversation with some salient pieces of wisdom for all yoga teachers.
As she always does, my friend Sarah brings deep wisdom on the topics of agency, ethics, community, and the radical nourishment of staying awake.