170: A Yoga Nidra Deep Dive + Great Advice For Yoga Teachers with Indu Arora
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.
In this episode you’ll hear:
why modern practitioners and teachers get stuck focusing on the “fix”
why Yoga Nidra is both powerful and accessible
how to keep Yoga Nidra from becoming robotic
why you should make nature your guru
the power of unlearning
how to choose a teacher
why we both love confusion and doubt
Learn More From Indu
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. I’m proud to be supported by a public benefit company whose mission is to further wellness access and education for everyone.
Teaching yoga involves far more than the hours we spend with our yoga students. Behind every yoga class we teach there is a significant amount of planning, relationship-building, scheduling, administration, marketing, and financial management. In this episode, I share the practical systems that have helped me build a sustainable yoga teaching career over the last two decades.
Following up on our recent conversation about the hidden labor of yoga teaching, this episode focuses on solutions. While we absolutely need collective action and systemic change to better support yoga teachers (and other freelance workers), there are also concrete systems we can put in place right now to make our work feel more manageable, organized, and sustainable.