Are You Actually Practicing Yoga? A Yoga Therapist's Honest Answer (VIDEO)

About this episode

Harmony Slater and Tara Mitra discuss the true essence of practicing yoga and its deeper philosophical roots.

What does it actually mean to practice yoga — and are any of us really doing it? In this rich and unhurried conversation, Harmony sits down with Tara Mitra: Ashtanga teacher, yoga therapist, and devoted Vedic chanting practitioner who has spent decades tracing the practice back to its roots. Tara's path moved from high-stress corporate life in Toronto to studying Ashtanga with dedicated teachers in Canada and California, then four years assisting in the Mysore shala, and finally into the Krishnamacharya lineage in Chennai — where yoga therapy, pranayama, Vedic chanting, and philosophy became her deepest studies. Today she works with everyone from cancer patients to hospice clients, with the simple premise: if you can breathe, she can teach you something. This conversation is a slow, deliberate unwinding of everything we think we know about yoga — and an invitation back to what it actually is. In this episode you'll explore: Why 'nobody is really practicing yoga' — and what that actually means The journey from Ashtanga to yoga therapy: what made Tara go deeper How chanting and philosophy naturally shift the inner landscape Samasthiti as 'the pregnant pause' — and why skipping it…

People in this episode

Host: Harmony Slater

Guest: Tara Mitra

Topics covered

• yoga practice
• yoga therapy
• Vedic chanting
• philosophy
• mindfulness
• spirituality

Keywords

• yoga
• Ashtanga
• yoga therapy
• Vedic chanting
• mind
• spiritual bypassing
• pranayama
• Samasthiti
• Chitta vritti nirodha

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Krishnamacharya lineage, Ashtanga, Yoga Sutras

More episodes of Finding Harmony Podcast

• Selling Without Selling Out: Why Healers Struggle to Share Their Gifts (and How to Change That) | with Mel Brandt · June 9, 2026 · 54 min
• Selling Without Selling Out: Why Healers Struggle to Share Their Gifts (and How to Change That) | with Mel Brandt (VIDEO) · June 9, 2026 · 54 min
• The Language of Yoga: Sanskrit, Ashtanga, and the Pursuit of True Meaning | with Zoë Slatoff · June 2, 2026 · 58 min
• The Language of Yoga: Sanskrit, Ashtanga, and the Pursuit of True Meaning | with Zoë Slatoff (VIDEO) · June 2, 2026 · 58 min
• Are You Actually Practicing Yoga? A Yoga Therapist's Honest Answer · May 26, 2026 · 1h 11m
• What 9 Trips to Mysore Teach You About Devotion, Discipline & Real Life | with Tina Bock · May 19, 2026 · 57 min