How to Prepare for Death: A Buddhist Scholar on the Bardo | with Dr. John Campbell [video]

How to Prepare for Death: A Buddhist Scholar on the Bardo | with Dr. John Campbell [video]

From Finding Harmony Podcast by Harmony Slater

July 14, 2026 · 1h 33m · Episode 325

About this episode

The episode explores the concept of the Bardo and how yoga practice can prepare one for death, featuring insights from Dr. John Campbell and Russell Case.

What if the whole point of your yoga practice was to prepare you to die well? In one of our favorite conversations of the year, Dr. John Campbell joins Harmony Slater and Russell Case for a third time — and goes somewhere we’ve never gone on the show. John is one of the few Westerners certified to teach Ashtanga by the Mysore lineage, finished the Fourth Series, and holds a PhD in Religion from Columbia. He co-founded the Contemplative Sciences Center at UVA and translates Sanskrit and Tibetan tantric texts with Prof. Robert Thurman. Today he teaches Vajra Yoga at Tibet House US in New York. Together they explore the Bardo — the Tibetan “in-between” of dying and rebirth — and how the same dissolution can be glimpsed through psychedelics, deep meditation, and moments of love or terror. Russell shares what an ayahuasca journey revealed about a lifelong fear of death; John recounts a 24-hour ceremony and the integration that mattered more than the medicine; and Harmony reframes asana as the building of a “diamond body” — a vessel strong enough to hold the energy that practice unlocks. They sit with hard, beautiful questions: Why would an enlightened being choose to be reborn? What…

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