Sathu Jois | Ashtanga Lineage, Joyful Practice & the Future of Yoga

Sathu Jois is a dedicated Ashtanga yoga teacher rooted in a rich lineage as the granddaughter of Pattabhi Jois and daughter of Manju Jois. Immersed in yoga from birth, she deepened her practice during the COVID-19 pandemic while studying with her father. A former dance major, Sathu blends discipline and joy in her teaching and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Yoga Therapy and Philosophy at Loyola Marymount University, with hopes of working with veterans.

Visit Sathu: https://joissathu.com/

Key Takeaways:

• Sathu Jois combines her Ashtanga lineage with modern yoga therapy to cater to a diverse range of students, including those with therapeutic needs.
• The integration of joy and exploration in yoga practice can help soften strict perceptions and promote a holistic approach to personal and communal growth.
• Sathu's work aims to support veterans by applying yoga's transformative tools to relieve physical and mental stress.
• Understanding the female cycle and the impact of daily variances reflects in Sathu’s yoga practice and her teaching philosophy.
• Sathu aspires to create a community-focused yoga retreat and farm, embodying the spirit of inclusivity and joy.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Finding Joy and Balance in Yoga Practice
• 10:37 Sathu Jois Balances Yoga Royalty Legacy with Personal Identity
• 14:36 A Passion for Supporting Veterans Through Yoga and Connection
• 18:29 Integrating Yoga Therapy Into Ashtanga Practice for Individual Needs
• 21:17 The Healing Power of Yoga and Nonverbal Communication
• 30:36 Cultural Identity and the Possibility of Global Peace
• 34:06 Balancing Yoga and Dance Through Patience and Body Awareness
• 39:47 Yoga, Community, and Home Practice in Encinitas
• 48:26 Balancing Authenticity and Ethics in Yoga Social Media
• 50:17 Finding Joy and Community Through Personal Dreams and Aspirations

Transcript

Todd McLaughlin: 0:33

Welcome to Native Yoga Toddcast, so happy you are here. My goal with this channel is to bring inspirational speakers to the mic in the field of yoga, massage, body work and beyond. Follow us at @nativeyoga and check us out at nativeyogacenter.com. All right, let's begin. Hello. Welcome to Native Yoga Toddcast. My name is Todd McLaughlin, and today I am delighted to bring Sathu Jois to the show. I had an incredible conversation, which I'm excited for you to be here now to have an opportunity to listen to with Sathu. She's so lovely and pleasant, and I really appreciate all of her insights and just her calm nature in relation to her appreciation and love for yoga. She has a long history with yoga since childhood, and now is taking the teacher role, and what a pleasure to have this opportunity. So I employ you to check her out and go look at her website, which is www.joissahtu.com and find her on Instagram at @sathujois and the links are in the description, so it'll be very easy to find. Go ahead and send a message on when you go to her website, you'll you'll see her email there, and go ahead and send her an email and let her know what you think those of us that are myself included, but also our guests, really love to hear from you and see what sort of takeaways you received from it, the whole process of talking, sharing conversation and story, and then getting a view of how it's received and what you think really matters to us. So if you have a moment, we'd love to hear from you. All right. On that note, let's go ahead and begin. I'm so excited to have this chance to have Sathu Jois here with me today. Sathu, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to meet with me.

Sathu Jois: 2:49

How. Yeah, thanks for having me.

Todd McLaughlin: 2:51

Oh, man, it's an honor and a privilege. How has your day been going so far?

Sathu Jois: 2:56

Yeah, it's been going pretty good. We're just preparing for a group of students to come in a bit. So, yeah, cool.

Todd McLaughlin: 3:02

And in, in case somebody listening doesn't know who you are. How did you get into yoga? Yeah.

Unknown: 3:14

So I, I'm the granddaughter of pattabhi Jois, the daughter of Manju Jois, his son and I started, my dad's been teaching yoga for over 60 years now. He's 81 and he's been exposing me to yoga since, right, since I was born. I think the first yoga class I attended was when I was a month old, and he started sort of teaching me just for fun when I was around six years old, but I got more serious into it over covid. Actually, I was a senior in high school at the time, and everything had shut down, and he used to travel a lot for yoga, and this was a time where we were both home and getting a little stir crazy with the shutdown and everything. So he was like, Okay, we need some routine. Every morning I would practice with him, and and I really loved it, and that's when I fell in love with it, and and then I went off to college and sort of abandoned my practice a little bit. I mean, I still use some parts of the practice, but I was a dance major in university, and that was pretty full on physically, so it would have been far too much for me to do both at the time. And so after I graduated, I came back to the practice and started teaching with him. Immediately after 10 days after I graduated, we set off to Europe for three months, and I was hooked. So that's how,

Todd McLaughlin: 4:43

very cool I got involved. That's amazing, you know, having had the experience when you were six, and if you juxtaposition that off of your experience when you started learning and practicing more, or, you know, continuing to practice during 2020, how. Would you gage that difference in relation to your perspective of seeing it such a young age and then coming into it in your teens 20s?

Sathu Jois: 5:09

Yeah, I really admire the way that my dad chose to teach me as a kid versus as an adult, because I think if I if he had taught me so seriously from a young age, I would have totally lost interest. But the way that he taught me was to have a lot of fun. You know, it was sort of playing around. Every kid wants to do handstands and all the fun, sort of acrobatic parts of it. So he kind of just told me to play around. And actually, what he did as a when I was a kid was he did a little reverse psychology and said, Don't practice yoga. Don't do it, which, of course, makes you want to practice. And so it worked. It worked very well. And I started to sort of practice with my door closed. And I just got more and more interested in it as a kid, but I was never really deep into it. And then as an adult, I found that it was giving me a lot of tools that I could use at the time, like when I was a in high school, for example, I'd get a lot of test anxiety and and he'd say, you know, you have your pranayama to do before each exam, and that would help me a lot. So there was, I think it just became more applicable to my life as I got older, and that's where that change happened. As a kid, I didn't have so many problems, and as an adult, things start to come up, and that's where I knew okay to get through life, I'm going to have to stick to this practice and get a little deeper involved with it.

Todd McLaughlin: 6:41

That's cool. That's amazing. Satya, I have two children that, and the process of my wife and I having a studio always kind of took the approach of thinking, don't push it on them, because I didn't want them to feel the way about it that I felt about like when my parents forced me to go to church, like I really rebelled. So I love hearing that that reverse psychology aspect worked. That's really cool. Yeah, yeah,

Sathu Jois: 7:05

yeah, absolutely, yeah. I I also feel like when I decided that I wanted to be a teacher, that happened when I got to sit down with his students, one on one, and hear what the practice and what him as a teacher, what what that has done for them, and that's what really got me to stick with. It was, yeah, just understanding how much the practice has helped so many other people. So it's really important.

Todd McLaughlin: 7:33

That's amazing. What are some of the key feedbacks that you receive that stick out in your mind, that that you heard, that you hear from students and or what you heard from students, that the benefit that they receive from yoga practice,

Sathu Jois: 7:50

the biggest one from my dad's teachings, has just been joy. Like he just radiates joy. He is such a character. He finds jokes and everything. Everyone's always laughing in his classes, which I hadn't really experienced before. I, you know, growing up as a dancer, it was always very rigorous training and and not so much. There wasn't a lot of room for laughing, and it was very serious. So he was very joy. He's is a very joyful teacher, and I think that changed the practice for a lot of people, because Ashtanga has gotten a reputation of just being very serious and disciplined, and it is disciplined, but that doesn't mean you can't have fun with it. You can't find joy in it. It shouldn't be something that brings you unhappiness and yeah, so that's what I think I have heard from most people, is that they can just soften into their lives a little bit more and into the practice, because they have this approach with joy.

Todd McLaughlin: 8:55

So great point. That is a really good point. How do you meet people when they really want that strict, authoritarian sort of approach. Do you just kind of don't meet him with that and just give him lots of love and joy? Have you? Have you come across that? Because I would imagine being able to assist your dad, your your interfacing with lots of different people. What has been your experience with because I know sometimes people are like, I really want it to be tough. Like, I want you to push me. I want you to push me. And I'm saying, like, let's just relax a little bit. Yeah, enjoy this experience. How do you do how do you how do you face that?

Sathu Jois: 9:36

Yeah, I've definitely encountered that. And it's like, with everything, you're not going to be everyone's cup of tea, and they can either stick with you, or they can look for what they need somewhere else. But I think it's really beautiful when people choose to surrender to the practice and try something new in that sense of, okay, while you're here in this space, try it a little bit more relaxed. Don't try to be so strict with yourself. And just observe how that changes your practice. And if you don't like the way that it changes your practice, go back to having that strict discipline and and that's totally fine, too. So it just really depends on on the person we try to be. You know, really gentle with everyone I know. I've, I've had a few students when I'm offering adjustments. Who say, like, push me harder. Like, go harder. But sometimes I think that's the ego talking. It's not so much. It's not going to be good for their bodies. Because I can feel my dad says all the time, you can tell when you're assisting, if someone's accepting or rejecting your touch, and if you can feel them rejecting, but they're telling you, you know, keep pushing. I'm not going to listen to what you're telling me, because your body is telling me otherwise. So those are kind of moments where I'd say, I have to, I have to go with my teachings, and not so much what the student wants in that moment.

Todd McLaughlin: 10:56

Yeah, that's really good insight, good advice. Do do you feel that when you practice, do you try to maintain any sort of, I don't want to use the word strict, careful attention to the sequential order that the way the primary and other series have been taught. Or do you take a do you do piecemeal it? Do you pick things that you really enjoy and just focus on those. How is your approach these days? I do a

Sathu Jois: 11:25

little bit of both. I'd say I mostly stick to the sequence. We really just try to use the picking for more therapeutic uses. You know, people that maybe have Parkinson's or going through chemo and who just need something a little bit different. That's where we would piece it. And for me, at this current moment, I don't have a lot of those problems, but there was a time where I had some pretty intense knee injuries from dance, and I had to heavily modify my practice and tweak it a little bit so that if I could continue, because otherwise I just wouldn't be able to practice at all, and that's no fun. So yeah, I think it's a little bit of a combo of both. Has been really helpful for me and and for students too.

Todd McLaughlin: 12:12

That's cool. Thank you. When someone walks into your space for practice, what's one of the main things you would like for them to pick up on, what type of like intention or focus do you put your mind on to help them potentially convey to the students?

Sathu Jois: 12:33

I hope they just leave feeling a little bit lighter than when they came in. I'd say that's the biggest thing for me, as long as you got one thing out of it, even if it's that maybe you never want to come back, at least you know you learned something during that time. So yeah, I just, I just hope that everybody can get something out of the day, whether they enjoyed it or not so much. I think the practice is so beautiful, and being able to explore your likes and your dislikes and and seeing where you might need to shift your mindset also and, and I hope that when people come to us, they can just have an open mind, open heart, and see what it does for them and and adjust as needed.

Todd McLaughlin: 13:15

Yes, nice. You are currently enrolled in university study. What is your what are you aiming to? What are you studying?

Sathu Jois: 13:25

Yeah, I'm in my first year of a master's in yoga, therapy and philosophy. So it's a three year program at Loyola Marymount University and and I've been loving it. I'm taking last semester, I took Sanskrit one Foundations of Yoga and health science, and this semester, I'm in Sanskrit two Hatha Yoga texts and philosophy. Course, it's been it's been really incredible. I've been learning a lot. And actually, my Sanskrit professor was a student of patabi Joyce for for 20 so years. So she learned from him, and now I get to learn from her, which has been a really full circle, beautiful moment. Yeah, did

Todd McLaughlin: 14:11

she know that you were enrolling in the program? Or was that a surprise? You walk in and she goes through the roster of names and says, satu Joyce, by the way, are you really how did that unfold?

Sathu Jois: 14:23

Yeah, I actually, I did my undergrad at Loyola Marymount University, also sort of with the intent of wanting to do my master's there afterwards as well. So when I was in my undergrad, I went, I introduced myself to the people in the in the yoga studies program, and I met her. And as soon as I met her, she gave me her Sanskrit book, which was dedicated to my grandfather, and it was just, wow, yeah, so, so she knew who I was. Yeah, it was, it was amazing. And, yeah, the first day I my my courses are online, which is really nice. I'm able to be here in San Diego and do it online. But we had a two week sort of intensive in Los Angeles where we got to meet everyone in our court, on our cohort, and a lot of people are, like, on the east coast too. So it's not an in person. Really understand program, but that first day, I remember going into it thinking like, I'm just gonna I don't. No one needs to know, but we're going around the circle, introducing ourselves and oh, like, why are you in this program? And, and she had introduced herself as, oh, my teacher was batavi Joyce. And then, of course, I said, Oh, I'm satu Joyce. And people kind of wait a minute. So that didn't last very long,

Todd McLaughlin: 15:39

but, but, yeah, that's cool. That's so interesting thought, too. I mean, how do you manage that in relation to potentially people on on first interaction with you, would maybe just think, Oh, she looks really nice and friendly, and then they hear your name and they go, Oh my gosh, she's yoga royalty. And then maybe put you up on a pedestal. I don't know if that occurs to you, but how do you do you ever feel that? And do you try to dissuade that? Or what is your kind of way of thinking around all that?

Sathu Jois: 16:11

Yeah, I do feel it sort of sometimes, but I just try to hope that the people I'm surrounding myself with can just see me for me, and not kind of categorize me or come up with preconceived notions or ideas about what I might be like, or my views on yoga too. Because I know you know you hear Joyce and you think, oh, maybe they think this way or this way, whatever. And so, yeah, I hope people can just meet me here and then and get to know me that way.

Todd McLaughlin: 16:43

Yeah, that's cool, yeah. Can you talk to me a little bit about your engagement with the the veteran community? Can you talk a little about your what you'd like to achieve in relation to your the help for veterans, because I know we had a little opportunity to connect before this podcast, and that's something that really inspired me, when you started to express the your passion for assisting in that world. And I'd love to hear about what your dreams and aspirations are in that.

Sathu Jois: 17:14

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So part of the reason I wanted to join this Graduate Studies program was because eventually I'd love to work directly with veterans or active military, whoever really but, but my interest comes from, I really feel that a lot of our passions in life come from loving people who have done those things too, and and I my uncle. He's not blood related, but his name was Larry. He was a Vietnam veteran, and he lived here in Encinitas. And my mom is from New York. She moved from New York here to Encinitas, and she was roommates with Larry. And every morning, Larry would leave at five in the morning, and she was like, Where, where is he going? And and one day he brought her with him, and it was to my dad's yoga class. And so that's how my parents met. Was because of Larry, yeah, but he was a Vietnam veteran, and when he got out of Vietnam, he was a firefighter while he was there, when he got out of Vietnam, he was diagnosed 100% disabled at 21 and his doctors gave him 10 years to live. He had Agent Orange poisoning, multiple sclerosis, he had COPD eventually, and ulcerative colitis and all these. He had so many problems. And as I was growing up, he always expressed to me how much the practice had saved his life. He you know, he had this 10 year timeline. He was should have been dead by 31 and he passed away two years ago. He ended up living to be 7576 so I was always really inspired by him, and he never complained. The last five years of his life. He was wheelchair bound, but he would still sit in padmasana when he could. And, and he was just yeah, he was he was really incredible and, and I, just because of my deep love and admiration for him, I want to learn about how I can keep helping people like him, and in my last few years of teaching, I've had students who are veterans and getting to talk to them one on one and understand what they've been through, but then also how the practice itself has helped them in so many different ways. That has been what's really inspired me to work with this specific group, because, you know, they do so much for us. They they they're just incredible humans putting their lives on the line. And the least we could do to give back to them is offer them some peace and relief from whatever pain, mental, physical that they're feeling. So I'm really excited. For for what's to come. And I've been working closely, speaking closely, with one of the veteran students who I've become really close friends with, about, you know, starting something with her in the future, because she understands that side. I obviously have not been in the military, so I don't understand everything, and so working with her would be really incredible.

Todd McLaughlin: 20:24

So amazing stuff too. That's incredible. You have such a good vision for, like, what you want to do. I love hearing this from from you. Would you think about going into the military to learn to go do a deep dive into what it actually is like to be in the military.

Sathu Jois: 20:43

I don't know. I don't honestly think I'm strong enough for that. I mentally, if I'm honest, I don't think that I would be able to do that. I would like to stay, probably on the other side, and just learn as much as I can from them and and even start applying, like yoga therapy to them, because it's already happening. It's already being implemented right now, and I just want to see how much farther we can take it. But yeah,

Todd McLaughlin: 21:09

yeah, very cool, amazing. What are your thoughts around the idea of therapeutic Ashtanga Yoga? And I know that's a little bit of a funny term, because Ashtanga Yoga is therapeutic, but then we have you're probably already picking up on the yoga therapy side of the aspect where it's just done very differently, like that, a therapeutic yoga session might be approached in a much different way. Have you explored blending what you're learning within the realm of yoga therapy into the Ashtanga Mysore room. Or do you feel like I want to keep that separate, so that you know I want to honor this and and also honor that? What are your feelings there?

Sathu Jois: 21:57

I I sort of like the idea of combining them. I think we're sort of already doing that here at our house. We have, because we have a lot of people that come to us with different problems, and then we have a lot of fully able bodied people that just want to do the full series through and that's totally okay. But I've really loved being able to use the yoga therapy techniques and apply them to students and see how that changes the practice for them, because there's so many postures in in the Ashtanga sequence, and when you can reorder them, sometimes for people that need them to be reordered, then something amazing happens. Even you know, in my I just wrote a paper about yoga and veterans and military, and one of the things that I was learning from it was that actually a stronger would be a great practice for them, because they need a yoga practice where they can sweat and they can, you know, it has to be a Vinyasa. And also, you know, when they're doing my dad, I remember him telling me that he had the best students he ever had for pranayama were Navy SEALs, that they were just incredible with the pranayama, because they have to hold their breath for a long time. But also, you know, like teaching a meditation or doing chanting, veterans would need to not have their eyes closed all the way that can take them to a really dark place. So, you know, just having a soft gaze, so just little things like that, little tweaks that you can make, addressing each person's individual needs, I think, is really important. And in a stronger space, it's not always a one size fits all for everyone. And if we're talking about yoga in terms of therapy, then it's definitely not one size fits all. It's like a prescription. Each person needs something a little bit different. So I think it's great to have that room of the whatever, full series, able bodied and then a little bit different for others.

Todd McLaughlin: 23:56

Yeah, that's amazing. I agree with you. Isn't that interesting? That the idea of, if I were when I close my eyes, I might end up going into a space that I feel like I can't manage or control, or a traumatic event or memory could potentially surface that could completely disrupt or dysregulate me. Do, do Can you relate with that? Do you? Do you ever have, have you ever had a moment like that where you've gone deep into your own personal meditation practice, where you felt like, whoa, whoa, you know? Or do you, yeah, you know? I mean, but then, if you've never really had a major traumatic event, maybe that hasn't ever happened to you? What are your thoughts on? How to even gage that as a teacher, just, do you feel like just read the signals of the student and then just be there for them in the moment that they need you? Or, yeah, what are some other skills that you've learned?

Sathu Jois: 24:53

So one of the things that I learned in school was that humans are the only. Cheese that after experiencing trauma or stress, they don't immediately run it off. So like dogs get zoomies, you know, and all animals, they kind of have that way of expelling it from the body, and we start to store that energy in our bodies. And it's like I always talk about this book, The Body Keeps the Score, because it's really true, and I I've gotten to witness it firsthand with students. And, you know, I had one veteran who was in was going into kaputasana and started crying, and everyone was like, Oh my gosh. Like, is she okay? And I was like, Finally, like, this is great. This is good news, you know, and and this specific person hadn't been able to cry in a really long, long time, so having that emotional release is really important for her. And I've experienced the same thing where I'm in a posture that I feel really uncomfortable with, and then I sort of sit with it, and then I can release it all. And it's just those moments where you have to hold space for people that are experiencing that it's really, it's a really beautiful thing to be able to see the sense of community that comes together in those kinds of moments. You know, when you have someone in the corner of the room crying, maybe someone's laughing hysterically, and you just let them do their thing, because something is coming out. Yeah, yeah. So I personally, I have experienced, you know, personal traumas that have come up when I move. I've never really been able to I've never been one to be able to express myself with words, which is why I was always a dancer, and why I always felt drawn to yoga, because the way I was able to get it out was through my body, through the practice,

Todd McLaughlin: 26:43

nice, that makes perfect sense. And then, just because I want to know what you're talking about, and I haven't heard this term, what is a dog doing a zoomy? Is that like when they run around the zoomies?

Sathu Jois: 26:54

Yeah, it's when they're, like, running really crazy, basically.

Todd McLaughlin: 26:57

And that's just the way of processing, like they have so much energy. So it's like, I gotta get Yeah, versus, let me just sit in stew over this, like, intensive feeling, yeah, okay,

Sathu Jois: 27:06

exactly, yeah. This wasn't something that I that I knew. I always thought, Oh, my dog is just, you know, feeling really energetic right now. But no, my I had a professor who kind of explained to us that, you know, we're the only species humans are the only species that don't immediately expel all of that energy, all of that trauma. We sort of sit with it, we dwell, we push it down until we're forced to bring it back up. So yeah, what?

Todd McLaughlin: 27:32

What are some of the things that run through your mind when you're teaching with your dad? I would love to hear like, do you do you have moments where you guys kind of make eye contact, and just like, don't even have to talk. And kind of, yeah, you know, are you working intuitively in that space where you feel, you know, connected with, not with, beyond words or what? Yeah. I mean, obviously you're, you know, when I'm with my family, I there's a different, you know, you can feel like you really can read them and understand what they're thinking and, you know, it's, I don't know. So I'm just curious what some of the maybe highlights of being with your dad and teaching that that has to be a pretty cool thing.

Sathu Jois: 28:06

Yeah, yeah. It's, it's such an honor to be able to teach with him and to learn from him. We actually in the yoga space we only ever communicate with eyes like we never are speaking, which has been really, I'm just, I'm smiling right now, because yesterday, we were doing chanting with the group and and he was sitting on the other side of the room, and he's sort of, sort of like conducting me with his fingers. And I was just laughing during the chanting, because I don't need him to conduct me. But he's just funny like that. So he's always, you know, finding joy again. It's come back to that joy where he just, he's so funny and and his faces are always filled with filled with so much love and patience and kindness and genuine desire to see his students grow and progress and explore. That's a big thing in his classes, is exploration and and he encourages me to explore too, which I love. You know, we'll be walking around the space together, and he can tell that someone maybe needs an adjust. And he's just looks at me, and I automatically know to go to them. And instead of him taking over the whole time, he gives me a lot of opportunity to to learn from him and put it into motion. Also getting to actually use my hands, getting getting to try new things. And he's always just been one to throw me into things. He just just do it. He we always say he should be sponsored by Nike. Just do it.

Todd McLaughlin: 29:40

Don't think about it too much. Just do it. Yeah, that's cool, exactly.

Sathu Jois: 29:44

And it's really, it's really helpful, too. I, you know, I teach privates also just every once in a while, and I have one student who it's all mental, it's all in her head, not being able to do a posture. And when I say, you know, just take a breath and go. Go right into it, don't stop thinking about it. And that's when the change happens. And we have another student who who works a lot like 12 hours days, every day, and she said that ever since she started her practice has improved so much, because when she practices in the morning, she doesn't have time to think about the posture. She just has to go right into it, get her practice done, and then move on.

Todd McLaughlin: 30:24

So, yeah, amazing. That's one thing that I feel really dawned upon me in the Mysore room. I had always been in yoga rooms where there's a lot of barking of commands from a teacher up the front and and the first time I got to experience the Mysore style setting and the quietude of it, and just being able to hear the breath, people's feet hitting the ground, all of that stuff, just felt like I that there was like a nonverbal communication happening, which is just so fascinating to me. It's it's cool to hear that you and your dad, do you guys consciously? Have you consciously said, look, let's not talk while we're in the room. Or has it just been a natural manifestation? It's been

Sathu Jois: 31:11

really natural. Yeah, we never it's, you know, I keep talking about dance, but it feels like a dance when I teach with him, because it's just this natural kind of environment is created. And, you know, when we travel in Europe too, like people, there's a language barrier there too, and and we just get to communicate with our bodies in that way.

Todd McLaughlin: 31:33

So that's cool. Now, now that you're studying Sanskrit, are you having any realizations in relation to the power of chanting and hearing the sounds and learning a certain level of pronunciation and then learning meaning. What are some of the takeaways that you're getting from the study that you're doing currently?

Sathu Jois: 31:56

Yeah, it's been funny because I've been chanting since I was really small, since I was like six. My My dad has a chant that he would say to me every night before I went to bed. It was for getting rid of nightmares. And then as I sort of got older, and would sit with him in his yoga workshops, and he'd do chanting at the end. That's how I learned it so I just learned it from or orally. I didn't ever look at a paper honestly until I was maybe in my early 20s or late teens. I'd never seen it written down. I just knew it from listening to him over and over again, which is how they're taught in India. You know, the Brahmin boys are taught orally only. It's not really something that they they read, or you they don't really fully understand what they're actually chanting. And so it's been really a full circle moment to be able to now understand what the meaning is behind what I've been saying this whole time. And I've known, like bits and pieces before. I've known, you know, it's for nature, it's for this God and and now I get to really dive deeper, which has been pretty incredible. And it's just showing me how beautiful of a language it is, how beautiful of a tradition it is, and how lucky we are to be able to have this in our practice, too.

Todd McLaughlin: 33:15

That's cool when you when you make mention of Brahmin boys, how do you navigate being an American woman and also having roots in India or culturally, because there's different ways of doing things. How do you feel coming from the American view, when you look over at this idea that maybe only the boys would be taught, and I would have, I would have been kept out of that. Do you have any thoughts there? I'm just curious.

Sathu Jois: 33:47

Yeah, yeah. It's been really interesting to see the shift from such a male dominated space to now becoming mostly female dominated space. And I think it's something that, you know everybody should take take part in this space, but it's been interesting to see that shift, and I feel really grateful to be entering at a time where it's more, I guess, acceptable for me to be teaching as a woman and to be teaching as an Indian woman, but I also have this western perspective at The same time. So I think as a kid, I struggled a lot more because I wanted to be one or the other. You know, my mom is white, and I never felt white enough for that side. But then my dad is Indian, and I was never Indian enough for either side. But now I see that having this blend, I get a whole different lens than people who might just be one or the other. And, yeah, and I feel like having, having these two sides, I'm able to bring in something that's a little bit different and something that maybe is a little more open minded to finding what's next. You know, because it's we're constantly evolving and and. Who knows what the next space will be, if it'll be female dominated, male dominated, or perfect combination of the two, and with everybody? So, yeah, I don't know that's

Todd McLaughlin: 35:09

really cool. I hear ya. I recently was having a conversation with someone where I was bringing up this idea that I personally believe humans can we could coexist together peacefully? Yeah. And their answer was like, no, look at history. Humans have never coexisted peacefully together. There's been war forever and ever and ever. Oh, it's a big one philosophically. But I have to ask you, which way do you lean? Do you I mean, do you think it could be possible for humanity to exist peacefully all at once on planet Earth, together? Or do you feel like we're always going to have to have this push pull, sometimes peace, sometimes war? Do you have any thoughts here? I know it's not an easy one to answer. I don't know that we could answer it. I don't know that we can answer this, but I just love to hear your thoughts.

Sathu Jois: 36:01

I definitely think it's a possibility. I mean, I see it. I see it in our classes all the time. You have people from different cultures, different religions, different backgrounds, different ethnicity, different sexuality. You have all these different people coming to your class, and the thing that unites them is this practice, or is this space, or is there devotion and dedication to being there, to showing up for themselves? So if they can do that, if they can co coexist in this space, just imagine what good they could do elsewhere. So I think it's a possibility. I think we have to be a little less narrow minded to get there, but it's it's something that we can do that's attainable.

Todd McLaughlin: 36:44

So yay. Thank you, satu. I agree with you. You've been able to navigate both the yoga world and the dance world, and in relation to physical sensation, pain, injury and really good feelings in the body with no pain, no injury. What has been your journey in the world of dance? What is your journey in the world of yoga? And then overall, what are your thoughts on, what are we trying to do here, like in relation to pain and when you were pushing in our practice?

Sathu Jois: 37:16

Yeah, yeah. I feel really grateful to have had this dance background before going into my yoga practice, because when I did first start getting more serious in my yoga practice, I noticed how I brought some of the I brought both the positives and the negatives of dance into my practice, and the negatives are what would get me injured. I mean, I would, I would get injured from dance, from pushing myself in dance, from, you know, not warming up, or whatever it might have been. And, and I it would translate into my yoga practice. I remember one time I was in a yoga space here, and and I was doing backdrops. And the day before, backdrops were nice and smooth, easy, coming up, coming down. And this next day, it was like, I went down, I come up. And it was so hard and heavy, and so then I kept trying. I kept going back, and every time I would want to come up, just follow my butt. Follow my butt. I just kept falling. And then someone across the room goes, just stop. Just sit down. Just stop. I was like, and then I was so embarrassed, because I was like, Oh, why could I do it yesterday and I couldn't do it today? And And over time, I learned that this was a very shame based idea that I had cultivated in my head. I was like, it was that perfectionism that had come from, you know, my ballet training and from wanting to exceed in my dance career, and I had brought it into yoga, and I really shouldn't have, because it was just going to hurt me, and it was just going to hurt my my head, it was going to hurt my ego and and that's what was taking over at the time, was the perfectionist side of it. And so what I've had to learn recently is just patience and knowing that no two days are ever the same. What I could do yesterday I might not be able to do today, and that's okay, you know, it ebbs and flows. And something I've been really interested in learning about lately too, is like the female cycle, and understanding how my body changes throughout that, you know, carrying more water weight one day versus being on my period the next day, and and just how this will change my practice too, and not having that, that wanting to force my body to do something that it just doesn't want to do that day, you know, it goes again with just practice and move on, that's, I think, the biggest thing. But yeah, a lot of my my dance career I'm really grateful for, because it gave me that discipline, also to show up for myself and to have that movement. And, yeah, it wasn't until my college career that I was really getting injured because I was just doing I was doing too much, I think. And, and. Was always pushing myself. It was always during the show week that I would get injured and suffer the consequences later by not resting at the time. So I've had to learn to soften, I guess that's the biggest thing.

Todd McLaughlin: 40:13

Yeah, nice. Great answer. Thank you so much. You know, while you were saying that and you talked about hydration and being aware of our bodies in relation to how hydrated or not hydrated. I'm reading a book right now called your yoga your spine, by Bernie Clark, and it presented an idea that I had not heard before. I just read this, like two days ago. His theory is that when we sleep at night, that our spaces in between our backbones so our Inter the intervertebral space actually swells a little bit because they become more hydrated, and through that swelling experience that actually puts tension on the ligaments surrounding the spinal cord, so that when we wake up, his theory that we shouldn't try to bend our bodies very deeply early, and that we would maybe do better to wait to start moving when the disc space is a little less hydrated. And I was like, Wow, I've never but it kind of is interesting, because you know how when you know, when you wake up and you're like, I feel stiff, yeah, and like, in the later in the day, when we practice at night, it's like, oh my God, I feel, oh my gosh, I feel so much more flexible. And so I and then, you know, having within the Mysore realm, it's like, we're setting our alarm clocks for 4am and getting there at 30 and trying to do these really deep things really early in the morning. And I was like, Okay, well, I needed a little time to process all this and think about what the best way to go here. But what I know you haven't had, I don't know if you've had time to think about that, but what are your thoughts there on that idea?

Sathu Jois: 41:53

Yeah, that definitely makes sense. I've because I've tried both ways of practicing, practicing really early in the morning, and then practicing in the evenings, you know, when, when that morning time isn't accessible to me, and every evening practice is just amazing. And always just feels like I took the day to warm myself up, you know, a few hours before, I didn't have such a heavy meal, and so I still feel light enough to be able to do this practice. So that definitely makes sense. And now I'm interested in

Todd McLaughlin: 42:24

this topic. I know I hear ya, yeah, well, that's cool. You know, my wife and I had an opportunity to live in San Diego. We used to co direct a yoga studio Amir Mesa Boulevard, and then we lived down in Carmel Valley, and at that time, we were practicing with Tim Miller when he was on E Street in downtown Encinitas. I say all that because we love Encinitas like it's our most favorite town in the US outside of we love where we live here too. Can you tell me a little bit about you've been able to grow up in Encinitas? What is your feelings just about Encinitas like I know one thing for people I don't know, a lot of people will say that Encinitas is like the yoga capital of United States, and there's been so many incredible yoga practitioners and teachers and gurus and folks that have moved either through or stayed in Encinitas. There's so many different yoga studios in Encinitas. There's an incredible culture there. I have not been there in a very long time, but I would just love to hear your thoughts about your hometown and what you really appreciate about it.

Sathu Jois: 43:37

Yeah, you know, every time I leave and come back, I just grow such a deeper appreciation for living here. It's such it's changed a lot. I will say, in the last 10 years, it's changed quite a bit. It's become very populated. We're getting more and more people coming in. It's not so much small business. See, I mean, there's still a lot of small businesses, but it's starting to feel a little bit I mean, I went to school in Los Angeles and and every time I'd come home on the weekends, I'd say, Huh, like, it's starting to feel a little bit more like Los Angeles. You know, I can't really tell the difference so much. So that's something that's changing a little bit. I sort of miss the charm of it being such a small town. And I will say, with the yoga yoga here, there's a yoga studio on every single corner. It's like, you know, so many different spaces, so many different offerings. And I sort of struggled with that a little bit, just because I had a hard time differentiating between the sort of westernized form of yoga versus this very therapeutic offering that we have, you know. And every time I say to someone, oh, I'm I'm a yoga teacher, I teach yoga like, Oh, I love hot yoga. I love, you know. And I'm like, That's great. No. Quite but I am interested in and I don't judge anyone for their preferences. I just have a hard time, you know, differentiating what we do and then what they did, you know, a workout class versus something profoundly deep and philosophical that can enhance your life. And so that's something that I've been struggling with a little bit here, with the yoga. And also, it's not a very diverse place living here. I'd say there's about three Indians that live here, and my dad and I are two of them. So that's been interesting also. But everything teaches me something. I mean, I learn a lot about about what the western view is on yoga, and then it helps me adjust my teaching and understanding of them. So, yeah,

Todd McLaughlin: 45:53

good insight. Yeah, I hear you. What do you think of Self Realization?

Sathu Jois: 45:57

Fellowship? Yeah, I was gonna say that also I love the Self Realization fellowship. I walk the gardens a lot. I haven't been to any of the meditation courses or anything there, but, you know, I have Autobiography of Yogi. I love the gardens. And every time we have a yoga group here, I take them. I'll take them this Friday over there. So, yeah, it's a really beautiful space. I find I can have really deep meditations when I just go sit there for a while too. And honestly, our backyard here has sort of become like a little self realization fellowship. It's, it's very tall trees, and you have a koi pond also. So, yeah, yeah, awesome.

Todd McLaughlin: 46:40

Can you talk a little bit about what your practice space looks like at your where you guys teach? I think I heard you say it's at your house. And so when you're describing the koi pond, this is your backyard. Yes, is there a practice space that is enclosed or you want to Patty out outside? Because in San Diego, you guys don't have bugs like we do over here. So that's one of the most amazing things about California, is like you can be outside and not get completely chowed.

Sathu Jois: 47:07

I know. Yeah, that is very nice part of living here, yeah. So we moved to this house. I think it's been about 16 years now. We used to live right on the beach. I remember when we moved here, wondering why we were moving here, because this house was built originally in 1975 and when we toured it, it was like there was green carpet in the kitchen. Totally ridiculous.

Todd McLaughlin: 47:32

Lady style, yeah, interior Gotcha.

Sathu Jois: 47:36

But of course, my parents saw, they saw, you know, the potential. So we got this house, and we did, honestly, I think, about 10 years of work. And just before, maybe two years before the pandemic, my mom decided to convert our garage into a yoga Shala, cool and it's, it's really beautiful. We get a it's, it's small. It can fit comfortably about 14 people. And so if we have bigger groups, we do two sessions. But we really like the smaller groups. It's more intimate getting to, you know, connect one on one with the students. But, yeah, it's great. We have just photos of our family and of Larry and and my grandfather and and then right outside of the garage, we have our garden, vegetable garden, where my dad gets most of the he has, like coriander out there and curry leaves out there, and all these different vegetables he uses for cooking. And then our backyard. So the people who lived here before us, they said they wanted their backyard to look like the Philippines, so you can sort of imagine what it looks like. It's just a lot of trees and and the koi pond came with the house. It had one fish that's still around in there, and we added lots of koi to it as well. And we have a pool. And, yeah, it's great. No complaints here.

Todd McLaughlin: 48:58

That's awesome. It is neat to think about being able to go to somebody's house to practice where you have that, yeah, environment is it? Is it hard to separate? Though? I've always wondered, like, if I had that's one thing I found was interesting being in Mysore and seeing how, you know, living at the shallow, the shallow being below and the house or living quarters above. I always wondered, but if I wanted to get away from the students? Would I be able to I'm curious, do you ever have any of that, that kind of challenge, or is it just flow nice and easy?

Sathu Jois: 49:28

Um, I'd say, because we don't hold classes daily. It's more like weeks at a time, week chunks. It's a little bit easier. And also, my mom and sometimes my dad, we cook for the whole group. So, you know, they do their morning practice and then you cook so

Todd McLaughlin: 49:45

they can eat. Yeah, oh my god, yeah. So it's really lovely. That sounds Yeah.

Sathu Jois: 49:49

Oh my gosh. It's amazing. And it's nice to share a meal too with the whole group and just get to talk that way and connect in that way. So, yeah. Yeah. I mean, if we had to do that every day, that would definitely, I'd be like, Okay, we need to take step back. But because it's, you know, in weak chunks, it's a lot easier and and we love having everyone here, everyone that comes, feels like family, even if we haven't met them yet. You know, it's a certain person has to be able to come here. You have to, you know, be humble, and you have to not expect anything when you come here and just have again, an open mind, open heart and

Todd McLaughlin: 50:27

and so we have a lot of fun. Yes, that sounds amazing. Satu, I really hope to come visit you guys. Yeah, thank you. Is um, how do you feel about social media? I really appreciate you. I really appreciate you being here now because, you know, we're putting ourselves out into the public sphere. And I like this medium, because with conversation and long form conversation, we get to really dig into some different ideas, versus trying to make a massive point within 15 seconds. And so I'm, yeah, you know, I just love to hear about, how do you navigate the balance between being an authentic teacher and presenting yourself in the public sphere through the internet?

Sathu Jois: 51:05

Yeah, oh, man, social media is a crazy place.

Todd McLaughlin: 51:10

Here we go. Yeah,

Sathu Jois: 51:13

it's funny. It's funny because, I mean, right now it's so hard to support yourself in anything, in any job. It's really difficult right now to support yourself. And so I understand people who love to teach yoga, want to teach yoga. They'll they'll continue to support themselves through content and all of that. But I strongly, I have strong feelings about what content they're choosing to put out there and and what the message is that they're sending. I think there's just too many people, at least in in the yoga social community, who use their platform to lift themselves up by tearing others down. And that's something I why. You know that's not the path at all. That's not the path that we're going on. And if you're really surrendering to the practice, you would understand that that's not something that you should be doing. You should never have to tear others down to show your worth. And I think a lot of the content we see too is very you know how to do this, Asana, how to do that Asana. But I think those that kind of material should be saved for an in person space. And I understand that's not available to everybody. I know it's hard financially to be able to attend a workshop and to do all of those things. But I also, you know, you see sometimes on social media, people giving incorrect information about how to enter a posture, and that can be really harmful for an inexperienced practitioner. I think, I think we're more and more losing this connection, the one on one, in person, human connection. And so I think we just need to continue, you know now, with the use of AI everywhere. It's so important to maintain human connection, human conversation and studying the body in person. So yeah, I think everything like everything, it should be taken with a grain of salt.

Todd McLaughlin: 53:15

Yeah, yeah, oh my gosh. I was gonna take us down the whole AI theme, but let's just not somewhere else for another time. What are what are some of so I picked up on that you'd like to complete your master's program. You're in year one, so it sounds like you have two more years to go. I pick up on you love family and you're really grateful to be around your family and have a tight connection, which I really appreciate, that you're really interested and focused on helping the veterans community, which is cool. So if you're to put yourself out, and I know we're supposed to stay present, but I just love to hear but you're so young, I'd love to hear what your dreams and aspirations are moving like as you, as you visualize yourself as you go down this track. Do you? Do you have a dream, a vision, beyond what you've shared with me, or any other little tidbits you'd like to add?

Sathu Jois: 54:15

Yeah, I mean, my biggest dream, it's funny, I just made a vision board where, every year I put, you know, the end goal for eventually, but

Todd McLaughlin: 54:25

I would love, well, what did you put? What did you put? What if you don't, you don't have to share?

Sathu Jois: 54:29

No, no, not at all. Okay, I put all kinds of little things. You know, it's some big, some small. But you know, my motto for this year is finding more pockets of joy where I can I experienced a lot of loss the last three years, some sort of like one after another, a lot of grief I had to experience. So now I'm just like, you know, if joy is not going to be there, you have to create it. And so that's one of the biggest things that I That's my motto for the year. And more hobbies. Hobbies are so important, you know, we can't just do one thing. So just my mom's going to teach me how to crochet, and I'm going to get back into guitar, start taking guitar lessons, just fun things like that. But the end goal for me, I I love animals. I just, I really have a deep love for animals. And I'd love to have a farm, actually, yeah,

Todd McLaughlin: 55:24

I would love to have a farm. How many acres, if you visualized, how many acres, how big of a space do you feel like you need

Sathu Jois: 55:30

big, nice and big? I 100

Todd McLaughlin: 55:33

like five. Like, what is big to you? Maybe, like,

Sathu Jois: 55:38

like, 30. Sounds good. Yeah, yeah.

Todd McLaughlin: 55:41

I and if you love to just, and if you got to pick somewhere, would you, would you be a Californian? Would you go Washington? Which India? Where would you want? Where would you want?

Sathu Jois: 55:56

Too hot in India? No, yeah, I've actually, it's funny. I've been trying to, when I travel see Oh, but I want to live here. Yeah, yeah. I'd love to be I love Vermont. I love I love Oregon also. Oh, Vermont, you definitely need to make the I was just so beautiful in the fall. Oh, my God. It's just beautiful year round. It's such an amazing place. And, and, and, and politically, they're very liberal, and I like that. And they also have, like, a no, no billboards rule there, which I love, you don't get any of that, like clutter. I guess they're very environmentally conscious, which, which I really care about. So, yeah, Vermont's beautiful, even Hawaii. If I could go to Hawaii Maui. I love Maui, but yeah, I'd love a farm. I'd love to have a little yoga Shala on the farm. And I was actually a barista for four years, so I'd love to open a little cafe also. And I just like hubs. I like being a hub. I love that we host yoga here. I love every year we host Thanksgiving and Christmas at our house, we're always the hosting family, and I just want to keep that up. So that's the dream. Just community, I guess is the dream.

Todd McLaughlin: 57:07

Yeah, cool. Satu, well, that sounds amazing. You know, I really enjoyed this. Thank you so much for being open and willing to come here on the show and share your stories with us. I really appreciate it and the attempt to come toward our close. Is there any other thing you'd like to leave us with, and in terms of just words of inspiration and or any further insights before we conclude?

Sathu Jois: 57:37

Yeah, well, I want to thank you so much for having me, this was my first podcast, and so I'm really just honored to be here, and

Todd McLaughlin: 57:48

thank you. Yeah, it's an honor. Satya, thank you so much. Thank you for being willing to do that. But continue.

Sathu Jois: 57:55

Oh no, no. No worries. I was just gonna say like anyone listening, I hope you just you have a great New Year and and that you continue to find the joy. I guess that's our theme. Is, yeah,

Todd McLaughlin: 58:07

pockets, yeah, little pockets, like, a minute here, a minute there. Amazing, amazing satu. Well, we can find you on your website, Joyce satu.com and you're on Instagram. Can you remember your Instagram handle? Again. Saw two. Joyce. Satu. Joyce, cool. That's it awesome. Satu, well, thank you so much, and I can't wait to continue our conversation down the road. Yeah, me too. Thank you so much. Bye. All right. Well, what did you think? Wasn't that great? Satu is incredible. What a what a sweet, kind individual. Hope you enjoyed this episode. I release an episode every single Friday. Check us out native yoga center.com go follow satu on her website, or at least visit her Joyce satu.com Follow her on Instagram. Satu Joyce and again, we would love to hear from you. So find our email, slash social media channels, and just give us a little note. Let us know what you think. All right, we wish you Happy practice and for you to have an amazing day. And I think one of the takeaways that I got from satu and one of her goals this year being to find a little bit of joy, find a pocket of joy every single day. And I think that's a really good idea. So hopefully this, this episode, this conversation, brought you a little bit of joy, a little put you into a little pocket of joy. All right. Thanks so much. Until next time. Native yoga Todd cast is produced by myself. The theme music is dreamed up by Bryce Allen. If you like this show, let me know if there's room for improvement. I want to hear that too. We are curious to know what you think and what you want more of what I can improve and if. You have ideas for future guests or topics, please send us your thoughts to info at Native yoga center. You can find us at Native yoga center.com, and hey, if you did like this episode, share it with your friends, rate it and review and join us next time you you.