Mariko Hirakawa, internationally known yoga-Ayurveda expert and founder of Visionary Yoga, joins Tatiana Berindei to discuss the relationship between the development of consciousness and a committed yoga practice. Mariko presents as conferences all of the world about the hidden wisdom of yoga. She is the author of Visionary Yoga: Enlightened Lessons on Peak Performance,Leadership, And Living A Life with No Regrets, an international bestseller in three countries. As an Ayurvedic physician trained in India, Mariko is dedicated to positioning yoga as something far beyond fitness. Listen in as she shares her in-depth knowledge and practical insights for moving beyond traditional body awareness and begin the development of consciousness in partnership with your body.
Hello everyone, welcome to the Sex, Love, and SuperPowers podcast show. I am your host, Tatiana Berindei and today I have a really beautiful woman with me, Mariko Hirakawa. I’m really blessed to have just her presence here with us. She’s a very, very sweet and kind and gentle woman. Today we’re gonna be talking about the development of consciousness through yoga.
Mariko is an internationally known yoga Ayurveda expert, and founder of Visionary Yoga, a personal development company dedicated to accelerating the growth of business leaders and companies through the sophisticated and often hidden wisdom of yoga. Her book, Yoga of Personal Development: Enlightened Lessons on Peak Performance, Leadership and Living A Life of No Regrets is a number one international best seller in three countries.
She’s a teacher of teachers presenting at yoga festivals and conferences around the world and currently works with businesses in New York City bringing yoga as a powerful peak performance and personal development tool. A former professional ballet dancer as well as an Ayurvedic physician trained in India, she is dedicated to positioning yoga as something far beyond fitness, the ultimately technology for human consciousness evolution. Welcome to the show, Mariko.
My honor to be here, Tatiana. Thank you.
Yeah. So I am so curious to hear, as someone who has been on this beautiful yogic journey for so many years, what are your superpowers, Mariko?
One of my superpowers is bridging the ancient and the present.
Yes, so having lived in India and then coming here, I feel like I’m a translator. You know, so I think one of my superpowers is bridging the ancient and the present, and I have a real love for innovation too. So I feel kinda privileged to span those, staying true to the ancient spirit of yoga while really making it current and relevant for people. I feel that’s really part of my work on this planet.
The other superpowers, I feel is my devotion for my work. When I met my spiritual teacher, she gave me the name Bhakti which is a Sanskrit word meaning devotion, and I felt there was a deep meaning there and a lesson there, you know? First it’s just I feel devotion is really learning to channel your emotional power towards … really focusing it and paving a path for yourself and … because love is a fire, you know? It can either … it can be destructive, but I feel like devotion is that very benevolent side of love.
The other is purpose. How I came to yoga was through a purpose crisis, and I feel because it was such a catalytic thing in my life, when I found my purpose I truly embraced and went deep into it and I feel that’s a strength that carries a lot of my people in my tribe through. So I believe those are my three superpowers.
Beautiful. Yeah, so one of the things that really drew me to you and why I really wanted to have you on this show is because you, in my understanding and my estimation are really holding that ancient thread of yoga and carrying it forward in such a beautiful way, and in such a powerful way in the places that you’re bringing it into. So I would just love to hear you talk a little bit more about that, because so often nowadays, I mean, there’s like a million different kinds of yoga that you can go and experience.
There’s like, the core power and there can be like, really intense fitness oriented. Often times when we think of yoga we think of asana, we think of the poses, right? And yet from my own personal relationship with yoga, it’s so much deeper than that. So I would just love to hear you talk a little bit more about that and how you sort of navigate those … sort of that, like the power fitness yoga world with this ancient understanding that you’re carrying forward.
Yes. I mean, I always … I do feel that now that yoga has been in the west at least 100 years, I mean, it’s really up to debate when we say yoga came to the west. All this time, I feel that the word yoga has come to almost equate with the physical poses. I really want to shift that understanding, because it does the world … I think it cheats the world of what yoga can truly do, which is transform the entire human way of being, you know? On this planet.
When you think of yoga as just poses, it becomes kind of calisthenic, it just only becomes about the body and it lives in gyms. Not that, you know. I think the physical yoga is a great doorway. But I think we’re stuck at that level, and so I really wanna help unlock that other, very rich dimension of yoga which I feel is like the 90 percent of the iceberg, you know? The tip of the iceberg we see now, and below that there is like a huge bedrock.
Until we understand the original intent and kind of the culture of yoga, I think that we will always kind of revert back to just the physical, because the whole industry has now become, you know, we don’t call it  real yoga, we call it just yoga. I think it’s very unfair to yoga as a wisdom tradition. You know, we pay lip service to this spiritual dimension of yoga, but I don’t think we really strive to live it and tried to realize it.
So I want to, you know, my movement is really saying, “Hey,” you know, “Let’s really embrace it because if we really wanna get to the next level of yoga, it’s not about doing a lotus pose headstand or that scorpion pose or the quote on quote advanced yoga is not advanced asana.” You know, it’s really taking it into your life and taking it into the field of relationships. Into the way we do our business. Into the way we show up in all dimensions of our lives. So –
I love that you said that about advanced yoga not being about advanced asana but really bringing it into life. Because I think that is so spot on and so true and a place that people, they forget that and they get caught in the like, “I need to master this physical pose,” and there can be, I mean, there can be amazing lessons and teachings through the process of mastering the physical body, absolutely.
Yeah. I never want to negate or say physical yoga is superficial, no. Because anybody who’s done it knows, you know, how difficult it is and how it does open up so many dimensions. So I wanna just say that, you know, just walk that pathway deeper. Recently I had the privilege to interview Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, who is the head of Art of Living, international guru with like 300 million followers. He also guides the prime minister of India.
But so I got to ask him this question directly. I said, you know, “Guru, how do you understand advanced yoga?” His answer was so disarmingly simple, you know, he said, “A constant awareness. A state of constant awareness and the readiness to serve.” You know, and I thought, wow. That’s such a profound answer. There was nothing about perfecting that asana. It’s really that inner attitude and your inner state of being, and it’s not as sexy as being able to do those advanced poses. It’s not Instagram-able, but it’s so … it definitely is –
It’s real.
We have to embrace that, you know, to really take the world to the next level of evolution.
Yes, which is what we’re here to do and which is what we’re all about here at SuperPower Experts. So I just, I love that and I love that you’re really bringing forward that understanding. We’re gonna go to a quick break, and then I really want people to hear more about your story and about how you bring your work into the world, ’cause I think it’s fascinating. It’s so needed right now.
Even though it might not seem like it has anything to do with the themes that we cover here on Sex, Love, and SuperPowers in my world, it absolutely does. Because I’m always looking at the micro and the macro and how they’re related. I’m looking at these masculine and feminine dynamics that we’re working out right now, and when you really break it down, this like, the mind, body, soul, spirit, heart connection, you know, we have … I was saying to you before we got onto this interview, we’ve really … we’ve cultivated the mind, which it is, I relate to more of that masculine principle. We’ve over cultivated that in our culture and there’s been some really beautiful and wonderful things that have come out of it. But at the expense of what I hear you are teaching people with yoga, which is a more emotional intelligence.
So after we go to this break, I really wanna dive more into that and what that work looks like and how you’re doing that, bringing my understanding of that more feminine realm of the emotional intelligence into the world of business which has so highly prized the mind. So we’re gonna dive into that after the break. But before we go to break, will you please tell our listeners where they can find out more about you and your work?
A shifted paradigm way of looking at yoga.
Yes, absolutely. Thank you. I’m really excited, I have a new book that’s out, The Yoga of Personal Development, so that’s available on Amazon right now. So you’re welcome to grab that, I think it’ll give you a completely … like a shifted paradigm way of looking at yoga. My website, well, I wanna offer a gift if it’s okay with you.
Absolutely.
Audience, it’s available at the VisionaryYogaChallenge.com and this is a five day course, a video course that takes you each day through about a 12 to 30 minute physical practice, but each is kind of wrapped around this inner theme of carrying this awareness into your day. So things like shifting your relationship to stress, things like empowering your core to boost your confidence and self esteem.
So you’ll find lots of ways, you know, because the physical and the mind are so connected. This five day visionary yoga course is really … it’s about bridging that and then bridging the practice on the mat with living your yoga in your day to day life. So if you like, I would love for you to just enter that course. Again, it’s VisionaryYogaChallenge.com, and my own website is just VisionaryYoga.com. So thank you so much.
Beautiful, thank you. I’m definitely gonna check out that Visionary Yoga Challenge, that sounds like a really lovely thing to take in and just what I’ve been looking for and needing right now, so, yay. I’m gonna take advantage of your free gift.
It’s a jumpstart, right, back to –
Yeah, exactly. Back into the practice. So we’ve been talking with Mariko Hirakawa, and we’ve been talking about the development of consciousness through yoga. We’re gonna really dive into this more when we get back from the break, so stay tuned.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
Music Credit: All instruments played by Amanda Turk. Engineered and produced by Tatiana Berindei and Daniel Plane reelcello.com
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