Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast Episode #27 – Delight in Yoga: Anusara Yoga – Yoga in Barbados with Pamela Harris 

Welcome to Episode #27 of the Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast! This week, I welcome Pamela Harris onto the show. She is a yoga teacher and yoga studio owner from Barbados. 

My conversation with Pamela Harris, a yoga teacher from Barbados, was so lovely as she shared stories about what yoga was like in the 1960s and 70s in Barbados and how it has evolved over time. Hearing her stories about demonstrating yoga at a Hilton Hotel and how people were worried about getting swept up into a “hippie world,” provided such a unique snapshot into the past. Pamela and I also talked about Yoga Therapy and Anusara yoga and weaving the philosophy of yoga into every class, and taking it through the whole practice.

If you’re looking to tune into a podcast episode that is about energetic openings and connecting to the divine within yourself then this is the conversation for you.

Tell me more about Pamela Harris

Pamela Harris is a yoga teacher who has been teaching yoga for 20 years in Barbados. Although she was born in Jamaica, she moved to Barbados at the age of 6 and has lived the vast majority of her life there with a long stint in the UK as well. She is honored to be the founder and principle teacher at Sunshine Kula Yoga Studio (SKY), which she opened in 2012.  She is a Certified Anusara Yoga Teacher and advanced teacher of Therapeutic Yoga. She teaches enthusiastically about the transformational practice of yoga and truly wishes to share it to help enhance people’s lives, our communities, and our planet.

Pamela Harris first experienced yoga as a child in her island home with her mother who was a yoga teacher. Her career began as a Physical Education and Educational Dance school teacher in the UK. She then trained in Reflexology and Thai Yoga massage due to a lifelong interest in health, wellness and holistic modalities.                                                                                  

Her initial yoga teacher training was with Integrative Yoga Therapy which she still proudly teaches today. She experienced other schools of yoga but when she landed in the world of Anusara Yoga, she fell in love with it. She began to seriously study the method, and in 2007 she became an Anusara® inspired teacher, and in 2018 she completed the path to higher certification as a certified™ Anusara® Yoga Teacher.

Pamela is devoted to inner peace and personal development and committed to sharing a practice that is inclusive, accessible and for every level of oneself.

What to expect in the Yoga In Barbados episode of the Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast

Pamela started learning yoga around the age 8 as her mother took her along to yoga classes. Yoga in the late 60s in Barbados was a magical place for Pamela, although apparently some ladies in Barbados of the late 60s and early 70s were worried about “going off into some hippie world” if they attended yoga classes. In fact, Pamela performed yoga demonstrations at the Hilton Hotel in Barbados in the 1960s— a story she unraveled for us on the show.

Though Pamela didn’t continue yoga through her teenage years, but came back to it around the age 25. She now is a studio owner in the Barbados, who teaches Anusara yoga and yoga therapy. Pamela finds the sacred within all, as she looks at yoga as an experience of journeying inwards. In regards to teaching yoga, Pamela prioritizes guiding others to delight in the experience of yoga and in life. Moreover, I loved how Pamela talked about yoga as honoring individuality and celebrating diversity, all while recognizing our oneness.

Pamela and I also discussed the 5 principles of alignment of Anusara Yoga, as well as the scandal that happened with the founder of Anusara yoga, John Friend, and how she reacted and responded to that becoming public knowledge and how Anusara has shifted since then.

Curious about yoga in Barbados and all the yoga happening there? Tune into the episode to find out more.

For the skimmers – What’s in the Barbados episode?

• What is Anusara Yoga?
• Coming to yoga as a child 
• Demonstrating yoga at a Hilton Hotel in the 1960s
• Honoring individuality and celebrating diversity, while recognizing our oneness
• The beauty of Barbados
• Finding the sacred within all
• How to delight in the experience of yoga and of life
• The 5 principles of alignment of Anusara Yoga

Favorite Quote From Pamela Harris

“I’ve always looked at yoga as an experience of journeying inwards through those inner levels— the energetic, the emotional, the mind, the heart, to the spirit level.”

Connect with Pamela Harris 

www.sunshinekula.com

www.facebook.com/SunshineKulaYoga

www.instagram.com/sunshinekula_yoga

Want more?

https://wildyogatribe.com/thepodcast/

Everything you need is just one click away! Check out all the resources here: https://linktr.ee/wildyogatribe

JOIN ME FOR LIVE-STREAMED YOGA CLASSES!

Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast Episode #27 – Delight in Yoga: Anusara Yoga – Yoga in Barbados with Pamela Harris 

[00:00:00] Lily Allen-Duenas: Welcome. Welcome. Welcome to the Wild Yoga Tribe podcast. I’m your host, Lily Allen Duenas. Together we’ll talk about the world of yoga and we’ll talk to people from around the world. I wanted to let you all know that there will not be any episodes launched this upcoming Friday on Christmas Eve or the Friday after that, which would be New Year’s Eve in honor of the holidays, the holiday season, we’ll be taking a two week break.

[00:00:34] So I will see you back in January, 2022, welcoming in a new year and wonderful conversations with yoga teachers. In the meantime, let’s dive into our conversation with Pamela Harris, a yoga teacher from Barbados.

[00:00:56] Namaste family. Welcome back this week to the episode of the Wild Yoga Tribe, where I welcome Pamela Harris onto the show. She’s a yoga teacher from Barbados, and she’s been teaching yoga for 20 years in Barbados, and she’s had her own yoga studio there, Sunshine Kula Yoga, in Barbados for about 12 years.

[00:01:21] Although she was born in the UK she moved to Barbados at the age of six. She has lived the majority of her life there as well as a little bit in Jamaica, too. She’s honored and she’s honored to be the founder and the principal yoga teacher at Sunshine Kula, and she is certified in Anusara yoga.

[00:01:42] And she’s also an advanced teacher in therapeutic yoga. Pamela is devoted to inner peace and personal development and committed to sharing a practice that is inclusive, accessible for everyone on every level. Thank you so much, Pamela, for joining me on the show today. 

[00:02:01] Pamela Harris: Thank you Lily for inviting me to join you.

[00:02:04] I’m actually going to start with one little correction because I’m not born in Britain, not born in England. I sound very English. I was born in Jamaica. I have a British father and a Jamaican mother. So I was actually born in Jamaica and then came to Barbados at six, which you correctly said. 

[00:02:25] Lily Allen-Duenas: Oh, thank you for that correction. That’s fantastic. I’m glad to know that. 

[00:02:29] Pamela Harris: Yeah, I’m definitely West Indian, although I don’t sound like it. 

How Did Yoga Come Into Your Life?

[00:02:33] Lily Allen-Duenas: Oh, so let’s dive more into your story. I would love to hear more about your personal history and how yoga came into your life. 

[00:02:41] Pamela Harris: Okay. When I came to Barbados at six, it was only a couple of years after that.

[00:02:46] Obviously I came with my parents, that my mother decided she wanted to do yoga and she thought I’m just going to take Pamela along. So yoga was here in Barbados, this was all the way back in the late sixties, and I loved it just going along with her. I was the only child that joined those classes.

[00:03:08] And I did that till I was 11 when I went to boarding school in England. Hence this Englishness. But I would always do that every time I came back to Barbados, every holiday, every school holiday. And then by the time I got to an older teenager, I started dropping out of it. But it always stayed with me.

[00:03:26] It stayed with me so much. I do the odd drop into classes, but I didn’t get back fully into yoga till I was probably late thirties 40. And it came about by a friend who had done a little tiny course in yoga. And she just said, do you know a bit about yoga? Can you help me? And when I went to help her, I found how much I loved helping her and how much I still knew.

[00:03:53] I could hear my teacher from when I was a child. I knew the series of postures we did. And it was absolutely fabulous. It was a man and he taught quite a lot of people on the island. So there was quite a bit of yoga then. And then it seemed to disappear because of that age group of my mother, who then did start teaching yoga.

[00:04:16] And then there were a few of us that got going again, me, probably in the late, well, mid nineties. There was a big gap there. From there I very quickly went into teaching yoga. I went into teaching yoga without doing yoga training, and I just trusted that I knew enough and because there wasn’t much around, I just went and started teaching in a local gym, the typical setting when there aren’t any yoga studios around.

[00:04:49] And once I’d been teaching for a year or two, I said, this is what I want to do. I was a school teacher. Physical education, educational dance, general science. And I gradually started teaching more and more yoga and knew that I wanted to go away and train. And the first training I did was actually with interpretive yoga therapy.

[00:05:09] So that’s where therapeutic yoga comes in. That’s a wonderful school of yoga and I went to do it at propel. That’s where they had the training for yoga therapy in Massachusetts. And then went on and on with that until I’ve done the 500 hours. And while I was still doing that, I came across the Anusara yoga because another teacher in Barbados had fallen in love with it and started bringing teachers in from the states.

[00:05:40] So that’s when I got hooked and realized I wanted to do more. 

Do you feel like yoga wasn’t accessible in England when you were in boarding school?

[00:05:46] Lily Allen-Duenas: Yeah, I think that was so it’s amazing to me to learn how you started yoga so young, and then you had a gap where it seemed like it left your life. Do you feel like it just wasn’t aligned with where you were or wasn’t accessible in England when you were in boarding school?

[00:06:04] Like what do you attribute to that gap? How did that affect you say 

[00:06:09] Pamela Harris: so. Yes. Being at boarding school, I wasn’t with my teacher here or my mother teaching that I just dropped in on when I came home. And then from boarding school, I studied my teacher training, not yoga teacher training, but school teaching, and was more into just the fun of being at university and so on.

[00:06:29] And then when I came back to Barbados to live here at 25, I did work in England for three years, came back here at 25 and got busy with all kinds of water sports. Sandbar bait is the most fantastic place for those kinds of activities. And I did always have this great interest in holistic living practices and so on.

[00:06:57] So I initially trained as a reflexologist. This was what got me more into health and wellness that then led me to want to do yoga therapy. Cause I thought that’s aligned well. And I’ve told you the rest after that, that the therapy training going into my Anusara yes, the gap, it really was. I remembered it and I hit my teacher’s voice sometimes, but I was, I, to be honest, I wasn’t practicing yoga postures.

[00:07:25] So when I got back in, I couldn’t believe how stiff I was, as a child, of course you’re flexible and backbends and so on. I was very tight and that’s the way I am naturally. So it’s taken a lot of work to loosen up. And then of course, to delve into the deeper levels of yoga. Actually, I’ve probably delved into those before getting more into the deeper physical practice.

Adapting to a deeper physical practice

[00:07:52] Lily Allen-Duenas: Ooh, tell us more about that. 

[00:07:53] Pamela Harris: Because of being interested in health and wellness, I would just read a lot. And I, as I say, I could remember this initial teacher from that age and the meditation in the classes, in which some of the ladies, which was interesting, said “I don’t know, I’m just in it for the physical.

[00:08:12] I don’t want to be doing the meditation side.” They were a little frightened of what people would think of them. And I sat back quietly. I like this fit and I like looking at candles and so on. So I had that stayed within me. And so that interest as I started, the physical practice was automatically there.

[00:08:32] I’d love the breath work as well. And as I say, as I started as a yoga therapist, it was often to do less to do more. So it didn’t matter to me how flexible I was in my body, how strong I was with the postures and so on, but that really did come on. And as you do move more, you definitely find those greater openings starting to clear you energetically and moving into those deeper levels.

[00:09:00] You feel it in a different way. Although, I was always very interested in IO, the fair pay in those levels. Anyway, the coaches and so on. I didn’t recognize how much more I could open them up with a deeper physical practice myself as well. 

How yoga conflicted with culture in Barbados

[00:09:17] Lily Allen-Duenas: I never have heard that people used to be concerned about what people would think of them if they were in meditation, would it be more like they were worried about other people in the room?

[00:09:27] It seemed more like you meant maybe people in the community? 

[00:09:31] Pamela Harris: And it was, yes, community public thinking that these ladies of the late sixties, early seventies were going off into some hippie world. So they were, they really wanted it thought of as their yoga for their health as in physical health, which of course it is.

[00:09:51] And I don’t think they, some of them, were stepping into so much more. I can actually remember hearing my mother say, oh no, I don’t. I want to be careful that I’m not adjusting my mind and things like that. And I just sat there quietly. I think maybe there were lots of people at that time.

[00:10:08] Maybe it’s because we were living in Barbados and at the start of yoga here, myself, there were other teachers by that time when I was starting to teach there had to be careful due to society being very Christian. We had to be very careful. I’d have people come in and say, I’m not going to put my hands in a prayer position.

[00:10:30] Not knowing that it was Angela. Moodra a studio clean and not wanting to clean a book. There was a sense of carefulness, but Barbados has changed, Barbados has changed while that still exists, there are so many people interested in yoga now. So I opened my yoga studio 10 years ago. And from then I think really that’s when things began to change, there’s more and more local teachers, about 20, I believe.

[00:11:02] There’s probably four or five studios, small studios. I have a lovely big space, but it’s small, like you couldn’t compare to a studio in the states or different rooms and therapy centers and a big reception. And I have a super big open, airy room, but it’s still quite simple and homely and basic.

[00:11:22] And I love that idea of simplicity and connecting to nature. 

How do you feel like yoga was first introduced in Barbados?

[00:11:27] Lily Allen-Duenas: Oh that’s wonderful. I’m glad to hear that the evolution of yoga in Barbados, how do you feel like it maybe was first introduced? To know that it was there in the sixties and that your mom had access to it and there were teachers, do you have any guesses for how it first came over and got started?

[00:11:43] Pamela Harris: The teacher that we went to actually was of Barbados heritage, and he’d been to the states and then came back teaching yoga. He had an American wife who was also teaching. So the two of them ran this little school of yoga. There may be others, but that’s what I knew and I can’t comment on things that when I was eight years old about others, that’s who I was with.

Do you feel like having yoga in your life when you were so young changed who you are today?

[00:12:09] Lily Allen-Duenas: Got it. Yeah. So do you feel like having had yoga in your life when you were so young, do you feel like that has changed who you are today? Do you know what I mean? How some people come so late to yoga and they receive amazing benefits, of course, body, mind, spirit, emotion, but do you feel like. [00:12:27] Coming into it younger, had an impact on your growth and development? 

[00:12:32] Pamela Harris: I say it hasn’t had an impact in my teaching and my awareness of this deeper side of life or higher side of life. That consciousness was there, but I didn’t dwell on it much. It was definitely very in the background until I went back doing yoga.

[00:12:56] Tell you one thing, it really has helped deepen a person’s awareness of gratitude. I am so grateful to my mother for taking me. I am so grateful to every yoga teacher and because I live in Barbados there only been a few of the teachers, particularly when I started, it was a lot of hard work to have to travel, to find all your training, to travel, to go to different studios and different parts of the world to do your yoga.

[00:13:25] So I’m so grateful that I had that background already. Otherwise, maybe it would have just slipped away. I was dedicated to getting back to how I felt doing it as a child. It was a little different in the sense that we actually did yoga demonstrations at the Hilton hotel. And nowadays, I guess it would be quite frowned upon like literally doing yoga demonstrations, like people showing their postures and the yoga teacher commenting on what they wear.

[00:13:52] And so on. Interesting starts. 

[00:13:54] Lily Allen-Duenas: Wow, was that kind of like a marketing experience then? 

[00:13:59] Pamela Harris: Well it was some marketing for him? I think it was to get yoga known, but I think it would seem quite unusual. It made it look like a bit of a performance. That when you were actually on a stage as a Hilton hotel and guests are watching it outside locals come in too, to be able to succeed.

[00:14:17] Yeah. So it was, but I just can’t imagine that going on now in the way that it did then, but I really remember it. And I did send you some photos that would have been taken right there at that Hilton hotel, probably when I was about ten. 

[00:14:33] Lily Allen-Duenas: Amazing. I will definitely share those photos on my website, wildyogatribe.com and on social media [00:14:39] so all of our listeners can take a look at those photos from when you were 10. They’re beautiful. And it’s just so special that you have those memories.  

[00:14:49] Pamela Harris: My backbends can’t do that anymore.

[00:14:54] Lily Allen-Duenas: Yeah. There is something special about being a child and the flexibility is just given.

[00:14:59] Pamela Harris: Back bends. Right?

What aspects of yoga are most important to your journey and your growth?

[00:15:01] Lily Allen-Duenas: So we talked, you talked a little lightly on the different elements and aspects of yoga to koshas and meditation. Would you talk to our listeners about which aspects of yoga you feel are most important to your journey and your growth, or are most vital that students learn and develop those awareness and skills with, cause I know we’re really focused on the Austin as of course in the general yoga practices, but sometimes I think it’s nice to touch on the different the yamas and niyamas or the different aligned modalities that students can know align with.

[00:15:40] Pamela Harris: It’s really that while I recognize how important those yoga postures are, those assets are because my initial training was in yoga therapy, which would be helping muscles, joints, and injury back care is one of my highlights that I teach now. It also was for wellness, for healing at deeper levels. So I always really looked at yoga.

[00:16:07] As an experience of journeying inwards through those levels, the energetic, the emotional, the mind, the heart to the spirit level, that has always been very important. So I’ve stuck with that. Whatever I’m teaching, it’s very important that yoga is inspiring and will open people up to their innate beauty, that goodness, that joy and you’re sorry, yoga brought that into their link beautifully.

[00:16:41] And also Anusara yoga is very connected to working with looking for the good, finding the sacred within all, as well as working with yoga therapeutics. I know we can say that most yoga does, but these two really did align well, do align well, and I continue to carry that through every class. Although I may not be talking about the coaches, it’s so much more important to connect to all of them there’s different layers of ourselves, connection to nature, connection to our world, connection to the divine.

[00:17:26] So that is an emphasis. That good feeling really comes out, not just from that physical clearing, but because each student has connected to that special place within that divine place within that light and that higher wisdom. So in that yoga teaching, I recognize that it is one of the most important. [00:17:52] practice to take you to these places is the practice of awareness. So awareness starts with that physical there, but we all need to practice our yoga to bring awareness into our lives off the mat, as well as on the mat. So that awareness takes us into being the observer by stepping into witness consciousness, to learning, to check into ourselves.

[00:18:22] As we move out of being on the mat out of our studio, whether we’re practicing our yoga at home, that you continue to be the watcher to recognize whether you are practicing what you’ve been inspired within yoga. So that is another big part of our teaching and the Anusara practice is that all of our yoga is full of inspiration.

[00:18:47] It interweaves the philosophy of yoga into every class. It’s not just a little bit of information about yoga. It’s taking it through the whole practice, helping it’s really merged with our being what you’re hearing and then carrying it out into the world. So this way, this is why I think one of the most important practices of yoga is that awareness in our lives as well.

What is Anusara yoga?

[00:19:15] Lily Allen-Duenas: Beautiful. And for our listeners, who’ve never heard of Anusara yoga before. Could you tell them more about it? 

[00:19:22] Pamela Harris: Anusara yoga is a yoga of celebration of the heart. The word Anusara means to flow with grace. So opening to grace. Yoga has taught me one of the important things that yoga has taught me is that softening to open, to grace, softening, to be open so that we do connect to the divine within ourselves.

[00:19:51] We connect to each other more fully. That we connect to all the beauty of the world, but we’re looking for the beauty. We’re looking for the goods in everybody that we then trust in the flow of grace. We can move into very steady practice, a very deep alignment practice. We work with principles of alignment, but it’s not too hard.

[00:20:17] It’s not to be rigid. We, of course , need breath boundaries. We’re still, always stepping into the currents of grace. We’re feeling our yoga. We’re giving our yoga great purpose and meaning. In fact, this morning, I was thinking it’s very auspicious that this chat with you has happened today in Barbados.

[00:20:42] It is independence day. It is the 55th year of independence and we are also becoming a Republic. For example, I was bringing in the theme of trust. Building that quality of trust within us. So my teaching is very theme based and you saw our teachers have a theme going on within each of their classes to emphasize so that people are inspired to work with this.

[00:21:07] And this is again, one of the reasons why I think awareness is so important. Once you’ve heard, you’ve got to keep checking in and practicing this. So we were working just as an example today of trusting because there’s going to be huge change in this beautiful island. And it really is a beautiful, special place.

[00:21:26] And moving from being an independent island in 1967, we became independent for Britain. We are now not just independent, but we are now a Republic as of today. And the change is huge. We need to trust in leaders. We need to trust and build community spirit. It’s a day of great celebration and anusara is a celebration of the heart.

[00:21:54] We need to love life. We need to breathe. We need to live fully. We need to have vitality for life, but it’s a very important message to Barbados at this time, as well as to every individual.. And talking about every individual also leads me on to saying that a big part of this practice is to honor individuality differences yet recognize our oneness.

[00:22:29] So in seeing our sameness, we also really honor diversity and difference. And of course that’s what brings interest and variety and excitement into our lives. We learn to practice being non-judgemental. Of course, that could be another theme for a class, for example, but that’s a very important aspect of our yoga practice being non-judgemental helps us see that 

[00:22:57] essence that union experiences it and feels it, and just look for the goods in all, look for the sacred within, or they’ll always be differences in culture and characters and social structures. But we really do need to seek out what is wonderful and everybody, and let their light shine. We’re trying to uplift everybody here in Barbados, in every yoga class.

[00:23:25] It’s a very special day for the island. It’s monumental really, it’s a momentous time. 

[00:23:32] Lily Allen-Duenas: I’m so glad you brought that up. I was reading about that yesterday, I got news emails and I wanted to, of course, touch base with you about that. It is a momentous occasion and I want to offer congratulations on this huge step.

[00:23:45] Pamela Harris: Yes. And what synchronicity is that we’re having this talk today? 

How would you describe Barbados to somebody who’s not familiar with it?

[00:23:50] Lily Allen-Duenas: How would you describe Barbados to somebody who’s not familiar with it? 

[00:23:54] Pamela Harris: Barbados is a small island. It’s 21 miles long by 14 miles wide. It’s 166 square miles. So that is pretty small. And a lot of people have never heard of Barbados.

[00:24:06] And they’d often get confused with Bermuda, Bahamas and Barbados. We are an island in the Caribbean 13 degrees north of the equator. We’re part of the Wynwood islands. So we’re not really very far from South America at all. It is a beautiful island, a real gem in the Caribbean. We have, well, parts that make it so beautiful is its diversity in our coastline and our center.

[00:24:37] We are very calm. West coast, Caribbean sea. We have the most exciting windy wavy east coast with the Atlantic waves coming crashing in it’s very dynamic. It’s full of energy, huge beaches to walk along. And then in the middle of the island, we went, we were the number one sugarcane island for now that the sugar industry has been dying down around sugar.

[00:25:09] I had when I was here as a child. From any of the years as a youngster, the whole island was sugar cane. And now a lot of that’s gone, but there’s so much to see, beautiful countryside, beautiful gardens, parks, vegetation. We are considered quite a flat island, but we do have a hilly area, of course, being in a low line [00:25:33] low-lying what a coral stone island. So we have beautiful Sandy beaches, some volcanic islands, but we are coral islands. And it really is a wonderful place to come to and visit. There’s a lot going on. Some islands are more quiet. I don’t mean that it’s noisy by any means, but there’s lots of activity.

[00:25:56] There’s lots of restaurants to go to. Lots of great entertainment, music, dance, theater. We have very active cultural islands. 

[00:26:10] Lily Allen-Duenas: Definitely a slice of paradise, 

[00:26:11] Pamela Harris: But just really proud to be part of the islands and teaching yoga here, to be able to offer out to people and as yoga’s grown and grown, now there is more interest and I’m so pleased that I can [00:26:28] Serve the island through yoga, yoga’s really growing. There were very few people practicing yoga and then Jim, and now we’ve got some yoga studios and more people. And I really think that Barbados can become known as a real wellness island or retreat island.

What offerings do you have online or in person in Barbados? 

[00:26:46] Lily Allen-Duenas: Wonderful. So how about you tell our listeners about what offerings you do have online or in person in Barbados? 

[00:26:54] Pamela Harris: Okay. My yoga studio is a yoga studio. We do have a variety of classes from very gentle and therapeutic to very active and dynamic Vinyasa classes, yin classes. So there’s a wide range of classes and a bigger studio now that I should have mentioned, and a big interest in myself is yoga and sound.

[00:27:15] So we have workshops and special classes with two of our teachers, but then. Totally yoga and drum percussion, handpan crystal bowls, metal bowls. So that is a very important part that vibration energy is being brought into the studio and will continue to grow. 

Where can our listeners find you?

[00:27:39] Lily Allen-Duenas: And so where can our listeners find you?  

[00:27:42] Pamela Harris: Okay so yes. So that’s going on in the studio and I do teach online. Yes. I teach on zoom. But I don’t have any videos for you to watch attached to my website at the moment, but yes, do get in touch via my website, sunshinekula.com and Kula means community, it’s community of the heart. So the meaning of that word is very important for you to recognize that.

[00:28:11] So yes, online and in the studio, you can view the studio and get in touch with me via Instagram, by Facebook. I do have a Twitter account and set and share my monthly newsletter. There haven’t been so many active and regular blogging or comments there, but yes, you can certainly find me. You can easily Google me, yoga and Barbados.

[00:28:39] Delight in the experiences, a phrase that appears on my website and my classes quite a lot. And I hope people will come along and delight in the experience here in Barbados, here in the studio and online. 

[00:28:51] Lily Allen-Duenas: I love the phrase delight in the experience. That’s such a beautiful mantra to have representing you and your work and your yoga Shyla [00:29:02] So how did you choose that phrase? How does it resonate with you? 

[00:29:07] Pamela Harris: Yoga should be an experience. Yoga should be a feeling. Invitation to go into the center of yourself. So the experience becomes more and more blissful as you move within, but it may simply be enjoying the experience of laughter or enjoying an experience in your body.

[00:29:30] We start by experiencing our stretches and our openings and our pulsations experiencing life. And of course we want to find delightful experiences. We want to share the goods. We want to feel good. So we want to find delight in more and more moments in our day. I think it’s very important in our everyday life, in the mundane and the ordinary, to find delight in the moments to make each moment more and more special, if you are making the bed love the beautiful linen.

[00:30:08] If you’re doing the washing up, the preparing the foods, find the joy in that moment. So delight in every experience in life. Delight in your Asana and your breath on the mat in going into the center of yourself. There’s so much for us to enjoy and so much for us delighted. And that is of course looking for the positive again, seeking the good that’s the best way for us to be, to learn, to listen into our hearts, to have that inner know.

[00:30:44] And be in touch with our feelings, connect to the divine within, it’s all a blissful experience. 

[00:30:52] Lily Allen-Duenas: I’m so glad I asked that question. Your answer was amazing. 

[00:30:58] Pamela Harris: I also think I should say that it doesn’t mean that we don’t recognize that there’s difficulties, there’s obstacles. It’s just that we acknowledge them.

[00:31:09] We know that we’re going to move to the dark, sometimes we may fall totally backwards, but we can bring ourselves back to delight. We can find the light within ourselves. We can find the nights and joy in life and in others. I know that when we do sink down, get into the hole, we can try them out again.

Did scandals in yoga affect your decision to teach yoga?

[00:31:32] Lily Allen-Duenas: Very true. And I, what did he want to ask if you’re comfortable talking about it, Pamela? How, unfortunately, scandals in yoga and abuse and power do happen. And I was wondering if the scandal around the founder, John friend of , if that affected you or any part of your decision to continue to teach Anusara yoga or how you processed what happened there?

[00:31:58] Pamela Harris: It even took a little while for me to even know about it. And that is because I wasn’t in the states. I was a big part of Anusara inspired yoga. Yeah. And you saw as many different levels of teachers. But you have to go through before you become a fully certified teacher.

[00:32:16] And I was regularly going up to John friends for many workshops, training, my teacher training and so on. And I still didn’t know about it right away. So I was divorced from it in the fact that I was so far, but then as it trickled through. Because I wasn’t in a yoga studio in the states. 

[00:32:37] I didn’t feel I’ve just got to cut to myself off. Plus I really honored him as a teacher. He had given me so much and so many, and then when many teachers that just dropped out and stopped immediately, there were also many who stayed and they stayed for a year or two decided to carry on some, stayed for a year or two and decided to shift because of course, this is now an opportunity to move into something different, to start with your own freedom, to follow perhaps a different angle.

[00:33:11] But I also do love the fact that even teachers that do not now call themselves Anusara because of that link. Those principles, alignments, those teachings, those words. I hear them so often in more and more places. So many Anusara teachers have carried the spirit of that teaching philosophy, the interweaving of philosophy into our physical practice.

[00:33:42] It has spread. So in that sense, that’s taking the positive out of this. And I am fortunate that I was away from it and I just stayed with the teachings and there is a new school, the Anusara school of Patheos. It is a wonderful school, very connected to the community and expanding community. So in every difficulty there is more growth and I’m proud to carry that Anusara name still.

[00:34:13] Lily Allen-Duenas: Thank you. Thank you for explaining that. And I know it’s sensitive. It’s awkward. It’s difficult. I, but I just wanted to make sure I asked that question. If you were comfortable talking about it. 

[00:34:25] Pamela Harris: Yes. I still have a belief that it’s so important. Oh, this is going into another huge topic to not be worshiping teachers, any teachers, but honoring teachers.

[00:34:39] So I won’t go into that huge other conversation, but I do honor all my teachers. 

What are the universal principles of alignment?

[00:34:48] Lily Allen-Duenas: I hear ya. I hear ya. I understand. And one thing also I did want to ask is what are the universal principles of alignment? That is integral to honor yoga. That was something that I wasn’t familiar with, but it seems very just vital to the teachings. [00:35:06] And I would love to hear you speak more on it. 

[00:35:09] Pamela Harris: There are five principles of alignments. The first one being, and really the overriding principle is to set a deep foundation to open to grace, to step into that flow, but to make those deeper connections. To the inner self, to the greater whole. So that deep foundation comes in our physical practice.

[00:35:34] So the number one part of our learning is our feet, our hands, any body parts, our foundation. But of course, it’s the foundations in the structure by adding the foundations and our yoga learning the foundations in our life, our truth, our beliefs, et cetera. So everything can expand out and out.

[00:35:53] Like we can go deeper into the levels of ourselves. It’s yoga, the real practice from inside out and that opening to grace is present through all the principles enlightened for all the teachings. That second principle of alignment is muscular energy. Which is muscular engagement. It is a strong practice.

[00:36:16] We engage and be strong in our body muscles, squeezing to bones, hugging the midline, drawing to focal points within the body. But it’s also a commitment. It’s a discipline, it’s a strength. So muscular energy aligns to tolerance and all kinds of qualities. And then we have a third principle alignment in a spiral internal rotation, which are physical actions, but you can also align that to moving internally and our next principle alignment.

[00:36:59] Is the outer spiral. The fourth principle alignment is the external rotation. So again, that is physical, but it’s bringing us out. It actually is, say, for example, talking about your hip. You notice you’re open from the midline. You’re getting an external rotation. And then there’s many actions within that that we teach that help us work towards deepening that rotation.

[00:37:23] We use it in our arms, et cetera, but it also is a regrounding practice. An external rotation moves us back down to earth and grounding to allow us to open up to the world, to open up to the extent external. And then our fifth principle alignment is organic energy. And really, I think all of yoga should be all organic practice and natural practice, but it’s the organic experience of fully opening and expanding.

[00:37:57] We hug in, we hug into focal points physically, and we expand from each and every one of this through our extremities. Energetically through the edges of our skin. Organic energy allows us to glow, allows us to shine, allows us to be our fullest. So we have to journey to our center. We have to come physically to those places to allow our posture, to express our divinity, our posture to shine out.

[00:38:30] You can see the expression and feeling. This is the organic experience and natural experience of yoga to see and feel it and see the shine in the beauty of people’s movements on the map, and then move movement in life and living your yoga. That’s all organic energy. So I hope that gives a little understanding. It’s all there on the Anusara website.

[00:39:00] So if you look at details about me on the website, you’ll see a little bit more, and I have links there, both the Anusara practice and integrative yoga therapy. 

[00:39:11] Lily Allen-Duenas: Oh, thank you, Pamela so much for walking us through those five principles of alignment. I really appreciate it. So thank you so much, Pamela, for being a guest on my show today, it was a joy to be with you.

[00:39:23] Pamela Harris: Yoga is a joy. It was a joy to be with you. Thank you very much, Lily. Hope to see you in Barbados.

Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast Outro

[00:39:33] Lily Allen-Duenas: Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of the wild yoga tribe podcast. My conversation with Pamela Harris, a yoga teacher from Barbados was so lovely as she shared stories about what yoga was like in the 1960s and seventies in Barbados and how it has evolved over time. Hearing her stories about demonstrating yoga at a Hilton hotel and how people were worried about getting swept up into a hippie world, quotes around that provided such a unique snapshot into the past.

[00:40:08] Pamela and I also talked about Anusara yoga, and weaving the philosophy of yoga into every class and taking it through the whole practice. Thank you so much for tuning in, my dear listener. Be well. Thank you for being on this journey with me, it’s been a privilege to be with you. And I know how precious your time is.

[00:40:31] So I’m honored that you chose to spend it with me here on the wild yoga tribe podcast. I just wanted to let you know that we will not be publishing any episodes for the rest of December as next Friday is Christmas Eve. The Friday after that would be New Year’s Eve. We’ll see you again the first Friday in January, very excited about all of the guests that are coming up in the new year.

[00:40:57] Beautiful conversations are about to take place and I’m very excited to share them with you also, I’m very excited to be teaching yoga online again. I’m offering weekly classes through a platform called Moxie. I’ll send a link here on the show notes as well as on my website of course. I’m very, oh, I just can’t express how excited I am to launch a new website here at the end of 2021 and into the new year, it’s a new redesign with the help of a wonderful web developer and designer, Rob Berk.

[00:41:29] So if you are in need of web design work, I will send you his way. I’ll send you his email. He’s a joy to work with. And I’m very grateful for all of the help he’s put into making my website as beautiful as possible. So I’ll see you in the new year, may all be Merry and bright for you and yours. Be well. 

Copyright © 2022 Wild Yoga Tribe LLC. All rights reserved. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Kindly check the corresponding audio before quoting in print to ensure accuracy.

The Wild Yoga Tribe, LLC, owns the copyright in and to all content in and transcripts of the Wild Yoga Tribe podcasts, with all rights reserved, including right of publicity.

What’s Okay

You are welcome to share an excerpt from the episode transcript (up to 500 words but not more) in media articles (e.g., The New York Times), in a non-commercial article or blog post (e.g., Elephant Journal), and/or on a personal social media account for non-commercial purposes, provided that you include proper attribution and link back to the podcast URL. For complete transparency and clarity, media outlets with advertising models are also welcome to use excerpts from the transcript per the above.

What’s Not Okay

No one is authorized to copy any portion of the podcast content or use Lily Allen-Duenas’ name, image or likeness for any commercial purpose or use, including without limitation inclusion in any books, e-books, or on a commercial website or social media site (e.g., Instagram, Facebook, etc.) that offers or promotes your or another’s products or services. Of course, media outlets are permitted to use photos of Lily Allen-Duenas from her Media Kit page or can make written requests via email to receive her headshots folder.