Meet Kaloyan Popov in a yoga teacher from Bulgaria who is putting science to yoga to show people that yoga is more than the stereotypes people may have in their heads. Welcome to yoga in Bulgaria!

EPISODE #61 – YOGA IN BULGARIA

Meet Kaloyan Popov

Meet Kaloyan Popov in a yoga teacher from Bulgaria who is putting science to yoga to show people that yoga is more than the stereotypes people may have in their heads. Welcome to yoga in Bulgaria!

Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast Episode #61 – Yoga for Health – Yoga in Bulgaria with Kaloyan Popov 

 

Welcome to Episode #61 of the Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast! My conversation with Kaloyan Popov, a yoga teacher from Bulgaria, was so lovely as we dove into the physiological responses of the body to stress, and how yoga can serve the health of humanity. I hope that this conversation made you curious about how yoga can help those around you on their path to health and wellness.

If you’re looking to tune into a podcast episode that is all about yoga for health then this is the conversation for you.

Tell me more about Kaloyan Popov

Kaloyan Popov is certified under the Yoga Alliance by Sanjay Yogi. He completed his yoga teacher training in Sofia, Bulgaria, and he will be graduating as a physiotherapist in 2023. Kaloyan is passionate about helping people by seeing the human body as a whole. He teaches vinyasa yoga, and occasionally a specialized type of Kundalini yoga.

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

Bulgaria was part of the communist block so everything around spirituality was forbidden until the 1990s. Kaloyan was born into democracy, just three years after Bulgaria entered into a democracy. When Kaloyan was young, his father was reading him Indian tales, and part of the Bhagavad Gita. In high school, his mathematics teacher would tell stories about sacred geometry.

He acknowledges that when he started teaching yoga, he took a step back in yogic life. It brought him back into “normal life,” having to focus more on the clock and being responsible to show up at certain places at certain times. He knew it was time to share his knowledge. After he started teaching yoga, he decided to study physiotherapy because he felt like it was close to yoga, working with the breath and movement. Kaloyan believes that the answer to our physical ailments, and our stress, is yoga.

Interestingly, Kaloyan says that yoga has a lot of stereotypes. He’s trying to put science to yoga, and show people that yoga is more than the stereotypes that they have in their heads— whether that is that yoga is fitness based, or the only reason that a man would teach yoga would be to look at women’s bodies (so sad that he said this is a stereotype he faces!)

Of course, we talked about yoga in Bulgaria, and about what Bulgaria is like as a country. If you’re curious— tune in to the whole episode!

For the skimmers – What’s in the yoga in Bulgaria episode?

  • Reading spiritual books as a child with his father
  • Mathematics teacher sharing knowledge on sacred geometry 
  • Mandala Spiritual Center in Sofia
  • The stereotypes yoga faces
  • Teaching yoga has made him step back from a yogic life

Favorite Quote From Kaloyan Popov

“So when I started teaching yoga, I lit the fire for studying the human body, studying human emotions, and I found out that I really want to help people through movement. And through meditation and through breathwork. So I’m actually trying to put  science to yoga, and I want to show people that yoga is more than the stereotypes that they have in their mind.”

What’s in the Yoga in Bulgaria?

Feel like skimming?

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Reading spiritual books as a child with his father

N

Mathematics teacher sharing knowledge on sacred geometry

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Mandala Spiritual Center in Sofia

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The stereotypes yoga faces

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Teaching yoga has made him step back from a yogic life

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Connect with Kaloyan

https://youtube.com/channel/UC2XdARB4vvQFTIcDziEf6RQ

https://www.instagram.com/kei_higher/

Support the podcast:

https://www.patreon.com/wildyogatribe

Want more?

https://wildyogatribe.com/thepodcast/

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

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Facebook: @wildyogatribe
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PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Read + Reflect + Respond

Wild Yoga Tribe Episode #61 with Yoga in Bulgaria with Kaloyan Popov – Transcript

[00:00:00] Lily Allen-Duenas: Namaste family, and welcome back to the Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast today. I’m so excited to welcome onto the show Kaloyan Popov. He is a yoga teacher from Bulgaria. He completed his yoga teacher training in Sophia, Bulgaria, and will be graduating as a physiotherapist next year in 2023. He teaches Vinyasa yoga, and occasionally a specialized type of Kundalini yoga. So thank you so much, Kaloyan for joining me on the show.

[00:00:31] Kaloyan Popov: Thank you for having me Lily. I started blushing.

[00:00:35] Lily Allen-Duenas: Well, I am excited for our conversation and I would actually love to just start off asking you how you first heard about yoga, or how yoga came into your life.

How did yoga first come into your life?

[00:00:47] Kaloyan Popov: Oh that. That is actually a long story cuz bulgaria was part of the communist block. It was like a totalitarian socialist country. So everything connected to spirituality was forbidden until the nineties. My father was interested in more of these Chinese traditions, like Tao and meditation.

Afterwards I was born in democracy, three years after democracy. So I remember when I was little, he was reading me this book, which was called Indian Tales, and it [00:01:30] was actually parts of Mahara and Bhagavad Gita that were rewritten for children. I can say that this. It’s a bit far fetched, but that was the first time I got connected to yoga.

Father reading Indian Tales 

[00:01:45] Lily Allen-Duenas: Amazing that your father just had those books and he was able to. I’m glad he was able to get them as soon as the country entered a democracy. But I love that he was reading you those as a child. What a gift.

[00:01:57] Kaloyan Popov: Yeah, even after that I remember him calling me to have a conversation and he was like giving me some life lessons. I was like, come on, I want to play computer games. He said, Do you remember the story when Arjuna wanted to hit the eye of the ego? We need to concentrate on the important stuff. But I didn’t get it back then, and afterwards when I was in the gymnasium, middle school. No, that’s high school. In high school I had one mathematics teacher, and he was doing yoga for the past 30 years. So sometimes when he saw that we were tired of mathematics. He used to tell us stories about sacred geometry, yoga, and stuff like that.

Mathematics teacher sharing sacred geometry knowledge

[00:02:47] Kaloyan Popov: But he really kept it, just not that much details. He didn’t give us that much details because we were in school. He didn’t want some parents to accuse him that he was trying to put us in [00:03:00] a sect or something. I think when I got 18, I went to him and I asked him, What books have you read? Cause I’m interested. He told me that I should read Volek. Maybe you’re familiar with the person?

[00:03:22] Lily Allen-Duenas: I don’t think so.

[00:03:23] Kaloyan Popov: He’s an American. If I’m not wrong, he wrote a few books in the nineties and early two thousands, and it’s about sacred geometry. He’s speaking a lot about meditation and breathwork, not yoga mainly. But in his books he says that he’s doing yoga on a daily basis. Through yoga and meditation and breath, he came to those thoughts. He’s also speaking a lot about the higher self, higher consciousness, and that really excited me. Because, being a teenager I always wanted to have the opportunity not to make choices so I wouldn’t bear the consequences. When I read his books, I was like, Okay, cool.

The element of choice 

[00:04:21] Kaloyan Popov: So I’m going to connect to my higher self and he’s going to make all the choices for me. I’ll just sit back [00:04:30] and relax without making any mistakes. Without bearing any burdens. Again, when I look at it from my point of view now, 12 years later, I’m like, this will never happen, I think.

[00:04:46] Lily Allen-Duenas: Yeah, I think we have to make decisions, even if we’re going with the flow, even if we’re surrendering to how life unfolds organically. Which is so beautiful and so challenging. There still is, the element of choice. So many times. 

[00:05:03] Kaloyan Popov: Yeah. It’s what makes us human, making choices, making mistakes. I think this is what got me into yoga, because afterwards I started going to university for the first time. University life, girls, alcohol, everything that goes with it. So I put aside the spiritual thing, the meditation, and the breath work. But at some point my body really started to hurt.

I was twenty-two or twenty-three, I was overweight. My legs hurt even when I am lying. So I decided I needed to do something for my body, and picked a book like in Bulgarian translation. It is called [00:06:00] the Five Divisions. I’m not sure how this is said in English. It’s a small book. The focus is on five exercises. They’re easy exercises. It’s like up dog, down dog, stuff like this. A little bit of exercise for the abdomen and some easy yoga postures, like five of them. So I started doing them and I started feeling better.  Yeah, I remember, meditation, breath work. You are always good for me.

Remembering yoga

[00:06:37] Kaloyan Popov: So I got into singing mantra and listening to Mantra, and I think some months after that I was staying at home. My flatmate called me and he said, Yo, bro, I’m here at this really big yoga studio. It’s their open doors day. Everything is free. I met a lot of cool people, we should come. I went there and I really met some nice people there. One guy gets an aura camera that you put your hand on and it shows you the temporal state of your aura, because it’s always changing. Some people hear gongs. They were doing gong meditation.

I went to laughter yoga. I made some new friends and [00:07:30] from that point, I focused my life mainly on yoga. Because one year after that I just quit my job. I had some money that,  I have saved and two years from that day… I was living a little bit like a hippie, a little bit like a yogi. Spending my time going to the beach, watching the sunrise, doing some pranayama, doing meditation, trying some different things like tai chi, bagua, the Chinese spiritual practices, then going home doing yogas. I spent two years like that, and afterwards I started teaching yoga actually.

[00:08:24] Lily Allen-Duenas: So was that center you’re talking about where you did gong meditation and laughter yoga? Was that in Sophia?

[00:08:32] Kaloyan Popov: Yeah, that’s in Sofia. The thing about Bulgaria is that. We are six million people in the country and 2.5 million live in Sofia. Most things happen in Sofia, which is the capital.

[00:08:47] Lily Allen-Duenas: That’s amazing. What’s the name of that center?

[00:08:49] Kaloyan Popov: It’s called Mandala.

Mandala Center in Sophia Bulgaria 

[00:08:51] Lily Allen-Duenas: Okay. Mandala Sophia. Very cool. I’ll try to find it and link it here in the show notes because that’s such. It sounds like such an amazing center to have. I don’t know [00:09:00] if every country, or even a quarter of the countries around the world have a spiritual center. That has those aura readers that kind of, I forget the technical term, but a color spectrometer. Auras. To have access to these different modalities on the spiritual path that’s really unique.

[00:09:20] Kaloyan Popov: I think they opened it eight years ago, or seven or eight years ago. At that point it was the biggest yoga center on the Balkan Peninsula. It’s really nice. It’s three floors. They’re like massage rooms, meditation rooms, three yoga halls and a lot of different stuff.

[00:09:45] Lily Allen-Duenas: Awesome. Awesome. So for you to decide, okay, I want to quit my job. I want to become a yoga teacher, what was your training like? Now that you’re teaching, what is it that kind of brought into your life, or how has teaching yoga transformed your days?

How has yoga transformed your life?

[00:10:04] Kaloyan Popov: Yeah. To be honest, when I started teaching, I made a step back from Yogi Life because you know, before that I didn’t have any work to do. I didn’t need to follow the clock. I could be everywhere, do whatever I like. When I started teaching, I [00:10:30] got a little bit back in my normal life. But I decided to do it because those two years that I have spent on working on myself, rediscovering myself, and I found that I really want to teach people what I have been taught and what I know and teach them from my experience.

Actually I started teaching yoga one year before I got my teacher training. Because here in Bulgaria it is not very strict about that, because it’s a small country and yoga was popular at some point. It’s still popular, but there are few people and I may say that everybody knows each other.

The similarities of physiotherapy and yoga

[00:11:20] Kaloyan Popov: It changed me in a way because after I started teaching yoga. I thought that I wanted to have a higher education. So I decided to study physiotherapy because it is really close to yoga, cause you have physiotherapy, you have healing movements. We teach patients to do exercises.

Some of them are really close to hatha yoga, and we teach them to do breath work, and most of the breath work is identical to Pranama. There are also some re relaxation [00:12:00] techniques that are really close to meditation. Or some Psychologist or some doctor studied yoga, and he took something from him and made it into a relaxation technique.

So when I started teaching yoga, I lit the fire for studying the human body, studying human emotions, and I found out that I really want to help people through movement. And through meditation and through breathwork.

[00:12:36] Lily Allen-Duenas: Amazing. Agree with the physical therapy and physiotherapy element, there are so many similarities between yoga, yoga teachers and physiotherapists. Because when I’ve had to go to a physical therapist for something in my body, you’re right, it, there’s breath work involved. There’s a lot of talk about calming the nervous system as well.

We hold so much tension in our body and in our muscles without even realizing it. And it’s about tuning in, tapping in and saying, Okay, how can I breathe and be mindful of where I’m clenching and holding and gripping. Especially we’ll say like in the pelvic floor, that’s a very tense area of the body. So there’s asana, breath work, and meditation. I love that you brought that up. I don’t think any other yoga teacher has talked to me about that yet.

Yoga is better than physical exercises when it comes to patients with diabetes

[00:13:22] Kaloyan Popov: It is very important actually. Last Friday I went to a science convention and I presented [00:13:30] a study that yoga is better than physical exercises when it comes to diabetes to patients. I read a few meta-analyses, read a few clinical studies.

What my colleagues have found is that yoga is better when it comes to lowering the blood glucose in these diabetes, type two patients,  it also lowers their blood pressure better. Actually, like you said about stress, not only in the pelvic floor. But nowadays we really experience a lot of stress and hormonal stress.

It’s called cortisol. This cortisol has a connection to blood glucose. So people that experience a lot of stress, they have higher levels of glucose, chronic. This leads to obesity. This leads to insulin resistance, and sometimes it may lead to diabetes.

Our physiological response to stress

[00:14:42] Lily Allen-Duenas: Yeah, I know that. You know, We get stressed. Our physiological response to stress is pretty intense. Like it, it is on high alert and it involves all of the aspects of our body from the musculoskeletal to the respiratory, cardiovascular, endocrine. [00:15:00] As you said about the glucose, I know that when we feel stress, and remember that stress could be like an email or traffic, or it doesn’t have to be a stress like a tigers chasing us. But I know that glucose, fats and proteins are released from our fatty tissues when we feel stress. So it’s released from the fatty tissues, so we don’t have time to actually digest properly.

The cells need the glucose, fats, and proteins to do their job as quickly as possible. Like they are running from a tiger. That’s the level, they’re like, okay, we have to immediately, have this at our easily and quickly available glucose, fats, proteins to just go for fight and flight.

So it’s like you can’t digest when you’re running. I like to think of that. If I was running a marathon, my body shouldn’t be digesting food. It’s similar if I get a bad email, have a stressful situation in my car, or actually am being chased by a lion or a tiger, that my body has the same response.

We are high on stress 

[00:16:02] Kaloyan Popov: Yeah. Actually, a lot of people talk about how much the air is polluted nowadays. This is the cause of premature death, but actually we don’t put much attention on stress because you know, everybody feels okay, I have to work from nine to five,  take care of my kids, try to do some extra work to get extra money. 

We are high on stress. Actually stress is, it [00:16:30] may not be the number one cause, but. In the front places when it comes to premature death and one of the best cures for this surely is yoga.

[00:16:43] Lily Allen-Duenas: I agree. It surely is Yoga . So I love to ask all my guests on the show this question. What is your personal definition of yoga?

What is your personal definition of yoga?

[00:16:55] Kaloyan Popov: Oh, that is very philosophical. For me, yoga is just part of my life, big part because I spent two years mostly between yogis. Yoga people that teach yoga, people that do yoga.

So actually the stories are that when I went to this center, Mandala. I met one guy there. It was actually the guy with the oral camera. We became friends and at some point he started traveling around the country,  people were inviting him to their yoga studios around the country. He told me that if I want, I can go with him, help him carry his bags, and I was his student.

For some time I was traveling the country, and I went to almost every yoga studio in the bigger cities. Met a lot of yoga teachers. I met a lot of yoga students [00:18:00] and during that time yoga was my whole life. But nowadays, I might say it’s half of my life. The thing is that when it comes to everyday life yoga bears a lot of stereotypes.

Yoga bears a lot of stereotypes 

[00:18:20] Kaloyan Popov: When I go to university or to the hospitals where I have practices. When I tell them that I teach yoga, most people look at me and they are like, “Oh, you want to look at girl’s in strange positions and stuff like that.”  So I’m actually trying to put science to yoga, and I want to show people that yoga is more than the stereotypes that they have in their mind.

[00:18:50] Lily Allen-Duenas: Yeah, there are so many stereotypes of yoga. I don’t know the word, but it’s almost omnipresent, it’s in every corner of the world. People have stereotypes around yoga, whether they think yoga is witchcraft like in Mexico, not everywhere in Mexico. I’m generalizing based on what other guests have said that they’ve thought that yoga’s witchcraft, or catholic countries. We could say that yoga has been thought of as a cult, with a lot of concern. Or yoga can also be thought of as just strictly a religion, or it can also be thought of as just an [00:19:30] exercise. Going to the gym and exercising in that way. So I think, out of duty, our responsibility as yoga teachers is to help shine a light. Spread the message on what yoga really is, and what yoga can be. Yoga doesn’t have to be the whole all-encompassing, enormous path of spirituality,  with all the eight limbs. It doesn’t have to be that way for every person.

I’m not advocating a full yogic path for the whole world, because I acknowledge we all get to make that choice. But I do think an understanding, “oh, it’s not a cult, it’s not witchcraft, it’s not religion, it’s not, xyz.” Clearing up those stereotypes. Even what you said about people saying, “Oh, you just want to look at women in tight clothing.”  There’s so much I think to unveil about yoga.

Yoga in Bulgaria – A Book Speaking Against Yoga

[00:20:22] Kaloyan Popov: Actually, now that you talked about it, I remembered five or six years ago here in Bulgaria. A person from the church wrote an essay, and he published it like a book. It was called Yoga Path Towards The Devil. Like the media, Bulgaria tried to make it something big. There were interviews from the church, from yoga instructors, but it all went away.

There are still some people that think yoga [00:21:00] is the part towards the devil. For example, my mom is a school teacher, and she says “I want you to teach yoga at our school but some parents might think that it’s not appropriate. Because it’s a cult, or it’s a religion or something like that.”

Whereas I haven’t read much scientific research. But I’m sure that also kids may benefit a lot from yoga. From the physical exercises, from the breath work, from meditation. Nowadays, even in Bulgaria, there are many kids that have ADHD, and they’re really struggling to stay at school because they’re bored.

Actually now I remember I worked as a yoga teacher in kindergartens. It was only for one year, because I learned that working with kids is not my thing.

[00:21:58] Lily Allen-Duenas: Yeah, it’s not for everyone. That’s for sure.

Teaching yoga to kindergarteners

[00:22:01] Kaloyan Popov: Yeah. After the first day on the job, I did everything perfect. I went back home, I went to bed, and closed my eyes. I could hear kids screaming and I could see them running around.

I find it more pleasing to work with adult people. I like to explain things in detail. When I teach a little bit slower. I teach [00:22:30] NIAA mostly. But I don’t do it in this fitness way. I give them repetitions, but while doing the repetitions for a while, holding the pulse, I go into detail, about, where your knee should be, where your finger should point, I really like to put the details in yoga.

[00:22:54] Lily Allen-Duenas: That’s great. I know we’ve talked about it throughout the whole conversation. But how would you describe yoga in Bulgaria like today? In the past? I know you mentioned it was forbidden, obviously because of the communist era, but then when the democracy. Do you think it slowly grew? Now do you feel like it’s as popular as other European countries? Or what’s the pulse on yoga in Bulgaria?

What’s the pulse on yoga in Bulgaria? 

[00:23:22] Kaloyan Popov: It’s actually strange because even though it was forbidden during communist era. I think I have a book that is from that time’s, and it’s not Xen, it’s of the era, but it’s in the middle. It was 1973, 1 or two books about yoga and it’s a Bulgarian author. 

But it’s a bit strange. I’m not the person to talk about that because I was born twenty years after that. Nowadays I think Bulgaria is like most European countries, also [00:24:00] like the USA. Because you know Bulgaria, and the whole world is looking towards Western Europe and America. 

Probably the same. I haven’t been traveling for yogi reasons. I’ve been to a few yoga classes by foreign teachers, mostly American. I’ve talked to some American yoga teachers, some UK yoga teachers actually too. I know there must be online subscriptions for yoga videos, and they actually shoot some of the videos in Bulgaria.

[00:24:44] Lily Allen-Duenas: That’s really cool.

Yoga Classes and Yoga Festivals in Bulgaria

[00:24:45] Kaloyan Popov: I think the one was called Udaya Yoga. They shot like three, four years in a row. They shoot their videos in Bulgaria. After that, they made it like a yoga festival in one of the bigger hotels in the countryside.

So I went to the shooting. I talked to a lot of the teachers, and when it comes to teaching yoga. My teacher is an Indian, he’s called Sanjay Yogi. She’s a student of Sw Mu. Which is known as the Himalaya Bear I think. [00:25:30] But when it comes to teaching, I might say that I mostly look up to Dylan Werner.

I’m not sure how it’s pronounced. I need to apologize for that. He’s very famous. He’s an American teacher, so I think my colleagues also look up to. Mostly American teachers. Western Europeans. I think there’s some really famous teachers from South America. I might say that nowadays everyone wants to follow the trend, and the trend is set by the bigger countries.

I think four or five years ago, yoga was very popular. Everybody was going to yoga. Nowadays it’s okay, but it’s not what it was. Especially after Covid. Some people still feel a little bit afraid. They don’t want to go to a lot of crowded places. Maybe that’s stopping some people from going to yoga classes.

[00:26:34] Lily Allen-Duenas: Yeah, the pandemic changed so much. Especially for yoga teachers, gyms and fitness centers. It changed everything. But I am grateful now that things are open again and we can be practicing together because there’s such magic when you’re practicing in a classroom with people.  Feeling the energy of everyone in unity, in the same movement. You [00:27:00] know, like it’s an energetic thing. I love it.

Yoga classes versus yoga online classes

[00:27:03] Kaloyan Popov: Yeah when Covid came, I said Okay, people need to do yoga. They want to do it. So after that, I started doing some yoga videos. It was also good because you know it’s better to teach yoga to give to the people so they can practice. For me it was strange, I have always done my own practice. Like a lot of my colleagues, they go to different yoga practices for four, five years. Then they go take the teacher training and they start teaching. Whereas I have mostly done my practice at home, and I think this is the best everyone could do. When I talk to my students, most of them say, it’s better when I come here. I have my peaceful spot. You are around. You lead me. If I do something wrong, you correct me.

[00:28:05] Lily Allen-Duenas: Yeah, I think self practice is such an important element. For everybody who wants to practice yoga to find a space in their home. Their home where they can feel that’s their space, to do  their practice. I do know that there is still magic in the yoga centers, in the yoga classrooms, in [00:28:30] shalas. When we’re all together practicing. Especially with the teacher who sees what we can’t see sometimes, or guides us..

In certain shapes, there’s just so much creativity in yoga, sequencing. I know I avoid certain pranayamas cause it’s like, oh, that’s not my favorite . 

It’s nice that with teachers, they don’t have the same kind of tendencies and habits or patterns that we ourselves have. We reach, we have those cravings and those resistances to certain asanas, or certain meditative practices or pranayamas.

It’s nice when a teacher is like, Nope, you’re gonna hold that way longer than you would. You know? I would also like to ask you Kaloyan um, just about Bulgaria in general. In case some of our listeners aren’t very familiar with Bulgaria, or curious and want to learn more. Can you share with us a little bit about your country?

What is Bulgaria like?

[00:29:23] Kaloyan Popov: What can I tell you? It’s a really nice country. There is a lot of nature. We have a lot of beautiful mountains. We also have a nice seaside, and I think this is what I mostly like about Bulgaria. All the nature. There are a lot of trees everywhere. It’s  really nice to come on a vacation here. Otherwise I don’t recommend it.

[00:29:56] Lily Allen-Duenas: You don’t recommend it? What do you mean?

[00:29:58] Kaloyan Popov: I don’t know.  [00:30:00] We are part of the European Union, but I think we still need a lot of work to do to catch up.

[00:30:09] Lily Allen-Duenas: Yeah, I think every country has a lot of work to do. We all have our own responsibilities or weaknesses or things that don’t feel right, in this day and age. I love that. We’re all trying to improve as we can, as individuals. Then hopefully the community it grows. 

[00:30:30] Kaloyan Popov: Actually, like I told you, I was living in the UK for one year, and I spent some time in Glasgow Co. Then I spent some time in Coventry, England. I decided to go back to Bulgaria. So it’s not that bad actually.

[00:30:51] Lily Allen-Duenas: Yeah, it is your home. Bulgaria, I know, also has amazing skiing, right? 

[00:30:58] Kaloyan Popov: Yeah. A lot of places, but I’m more of a summer type of guy. I like the warm weather and seaside, beaches, lying in the sun, doing pranayama on the shore. We actually have a lot of hot water springs. I’m not quite sure. Although it’s part of my physiotherapy specialty, I think Bulgaria is second in place after Iceland [00:31:30] for the number of hot water springs.

[00:31:34] Lily Allen-Duenas: Well, That’s very special. That’s amazing.

[00:31:36] Kaloyan Popov: Yeah 

[00:31:37] Lily Allen-Duenas: Well, I have loved having this cool conversation with you, Kaloyan. 

If any of our listeners want to get in touch with you, or learn more about you. I think that Instagram’s probably the best way to do that. I’ll link your Instagram, your YouTube channel here in the show notes, so anyone can just click it and find you.

Or they can go to the website. wildyogatribe.com/yogainbulgaria, and you can find show notes at transcription. You know everything you need to know on Kaloyan. But is there anything else you want to share about how people can get in touch with you? Or any last thoughts?

[00:32:12] Kaloyan Popov: I think Instagram is okay. About last thoughts…I think we still have a lot to think about still.

[00:32:22] Lily Allen-Duenas: Yeah, always. There’s always more, and I think that’s something I love about yoga too. There’s always more.

[00:32:30] Kaloyan Popov: I would like to thank you, that you gave me the opportunity to be part of your podcast. It is actually the first podcast that I was part of.

[00:32:43] Lily Allen-Duenas: Thank you so much, Kaloyan.

[00:32:44] Kaloyan Popov: Oh, thank you, Lily.

Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast Outro

[00:32:46] Lily Allen-Duenas: Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of the Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast. My conversation with Kaloyan Popov, a yoga teacher from Bulgaria, was so lovely as we dove into the [00:33:00] physiological responses of the body to stress. How yoga can serve the health of humanity. I hope that this conversation made you curious about how yoga can help those around you, and yourself, on the path to health and wellness. If you are looking to tune into a podcast episode that’s all about yoga for health, then this is the conversation for you. Thank you for listening to the Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast. Be well. 

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