Ali Owens shares her personal experiences with yoga and meditation to help her stay centered and be a better parent. You’ll learn about the concept of the subtle body, and how Ali’s journey has led her to a deeper understanding of her physical and energetic self. This is a conversation about finding presence in life’s chaos and how Ali’s yoga practices ripple out to positively influence those around her.
In this episode, part of our series of 30-minute conversations with Glo teachers, Ali Owens talks about what it is like to work with Glo behind the scenes, how her teaching focus has shifted to pre- and postnatal yoga classes; she also discusses the connection she feels with Glo students, both on and offline.
What if you could strengthen your relationship with those around you by practicing mindfulness? That’s the transformative journey Ali embarked on through her practice of yoga and meditation. She discovered the power of presence, especially in the face of chaos, and how her energy can influence her three children in a positive way. Allie also shared her journey into the subtle body concept, learning more about energy work and understanding her physical and energetic self.
A few key points in the episode:
0:01:11 - Present moment awareness
0:05:47 - Meditation’s ripple effect on children
0:13:27 - Feedback on Ali’s classes
0:21:24 - The subconscious mind and the subtle body
0:26:00 - Exploring dreams
Ali on Instagram, X, Facebook, and YouTube.
COLD OPEN
Ali Owens: I still remember my very first yoga class at UCLA, balancing in Warrior Three, and the thought came to mind of, ‘Wow, I am really present right now. Like I can really feel myself in this moment right now.’ And I had no idea at that time that I was anxious or had anxiety or, you know, any of the things that we go through in life until I found that present moment awareness. And I think that is really what hooked me onto yoga.
MUSIC
INTRODUCTION
Derik Mills: Hi, I’m Derik Mills. Welcome to the Glo Podcast. Life can be chaotic, and it’s easy to become disconnected from ourselves and those around us. In today’s interview, the latest in our series with Glo teachers, Ali Owens discusses how you can harness the power of yoga and meditation to help yourself stay centered and enhance your relationships with those closest to you.
Ali teaches prenatal Vinyasa flow, postnatal classes on Glo. We talk about her focus on the subtle body, which you can experience in one of her recent classes called The Subtle Body. In it, she uses a Vinyasa sequence to navigate through various layers of the body physically and energetically. We also talk about how mindfulness can help you navigate parenting and what it’s like to be a teacher on Glo.
I hope you enjoy my conversation with Ali Owens.
BEGIN INTERVIEW
Hello, Ali. I’m so grateful to be here with you today.
Ali Owens: Thank you for having me.
Derik Mills: In preparation for our conversation today, I took one of your classes and it’s the most recent class. I think the title of it was The Subtle Body Flow. And I, I loved how you shot it outdoors. It had the sunlight coming through and it was, it was just beautiful.
And I appreciated so much about that class, but one in particular that caught my eye, I wrote down this morning was that you said forward folds, teach us how to bow to our wisdom body, and it helps us to learn, to let some answers come from within. And you had multiple nuggets like that, that I wanted to write down, but I didn’t want to spend this whole podcast on, on what you’d said in the class.
So I just wanted to acknowledge that, that I appreciate the journey that you took us on in that particular class.
Ali Owens:. Yeah, The Subtle Body has become one of my passions in this practice. I feel as a dancer and a mover, I was very well educated in how to move my body, but yoga really woke me up to feeling my body and how yoga breaks down The Subtle Body, everything from Nadis to Koshas to Chakras and just energy work in general, it really enhances the practice and makes it come to life.
And it’s somethingthat I’ve continued to study really up until this day. So I’m glad you took that class in particular because The Subtle Body is one of my favorite topics to teach.
Derik Mills: You mentioned waking up to feeling your body. Like how important is that in general? And how has that been important for you?
Ali Owens: I mean, I still remember my very first yoga class at UCLA balancing in Warrior Three. And the thought came to mind, ‘Of, wow, I am really present right now. Like I can really feel myself in this moment right now.’ And I had no idea at that time that I was anxious or had anxiety or, you know, any of the things that we go through in life until I found that present moment awareness.
And I think that is really what hooked me onto yoga over any other physical form of movement or exercise or, or discipline was just, that was the goal was coming back into the present moment, coming back into the present moment, and balancing in postures like Warrior Three, or the next one I can remember is H,eadstand. Where you just have to be so fully present or you’re going to fall, right? So you just try to try to remain there in that moment for as long as possible. And, and it’s a daily practice,
Derik Mills: You know, speaking about grace In the present moment, in the midst of chaos or, you know, some sort of challenging event that brings to mind either an interview that I read that you gave online or, or maybe it was an Instagram post where — and maybe we can use this as a way to anchor you sharing a bit about your background with us and — you know, you shared how you started to meditate with your daughter while she was struggling with one of her tantrums and that you sought to deal with it by just leading by example and, and, and meditating for yourself.
And you did speak to her, you know, once she asked like what it was that you were doing. And so I wonder like, what was it about your background, your education, your interests that led to you in that moment, being able to respond with her in that way.
Ali Owens: Yeah, my oldest, I started meditating with her when she was a baby and she would nap on my chest often.
And so, I couldn’t really do anything, right, when she was napping on my chest, so I would turn on a guided meditation. And… I noticed that when my body relaxed, her body relaxed. So, that was really the foundation for me to start bringing meditation into my home and with my kids. Is I just noticed the ripple effect that my energy had on them.
And kids are very present. You know, they don’t really need to sit in silence and watch their thoughts. They’re like, okay, next moment, next moment. I forgot about what happened five seconds ago. So they don’t necessarily, they’re not here to just come back into the present moment, but they do experience the same influx of feelings and emotions, and there’s a lot of new things that they’re learning and new environments that they’re going into. And so from those very early experiences, I learned that I was her anchor, and if I could anchor myself and I could breathe into my body, that gave her a little bit of stability when she was going through her own ups and downs.
And that in and of itself has just been such a fulfilling role that I didn’t know that I was going to play as a mother and my practice has been very helpful in those moments because I think a lot of us get caught up in the moment and we see their emotion and we try to fix it when it doesn’t really need to be fixed, it just needs someone to hold space for it.
And when we hold space for it, they know that they’re in a safe space, that they’re in a safe container. And that, you know, that’s taken a lot of awareness on my part to notice when I’m getting caught up in the moment or when I’m getting caught up in her emotions or when I’m trying to fix things. And to just come back to my practice and re anchor myself into my body with my breath in the present moment.
And then everything goes so much more smoothly. And it’s not just with her, it’s with all three of my kids. So it’s, it’s just one of those things where I’ve just noticed that the more centered I am in myself, the better I’m able to connect and communicate with them.
Derik Mills: Oh, that’s beautiful. Is there anything else you’d like to share about your journey and how you developed that skill set, or shall we just move on to some of these other questions?
Ali Owens: I mean, I will say that I really found meditation to be so powerful when I was going through the life transition of working in the corporate world to becoming a yoga teacher, just sitting in silence for 11 minutes a day, that was my initial goal, really helped me to clear a lot of self doubt that I was experiencing at that time.
And we talked about sourcing the answers from within. I think prior to my meditation journey, I sought approval from others. So I would ask my friends and my family members and my colleagues, what should I do? How should I eat? All the things that really we, the decisions we should be making for ourselves.
I was asking a lot of people what their opinions were, and meditation just gave me the framework to get still and sit quietly and wait for the answer to come. And it was then that I was able to make my own decisions, decide to become a yoga teacher, how I wanted to lead my yoga classes. It just really set the, the whole framework for me to taking ownership of my life.
And I love my life right now. And I feel very confident that I’ve chosen it, if that makes sense.
Derik Mills: Absolutely.
Ali Owens: So, yeah, I mean, that was my, that was my initial lead into meditation. And then it’s just, it’s catapulted me so far in all of my relationships. And it’s been really spectacular. I can feel when I don’t meditate, I can tell.
Derik Mills: Yeah, same. I know when I haven’t made the time for that quiet time it seems to stack up and, and have consequences.
Ali Owens: It does. You get pulled more so by your surroundings and by your external environment, then, you know, showing up and letting things come from within you.
Derik Mills: That, and just the quality of my internal chatter isn’t where I want it to be.
Ali Owens: Yeah.
Derik Mills: If I don’t maintain a consistency. It’s another thing I wrote down from this, this interview, one of these interviews you gave you, you wrote, or you said, you start to manifest your life rather than wait for things to happen because you feel more connected and aligned with your intuition and that this allows you to follow your path rather than focus on the paths of others, which echoes what you just said.
Ali Owens:.
Yeah. Yeah. When I was younger and in my twenties, I think I said yes to everything
Derik Mills: As do most of us, I’m sure.
Ali Owens: Right. And so I think having that connection to your intuition, it gives you discernment. It allows you to discern what’s a yes and what’s a no. And that in and of itself is just such a powerful tool.
And to leave things behind that, you know, aren’t necessarily meant for you and to feel confident that whoever it is meant for, it’s going to land in their place. Right> So, and then something else shows up that is much more in alignment with your heart and your joy and what you’re excited to do.
Derik Mills: Well, speaking of saying yes, I’m glad you said yes to teaching on Glo.
I know our team very much enjoys working with you and in, in general, they, behind the scenes, they highly value the time they get to spend with Glo teachers, you know, onboarding with you and creating the relationship, prepping for classes. And so I asked them, that particular team on Glo, what they thought our members might like me to ask our teachers.
And so I have a list of questions here. I know we won’t get to all of them, but the first one is, you know, what is it like working with team Glo behind the scenes?
Ali Owens: They are such a lovely team and I feel so grateful to be on the Glo platform. It is one that I admired since the very early days of my yoga journey in Santa Monica.
And it just feels like such a welcoming environment. You know, the studio is very welcoming. The people who manage the app now are always very welcoming and they’re with you from the conception of a class all the way to the completion of a class. And that is very unique. I’ve filmed for a lot of different platforms, and normally it’s just the filming part that people are there for, and to have somebody there who can give you feedback in terms of what are Glo members needing right now, what are they asking for, what is it that I’m going through and what would I like to offer in this moment, you know, I signed on to Glo weeks before I found out that I was pregnant with my third child.
So the content that I thought I was going to offer initially ended up shifting to being more prenatal and postnatal content, and they were just so enthusiastic and accommodating and supportive of me as I went through that journey and together we could create the content that we felt would be the most valuable for members on the site.
And that just, for me, that gives me a sense of purpose and a sense of fulfillment to know that I am teaching something that is going to change someone’s life in some way. So I feel like having that content creation aspect of it is very valuable to me. And then on the flip side, I also get a lot of feedback in terms of what people are liking and what they’re needing. And, and that’s helpful for me moving forward so that we can continue to refine what it is that we offer.
Derik Mills: Thank you. Our team is going to love hearing that. I’m not surprised. They’re amazing. But it never gets old to hear that. So thank you. And I love that it is a co-creative. Experience and that it’s going to be more meaningful for you as a teacher if you’re also tapping into what it is that has your attention and interest and passion in that moment.
And so that we’re not, we’re not just saying, like, just do this or please do this and not listening to, to your needs as well. So that’s amazing. And we often hear directly from our members, and I know our teachers do as well that even though they haven’t met you, they begin to feel this helpful connection that persists after practicing with you, you know, for a while on Glo.
And, you know, I mentioned we, the teachers here from Glo members, sometimes that teacher trainings at workshops and even on the street. They may get approached and say, ‘Hey, you don’t know me, but I know you, and I’ve been practicing with you on Glo’ and, and in so many words, how much they’ve benefited from that experience with you.
Have you had that experience of someone approaching you out there in real life? And if yes, is there anything about how you approach teaching online that might help engender that effect?
Ali Owens: I have. I’ve received several messages just from women specifically who have taken my pre- and postnatal classes, and they have said how much the classes have impacted their lives and how they’ve helped, and that to me is—it’s just so valuable because you don’t get that face-to-face interaction when you’re teaching online. So to be able to see somebody who is on the other side of that lens, or to hear from somebody who is on the other side of that lens, to me, it just sparks such a joy in my heart. I’ve always loved teaching in person for that reason, but I also love teaching online because it can reach so many more people.
And you know, when I teach my classes I try to bring my whole self to the mat, so I’m practicing right there with you and I’m feeling the poses in the same way, maybe not in the same way you are, but we are still moving through the same poses. And I try to be extremely honest in how I’m feeling in that moment.
And I hope what that does for those who are practicing is it gives them permission to show up as their whole selves in that moment and to just bring all of them to the mat. Because I think when we’re able to be honest and vulnerable with ourselves, it allows us to be a little bit more honest and vulnerable with others.
And that, that is such a healing part of the journey. And so if people feel like they know me, it’s because they do, because like yoga just brings up so much, right? And, and that is really how I try to teach. It’s, it’s just a very honest reflection of how I’m feeling and what I’m going through. And if it’s not what I’m feeling and going through in that moment, it’s something that I have felt in that pose, in that moment at one point in time over the 15 years that I’ve been practicing and yeah, I just hope it speaks to somebody somewhere.
Derik Mills: It goes back to the leading with example that you do with your children. And it’s so powerful that when you experience someone else being vulnerable and inviting you to experience that with the same amount of presence on that journey with you, that just seeing it in someone else helps create an opening in oneself. And I completely agree with that. Appreciate that.
Is there anything right now that you’re either… focused on professionally or personally that particularly has your attention at the moment.
Ali Owens: Yeah, I am very interested in the mind. I did a Yoga Nidra training last year and I did a positive psychology training this year. And so I’m very interested in neuroscience and the nervous system.
You know, I think prior to what I’m interested in right now, I focused a lot on the physical poses and alignment and energetics and dabbled in Ayurveda. And now I’m just so fascinated by the subconscious and how we can reframe our thoughts and our beliefs and recreate a new reality simply by how we speak to ourselves in the words that we also speak out loud.And it dabbles in quantum physics and just all these kind of topics that feel very innovative, right? They feel very, like, exciting and new. So that’s kind of what I’ve been diving into in the last year or two.
Derik Mills: It is such an incredibly fascinating time. In terms of what’s happening with science and AI and the acceleration of the domains that you’re referring to, as well as the, like the health span space.
I love ii when someone mentioned subconscious. We could spend the whole conversation just on what that means to you and how you work with that. Is there anything in particular that You use as a tool to create growth and learning along that dimension.
Ali Owens: My favorite is Yoga Nidra. I’ve been practicing for 10 years now, maybe and guiding for two.
And when it is led well, it takes you into such a deep state, and it’s, it’s not as though memories are there, although memories may resurface, but there is this blank canvas where you can kind of pull forward that which you know already exists in you, right? So somewhere, and I have small children, and so they say that, you know, the first seven years of life, you’re developing your subconscious mind.
You’re not going to be, you’re not going to have memory recall of the first, let’s say five years of your life. And so I am watching them and seeing them download my conversations, my mannerisms, the things that I say, what I do, you know, and they are their own individual personalities, but they also absorb so much from their environment and yet they don’t remember everything that happened.
And so if you think about that as a reflection of you. I’m thinking to myself, ‘wow, there are a lot of conversations that I would like to shift.’ And there are some really great conversations that I have. And then there’s some ones that have, you know, they’ve, they’ve felt like the mountains I need to climb to get to where I want to go.
Right. So that like perfectionism or self doubt or you know, I talked a little bit about this at the beginning, but just that inner knowing connecting to that. Yoga Nidra, when I just drop into that space and I pull forward at San Kalpa, I feel the ripple effect of that for so many days afterward.
And I’m, and I’m reminded of it every time that, you know, they call it like a self sabotaging thought comes up again. And, and so for me, that, that is the practice that I lean on the most.
And it’s just so fascinating because If there’s one thing that’s really going to change your life, it’s going to be changing your mind. And that is the one thing that, you know, that you can control. You can control how you react to things. You can control how you talk to yourself. You can control, you know, what thoughts you give your power to.
Derik Mills: And what I appreciate so much about, experiencing, tuning into being receptive to that conditioning that you refer to subconscious movement, is that it’s never ending. There’s always new material. Like no matter how much I think I have learned, grown, evolved, or slipped in evolution, there, there, there, it’s always churning out new material for me to work with, and dreams in particular have been incredibly important for me.
I work with a therapist every other week talking through my dreams, and there is just invariably an ever flowing wealth of information that come from my dreams that directly map to parts of myself that are hard for me to see from an egoic conscious point of view.
Ali Owens: Yeah, those. I mean, those protection mechanisms, they’re so strong, you know, and they’re there, they’re there for a purpose.
Right. So I think we, when we add a little bit of playfulness to it, it gets, it makes it a little lighter. Right. So you can say, ‘Oh, there’s that voice again,’ or, ‘Oh, there’s that thought,’ you know, but now it’s not unconscious. Now it’s conscious. And then from that place of consciousness, you can shift it, or you can shift the behavior.
And I just think that’s such a powerful place to be. The dream space is so fascinating to me too. You know, one thing I don’t talk about a lot is that I actually, I did a double major when I was getting my undergrad at UCLA. And my second major was an interpersonal communication. And so I took a lot of courses in, in psychology and one of them dived into the dream space and, and it is, it’s just, you know, when you think about that, you are just living at the tip of the iceberg with it.
There’s this whole iceberg underneath that is your subconscious mind. I mean, that’s, it’s just so interesting to me.
Derik Mills: Truly, I, I feel like I don’t recall my dreams every morning, but if I do and write them down and record them and work with them, I feel like I’ve just met another aspect of myself or informed other aspects of myself or created a greater intimacy with some aspect of myself.
And yeah, well, again, what’s so fascinating about that journey is it just, it’s never ending.
Ali Owens: Yeah. I feel like the universe is. It’s always asking you, did you learn this lesson? Are you sure?
Derik Mills: Right, right,
Ali Owens: Have you ever read, I’m in the process of reading Why We Sleep by Matthew— I can’t remember his last name.
Derik Mills: I just looked it up. It’s Matthew Walker.
Ali Owens: Matthew Walker. He just goes into talking about how you’re almost cleaning up your subconscious sometimes when you’re dreaming, you know, it’s like, you’re just, you’re cleaning things up. You might have all this stuff there and as it rises to the surface, you’re just, you’re ready to see it, right?
And it’s a fascinating read. He’s a, he’s a funny writer because he talks about how, you know, as humans, we think that we go offline when we fall asleep, but our mind goes online and it’s almost like we’re hallucinating while we’re sleeping because we have these magnificent dreams.
Derik Mills: What challenges have you experienced, if any, in terms of falling out of commitment of your routine, your physical mindfulness, mindful movement routine, and what encourages you to find your way back?
Ali Owens: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I have three kids, so I’ve gone through postpartum three times, and I think each time there’s a dedicated amount of time that I use to just rest and recover, and I meditate more in those moments, and I might do more restorative yoga in those moments, but picking back up always requires a little bit of commitment.
And my daughter is six months old and I just found myself not having time. Like this was my conversation, right? I’m, I don’t have time to practice for the 45 to 90 minutes that I normally like to practice. And so I committed to practicing in the morning, which is when I have the most uninterrupted time in my day.
And even though there’s things to do around the house or things that are on my, you know, on my wishlist, on my priority list, I make that my first priority. And as soon as I did that, my whole day shifted and I started feeling a lot better. I was more productive. I was more patient. And I think we all fall off the bandwagon at some point in time in our journey.
And sometimes finding a new teacher can re-inspire you, right? So sometimes we just need, you know, a new source of inspiration. And then sometimes we just need to set aside the time and commit to it. And when we do that, we’ve, you know, we always feel better after we’ve practiced. Right. And so there aren’t too many times that I get on the mat.I’m like, ‘Oh, darn. Shouldn’t have done that.’
Derik Mills: [laughter] Yeah, that was a big waste of time.
Ali Owens: I can’t really think of one time. So I think for me, it’s just getting past my conversations of I, of lack, right? If I don’t have enough time or I’m not strong enough yet in my body or my body or my practice doesn’t look like how it did pre- pregnancy.
And so, you know, I just get rid of the, oh, and this is one of my favorite quotes is “self observation without judgment is the highest form of enlightenment.” So if you think about self observation without judgment, that means that when you step onto the mat, this is not a place to practice your perfectionism.
It really is just a place to show up as you are. And so that really gives me permission to show up as I’m being, and that might be tired. That might be energized, and, and knowing that that’s okay. So letting yoga really be that safe space.
Derik Mills: Right. I’m tired. I’m whatever, fill in the blank, but it doesn’t define me. It’s not who I am. This is how I’m feeling in this moment. For me, it’s just tricking my mind, my body, to just start.
Ali Owens: Yeah, just get in Child’s Pose, right? Like just, just commit to Child’s Pose. And if you can commit to Child’s Pose and you can take 10 breaths, then you say, okay, maybe I want to do a little Cat-Cow.
That’s right. You’re like, okay, Cat-Cow is feeling pretty good. Maybe I’ll do a Down Dog, you know, and just don’t even, don’t even think about where you’re going or what you’re doing, but literally just take it one step at a time and that in and of itself is such a huge life lesson. And I think your body will take you to some pretty amazing places.
And sometimes when I’m tired, I have the best practices of my life because I’ve just deleted all of my expectation.
Derik Mills: And you rewrote or wrote over that programming or that, that framing that wasn’t helping you in that moment.
Ali Owens: Exactly.
Derik Mills: It’s that beautiful? This has been awesome. Thank you so much for doing this.
Ali Owens: Absolutely.
Derik Mills: Is there anything upcoming either online or out there in the world that you’d like to announce or share with us where people can find you online?
Ali Owens: Yeah, I am currently in the process of relaunching my website where I will have a series of courses that people can take and one of them is for yoga teachers to learn more about how to teach pre and postnatal yoga.
And I’m really excited about that because I feel like unless you’ve taken a 300-hour, we’re not always, you know, so well equipped to guide women who are postpartum. So to provide those tools is something that I’m very excited about. And other than that, just following along on social media and connecting there, you know, I really do love hearing from Glo members, especially ones that practice with me and hearing how the practices have helped them in some way. It’s always nice to, to hear from the members.
Derik Mills: Beautiful. The world will be a better place with your course online. And I’m sure that’s going to be incredibly powerful. You know, especially if you’ve seen Ali teach the programs that she referred to early on, you’ll know that that’s certainly going to be incredibly meaningful and instructive and I look forward to seeing it. List your website and if you could spell it out.
Ali Owens: Sure. So you can find me everywhere at Ali, A L I O M Y O G A, Y O G A, Ali Om Yoga. That’s my Instagram, Facebook, Twitter handle, and also my website.
Derik Mills: Nice. And once it launches, let us know and we’ll include a direct link to. The course and do what we can to help promote it.
Ali Owens:
Thank you.
Derik Mills:
Ali, this has been so wonderful being here with you today.
Ali Owens: Thank you for having me. I listened to quite a few of the episodes before coming on and it’s been super enlightening to hear all of your guest speakers. So I appreciate the work that you’re doing.
Derik Mills: Nice. Well, I’m grateful that you’ve been one of them. Thank you.
MUSIC
WRAP UP
Derik Mills: Thank you to our entire team behind the scenes at Glo. I’m so grateful for your care and commitment to serving our members around the world. Thank you to our teachers for so beautifully sharing your gifts and talents. I’m also grateful to our lovely community of Glo members. You’ve supported us since 2008, and because of you, we get to continue to do the work we love.
It’s the combined support of our team, our teachers, and our community that grants me the privilege to continue to bring you the Glo Podcast. Thank you to Lee Schneider at Red Cub agency for production support. And the beautiful music you’re hearing now is by Carrie Rodriguez and her husband, Luke Jacobs.
And remember, take care of yourself because our world needs you. Thank you for coming on this journey with me. You can find the Glo podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or glo.com/podcast, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. I’m Derik Mills.