My guest this week is yoga instructor Tim Senesi. Tim hosts the popular Yoga with Tim YouTube channel, and teaches classes near his home in Southern California. It was great to talk with Tim about his love of yoga, what drew him to it, and what inspires him as a teacher. I’ve done countless of his online videos myself and haven’t found any better instruction than what Tim offers every week.

Topics we touched on in our relatively brief discussion included:

• How Tim got into yoga
• How our actions create our reality
• Yoga as a laboratory to go inward
• The year-long legal debacle over the previous Yoga with Tim YouTube channel
• Tim’s evolution as an online yoga instructor
• The disillusionment with common definitions of “happiness” that led Tim to yoga
• The value of yoga retreats (check out Tim’s retreats here)
• How Tim’s yoga practice and instruction developed
• How to approach savasana (corpse pose) at the end of a yoga session
• Physical practice as a way to enter into deeper mental and emotional experiences
• The connection between anxiety and the breath
• The importance of daily practice to get the benefits of yoga
• The place of humor in yoga practice

Tim recommended two books by B. K. S. Iyengar for those who want to learn more about the Iyengar method of yoga, which has heavily influenced Tim’s approach (a percentage of each purchase made through these affiliate links will be used to support the podcast, at no additional cost to you):

Light on Life

Light on Yoga

Tim and I discussed the difference between his previous yoga channel and his current one. Here’s the back health video we talked about from his old channel:

Yoga Stretches for Low Back Pain

And a more recent one filmed with his friend and assistant Stacy:

Yoga for Back Pain 15 Minute Stretch, Sciatica Flexibility & Core Strengthening

The instruction in both is equally excellent, but the difference in energy is very apparent.

Tim’s YouTube channel is here: Yoga with Tim, where you can subscribe and get notified when he posts free weekly instructional videos.

If you’re interested in deepening your home yoga practice, consider joining Tim’s Conscious Movement community and supporting his work at the same time through a monthly subscription.

Tim Senesi has been practicing yoga since he was a college student. He found he was living a toxic lifestyle and tried yoga as a means to a healthier life. Although he struggled with the shapes and was sweating profusely as he tried to keep up, he discovered something unusual at the end of class: his head got quiet and he felt at peace.

That glimpse of what he was looking for compelled him to stick with it, and soon he started feeling more connected to his body. He noticed that drinking alcohol or getting high didn’t provide the same connection and relief that he felt at the end of that first yoga class.

Soon Tim was practicing yoga every day, so there was no more time to eat junk food or stay out late drinking, as he knew he wouldn’t like how he felt the next morning on the mat. Yoga slowly changed his life, one day at a time.

Tim changed who he hung out with, started making healthier decisions, and built a community of supportive like-minded friends. And he knew from his experience on the yoga mat that a challenge was an opportunity for growth.

Tim soon fell into teaching yoga, as he describes in this episode. He was drawn to the Iyengar method, which made sense to him as it was concrete, focused, and effective. He was then introduced to Vinnie Marino’s class and realized he could take ideas from his Iyengar foundation and blend them into his own style of Vinyasa Flow.  

You can find Tim online at his website where you can sign up for weekly updates, on Instagram, and on Facebook.