This week we sit down with Kelly Sims, a Navy veteran, CPA, and one of the OG Bikram yoga practitioners who's been showing up on the mat since around 2000—back when the rooms were hotter, the discipline was stricter, and people wore Speedos unironically.

Kelly came to yoga the way a lot of people do: something was broken. In her case, it was her knee. She was a runner who loved the high, loved the hills, loved the whole thing—until her knee started crunching going up stairs. Physical therapy wasn't cutting it, so a coworker at BJC said the magic words: "You need to come to hot yoga." No instructions. No guidance on what to wear. Just "come."

So Kelly showed up in cotton jogging pants and a t-shirt. In a 105-degree room. With people screaming at her to lock her knees and open her eyes. And somehow, she fell in love with it.

What follows is one of the most entertaining yoga origin stories we've heard. Kelly practiced Bikram for over a decade—through the strict era when teachers would clap at you, when you couldn't leave the room, when they'd pack bodies so close together you could touch someone's back on either side with your arms extended. She watched yoga competitions happen (yes, with judges and winners), saved a man from hitting the floor when he passed out mid-class (he was getting a pacemaker installed on Monday, because apparently his wife thought Bikram was a good pre-surgery activity), and once threw up so violently after eating a Whole Foods salad that she "painted the wall" on her way out of dancer pose.

But this episode isn't just about wild Bikram stories.

Kelly and Roxanne met as student and teacher at Yoga Six and quickly discovered they're basically the same person—same sense of dark humor, same coping mechanisms, same life outlook. They even left their marriages on the exact same day without knowing it. That coincidence turned a yoga friendship into something more like sisterhood.

We get into Kelly's time in the Navy, including a night in a Tijuana jail after a brawl that started with something called "poppers" (not what you're thinking—it's where they pour alcohol down your throat and shake your whole body). We discuss her two other arrests, including one in St. Louis for a warrant she didn't know she had, where she got her first Hot Pocket and a Capri Sun while waiting to be bailed out.

Kelly talks honestly about what it's like to be a Black woman walking into predominantly white yoga spaces—and why she makes a point to welcome other Black students when she sees them. She's also refreshingly honest about not always noticing because she's been "the odd one out" her whole life and has learned to just exist in her own world.

The conversation touches on everything from whether yoga people have superior immune systems (Kelly's theory: all that shared sweat builds antibodies), to the absurdity of COVID protocols in yoga studios, to why Kelly can't skip yoga during tax season without wanting to "yell at people." Yoga, she says, is what keeps her kind during the most stressful months of the year. It's not about flexibility or achieving perfect poses—it's about perspective, grounding, and staying human when the IRS is breathing down your clients' necks.

We also bond over the real reason Kelly prefers 6 AM classes: so she can drink as much coffee as she wants afterward.

This is a conversation between friends—messy, tangential, punctuated by inside jokes and genuine affection. It's also a window into what 25 years of consistent yoga practice actually looks like: not perfection, not enlightenment, just showing up, staying mobile, sleeping better, and occasionally catching strangers before they hit the floor.

If you've ever felt like mainstream yoga culture wasn't made for you, Kelly Sims is proof that it doesn't have to be. You can curse on the way into the parking lot, flip someone off, walk into class, and become friends with them by the time you leave. That's the real yoga.

Anna Welsh has lived about nine yoga lives. She started as a high school basketball player who got dragged to her first Bikram class by her mom and thought she was witnessing a cult—sweaty adults in various states of undress, doing synchronized breathing on disgusting carpet, doors locked so nobody could escape. She didn't touch yoga again for a year. Classic origin story.

Fast forward through a college breakup (the gateway drug to yoga for so many of us), a 200-hour training, a 500-hour with the legendary Jen Jones, and Anna found herself moving to Lima, Ohio for a relationship. Lima, Ohio—where the nearest Target was two hours away. She makes it very clear she will never again live somewhere without a Target. Noted.

But here's where it gets interesting. With no yoga studios and no infrastructure, Anna got creative. She worked at a cupcake shop. She prepped jackfruit in the middle of soybean fields for a vegan food truck. And she handed out her yoga business cards with every taco she served at the AutoZone parking lot—eventually teaching a class right there in the lot for the AutoZone guys. She got paid in hot peppers by a line cook named Fritz. She worked one-on-one with a woman whose only goal was to walk down the church aisle for communion without falling over. They started with toe lifts while holding a chair.

This is the yoga they don't show you on Instagram.

When that relationship imploded (her dog Lobo was the wake-up call—long story), Anna came back to St. Louis and hit the ground running. At her peak, she was teaching 25 to 30 classes a week at nine different locations, from Illinois to South City. No days off. Running on fumes and passion and probably not enough White Castle. And then the universe intervened in the most dramatic way possible: she slipped on ice on the way to teach a retreat in Costa Rica, her foot got wedged under a truck tire, and she broke her leg in four places.

She asked the ER doctor if she could still make her flight. He thought she was joking. She was not.

Ten weeks non-weight-bearing, no health insurance, and a $50,000 surgery later (shout out to Dr. Christopher Mudd for charging her $1,500 because he's a good human), Anna had to reckon with what wasn't working. The pace. The hustle. The fact that yoga teachers can't actually make a living teaching yoga unless they're running themselves into the ground—or into a truck tire.

We get into all of it: why studio economics are broken, why teacher trainings and retreats exist mostly to keep studios afloat, why the rate of pay hasn't caught up with inflation, and why Anna was one of the lucky ones who could take unpaid gigs because she had a partner supporting her at the time. Most teachers don't have that. Most teachers are choosing between rent and doing what they love.

Anna's not teaching in studios anymore. She pivoted to medical device sales—she now works in surgeries helping teams use equipment for wound debridement and grafting. And here's the thing: she says her yoga teacher training prepared her perfectly for it. Reading a room. Communicating clearly. Helping people work together. She's still teaching, just not asanas.

But she's got the itch. And by the end of this episode, Roxanne and Anna are half-seriously, half-not-seriously talking about opening a studio together. We'll keep you posted.

Other things we cover: the real history of downward dog (it comes from Indian wrestling, not ancient yoga texts—thank you Mark Singleton), why there are no standing poses in the original yoga sutras, what it's like to teach blindfolded yoga using peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as a training exercise, the ethics of addressing a wardrobe malfunction mid-class, Gary's TSA "jacket off" prank, and our pitch for a yoga studio on a blimp.

Anna's favorite curse word will get her in trouble with HR, Roxanne's is "sugar snappers," and we learn the origin of "jabroni" (it's from Italian-American slang for "big ham" and was popularized by The Rock in the 90s.

New yoga teacher Nichole Carpenter joins Gary and Roxanne to talk about what teacher training doesn't prepare you for: standing in front of a room, blanking out, and learning to be okay with not being perfect.

This is a real conversation about the first year of teaching yoga—the nerves, the imposter syndrome, the obsession with class numbers, and why "sucking" might actually be the best thing that can happen to you.

🎧 Listen on Spotify: [LINK]🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts: [LINK]🌐 Website: https://theunqualifiedyogi.com/

TIMESTAMPS:

0:00 - Intro0:54 - Still haven't been canceled (yet)1:28 - Meet Nichole Carpenter2:00 - The nerves of doing a podcast (and teaching yoga)2:48 - Imposter syndrome and trying to be someone you're not3:54 - "Christopher Nolan imposter syndrome" - being the imposter of yourself4:19 - Gary can't listen to his own voice5:30 - Is your "teacher self" really you?10:45 - Nichole's journey into yoga teaching18:58 - "Sucking is okay because it gives you opportunity for growth"19:59 - Why failing teaches you more than succeeding20:48 - "I've been teaching 10 years and still have classes that suck"21:25 - Nichole's dharma talk that made Roxanne cry22:13 - The intense high (and crash) after your first classes23:05 - When your own teacher shows up to your class25:08 - Roxanne's confession: crying while teaching from nerves25:42 - "You just have to do the hard thing"26:15 - What Nichole's gotten better at: pacing and timing27:25 - Being "consistently inconsistent" as teachers and humans28:18 - The obsession with class numbers29:01 - The universe sends you students who are like you

CONNECT WITH US:Instagram: @theunqualifiedyogiWebsite: https://theunqualifiedyogi.com/

#yoga #yogateacher #yogapodcast #newteacher #impostersyndrome #wellness #authenticity #podcast

Regan Tucker discovered yoga at 17, grieving her mother's death, dragged to a class by her mom's friend in Vegas. It was instant. She didn't choose yoga—yoga chose her. Two decades later, she's one of St. Louis's most beloved teachers, running Soulful Sundays at True Fusion Clayton, where she's taught 250+ uniquely themed classes without repeating herself. All handwritten in notebooks she's kept for years.

This is a nearly two-hour conversation that goes everywhere: grief, guardian angels, The Telepathy Tapes, Viktor Frankl, why your calf muscle is technically your second heart, the 11/11 "spiritual portal" that was invented in 1992, and whether yoga mats are even necessary (Roxanne doesn't use one at home—just her and the wood floor).

Regan opens up about losing her mom right before senior year and how yoga became her therapy when she had no words for what she was going through. She talks about the 15-year gap between her first time teaching (uncertified, early 2000s Vegas) and her return to the mat after raising her kids. About stopping teaching because she'd lost herself as a student. About finally signing up for teacher training at True Fusion in January 2020, graduating—and then having the world shut down a week later. The universe, apparently, had other priorities.

We discuss losing teachers who shaped us. Regan trained under Julie Funke and Lindsay Mallers—both have since passed away. She now shows Julie's YouTube videos to the teachers she trains. There's a mural of Julie doing side crow outside the studio. For some people, walking back into that room is still hard. Lindsay's playlists are still on Spotify, and listening to them now reveals this strange overlap of musical taste that Regan never noticed in class because she was actually practicing.

We get into why so many yoga teachers are secretly introverts, what it means to teach from embodiment versus performance, and the difference between pain and discomfort (Roxanne admits she couldn't tell the difference for years). Gary shares that he did 280 yoga classes last year and got yoga shoulder. Roxanne hurt her hip spontaneously running during a walk. Regan? Never been injured. Never been to a chiropractor. We're suspicious.

There's a wild story about Regan almost getting arrested at a Vegas house party after her mom died—going out with her hands up, an officer dialing the wrong number, and a mysterious woman with the same rare name showing up to unknowingly rescue her. Guardian angel or alien? She's not ruling anything out.

We talk about playlist philosophy—how Regan saves her favorite artists (Radiohead, Tori Amos, Jeff Buckley, The Beatles) for herself and instead plays music with the same soul. How her 11-year-old son calls James Hetfield "Papa James." How she once tried to sell handwritten Metallica lyrics at school for 50 cents. No buyers.

There's discussion of cassette tapes (Regan's daughter wants them), mat hygiene (we're all failing), stem cells in Mexico (Gary's interested), and whether Yoga Alliance certifications actually mean anything (the scope of practice is "very muddied").

Viktor Frankl shows up—the pause between stimulus and response, and how yoga can be that pause. Harry Potter's Room of Requirement becomes a metaphor for what the yoga room offers. And meditation, for Gary, is apparently just writing stand-up material in his head while trying to remember the jokes until class ends.

This one's about the long game. About grief as an entry point. About teachers who leave imprints that don't fade. About waiting 15 years and then having the universe say "hold on, not yet." About liking yourself at the end of the day because you spend most of your time in your head, so you might as well make it a good place to live.

Regan teaches Soulful Sundays at True Fusion Clayton, 10am, 75 minutes. Bring water. Prepare for your second heart to get a workout.

In this episode of The Unqualified Yogi Podcast, hosts Gary Martin and Roxanne Quinn sit down with yoga teacher and women's coach Keri Kugler for an honest conversation about transformation, control, and what it actually means to find yourself through yoga practice—without the wellness industry bullshit.

FROM ONE CLASS TO TEACHER TRAINING

Keri shares her unconventional entry into yoga: she took one hot yoga class at Yoga Source with Terry Sobin, got her ass completely kicked, walked into the lobby, saw a flyer for 200-hour teacher training, and signed up that same week. What happened next? Her entire life fell apart. Job loss, ending a 10-year relationship, roommate moving out—everything collapsed within a few months of starting her yoga teacher training. But something inside her knew this was exactly what she needed.

THE MOST CONFRONTING MOMENT: YOU'RE NOT THE VICTIM

Keri describes her first teacher training as a "huge red stoplight" that showed her something uncomfortable: she actually had control over her life. Not control over external events, but control over her habits, behaviors, responses, and internal discipline. For someone who had zero structure, no boundaries, and no sense of self, this realization wasn't beautiful and light—it was confronting as hell. The practice of yoga became what saved her, offering discipline when everything else was chaos.

WHAT YOU CAN ACTUALLY CONTROL (AND WHAT YOU CAN'T)

The conversation digs into the difference between pain and suffering, internal versus external control, and why people grip harder when they feel out of control inside. Roxanne shares her own experience with grief after putting her dog Buddha to sleep, discussing how meditation practice and disciplined structure hold you through devastating moments. The hosts explore how yoga practice builds the internal stability that allows you to respond rather than react—even when life is falling apart around you.

EMBODIED TEACHING VS. YOGA VOICE

Keri talks about teaching from her bones rather than performing a "yoga voice" or teaching persona. She discusses the journey of finding your authentic voice as a teacher, dealing with criticism from more seasoned instructors, and learning to own your choices even when they don't fit traditional yoga molds. Roxanne reflects on teaching athletic, westernized classes and having to say "this is what feels right for me, this is what I like in my practice." Both teachers emphasize that embodied teaching—when you actually live the practice outside the studio—creates a different kind of journey for students.

OPENING A STUDIO RIGHT AFTER TRAINING

In a bold move, Keri opened a yoga studio immediately after completing her 200-hour teacher training. She shares the challenges of being a brand-new teacher facing criticism from established studio owners and seasoned teachers questioning "what are these new kids on the block doing?" The studio did really well but closed after barely a year—a learning experience that shaped her path forward.

MEDITATION, DISCIPLINE & THE BODY AS VEHICLE

Roxanne discusses her current meditation teacher training, sitting for two hours daily (30 minutes seated, 10 minutes walking meditation, repeat), and how disciplined practice creates the foundation to handle life's challenges. The conversation explores how many people start yoga for superficial reasons—cute pants, wanting to look hot, achieving impressive poses—and how the body becomes a vehicle that eventually brings you to yourself. Keri reflects on no longer caring about doing full splits or impressive asana, emphasizing how priorities shift when yoga becomes an internal journey rather than external performance.

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This week we sit down with Siriatmakaur—Kundalini yoga teacher, sound healer, and someone who watched her entire spiritual practice implode when the Netflix documentary "Breath of Fire" dropped.

SiriAtma started practicing yoga from a Baron Baptiste book in her backyard while her toddler did better arm balances than she could. She fell hard for Kundalini yoga (the kind with the white turbans, the 62-minute arm holds, and the allegations of cult behavior that turned out to be warranted). She got a spiritual destiny name from her teacher, stopped shaving everything, attended Summer Solstice gatherings religiously, and taught devout Kundalini classes for over a decade.

Then came the allegations against Yogi Bhajan—the guy who supposedly brought Kundalini to the West. Then came the documentary. Then came the reckoning.

We talk about what it's like to build your entire practice around teachings that might be fabricated. How to process that the formulas you swore by—the ones that made you feel alive and buzzing with prana—might have come from someone who hurt people. Whether you can separate the practice from the founder (spoiler: it's complicated). And what happens when the studio you're teaching at asks you to stop offering "Kundalini by Yogi Bhajan" on the schedule.

But this isn't just a sad story about disillusionment. It's about what comes after. SiriAtma talks about becoming "unfuckwithable"—that beautiful state where other people's opinions stop running your life. About teaching slow flow that feels like choreographed dance. About the 90-second eye gazing meditation that makes people cry (including Roxanne). About playing massive planetary gongs for sound healing and why six-foot gongs cost six figures.

We also discuss: why Kundalini classes were always 50/50 men and women when vinyasa is 70/30 female, whether cutting all your hair off is an act of freedom or just Wednesday, why shaving your legs for the male gaze is bullshit, how being a single mom in your twenties drinking half a bottle of wine every night led to practicing yoga in patches of sunshine between houses, and why we're all prime candidates for cult membership (it's the urge to merge back to source, obviously).

Plus: our fictional traveling yoga studio plans continue to develop. We're talking Las Vegas Sphere technology, programmable smells, laser shows, hardwood floors that can go soft on demand, and forest projections on the walls. We'll need matching uniforms (Gary insists) and someone with deep pockets who's open to weird ideas. Also a six-foot gong. Applications now open.

Fair warning: We talk about the Breath of Fire documentary, sexual abuse allegations, and what it means to feel duped by teachings you loved. This isn't light "good vibes only" content. But it's real, it's honest, and SiriAtma's journey from devotee to skeptic to her own authentic practice is exactly the kind of story we're here for.

Find SiriAtma at Blue Sky Yoga in South City (Wednesdays 7:30pm) or at her monthly Simply Sound meditation events. She's the one with the 32-inch Mercury planetary gong and zero patience for performative wellness.

This is yoga for people who think yoga content is mostly garbage.

What happens when you try to teach yoga in a small town that's convinced you're recruiting for a devil cult? This week on The Unqualified Yogi Podcast, we sit down with Jenna Goble—founder of Flow Yoga and Fly Yoga in St. Louis—to find out.

Jenna shares her journey from stay-at-home mom in West Plains, Missouri, to accidental yoga entrepreneur in a town where rumors spread that she was literally a devil worshiper bringing people into her cult. She started teaching yoga (before she was even certified) in the back of a disgusting gym with carpet and metal walls, where the owner slapped her ass and said "good luck, honey" when she asked to use the Zumba room. Because sometimes the price of admission is pretty high when you're trying to bring wellness to unexpected places.

WHAT WE TALK ABOUT:

Small-Town Yoga & Overcoming Prejudice: Jenna discusses what it's like to introduce yoga to a conservative community where people are genuinely suspicious of your intentions. From one friend showing up to the first class to building something so successful they couldn't fit everyone in the room anymore, this is a real story about grassroots yoga teaching and community building without any of the Instagram-perfect wellness industry nonsense.

Building Yoga Studios from Scratch: Learn how Jenna went from teaching in borrowed gym space to opening Flow Yoga with a business partner, and eventually creating Fly Yoga in St. Louis. We discuss the realities of yoga studio ownership, why she ultimately chose to close a successful business, and what it's really like to run a wellness business when you're not interested in becoming a wellness influencer.

Roxanne's Arrest Record: In true Unqualified Yogi fashion, we take a detour through Roxanne's surprisingly extensive history with law enforcement. Stories include: stealing her friend's mom's car at age 13 with 12-year-old boyfriends in the backseat, a fake ID incident at a 3am bar involving a red Mitsubishi Eclipse with custom plates (R-O-X-Z-A-N, naturally), a hit-and-run in a Corvette wheel well, and spending the night in Richmond Heights jail over an unpaid ticket while her kids waited for pickup. Because yoga teachers are real humans with messy pasts, not enlightened beings who emerged fully formed from a meditation cushion.

Why Yoga Studio Vibes Actually Matter: We dig into the intangible differences between yoga studios and why some spaces just feel better than others. Jenna shares why she prefers certain studios over others (even when the amenities are objectively worse), and we discuss what creates that sense of community and belonging that keeps people coming back—spoiler: it's not the fancy amenities or Instagram-worthy design.

ABOUT THE UNQUALIFIED YOGI PODCAST:

We're Gary Martin (200-hour RYT, PRO EDU founder) and Roxanne Quinn (experienced yoga teacher), and we're credentialed skeptics bringing you an anti-guru wellness podcast. We're qualified enough to know what we're talking about, unqualified enough to admit we don't have all the answers, and irreverent enough to laugh at the absurdity of wellness industry culture.

Expect evidence-based information, dry humor, real yoga teacher stories, honest discussions about mental health and wellness, and zero namaste-in-bed bullshit. We punch up at the wellness industry, not down at people trying to feel better.

GUEST: Jenna Goble (founder, Flow Yoga & Fly Yoga)
HOSTS: Gary Martin & Roxanne Quinn

Visit us at theunqualifiedyogi.com for more conversations about yoga, wellness, and meditation without the guru worship.

Not for everyone. And that's the point.

Music for this episode was licensed through Artlist license # 973498

Welcome to Season 1 of The Unqualified Yogi, where we talk about the path nobody talks about—struggles, failures, and actual practice. This is wellness content for people who think most wellness content is garbage.

Our first guest is Angie Maniscalco, a real estate agent in St. Louis who Roxanne met in yoga class. Roxanne knew within two meetings they'd be friends because Angie is authentic, funny, and wears everything on her sleeve. Also because Angie is the kind of person who, when asked "have you ever been arrested?" responds with "yes, three times" and then tells you about stealing Newport cigarettes from Schnucks as a teenager.

On ignoring your body until it forces you to listen: Angie spent years pushing through chronic hip pain because that's what you're supposed to do, right? Push through. Be tough. Except that doesn't make you a warrior—it makes you someone who needs hip surgery in their early 30s. We talk about what it actually means to listen to your body, which turns out to have nothing to do with Instagram affirmations and everything to do with getting things checked out before they become surgical.

On solo retreats that aren't content: Angie goes on meditation retreats alone. Sometimes without pants. She's not turning it into a lifestyle brand or documenting it for social media—she just goes, sits, meditates, and comes back. Novel concept. We discuss finding practices that work for you without the performative wellness bullshit, including sound baths (the kind that don't make you throw up) and singing bowls that make you feel like you're talking to aliens while flying through space.

On blowing up your life and starting over: Sometimes life explodes. Sometimes you blow it up yourself. Either way, starting over is part of being human. Angie talks about reinvention without the "manifest your new life" nonsense—just the honest reality that sometimes you have to destroy something to build something new. Roxanne shares that she's reinvented herself four times, and each time required blowing something up first. This is the conversation about change that doesn't involve vision boards.

On the completely random but important stuff: Why to-do lists might actually work. Whether people who say they love running are lying (or just trauma-informed). The correct approach to dating when you don't want anyone in your bed snoring and farting. How many laws you break in an average day. Why Angie's mom made her play soccer in jeans over her shorts. What causes itchy thighs when running (we consulted an AI about this, no clear answers). Halloween costumes. License plate theft. The whole messy, digressive, honest conversation that happens when three people actually talk instead of performing wellness.

This isn't another podcast telling you to raise your vibrations or manifest your dreams. We're credentialed skeptics—qualified enough to know what we're talking about, unqualified enough to admit we don't have all the answers, and irreverent enough to laugh at the absurdity. We reject guru energy and toxic positivity while still believing that practices like yoga, meditation, and paying attention to your body can actually help. You just don't need the spiritual bypassing or the lifestyle aesthetic to do it.

Angie doesn't have it all figured out. None of us do. And that's exactly why this conversation works. It's honest about pain, messy about change, and completely lacking in the kind of aspirational bullshit that makes you feel worse about yourself instead of better.

If you're tired of "good vibes only," if you've rolled your eyes at wellness influencer culture, if you want actual information without the woo—this might be for you. If you're looking for someone to tell you they've cracked the code to enlightenment, keep scrolling.

Real talk about wellness. Zero guru energy. Some profanity. Occasional discussions of bodily functions. Welcome to The Unqualified Yogi.

Find more at: theunqualifiedyogi.com