The Uplifted Yoga Podcast

Do cravings, fatigue, or hormonal shifts have you feeling like a stranger in your body?
In this episode, I'm joined by Sema Özpekmezci for a grounded, compassionate conversation about chronic illness, women's health, perimenopause, hormones, and what it really means to listen to your body.
We explore how midlife changes can feel confusing and how symptoms like cravings, energy dips, mood shifts, and inflammation can become invitations into deeper self-understanding.
Sema also shares a powerful way to think about your hormones as the "CEO" of your body and why food, stress, blood sugar, sleep, and nervous system regulation all play a role in helping you feel balanced again.
Inside this episode, we explore:
🔹 Why perimenopause symptoms, cravings, and inflammation may be body signals, not personal failures
🔹 How hormones, stress, cortisol, and the nervous system influence women's health
🔹 Why chocolate cravings and blood sugar patterns can reveal what your body actually needs
🔹 How to respond to your changing body with curiosity, compassion, and practical support
My hope is that this conversation helps you stop fighting your body and start listening to it. Because your body isn't broken. It's speaking.
💗 If you want to keep exploring this connection between the nervous system, embodiment, and women's health, come practice with me: https://www.brettlarkin.com/ffy?utm_medium=social&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=ffy 
 
GUEST EXPERT: Sema Özpekmezci | @semaozpekmezci
Sema is a certified Clinical Nutritional Therapist and Functional Medicine Health Coach. She is a Yoga and Mindfulness Trainer and yoga/meditation enthusiast. She believes that nutrition, mind, and spirit are inextricably linked to our health and overall well-being and spreading and explaining this is her life's purpose.
​Connect with Sema and find her programs here → https://www.semaozpekmezci.com/ 
 
FREE Practice: Somatic Exercises to Reduce Cortisol & Get Out of Freeze Response | Full Body Somatic Yoga Flow
Relevant Blog: Yoga Teacher Training as a Mid-Life Wellness Sabbatical: Why More Women Are Using YTT to Reset Their Nervous System (Not Change Careers)
 
Relevant to Today's Episode:
🐍 Kundalini 200-hour YTT
📚 Healing with Somatic Yoga Book
✨ Yoga for Self Mastery
💖 Uplifted Membership
💫 Somatic Certification
🎧 Also Listen to:
#366 – Is Trauma Actually In Your Hips? The Impact of Stress on Hip & Pelvic Health with Dr. Brianne Grogan
#369 – Nervous System Masterclass with Kristin Leal
#384 – Do Less, Heal More: 7 Invitations to Resolve Trauma from Organic Intelligence
 
© 2026 Uplifted Yoga | BrettLarkin.com

Why do the world's great spiritual traditions teach through stories, imagery, and metaphor instead of simple instructions?
In this episode, I'll explore why metaphor changes us in a way facts alone cannot and how imagery bypasses the analytical mind to speak directly to the nervous system, imagination, memory, and body.
Building on Part 1, we'll dive deeper into Tantra's vision of awakening as a love story between Shiva and Shakti: awareness and energy, stillness and sensation, consciousness and embodiment.
I'll explore:
🔹 Why metaphor activates the nervous system differently than information
🔹 The neuroscience behind stories, imagery, and embodied learning
🔹 How yoga philosophy, Christianity, Buddhism, and Tantra all teach through metaphor
🔹 Why metaphor is essential for trauma-informed yoga teaching and meditation
🔹 Practical ways to use imagery, cue layering, and storytelling in your yoga classes
🎓 Want to become a more confident, creative, and impactful yoga teacher?
Grab my free Sequencing & Cueing Bundle and learn how to structure classes, layer cues, and use metaphor and imagery in a way that truly lands with students → https://www.brettlarkin.com/teach?utm_medium=social&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=teach  
 
FREE Practice: 10 Min Beginner Morning Meditation | EASY GUIDED MEDITATION
Relevant Blog: Yoga Cues 101: Everything You Need To Teach Yoga
 
Relevant to Today's Episode:
📚 Healing with Somatic Yoga Book 
🔮 300-hour Online Yoga Teacher Training
🐍 Yoga for Self Mastery
💖 Uplifted Membership
🌀 Somatic Yoga Life Coaching 
🎧 Also Listen to:
#300 – Unraveling the Mystery of Chronic Pain for Yoga Teachers & Practitioners with Kim Patel
#422 – What Happens When You Die? Bhagavad Gita Chapter 8 Explained
#425 – Why the Divine Speaks in Metaphor: Sacred Stories from the Gita, Bible & Upanishads Part 1
 
© 2026 Uplifted Yoga | BrettLarkin.com

How do you make a big decision… yogically?
In this episode, I explore what happens when you deeply desire something — a new job, a baby, a retreat, a training, a relationship — but don't actually have the capacity to hold it right now.
This is a conversation about desire, capacity, and the real conditions for clarity. Because so often we think we're confused, when really what's happening is that one part of us wants something badly, and another part of us knows we don't have the bandwidth.
In this episode, I explore:
🔹 The difference between desire and capacity and why both matter
🔹 Why high desire + low capacity creates pain, burnout, and resentment
🔹 A yogic framework for understanding hard decisions through polarity
🔹 Simple somatic practices to help you feel what your body is actually saying
🔹 Four different decision-making archetypes and how stress changes the way you choose
If you've been stuck in a decision, this episode will help you stop forcing clarity and start listening for what's actually true.
✨ Make your yoga practice 2x more potent in 1/2 the time with my Free Yoga Transformational Portal
💗 Get Yoga for Self Mastery => https://www.brettlarkin.com/yoga-for-self-mastery/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=ysm
 
FREE Practice: Kundalini Yoga Meditation To Empower Your Decision Making (18-min) Guided Meditation Full Class
Relevant Blog: 15 Feminine Energy Traits And How To Cultivate Them
 
Relevant to Today's Episode:
📖 Yoga Life Book
🐍 Yoga for Self Mastery
💖 Uplifted Membership
💫 Somatic Certification
🎧 Also Listen to:
#297 – What is Samkhya Philosophy and How is it Different from Yoga?
#314 – Stop Abandoning Yourself By Leveraging Yoga & Meditation
#350 – Do a "Yoga Life Makeover" with Corinne Maples
 
© 2026 Uplifted Yoga | BrettLarkin.com

What if the patterns running your life didn't start with you?
In this conversation, I sit down with Uplifted alum Amy Hunter to talk about the deeper work of somatic coaching, recovery, and healing family-of-origin patterns. Amy has taken multiple trainings inside the Uplifted ecosystem — including 200-hour, 300-hour, Kundalini, Embodied Yoga Life Coaching, and most recently the AI course — and now brings all of that into her own coaching practice.
Together, we explore what it looks like to move from self-awareness into real change.
In this episode, we cover:
🔹 How somatic coaching helps uncover family patterns that still shape your life
🔹 The connection between people pleasing, self-abandonment, and personal power
🔹 Amy's six pillars of self-recovery and how they relate to the chakras
🔹 Why self-care is foundational if you want to change old patterns
🔹 A simple in-the-moment tool — Amy's PIVOT process — for catching yourself and choosing differently
If you've ever felt like you know your patterns intellectually but still keep repeating them, this episode is such a beautiful reminder that real change happens when awareness moves into the body.
🌀 Check out my Somatic Life Coaching Certification and join before July 10th to get the EARLY ACCESS EXPERIENCE => https://www.brettlarkin.com/somatic-yoga-training-certification/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=eylc 
 
GUEST EXPERT: Amy Hunter | www.guidebyyourside.coach 
Amy is a certified Somatic Life Coach and founder of Guide By Your Side Life Recovery Coaching. Her passion is guiding people through difficult life transitions and easing the emotional and physical pain that comes with them. Her proprietary system—the 6 Steps of Self-Recovery & the 5-step PIVOT Process—combines Somatic, body-based practices with Root Cause Coaching, Hypnotherapy, and Yoga Psychotherapy. 
Get your free "5 Steps from People-Pleasing to Personal Power" guide or book a call with Amy at http://www.guidebyyourside.coach 
Connect with Amy: connect@guidebyyourside.coach 
 
FREE Practice: YOGA FOR BOUNDARIES | Somatic Exercises to Say No 🛑 | SOMATIC YOGA BOUNDARY WORKOUT WITH MUSIC
Relevant Blog: The Healer Archetype: Characteristics & Challenges
 
Relevant to Today's Episode:
✅ 200-hour Online Yoga Teacher Training
🔮 300-hour Online Yoga Teacher Training
💫 Somatic Certification
✨ AI Training Course
🎧 Also Listen to:
#299 – Strategies to Slay Imposter Syndrome and Share Your Gifts
#354 – Redefining "Niche" with Carla Cline Thomas
#386 – Stop Selling Products—Start Selling YOU: Human Design for Visibility & Flow with Juliette Stapleton
 
© 2026 Uplifted Yoga | BrettLarkin.com

What if the deepest spiritual secret wasn't hidden somewhere far away, but woven into your ordinary life right now?
In Chapter 9 of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna reveals what he calls the "king of knowledge" and the "most confidential secret". A teaching so simple and intimate that most people overlook it completely. This episode explores the heart of bhakti yoga: devotion, relationship with the divine, and the radical idea that the sacred permeates everything.
We explore:
🔹 Why Krishna says the divine is both everywhere and beyond everything
🔹 The paradox at the center of yoga philosophy and why it matters
🔹 How devotion shifts from external ritual to inner relationship
🔹 Why sincerity matters more than spiritual performance
If you've ever wondered where the divine actually lives, or what devotion really means beyond ritual, this episode will change the way you see your practice.
👉 Dive deeper into yoga's origins with my History of Yoga Course → https://www.brettlarkin.com/history-of-yoga-course/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=hoy 
📗 Join the book club → https://www.brettlarkin.com/uplifted/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=uplifted 
 
📖 Different translations explored:
Barbara Stoler Miller: https://www.amazon.com/Bhagavad-Gita-Krishnas-Counsel-Bantam-Classics/dp/0553213652 
Godsong by Amit Majmudar: https://www.amazon.com/Godsong-Verse-Translation-Bhagavad-Gita-Commentary/dp/1524733474 
Eknath Easwaran: https://www.amazon.com/Bhagavad-Gita-2nd-Eknath-Easwaran/dp/1586380192 
Bhagavad-Gita As It Is by Swami Prabhupada: https://www.amazon.com/Bhagavad-Gita-As-Bhaktivedanta-Swami-Prabhupada/dp/0892131233 
 
FREE Practice: Easy Kundalini Yoga for Women | Kriya to be DIVINE LOVE EMBODIED
Relevant Blog: What is Bhakti Yoga? The Philosophy and Practice
 
Relevant to Today's Episode:
📚 History of Yoga
🐍 Yoga for Self Mastery
💖 Uplifted Membership
💫 Somatic Certification
🎧 Also Listen to:
#401 – Who Has Your Attention? Attention Economy vs the Ancient Path
#415 – From Self-Improvement to Reverence (Bhagavad Gita Chapter 7)
#422 – What Happens When You Die? Bhagavad Gita Chapter 8 Explained
 
© 2026 Uplifted Yoga | BrettLarkin.com