Most of us are aware of the paradoxically hard work it takes to find time to achieve balance in life. Some days it's as simple as finding the willpower to choose the organic [0] salad over the burger and fries, other days it's feeling the pressure to find time in your busy day to meditate. But in the midst of rushing around to juggle workload and family time with the myriad of other obligations, achieving balance isn't always easy. Enter the JivaDiva.

The JivaDiva, alias Alanna Kaivalya, is a five-year veteran yoga [0] teacher who brings peace of mind and body to the harried masses through her JivaDiva Yoga Jam Rush Series podcasts.

These 20-minute Jivamukti-style yoga classes and five-minute philosophy lectures can be uploaded to your computer or MP3 player, providing an easy way to inject time some "me time" into your life, especially on those days when attending an hour-long yoga class is impossible or when you're traveling on a business trip with little time for yourself.

A 20-minute rush series may seem like an easy way to appeal to the masses, but the classes aren't for the novice yogi. Given the time-crunched nature of the series, poses move quickly and listeners must have knowledge of the Sanskrit terms for downward dog, plank and the like, as Kaivalya often references the poses in their native language. To remedy this disconnect for those new to their Jivamukti practice, the JivaDiva's Web site [1] offers some video podcasts and contains some helpful links for those looking to get acquainted with the practice.

And there most certainly is a Yoga Jam Rush Series to fit your needs, as the focuses of the yoga podcasts vary greatly. There are the aesthetic classes, dedicated to refining your backside for one, though Kaivalya maintains yogi integrity by urging you to set a higher intention for the class other than a nice rear end. There are also the more mindful sessions, such as the balance class dedicated to a female soldier recently deployed to Iraq. Likewise, lecture series range from the history of fish pose to a special interview with Sharon Gannon and David Life, co-founders of Jivamukti Yoga. [2]

The sessions are available for download via iTunes [3] so they have the added bonus of being free, though Kaivalya recently added advertising content at the beginning and end of each session in an effort to keep it as such. While an ad for a free iPod Nano isn't exactly what you want to hear while stirring awake from Shavasana, the value of the podcast lies in its convenience and accessibility.

LIME caught up with Kaivalya to chat about what the history of the year-old podcast just before she departed to teach yoga in Australia.

LIME: How did you get started with the podcast?

Alanna Kaivalya: A little over a year ago my boyfriend came home and was listening to The Dawn and Drew Show [4] podcast [about a young couple who fled city life to a dairy farm in Wisconsin]. He started telling me about it, but it didn't make any sense to me that people would do radio casts for free, so that night I went online and learned everything I could about podcasting. Also, a lot of my students had asked questions about how they could keep up their practice while traveling, and I thought podcasting would be the perfect format for that. I started it in July 2005. When I started there weren't any other yoga podcasts.

LIME: What made you decide to cater to the time-crunched crowd?

Kaivalya: I had been reading a magazine called Breathe and they have a section focused on 15-minute yoga series. I thought that was a clever idea. Plus, I thought that a short format would be more accessible.

LIME: Where do you get the inspiration for your yoga podcasts?

Kaivalya: There are a couple of podcasts that have been recorded in classes, but mostly I sit at home with my eyes closed and visualize the practice and talk through it. All my classes come from my heart. I don't really have a plan beforehand, most of the time I have a theme and write down a couple of postures that I want to get in there. To have a quality 20-minute podcast takes me about two hours. I do have to make some edits and I'm not the world's best editor. It's very time consuming and I want to make sure I do a good job. Listeners can always e-mail me and request a specific class through my Web site, too. With all these people doing this podcast, I think it's a nice way to make our global community a little smaller.

LIME: You have listeners from all over the world. What has feedback been like?

Kaivalya: It's been pretty amazing. There's a woman who emailed me who works with a tour group, traveling all over the world to Mongolia, China, and Korea and where she goes there is no yoga. That was really amazing to me, that she was traveling that much and was still able to keep up with her practice. And there's Kelly, who is a soldier in Iraq. She's so inspiring, she's just doing her job—her husband's in the army and she doesn't want to be separated from him. To know that people in places like Iraq can [keep up with their practice] is pretty amazing.

LIME: We hear the JivaDiva Jam Series is up for a Podcast Award [5].

Kaivalya: It got nominated for the health and fitness section. I'm not sure when the results come out, but voting ended on August 11. I noticed that when I upload a podcast, my subscription base jumps, so I recorded another 15 podcasts to try and encourage people to go vote.

LIME: How many subscribers do you currently have?

Kaivalya: I post a new podcast every Friday and get about 3,000 to 5,000 new subscribers every week. Right now, I have about 130,000 subscribers. I feel like I'm teaching the biggest yoga class every week. It's so encouraging to know that people every week commit to their yoga practice and I love that idea that no matter what country we're from, there's something we can come together on. Knowing that 130,000 people are taking time to be silent and move, gives me hope.

LIME: You also recently started a podcast with your boyfriend, Kevin, correct?

Kaivalya: Yes, it's called, "This Yoga Life," and it focuses more around the lifestyle of yoga. We talk about the difficulties of cycling or being vegetarian [5], for example. My friend Sarah, who lives in Australia and turns up in my podcasts quite frequently, suggested the idea to me. And Kevin has always wanted to do a podcast since he's the one who originally brought the idea home. I also started it because I didn't want to just be this cosmic voice coming through the speakers. I wanted students to hear me talk and let them know that yoga makes me feel good, but that I also live it and breathe it, and hopefully in some small way offer support.

LIME: What lies ahead for you and the JivaDiva podcast?

Kaivalya: More traveling and teaching. I live in Denver, but I travel so much that my home base is my podcast-that's the thing that's consistent every week. I'm so blessed to be doing what I'm doing, I'm really thankful that people have latched onto this.

photo by Annik Harris