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Posted October 20, 2025

Introduction:

 

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Transcript:

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Hi, my name is David Pace, and this is Pace Yourself, a University of Utah College of Science podcast on wellness. Today our guest is Charlotte Bell, who has been practicing yoga since 1982, and began teaching in 1986. She has established and taught regular classes along Utah’s Wasatch Front, and in California, and Hawaii, and also teaches workshops, teacher trainings, and yoga for cancer patients and their families at Huntsman Cancer Institute here at the U. She has taught at national yoga conferences and international yoga teacher trainings, and on women’s river trips on the Green and Colorado rivers. She’s also the author of three books, including most recently, “Hip, Healthy, Asana.”

Welcome.

Charlotte Bell

Thank you. Nice to be here, David.

 

David Pace

I was just, we were just talking before the recording started, that we go way back to the mid-80s, when Charlotte and I met, doing alternative newspaper work, editing, as well as writing. And then later, Charlotte, you, I know, had a column in Catalyst magazine for many years, talking about yoga and mindfulness.

And so, tell us how you got started with yoga, and, also, what kind of yoga you do, because clearly there are different kinds, and there are different reasons why we do yoga. And we’ll also talk about the phenomenon of yoga as a cultural and social phenomenon. Anyway, tell us how you got into yoga.

Charlotte Bell

Well, it was really curiosity. I had taken ballet when I was a kid, and so I knew I was extremely flexible, probably not in a healthy way, actually, as I came to learn later.

David Pace

So anatomically, you were both gifted and troubled by it.

Charlotte Bell

Yeah, really loose ligaments. Well, I wasn’t troubled by it until I got older. Oh, okay. But I was just curious about it, and, actually, my first exposure was seeing a commercial on TV of a woman doing these kind of crazy poses, and I thought, oh, I could do that.

But I didn’t start doing it until much later. As you said, I started in 1982. And I wasn’t actually immediately so drawn to the fact that I could do everything. It was more how I felt when I was finished with the practice. Because yoga is different from a lot of other physical disciplines in that you spend the last 10 or 15 minutes just lying down and letting everything integrate. And at the end of that very first class, I thought, oh, I am home. This is what I need to do. And so, I just continued from there.

 

David Pace

So, you’re talking about Savasana at the end?

 

Charlotte Bell:

Yes. And so tell us, there’s this notion, you can talk about possible oxymoron … and so just to our listening audience, no Charlotte, Charlotte gave just a gesture like, I don’t think so.

Well, tell us about the, well, what is the purpose and value of yoga for you? Because is it just about the movements itself, the poses, which is what I think most of us think of when we think of yoga. I guess what I’m trying to get at is the backstory to yoga and the value for it, ultimately, for wellness, integrated wellness.

 

Charlotte Bell

Yoga is a whole system. The asanas, the poses are just one part of it in the yoga sutras, which is the only yoga text that I’m really well versed in, because a good friend of mine and I studied them for seven years together. We would meet once a month and take sections of either three, four, or five little sutras and just really delve into them during the month. And then we’d meet and talk about it. And I used 11 different translations in order to kind of flesh it out for me.

 

David Pace

Is it a specific school?

 

Charlotte Bell

Not really. No, not really. The sutras were written, like, long before Hinduism ever started. And, you know, like, two or three thousand BCE. Or, I mean, before, yeah, BCE. And so, the main part that I’ve focused on are what are called the eight limbs of yoga. And the first limb, really the foundation of it is ethical behavior, moral behavior. So things like, like, non-harming, being truthful, not stealing.

 

David Pace

So character development really.

And practicing that. And traditionally in India, people learn the first two, which I’ll give you the second one in a minute. The first two limbs of yoga before they ever started practicing asana, the physical practice.

The second limb is practices called niyama. And they’re practices that are, that help us to live a more peaceful life. Things like, saucha means cleanliness. And that applies to not only keeping our bodies clean and healthy, but the space around us, our minds. So, for me, one of my saucha practices for my mind is not going to see violent films.

You know, I mean, keeping that kind of toxicity out of my mind, because I can really tell how agitating it is.

Then there’s practicing contentment, being, you know, content with what is, what you have in your life. There are five niyamas. And then there’s asana, which is a physical practice.

 

David Pace

Which is what I think most people popularly think is yoga.

 

Charlotte Bell

Yeah, and most people would just call that yoga. And stop there. And then there’s pranayama, which is the breathing practices. And I really like to integrate the pranayama and the asana together.  So that when we’re, when we’re practicing the asanas, we’re working with the body’s natural rhythms. I don’t dictate to people when to breathe. I tell them to let their pose grow out of the breath instead.

 

David Pace

Interesting. So this shouting and commanding, find your breath, is maybe a little bit too aggressive.

 

Charlotte Bell

Yeah. It’s not conducive to, it’s not conducive to the goal of yoga. And I’ll go through the other four limbs briefly. But the next one is called pratyahara. And that means letting go of our addiction to the senses.

And that starts to happen as we pay attention to what’s going on. And, and as we, if we practice mindfully integrating breath and movement, then we start to kind of let go of being really pulled one way or the other by our senses.

 

David Pace

So there’s a difference though between addiction to senses and awareness.

 

Charlotte Bell

Yeah, we’re still aware, but we’re not, we’re not allowing it to become, overwhelming one way or the other. And then there’s dharana, which is, um, concentration. Dhyana, which is meditation. And then there’s samadhi, is the eighth limb.

And so, all the limbs, they’re not like a, a stairstep. They’re not hierarchical. They’re all, they’re kind of more like the wheels or the spokes on a wheel. They all contribute to this goal or this intention of becoming more peaceful. And the asanas are actually designed to work on the nervous system rather than to—I mean, there are side benefits of flexibility and strength and balance and things like that but that’s not the actual goal. The actual goal, according to BKS Iyengar, who I studied with in 1989 in India.

The thing that he said that stuck with me most was that this practice is about creating an environment of calm and ease for the mind. And that’s what I initially felt in that very first yoga class I took. And that’s what attracted me to it.

 

David Pace

What is, what is yoga an antidote to? If there’s an issue or a problem in our contemporary lives, what is it? I mean, I think I know the answer to that, but, um, you just talked about the calmness and the, what was the other word you used? I mean, I think I was, um, that’s the sense of being whole, perhaps is, is what you were talking about.

Why do people need that or, or, or do they? I mean, obviously everybody’s got their own disciplines, their own practices, their own theologies if you’re religious. But how is this a fix to some of the issues that we are faced with today?

 

Charlotte Bell

Wow. That’s a big question…

 

David Pace

Well, I’m thinking of the culture of distraction, for example.

 

Charlotte Bell

Yeah. Well, I mean, it is a method of, if, I mean, depending on how you practice it, like you, as you said, there are lots of different kinds of yoga now. And the goal for some of those types of yoga is to be stronger and more flexible and to sweat.

And I’m not saying there’s not value to that, but I don’t know that it’s actually the, it doesn’t have a lot to do with the original intent of yoga. And I don’t know that that’s what yoga does best.

If I want to get cardio, I’ll take a hike, or I’ll take a, you know, a brisk walk or something that works better for me than yoga. For me, yoga is about developing the sense of equanimity.

And we all can use equanimity no matter what the situation, because it’s so easy to get thrown off balance by wanting things to be different by all the distractions in our lives.

And some of them are pleasant, some of them are unpleasant. We spend a lot of time in neutral territory, too. But it seems like we’re always wanting things to be different. And the way I teach yoga, I really keep encouraging people to just stay in their bodies and be with what is.

And as you start, the practice becomes so much more satisfying that you don’t want it to be different. You just want to be there. And that’s a practice of then learning how to be okay with whatever is happening. Which doesn’t mean that you don’t have to, that you don’t change things that aren’t healthy or positive for yourself. But to just, to be able to live from a place of clarity, rather than reactivity.

 

David Pace

Yeah, just to define for our listeners. And this is from AI. So, put on a helmet.

“Equanimity is a state of mental and emotional stability and composure, remaining calm, open, and balanced in the face of challenging or distressing situations. Rather than suppressing feelings or becoming unbalanced by them.”

Is that fair enough?

Charlotte Bell

Yeah. Sometimes people interpret it as indifference. And it’s not the same thing. Indifference is, there’s an element of aversion and, ‘oh, that thing is over there and I, you know, I’m not going to pay attention to it.’ Equanimity is fully engaged and yet able to be non-reactive to what’s going on, which then allows you to respond to situations with greater skill.

 

David Pace

So, on your website, you talk about applying mindful attention to gain insight into the truth of each individual’s asana practices, which is the physical, you know, the poses, rather than striving for preconceived goals.

What that means is that when I walk into the yoga studio or the yoga space, that I probably initially, that’s what gets me there, have a preconceived goal. Like, I’m going to really kill that, you know, that mongoose or whatever it is where you’ve got your hands behind you.

I’m really going to kill it, right? I mean, this notion and this ambitious, goal-driven thing has to be dissipated. And I think a good yogi will tell you that at the beginning, or at least the ones that I’ve had, which is, “hey, let’s create this space here now and talk about what it is why we’re here, right? Is that maybe what you’re talking about?

Charlotte Bell

The competitive, the comparing mind is the hardest thing to let go of. I mean, my very first yoga teacher talked all the time about how this is not about what you can and can’t do. This is not about what the person next to you is doing. And I really liked that about it. And yet, I still, for many years, prided myself in being the person who could put my ankle behind my head or being the person who had the most flexible body and could do all these crazy things.

My dad was a gymnast, and so I inherited a lot of the qualities that his body had.

 

David Pace

But being a gymnast is very performative, too.

 

Charlotte Bell

Yeah, I mean, I still found myself being performative, and I still found myself being comparing, even as I was telling my students that was not what it was about. But it’s such an ingrained pattern for all of us. And, you know, I think systems like power yoga and all the different vinyasa types of yoga, which are more physical, they’re a way to get people in the door.

And some people stay with that, and that’s right for them. That’s an integrity for them. And other people want to go deeper, and they will go deeper and into the other limbs and, you know, the other aspects of yoga. And I don’t have any judgment about the way people, you know, people are going to do what is an integrity for them, and that’s good.

But, Joseph Goldstein, who is one of, Phillip’s and my main meditation teachers, we worked with him at Spirit Rock in California. He said that the Buddha said that the last thing that goes away before you become enlightened is the comparing mind.

So, it’s really in there, you know, and whether it’s competing against your fellow students or competing against yourself, like, I’m really going to kill that pose today. That is something that is really a part of us. We can get over it. And I find as I get older, and as, you know, two hip replacements later, you know, and some humbling. I don’t really feel that competitiveness anymore, and the practice is so much more about peace and equanimity in the practice when you’re not thinking, oh, it should be this way. I should be doing, you know, a different pose than I’m doing, or I should be doing what I did when I was 30.

 

David Pace

I’m reminded of a friend who went to Croatia on vacation and wanted to keep her practice up, and she went in to this yoga studio in Croatia—talking about the varieties of yoga, because it is a cultural phenomenon. It has become that— and it was hard rock blaring the entire time that she was in there, which was, of course, very different than her experience back home, where it was more meditative. But, you know, I mean, and everyone was having a good time. Everyone was sweating buckets, but she said, oh, yeah, it was just very interesting to realize that there’s this whole suite of ways that we engage in this practice, and different ideas about what it might mean.

 

Charlotte Bell

Yeah, and there are classes here that have playlists of rock music, too. There are classes in this country.

 

David Pace

So, you don’t have to go to Croatia for that.

 

Charlotte Bell

No, you don’t. I’m not sure where they are, because I’m not interested in doing that. As a musician, I don’t want any music in my classes, because. Oh, interesting. It’s too distracting for me. Okay. I’m interpreting it, and it’s one layer away. It keeps you one layer away from being in your body, for most people.

 

David Pace

Yeah. I think, though, that that’s a good segue into your musical life. For those who may not know, and I didn’t talk about this in the introduction, but Charlotte is a musician, and has worked with a variety of chamber chamber orchestras, and symphonies, right?

 

Charlotte Bell

Yeah, well, I play with this, I’ve been playing with the Salt Lake Symphony, this is my 30th year. And they rehearse right over there in Libby Gardner. I’ve been playing with oboe and English horn with them for 30 years this year.

And I also played with Red Rock Rondo, which was Phillip Bimstein and Kate McLeod, Hal Cannon, Harold Carr, Flavia Serrino Wood. We played for a number of years. It’s a sextet. And, and we called it chamber folk. Just partly because of the way we arrange the songs, but also because of,  just the instrumentation.

 

David Pace

So, tell me a little bit about how that has informed your wellness practice, not just with yoga, but just in general, maybe mindfulness, or has it? Is this a separate part of your life?

 

Charlotte Bell

Oh, no. I would say my first experience with being absorbed in the moment with mindfulness was playing the piano when I was a kid. And it was really a great outlet for me. In my family, I was the one that was supposed to be no trouble. And so I was not really allowed to express myself, but I could express myself through music.

 

David Pace

Okay. This is in Indiana?

 

Charlotte Bell

Cincinnati area, but in Indiana. So, I, I’ve always felt like the music was my first meditation. And then there was a period of time when I didn’t play a lot. And during that time, I was going to lots of concerts and, you know, forty Grateful Dead shows. And that was, that was also an experience of being in the moment.

 

David Pace

Oh, absolutely. In the mosh pit, as Phillip Bimstein says. Right. And I became, uh, I became involved in the Telluride Bluegrass Festival and have been working for them since 1984.

So music has always been an avenue for me. And the Grateful Dead, I would say, definitely informs the way I teach yoga. When I first started teaching, I would plan my class out to the minute. And then I started realizing that my class plan didn’t really—after a couple years of that, I started realizing that my class plan wasn’t really what the students needed. And I would just, I started just going in and just winging it the way the Grateful Dead do.

But by that time, I knew enough about sequencing and how to build a class up to create an arc, and then allow it to kind of become calmer and calmer toward the end, leading to Shavasana. So by that time, I knew more about, you know, what poses were heating for the nervous system, what poses were cooling. I knew how to create a class on the fly that would accomplish what I wanted to accomplish whether we were doing a bunch of standing poses or a bunch of things lying down. It didn’t matter. I wanted to create a class with an arc.

 

David Pace

A bunch of composition, a musical composition.

 

Charlotte Bell

What the Grateful Dead did was they came out on stage without a set list, and they never played the same show twice and never played the songs the same way. And so, in a way, I feel like that experience really helped me understand how to be responsive to the moment in my yoga classes and responsive to the people who were there, which then really helped me in working with cancer patients.

 

David Pace

I wanted to talk about that. But before we do that, I want to play to the strengths of this medium, which is a sonic or audio. Because I think that I can’t think of you or yoga without your musical career folded into that because of my friendship with you.

I wanted to play an excerpt from “Hay Colored Leaves,” which is performed by Red Rock Rondo, which you mentioned as part of your Zion Canyon Song cycle. And I forget what year that came out.

Charlotte Bell

I think it was 2006 or 2007.

 

David Pace

And it’s really, you know, it celebrates Zion National Park, but through the human stories that took place in Springdale and, the other small town there.

 

Charlotte Bell

Rockville.

 

David Pace

Thank you, Rockville. Yeah. And I have to say, just off the top of my head, it’s one of my favorite albums of all time. And I think, I think one of the reasons why is because it speaks to my hometown, my home state. And it positions with great respect and sadness sometimes, but also celebration of the life that we lead here in the Mountain West.

So, I wanted to play an excerpt from that. And it’s got Kate McLeod, who sings the lead. And Charlotte, you play the really beautiful introduction and interlude on your English horn. And tell us a little bit more about this particular piece or the song cycle in general, if you want, before we listen.

 

Charlotte Bell

Well, the song cycle was conceived by Phillip Bimstein, who was the mayor of Springdale for eight years.

 

David Pace

And Springdale is the town right outside Zion National Park.

 

Charlotte Bell

And so he got to know a lot of the old timers who had a lot of historic stories about the town. And he, you know, he got to know the town pretty well, being mayor, because there’s, he had to kind of know every, everybody and all the, a lot of the history and the dynamics between the pioneers and the people who’d moved in and all that stuff.

This “Hay-Colored Leaves” is based on a story that Philip gathered from a woman named Louise Excel, who was an English professor. But she talked about how she missed seeing the mulberry trees that were planted as part of the—I can’t think of the name of it, one of the program—one of the Depression era programs. They were planted there, but as the town has become more developed, they’re being chopped down.

So that’s what the song is about.

David Pace

Let’s listen to it.

 

[Music Excerpt]

 

In closing, I wanted to talk briefly about your experience at the Huntsman Cancer Institute. Tell me about how yoga can assist with cancer survivors and their loved ones.

 

Charlotte Bell

In 2016, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I had already been teaching yoga to cancer patients since 1997. But I was diagnosed, and I got my diagnosis by coincidence on the first day of an 18-day silent meditation retreat that I attended at Spirit Rock in California. And it just worked out that way. I had had my screening 10 days before, and then they called me in, and I wasn’t going to get the results back until the first day of the retreat.

And, you know, after, well, I started practicing mindfulness in 1988, and I’ve been really consistent with that practice over the years. And after the initial adrenaline rush that I felt when they gave me my diagnosis over the phone, I found that there was… I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, for myself to start going into, ‘oh, what did I do to deserve this? Or why, why me? Or poor me,’ or…

 

David Pace

I think you call it the freak-out.

 

Charlotte Bell

Yeah. I didn’t get into that at all. It was like, okay, I need to deal with this. And the people, the retreat managers, even though it was a silent retreat, let me use the phones to call my insurance and make an appointment with a surgeon. And they let me take care of all the details I needed to take care of, so that when I got home, I was ready to go.

And once I did that, and that was quite a process because, you know, the hospital would call me or the insurance would call me, and the retreat managers would leave a note on the bulletin board, and then I’d go call them back. And sometimes I had to leave a message, and then, you know, it took some doing. Because we were on a silent retreat, and I didn’t have instant access to a phone. But once I was able to get all that done, I could just be with, okay, this is a new context for me. And it is what it is, and I just need to be with it. And there wasn’t any of the self-blaming or self-pitying or anything like that. It was, and in fact, there was a lot of equanimity.

And it made me realize that mindfulness was, even though I’d been teaching yoga to cancer patients for years, that mindfulness practice itself was such an important part of it, too. Being able to be with your mind stuff, you know, your own mind stuff, and to understand that it’s not real. We’re just, you know, all these judgments that we have of ourselves, and the ideas we have about ourselves, they’re not real.

You know, we can take them or leave them, but often we get really super involved in them. And by the time I had that diagnosis, I was in a place where it was like, I’m just not doing that anymore. And I wanted to be able to share that with people who are going through cancer, whether they’re patients or whether they’re caregivers who are also going through a lot. And the staff at Huntsman is allowed to come to classes, too.

So, but with yoga, as you said, people develop a kind of an antagonistic relationship with their body. And in my classes, especially at Huntsman, I want to provide them a place where they can still feel good and enjoy being in their bodies, basically. To try to kind of dismantle that idea that we have to be in a battle with our bodies. Yeah, that we’re fighting. We’re in a battle with cancer. Well, we may be in a battle with cancer, but we don’t have to be in a battle with our bodies.

 

David Pace

That’s a really powerful distinction to make. And absolutely necessary to make.

 

Charlotte Bell

Yeah. And I think, I mean, I have students that have been with me the whole 10 or 11 years I’ve been teaching at Huntsman. And some of them are, you know, way out of treatment now. But they still find value in it.

 

David Pace

Well, I haven’t suffered from cancer myself. That may be down the road for me. But I have found value in yoga because it’s helped me be a better motorcycle rider.

 

Charlotte Bell

Well, it helps with balance. Is it the balance issue?

 

David Pace

I actually had my buddy behind me going, your yoga is really showing in the way you drive that motorcycle. I was like, thank you.

 

Charlotte Bell

That’s Great. And balance is so important as we age because, you know, the number one cause of injury-related death for seniors is falling.

 

David Pace

Yeah. Yeah. In fact, I see you and Phillip in the gym. Yeah. That’s where we connected to do this podcast doing resistance training. So, it sounds like you’re doing a whole suite of practices.

Charlotte Bell

Yeah. Well, trying to balance my hypermobility. Which I didn’t try to do for many years. I thought it was good because I could do all the stuff, you know?

 

David Pace

Well, our guest today has been Charlotte Bell. I want to thank you for being here and sharing with us your story as well as your advice on the topic of yoga, which, as we were saying earlier, has become really a global phenomenon. And it’s nice to have a stable, “equalibrious,” is that a word?, voice talking about how yoga can maybe impact us and help elevate our pursuit of wellness.

Charlotte is the author of three books. I mentioned the “Hip Healthy Asana,” but she’s also the author of “Mindful Yoga, Mindful Life: The Guide for Everyday Practice,” and “Yoga for Meditators.”

Thank you so much for being here with us today.

 

Charlotte Bell

Thank you.

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