This week on Authbition, I’m joined by Dharna Ashar, a writer, yoga instructor, former flight attendant, mother, teacher, and real human joining me from Dubai.
As long as you have a body, you can do yoga.
Dharna has lived what she describes as a few lives. She spent 12 years in aviation, served passengers around the world, became a mother, trained as a yoga teacher in India, taught yoga in Dubai and France, and is now beginning to write and reflect on the many stories she has carried along the way.
This conversation moves from airplanes to yoga mats, from Dubai to France, from meditation to writing, and from absorbing life’s intensity to learning how to observe it with presence.
👉 Listen or watch here:
YouTube | Spotify | Apple | Amazon
This episode felt like another breakthrough moment for Authbition.
When I started the podcast, every guest was someone I reached out to directly. I was the one asking. I was the one inviting. I was the one saying, please come on this show with me while I figure out what this thing is becoming.
Then something interesting happened.
People started reaching out to me.
At first, that felt exciting. Then it got weird.
A lot of the people reaching out were not really people. Or at least, they didn’t feel like real people. AI-generated pitches. Fake publicists. Polished messages with no human center.
That experience has become part of the reason I care so much about Authbition as a Medium publication, too. I want to find real humans. Real writers. Real photographs. Real stories. Real art. Real people doing the vulnerable, imperfect, beautiful work of making something honest.
And somehow, Authbition is becoming more global than I ever expected.
I’ve had conversations with guests in Spain. I’ve connected with writers in India. Stefanie, Authbition’s designer and two-time guest, is in Prague. And now Dharna joins me from Dubai.
That makes me smile.
This little podcast I started from Raleigh, North Carolina, is slowly becoming a way to connect with real humans all around the world.
Dharna is one of those real humans.
We connected on Medium, where she is beginning to share her writing. I didn’t know exactly where the conversation would go when we started, but quickly, I could feel how much life was in the room.
Or maybe across the screen.
I was in the Finger Lakes when I recorded the introduction and in Virginia when we recorded the show together. Dharna joined me from Dubai. Somewhere between those places, we found a conversation about aviation, yoga, motherhood, teaching, writing, and what it means to live many lives without losing the thread of who we are.
Dharna opens the conversation by saying she has lived a few lives.
That becomes the natural shape of the episode.
Her first life was in aviation. She began flying at 18, worked for multiple airlines, and eventually joined Emirates after losing her job during the difficult years after 9/11. She talks about serving passengers at 40,000 feet, the discipline of airline life, and the strange gift of getting paid to see the world.
She also talks about travel with the kind of detail only someone who has spent years in the air can offer.
Zimbabwe. Sydney. Maldives. Japan.
When she described Japan, I knew exactly what she meant. The cleanliness. The order. The care. The feeling that modern life and ancient wisdom somehow live side by side.
From there, the conversation moves from the sky to the yoga mat.
Yoga had been part of Dharna’s life before she became a teacher, but something still felt incomplete. So she went to India for yoga teacher training.
This was not the soft, candlelit version of yoga.
It was hot. It was intense. It was uncomfortable. It was full of ants, mosquitoes, creepy crawlies, long days, slow fans, and very little comfort.
Meditation did not come easily.
She could not sit still. She kept opening her eyes. She wondered how everyone else was doing it. She could not follow her breath. She could not force the stillness to arrive.
Then she said the line that resonated.
Meditation is practice, practice, practice.
That is the center of this conversation for me.
Not just meditation.
Yoga is a practice. Writing is a practice. Listening is a practice. Becoming a real human is a practice.
Dharna’s yoga training changed the way she saw herself and the world. She came back to Dubai with a different pair of eyes. The material things that once mattered so much began to lose their hold. Matching shoes and bags no longer carried the same meaning. Something had shifted.
From there, she began teaching yoga in Dubai, in homes, communities, schools, corporate settings, and even through chair yoga.
One of my favorite lines from the episode is her simple teaching philosophy:
As long as you have a body, you can do yoga.
That sentence has so much humanity in it.
It is not about the perfect studio. It is not about the perfect body. It is not about the perfect pose.
It is about breath, presence, attention, and meeting people where they are.
Dharna’s yoga journey later moved to France, where she found herself teaching in a rural countryside setting very different from the life she had known in Dubai. Some students paid with vegetables. Some paid with cookies. Some came with Parkinson’s, Lyme disease, arthritis, pain, and stories that reminded her what real people carry.
That part of the conversation moved me.
It wasn’t yoga as performance.
It was yoga as service.
In this episode, Dharna and I play The Whole Mind Game around the tension:
Observe <> Absorb
This one came directly from Dharna’s life.
As a yoga teacher, mother, writer, and deeply empathetic person, she has had to learn how to witness other people’s pain without taking all of it into herself.
That is not easy.
To observe is to see clearly.
To absorb is to feel deeply.
Observation without absorption can become cold, distant, and detached.
Absorption without observation can become overwhelming, exhausting, and self-erasing.
The best of the best is not choosing one over the other.
The best of the best is learning how to stay open without drowning.
That is what I heard in Dharna’s stories. She has listened to people in pain. She has taught students who needed more than a sequence of poses. She has carried her own hard chapters. She has learned, again and again, that breath creates space between what happens and how we respond.
In the Whole Mind Game, this becomes the real practice:
Care deeply.
Stay grounded.
Feel honestly.
Do not disappear.
That might be one of the great human tensions.
How do I keep my heart open without letting the whole world move in and wreck the place?
This episode matters because it is about practice.
Not polished practice.
Not perfect practice.
Real practice.
The kind that happens when the room is too hot, and the mosquitoes are in your ears. The kind that happens when you are trying to build a life in a new place and nothing feels familiar. The kind that happens when a student cries before the yoga class even begins. The kind that happens when you sit down to write after living so many lives and wonder where to begin.
I keep coming back to the connection between meditation and writing.
Dharna is early in her Medium writing journey. I’m further along in mine, but not finished. Not even close. We are both practicing.
That is one of the reasons I love these conversations. They remind me that Authbition is not about having everything figured out. It is about being in honest motion. It is about trying, reflecting, learning, and staying human while doing it.
Dharna’s story begins in the air, but the wisdom is on the ground.
Breathe.
Pause.
Observe.
Feel.
Let go.
Practice again tomorrow.
👉 Press play:
YouTube | Spotify | Apple | Amazon
Thanks to Dharna Ashar for joining me on Authbition, for sharing so many chapters of her life, and for trusting me with a conversation that moved through aviation, yoga, motherhood, teaching, writing, and the practice of becoming more fully human.
Find Dharna on Medium as From Sky to Soul
And thanks to everyone following along with Authbition as this show continues to grow into what it’s becoming.