Episode Details

Embodied Enlightenment with Cari Merriam

Our guest for this week is Cari Merriam, an expert health and lifestyle fitness guide with a mission to increase global happiness.

Cari has been fighting adversity her entire life. Throughout her childhood, she was heavily medicated due to depression and anxiety issues. Her struggles with mental illness led her to a life of drug addiction and self-abuse.

She found a way out in Core Power Yoga. After an emotional breakthrough experience, Cari resumed to challenge herself physically and spiritually and joined the 200-hour Yoga Alliance teacher training. Since then, Cari has gone on to teach over 2000 classes, lead BootCamps, Cleanses, and support Teacher Training nationally for Core Power Yoga. She has certifications in vinyasa, yin, sculpt, meditation, and breathwork (pranayama yoga).

Cari founded a lifestyle brand called Strength and Surrender meant to empower, motivate and teach you how to rebuild the love you have for yourself and strengthen your mind, body, and soul. In 2016, she moved to Bali and ever since, she’s been working on awakening others into their highest self-potential. You can check out her channel on YouTube and see what her intelligent workouts based on yogic philosophy and practice are all about.

She has her own podcast called Embodied Enlightenment where each week she discusses a wide array of diverse and interesting topics with her guests. Her intention is to shift your energetic experience of your everyday life, push you to think differently about your internal and external world, and to activate the greatness within you through conscious obtainable action.   

Cari is on a mission to awaken self-love in others and she is focusing on teaching others how to live a life of freedom, passion, and purpose.

Connect with Cari:

• Website: http://www.carimerriam.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CariMerriamHealer
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/carimerriam
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamcarimerriam/?hl=en

Cari’s Story of Inspired Evolution

Having been riddled with anxiety and depression in her youth and with no alternative to heavy medication, Cari’s origin story is one of struggle and adversity. In later years she suffered from drug addiction to the point in which her life was seriously endangered.

“I was almost on my deathbed, and in New York City because I was doing so much cocaine.” - Cari Merriam

One night, she decided to leave the bubble that drove her to the same paths of self-destruction and the universe responded with an unexpected encounter. She met a friend, her soul-sister, which opened her eyes to a new way. She planted an idea in Cari’s brain about Core Power Yoga, believing it could be an answer to the question she had been looking for.

“I remember I went into Core Power and just balled my eyes out the first class. I completely lost it. It was the first time I felt like someone held space and saw me.” - Cari Merriam

The transformation she felt every time she practiced Yoga kept her coming back to the point where she decided to sign up for a program and become a teacher herself. In a peculiar situation where she was working as a bartender at a strip club by day, and going to teacher tra