29 Apr Alchemy Yoga Turns Struggle Into a Transformative Everyday Practice
Ayako DeRuby, founder and CEO of The Alchemy Yoga and author of Mind Alchemy, shares how she built a wellness lifestyle brand that blends yoga, meditation, and sound healing to de-stress modern life.
Opening Scene Moment
The blue glow of the studio lamps washes over the mats as Ayako DeRuby finishes a breath and the room settles into a hush. Jeff Crilley’s voice fades in from the doorway, and the first thing you hear is the soft ping of wind chimes that seem to braid into the sound of a breath held just a beat too long. The energy in the space feels almost patient, as if the room itself is waiting for something to shift—from stress to something more spacious, more real.
Ayako sits with a calm that almost glows, a presence that makes the word zen feel earned rather than borrowed. The interview starts not with her awards or her studio’s design but with the simple, stubborn question of how to be present in a world that never stops moving. And just as the room seems to tighten into focus, the bigger story loosens—the idea that a single hour on the mat can rewire a day’s worth of hurry into something more navigable.
Origin Story Emergence
I started in 2008, became a teacher in 2012, Ayako explains, her voice tracing the arc with the same clarity she teaches a pose. She introduces the origin in concrete terms: a path through yoga, meditation, and Vipassana practice that began in childhood wonder and became a professional vow. Very unexpected, she says, I felt great but my face started swelling and so a couple of months of like trying to figure out what's going on.
Origin Story Emergence
She recalls how a disciplined practice collided with a life-altering diagnosis, a turning point that wasn’t advertised as destiny but forced her to reweave meaning. That time, sitting in the chemo chair is when I actually started listening to sound healing music, she recalls, and the room grows quieter as the memory lands. I was skeptical at first because I felt like it was cheating, she adds, a line that underscores the stubborn skepticism many of us bring to healing. Yet her candor keeps the story intimate, not triumphant, and the next detail lands with a quiet resolve: mother nature does make things, helps us to, in different ways to, I don't know, heal, I guess is the word I would use.
Turning Point Moment
The turning point comes into sharp focus as she speaks about the chemo chair becoming a kind of classroom. The best six months of my life, but I was so present with every moment, she says, and you feel the way that sentence lands in the room—hard-won clarity born from a moment that could have broken her. I heard a wind chime in my backyard that heard for years and I feel like I heard it for the first time, she recalls, tracing a memory that becomes a thesis: presence changes perception, even at your most vulnerable. And the line that follows—transformation, that transmutation of alchemy—lands like a hinge, signaling how a personal crisis would become a professional mandate. I wanna live life like this. I wanna live life as the alchemist of every moment, she declares, and the room seems to lean in to hear the vow again.
The Pivot Forward
From that clarity arrives a practical, business-minded pivot: alchemy, as she explains, is about taking moments that feel wrong or ordinary and making them serve you. So alchemy is that. It's taking these moments in life that seems like it's wrong or ordinary and we make it something that can serve you or serve ourselves and make it extraordinary. The pivot extends beyond studio walls into a whole ecosystem: Remembrance Retreats in Costa Rica, where Ayahuasca and earth medicines become portals for deep healing, and a logistics side she cheerfully embraces: I call myself a travel agent. I love it. Because I set everything up and I help with integration. Her confidence is matched by what the retreats have become: we sold out for three years. I just opened up registration for twenty twenty seven within two days. That's amazing.
Broader Industry Context
The conversation widens to the culture of pace and presence in a tech-driven era. There is a night-and-day difference between running on instant gratification and learning to slow down, a tension she tests with a practical breath-work approach: right now I do believe that it is imperative to be able to find a way to be present and with the moment. It’s not about abandoning progress but about shifting the tempo so life doesn’t pass in a blur. And then there’s a note of accessibility—walking barefoot in the grass, with no music, as a simple doorway into stillness—proof that slow, not flashy, solutions can land in real life. The mix of studio design and Earth medicines is a deliberate bet on giving people tools that fit into different rhythms of living.
Closing Forward Look
Ayako circles back to the core thread of her work: grounding people in the present and giving them a compass for navigating emotion. I want to be with the experience and softly hold space for ourselves, she says, and the phrasing lands like a quiet promise to anyone listening. The future, she suggests, is a continuum of practice—the deepening becoming a natural extension of the foundation, feeding a community that seeks not escape but comprehension and care.
Footer And Credits
Ayako DeRuby | Founder, The Alchemy Yoga | Website: alchemyyoga.com. The Alchemy Yoga is a wellness lifestyle brand offering yoga and meditation classes, sound healing, and retreats. The interview was produced by The Jeff Crilley Show, recorded at the studio. Costa Rica and Earth medicine retreats are part of Ayako DeRuby’s expanded practice, and remain central to her mission of turning everyday moments into opportunities for transformation.
Ayako DeRuby | Founder, The Alchemy Yoga | Website: alchemyyoga.com. The Alchemy Yoga is a wellness lifestyle brand offering yoga and meditation classes, sound healing, and retreats. The Jeff Crilley Show, recorded at The Jeff Crilley Show studio.
Key Topics
- sound healing with gongs and crystal bowls
- the meaning behind The Alchemy Yoga
- meditation for beginners and common misconceptions
- technology and instant gratification
- Remembrance Retreats in Costa Rica
- finding peace during cancer treatment
- expanding your comfort zone through presence
About the Guest
Ayako DeRuby is the founder of The Alchemy Yoga, a wellness lifestyle brand offering yoga, meditation, and sound healing classes and retreats. A dedicated Vipassana meditator since 2014, cancer survivor, and author of "Mind Alchemy," she leads sold-out Remembrance Retreats in Costa Rica and is currently working on her second book, "The Deepening."
Episode Timestamps
- 01:19 – Jeff introduces the stress cycle most of us live in
- 02:20 – Ayako explains The Alchemy Yoga's philosophy of non-judgment
- 04:47 – What 'alchemy' means—transmuting the ordinary into extraordinary
- 06:07 – How meditation teaches you to respond instead of react
- 07:05 – Designing the studio: separate spaces for yoga and meditation
- 08:26 – Technology, impatience, and why presence matters now
- 09:39 – How sound healing affects brainwaves at the cellular level
- 10:33 – Helping a student with ADHD through sound bowls and box breathing
- 11:21 – Remembrance Retreats in Costa Rica with plant medicine
- 14:55 – Ayako's cancer journey and the origin of The Alchemy Yoga
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Episode Chapters
- 00:00 – Introduction
- 01:20 – The Stress Epidemic
- 01:55 – Introducing Ayako DeRuby and Alchemy Yoga
- 02:24 – The Power of Presence and Non-Judgment
- 04:12 – Expanding Your Comfort Zone
- 04:47 – Alchemy: Transforming the Ordinary
- 06:13 – Responding vs. Reacting
- 07:05 – Designing a Space for Peace
- 08:26 – The Pace of Modern Life
- 09:37 – Sound Healing: Dropping In
- 11:05 – Remembrance Retreats and Ayahuasca
- 13:32 – Book: Mind Alchemy
- 14:55 – Overcoming Adversity with Inner Peace
- 17:26 – Living as the Alchemist of Every Moment