Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Ali Smith, Executive Director, Holistic Life Foundation

Episode Date: April 11, 2018

Ali Smith co-founded the Holistic Life Foundation in 2001, where he currently serves as Executive Director.He has over 15 years of experience teaching yoga and mindfulness to diverse populations.Through his work at the Holistic Life Foundation he has helped develop and pilot yoga and mindfulness programs at public and private schools, drug treatment centers, juvenile detention centers, mental crisis facilities, and retreat centers, nationally and internationally.In this conversation we discuss how they got schools to buy into their mission, the way in which they’ve made a big impact in many kids lives, and Ali provides some concrete examples of what his mindfulness practice entails._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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You know what I mean? I couldn't do it. I have to train myself up to being able to do it. And I just start off slowly and I slowly build myself up to being able to do it. I have to train myself up to being able to do it. And I start off slowly and I slowly build myself up to being able to do it. And it's the way it is with meditation. Like you're, it's not going to be easy right away. You are going to have to put in work. And, but it's going to be fun. Like you're going to feel, you're going to feel yourself becoming more relaxed.

As long as you can realize that every meditation was the way exact way it was supposed to be. And you're not grading yourself on your meditations or beating yourself up or just judging yourself. If you can really just be with your meditations when you're doing them and put the time in, you'll notice a difference and you'll get to know yourself very, very well. Welcome back or welcome to the finding mastery podcast i'm michael gervais and by trade and training i'm a sport and performance psychologist and the whole nature of these conversations this podcast if you will is to sit down with people who are on the path of mastery to better understand what they're searching for to work to understand their

psychological framework and to dig to understand, to illuminate the mental skills that they've used to build and refine their craft. Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Solutions. In any high-performing environment that I've been part of, from elite teams to executive boardrooms, one thing holds true.

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I love them. One a day, one a day. What do you mean one a day? There's way more than that happening here. Don't tell. Okay. All right. Look, they're incredibly simple. They're effective. 28 grams of protein, just 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. It's rare to find something that fits so conveniently into a performance-based lifestyle and actually tastes good. Dr. Peter Atiyah, someone who's been on the show, it's a great episode by the way, is also their chief science officer. So I know they've done their due diligence in that category. My favorite flavor

right now is the chocolate chip cookie dough. And a few of our teammates here at Finding Mastery have been loving the fudge brownie and peanut butter. I know, Stuart, you're still listening here. So getting enough protein matters. And that can't be understated, not just for strength, but for energy and focus, recovery, for longevity. And I love that David is making that easier. So if you're trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out. Get a free variety pack, a $25 value and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. This week's conversation is with Ali Smith. Now, Ali and I met probably about five or six years ago at a conference called Wisdom 2.0. It's where high tech meets mindfulness. And he's just got a great way about

him. And he's got an incredible story that he's been able to amplify in his business efforts. So Ali co-founded the Holistic Life Foundation in 2001, where he's currently the executive director. Now, what they've done, you've probably heard buzz or read about it or heard some controversy and some storylines around what they've done with mindfulness in schools. So he was early on that program, introducing mindfulness to public and private schools. He's had to practice himself for 15 years, teaching yoga and mindfulness to a wide range of populations. And what they've done is they've developed a pilot in yoga mindfulness programs in public and private schools, like we've talked about, drug treatment centers, juvenile detention centers, mental crisis facilities, retreat centers,

and he's done all this nationally and internationally. So in this conversation, we talk about how he got schools, large institutions to buy into his mission. And it's not him alone. It's he and his team. And we also talk about the way that he is making impact on kids' lives and how that's likely paying forward in dividends. And then we also get into great detail about his unique mindfulness practice. So we've taken the conversation from concepts right into the weeds about how he practices and how he helps his kids in the programs that he's running, or he and his team are running, how that works. So I hope this conversation is a reminder that we all have ideas. We all have ideas that could work. And whether that's business and or passions, whatever it

might be, it's wonderful when the two mix. But to be able to take those ideas and put them into play, it takes hard work. It takes a team. It takes building an environment, a culture where many people are nodding their heads like, yeah, okay following true north, that we're authentically lining up our thoughts, our words, and our actions, and helping others to do the same. So with that, let's jump right into this conversation with Ali Smith. Ali Smith, how are you? Doing wonderful, Michael. How are you doing? Yeah, fantastic. Fantastic. Okay, so where are you? We're in different parts of the world right now. Where are you?

I'm in Charm City, Baltimore, Maryland right now. Okay. Charm. You called it charm city. Charm city. That's what Baltimore is known as charm city. Oh, I didn't know that. Where, where'd that name come from? I don't know. I think it's from all the charming and handsome people that live here actually. Okay. So you're going to drop this during this conversation, aren't you? How, how, how wonderfully sexy you are. Um, I mean, if it comes up, I'm not going to push this situation, but if it comes up, I'll definitely throw it out there. and to celebrate around what you've been able to do in the city for young people. And you're the co-founder of the Holistic Life Foundation. You kicked that off back in 2001. And can you give us a quick insight on what it is that you're doing right now in the foundation?

And then also add in some of the buzz that you've been receiving from media standpoint as well. Okay. So the Holistic Life Foundation's whole mission when Atman Andy and I first started it was to bring yoga, mindfulness, and environmental education advocacy to underserved communities. But it's gotten a lot bigger than that since 2001. Now we're just bringing it to everyone. Our focus is Baltimore, but we do programs nationally and internationally as well. Yoga and mindfulness have become the crux of what we do. Most of the programs that we do are for school-age children, K through 12. In Baltimore City alone, we were working in this past school year, 17 or 18 schools, working with about 7,500 kids a week, and that's just in

Baltimore City public schools alone. And a lot of what we do is around reciprocal teaching. So we're not just teaching these kids to use these skills and tools and the teachers there as well, but we're also teaching them to be teachers because they're more likely to take these skills home and teach their parents and teach people in their community. And that's how we've seen the biggest changes we've made. So there is a thought that's been important in my life, which is meet them where they sweat. And it's a way to think about like having such regard for the person that you're willing to go to where they go. You're willing to meet them in the condition that they're in. But so like meet them where they sweat.

You're doing the exact same thing for people, for kids in schools. You're going to the place that they're naturally there and you're teaching mindfulness and teaching yoga as strategies. So can you can you why? Why are you doing this? I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that I and Andy and I really got into these practices when we graduated from college. I had some introduction to him as little kids, like little, little kids. But when we when we finished up in college like we we really delved deep into the practice and it was pretty much what most of our time was experimenting on ourselves with yoga mindfulness meditation pranayama any contemplative practice we could get our hands on

we were practicing and we felt amazing so we were like well we have to share this with as many people as possible and the first outlet just happened to pop up was a bunch of fifth graders at an elementary school so things kind of took you know i mean the universe puts you on a path and if you can kind of silence your mind enough to see where you're being led it'll lead you to these awesome places if you put in the work i think we just put in the work and and the universe led us to things kept expanding and expanding us working with more kids but then it expanded into us working with the teachers at the school the principals and drug treatment centers and mental illness facilities and homeless shelters and private schools and retreat centers here and overseas. So it's just like we really believe in what we're doing and we really love the practice.

So I think it's just we want to teach as many people in as many different walks of life as possible. And what do you want to teach them? I'd say how to be inwardly happy, I think is what we really want to teach them. I feel like a lot of the suffering that's going on is created in like the mind and the things that are going on around us. But I mean, life is going to be stressful. Life is going to be hectic. But if you can find that place of inner peace within you that you can always tap into, you can deal with life and the struggles inwardly and outwardly. Because, I mean, the life on the outside is going to beat you up. I feel like most people get beat up more in their own minds than they do on the outside, too. So like worry gets in, doubt gets in, anger gets in, jealousy gets in, sadness gets in. And that's where your mental that's where your mind stays. But if you have some options to catch those thoughts and switch them into something more positive put them in perspective

through the practice and i think you can gain that inner peace and inner happiness and i think that's what we really want to bring to people and what does your practice look like what does your training look like um my personal training was um learning meditation from my dad is when i was i guess around four or so maybe maybe five somewhere between four and five i learned meditation from my dad um and then we grew up in like a self-realization fellowship church which was based on kriya yoga so there was the practice there um we got out of our practice and as adults we um our dad's best friend me and my brother's godfather was one of those people that got into yoga in like the late 60s.

Then we went to him and said we wanted to learn some yoga. So he taught us a lot of different forms. It started off more physical like hatha and kriya and kundalini. And then it moved into like pranayama and a lot of the off-the-mat practices and meditation and still learning to this day. And then how do you take the things that you've learned and structure it in a way that little kids can learn? I think the way you put it was perfect. Like meet them where they sweat.

Like, you know what I mean? We meet them where they are with the practices. We make the practices applicable to the struggles that they're going through in their lives. We figure out ways to make them fun. I mean, because you don't want to go back to something that's seen as drab or boring, but if we can make it fun and make it engaging and also empower them with the practice so that they know how to use it and when to use it in their own lives and they can take control of their reactions or get shifted into responses to what people are doing to them, the thoughts

that are going through their mind, they feel more powerful and they can walk into their life with more confidence and be able to handle the situations that the world's throwing at them. And then what would be a specific practice that you ask people to train? Always, the first place we always start is with a deep breath. Most people don't know how to take a deep breath, a full deep breath, like down to their lower lungs or as a lot of people call it a belly breath and then incorporating their entire lung capacity. Most people don't. There's a lot of physiological and neurological benefits to just taking a deep breath. And it's very relaxing. Like, I mean, people it's amazing. Like we might walk into a professional development at a school and teachers are stressed out. We show them how to take a deep breath and they open their eyes and they're like what was that like i have not felt this calm in a really

long time and it's just from being able to slow things down and take a deep breath and and that's always where we start your life like otman always says your life starts with your first breath breath and ends with your last breath so it must be really really important yeah. Yeah. I think there was some recent research, or at least I think it's recent, at 18 deep breaths is when the parasympathetic nervous system begins to get triggered. And that's the fancy phrase for the response to relaxation or the system that kicks in to find a more relaxed state in the body. So can you walk us through like how you train somebody to take a deep breath? Yeah, no problem. I mean, so it's usually most people are used to taking a deep breath.

They do the stomach in, chest out thing, but you're not using your lower lungs where most of your lung capacity is. So it's usually just getting someone to sit up straight whether you're on the floor i mean you can even stand up straight as long as your spine is straight and taking a hand and putting it on your belly all the breaths are going to be in and out of your nose because your nose is a filter heater and a humidifier so you get a lot of benefits from just breathing in and out through your nose you're just going to inhale and expand your belly as much as you can you're going to feel like you're filling your belly up with air it's just actually your lower lungs expanding with the help of your

diaphragm then you're going to hold on to that breath for a second and then you leave your hand where it is and you exhale and pull your belly away from your hand creating space between your belly and your hand on that exhale imagine pulling your belly button to your spine um and most people think the inhale is really important which it is but the exhale is just as important just pushing all that stale CO2 out of your body and it's also getting rid of all those ruminating thoughts because it's like a link between your breath and your thoughts. Like those stale thoughts are usually related to like stale air in your body. When you can push the stale air out, you can push the stale thoughts out and you can kind of hit the reset button and clear your mind. So it's just the movement of your belly and uh the expansion and just a slow long deep breath is slow and as long as deep as you can make it and and you'll feel your stuff

start to slow down and then do you have a particular cadence like four up six out anything i mean that's when we're when we're first starting we just let them go um just because most people aren't used to taking a deep breath so we just let them go for whatever's comfortable ideally it's a it's a one to two ratio so if you inhale for five you exhale for ten yeah okay um where'd you learn that ratio like is that a particular practice or is that something that you guys have found to be valuable and it's it's an old yoga thing like um i think that's one of the coolest things people talk about um people always ask us why did you guys make that up like we didn't make any of this up this stuff has been around for thousands of years we're just teaching it you know i mean we're trying to get it to as many people as possible so

yeah the one to two ratio is a yoga practice yeah okay so uh gosh i got so many questions but i think i want to jump into some of the challenges with yoga and i'm curious how you get around some of those challenges so here's here's my biases and um and it's some of the challenges that i hear often is that okay yoga's for tree huggers yoga's for those woo-woo type people yoga and mindfulness and meditation you know it's just kind of a hippy dippy thing. And, you know, how do you get around some of that spiritual mystic voodoo perception? Because the way that I know you, you're not that you're concrete, your feet are on the ground. You go right to where people sweat in some of the hardest neighborhoods in America. And you're real about it.

So how do you work with that perception or that label? I think the second I'm in and I walk in the door, it kind of blows a lot of people away that we're the ones that are – the ones actually going to be teaching the yoga, meditation, and mindfulness practices. Abed and I are black. Andy is Puerto Rican, so that throws a lot of it out the door right there. And it's funny because most places we go, people ask us if we're the band because we don't look like traditional yoga and meditation teachers, so we get that a lot.

But, I mean, I think a lot of it has to do with we make the practice, we ground ourselves in the practice, and we show people how to really use it in ways that are going to help them and not i mean you can always go down the spiritual path of yoga my personal practice is is very is very very spiritual but when we're in schools we might not even call it yoga we might just call it stress and relaxation we don't use any of the sanskrit terminology like we don't want to scare anybody away from the practices but there are they are going to come with some stereotypes and misconceptions about what yoga is or might be or what or the way it's been portrayed but i think once you just get people and like you said meet them where they are like meet them where

they sweat like they they you can look at them eye to eye and you're helping them help themselves which is the key to it it's not me doing anything or atman doing anything or andy doing anything it's us helping them to help themselves through the struggles that life is going to throw at them. Okay. And then the tail end conversation or question I have for you on the back end of that is you guys got some wonderful press about what you're doing. So I'd love for you to talk about that. But you also got some heat for what you're doing. So can you talk about both sides of that?

So I'll start with the wonderful press first um which which heat do we which heat are you talking about before i before i throw ourselves before i throw us under the bus let's make sure we're talking about the same thing yeah well okay of course correct me of course correct me if i'm wrong but um uh there was there was a lot of attention around is it okay to do mindfulness and yoga in public schools and like that was the heat i'm talking about and i think you guys were you guys were at the center of that and i don't know know if you have some IRS scandal or anything else. Like that's not what I'm talking about. But like there was a pushback because you got a big splash about doing – you were the guys nationally that were bringing mindfulness and yoga into the kids' classrooms. And then there was a whole swell of people saying yes.

And then there's a backlash. And I don't know if it was targeted at you or just the idea of brainwashing kids in ancient traditions that are not Christian based or whatever faith based that is more American. And I don't want to sound awful when I say that. I'm suggesting that there is a counterculture nature to traditional schools that you guys pushed up against. So, all right. So I'll start with the good stuff first because that was where the attention came from. We started this program called The Mindful Moment where like the whole school stops and they'll do some breath work and they'll do some meditation for like 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the afternoon. And then there's also like an alternative suspension room, like a mindful moment room where kids can get referred

when they're stressed out, they're angry, they can't focus, they get into a fight. Whatever's going on is taking them away from learning or being focused or just being happy. You know what I mean? But like inwardly, you know what I mean? Like if there's something just bothering them, they get sent to this room for like about 15 to 20 minutes

and they work with one of our staff. And our staff will lead them through some breath works, meditations. And our staff doesn't counsel. They just do active listening, so they listen to what the kids have to say and give them some more mindfulness practice to do, give them some tea and send them back to class. And it was working wonders. At the elementary school that program is at,

which is in the heart of where the Freddie Gray uprisings happened a couple years back. There hasn't been a suspension at that school in three years. And then at the high school that we're working at that this program is at, suspensions went down, fights went down, freshman GPA and promotions went up, overall

attendance went up. I mean, we're not going to say just because this program is the only reason this happened, but I think some of the support skills we were given kids were allowing them to maybe accept some of the other things that were going on there too so there's a lot going on there's a lot of people that care at the school but we were giving the kids skills for like self-care and self-management and i mean just self-reflection where they could just go inward and be happy and a lot of people saw it and were really impressed with the fact that the school in

the heart of where the Freddie Gray uprisings was hadn't had a suspension in three years, which isn't very common in a lot of underserved communities anywhere. And so that went viral. Okay. So what's the name of that program? Is that called the Mindful Moment Program? Or is that the, instead of the traditional timeout it's a something else no that's the mindful moment program okay all right yeah it's it's the school-wide practice

and it's the room that kids can get referred to to kind of recenter themselves and then go back to class so who did you so you had the idea and then you had to pitch it somehow to a i don't know a principal or school board like how did that work uh it was it was initially a principal or school board? How did that work? It was initially a principal. It was a principal named Vance Benton. He's the principal at Patterson High School. Really amazing, dynamic guy that really cares about his school a lot. Where he was like, well, let's try this out.

I can see my kids are suffering on a lot of levels, and I think this might help. At the time, he didn't even have a personal practice or anything he was just like well you guys seem to care it sounds like what you got you guys know what you're talking about let's try to make this work and um the first year i mean we hit some stumbling blocks we weren't sure how things were going to turn out but the program ended up being really impactful to the entire school community and the teachers and and and even to even the principal even advance Like Vance started getting into his own personal practice. And he's even – he's gone so far with it, he even meditates with his son now. So it had a big impact. I'm glad we didn't know each other when you were starting this because I would have said, you know, Ali, I think that's a bad idea.

I think it's a bad idea to – and obviously I'd be dead wrong. Like it's a bad idea to send people who are getting punished to do mindfulness. And when I hear you describe it and play it back, I go, God, that's brilliant. And I know I would not have thought that because I would have had an old model in my head, which would have been, OK, you don't want to associate punishment with mindfulness. That's the last thing that you want to do. But when you play it back it's like it sounds so it's beautiful yeah because we don't see so it's not so we're like taking that and make changing it from punitive to empowering or like an opportunity you know what i mean so it's

like hey you know you messed up why don't you take the opportunity you can take this opportunity to get yourself back together to see if you can join the rest of your classmates so it's not like go to the mindfulness room it's like hey you might need a minute why don't you go down there get yourself together and then come back so the kids who's lost his thinking mind says man i'm not going down there forget about it so you'd be surprised like our staff is amazing like a lot of our staff are former students of ours that have been through our programs and have had a practice for like some of my practice for like 15 years now like they're they're really deep in the practice and they embody

it so the kids know that this is a resource like the room that the kids are getting sent to isn't a regular classroom it's got like meditation cushions and aromatherapy and water fountains and himalayan salt crystals and plants and inspirational posters and tapestries. It's literally like an oasis in the hood where the kids, I mean, oasis in the school where the kids just walk in and they just start to feel calm already. And they know this is a place for them to kind of recenter. But we've never, I don't think we, maybe I'm wrong, but I can't think of one time where a kid was like, no, I don't want to go down there.

Usually it's getting kids out of there and getting them back to class. Yeah. OK, so you make the room cool. Yeah. OK. And then you said Hood. How bad is the neighborhood that you're in? I mean, most of the neighborhoods in Baltimore are pretty rough. Baltimore is a city that's struggling a lot. And I feel like it's been struggling since the crack epidemic hit and hasn't really rebounded in a lot of different ways. There's a lot of trauma in a lot of the neighborhoods with the adults, with the kids, and it's kind of intergenerational at this point. So, I mean, there's a lack of opportunities. And I feel like one of the saddest things is like the hopelessness that you feel when you go in certain neighborhoods because it's like they're most people in in certain

in certain underserved communities their reality is just those few square blocks that are their community so it's just like they feel hopeless and helpless like they don't know how am i going to get out of this situation and i think one of the coolest things that the practice does like like the meditation just the inner journey like the coolest thing it does it connects you to yourself so you see that you're bigger than just this few square blocks. And then it connects you to like bigger things outside of your neighborhood, like connects you to everything and everyone where you start to dream and you start to see things on a bigger scale. Because we've seen some of our students that like just say and do things and achieve on a level that none of their peers are on because they do have their own personal practice.

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and use the code FindingMastery20 at FelixGray.com for 20% off. Okay, so I want to go back to the structure of your program for a minute and the backlash that we got to. But what does a training practice look like? Sit down, deep breathing, and then where do you take folks? Okay, so specifically for the Mindful Moment program, the school-wide practice is different in the elementary school and the high school. At both schools, they sit down, they start with some belly breathing to center themselves and ground themselves.

At the elementary school, they do a little bit, all of it's chair-based. They do a little bit of movement from the chair and a couple of standing stretches. Then they'll sit back down and they'll do an alternative, we call it the stress breath. It's an alternative of the Ujjayi breath. So for folks that don't know what that is, there's a particular sound that you make in the back of your throat. And that sound, it's kind of like, gosh, not a whale calling. Like Darth Vader, kind of.

Yeah, right. And why do you use that breath? Because the kids love it. We knew that it's really impactful. It's crazy. It's kind of like hitting the reset button when you practice that breath. And then we saw that kids were taking it. We saw kids using it in real-life situations.

We heard parents come in and say that they were coming out stressed out and ready to curse their kids out. And their kids were sitting them down and showing them how to do this breath. So we just listened to what people were saying. We rolled it and we did it that way. One of the reasons I like that Ujjayi breath is that it forces you to focus on making the sound, which is so different than normal breathing, that if you're doing it correctly your mind can't wander yeah you know and so i'm imagining you've got that same kind of like yeah that's exactly what the kids like about it too okay so you make the room cool kids want to go to it they get reset so to

speak and then you send them back to the classroom? After they get a cup of tea. What kind of tea? It depends what they're in the mood for. We got Whole Foods donated us a bunch of tea. So we just – whatever they're in the mood for. Usually if it's like winter, you go with like the – what is it? The Breathe Easy or like the cold – whatever the cold tea is it's usually yogi tea is what they've donated us so like they'll get a cup of tea and sip on it and then go back to class very calm and collected and centered and ready to move on okay so wild success

and kids love it parents love it teachers love it there's some change in outcome that you can point to to say we're one part of the solution where kids are doing better. And then you got some really cool national attention from it. There was a viral video that went around. How many downloads did you get on that? Last time we checked, I don't want to say something crazy like 30 million or something like that. Yeah. Did that catch you by surprise, I bet? Yeah. So we were actually away speaking and we were in Vermont at a college and we didn't have phone reception. So we didn't know any of this was going on.

And then we walked, we were walking somewhere and our phone started, we started getting all these texts and people were like, have you guys seen this? And we were like, we're seeing what? And then, so we were kind of blindsided by it. And then by the time we got back to Baltimore, I want to say, Andy and i each probably had like 500 new emails in our inbox so it's pretty crazy so for folks that want to download it and take a not download but take a look at it how would they search for it uh it's on our website if you go to um our website www.hlfinc.org uh all all the videos are on there, particularly that one.

Yeah. Particularly that one. Okay, cool. So then, you know, I don't know if you know this, but I don't think we ever talked about it, but my son is in a school in Los Angeles and they've got mindful March and they've got mindful Mondays and like they, they are committed to teaching mindfulness to the kids. And it's a, you know, he's in third grade. So it's a it's a pretty cool experience. So you've definitely had an influence and or have been at the center of, you know, I don't want to call it a movement, but at the center of young kids being influenced from an environmental condition of mindfulness.

So then what was the backlash that took place? I think that a lot of people think that mindfulness and yoga and a lot of contemplative practices are anti-Christian. So I think that was where a lot of the backlash may have come from. You know what I mean? I think it was just like, it wasn't, it was like we were, you know, which I don't get. Like, I think it's, people saw it as a religion that wasn't palatable to a lot of people. And we don't teach religion. We don't get. Like, I think it's, people saw it as a religion that, that wasn't, um, palatable to a lot of people. And, and we don't teach religion. We don't teach spirituality. We just teach people skills to relax. And I don't think a lot of it was directed totally at us. I think it was more at just mindfulness in general. You know what I mean? I think it was like, yeah. And it shouldn't be in schools because there's a separate separation of church and state,

um, particularly in schools. And like, that's of church and state, um, particularly in schools. And, and like, that's why we're very, very careful about our language. Like we don't, like I said, we don't use Sanskrit terminology.

We don't bring any of our own personal practice in there. We don't talk about spirituality. Oh, it's very, what we teach is very science based. You know what I mean? Like there's definitely neurological and physiological benefits to each of those practices.

And if you go and ask the students in our programs, they can tell you the physiological and neurological benefits of what they're doing and why they're doing it. It's not just some random practice that they're doing. There's a reason that they're doing it and they know why they're doing it and when to break it out. So what are some of the benefits that you are teaching them? So just say, like we were talking about just taking a deep breath earlier,

just breathing it out through your nose. Like I said, your nose is a filter, a heater a heater and a humidifier so the nose hairs filter out the air filter the germs out of the air so like you're less likely to get a cold in the winter when the schools are closed up and everybody's coughing there's all those germs in the air um the mucus membranes actually warm the air and the glands that make your tears actually humidify the air those are benefits you get just breathing in out through your nose that you don't get breathing in and out through your mouth um your heart and your lungs are connected so like you need oxygen to you know you gotta you gotta oxygenate your blood to clean it up most people are just panting so they never really clean their blood so they have dirty blood circulating through their body um one of the

best quotes that atman and i ever read was when we were first getting started that you're what they say, your blood leaves your heart like pristine, like a pristine mountain stream and comes back like sewer water. And if you're not taking a deep breath, you're pretty much just circulating sewer water through your body. So, I mean, there's those benefits. I mean, and you know, like when you're stressed out or you're angry, like your heart's racing and your breath is really, really shallow. And if you take a couple of breaths, you can slow yourself down and you can slow everything down and slow your thoughts down and slow your heart's racing and your breath is really really shallow and if you take a couple breaths you can slow yourself down and you can slow everything down you slow your thoughts down you slow your heart rate down and you feel a lot more calm like you said those 18 breaths and you're back in the parasympathetic dominance you mean you're not in that stress response so

you can just automatically relax yourself okay and you've got third and fourth and fifth graders going yeah you know, I understand this. And they're teaching their parents about. Oh, kindergarten kids, too. We got them. We start them young. You know, early on for my son, I just we lay in his bed at night and I'd love for you to coach me here on this. And I just put a I didn't know what I was doing, but I put a stuffed animal on his stomach.

And I say I said, let's count how many times that we can do it slowly together and just see how many times it rises and goes down. We just count. And that's how I introduced mindfulness breathing to him, mindful breathing. So now he's nine. Do you have any other strategies that you could teach me? Yeah, so it's a lot different teaching in schools than teaching your own kids. I know my oldest son is 10, and him and I have been meditating together since he was probably maybe a little under – somewhere a little under four. But it was – we started off slowly with some breathing and just working on keeping his body still.

But as he got older, we just talked about what he wanted his practice to be. I mean, I may have tried to influence a little with my own. I mean, you're a dad. You want to see your kids shine, so you're going to try to give them the right things. But it was also letting the practice develop and become his and go deeper with the practice as well. We went beyond just the breath work to, I mean, he's my own son, so I can teach him about spirituality and like, you know,

like we have conversations about yoga philosophy before we meditate at night and where he likes mantras. So we'll do some mantra yoga. So like whatever he wants out of his practice, what we do. And then his brother's five and we just started meditating with him. And I feel like his practice is probably going to look a lot different than his brother's, but I just want them to own their practice and just develop it with them. Like lead them on the right path and let them kind of develop it in a way.

Because the whole thing is getting it to stick. Like you don't want them to just associate your practice with you as a dad. It's got to be their practice. They've got to take ownership of it. What ideally would you hope your 10-year year old is doing for a training practice? Is it one minute, 10 minutes, six minutes, 20 minutes? Like what ideally for a 9, 10, 11, 12 year old? I mean, for him, we've been doing it for a while.

So I'm hoping he's doing at least 15 or 20 minutes. But like five minutes is cool. I mean, if you're just getting into it, like five minutes is a great amount of time to be able to just still your body every time you notice that your mind is distracted. That's the moment of awareness. Celebrate. And then just come right back to the one thing. And so when you can, you I'd love to learn what your let's call it 20 minute practice looks like, you know, like if you could segment how you do what you do in chunks of time,

like how do you structure your, um, your 20 minutes if, if that's what your practice looks like. When I'm working with my own personal practice. Yeah, exactly. Um, so my,

so my personal practice is a lot different now than it was, um, just because of time. So like, I feel like, so, so I have certain practices I'll do in the morning, like in the morning I'll do,

um, I'll do my pranayama practice. Um, and then I'll like, I'll do Kapalabhati. I'll do in the morning like in the morning I'll do um I'll do my pranayama practice um and then I'll like I'll do kapalabhati I'll do the breath of fire I'll do some alternate nostril breathing I'll do basharika or the bellows breath and I'll do some ujjayi breaths um and then I'll do a short meditation in the morning um maybe like I don't know maybe like 10 minutes uh usually and it's usually around the heart center. In yoga, they say the heart's the dwelling place of the self, like where your capital S self, it's like where your true self resides. So I meditate in my heart center in the morning. And then when I get into the office, I usually get in here early and I'll do a longer meditation of about usually about a half an hour.

And then I'll go in. I usually do that one at my brow point of my third eye. It's just where I'm just two places that I meditate now. And that's usually my practice. And then I'll also try to work on the off the mat practices, which I think are part of the coolest parts of yoga, because a lot of people like they'll go and they'll stretch for three hours. But then what are you going to do for the other 21 hours in a day you know what i mean like you got to really put in the like there's a lot of energetic and mental things that you can do to kind of keep yourself in a keep your vibe up i mean and make sure that you're you're sending out loving thoughts and not angry thoughts out into the universe because that energy does come back to you so i mean you got to be able to catch your thoughts and catch your words and mind your deeds and so yeah it's just trying to try and embody it and live it as much as possible and and be the practice instead of doing the practice i mean it's hard it's really

really hard i mean you you fail tests all the time but like you were saying like once you see that you failed that test or you've or you've um or you've slipped and you didn't respond or react to a situation a situation the way that you might ideally would have liked to like those are those learning moments where hopefully the next time you catch it if you don't catch the next time hopefully the next time you catch it but as long as you're aware of it and you're learning i think that's the real key to the whole practice okay so let's go let's go back to the breathwork you had three you had four or five different types of breathing that you're doing in the morning. So you're taking, say, two to three breaths every second in and out through your nose. When you exhale, you're going to push your belly

in. And the inhale is more of a relaxed and expand your belly on the inhale. So it's just really quick breathing. And it just kind of sounds like this. And you go for they say up to three minutes of that practice so clean your bloodstream i usually do five minutes of it and then i'll at the end i'll just retain my breath for as long as i can and then i move on to my next practice and then what is the next practice uh the next practice is usually uh by streaker or the bellows breath um it's pretty much the exact same thing except the exhale is three times longer than the inhale um and it's not two to three breaths per second and it's a little slower than that but the the bellows breath sounds something like so as you can see like the exhale is three times longer than the inhale

kind of like a kind of like a bellows when we're explaining it to kids. I mean, not kids, but like older. I mean, just anybody. If we're explaining it to adults, you can usually use a Tom and Jerry reference because a lot of people don't have fireplaces, but everybody's seen Tom and Jerry with the bellows. And like the inhale is short and the exhale is a lot longer. From there, I'll go to the Ujjayi breath. Just like you were saying, the sound. Just inhale for as long as I can, retain the breath for as long as I can, and then exhale, long, slow exhale. So it just sounds like – and then you just keep inhaling and the exhale sounds pretty much the same with the – so you're making that sound on the inhale and exhale.

And then alternate nostril is the way i finish up um just just um traditional alternate nostril nothing fancy in through the left out through the right into the right out to the left and that's one round and i'll usually do like 12 rounds or so okay so do you all how do you hold your nostril are you pinching with your thumb and your point finger? Yeah, I use my thumb and index finger. There's different ways to do it. I just like the thumb and index finger. It's more comfortable for me.

But I've definitely seen it tons of different ways with the different fingers that you use. Yeah, okay. Cool. And then so that's the first kind of quarter of it. And then what's the second half? Then I'll do like a 10 minute meditation on my heart center. Like, yeah, that's always where I start is with my heart center. Love yourself and then that love can spread out into the universe. I think you got to really know yourself before you can love yourself. And I think you got to know yourself on a deeper, more spiritual level.

I think that helps out a lot of people. I mean, if you get to it, but yeah, I'd start with my heart centers. There's always where I start. So I'll meditate there for like 10 minutes or so. How do you accelerate people to get to know themselves? Put in the practice, like with anything. You know what I mean? I think it's just

um meditation isn't going to be easy right away just like i couldn't go out and i couldn't go out and run a marathon right now you know what i mean i i couldn't do it i have to train myself up to being able to do it and i just start off slowly and and i slowly build myself up to being able to do it and it's the way it is with meditation. Like you're, it's not going to be easy right away. You are going to have to put in work. Um, and, but it's going to be fun. Like you're going to feel, you're going to feel yourself becoming more relaxed. As long as you can realize that every meditation was the way exact way it was supposed to be. And you're not grading yourself on your meditations or beating yourself up or, or just judging yourself. Like if you can, if you can really just be with your meditations

when you're doing them and put the time in, you'll, you'll notice a difference and you'll get to know yourself very, very well. Okay. Brilliant. Okay. Thank, thank you for kind of dropping into the detail. Cause I think it's so confusing for so many folks. Like what exactly is somebody who's doing mindfulness doing? And i don't know anyone that has a practice like yours and so thank you for sharing that that's really cool yeah and then that's my own personal practice you know i mean that's not what like we wouldn't we that's not what i wouldn't teach kids about meditating on their heart center and getting to know them through their true self in a school um you know i mean we'll do breath based meditations or like a loving kindness meditation

or like a body scan just something to get them in get them in their body like that that's what we're teaching in schools or my own personal practices is my own personal practice you know I mean I can teach myself whatever I want to teach. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep it starts with how we transition and wind down and that's why I've built intentional routines into the way, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down. And that's why I've built intentional routines into the way that I close my day. And Cozy Earth has become a new part of that. Their bedding, it's incredibly soft, like next level soft.

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With Caldera Lab, it's not about adding more. It's about choosing better. And when your day demands clarity and energy and presence, the way you prepare for it matters. If you're looking for high quality personal care products that elevate your routine without complicating it, I'd love for you to check them out. Head to calderalab.com slash finding mastery and use the code finding mastery at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. What do you want to see take place? Like what is your life purpose, your aim? What do you, what are you sorting out here with your life efforts? I'd say to be able to bring these practices to

everyone, literally everyone. We would like to be able to bring these practices to, and I don't think it's going to be like in the beginning when we started, we thought it was going to be Otman, Andy and I just kind of doing all this stuff and said like helping all these people. And, but I mean, we we realized that like as time went on like three people aren't going to make a dent in this entire planet but if we're teaching people to be teachers and like and doing trainings to help people bring these practices and just inspiring people to just go out and do it in their own communities like that's when when when you start to see shifts made so i mean like we would love for everyone to have these practices. Like that's, that's our

goal. I mean, it may, may not happen in our lifetime, but if we can help plant some seeds to where like a couple of generations down the line, everybody's got their own personal practice, that'd be awesome. What does your business model look like? Um, our business model is actually looking pretty good these days. We've got – yeah, things are good. I think the 1440 Foundation helped us really stop looking at just feet on the ground, doing the work all the time, but really looking at what we wanted to do with our organization. And if we really wanted to help that many people, what it would take to kind of start to scale up and build our infrastructure. So I'm our executive director, Atman's our director

of fundraising, and Andy's our director of marketing. Our administrative staff is about seven now. We have about 40 program staff right now that are out in schools doing the work. I'd say about 55% of our budget comes from fee-for-service programs. I'd say about 40% comes from foundations, somewhere around that, and about 5% is from private donors. So things are rolling. So if somebody wanted to do some work with you guys, what would be an ideal customer? Or how should folks think about hiring you or being part of your your mission um actually the funny thing is like anyone like we've done work from going to speak going to teach at um underserved schools to teaching federal reserve um to doing um workshops at jack morton worldwide

um to working with athletes to work like we've worked with we've done we've worked a gambit most people know us for working with kids because that's what people want to take pictures of you know what i mean like when when the media comes they want to see cute little kids doing doing yoga practices and then meditating so that's where most of our presses come. But we work with pretty much any and all demographic. What are you afraid that will take place? That people will put it on us, like Atman, Andy, and I, and not on the practice or our entire organization. I don't want people to think that like the holistic life foundation is

op and Andy. And I think that's a lot of people's misconception, but like it's, it's a, it's a team. Like it's a really, at one point it was, and that was when we were kind of stagnant.

But once we kind of built a strong team, that was when things really started to grow, like training up our students to become teachers and get our administrative staff. So it's, it's, it's a well-oiled machine at this point. It's, it's, I mean, it's got its squeaks and we need to oil it better in some places, but it's, it's pretty well-oiled machine at this point. Wow. Fantastic. Okay, good. So, um, can I ask you a couple of quick hit questions and just kind of see how your framework, um, how you respond based on your framework?

Okay. Okay. Okay. Pressure comes from? Doubt. Can you keep going with that? Yeah, I think you're always going to have pressure from the outside world and from inside your mind. And I think when you start to doubt yourself is when that pressure starts to build. I think having confidence in yourself and your skills and your ability to kind of overcome any situation definitely does a lot to relieve a lot of the pressure that's on you.

I mean, it's on you and you kind of dump on yourself as well. What are the conversations that get you most uncomfortable? Hmm. Um, conversations that get me most uncomfortable. Huh? I don't know. Probably.

I don't know. Relationship conversations. Yeah, I'm laughing. Seriously, the hardest conversations are with my wife and I. Yeah, I mean, that's what I can think of. I'm thinking like – They're the most intimate. They're the deepest. They're the most sensitive, the most challenging.

Yeah. Okay. The crossroad in my life was when i decided to not get a job and start and work with ottman andy and start the holistic life foundation that was definitely a crossroad because yeah i think graduating from college we could have either all gone and got jobs or we could have like uh followed our followed me and ottman's dad's advice and start our own thing and that was what we decided to do how much money did you start with uh zero uh we definitely started with zero i want to say for like the first like we volunteered our time for i think like the first like seven or eight years we were doing this so like we would we would put all of our money back into um our programs which wasn't much our budget was probably like twenty five thousand dollars

thirty thousand dollars and then um we would work like we got jobs on the weekends i remember the first stipend we gave ourselves was like um i think it was like a it was like a four i think it's like a three hundred dollar a month stipend or something crazy like that and we thought we were like like oh my gosh this is amazing we're actually making some money doing this and i remember um the funder that gave us the grant was like uh you guys realize that that breaks down to like a dollar and 27 cents an hour like you guys need to work a little harder on that but we were excited at the time because it it was something okay it all comes down to love and then can you talk about love yeah i mean i think it always like it always starts with um loving yourself um i mean because a lot of people don't aren't comfortable with themselves

and don't love themselves and it's hard for them to love other people around them so i think you got to love yourself first um you got to love the people around you. And, I mean, you've got to tell them you love them. I mean, I know the day doesn't go by, like, with my kids and the people around me. I say I love you a bunch of times to a bunch of people around me because I want them to know that I love them. And then it becomes really tricky when you've got to start loving the people that piss you off. You know what I mean? But technically we all come from that same spark. We all have to have that same light shining within us so you do have to love them because we're i mean

you're hating yourself when you do love well you don't love those people around you um like bhakti yoga uh one of the one of the forms that we try to say it's the easiest and the hardest form of yoga to practice because you got to see the light in yourself then you got to see it in everyone and everything else but it's hardest to see in those people who um who piss you off and don't seem to see the world the same the way that you do or people that you see taking advantage of other people but in the end it's the same light shining everyone and everything so you got to try to love everybody which is hard but you gotta try to do it yeah yeah it's really tough um what was the name of that because i practice it. Um,

someone introduced that to me a long time ago, which was, and tell me if this is the practice, I just never knew the name is, um, okay. Take a moment, be grateful, uh, for all the work you've done in your life to help you become the person that you are. So just take a moment, be grateful there. Then, uh, once you're connected to that, allow someone that you deeply love, come to your mind's, your mind's eye and thank them for the work that, you know, that no, I'm sorry. Thank them and be grateful for them, you know, wish them love, if you will. And then somebody else extend it out. It's like a pebble that drops into a pond and just keep working outward and as you

work outward you eventually run into people that you know you go from loved ones to family to people that you've just briefly met to people you just caught eye contact with you know once in your life to people that have disappointed you the people that really hurt you and then you move it out to you know places of the world that you've never been to you know like you a ripple effect it is that similar or is that something different you know it's definitely very similar um i'd say with the baki practice it's more like how do you how do you pronounce how do you pronounce that bakti b-a-b-h-a-k-t-i okay bakti and what does that word mean?

They call it the yoga of devotion. Okay. So it's kind of like you're – it's more like in walking down the street, like you're seeing the light in yourself and seeing it in everyone and everything else. Or when you're watching TV and a politician pisses you off, like you're not cursing them out. You can disagree with what they're saying but you're also seeing the light you and seeing the light in that person or the person i mean like your your kids when they disappoint you you're still like or when your kids when they make you happy like it's it's like in your waking day you're constantly trying to focus on light in yourself and then see that same light like use the physical as a reference but then you go into

that light and see that same light you see shining you see shining in them and everyone and everything is there a phrase or um a word that guides your life um i i don't know maybe i don't know i'd say like huh mental toughness is something that comes up um i know i that was one of our dad's big things like with me and my brother growing up was like he was he was a very big stickler on like mental toughness and how like if you're mentally if you're mentally strong you can overcome a lot of situations and you can will a lot of things to happen but you have to be mentally tougher than the things that are going on around you or the things that the struggles that you're going through. Like you don't have to be physically stronger all the time. Like you can get, you can get over in a lot of situations and succeed in a

lot of situations where most people might crumble just because you're mentally, you're mentally tougher and you have the fortitude and that grit to kind of get over it. Okay. What do you hope the next generation gets right? That we're all one. I think there's too much divisiveness. I think if the next generation can realize that we're all one, I think the world would be a lot happier place. That's pretty cool. Okay. And then here's kind of the question that i'm leading up to to ask you know everyone is in in your words how do you define or articulate this concept of mastery mastery um i think it's it's whatever you put your physical and mental energy and and time behind because it's important to your essence like who you are and what you're

doing. I think that might be what mastery is to me. Okay, brilliant. Where can people follow along and be part of what you're doing? And whether it's a donation or somebody who's running a business or a school or, you know, that wants to bring in what you're doing, how can they stay connected to you? Our website's the greatest way to stay connected to us. www.hlfinc.org.

You can find us on Facebook. If you just look up Holistic Life Foundation, we're on there. Twitter at HLFINC. But our website's definitely the best way to get in contact with us or see what we're doing. We have a great newsletter that goes out every month. Andy puts his foot in that newsletter every month. So it's got everything that we're doing, everything that's coming up, press about us.

So you can stay connected that way. And you can make donations through the website. On the website, you can contact us and get us to your business, to your school, wherever. If you're looking for some internal peace and a little bit of stillness, we can definitely help you with that. You guys are rad. I'm stoked that you're in the world and doing some good for the next generation. And thanks for being so concrete with what your practice looks like. And, yeah, I really appreciate you.

And so thanks for making the time for this conversation. I really appreciate it, Michael. Looking forward to seeing you again soon too. Yeah. Oh yeah, for sure. And I know people are going to have questions for you. Would you be open to answering some questions on our Finding Mastery Tribe? Yeah, that's cool. Okay. All right. So for everyone listening, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Punch over to Holistic life foundation and you can find their website in our show notes ali just mentioned as well and so you can find us on twitter at michael gervais you can find us on instagram at finding mastery and um and our

community page that we just talked about is called finding mastery.net that's our website slash tribe so ali thank you and keep doing tribe. So Ali, thank you. And keep doing the good work, man. Definitely. Thank you very much, Michael. I enjoyed the weekend. Yeah, you too. Take care. All right, man. Peace. Okay. Bye. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no-cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're

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So join our community, share your favorite episode with a friend, and let us know how we can continue to show up for you. Lastly, as a quick reminder, information in this podcast and from any material on the Finding Mastery website and social channels is for information purposes only. If you're looking for meaningful support, which we all need, one of the best things you can do is to talk to a licensed professional. So seek assistance from your healthcare providers. Again, a sincere thank you for listening. Until next episode, be well, think well, keep exploring.