Good Life Project - Yoga, Revolution, Revelation | Seane Corn

Episode Date: March 19, 2019

Seane Corn (http://www.seanecorn.com/) is an internationally celebrated yoga teacher known for her impassioned activism, unique self-expression, and inspirational style of teaching.Featured in magazines, TV, radio, and Oprah.com, Seane now utilizes her fierce commitment to action and her massive platform to bring awareness to global humanitarian issues. Since 2007, she has been training leaders of activism through her co-founded organization Off the Mat, Into the World®. Seane has spent time in the US, India, Cambodia, Haiti, and Africa working with communities in need- teaching yoga, providing support for child labor and educating people about HIV/AIDS prevention.Her forthcoming book, Revolution of the Soul (https://amzn.to/2UA2LZP), will be published in September 2019. And, this week, we're diving deep into her personal journey, early-childhood trauma and struggle with OCD, awakening to her own sense of power and agency, discovering yoga and a global community of teachers, practitioners and heart-led activists and so much more.-------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://www.goodlifeproject.com/sparketypes/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today, Sean Korn, has been a force in the world of yoga for many, many years. I, back in the day, in the early 2000s, owned a yoga studio in New York City and taught for seven years myself and was always just absolutely blown away by Sean's presence, her thoughtfulness, her compassion, her originality, and sense of service along the way. She has since built a giant global following, traveled around the world, taught and impacted the lives of so many different people. And it's kind of amazing because if you zoom the lens even further back in time, growing up in New Jersey, Sean was a kid who really struggled with any sort of teaching or education type of format. She did not do well in a traditional school where movement was not a part of the sort of educational process. And then she also struggled with a pretty substantial experience

of OCD, of anxiety and thought spinning. And it's really fascinating to actually know how yoga and breathing played a role in helping her unwind all of this in her life and led to a certain extent to the career and living and the lifestyle that she now has. These are things that we explore in depth in today's conversation. Really excited to share Sean Karn, her lens on life, her experience with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever,

making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later

required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? What kind of kid were you? What kind of kid was I? I was a decent kid. Curious, athletic, I think high energy, sensitive. But I grew up in a, my parents were super young, progressive in a lot of ways. And we were allowed, we were given a lot of freedom to explore,

to express ourselves. So I had a nice little childhood. Yeah. Sensitive how? I was highly intuitive. And so I had a real issue around injustice. If I saw people getting bullied, if I saw animals getting mistreated, things like that could send me into a tizzy. Very often, I would see things that didn't match what I was being told. Something wouldn't be right. And I didn't have the language to express it. But intuitively, I knew that whatever they were telling me was, you know, was just nonsense. So I was sensitive that way.

My mom said it's like she said I came out of her with my eyes wide open. And I've stayed like that since. So very alert, very present, curious. My mom said I was like a little adult. Couldn't stand other little kids. I was much more interested in being around adults, interested in adult conversations. Never played like marriage or, you know, children. Like, you know, the first real game I remember playing included an old discarded checkbook.

It was like business. Like I signed a check. So I was sensitive. According to my mom, I was sensitive in that way that I was just hyper aware of everything around me. Yeah. I mean, as a young kid, though, how does that fly with your peers and your ability to sort of get along and belong and find a group of people? No problem. I mean, I'm a highly social person and I ask a lot of questions, you know, as

I'm sure you do. It's a gift. And so I made friends very easily. And, you know, I wasn't like that with my friends. You know, I would, I would, I wasn't sensitive like that amongst my peers. I was sensitive like that at home in environments where I was safer. But amongst my friends, I could care less about anything except just connecting until I got older than it was partying and whatever it is that you do. I did not have

any kind of a childhood that was in any way extraordinary. It was, you know, went to school. I was the only girl on an all-male track team. I was very athletic and I was into theater, which I still am. I was not a good student. I didn't learn the way the other students learned. And I had a hard time. I just had a hard time grasping information that was linear. And it took me a while to kind of catch on.

It's why I didn't go to college, why I moved to New York City right outside of high school. Because I couldn't have gotten into college if I wanted to. I mean, it's so interesting now though, because somebody looks at you now and obviously this is decades later and there's a wealth of knowledge that's been accumulated by you.

But if you reflect on your path and your career, it's so physically embodied in a lot of layers. I mean, there's a lot of spiritual embodiment also and deep knowledge. But I often wonder when I talk to folks who share that they really struggled in a sort of traditional linear educational format, but they go into a field where there's a lot of movement. There's a lot of movement, there's a lot of flow, there's a level of embodiment in the learning process, in the sharing process, whether that almost has to be part of how you learn? I think so.

I don't know. It wasn't until I was around 16 years old, 15, 16, I had a teacher, young teacher, who recognized that I was very bright, but that I just did not do well in school the way my peers did or the way my older brother did, who was brilliant at school. He, I remember he gave me a different assignment than the rest of the students in the class. He gave me books to read. And there were books at that time, you know, back in the early 80s that would not have been, that would have been way too progressive

for my kind of conservative environment. It was the color purple. So you're dealing with injustice, you're dealing with incest and racism, sexual abuse, things that at that time, school would not have assigned to a 15 year old. So he let me read these books. And then all he wanted from me was to give reports on these books using whatever language I wanted to. I can express myself without censoring. He just wanted to know how I kind of literature, my mind understood it. My body felt it. It exposed a world in which I wanted to know more about. And when I was allowed to express, it was almost like I started to understand symbolism and philosophy in that intuitive way I always had, but he gave me the freedom to express it. And I spent much

of my last couple of years in school doing that, reading books and expressing myself. And he was, I know him to this day, and I've often said like, how did he know that I had this, in some ways, almost like a gift for the human experience, a sensitivity for it and empathy. And he drew that out of me. And it was the first time I realized that I was actually smart. I just understood information more through the right side of my brain. It was more circular than linear. And it opened up a lifelong passion for reading since. And that then moved into philosophy and spirituality. And just I would grab any book I could that would give me more insight about life, whether it was the light side of life or the shadow.

I wanted to understand more. And the embodied piece integrates it. It's like for someone with my temperament, because I struggled as a kid with anxiety, it's like the anxiety, the superstitions I had,. Once I started to move my body, it opened up those channels so that I didn't restrict that more creative energy. So I do think that there's a correlation for me. I can't speak for anyone else. The embodied work and me being able to assimilate ideas in a more integrative way. Yeah, that makes so much sense. And like you, I don't know if everyone's like that way, but for sure, I'm the exact same way as you're talking.

I had this super flashback, but in a very past life, I was a lawyer. And when I studied for the bar, I just moved out to, you know, like we had a little summer place on an island where I was alone. And I remember holding an outline in my hands and I would just walk outside for two hours in the afternoon sort of studying and walking, studying, walking, studying. And it was the movement.

And I realized if I just sat down, I was worth half of what I was worth in terms of my ability to learn. And I don't know why, but I do. I agree with you. I think some people, there's something about the movement that lets it all come together inside of you and just makes it gel. Yeah. I, for, again, for, I can't, I don't, I've never really thought about that in terms of anyone else. I know for myself, everything I do is embodied. I don't have the ability to separate the way in which I experienced the world, whether it's through learning or through relationship in any capacity that doesn't also require me to move, to breathe, to ground, to discharge energy. I just relate better to everything that I do when I discharge, when I release.

It allows me to be more present. Yeah. You mentioned that you had anxiety as a kid. How did that show up in your life? I had obsessive compulsive disorder when I was, it allows me to be more present. Yeah. You mentioned that you had anxiety as a kid. How did that show up in your life? I had obsessive compulsive disorder when I was a child. It wasn't diagnosed though, until I was 19. There was no word for it as a kid. I was just, I had these quirky behaviors. I was compulsive about the number four and the number eight. And it started when I was around seven years old. Again, I wouldn't have assigned anxiety to what I was experiencing. I know now that I was sensitive. I had anxiety and I attached it to superstitions. I wasn't raised in a religious

household. My family was very agnostic. Yet the environment I grew up in was very Christian, Catholic. So there was all sorts of God talk that was dogmatic and punishing. And even though I wasn't raised to believe in a punishing God, I was raised to believe really in no God. But the information I was getting was that if you messed up, you were unlovable, you're unworthy. And it stayed with me. And I started to get superstitious that if I did that, people that I loved would be punished or killed if I didn't do things in certain order. And so if I would get anxious, I would touch, blink, swallow. It usually was touching.

And I called it patterning. So things had to happen in fours and eights. If someone walked into me, I had to figure out how to walk into them on the opposite side to create balance and synergy in my body. And if I didn't do it, A, I wouldn't feel balanced. But B, I was afraid I would jinx myself and someone would die and I'd be responsible. The touching in lieu of alcohol or drugs, which I wouldn't discover until later on, this was a very clever way for my nervous system to figure out how to self-regulate. So I didn't, I wouldn't have understood self-regulation as a kid. I wouldn't have had access to the drugs and alcohol. So by touching things in even numbers, by patterning, I would calm my nervous system and it would allow me to function in a healthier way and it would allow me to take control over my body. So I look back at

it now, even though it was an emotional response to trauma, it wasn't a mental illness or imbalance the way that obsessive compulsive disorder often is assigned. For me, it was a response to my environment feeling out of control and me finding a very clever way to create control when I didn't know how. Again, I didn't have the words at seven. So it wasn't until I came to New York City at 17 where the OCD became more complex because I was away from my home and away from my mom, who I was very close to. I was alone. I was out there for the first time. Plus, at this point, I'm doing drugs a lot. And the drugs that I liked were stimulants like Coke. And so that's not great for anxiety. Someone should have told me that then, you know, but my compulsions got worse and I couldn't really leave my house without, you know, I'd have to check the doorknobs multiple times, four times,

at least. I just realized there was something going on. Simultaneously, I was getting into yoga. I was starting to notice that the human body is not the exact same on both sides. And it would cause me some anxiety while I was on the mat when I would realize one shoulder was lower than the other. One hip was higher than the other. And I couldn't do anything about it. It was structural. For me, a real change happened when I'm in a yoga class. Teacher accidentally steps on my foot, the sensation

in my body, like I could feel it through my body. I could feel the anxiety come up because he's now touched my right foot. How am I going to get him to touch my left foot? And I'm, if you looked at me from the outside, you know, I'm a dissociator. So you don't see that there's anything going on. I look perfectly calm, grounded and at peace, but internally I'm a dissociator, so you don't see that there's anything going on. I look perfectly calm, grounded and at peace. But internally, I'm plotting how I can trip and find a way to kick his other foot before I leave without making it too weird. It was always weird. And the teacher then randomly says, breathe and everything changes. And I remember hearing it and I take a deep breath

and nothing changed. I do it again. And the anxiety actually got worse. Like I could feel it like building. I don't know if it was my third breath or my 12th breath, but there was a breath where the sensation in my body changed, the tension shifted, and I was able to leave the studio without having to trip on and kick the left foot. That was a turning point in my life, was understanding that I can actually change the sensation in my body through the breath. The problem was I wasn't understanding the core of the trauma. So it was just, it was a beautiful band-aid and it's a band-aid that I recommend, but without getting to the core of the trauma, it's just temporary. It'll just filter into

something else. And, but at that time at 19 years old, learning that particular skill helped me to notice when the sensation, when I was able to assign a sensation to anxiety, it felt a certain way. So once I could just say like, oh, my heart's beating, my chest feels hot. There's a tingling under my skin. My back feels tight. There's something electric. These are the sensations I might feel. I would breathe until those sensations became something else. And they always did. And when they did, I was able to not have to act out on those compulsions and eventually was able to, I wouldn't say, it's not something you heal from. I don't have those compulsions today, but I'd be a liar to say that in moments

of stress, I haven't noticed myself hit an elbow and then hit another elbow and be like, oh, look at that. There that is. But it's not something I'd be conscious of. And it's not something that I would indulge. But I am aware like it kind of stays with you. Right. So it becomes more of an observation. And then there's almost a sense of agency that's built into it now that wasn't there before. It's like, oh, so this doesn't have to be my automatic response. I can choose to somehow diminish or like release the sensation a different way. But it also reminds, it lets me know like, oh, you're stressed. You know, you're tense or you're insecure. Yeah. And it's like, just take a moment with that before you like, you move on. Just know that your body is letting you know that you are not

completely in your center right now. So I'm not, I'm grateful when it shows up. I just know it's my body letting me know to pay attention. Yeah. You mentioned that, that this is all great and having the strategies and the techniques to unwind this is like do it if you can do it. Yeah. But if there is some deeper trauma, you know, that's the place where all the really, the big work, the big release happens. What was the deeper thing for you? Was it the reflection back to sort of the spiritual conflict that you grew up or was there something else that you keyed in on? Well, it's very interesting because trauma is defined as anything that overwhelms your capacity to cope and leaves you feeling helpless, hopeless, out of control or unable to respond.

I wouldn't have looked at my trauma through that lens. I was cognizant of my trauma. I was molested at six years old by an adult distant relative. This was not something that was secretive. It wasn't something that wasn't dealt with. It was something that was very much communicated. So it wasn't something that I carried within me as a trauma. Right, on a conscious level. No, not even close. Except that I was six when I was molested and obsessive compulsive disorder started at seven. No one ever connected the two that my body was searching for control, that my nervous system was outraged. I never got to scream, to yell, to, I was fine,

you know, because I'm a dissociator. I wasn't fine. I was completely outside of my experience, but none of the adults in my life could have understood that at that time. They gauged my reaction and my reaction was very adult. It's because I wasn't in my body. So the OCD helped me get back in my body. It let me have control. Again, never made that connection. experiences, breathe and everything changes, simultaneously decided to get into therapy to see if I could understand why I was doing these impulses. And it was that therapist who, he was the one who introduced me to OCD, but he also said, I think that you do this as a result

of your trauma. And I remember looking at him and saying, what trauma? And he like was dumbfounded. He said, you're molestation. And I had shared that with him once, like as a throwaway. Like in passing, like this is one of the things in my history. Totally. Because it was really no, it was not something that I carried and, or so I thought. And it was, he helped me to understand trauma, dissociation, the mind body connection, the way in which this information had been living in my cells, the suppression of the rage, the shame, the guilt, and how my nervous system was continually trying to work that out, how my environments were in the unconscious, never safe, and that my anxiety was trying to create this safety in a world that was proving consistently that it was threatening. So that molestation wasn't the only time that I had experienced that kind of exploitation, abuse or violence. That was consistent in my life. And I don't mean with that particular individual. I just mean as a young girl and young woman walking in the world, it was fairly chronic. So my nervous system was always waiting for that moment. But that moment was the same moment at six years old. There was no difference.

And so getting to go towards the emotion. You have to associate rather than dissociate. And then, which is something that's so, I mean, so many of us spend so much and we're like, I'm compartmentalized, but I get through every day. It's okay. And like, as long as that's my day-to-day reality, but at some point, you know, the compartment gate tears open or flips open. And, but we don't want to feel that knowing, we don't want to process or deal with it, knowing that feeling it will be sort of like the opening move. Right. But in the spiritual communities that I'm a part of, there's this thing that they give you called detachment. It's the goal in many of these practices.

And that's a gift to a dissociator. It's like big feeling come up and I detach. Great. Just let it go. Let it go. And that's what I was taught at a very early age within my spiritual practice. Big feeling, detach. Big feeling, detach. And it wasn't until I started to have big emotional releases in yoga classes,

which was freaky, that I started to understand the phenomenon of the mind-body connection, the way in which emotions release themselves from the cells, and how important it is to go towards the suppression and give voice to the shadow, no matter how ugly or mindless or unconscious it may seem. One of my mantras is that you cannot get to the bless you until you go through the fuck you. And I'm a big believer in that, like, great, I understand where I'm going, but I don't get to touch that until I allow for the animal energy, because that's all that it is, energy, to have space, no matter how unconscious. And anytime my brain starts to start saying like, yeah, but, or, you know, everything does kind of happen the way it's supposed to, stop it. Just let that animal out. Because if I don't, the ego, it'll find another way to direct its energy.

So I spent years in my practice feeling those feelings, connecting to the rage, not letting myself bypass from my own humanity. And as a result, the gift that that work brought and continues to bring is deep empathy for the human experience as it is, the complexities of the human experience, and recognizing that most people do not have tools. And most people are dealing with trauma, whether it's developmental or shock or somewhere in that spectrum. And as a result of that trauma, have been protecting their energy body because they cannot deal with their big feelings and they're reactive.

The energy comes out and they do and say things not because they're bad or even flawed. It's because the energy needs space to move. So I just chose with guidance to find tools to help me manage those big feelings, to understand them without suppressing them, and then to what's called flipping the narrative, but in time. I don't get to go to those higher spiritual places and flip those narratives until at least I understand what the ego's narrative is all about. Yeah. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever.

It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised.

The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him.

Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk. I was thinking about Bessel van der Kolk's work in PTSD and how I recently heard a conversation with him where he said, you know, a lot of the treatment for PTSD for decades was talk therapy, various forms of talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. And he's really come to a point where it's like he said, you cannot unwind trauma without having some sort of embodied part of the process, without moving the body, integrating it. And his integration very often is yoga, some form of physical movement. It seems like a lot of the therapeutic world is coming to that same place also and saying, okay, so we can't just sit in chairs across from each other.

Sometimes we can, but for a lot of times, like you said, there are, and I agree with you, there are so many people moving through life with some level of trauma, largely dissociated because it lets us get through the day. But it doesn't really. No, no. It's why there's drugs, alcohols, acting out sexually, shopping addiction, you know, internet addiction, anything to anesthetize ourselves from these big feelings because no one has taught us just how to be present to those feelings and just let them be. And again, the idea of breathe and everything changes. You know,

the grief becomes joy. The joy becomes heartbreak. The heartbreak becomes compassion. You know, it just these moves in these cycles, but we're not taught to tolerate the discomfort. Yet we crave the ease as a reward, but that's not life. Yeah. And also to your point, I feel like we're not given the tools to know that we can feel fully and then be okay. Yeah. You know, because we feel,

and it's almost like, oh, you're extreme, like you're manic or you're constantly angry and lashing out or you're depressed. And we don't, it's like, you know, it's almost like the aspiration becomes that great twilight that's in the middle of everything, you know, rather than saying, okay, so let's, let's actually, let's talk about this. Let's move through it. Let's, let's explore tools and practices that let us feel the full sweep of the human

condition and still be okay. It's like, no, let's actually just try and cut off the edges of the, of the human experience, not talk about the tools and see if we can be okay enough in that narrow space. What I understand about that mind-body connection is like when I experienced my trauma as a way for me to deal with what was happening. Again, I dissociated, but there's chemicals that release from your brain into your body. Your body goes into fight, flight, freeze, or fold. There's a contraction that happens. Your body contracts at a safety. It's a primal response. Now in that moment of contraction, it's like a photograph has been taken. There's an energetic imprint of this moment. What this is doing is

that the next time I'm in a situation that reminds me of or feels in any way threatening, my body will alert me first. It'll contract again to let me know you're unsafe. You're not going to be taken by surprise this time. The thing is, my nervous system doesn't know what's on the other side of that contraction. That contraction feels like safety. It feels like control. There's no evidence that if that contraction, without that contraction, I'm getting molested or I'm getting bullied or something bad is happening within my unconscious. That's not true.

Liberation is the thing that's beyond that contraction, but I don't have any cellular evidence that that's true. Yoga helps you to get past that contraction, but I don't have any cellular evidence that that's true. Yoga helps you to get past that contraction, but there's space between the release and the contraction where we lose most practitioners because that's when it gets real. That moment when the body wants to release, if you don't understand that this is a gift, this is what your body's been begging for this for years. You'll fidget. You'll look around the room. You'll start to project onto the teacher. You'll fantasize about the sex you're going to have one day, maybe whatever it is to not

have to feel the sensation of what's on the other side of that contraction. As a teacher, these are the moments. It doesn't, sometimes it happens instantaneously. Sometimes it's a process, but it's please stay with this gap because there is that moment when the body finally does relinquish what it's been holding onto. And it is freedom. People grieve, they cry, they laugh, their body shakes, and they have finally moved from that contraction to that liberation where they're finally able to surrender. And what we know spiritually in the work that I do is it requires surrender to open ourselves to God. It's not from your head.

It's from your heart. And if you're contracted, you will try to make sense of the etheric or of the incomprehensible or of the divine. But when you're available, you don't have to think it's just a knowing. It's just intuitive. It's an acceptance. It's a pathway in. Those are the moments of such deep grace. But you have to have a certain amount of courage because your body is saying, no, no, no.

What's over here is bad when it's actually the medicine. So that's what yoga has taught me is just to be really present to this discomfort. I don't blame people for not wanting to do this. Dissociation is easier than denial and dissociation is easier than accountability and self-responsibility on the healing path. It really is. The end result, unfortunately, is a disconnection from yourself, your soul, and pretty much the relationship of the entire planet. So it's like short-term discomfort for long-term freedom. But it does

require confidence in yourself, guidance in others who have walked this path, who are saying like, you're cool, we got you. And faith that there is a journey that we're on, that even the dark stuff, even the painful stuff are essential elements that lead to wholeness. We have to figure this out the hard way. And my hope is that people are willing to do the inner work necessary because what they get at the end is themselves. And you end up being grateful even for the deeply uncomfortable stuff. You can't help but be grateful for every experience, every moment, every being who's crossed your path because all of it has been fodder for truth and liberation you use the word god coming from the background you come from what do you what do you mean by that

well god is something that i had to i had to learn in a i had to relearn what that meant you know my introduction to spirituality began you know again it's like the mystery. It's like, I can look back now at 52 years old and recognize that there were so many angels just conspiring, you know, just to keep pushing me forward onto this path, feeding me little tidbits of information that I really couldn't understand until later in life. Then I can step back and be like, oh my God, even that moment was grace, even that. And my earlier introductions to God really happened here in New York City. It's a well-told story, you know, it's in my book, but I learned about God in an all-male gay sex club called Heaven, you know, that was in the rectory of Limelight, where I just came from.

It's now a gym and it's very weird.'s very strange because i remember that those days where were you in heaven peter uh peter gation yeah gation and michael a lake and that whole craziness yeah i worked during that time michael a lake club kid 2000 i think it was called it's when drugs like ketamine and and uh ecstasy were just everywhere. I mean, ketamine was like a special K, a horse tranquilizer. It was nuts. But I worked in a private club. I worked in the disco, but at the time I worked in a private club called Heaven, which was all-male gay sex club.

And through a series of events, I met this man there who helped me to understand that God was truth and love and that God existed in all moments and all beings and all time and space. And that it was not a force that judged, that isolated, segregated, separated in any capacity. That where there's truth and love, there is God and there's truth and love everywhere. And he also helped me to understand that everyone is here in these bodies to understand and to learn what love is. And it's a very unique journey for each soul. And it's not going to be the same for each soul.

And the rate in which people awaken to the truth of their own nature is between each being and the God that's within them, the highest aspect of themselves. And that seed was it was the first time where I'm like, oh, I can get behind that. That's cool. You mean I can, I can, I can still be worthy of love, you know, in the back rooms of a sex club, you know, when there's glory holes and getting beaten by like whips, like that's all, that's all okay. And apparently, you know, yes, that it, that, that doesn't matter. It's not my business. So that was really my first introduction where I got a taste of perhaps maybe. But I still rejected God for years, especially in the environment, you know, getting so into yoga at that time. The schools of yoga were kind of, they weren't the way they are now in the mainstream yoga community where you can go to any school and take a variety of different kinds of classes.

Right. You know, it was Sivananda, you know, it was Ashtanga, it was Iyengar. It was systematized. And within these systems, there was always a guru. And I had a real issue with that here in the West with gurus, these elevated personalities, the dispellers of darkness, and that I was supposed to surrender my will to these people because they were the only way to get to God. And I remember thinking like, son of a bitch, I just spent like a fortune in therapy trying to call my power back. And now you're telling me I got to give my power away.

But there was another part of me was like, wouldn't mind someone else telling me how to live my life. That doesn't seem like such a bad trade-off, but I had a really hard time reconciling my understanding of experiencing the God within when I was only being supported to experience the God within someone else as elevated from me. And it wasn't until an event in India where I literally was awakened to understanding that God is not what you, I can't relate to the gods in the Bible. I can't relate to that patriarchal misogynist message. There are some words in the Bible that I do relate to.

There are certain things that Jesus Christ said that I am completely all in. Because it's love. It's truth. It's inclusivity. That resonated in my soul. And that didn't really happen for me until around 1996 when I started to really connect to not looking outside of myself for God, not expecting God in the rainbows. within me, within you, within all experience. And it was always love. It was always truth, even in its shadowed form, that there was always an invitation to move towards higher states of awareness that open us to a deeper spiritual connection. So it was just, it's a reframing. I don't look at it in that traditional way, but I feel God in everything. Every moment to me is miraculous.

You know, my body is miraculous, your body, everything, this microphone, for God's sakes, it's all like so weird and wonderful, wondrous. And I just feel like that's my connection to source. It's this mystical essence that does not discern and that exists and resides within each soul completely. And our work is to remember who we are and to waken up and to awaken ourselves to that essence. Yeah. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman.

I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot.

Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes.

The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. We skipped a whole sort of like chunk of your path. But clearly you've been teaching yoga for decades now. There was a window of time from 17 to mid-20s-ish, I guess, where you're bopping around New York City doing various things and then begin to practice intensively and then eventually teach.

And you came into the practice and into the world of teaching at a time where I feel like the world of yoga, at least yoga in the United States, was majorly in transition. Oh, yeah. States was majorly in transition. And there were other than the small number of male quote gurus who you've sort of talked about, it's not like it is now. And you became fairly quickly one of the sort of rising stars in this community. And so when you start to experience that yourself, and you know that internally you have this knee-jerk reaction against saying like, no, to people you perceive as being like, well, you're telling me that I have to access this thing through you and submit to you and transmission through you. When you start to enter that world as a teacher, as somebody where people are looking to you for guidance, how do you make the choices to navigate this

new position in a way that feels like you're honoring sort of like the way that you need to do it? Sure. It's very interesting because when I started teaching in 1994 and after having practiced yoga for years, never in a million years thinking I'd be a yoga teacher because I learned differently. I didn't adapt well in a teacher's training. I had a hard time understanding anatomy, putting things together like that. Very difficult for me. I also had a deep fear of speaking in front of people because I struggle with vertigo and I get very

dizzy. To this day? Yeah, yeah. I still struggle with vertigo, but in different ways. But at that time, I know now I'm very sensitive to energy. I didn't know that then. If more than eight people at a time looked directly at me, I would lose my train of thought. Things would get very blurry on the periphery. It would be hard for me to keep my train of thought. And so teaching yoga seemed an impossibility because people were actually going to be looking at me. And so I just took a teacher's training with the intention to advance my practice, not thinking I would ever become a teacher. So no one's more surprised than me, the direction that my career went. And I did get very successful very, very quickly. It's like I started teaching at the almost the exact same moment that yoga became more mainstream, like people were coming in from the gyms and they wanted these dynamic classes. And the type of yoga I was into was, you know, it was a blend of Ashtanga and it was power yoga.

I had evolved from Mayengar, Ashtanga, you know, I played in power yoga. And so I started teaching power yoga and vinyasa flow. It wasn't called vinyasa flow at that time, nor was it called, you know, power yoga. It was just intense. And my classes got very, very popular very quickly. And it was, it was difficult for me because here I am a young, insecure teacher, you know, I want to make sure I please everybody. And you've got these really aggro A-type personalities coming in. And at that time, I would just give them what they want, not what they needed. And the class was just like an ego fest on everyone's end.

But they were popular. And this was a lot in LA also. This is in LA. Yeah, I wasn't teaching in New York. This was out. I moved to LA, I think, 92. And then something else happened simultaneous to all of that, which was the commercialization of yoga. Now, that also wasn't a thing, you know. Yoga looked a certain way. It wasn't what it is now. And I started getting invited. And I didn't look like your typical yogi, you know.

You know, I wasn't wearing a turban. I looked marketable, relatable, blue eyes, blonde hair, white skin, able-bodied. There are things about me that could sell product, that could sell yoga. This was very difficult for me because at this point, I'd already been quite involved in social justice issues and activism. And I was aware right away that by representing yoga, if you will, in this mainstream way, that I was also participating in the status quo of showing what good health looks like. When of course yoga is very diverse and looks like a lot of different things, but I was marketable.

And I started getting covers of magazines. I was on the Today Show, you know, six months into my first, you know, after I'd graduated my teacher's training, I didn't know anything. And yet I was being asked to do all these things. And there was a lot of conflict internally because I felt like I'm a fraud.

Like, I don't know what I'm doing as any young teacher doesn't know what they're doing. And yet I'm getting all these opportunities. And the only reason I'm getting these opportunities is because you will, you know, come to Jesus moment for me because I knew that there was, that I was going to get opportunities that other people weren't going to get and had nothing to do with my skill or talent. But I wanted to earn this privilege and use the platforms that I was going to be given in a way that took the attention off of me and onto things that actually mattered. It was one of those moments where I had to really sit down and say, all right, I see the direction this is going in.

I'm not sure I'm emotionally prepared for this. I'm intimidated. I intimidated myself in this. So what do I need to do? And for me, it was authenticity, is that I am not going to walk into these environments and pretend I'm going to share what I know. I'm going to share my own journey. I am going to be direct about it. I'm going to take ownership for the privileges that I have.

I'm not going to pretend that, you know, somehow I've earned them, but I am going to use it and make sure that I constantly redirect the energy. Because I'm from the East Coast and a blue collar environment, there is no way that people in my life would ever allow me to buy my own hype. It just wouldn't happen. So- Like a Jersey kid, Jersey family, Jersey friends. Totally. Like someone would smack me in the head. Come from the New York area, it's like,

no, that won't fly. No, that always lived within me. Yeah. So I just knew that I wanted to get good and I have. And what I mean by that and why I'm confident when I say that is that there were a lot of teachers during that time in my life and up to this day who invested an enormous amount of time and energy into helping me develop my skills as a teacher. To suggest that I'm anything less than good would be a complete disrespect to the amount of commitment that they had to the

evolution of my skills, both spiritually, psychologically, as well as practically. And again, more angels that came into my life that said, okay, you're going to get attention. Let's help you become a good teacher. Let's help you to become effective. These were also people that, you know, wouldn't check in with me, you know, how you doing, how you feeling, what's going on. If I said something that they felt was inappropriate or, you know, I missed the mark a little bit, they let me know, like, you know, want to check in with you. You need to rethink this is not about you. This is, this is your Dharma, but this is not about you. You're in service to something

bigger, they would remind me. And so I feel like over the years, I've been, I'm grateful for the attention that I get. Certainly grateful for the students who have empowered me to facilitate experiences for them that have helped them to grow and evolve on their path. But I do feel that my dharma is to be in service to God, to do whatever I can to use my skills and talents to help others step into their own purpose, whatever that might be, through these embodied practices. My role in this bigger picture is no greater than anyone else's, but I'm very clear what I'm supposed to do. Part of that though, is not letting my ego get in the way of this. Because I know that if I feed my ego around my teaching, if my sense of

self becomes determined by my popularity or by my success, there's never enough of anything to fill that void. So I have to stay on top of it. I have to notice like, Ooh, that, that, you know, I, I really, I got off on that moment. Like that felt really good. Like I don't avoid thinking that to myself and checking in later, like, okay, honey, just, you know, be aware that was seductive. I know that there's a, there's a big yoga in yoga, and I feel like I'm in on the joke. And so I haven't been interested in buying the hype. And I think because of that, I feel, that I'm committed to social change, and that if I do mess up, I take ownership and accountability for it and try to model what that looks like and that the work doesn't ever end. So that's been my experience. I think a lot of it does have to do with the jersey thing because the amount of attention that I got, trust me, it was, it's seductive. I just, I just don't, my yoga is not to, is not to follow, allow myself to be seduced in that capacity. Yeah. Do you feel like that gets easier with age? Sort of like as you move deeper, it's sort of like,

yes, because I've, it seems like that's, that's a natural process. Everything gets, it's, I wish I could say that it's the spiritual practice that allows us to kind of ease into these experiences differently. Perhaps it is that, but I definitely feel that it's also age. That there are certain things that I do not care about, am not attached to. It just rolls off me in a completely different way than it did when I was younger. And I can't equate it to anything other than just a certain amount of maturity that comes with just living and breathing. Having a spiritual practice, of course, doesn't hurt. But for me, age has definitely allowed me to become more and more less interested in people's opinions of me, whether it's good or bad.

I feel way more neutral about it. I know you have shared, I think it was towards the end of last year, a conversation with your mom talking about aging. Yeah. And where, I'm sure I'll get it wrong, but hopefully I get the gist of it right, where there's, you said something about aging gracefully and she responded. And it's not about aging gracefully, it's about aging wildly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My mom's amazing that way. I mean, my mother's such a character.

And I remember when I was a kid, I must have been 10, my mother wanted me to sell these lottery tickets that she was supposed to sell. And I got in trouble because you're not allowed to sell lottery tickets when you're not of age. So I went back to my mom. She was getting her hair cut. And I said, Ma, I just got in trouble. She hands me those tickets back. And she said, you go back to them and tell them that today I turned 30. And when you turn 30, you can do whatever the fuck you want. And I'm like, Ma, I can't say that. But I live with this in my heart. My mother was very clear. My mother is funny that, you know, she just grabbed age, grabbed the experience every moment and lives it fully, celebrates it all, talks about everything. And I'm much more conservative than my mother in so many different ways. And I look at her as a real role model of how to approach

each day as you get older. I mean, my mother's in a sexual renaissance right now, and she wouldn't care that I said that. It's like she is, ever since my dad died, it's like she's let herself awaken to her body in a very different and new way. It's a different body than she had at 25. It's a different renaissance. She's had many of them. She's loving it. This is a time when you're supposed to be, and I put that in quotes, you know, you're supposed to be withdrawing from society. You're supposed to be like turning inward. My mother's more creative, more expressive than ever, but just seeing life through this more mature lens, but still just with this equal amount of curiosity. So yeah, she reminds me often to age wildly. I love that. We've kind of reflected a number of times on how from the earliest of times you had this sense for justice, for social justice, for right and wrong.

That seems like it was sort of like you knew it, you felt it when you were younger. It started to emerge when you started to go out on your own a lot more. And it feels like over the last 10, 15 years, it has really become a central focus in your life. Tell me more about that. I'd have to say that service and justice, really justice, is my yoga today. And I can't imagine that it's going to evolve into anything other than more, a deeper commitment to it. To me, it is yoga. Social justice is yoga.

Racial justice is yoga. Environmental justice, indigenous rights, animal rights, anything where people, beings are being oppressed, being denied, being rejected, being alienated, being denied access to resources is the opposite of yoga. Yoga means to come together and make whole. Everything that divides is oppression. It's the opposite. And it was a natural evolution. I mean, I had always been involved in activism and service, but it was very separate from my yoga. They didn't really meet until some years ago. Once I made the connection,

it was like, okay, step back. You know, as an activist, you're against something. As a conscious activist, you're for something. And so my activist was very much about what I was against. But if I'm against something, again, I'm the problem. I'm still creating that separation. I'm still oppressing, even if it's an idea. So when I was an activist here in New York City, I loved it because what I was doing without knowing it, they were embodied experiences. I was yelling and screaming and raging, marching, chanting. I felt amazing when it was done because I was discharging the rage that I felt that hadn't been processed yet. It was just a band-aid though,

because it would take a day or two and the anxiety would come back and I would need another rally. Once I started understanding this connection and I stopped my activism because I knew that I wasn't approaching it in a healthy way and I was going to burn out. As I got back into activism, first it was service. It was a slower process because I really had to, I became so aware of, like at first I was in service teaching young children who were severely sexually abused how to do yoga. But my first foray back in was I came in with a prescription, do this pose, breathe this way, and you're going to get fixed without recognizing that they have

their own culture, their own medicine, their own ideology. And by me imposing, there was something about that that was like, oh, so I'm a savior? Is there a difference between helping and true service? What does that mean? What does it look like? What did I learn? What lives in my body? It just opened up this whole new inquiry around what it meant to help. And does that continue to perpetuate oppression, especially as a white person, a privilege? What does that mean? And what does yoga tell me that means? Yoga tells me we're all one. That's what I learned. We are all one. I believe that. But what I then started to learn, well, but we're not the same. You know, we're not

the same. When I can walk down the street with my partner hand in hand, kiss him publicly. No one's going to say or do anything. They're probably even going to say, oh, isn't that sweet? That's not the case for a lot of people. I can get a visa anywhere in the world that I want to go. I can navigate the healthcare system. There are so many things that I can do that most people in this world can't. We're not the same. So just to issue this blanket statement of we are one misses the truth, the reality of this imbalance of power, which again is the opposite of yoga. Getting back into service forced me to have to look at where am I complicit in this imbalance of power? Where do I benefit from it?

And where do I participate in it? And I do every single day. Why? Because it's in my body, because I inherited it, because it's ancestral, it's cultural, it's religious, it's in my school system. I'm racist and sexist and homophobic and transphobic and have bias and discriminate and all of it. I can't not because of the environment in which I'm raised. And if everything is connected and if I've inherited my curly hair and my blue eyes, I've also inherited the bigotry of my grandparents. And now will it come out overtly? Probably not. But in a moment of stress, when there's a primal in microaggressions? Yeah. So the onus is on me as a practitioner to recognize that when it this oppression. And we all do in different ways and then begin the process, not just healing it within ourselves, but dismantling the systems that exist

that continue to perpetuate it. Yoga taught me how to do that. Like for years, my activism was like, you got to change. And the people listening, if you would have seen what I did right there, I pointed outward. But there's a saying is when you point one finger out, there's still three fingers pointing back at you. And that was a really important distinction is like, no, I think the deepest service that we can do is to take accountability for own humanity and to recognize the ways in which we utilize our power and privilege to disempower someone else, whether we're conscious of it or not. And what do we have to do to change it and to change the systems that support it?

This was and continues to be the deepest yoga. And I learned along the way. I mean, I'm much more articulate about it now. I wasn't talking like this 15 years ago. I was just trying to figure out the difference between charity and social justice. So you like everything. Like, you know, when I first learned my first downward dog, I didn't know where to put my fingers.

Now it's second nature. Same thing when you're learning about social justice. It's like it's awkward and uncomfortable at first. And then eventually it becomes not just necessary, but essential, truly essential. If we're going to create any kind of peace in this world, there's a saying in the spiritual practice that our liberation is bound. And so therefore, if my goal in yoga is liberation, then I better do whatever I can to support the liberation of all souls. Otherwise, I'm stuck.

And that no one can be free unless we're all free. And that includes myself. So my service has, it shows up in everything that I do. I use the platforms that I have to support it. I look back now and it's like, that's why I was getting the covers of the magazines. That's why. Put the pieces together. Yeah. Looking back. I couldn't have known it then, but I was saying, they were saying like, you better prepare yourself and use this well. And you know, this is the way I choose to use it

is to help, especially the people in the yoga community. We're low hanging fruit. We're people who are opening to transformation. So it's like, really, you want transformation? Try this and now go out and actually serve. But I mean, it's interesting too, because like, I kind of feel like there is a lot of lip service to opening to transformation because we want to, we want to wear the badge and we want to wear the t-shirt that says, Hey, I'm in the process of transformation. I'm in a group that's like devoted to this thing. And I go out to these things and I do this and I take care of myself. And yet what you're saying,

at least what I'm hearing you're saying is that the deep practice of unpeeling your own onion, of cultivating inner awareness is the most powerful and the fundamental form of activism and service and transformation. You can't go out into the world and make big social change. Well, you can. You can take external action. But fundamentally, if you still walk down your block and you're loaded with bias, because you have, and you're not even aware of that on a day-to-day basis and what you can and

can't do simply because not of choices that you've made, but because of how you landed on the planet. Yeah. You know, there is this massive conflict which exists. And in a way, I think it's almost easy to say, yes, I'm for this. I'm out. I'm going to the rallies and fill all of your like available code activism bandwidth with that stuff. You know, because then if you don't create the time, then say, oh, but what, you know, like then you don't create the time, then say, oh, but what, you know, like then you don't have the time to sit in solitude, you know, to do your own inner practice, which is, which is really hard. And I don't think it's an either or, you know, it's a yes and.

Yes. It's a yes and, you know, but, you know, there are some practical things that just have to happen. You know, people need to be fed. People need access to resources. You know, there's just things like, you know, I wouldn't say, well, I'm not going to be of service because I haven't done my inner work. It's like, no, get out there. It's messy. It's messy. And I also look at I made a lot of mistakes along the way, big mistakes that I couldn't have matured from had those mistakes not happened exactly as they have had. Like those moments, I look back now and be like, oh my God, like,

what was I thinking? Now I, but I'm grateful because that moment led to the awareness that I need to do deeper work. And I couldn't have known that prior. And yeah, it's like, it's, it's a, it's a parallel thing, not a serial thing. You know, it's like they're one feeds back to the other and the other and the other. Like for years, I mean, with the, the organization that I co-founded off the mat into the world, which is a leadership training organization, that's done a lot of social justice work in the United States, in the world. And we also have an offshoot program called Global Save a Challenge. Now, that was really successful.

It was a smart, just model, challenged yogis in the community to raise $20,000. If they could, they would get to come with me to whatever country we were focusing on. Let's say it was India. Sex trafficking was the theme. I would, and my organization would go and vet different organizations from building halfway houses to paying lawyers for, to work to change policy, whatever it was, we would commit to these organizations, certain amount of money that they would get. In India, we raised around a million dollars. And if you can't raise the money, you don't get to go, but, but the money was still going to this pot. And it was a good model.

And we got to bring people to India and got to, you know, they worked with the organizations hands on. They got to see, you know, the face of this trauma. This was a successful program that was doing super well. But it was after quite a few years where there were these moments where I would watch the participants say or do something where I'd be like, oh, whoa, you can't do that. You can't say that. And all of a sudden I'm looking around like, wait a second. I think we can't be here.

These people, we don't have enough information about this culture. We don't understand their trauma. This screams of a little bit of colonization. Wait a second. Like it was this realization. So we stopped the program, even though it was so successful because we try to put our money where our mouth is.

It was like, we need to understand like what's missing, education. So we redirected the program. And what we do now here in the United States, it's called Learning and Listening Tours. And we bring people, the last one I just did was called Race in America, which was down in Alabama, which was to learn about slavery, systemic oppression, of course, the civil rights movement and progressive movements of the day. Now, I'm not teaching that stuff. What I'm doing, though, is teaching the yoga. So when stuff comes up, I'm helping people

to embody that information. We hire leaders in the community who are coming in and teaching us. We even hired someone who was he was an ex neo-Nazi white supremacist. And now he goes around. It's called Life After Hate. And he helps other people who are neo-Nazi white supremacists get out of that world, heal. And he helps people like me understand my own whitems and not in a judgmental way, just to say, there's your yoga now, it lives in the body. And then I help them to embody it. So, you know, and this has only been the last few years. So the learning process never ends. But to me, it's all about accountability, normalizing, taking ownership, not pretending that we should know better, owning what we know or don't know, and then doing whatever we can to continue to mature our awareness. I think that that's how

real change happens. I can get beyond that. Yeah. It feels like a good place for us to come full circle. So hanging on this container and good life project, if I offer out the phrase to live a good life, what comes up for you? To love bigger than you ever imagined possible. That was advice given to me when I was 18 years old at Heaven, an all-male gay sex club. Love bigger than you ever imagined possible. He also told me to ignore the story and see the soul, and remember to love, you'll never regret it.

And so that's how I try to live this life. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much for listening. And thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make this show possible. You can check them out in the links we have included in today's show notes. And while you're at it, if you've ever asked yourself, what should I do with my life? We have created a really cool online assessment

that will help you discover the source code for the work that you're here to do. You can find it at sparkotype.com. That's S-P-A-R-K-E-T-Y-P-E.com. Or just click the link in the show notes. And of course, if you haven't already done so, be sure to click on the subscribe button in your listening app so you never miss an episode.

And then share, share the love. If there's something that you've heard in this episode that you would love to turn into a conversation, share it with people and have that conversation. Because when ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change takes hold. See you next time. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th.

Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk.

The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X.

Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary.