The Rich Roll Podcast - Guru Singh: A Master Spiritual Teacher on The Power of Cultivating Awareness To Awaken Your Highest Self

Episode Date: January 9, 2017

Inspiration. We crave it. We need it. We love it. But inspiration alone is a salve that does not cure. Because it rarely translates into positive lifestyle adaptations sustained over time. For that you need something called purpose. Purpose derives from a keen awareness of self. An awareness that cannot be found in externalities but instead emanates from the deep recesses of your soul — a place far removed from the dopamine-inducing inspiration hits we restlessly seek outside ourselves. Indeed, purpose is an inside job. So this week, we turn inward. A conversation designed to cultivate that awareness, amplify intuition, and enliven the soul so that we can more deeply connect with our unique purpose and awaken to our highest, most authentic selves. I can think of no better steward to ignite this process than master spiritual teacher and celebrated Kundalini yoga wizard Guru Singh (@gurusinghyogi). Imagine a modern-day rock star Gandalf dropping mad guitar licks between pearls of timeless wisdom that beautifully fuse of Eastern mysticism with Western pragmatism and you start to get the picture. Named “Best Guru in LA” by Los Angeles magazine, for the last 40 years Guru Singh has been studying and teaching Kundalini Yoga – a 5,000 year old ancient science and school of yoga focused on awakening the primal energy known as shakti for the purpose of spiritual enlightenment. He is the author of several books (enumerated below) and a powerful lecturer uplifting thousands worldwide. An extraordinary teacher, he also serves as a behind-the-scenes guide to many a luminary, including Fortune 500 CEOs, athletes, artists and even Tony Robbins. A peer of rock legends like Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and the Grateful Dead, Guru Singh is also a supremely talented musician who began his recording career on Warner Bros' Sire label in the 1960s. When he isn't recording tracks with people like Seal, he's bringing down the house on the daily at Yoga West, his Los Angeles home base. Simply put, Guru Singh is one of the coolest people I have ever met — a huge, beautiful consciousness I'm proud to call friend. It's an honor to share his story and wisdom with you today. My hope is that that this conversation will catalyze your desire to peer more deeply inward. That it will spark a yearning to more thoroughly cultivate your latent intuition. And ultimately that it helps set a trajectory for your journey towards the ultimate superpower — unlimited awareness. To rise up, you gotta lay down. It is there that you will find purpose. Peace + Plants, Rich

Be aware. Be aware. And then assign... You got bandwidth. Assign a strand in your bandwidth for maintaining that awareness. This is the nature of yoga, literally off the mat. To be able to assign a part of your bandwidth, your awareness bandwidth, and we've got a lot of it that we don't use, to being aware that you're breathing. Have an awareness that you're not just talking to somebody, you're actually conversing. There's a there's this pathway going between you. And when you start to be aware of these bandwidths in your consciousness, it's like a whole new world opens up to you. The world of relationship becomes so much richer.

That's Guru Singh, and this is The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. How are you guys doing? What's going on? What is happening? Greetings. My name is Rich Roll. I am your host. And welcome or welcome back to the show where I get intimate and go long form with some of the world's most intriguing thought leaders and positive change makers all across the globe. I really appreciate you guys tuning in today. I appreciate you subscribing to the show on iTunes and for sharing the show with your friends and on social media. And of course, for supporting my work through Patreon and the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com. Okay. First off, I want to thank you guys, all of you for the tremendous reaction to the David Goggins episode.

Just unbelievable. Man, that one just took off. It went a bit viral. There were thousands upon thousands of tweets and posts on Facebook and Instagram. It even made the newspaper in Sydney, Australia. People are just really responding positively to David's powerful, super inspirational message. And that episode is definitely well on its way to becoming my most popular podcast ever. So where do you go from here?

I mean, how do you top that? And the answer is, I don't know. I mean, I guess for me, it means shifting gears. It means going in a totally different direction to mix it up. And that's what this week is about. As we enter 2017, we want to be motivated. Of course, we want that. We need that kick in the pants that David delivered and we want to be inspired. But I think as David made abundantly clear, you got to go beyond motivation because inspiration alone, it's just not enough to translate into sustainable long-term lifestyle changes.

For that, you need purpose. And purpose derives from self-awareness. And self-awareness is an inside job. It's an inside job that begins with a focus on your interior life. So this week is perhaps the yang to last week's ying as we turn inward a bit and put a spotlight on how to better cultivate that awareness, how to better amplify our intuition and balance our energy systems and magnify our spiritual evolution to enliven our souls and really awaken to who we truly are, what we are here to do, and how to do it so we can more deeply connect with ourselves,

with others, and with the environment. And it is this process, I think, that will truly set a trajectory, a long-term sustainable trajectory to ultimately unlock and unleash our best, most authentic selves on the world. So with all that said, I can think of no better steward to enlighten and mentor us through this process than master spiritual teacher and celebrated kundalini yoga wizard, Guru Singh. So who is Guru Singh? Well, he's sort of a modern rock star Gandalf who beautifully fuses Eastern mysticism with Western pragmatism. For the last 40 plus years, Guru Singh has been studying and teaching kundalini, which is this 5,000-year-old ancient science and school of yoga that's all focused on awakening our primal energy, our Shakti, for the purpose of spiritual enlightenment. In addition, he is an author. His

book, A Year of Prayer, and his memoir, Buried Treasures, they're both must-reads, as well as an extraordinary musician. He is a truly gifted musician. He was a peer to people like Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and the Grateful Dead. His stories about this time are amazing. We get into it in the podcast. And he's also an incredibly powerful lecturer who travels the world, uplifting thousands worldwide. A few more things I want to say about Guru Singh

before we get into the conversation, but first. But first. to become a teacher of mindfulness and meditation, then you may recall that it was Guru Singh who lit Jason's spark and mentored him through his evolution. In fact, the conversation with Jason took place in Guru Singh's meditation room, and that's where I conduct this interview today. So I guess what I'm saying is today we're going right to the source. It's been an honor for me getting to spend some time with Guru Singh over the last couple months. And in addition to being an extraordinary teacher, this is a guy who behind the scenes

is counsel to many, many luminaries, major CEOs, executives, athletes, artists, even Tony Robbins. He's just a huge, beautiful consciousness, not to mention a stunningly talented musician and a guy who is also surprisingly relatable. Just one of the coolest people I've ever met and a guy I am personally committed to spending time with and learning from in 2017. And on that note, I thought I would share that on New Year's Eve, instead of going to a party, Julie and I decided to instead attend this event at Guru Singh's studio, Yoga West. And it was incredible. If you find yourself in Los Angeles, I highly suggest trying to attend one of his classes.

It's unlike anything you've ever seen or participated in. Definitely unlike any yoga class you've ever been to, I can assure you of that. And this event in particular, it was like a mashup of rock concert. I mean, Guru Singh was playing guitar and he was singing backed up by this amazing band, part meditation, part breathing practices, and all tied together by this really impactful, powerful, and uplifting oration by Guru Singh that was just so empowering. And I left that experience really changed, changed for the better. And I feel like it has set an amazing tone for me to kind of launch into a positive trajectory going into 2017. So in any event, I think I've said enough.

I'll let Guru Singh do the rest. I'm honored to share his story and his wisdom with you today. Its wisdom, I think, is more important than ever as we enter what I think is fair to characterize as a pretty volatile, uncertain time for many. And my hope is that it catalyzes your own desire to look inward and more deeply cultivate your consciousness, your self-awareness, your intuition, and your commitment to yourself and your spiritual growth and evolution. I think that's good. Good. Are you ready to go? Ready to roll. Let's do it. Thank you. That's nice equipment.

You like that? Well, the mics are good. I used to carry around this whole big soundboard, which was overkill. And then I went and did a podcast with my friend, Jonathan Fields, who had this little device called a Zoom. The sound was better than my soundboard. And I'm like, why am I carrying around this big soundboard? So I upgraded to this thing and it's fantastic and portable.

So anyway, thanks for taking the time to do this. I've been looking forward to this for a very long time. Yeah. We're sitting in the same location where I did the podcast with Jason Garner, your friend and disciple. That must have been about a year and a half ago. About a year and a half ago. Yeah.

Well, at least because they've been living in the Santa Cruz Mountains now for about a year and a half. Right. So it might be. No, you know it was because he was down here. They had already moved out of their house. Yes, he was staying with you down here. Yeah. Yeah.

And I was sitting where you were sitting, so we switched places. I turned the table on you. Yeah, you did for sure. So, so many things I want to talk to you about, but first I'd love to hear about your trip to India. You were starting to tell me a little bit about it before the podcast. You just returned from India. what were you doing there teaching with with a couple of locations one in Jaipur which is the really sort of the the capital of the gemstones and the gypsies Jaipur is Rajasthan, the state of Rajasthan, and right next to Rajasthan is the

state of Gujarat. And so we've got Punjab, Rajasthan, and Gujarat, and these are the really old birthplaces of yoga. So there's a lot of ancient temples, there's a lot of ancient temples there's a lot of really incredible old vibrations yeah is that close to arunachala close to the mountain arunachala do you know what that yes is it is that in the same yes because those those go from, we're more down in the plains, and those go up into the Himalayas. Right. Dharmashala, where our good friend, the Dalai Lama, spends part of his year. And then if you go a little bit further east,

you get around Darjeeling and the gateway to Nepal and all of that. So it's really, really, really a rich, sacred state ecosystem in India. You know, every area that has been overrun by Western civilization over the last few hundred years has succumbed to a variety of immune deficiencies. What do you mean by that? For example, the American continent, the American hemisphere, it was physical diseases, biological diseases, and alcohol. And so the natives, the indigenous natives of this area had no protection against these components of the sort of the Western European lifestyle. Then when the Western Europeans went into Africa and they started, in violent nature, pulling out slaves, they created hierarchies because Africa was this incredible non-hierarchical... They had their priests, but they weren't considered higher than,

they were considered equal to. And as a matter of fact, the ancient sense of a ruler was somebody who was setting a high standard that you tried to measure up to, as opposed to somebody that was taking on the position of being a boss. Or an oppressor. of being a boss. Or an oppressor. Correct. And so this oppressive, violent, hierarchical nature came in because what they would do is that they would take the priests

and the chieftains, so to speak, and they would pay them off in big ways for them to give up their populace to the slave trade. And this created something that their psyche couldn't handle and has made Africa one of the most violent places on earth. Then when they went into India, there was no, in India there was absolutely no poverty and no starvation prior to colonization. So when they went into India, they brought in industrialization. They brought in spinning and weaving machines

because everything was done by hand before that. And railroads. Railroads, automated farming. And along with that came, in the 20th century, came plastics. You know, single-use plastic bags litter the countryside now and what it was was that an indian an indigenous uh south asian ate off a banana leaf and anything that they wrapped they would either wrap in cloth or they would wrap in disposable paper. There was no such thing as a glued bag Or the idea that something would not be biodegradable then

Exactly enter the conscious you hit it exactly and so everything went out the window and it just disappeared into the into the earth And then with industrialization single-use plastic bags all of the pollutions And then with industrialization, single-use plastic bags, all of the pollutions, everything goes out the window and doesn't disappear. So right now, India is the most polluted country on earth, even more so than China. Yeah. I've heard that. I haven't visited yet. I'd really like to go.

My wife has been. But that's great. And so you were teaching there for a couple weeks. I know you were doing stuff with Tony Robbins. And you also have like a high teaching there for a couple of weeks. I know you were doing stuff with Tony Robbins and you also have like a high school there. So I trust or assume you've been going back there for many, many years. Yeah. Tony and we, uh, Tony and his wife, my wife and I have been going there together. We've known each other for what? 25 years. And, uh, so we've been teaching over in India for about a decade now and then for about 20 years here comes my wife with our tea. Excellent that's a welcome

interruption. Yay. Hi. So we have been, thank you, sweetheart. So we have had this high school over there for about 20 years. Thank you. And we have kids from all over the world. We have kids from China, Japan, South Africa, North Africa, Europe, Canada, all through the Americas. north africa europe canada all through the americas and they come and they learn in a cambridge system all of the main courses but they also learn how to be a global citizen and a spiritual being so they graduate uh with a level one teacher training in kundalini yoga they're a they're a certified teacher so is this so it's like a private school like i want to go to this school like how do you get into this school yeah

it is a private school that's called midi m-i-r-i pity p-i-r-i midi and pity means the physical world and the spiritual world that's what midi pity Piti means, Midi Piti Academy. And it's in northern India, just outside of a town called, or a city called Amritsar, which is where the Golden Temple is. Right, very cool. And how long has the school been in existence? We built it in 1997.

And our daughter, actually, our daughter graduated from that in 2001, and our son taught there for three years. Oh, wow. Cool. Yeah. unpack, uh, you know, this idea that I have around you, which is that, you know, you are this guru, you're a teacher, uh, and you sort of, uh, dress in the, in the trappings of that, so to speak, you know, you wear the, this, the Sikh attire. But I think also what's super interesting about you is that you're, you're like a guy, you're a very easy person to talk to. Like you're a guy, you're a husband, you're a father, you're very much in the world, right? And you have a very easy person to talk to. Like you're a guy, you're a husband, you're a father, you're very much in the world, right? And you have a very grounded ability to kind of communicate to

your fellow man in that regard. And so I'm really interested in you as a person, like I want to get into your personal story a little bit, but also maybe we could talk a little bit about yoga. Like what is the truth of yoga and specifically Kundalini yoga? Because I know you have a very interesting perspective on that that's rooted very much in science. So is there a possibility that you could unpack that for me? Yeah, we'll enter through a wormhole and see where we end up. I was born a yogi because my parents were deeply influenced by part of our family that lived in Calcutta, India, back in the 19-teens. And they ran into Sri Yukteswar, who was the teacher of Paramahansa Yogananda. That's right, he was Yogananda's guru.

Yeah, and my great-aunt was sent with Paramahansa Yogananda to America, to Boston, in 1919. And she served him until his death in 1952. And for people that don't know, maybe explain who Yogananda was. Paramahansa Yogananda, yes. There's a great book that he wrote in the late 40s, or he wrote in the 40s and published in the late 40s, called Autobiography of a Yogi. And in that, he really, as I'll use your phrase, I like that phrase you use, unpacked. as I'll use your phrase, I like that phrase you use, unpacked. He unpacked the science around yoga in a very personal way. And he tells of the yogis and the great seers and sages that he met

throughout his travels in India, and then about his coming to America. And he built what was called a church of all religions. He was trying to be extremely inclusive because he came to America in, well, in 1919. But we're looking at America in the 1920s and 30s when he was, you know, building his organization. It was not a real receptive place to Eastern traditions. So he really came across as a person of all traditions, which if you think about what you just said about me, it's kind of similar in that I'm steeped in some traditions, but I'm open to all ways. And that way I can speak to people without trying to indoctrinate them. They don't feel like I have something to

sell, because I really don't have anything to sell. I'm just trying to look for that connection, that connecting thread in which we can find our commonalities. So I was born into that tradition, and then in the late 60s, after going through a career in music, a recording career in music, which we're going to talk about. Right. I met Yogi Bhajan, who was a master of Kundalini Yoga, and Paramahansa Yogananda was a master of Kriya Yoga. And the similarities far outweigh the differences in all forms of yoga. And again, this was a path of inclusion rather than exclusion. So all my life, I have been trained by kind of like default, right? I've been trained to be

inclusive. And if you read back in history, the renunciates, the yogis who would take their spiritual mastery and go into seclusion, it was a tradition that was good for a few, but it wasn't a tradition that was going to reach very many. Mm-hmm. You have to carry the message into the world. Today. In the sense of, in the tradition of Yogananda as being this emissary of the East into, you know, indoctrinating the West into these ideas around yoga. I mean, my autobiography of Yogi is one of my favorite books. I've read it several times.

The Autobiography of a Yogi is one of my favorite books. I've read it several times. But the sense I sort of get of the history around that is that he kind of went on the cocktail party circuit. Like he was sort of paraded around high society as this exotic creature. But he really did plant these seeds that have allowed these ideas. I mean, you look at Lululemon and you realize like Lululemon doesn't exist without Yogananda coming to the United States in the 1920s, right? It's crazy. That's great that you bring up Lululemon because the brother of the progression of lululemon from uh the founder being in a yoga class and looking around at everybody in sweats and saying you know

there could be some style here yeah but just the idea that lululemon represents uh this idea of yoga being absolutely mainstream being attainable being, being achievable, being reachable. And so Paramahansa Yogananda came, and then many came in the late 60s with Swami Muktananda, Swami Satchidananda, and the first one to ever come was Vivekananda, Swami Vivekananda, who came in 1904. And so it was first Vivekananda, and then Paramahansa Ykananda, who came in 1904. And so it was first Vivekananda and then Paramahansa Yogananda

and then a whole wave of people came in the late 60s and brought many forms, including Vinyasa and Hatha and Kundalini. And so I got into Kundalini. It was a natural fit. And so I got into kundalini. It was a natural fit. It's a form that can be very moldable to the circumstance. We have, for elderly, we have what's called chair yoga, right? We have, for the people that are unflexible, we have standing yoga, where you're doing all of the moves and the breath and the

mantras in a standing position so able to form it to do what you said create a mainstream effect seven and a half billion people on the planet is a lot and to not have some form of enlightenment, but just to have these stories about one or two or five people that have attained this incredible state of consciousness as the prophets and avatars of the various religions, isn't going to be enough to bring connection and cohesiveness and coordination amongst people. And so it's really important now more than ever that this kind of a practice be mainstream, be reachable, be connectable. And so these kinds of podcasts that you do and bring people into the world they're essential the kinds of teachings that Tony does they're essential the kinds of things that Lululemon does they're essential We have to approach it from all of these different ways, all of these different directions in order to bring about peace.

Because we are going very fast in the opposite direction. Right, and I'd love to define Kundalini yoga as something sort of perhaps separate from what we think of as yoga in general, you know, sort of just an asana, you know, a series of asanas. Like, what is it about Kundalini that makes it special? is it about kundalini that makes it special and then i'd love to hear your thoughts on on kind of the current climate that we're in like how your perspective on kundalini yoga and your experience informs how you think about what's going on around us right now there's a lot of fear there's a lot of confusion there's a lot of people that are acting on that fear, and we seem to be quite divided, and we're struggling more than we ever have been before to find a way to constructively communicate with each other. Kundalini yoga is called the yoga of awareness.

All forms of yoga will raise the kundalini. The kundalini is that energy that primarily sits in what are called the lower three chakras, the lower three energy centers in the body. And the lower three energy centers are the physical world energy centers that keep you grounded, that keep you reproducing, that digest your food, that enable you to live and function on the earth. The next center up is the heart center. And then you have the throat center, the third eye, and the crown. And so of these seven chakras, Kundalini Yoga focuses on raising your awareness so you include all of your system in your life, that

you include all of your awareness in your daily practice, in your daily function, whether you're at work, whether you're a teacher, whether you're a mother, a father, whether you're a student, no matter what it is that you do on earth, yoga and then also kundalini yoga enables you to do it more effectively and efficiently. As I said, all forms of yoga raise the kundalini. What kundalini yoga does is it specifically targets the raising of that energy so that you can be far more aware. You are more aware of your physical body, so you believe in health. You believe in feeding yourself in a healthy way. You believe in exercising in a healthy way.

I mean, I know that I'm speaking to the choir here because you're a master of these things. You know, food, diet, and exercise. a master of these things, you know, food, diet, and exercise. And that's what Kundalini is about also, is raising your awareness so that you are very aware and in tune with your physical body, very aware and in tune with your emotional body, very aware and in tune with your mental body, and very aware and in tune with your esoteric, right, or your spiritual bodies. Kundalini Yoga does many of the asanas that are done in Hatha. The difference perhaps is less than the similarities. What Kundalini also has is what are called kriyas, which are asanas which go into movement, which turn into another asana with a breathing process that connects them.

And it's the practice of these kriyas that may, if you want to create a differentiation, set it aside or set it apart from that. Also very prevalent in kundalini yoga is mantra sound music even dance right so it's a very boisterous joy it can become very boisterous and joyful and it can become in vipassana it can become very silent and very very still So it really goes through the entire spectrum. So that's my thumbnail sketch of Kundalini. Yeah, I get it. So when we walked into your meditation sanctuary here, there was some music playing, there was some nature sounds, there was sort of the the tone i don't know what you call that is it like the um that indian sort of is a tambura tambura yeah it was playing sounds

like a sitar right and it just kind of holds a frequency so is that is that part of yeah kundalini yoga and sound current and and and kundalini yoga like how do you carry kundalini Yoga, like how do you carry Kundalini Yoga off the mat and into your life and into the world? Good point, because yoga off the mat is where you spend most of your day. And to include yoga off the mat means that you're, well, yoga means to be in union, to be in connection with. to be in connection with. Yes, specifically the sounds. The sound current is very much a key part of kundalini yoga. We use a gong in class.

The other day, a fellow brought his didgeridoos. So I've got amplification in this large room of well over a hundred people and about 150 people in the class and we had him everybody was in easy pose in gyan mudra right sitting in meditation and he is playing this beautiful he was one of the most masterful digi players that i've heard and he's playing it into a microphone and we're putting it through the pa system into the room bow speakers and the whole bit right um i mean people were having people were catching the sound in their chest not just in their ears and it was like they were a sail in the wind and that's when you get a real powerful experience of the sound current that you were experiencing when you came in this room but with a didge on let's use a cliche a didge on

steroids right going through a full bose sound system they were in just just incredible bliss and this is the nature of our teachings, that we'll take a didge from the indigenous people of Australia and include it in a kundalini class. Because it's not about sticking to a strict tradition of only that which was with the great masters of hundreds and thousands of years ago, but it's about what works today. So we even have remixes of our mantras, right?

Where people are actually listening to good solid beats with the mantras. So we move with the times in order to include everybody that is in the times. And that's actually what Param mahansa did when he came to america he said okay i've got this really strict tradition but i'm in america i have to if i'm going to be included in america i have to make something that america's want americans want to include and so that's that's one example of kind of taking this set of ideas, for lack of a better phrase, off the mat a little bit. You're still in the yoga studio, right? So how do we carry this idea of union, of yoga, out into the world and allow it to infiltrate our minds and our behaviors?

Remain totally conscious of your breathing. For example, we're having an interview here. And the whole time that we've been having this interview, I've been also consciously aware that I am breathing. I've been consciously aware that you are breathing. I've been consciously aware that you are breathing. I've been consciously aware that we are breathing, and that has given me this sense of, you may be asking the questions, but we're both exploring the answers. And so there's a connection. So if I'm standing next

to a person in my daily life off the mat, I have to find some way of creating a yoga, creating a union, a connection with them. And the easiest way is that which keeps us alive, to constantly be aware of we are breathing. Another way is that off the mat, we're constantly conscious of what it is that we're taking in, in the form of words, what it is that we're taking in, in the form of words. What it is that we're putting out in the form of words. How are you articulating what it is that you're expressing? And are you expressing from the pure state of emotion, or are you putting it through some kind of a refinement so that your emotion doesn't have to hit somebody in its raw form

you don't want to filter it too much you want to be authentic but also you want to be able to deliver something that they can understand and so you keep your awareness to the point of where you're not speaking just from yourself but you're also able to speak to the other person that's a lot to be conscious of well that is that is such a great response because do you remember when you learn how to ride a bicycle i mean you do triathlons right you ride a bicycle for a long way and and do you remember when you i remember the alley that I learned to ride a bicycle in. And I remember the moment that my feet, because this alley was an unpaved alley that had these two trenches where the tires went down.

And my feet could touch the sides of the trench and the wheels were down inside the trench. So I'm running along with the bicycle time after time after time and then i finally brought my feet up and remade balance do you remember when you first learned to ride a bike i do i remember the street i have very vivid memory of that very vivid memories and that is the nature of when you learn to ride a bike so for the next few days or weeks or whatever, you were very conscious of every move you were making on that bike. But then after a while, you could almost stand on the seat of the bike. You could ride without hands. You didn't have to look where you were going all the time. So you became very comfortable. And that's the same thing that happens with yoga off the mat,

with kundalini yoga off the mat is that you become aware of your breathing even though you're still doing other things you become aware of your conversing even though you're still doing other things so it's not not like conscious like if i'm riding a bike i'm not yeah i'm aware that i'm riding a bike but i'm not consciously processing you know oh i have to exert pressure on the pedals and, you know, how much weight is on my hand, on the handle. But like, I'm not consciously thinking about any of those things. Much like my breathing, it becomes a rote, you know, manifestation of being, right? So take it out of rote.

So be aware, be aware. And then assign, you got bandwidth bandwidth assign a strand in your bandwidth for maintaining that awareness this is the nature of yoga literally off the mat to be able to assign a part of your bandwidth your awareness bandwidth and we've got a lot of it that we don't use, to being aware that you're breathing. Have an awareness that you're not just talking to somebody, you're actually conversing. There's this pathway going between you. And when you start to be aware of these bandwidths in your consciousness,

it's like a whole new world opens up to you. The world of relationship becomes so much richer. So walk me through that. I mean, why is it important that I should be aware of my breath? Like, what is that going to do for me and the quality of my experience and my relationships? If I focus that attention. It brings you to this moment. Because in this moment, there is nothing going on except for breathing, that is keeping you alive in this body. And so when a part of your awareness is connected to your breathing, there is a part of your awareness that connects to your life in this moment. And the impact or the result of that is what the impact of that is that you have a sensation

a physical sensation a physical experience of more magnitude of more Right now, my body is vibrating, and I can feel it in my hands, in my face, in my spine, in my chest. And all I'm doing is sitting here talking with a good friend. is sitting here talking with a good friend. And yet, my enjoyment of this moment is like my team just won. You know, like I'm just trying to use a cliche from what the world understands, right? The inspiration of this moment can be like any other moment that has got a lot of meaning to it. So what you are able to do when you connect in this way, you connect not just in addition to your breathing, you connect with your conversing, you connect with your conversing you connect with your relating and all of these things suddenly your body becomes super alive i mean like you're a you're an ultra athlete and you know the sensation of that zone

this is really what we're talking about achieving that zone at will and that zone really can be defined as as the present moment right it's about i mean i think attention to the breath or or you know sort of losing yourself in the active meditation that is you, training for or participating in an endurance race. For me, I'm only speaking of my own experiences, is always bringing it back to the now, right? The more I can kind of, the minute I do, I forget and I wander off. And then I have, it's a constant process of surrendering to the moment, anchoring myself in the present. And the breath always brings me back to that right you know what you're talking about in training and participating in an endurance event you know because one of the most important parts of an endurance event is how are you breathing how are you pacing how are you using

your oxygen you know yeah you have to become hyper aware of how you're meeting out your energy levels in various ways throughout a very extended period of time. And it's about efficiency and economy with that, right? And I think the same can be applied to that yogic sense of how is my energy? How am I? What am I letting in? What are the energy fields that I'm sense of how is my energy, how am I, what am I letting in? What are the energy fields that I'm allowing to permeate my boundary? And how am I exerting my energy or emitting it out into the world, right? And trying to always amplify the quality of that and, you know, adjusting the levels accordingly

to make sure that you're protective of self and optimizing those levels for the best outcome for yourself and others. Is that fair to say? Definitely. And you could also translate the concept of an endurance event. Life is an endurance event event it's the ultimate ultra endurance race that we're all we're all ultra endurance athletes exactly and it begins at birth and it lasts till the finish line which is you know when we when we breathe our last and during that process if we are also vigilant and i'm not saying that we are just like crazy focused and not aware of anything else, but that we have assigned some bandwidth, as I mentioned previously, to being aware of that which keeps us in this training and participating mode, then pretty much all of our

days can be those kinds of days in which you're in a high performance mode. And you're high performing in a day. You're high performing in the parts of your life that if you do high perform, you have great success. What I'm getting from that is that in a very kind of Ayurvedic sense, you're finding that the highest performance comes from finding balance, right? When all of your systems are in proper balance, then you can perform at your optimal level in a sustainable way, right? Beautiful. The struggle that I have, and I'm going to turn this into a session all around me and my problems.

Cool. Is that- I love it. I'm in recovery for alcoholism. I've been in recovery for a long time. And kind of packed into that is a attraction to extremes, right? Whether it's drinking or drugs or training for an ultra endurance race, like I am magnetized by, you know, what happens when you explore to the outer limits. And so for me, balance is harder than going out and riding my bike all day or balance

is much harder than going out and drinking 25 beers. And still, even with years and years of recovery, I find that my innate nature still is always pushing me to be out of balance. And so the question I have or what I'm struggling with and what I'd love to hear your perspective on is, should I just own that about who I am and try to channel it in the best direction for the best results? Or should I try to deny that aspect of myself or progress out of it to a more balanced state? Because I'm struggling with this idea myself, and part of me wants to just accept that this is baked into my personality, and that's okay to not exert violence or self-judgment on myself for being that way the one that you said the approach that you communicated before you used

the word deny is the approach that you should walk forward with, and that is that you incorporate this nature. And the nature of being extreme is an advanced nature. Those who are plagued by addictions are not less fortunate than those who aren't. They have a more extreme version of the human psychobiometry that is actually going to give them, if they can get on, a great teacher of mine during a portion of my life called it riding the steed, riding the wild steed, that if you can actually get on and stay on, rather than having it throw you off through the inappropriate natures of that extreme, then you can ride it to become a very powerful tool as opposed to a weapon that gets used against you. For example, take for example gasoline. Gasoline, if on the ground and combined with fire,

creates an explosive nature. Gasoline, when fully contained and you add the fire, creates an engine. So that same thing that took you into alcoholism is also the power that can take you into an extreme sport. It can take you into doing what you do right here. There's a great deal of focus and enthusiasm that's required for you to truck this equipment around and interview people that are going to inspire others. I mean, you're doing so much good by channeling your energy into these, let me just use the word that you used,

extreme activities. mean when you called when we connected uh over the many times that we have connected and we finally agreed and you said well i'll it'll take about 90 minutes i was both impressed and kind of surprised because most people don't want to do an interview i'm not talking about on the interviewee i'm talking about the interviewer that your role and the fact that you said well you know it's going to take about 90 minutes i was impressed by the fact that wow he's really into his craft we can go two out we can go three hours i don't you know i'm always like i don't want to ask too much of the person that's that's the nature that's the beauty of what you called that that baked in condition of your

extreme nature and so in direct answer to your question you should not try to deny it you should channel just like gasoline channeled inside of an engine you should channel the power of your extreme nature into production into producing things but then also you use the word balance you must also learn to balance it with extreme relaxation so balance is a big part of kundalini yoga as a matter of fact we have many asanas many postures in which balance is a big part of kundalini yoga as a matter of fact we have many asanas many postures in which balance is you're balancing on one leg and the balancing on one leg and holding your arms in the other leg in a particular way this is very important to sort of acclimating the psychometry the the psycho-emotional somatic the the mental

emotional and physical natures so that you align them you get them so that they're working together rather than working against each other so in other words the pendulum can swing it just has to swing back so it's swinging all the time it's sort of in the middle and stationary. Don't burn out. Yeah. Don't burn out. I definitely do burn out. Yeah. You've got to balance.

So don't deny your nature, but also balance it with the extreme relaxation, which I'll give you a treatment of next door afterwards. We're definitely going to do that. You know, sound. You talked about off the mat and you talked about the sounds when you entered the room uh sound and really really joyful and and meditative sounds you know the joyful on one way and meditative on another are extremely important to the body the body and rhythm is extremely important to the body. The body and rhythm is extremely important to the body. So sounds with rhythm, sounds with sustained ambient natures,

these are part of the ways in which you balance out your body as well. I love that. Speaking about balance and also speaking about how we best navigate the world. the idea of sort of just trying to survive to the point now where our needs are met and we ask ourselves the question, you know, who am I and what am I doing here and what is the purpose of all of this? And in that evolution, somewhere along the line, we have created a world that is very out of balance, which is sort of ironic, right? If we're wrestling with these questions, you would think that part and parcel with that would come a better world. And yet we are in a world that is disease ridden. You were talking about India with the garbage. We have the plastic patch in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. We're destroying our environment in various ways at an abominable astronomical rate.

We're harming our bodies. We're harming each other. We're very divided. We're at a crisis point, I think, in the evolution of – I mean, the planet will be fine eventually, right? But we're at a crisis point in terms of humanity, and I think we're at a crossroads as to what direction we're going to turn. And, you know, I think that that that, you know, this this election was sort of a flashpoint in that. And it's bringing it a lot up to the surface for a lot of people. So, you know, how do you, you know, counsel people about this and help them kind of emotionally and spiritually navigate it?

The first thing to remember is that the greater your awareness, the greater your awareness of everything. So not only are you more greatly aware of the beauty, but you're also plagued by the greater awareness of the devastation, of the garbage, of the insanity. So using a word that you brought in a moment ago, balancing yourself within this awareness is an absolute must. absolute must. This election is a flashpoint, you said. It's an indication of what's been going on under the surface. Just like the internet is now brought to the surface, what's been boiling underneath the surface, for a very long time. Yes, the world, the earth will be fine. Just look at a street that hasn't been driven on for a while and see how all the plant life is growing up through

the cracks. And ultimately it will take over the road, it will bury the road, it will disassemble the road, and it will be just a lush garden again. The idea that we have this exalted state that we're in, at the same time we're in a severe crisis, is the nature of evolution. Seven and a half million years ago, there was a crisis amongst the great apes. And the great apes had come out of the 20 million years of super reproduction that had followed the reptilian demise in 60 million years ago

when the great dinosaurs were annihilated and then once the reptiles were wiped out as the dominant force this little bitty mammalian or the mammals of the world started to multiply and then they became the dominant force through the great apes that around 30 million years ago started multiplying and multiplying off the east coast of Africa. They lived in the mangroves and they lived on all fours because they climbed and they walked and they climbed and they walked. The crisis that they found was that they ran out of food. They ran out of resources. And so in order to find more resources, some of them started to stand up seven and a half million years ago and it took them four million years to master it so three and a half million years ago now you had true what are called bipedal hominids right creatures walking on two legs and able to

see the third dimension in a full form because before that when you're on all fours you don't really get a full view of the third dimension of space right so this third dimension view of space takes you out into it and you start to migrate so these creatures my started to migrate and they started to move in greater in greater and then of course in order to do that they lost track of how they could be in the places that were warm enough. And so all of a sudden they started taking on fire. And one evolutionary event after another took place.

But every time it took place, it took place through crisis. Because crisis triggers evolution. Fast forward to today, and all of a sudden we're all over the world, and a great friend of ours, Vandana Shiva, a great woman from India. Yeah, she's amazing. Amazing. And she has a beautiful saying, and that is that you can judge the intelligence of a species by whether or not it eliminates its waste upstream or downstream from where it takes in its water. And her statement is that every place now that human beings are eliminating their waste is upstream from where we're taking in our water.

Because we have inundated the world with such waste that we cannot escape it. Well, this in and of itself is creating crisis. So we are going to find over the next hundred years whether or not human beings was just a great moment in history, or whether or not we will be able to survive. Because when you think about how long life has been on earth, and what a short little period of time human beings have been on earth things have come and gone many times before us and if we come and go because we messed it up so profoundly it won't be a big deal but there's a chance that we can make it through this are you optimistic or i'm sensing a little pessimism no i'm actually optimistic because i'm alive and i'm going to help lead

it through like you're going to help lead it through like all of those of us that are in this extreme attitude are going to be leading us through and so knowing that in the physical world according to physics for every action there is always an accompanying equal reaction, right? For every action there's a reaction equal and opposite, Newton's third law of motion. That means that right here in this moment there is an equal reaction to the demise that is taking place. is taking place. Right here in this moment, there's an equal reaction to the horrific attitude that elected the governments around the world, not just in America, but there's a government in the Philippines where it's legal to kill your neighbor if you suspect him of dealing drugs. They just overthrew the first elected president in Brazil, a female president

in Brazil with a coup that nobody's calling a coup. They're doing an extreme attitude of fascism that's almost there in Austria. And much of what took place, a wave is sweeping. Angela Merkel in Germany looks like she's going to be out like it's Brexit. And Le Pen in France is gaining popularity. So what we have is extreme attitudes because what is taking place is the extreme opposite. Under the surface of this extreme superficial nature of bigotry and xenophobia and gender attitudes and homophobia and all of these things is an extreme tolerance. The kind of tolerance that you have, the kind of tolerance that I have is very widespread. If you think about the intolerance that won the American election, 49% of the American electorate turned out to vote and 46%

of that electorate so-called won the vote. We don't know if it won the vote or if it was a count thing or whatever it was, that's not my point my point is 46 of 49 is less than 25 so less than 25 is what's causing everybody to be concerned well if you think about it that is not necessarily reason to be concerned that's reason to be aware but if you're fully balanced in your awareness your attitude is well let me ignite the other 75 percent let me get out there and and put together podcasts that ignite the other 75 percent let me create a campaign let Let me put yoga centers. Let me put whatever it is that ignites the other 75%. And what is the fulcrum point between sort of surrender and self-sovereignty and igniting or action on the other end? I love these questions.

I love these questions. I love these questions. It's sort of like the most powerful thing that you can do is to work on yourself, right? And surrender to the idea that you lack control over most things in your life, certainly other people, against this idea of speaking up for what's right, of being an activist. of speaking up for what's right, of being an activist and reckoning with this idea that, you know, if you're fighting for the right thing, you're still fighting. So what does that mean to kind of like walk forward in the modern world as somebody who has an opinion or a sense of purpose with respect to justice versus this sort of Buddhist idea of like, be still. Balance. Balance out your days, balance out your weeks, months, and years, and set up a time in which you are a player and set up a time in which you are a player. And set up a time in which you are a renunciate. In our day, we start out our day before the rise of the sun. And in doing so, anybody that's gotten up before this, you know, break of day,

knows that you get a whole lot done then, a whole lot more than you do after the sun's come up. Right. And you're not talking about 6 a.m. No, I'm talking about 4 a.m i'm talking about 4 a.m and we start our day then and we get our renunciation you know our meditation our yoga our deeply inward practice done and then when the sun comes up we get into world. And we're a full player in the world. I look at it very much like a metaphor of a soccer game, or as they say everywhere else in the world, a football game. And that is that, are you a ball on the field, being moved to wherever the play is taking you?

Or are you a player on the field? Or are you a coach of the team? Or are you an owner of the team at what level are you willing to play the game of life and at sometimes you want to be the ball going through the goal and that is that renunciate where you're in your deep meditation and you're experiencing the vastness but you better not be doing that while you're driving down the street because if you're experiencing the vastness of the street you may not be doing that while you're driving down the street, because if you're experiencing the vastness of the street, you may not be paying attention to traffic. So there's times when you should be a full participant in the world.

It's called in Sanskrit, it's called grisht ashram. It means being an enlightened householder. In direct translation and in perhaps a more modern translation, it means being involved. Get involved. perhaps a more modern translation, it means being involved, get involved, but also balance it out with enough time that you're in meditation so that you're not just involved in reaction, but you're involved in deep understanding. So that when you do react, you don't react in an unmonitored way. You don't react in an unconscious way. You react in a very conscious way, but not so much in a measured way with calculation and all of that, because that's just kind of clever strategy.

But you're involved in an intuitive way where you really know the full nature of the game. You know the full incline of the field. We want to to have it a level playing field but it's not we know that there's a great advantages to major corporations and that the majority of the population is at a as at a as at a deficit so you play the game in that way and that means that you work with what you know is happening in life so that you can take advantage and leverage the position in life really important to be a player that's tricky i mean that's a complicated you know sort of calculus right of trying to good word a yogi in the world yeah you know and it's it's it's it's it's fully functional i mean the yogi that was not in the world was great in 1500.

1500 AD, 500 AD, 2000 BC. That was a great time to be a yogi in a monastery or a yogi in a temple in the mountains, whatever. But today, you know, if we're eliminating our waste upstream from everywhere on earth, you know, there's no place to hide. So I love Lord Krishna's communication with Arjuna in the Mahabharata of the Bhagavad Gita, in which he's telling them, look, you came into this life knowing full well what the implications were. So play it the way you know it. And we all came into this world in this lifetime of ours, in the 20th and 21st century, knowing the full implication of what was going down at this time, you know, this post-atomic age. And we all know what's going

down. We all, and we cannot hide from it. So what we have to do is we have to set aside enough time to be in deep meditation so that when we enter the world in deep occupation we're entering it consciously right and not being thrown off by it like you in a in the middle of your of your great event right the middle of your extreme event of your endurance efforts you have to know in your practice for it which is like our meditation every morning right just practice for our day but in your training or practice for it you have to have anticipated everything that's going to happen you have to anticipate the hill on the on the 18th mile of the marathon you prepare for all of that but then you have to let go.

Yes. Right? So that you can be present. Let go, let go. For the experience and be malleable. Yes. Right? And that's where intuition comes in.

Yes. But when you were just sort of talking about what you were talking about, I was thinking about, you know, the great tradition of yogis sort of meditating in caves for months on end and not eating and having disciples sort of feed them a little bit. Yeah, right. And all of these kind of, you know, parlor tricks over the ages, even the yogi Kudu, who in, remember the TV show, That's Incredible?

They put them at the bottom of the swimming pool in a lucite. Like all these things are fascinating and cool. and a lucite like all these things are are fascinating and cool and i think illustrate and demonstrate the the facility of the human body mind and spirit to do things well beyond what we kind of imagine are possible but i think what's a lot harder is how to remain balanced and how to respond with appropriate intuition when your daughter tells you to fuck off. You know, you're not the boss of me or or, you know, whatever it is that the challenges that we all face as people living in the world, as parents, as fathers, as sons, as daughters, what have you. Right. As people that work for corporations and the things that come up. How do you carry yoga into that, right?

How do you master that? That is the mastery of the 20th and 21st century. We have a son and a daughter, and both of them have let us know that we are no longer the boss of them. I should have. that we are no longer the boss of them. I should have. And we have responded in kind to be able to enjoy the new role.

Because when you enjoy the new role, then you're living. When you don't enjoy the new role, anytime you're with them, you're like not alive. You're kind of like training for the life that you can have when you're not in their presence. And that's just hell. The idea that there are these extreme examples of what yogis can achieve. They can stop their breath. They can slow their heart.

They can do this and that. And each one of these feats of great mastery takes a long time to master. Yes, many months or years in the cave, so to speak. The day and age for that is over. The time to get real is now. And that means get awakened enough that you can function intuitively rather than in a reaction to the moments of your life. intuitively rather than in a reaction to the moments of your life. And then teach others shortcuts, not necessarily ways in which you don't have to work at it, but ways in which you don't have to spend months in a cave. And ways in which you can achieve a level of awareness with an hour every morning, with an hour and a half every day, with keeping about conscious of your breath at least 10 minutes out of every hour in your day, you're conscious of the fact that you're breathing.

with good food at mealtime, good sounds in between time, and pay less attention to, you know, news used to be news, now it's just opinions. You know, there used to be an opinion part of news, but now all of news is opinion. And for people that are inundating themselves with these OPO, we call other people's opinions, inundating themselves with these OPO, we call other people's opinions, are just indoctrinating and intoxicating themselves with this incredible barrage of garbage. What you have to do is be aware of what's happening out there. Yes, this is happening. Yes, this is happening. Now go back to your personal drawing board. What are you going to do about it? what are you going to do about it how are you going to make that end run how are you going to outflank that less than 25 percent of the population that is raging homophobic that's raging xenophobic that's raging in this way how are you going to outflank

it because you got 75 percent of the world population and all you've got to do is get them off their butts and get them active in a non-violent way to just start moving and start making a difference it's becoming more and more challenging though because we're all carrying around these star trek tricorders in our in our pockets that are inundating us sorry i have I have a frog in my throat. With OPOs constantly. Yeah. And it's requiring more and more discipline to mute that out. Good word, discipline.

Where before you could just say, well, I don't have a TV, you know, or I don't listen to the radio in my car and you would be fine. Whereas now the level of overstimulation is so overwhelming and has become such a function of how we live our lives that to opt out of that or to exercise some discretion about that takes a tremendous act of will, right? To say, I'm not going to bring my phone when I go out to dinner is almost like anathema right

but if you can do that it's almost like a superpower right because you are very consciously carving out space to cultivate that intuition and without that you can't be a creative being. You are constantly in reactive mode. The way you drew a metaphor probably about 15 minutes ago when we were talking about being in training. If you were to, and you're talking now about discipline, And these go together very, very precisely. So you talk about going out to have a meal with people and let's engage in conversation and not take our pocket computers, right? The phones. Or if we do take them, turn them off and allow them to find us there with a gps but turn them off when

we get there in case that daughter who doesn't want anything to do with you something might be amiss right she needs to get in touch he needs to get in touch so the idea that we have this opportunity to have so much information and yet we can discipline ourselves so that we can use the information rather than be used by the information. And that's the nature of this information age. What are you going to use the information for? Think about that in terms of a triathlon or a marathon. What are you going to use the route for? What are you going to use the pathway for? What are you going to use the swim for? Are you just going to get through the swim and make it on the bike? Or are you just going to get through? Are you going to try to get out ahead

on the swim far enough that you can get even further ahead on the bike? You always have to be planning. So if you thought of this phone you know these smartphones that we have that are really making us a little stupid because we don't remember anything but we look it up on google the fact is is that we can discipline ourselves and say okay i'm going to use that phone for this and then i'm going to use it for that and i'm going to use these tools for this and that i'm going to actually use this interview i'm going to use these tools for this and that. I'm going to actually use this interview. I'm going to use this conversation. I'm going to use this time at dinner with my friends and don't make it so firm and fixed that you can't, like you were saying earlier, roll with the moment. But you're going to use it. You set up an attitude, an intention to use it, and then you open up your intuition so that whatever happens during that period of time you can

respond to it in a kind way, in a loving way, and in a conscious way. And then what we have is we have ourselves as a being fully living in a very very loaded informational age with a lot of bullshit out there as well as a lot of good information and we can know because we can sense you know there's three forms of of intuition there's clairvoyance which gives you vision there's clairaudience which gives you the the the sound and and and the the word in your in in your third ear. And then there's that clairsentience, which gives you that sense of what's around you. And you should be operating with all of those things at all times. You can. There's nothing that anybody ever had, no master,

no prophet, nobody ever had more than what you can achieve. They've just advanced it with greater discipline. But you have the opportunity to be that same kind of athlete in the game of life. And so when you think about this clairvoyant, clairaudient, clairsentient capacity, and you can be in a conversation, you can be without your phone, you can be engaged, you can have the visuals, you can see the aura, you can hear the tones in people's voices that are going to give you more information than their words and you can also have the sense of feeling so that you can engage that sense of feeling, connect on that feeling sense and now you're dancing with the people around the dinner table rather than

just having this combative you know game of ping pong where everybody's knocking the ball back and forth which is crazy as a matter of fact what yogis called this was this krishnasram this fully engaged being was that you get that enlightenment and then invest it in the world get that enlightenment during your time of meditation then go out and be beat around beaten up by the world yes when you walk through a smoky room you come out smelling like a smoker but then you wash yourself in your meditation and your dream state and then you go back out into the world. I like that. I like the kind of very grounded sensibility and approach to really trying to carry these things into your life,

into our modern lives. As somebody who's in recovery, one of the kind of tropes know, tropes or adages that come up in that is that as you walk this path, as you blaze this journey, the road gets narrower, right? So as you continue to expand and grow, things that you used to not be conscious of or that didn't bug you start to bug you.

And then you have to look at that. And then you have to discard that. And then it's on to the next thing and this this process of shedding you know continues so you know watching television late into the night was something that i used to do for fun and now that doesn't really jive with where i'm at so So that has to go. Then sort of unconsciously buying garments wherever. Now, after watching the movie True Cost and developing an awareness of how the fast fashion industry is negatively impacting the environment, I have to be more conscious of that and what I'm doing. And then sort of starting to learn about minimalism and what that means and starting to really, uh, break down my consumer habits. Now I have to look at that. And at some

point you can become exasperated or then you start to feel like you can't communicate with the average human being because you're dealing with all these things that most people aren't really even consciously aware of or care about i always you know that came off sounding really pretentious like i didn't actually like that no it actually came out as a description and i appreciate that description because that was a description of what happens when you become conscious or more conscious in times like we live in today, where not only are we accelerating in consciousness, but we're also accelerating in our ability to produce and ship stuff, whatever that stuff is, all over the world. I mean, you go into a Whole Foods store and there's never anything out

of season. Well, that's a big carbon footprint that we're imposing upon growers that are growing in South, in the Southern hemisphere to ship summer foods to the North during winter. And then you hear that in the healthiest way of living is to eat things that are grown nearby and eat things that are in season. Then we're around constant infliction of these halogen and fluorescents, which are constantly registering high noon colors. And so our brain is being continuously operating as if it's high noon for all the time that we keep the lights on so we are disrupting our physical bodies yes it is the 21st century and yes we are stuck in it and yes like lord krishna said to arjuna deal with it you knew about it coming in and so dealing dealing with this on a conscious basis

means that yes we will have to curtail our consumerism because it's available to us in spades we will have to curtail the way in which we feed ourselves because it's coming to us in gross amounts and huge carbon cost. So the end result is that we make a discipline for ourselves. But then I like to use the metaphor of being a sailor. You got to deal with the winds of the time. And if that means that you're around a lot of people that aren't quite as whatever, let's not try to be, because I don't consider your lead up to the question pretentious. I just considered it to be a description of the facts, the kind of world that we're living in. So that you're not entering into every conversation at work or wherever you are as this pretentious idiot that just can't relate outside of your own frequency. You have to be like a sailor in the seas.

You have to be able to use the sails that are appropriate for the winds of the moment. moment and that means that if you're around i mean i come to i come to you know parties i come to gatherings i come to things and they're not all going to be spiritual gatherings of everybody at the nth level you know they're going to be from people all over and i've got to be able to walk into those gatherings and not think of myself as better than because the moment I think of myself as higher than, better than, or any other kind of hierarchy, then I'm in shit, right? As a matter of fact, the last time that we had a real solid spiritual awakening on earth was thousands of years ago. And out of that came the Brahmins, who considered themselves to be the elite caste, and everything else was, you know, there was a lowerarchy, not a hierarchy,

of beings that were lesser than. If we go down that path again, we're screwed. I think that is a problem in kind of this current incarnation of spiritualism. Yes, maybe, but we have... There's a lot of ego attached to spiritual growth. Yes, and people like you and me have to influence that obliquely, meaning that we have to not attack it directly, but we have to be teachers by example.

You said in the opening statement that, wow, Guru Singh, you dress like you dress, but you're really reachable. You're really a person that you feel comfortable with. And that's what we have to be able to teach by example. That if you're going to get anywhere in this world, you have to be accessible to this world. I have to be able to walk into a church of any religion and be able to be accepted. I have to be able to walk into a bar of any location and be acceptable. Here I am at

the bar, but I'm not drinking. I may be drinking water, but I'm still having a good time with everybody else. And I'm not going to judge them. But maybe they could see, without being judged for the fact that they're consuming alcohol at a rate that may be in excess, that, hey, you know what? This guy over here that's dressed funny and looks kind of weird is drinking water and having just as good a time as I am and is keeping up with me with this good time, right? Rolling with the punches and everything. And maybe I could drink water and feel like him. Maybe I ought to ask him, how does he do that? And there will be enough people that will ask us, how do we do that? How do be enough people that will ask us how do we do that how do

you how do you get that feeling just you know being vegan and just you know and not drinking alcohol and and you know because yes we know that the future of the world has to be vegan because we can't keep producing this kind of waste that comes from the agribusiness in the way that we are. It's going to destroy us, but we can't preach that and reach people. We have to live by example, and we have to preach to the reachable. We have to communicate to the reachable. We have to teach the teachable.

But when we're out there in public, we have to consider ourselves equal to everyone we meet and by being equal to everyone we meet we get we're we're buddies you know and that's important you have to be a very good very intuitive uh judge of your environments and of people right i think that that discernment comes with the practices that you've described. Yeah, Lao Tse was so good at that. He said, have no offensive moves. But if someone becomes offensive to you, let your moves use their energy rather than try to block their energy. So when somebody, I mean, you know, I'm sitting at gatherings and there'll be somebody that's had too much to drink and they'll come over and they'll, you know, they'll go, ah, you know, it'll be very offensive to me. And usually I'll just sort of parlay into working with them and then move my way away from them.

Because if they're too offensive you're not going to get anywhere because they're they're gone not necessarily gone for their life but they're gone in that moment but if somebody comes over and has an offensive attitude but you can see they're not really gone they're just like have they they really don't know how to approach you so because they're hesitant and whatever else they kind kind of like bolster in, in an aggressive way, and that's an offensive move. Well, then you just have to sort of parlay that into a move in which you feign their

move into you and don't take offense to it. And then let them see that you haven't taken offense to their move and that you're actually quite relaxed with them being there and all of a sudden their mode comes down a notch or two they're more relaxed with you I had somebody that told me after a very big name won't mention it very big name in the entertainment business was at a gathering with me that was you couldn't escape i mean we were on an island together in a resort and there was no way of that person getting out of my presence and i was one of the main teachers and he walks into this thing and he goes like necker island or

something you're not he was he walks into this he walks into this gathering goes oh you know walks into this he walks into this gathering goes oh you know all the expletives what have i got what has my wife gotten me into and as we were leaving 10 days later he sits next to me on the on the bus going to the airport and purposely sat down next to me and put his arm around me and said, when I first met you 10 days ago, I thought this is going to be the worst 10 days of my life. But something you said at the first class you led made me realize that I had misjudged you. And he said, what you said was, yoga is not an Olympic contest. We're not here to prove what we can do. We're here to improve what we can't do. And he said, suddenly I realized that you were reachable, that I could connect with you. And he said, from then on, I didn't feel so bad about not being able to do most of the things that you were having us do.

Until about six days in, I realized I was improving. So what you have to do is you have to be able to have a few statements in your toolbox. When you see someone feeling really awkward When you see someone being offensive because they not relaxed Use a few of these tools in Conversation that can reach out and let them know it's okay Everybody is in the same. Yeah. Yeah,. I mean, that's some emotional and spiritual jujitsu, right? To be able to, when someone's coming at you, to be able to just be non-reactive to it.

True. And to be able to grab onto a tool as opposed to spontaneously just sort of impulsively. Grabbing for a weapon. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Right? So that comes with experience and practice, I think, right? Yeah.

Well, let's unpack the journey a little bit. I'm really interested in how you went from this rock star existence into being the teacher that you are today. And that story of you as a young musician is pretty extraordinary. I mean, you were opening for the Grateful Dead and hanging out with Janis Joplin and literally at the intersection of Haight and Ashbury at that very time in our history that has been such a crucible for so many of the ideas that you kind of espouse today. for so many of the ideas that you kind of espouse today. And it was a time very much like today in which political and economic power were waging violence.

Attitudes in that realm were intolerant. And there was this wave of awakening as there is today. And what happened in my world was that a path that I had pursued and was really enthusiastic and inspired to move down got blocked and so like solution in water if you damn it up it rises above and falls over what do you mean it got what happened specifically well the cointel pro of um or the counter intelligence project of the fbi uh sort of divided the bay area of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Area into two halves. The East Bay, which was the Oakland side, which was where the Black Panthers were rising, that was one approach that the COINTELPRO operation was focused on. And the peace movement in the San Francisco side or the West Bay side of that,

where I was living, uh the target of of that side and so they were involved in trying to monitor and and mediate in a very aggressive way these two movements the the the movement of social responsibility and, you know, integration, and the peace movement of pacification. And so on our side of the bay, there was a lot of effort. And we had built an underground railroad in which we were getting people out of the service and we were either getting them new identification under new names. It was very easy back in those days. Well, it's always very easy, but it was very easy back in those days. Or we were getting

them into Canada. And we would, you know, raise awareness at all of our concerts uh the peace movement and so what knowing that we were doing this uh the the fbi decided because i was one of the first with a recording contract i was under under um contract with reprise of warner brothers and even before all my buddies you know jerry and the grateful dead and Janice and all of them, I had a recording contract before they did. Before all of them. I mean, you were poised for this. Yeah, I was poised. Yeah.

I was poised. I was teed up. And meaning not teed off, but teed up. Ready to really launch into that. And the FBI decided that because of some of the words in my songs, they went to the F... First, they went to Warner Brothers and said, you got to pull this guy off. They said, we can't do that.

And so then they went to the FCC and they said, okay, the guy's talking about drugs and promoting drugs. And I've been drug-free my whole life. And drug and alcohol-free my whole life because... You went through the whole hate Ashbury thing. Yes, sober. Without doing anything. Yes, sober.

Are you the only one? No, I don't know if I was. I'm sure I'm not the only one, but here's the deal. They had to vouch for me at parties. My buddies, Janice and Jerry and all of the rest, had to vouch for me at parties because everybody thought I was a narc. A narc, yeah. So anyway, but what happened was that they said i was promoting because i had this song um

a little cat yellow eyed trips along by my side and so they said okay trips okay walking high you know okay this guy's promoting drugs so they just use that as a as a segue into let's take him off the air so they went to air. So they went to the FCC, they went to the radio stations, you got to pull the music. So Warner Brothers came back to me and said, you got to change your lyrics. Well, I looked at this and I tried to do it and I did it partially and decided that my heart wasn't really into it. And so I took a hiatus, which I thought was going to be two weeks. And it ended up being about 11 months when i came back from that my life and world had changed to the degree that i was more inclined towards using music as a part of my spiritual practice

and spiritual teaching than going out on it as my my lead and um what changed what changed your perspective on that like what what what do you attribute that switch i in order to go on this 11 month hiatus i had to leave my guitar behind and um because we were going into an area of central me Mexico where you had to go through dark underground and end up in the copper canyons in the way back. And it's all written about in my book, Buried Treasures. And so being without my instrument, just having my human instrument for 11 months and going through rites of passage with my human instrument and turning it into the music of my life gave me a realization that music needed to be a big part of my life like it had

always been but it wasn't going to be the head on my arrow flying through time that it was going to be parts of the feathers or the shaft but the head on my arrow had to be my consciousness. And so anything that I was going to do in life had to be focused on raising my consciousness. Eleven months in the Copper Canyon with the Tarahumara? Well, further back in with the Wirikuta, which was the, there were two migrations of the great Aztec nation. The first migration happened when the high priests started their sacrificing. And that was long before the

conquistadores came in. And the migration that you talk about, that's written about in Born to Run, The migration that you talk about that's written about in Born to Run was the second migration, and that was the migration that fled the conquistadors. But hundreds of years before that, when the high priests, in order to sustain their power, began the human sacrifice, that was when the first migration took foot. And they went into the farthest, deepest portions of the Copper Canyons. The ones that you talk about are actually accessible from the ridges of the Copper Canyons, but the ones that I went into were not accessible from the ridges. You had to go further back you know the copper canyons are five times larger uh in in landmass than the grand canyon and people go in there and don't come out never come out yeah i mean it's so what is was this some kind of uh you know sort of walkabout spiritual quest i mean what did you go with a group of people or what was the intention i went with one person who had been born there who with his wife and children had come out from there

into the world basically to capture the essence of the world and to to find some people, and I'm one of those people, in the world to indoctrinate with ways that are greater than the technologies of the world, to really get indoctrinated in human technology as opposed to just using the external technology. And that's what I went through the rites of passage with in that, in the Wirikuta, down in what's called the Tkwotsi, the deep underground. And then you come out of that, you come back to San Francisco, you tell Warner Brothers, don't worry about it. No, actually, I thought I was still going to go with it. I thought I was still going to go back to Warner Brothers, but my brain was so different that to try to get to try to write a three and a half minute song that had airplay capacity was like crazy. indoctrination indigenous indoctrination without psychotropics you know no drugs no um but just deep deep deep rites of passage um my brain couldn't write a ditty you know i couldn't

write your road your road got narrower yeah my road got narrow just i was i related to that when you when you spoke of that and everything was in what would be called in sanskrit rag melody and tall rhythm and so you know i came out sounding more like the grateful dead with their with their great you know long songs jam yeah freeform jam. there's a new yogi in town. And I was in my manager's office who had moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles while I was away. And everybody thought I had died because I went away, said, I'll be back in two weeks. And I didn't come back with no communication for 11 months. So, you know, to find me still alive was quite a shock to them. And then to hear my new music was even a greater shock because I

brought my guitar that I hadn't played in 11 months. So I was playing it like an entirely new event. And my music changed also from that moment on. I played my guitar more like a drum, a drum guitar. It sounds more like a piano than it does a guitar. And so things change. As you know, when you become sober, your life changes. You play your human instrument differently. And things that you could never even think of doing before now become things that you can do and other people can't. Most people could never imagine doing the endurance things that you do, but you do them because you know you can, because you've walked that extreme level. Well, going into the Wirikuta was extreme. You get buried alive with only air holes to breathe,

but your body can't move. That's's extreme you go down into the underground where you can't get out of the pitch black for days that's extreme you climb mountains i had a i had a teacher he was in his 80s i was in my early 20s i was so much stronger and so much faster on a level playing field than he was but every day we would walk a mountain and every day he would finish it in two hours and it would take me four. And finally, I couldn't get him to answer my questions. How do you do it? How do you do it? And finally he answered, which was very profound. He said, when I walk the mountain, all I do is walk the mountain. When you walk the mountain, that's only part of what you do. You know, I'm gazing at the views, I'm thinking about a million things, I'm doing all,

and that's all taking energy. And all he did when he walked the mountain was look at his feet and walk the mountain. Have you ever tried that in a marathon? I've seen bicyclists do it, but just look at your feet. So the only thing that you know is the step that you're taking. I haven't done the specific practice of just looking at my feet, but I can say in an analogous way that when you reach that point of what you think is complete physical exhaustion and you can't go on any further, that's really when you start to become most alive, right? Where you're forced to sort of meet yourself as you really are. And the only way through that is to become as present as possible. And so when you do that, those thoughts that are entering your mind have to be stripped

away if you're intent upon going any further. And so you're compelled to kind of shrink wrap that experience into just what it is and nothing more, because anything else is a drain on your precious energy reserves. Beautiful. That happened to me as if you read the book Buried Treasures when I was in the underground, right? The Tkwotsi and back in the Wirikuta. And I had memorized a map for what must have been at least a month or more on a dry lake bed of how to get through this underground maze, right? This underground cavern that I had to walk in the pitch black. And when I reached that point, which to me, it wasn't exhaustion, it was pure terror, right? The fear of absolute terror, realizing I was stuck and I was going to

die. If I didn't find my way out and not thinking there was any way to find my way out. I snapped through a barrier, like perhaps what might be called hitting the wall in an endurance. I snapped through a barrier in which all of a sudden I could see in the pitch black. But I wasn't seeing with my rods and cones. seeing with my rods and cones I was seeing with some other kind of sonar that was ricocheting off the walls and presenting an imagery almost like a what do they call it the echolocation right those goggles that you can see the virtual reality like the military yeah see in the dark goggles right and so all of a sudden the the brain like your brain of passing that point of not being able to endure it any further and my brain you you go into this altered

state that's the point that you and i both know about that everybody has access to if they push themselves to that degree that in some form of push you can access that vast vast reserve inside of yourself that can push through that can make it over the hurdle that can make it through what seems impossible that's a trip so you come back out of that and you integrate back into the world. You can't write a ditty. I can't write a ditty to save my life. And meanwhile, how conscious are you of this multi-generational tradition in your family of this yoga lineage?

Your parents were artists and musicians. generational tradition in your family of like this yoga lineage you know you had a you had your parents were artists and musicians so you have that aspect of you which are obviously kind of exuding at that time but are you aware of this kind of you know call towards the the yogi path or was that discovered later no it was discovered as a child and i had it going into my music and then my music was going to be the greatest event of my life and then when i got sort of canceled out thinking that i was just going to take a hiatus try to regroup and come back and ended up being out for 11 months and then coming back after the experience that i had in Central Mexico and not being able to write a ditty anymore, then all of a sudden I said, okay, this is starting to make sense

because this is what I was before I got into the professional scene of music. And then, okay, now let me use my music through this and let me stack these things in a in a more conscious way and then my friends started dying off from overdoses and things like that right and then i started realizing wow there's a reason for this and my yoga locked in right now when janice is no longer and jerry ultimately no longer and jimmy no longer and Jerry ultimately no longer and Jimmy no longer and Jim no longer and all of these people that Jim Morrison. Yes. And Jimmy Hendrix and all of these people that I that I that I knew, you know, and that we had, if not a personal relation with all of them, I had a professional relation with all of them.

And suddenly we're realizing, OK. There's another way that we've got to go here. And now that we're seeing, you know, the resurgence of big industry, the resurgence of big corporations in their way of sort of manipulating the world, and not looking at that manipulation as a bad thing, looking at it as a thing, and how do we counter it without actually opposing it. The nature of yoga is perfect in that, because it teaches you how to approach, just like a sailor, how to approach the prevailing winds with angles. Because you can't control the weather, but you can control the way in which you deal with it. Mm-hmm. Self-governance and discernment.

Correct. way in which you deal with it self-governance and discernment correct so at some point yogi bhajan comes into your into your path right right after right mexico so that's that is the new guru who is in town that's the new that's the new yogi in town come on down and and did he just hit you like a mac truck or yeah exactly you know the funny thing was that this guy was so real i mean you you say i'm approachable you know and blah blah he was also and he was you know he had this whole lineage from india and he comes in my first class we're in there he's late we're in there. They're always late. Always late. You know, they say, on time or yogi time. Yeah.

And he comes in late. And there was this pop singer at the time. His name, he's still around. His name's Johnny Rivers, right? And he had tunes on the radio. And, you know, he was one of my contemporaries. And he drives Yogi Bhajan to class that night and the radio is blaring and so yogi bhajan's got this song in his head and he walks into the room and he comes in and he goes what goes on cheek to cheek what goes on i really wanna know

and i look up and a voice in my head said there's the man you've been looking for your whole life and he was so real and that was a donovan song because he was a he was a musician yogi he was able to connect you that was your emotional end that was it and but he was so real he was so he took it down a notch because in my in my life with my parents i had met all kinds of great spiritual leaders and they had all been sitting on a bit of a pillow and he walks in with just an attitude of i'm real and what goes on you know which was a donovan song it was on the radio obviously at that at that time. Donovan, old friend, and I'm going, this guy's singing my buddy's song. And so I go, okay, there's the guy you've been looking for your whole life,

and we just connected. And then I became his driver. I hounded him. I worked with him. And then finally, within a bit of time, I'm teaching, And then finally, I'm, you know, within a bit of time, I'm teaching. And he said, you know, the guitar is the rifle of the Aquarian soldier. And so that made total sense to me as well.

That's beautiful. Yeah. I like that. What is, you know, what is the most profound thing that he taught you or that you took away from that early on he said that god that can't be experienced and the experience that can't be expressed and explained is of little value in other words rituals that don't have actuals aren't going to make it in the new in the new times and as you can see the more people move away from ritual that doesn't have actual the more the ritual gets fanatic and that's the problem with you know the competing religions of the world today right that is such a mechanism right the rituals that they're throwing at each other. The fundamentalism in any form. Yeah, it doesn't work. And so he said, have an experience,

which is the experience that keeps you in your endurance contests, which is the experience that keeps me aware of my breathing, that keeps my body feeling that tingling, that I know that I'm alive in every moment. And that's God. I mean, let's face it. That experience. Extreme athletes are all the time talking about the zone.

And that, you know, breaking into that zone, that is your higher consciousness. That is the realm in which you in communion with god and you get a taste of that and then it ignites something inside of you that leads you you know down this path and you know this is a path that i've been walking for you know a minute uh in comparison to what you've done but and that we've all been walking a minute in comparison to the time that we've been on the you know that humanity has been on the planet for sure um but it's one of those things for that at least for me like i get a taste of it and then i want more and then it's like what next and how to move forward with this without getting caught up in the ego component of it,

but for the right reasons so that I can be a more authentic, more fully actualized version of myself so that I can be more present and more of service and more loving and more forgiving and less resentful and less angry and less reactive and more efficient and more efficient. Yes. And effective. And so we're with more efficient and more efficient yes and effective and so we're with your kids all of these and with your work and with your life but i will also say that i will admit to being an ambitious person i have i have goals and i have dreams and there are things that i want to accomplish i do too so where do i where does the you know balance where does the ego fall in that and how do i not become fall prey to the ego ego is what ego does abandon this

this you know what i mean no no no i no i love it i love it ego is the glue that holds soul to body. So ego is an innocent mechanism through which you express life. The reason that ego has gotten such a bad rap is that ego has often, when life is very expressive, been also very exclusive or very greedy. But people like Jesus had a huge ego. People like the Buddha had a huge ego. People like the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa had a huge ego.

I had a huge ego Ego is what ego does So anything that is in created an impact on the planet is a massive ego but it's a massive ego used for benevolent purposes as opposed to a massive ego used for personal reasons Trying to wrap my head around that because he goes is he and i know i think you have to define ego like right talking about no no redefine ego okay because ego as i said has gotten a bad reputation because it's been defined by people that were using their power their human power, their personal power for personal reasons. But ego is not positive or negative. Ego is not good or bad. Ego is an innocent participant, a tool that can

either be used as a tool of benevolence or a weapon of destruction or a weapon of absorption, of limited and only personalized and exclusive absorption. But isn't it true that just by virtue of an enhanced ego is going to lead towards that inflated sense of self that will almost make those negative actions that come with an overinflated ego automatic, right? Not automatic, but semi-automatic to use a weapons mechanism. automatic to use a weapons mechanism right the only thing that keeps you going in your extreme events is ego now if you were only doing it to get known there would be a problem in there and it may even sap some of your energy

so that you weren't able to perform as well. But ego is a performance mechanism that enables you, because what if you were not known by anybody? What if you didn't do extreme things publicly, but just did them very privately and nobody knew that you did them, you wouldn't be able to have a podcast that had, what, hundreds of thousands of people listening or millions of people that are listening. Whatever the number is, it doesn't really matter, but it's a big number, which means that you wouldn't be able to get these messages out,

which means that you wouldn't be able to do the work that you do. That's an ego that allows you to do that. But it's a brand of ego, not a force of ego. There's an equal force of ego that could be on another brand. The brand of I, I, I, me, me, me, me, me, I, I, I, me, me, me, me, me. And you would also attract a big audience, I, I, me, me, me, me, me, I, I, I, me, me, me, me, me. And you would also attract a big audience as many of them do, but it wouldn't get the same effect. And the seeds of destruction are baked into that.

So I declare, not the only one that's ever declared it, but I also declare that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts, but absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, and power does not necessarily have to corrupt. Just like in a wind, the way you set your sail is going to determine how you make your way through the wind. Yes, big gusts of wind will tend to knock you over but if you set your sail at a certain way your ego can ride those winds for very beneficial reasons and the practical real world way to properly set that sail is what like what are the practices the hippocratic oath cause no harm and for that you need to have a higher awareness so as you're as you're learning to do this you're going to cause a lot of harm you're going to bump into a lot of people you're going to cause a lot of harm. You're going to bump into a lot of people. You're going to mess things up. But as your awareness is raising, you become more intuitive. You become

pre-scripted so that you know the consequence of your action before you take action. Like in the 12-step program, you become more aware by making friends with the people that you've hurt, by asking for forgiveness for the things that you've done. We all intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. Perfect. Perfect. Exactly. And in doing so, you can use ego to become well known for the purpose of getting people to know the information of recovery to get people to know the information of discovery to get people to know the information of extreme discovery right endurance kinds of discovery it's about intention and the motivations that fuel it right yes and and and this journey this practice i kind of want to we got to start to like wind this down a little

bit i know we can go on and on we're good will you come back and talk to me more because yeah for sure i could like go all night we'll do another one. I just I want to leave people with with, you know, at least a tool or two that they can take away from this and begin to incorporate into their life. So beyond find a Kundalini, you know, yoga practice in your vicinity or, you know, go to your website and watch your videos and read your writings. And I'm going to talk about that in a second. Um, and of course what you referenced earlier, which is developing a habit of waking up very early in the morning and the, and the precious kind of, um, beautiful, uh, like flowers that can bloom from commitment to that practice. It's something that I feel strongly about, and it's difficult, yes.

But once you get used to it, I mean, I know that like my most creative time, my writing, everything comes in those precious hours before everyone else is awake. So maybe speak about that a little bit. awake so maybe speak about that a little bit well you asked for uh in your in your lead up to this you asked for some practicals um one thing that i want listeners to remember is newton's third law of motion for every action there is a reaction that is equal and opposite. And so if you live your life in that premise, that for everything that is happening to you, there's a way out, there's a way through, there's a solution. Because if it's a problem, there's a solution.

If it's a solution, watch out for the problem. So if you're governing your life by the laws of physics, which apply to our lives, because our lives are physical, in addition to mental and emotional and spiritual, physical, in addition to mental and emotional and spiritual, then you will realize that no matter what's happening, there's an alternative. And within, even if you go down into the quantum of physics, there's a way of reconstructing the moment, deconstructing and reconstructing the moment, which simply means always have hope, always have hope, always have hope. Then go on from there. What are the ways in which I can help to instill hope? Every single day, go out onto the ground and get in your bare feet on unpainted pavement or on the grass or dirt and just stand there for at least three minutes and get in touch with your

earth magnetic field, gravitational field, etc. Just get really grounded. Very practical. Three minutes and then do some stretching. So three practical things. One mental, one very physical, and one very exertive. The mental is know that there's an equal and opposite in every situation, a way out of every challenge, a way through every block. Physical, get grounded every morning. And in exertion, stretch. Stretch into your body glove. There's not just kundalini classes. There's exercise classes.

There's your trainings. There's not just kundalini classes, there's exercise classes, there's your trainings, there's so many different trainings. Learn to do stretching for another 10 minutes of your morning because the way in which your nerves and muscles and tendons and bones and fascia interface inside of your physical body, I'm not going to try to go into the technical details but just trust me i'm saying not saying to you because you know but i'm saying to the listeners just get into your body get fully inside your body and if you can handle it take a cold water shower after your warm water shower to really force the blood down into the deep glands and organs to flush them out because you used warm water to wash the skin now use cold water to force

it constricts the skin forces the blood down inside the body to flush out the inner part of your body and just end your five minute hot water shower with a three to five minute cold water shower it'll be cold only for the first few seconds and then your body will get used to it so cold water therapy as well so these are some practicals that very practical and very doable very doable very simple very doable very doable do you know this guy uh wim hof the Iceman? Yes, yes. I met him. I met him. Oh, you did? Yeah.

We met each other on two-way Skype when we were in India with Tony because he came in and taught the class on his... Oh, that's cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tony brings great people in. Right. Yeah, so I've had Wim on the podcast. Oh, fantastic.

He came to my house. But I couldn't help but when you're describing this, I'm like, this is very Wim Hof, even at the outset of the podcast, when you're talking about the breathing exercises or just becoming conscious of the breath, you know, his mantra is breathe mother like that. You know, that's what he says, but the idea behind it, like everyone wants to talk about the crazy things that he's done with respect to cold exposure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's really about the breath. Yeah.

And it's his focus and discipline around breath work that allows him to do these things in the cold. And all of that kind of flows from the breathing. And the cold changes so much. I mean, we don't have time to get down into the details but the details are science it's not woo-woo the things that you and i do in our lives rich are not woo-woo they're just so real and three and four dimensional you know three dimensions of space and four dimension of time that it's real it's practical it's pragmatic it's not like crazy woo-woo stuff it's not at all man yeah i think that's a good place to to end it cool cool man thank you for

the promise that we'll be back yeah will you please come back because i could i could definitely you know talk and it'll be cool to take it from this level and go beyond yeah we've just laid the groundwork that was the uh that was the party. We'll have the after party later. I love it. everybody should do is subscribe to your daily meditation email, which is something that I've been getting for, I don't know, a year and a half now, ever since I saw you when I was in this room with Jason. And they're just, they're beautiful. They're just beautiful meditations to start your day with, you know, a simple thought, beautifully articulated. And I just love getting that every day. And you can, you also put them up on Instagram and

on Facebook. Yeah. I actually email them to just about a group. But the Instagram and Facebook is how you can get them. And so it's Guru Singh on Facebook, G-U-R-U-S-I-N-G-H, and Gurusingyogi, Gurusing plus Y-O-G-I on Instagram. Yeah, those are great. And, of course, gurusing.com if you want to learn more about what you're doing. And perhaps, I mean, you're traveling and you're doing appearances and things like that, yet if people want to see if you're coming to their location, they can go there and check it out. Right, we're centered. Our main center in Los Angeles is Yoga West.

But we also have another home in Seattle. So we teach out of Seattle a lot. We teach on the East Coast. But our calendar will tell people how to get in touch. Excellent, man. And there will be also a lot of classes online. So we'll be able to get out there. Very cool. Are we going to go do some sound therapy now we are you are cool yeah so now i'm just going to say to you all that rich

is now going to experience a little bit of my medicine because you know he's had you experiencing his medicine so we're going to go and do some sound therapy on him and i'll report back to you guys all right Thanks so much. Peace. Peace. All right, we did it. What do you guys think? What a gift.

What a treasure that man is. I really hope that you enjoyed that conversation. And again, my hope is that Guru Singh's words, his wisdom will help you clarify your own journey towards self-understanding, your commitment to self-awareness and finding purpose in your life. So I think it would be great if you all made a point of following his daily morning meditations on Instagram. It's at Guru Singh Yogi, G-U-R-U-S-I-N-G-H Yogi, all one word. Check out his book, Buried Treasures,

of course, by using the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com or by first typing in richroll.com forward slash Amazon. You could check out his podcast on iTunes. It's called Guru Singh podcast. It's relatively new. He's got nine episodes up currently, I think. And again, try to drop in on his class at Yoga West. Should you find yourself in Los Angeles?

As always, please make a point of checking out the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com. I got tons of links about Guru Singh and his work that you can peruse and enjoy to take your edification beyond the earbuds. I appreciate you guys sharing the show with your friends and on social media. That means so much. Thank you for leaving a review on iTunes. Of course, click that subscribe button on iTunes or on whatever podcast app or service you use to enjoy your podcast entertainment and mad love to everybody who has made a practice habit of using the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com for all your Amazon purchases, or just by typing in richroll.com forward slash Amazon, which takes you to Amazon,

buy whatever you're going to buy. It doesn't cost you anything extra, but Amazon kicks us some commission change. And that really helps us out a lot. And of course, to everybody who has taken that extra step to support us financially on Patreon, that's huge. Thank you so much. If you would like to receive a free short email from me every week, every Thursday, you can sign up for it on my website. It's called Roll Call every week. Just three, four, five, six things that I've enjoyed throughout the week that I wanted to share with people. Generally, it's articles or books that I'm reading or videos that I've seen or podcasts that I've listened to or products that I'm enjoying, just things that I've found beneficial in my life that I wanted to share. And generally, these are things I don't

put on social media. So if you want in on that, sign up on my website. I'm never going to spam you. Just good stuff. And of course, also at richroll.com, I got signed copies of Finding Ultra and the Plant Power Way. We got cool t-shirts and tech tees and all your Plant Power merch and schwag needs are met there. I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering and production. Sean Patterson for help on graphics, Chris Swan for additional production assistance and help compiling all the show notes and configuring the website and theme music by Annalema. Thanks for the love, you guys.

Final thought for you. One of the things that Guru Singh spoke about at the New Year's Eve event that I attended is the importance that we all stand in our strength and our power, that we own it, and that we need to stop being nice. He kept saying it. You got to stop being nice. And by nice, he means neurotic, insecure, crazy, and emotional, N-I-C-E, right? And start being who we really are. And for some, that might mean dissent, sharing your truth irrespective of social norms or expectations. For others, it might mean erecting healthy boundaries around what best serves you to avoid getting dragged into inauthentic experiences or relationships due to social pressure. And I think for me, it means being more comfortable in my own skin, sharing my truth more openly without attachment to the reaction, without the fear that might surround how I'm going

to be perceived or how it impacts the show's popularity, for example. So my question for you is this, are you ready to stop being nice and step into who you are? Do you have the strength to become the person you know yourself to most authentically be? And if so, what are you willing to embrace? And conversely, what are you willing to let go of in order to get there? Chew on that and I'll see you guys back here soon.

Peace. Lance. Thank you.