Ep. 40 - Music, Life, and Fun with Lily Cushman

[ Silence ] >> You're listening to MindPod Network. [ Music ] >> This is synchronicity. >> This is synchronicity. >> This is synchronicity. >> This is synchronicity. >> This is synchronicity. >> This is synchronicity. >> This is synchronicity. [ Music ] >> Welcome to episode 40 of synchronicity. My guest this week is Lily Cushman. Lily is Sharon Salzberg's assistant. She runs and found Brooklyn Yoga School in Brooklyn, New York. She has a record label. She is super cool and just does a whole lot of stuff that I find particularly interesting. And I think you will too. So listen to that. We're sticking with the format from last week where I just give a very brief overview of who the person on the podcast is.

And then Jim, I talk about other stuff that hopefully it doesn't bore you. So let's talk about the stuff that hopefully it doesn't bore you this week. Podcast reviews have been coming in. And I think I got my favorite review yet. And it's a four star review. That's not an invitation to only two four star reviews. But Julie R70 from the United States of America left this review. And I will explain to you afterwards why I love this review so much. All the MPN stuff is great. Not sure how or why Noah feels like he can talk about spiritual matters like this. But his charm and insight has won me over.

Great cast. But not every episode. So thanks, Julie. I love that review because I think it's the epitome of honest. And I think there's, I actually feel probably like Julie does too. I don't know. I hope that I don't come off like I do. I don't know. I hope that I don't come off like I'm talking about spiritual stuff as like an advice-giving thing. Not my intention in any way. I'm like you figuring this stuff as I go along. I've had the amazing benefit of being with and talking to people who have been doing this for the majority of their lives. I'm a big reader. But I don't know what I'm doing.

So I think that's really a stupid thing to notice. I don't know how or why I feel like talking about this stuff. I'm talking to guests mainly and getting their perspectives and not necessarily offering my own. But I'm sure I do. And then I like that she says, "Great cast." But not every episode. Yeah. Thank you for that. I probably agree with that too. I mean, every episode can't be amazing. Maybe it is though. Maybe Julie's wrong. Right? Leave a review and tell Julie why she's wrong. But thank you. I also got some other really nice reviews in. I'm not going to read them because they're too nice.

And you know, reading really nice things about yourself, so other people. What is that? What is that? Okay. So I wanted to talk about Book Giveaway, Synchronicity Book Giveaway this week. No, first of all, first off, congratulations to Dave, who won Cats Cradle. I reached out to the other book winner. You may remember there was two last week. The other book was Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces. But the person hasn't gotten back to me yet. So if they don't get back to me in a week or so, I'll probably redo that one. But this week's Book Giveaway is Women by Charles Bukowski, one of my favorite books.

Bukowski. So, so good. Don't know why I said it like that. Don't do that again. Sorry about that. But if you're a reminder, if you don't know, or a reminder, if you do know, you are entered in the Book Giveaway contest if you go to synchpodcast.com, S-Y-N-C, podcast.com. Join the community. You get emails from me on a weekly basis. So if you don't want that, don't do it, but hopefully they're not annoying emails. But that's how you get entered in these book giveaways. And speaking of the emails you get, this week I wrote an email about failure. And the subject line of the email was, "I'm a big failure," which is a pretty good way to get open rates if you want to know.

It worked really well. But really, the meat of the email was about how many times and how many things I fail at on a regular basis have failed at throughout my life and how looking at failure is not as a negative, but as either an opportunity or a growing experience or maybe a blessing in disguise is a great way of starting to do things. Because in my experiences, a lot of the things I don't start can pretty much be ruled right down to me being afraid of failing, right? That's a huge... I like to think of myself as a perfectionist. In some ways, I'm sure I am, but I'm not really, but that way of thinking prevents me from starting a lot of projects.

And the things I usually do start and stick with, I'm pretty happy with, regardless of outward or other types of successes, it's a fulfilling thing to do. So that's the type of stuff you will get if you join the community. It's not going to be annoying. So if you're interested in doing that and you can get some books, that's fun. Quick update also on the Synchronicity Generosity Experiment. This is where we're collectively raising money that we will send to a person or persons at the end of August. We're almost at $700 now. That's pretty sweet if this is something your... This is the way I'd describe this.

Essentially, if you're interested in opening up transcendental portals of abundance, try this. I'm not saying it's a guaranteed thing to work. I'm not miscleo here guaranteeing your future, but in my experience, when you give, you get. And weirdly, even if you're given in a selfish way, sometimes you get. I think the karma complications of giving selfishly are probably not the best, but still, nevertheless, think that's a law of the universe. So if you're interested in donating to that, you go to synchpodcast.com/generosity. We're also on GoFundMe. That's how we're collecting money. And then about the second week of August, I'm thinking maybe third week, we will have a poll and a vote on some places we want to send that money to.

So that'll be cool. Hopefully you get to $1,000. That'll be really sweet. Think of you or a person. Maybe that's some shit going on. It wasn't going so well for you some way. And then you got $1,000 from a group of people. That's fucking cool. Okay. I wanted to talk about a quick thing. I've been watching Netflix more because they've been paying for it every month, and I've been watching a lot of Hulu. Hulu's got a lot of TV shows I like, but I've been getting into it. I love documentaries. Big documentary fan. Speaking of documentaries, if you like documentaries, go check out another podcast on MyPod Network.

Sean Dunn's very apt podcast. He also check out his documentaries. They're all free, very apt.tv, incredible stuff. I'm not even going to say anything more about that. If you're interested, you will check it out or you should check it out. But I watched this thing, this documentary called Foxcatcher, which there was a movie that came out with Steve Carell not too long ago, which was a true story of a US wrestling team and a DuPont, John DuPont, who basically was a benevolent financial provider for a lot of Olympic things, and he got super into wrestling, and it ended in a murder, a tragic murder because John DuPont had a very weird life, was very socially isolated, didn't have social skills, and basically devolved into a paranoid, really fucked up mental state, and he ended up killing Dave Schulz.

So I bring this up not only because this is a great documentary, it's really interesting, but the coolest thing about this documentary is at the very end, there's a part where Dave Schulz's daughter, who's now grown, young adult, she basically has, I think, the line of the movie where they're talking about how, basically, I'm not going to ruin it for you, but John DuPont gets put in jail. He tries to plead insanity, but it doesn't work, and he gets put in jail and he eventually dies in jail, alone, and she says, you know, so weird, everyone was cheering and happy when he died, and she thought that, and she was like, I thought that was the saddest thing I had ever heard.

This guy, who grew up alone, isolated, his father was never there, no one interacted with him, all he wanted to do was connect with people, and how does he end his life, he's alone in prison, people cheering, and she's like, when my dad died, everyone was grieving, and I just thought that was incredible, that she basically had the ability to tap into that, and, you know, that was her father who was killed by this guy, and she had compassion for him, so I thought that was fucking amazing. So check that documentary out also, just really good. Okay, a few more things, promise I'm getting through it, I'm writing these things down, and I'm not laboring on for the people who don't want to listen to this.

You can always skip ahead though, right, no big deal. Synchronicity playlist, these Spotify playlists I've been putting together, a new one is coming soon, number seven, I've been taking my time with this one, I like the number seven, it's going to be cool, I think you'll like it, so stay tuned for that. Also guys, girls, ladies, men, out there, if you have any guest suggestions who you would like for me to bring on to the podcast, let me know, you all let me know about Duncan about a few months ago, and I mean it happened, right, and he made it happen, so let me know, write to me at Noah@synchpodcast.com, tell me who you think would be a good guest, someone I would be interested in, someone you would be interested in hearing from, and yeah, that's it.

Okay, I don't have anything else, I think we're going to get to the episode, I'm feeling pretty good, had a long walk today, get out there and walk, even if it's hot, just stay hydrated, you feel a lot better, that's my advice, there we go, there is time, I'm totally unqualified to get that advice as well, but I enjoy it, so if you want to take a walk, do that, okay, rate and review on blah blah blah, blah blah, blah, blah, blah, without further ado, here is Lily Kushman. Hey, what's going on? Hello. I'm going to turn my video off. Oh, no, no, if you're just going to turn yours on, what's going on?

Hi. How are you doing? I'm all right. Yeah. Good. Good. I'm sure that my settings are correct. Yeah, and let me know if you want more level from me. No, you sound great. Do I sound great? Yeah. Good. I think I am good to go speakers, perfect input, good, great. Yeah, how hot is it in the city? It's pretty hot. Today is actually a lot better than it's been. Yeah, it's been 90 feels like 45. Oh, man. It's like that here. I think it's worse here. I've been looking because we're comparing temperatures as we plan to move back up to that area. And it's just like the little bit of coolness it gets from like those 200, 300 miles is actually like pretty significant because here it's like brutal.

We have it like our poor dog hasn't gone out in like a week and a half like for our serious walk because it's just like oppressively disgusting out there. It's gross. But we're inside. Are you in Sharon's place? I am. Yeah. Cool. It's the Sharon's place. Awesome. Where is Sharon's place now? It is right on 14th Street and 5th Avenue. Oh, cool. Yeah. That's not the one near the Ruben. Is it? That was another one, right? That was a bomb. It's still close to the Ruben, but yeah, she considers this a different neighborhood. She's like three blocks from her apartment. I guess it's all relative. Yeah, totally.

Hold on. Let me turn my thing off. Thank you, by the way, for coming on. Yeah, I'm so excited. Yeah. Me too. Because I never really thought about it because like, you know, you wear a lot of different hats and I wear a lot of different hats at times and but like I was writing down stuff you were into and stuff that you did and I was like, holy shit, like we have like a tremendous amount of stuff in common that like just when it's written down, it becomes pretty clear. Yeah. So we'll just start. Okay. Sounds good. Yeah. So where to start? This is like, let's start. Let's start with Berkeley. Right?

I think we should. Yeah. Let's start with Berkeley. So tell me, we both went to Berkeley. When did you graduate? What year? I graduated, let's see, I went in 90s, started in the start of 98 and I graduated in 2001 and I moved here right like a couple of days before 9/11 and had just finished like the week before. Where were you living when 9/11? I was living down in the East Village and it was, yeah, that was a very surreal way to come into New York because I was like in it. I was like in the area where you had to like show ID to get to your apartment. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Like saw the towers go down out my windows like that.

Where are you originally from? I'm from Idaho and yeah, I'm like a serious transplant. My mother was from Manhattan and I think that kind of put the East Coast on my radar in a way that most people from Idaho, they really, they don't go very far. If they go far, they go to like Portland or Seattle. I've met maybe three people in like 20 years on the East Coast that are from Idaho. Really? Yeah. It's very rare. So. Your mom grew up in the city? Mm-hmm. Yes. She grew up on the Upper East Side and used to like grow corn on her fire escape. That's so, you know, my, Alexis's mom grew up on the Upper East Side.

Oh, wow. Yeah. That's cool. Maybe they like had some corn and common beefy. So wait, then you went to college in Boston and you were there for three years, four years? Yeah. I was there for like three and a half years. I did sort of the like accelerated track where I went to school during the summer semesters as well. So what did you study? I'm sure we've spoken about this but I forgot. What did you study at Berkeley? Well, I went to study voice because I had been a singer for a really long time and when I got there, the vocals department kind of sucked, so it's like really bad to say that now.

Yeah. I think it's improved a lot. Yeah, just a little, I'm sure. So yeah, I went for that and it just didn't, it wasn't that substantial. So I had a roommate at the time and she was studying production and engineering and she like brought me to the studio and I really loved it. And so it like took me on that whole track, which was really perfect for me because I'm kind of very right and left brain. Yeah. And that's all the best stuff for it. I know. You did music production. That's awesome. Yeah. Which is like your neighbor because you did music synth, right? Yeah, which is not a major anymore.

They don't call it that. They've changed that. Well, I mean, it's a terrible name. Music synthesis, I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but it's like that literally means nothing. Yeah. Like it may be contrast images of like synthesizers or something, but it was like, and I think they've defined it to like electronic music production and engineering or something like a little more descriptive for what it actually was, but you're right. It was two. There were the twin departments. There was MPNE and the music synthesis. So what are you learning and so I went to Berkeley 2003. I graduated college and went to Northeastern and I did a one week application for Northeastern.

I put down psychology. I was high. I smoked a joint. It was like a psychology. Yeah, I'm into that. Seriously. I put it down. Psychology. This is a total two week application. They came back and they gave me like a decent scholarship, so I was like, all right, I'm going there. I wanted to go to Boston. Almost all my schools were there. I got there. I hated it. I mean, I like Northeastern as a school. They had the co-op where you could go and like get a job after, but the psychology stuff was like literally awful huge lecture halls, just like classic images of college. Yeah, it was it was just awful.

So I left there and then went to Berkeley in 2003. I didn't end up graduating until 2008. So yeah. Well, I'm sure by the time you were there, because when I was there, they had like just gotten the first Pro Tools rigs in there. I mean, it was like, it was just crossing that threshold into like the digital era. So a lot of what I studied was analog. I mean, like we were cutting tape. That's why I asked. Yeah. You know, so I think now it's a totally different ballgame there and like it makes sense that they've renamed music synthesis department because what it was was like all of these like super nerds like sitting in a room at these little like cute like little carts, like horrible Pro Tools interfaces that were just like really slow.

And then occasionally we would like, you know, just talk about like some wall of like analog synthesizer that was a sizable wall. Yeah. But yeah, it's very, very different now. And anybody in their mother knows how to use Pro Tools now. So it's really fascinating. What do you what do you use to edit and I still use Pro Tools just because I was on it so long, I'm like, I'm, I'm just very fast editor on there and it's like the language I know. That's exactly what that's all comes down to. I use Pro Tools while I was at Berkeley, but only because it was available because they had the studios and everything and they made you get the M boxes.

I worked in the technical place too. I had to fix everyone's inbox, which is a nightmare, it was really, really quite awful. But it is like, I use logic in Ableton primarily now, but I mean, I know so many people and now they have now you don't even need hardware to use Pro Tools. They have the free version, which is super sweet. Yeah, it's changed radically. And I think actually, I mean, it's interesting because a lot of them do the same things now. I mean, it used to be that logic and Ableton were totally different animals, but you know, you can pretty much use all of them and they're all really good interfaces.

So once they all kind of had Pro Tools, I remember at one point, their time stretching was by far the best and then Ableton kind of caught up with warping and now they're all, it's just like par for the course, although no one uses logic for that really. Although it's not that hard. So okay, so you went for a voice to Berkeley and then you transitioned to, so like, what were you learning? What were you studying? What were you getting interested in? And where were you living? Were you living in the dorms? I only lived in the dorms one semester and then I moved kind of to Back Bay, that area is. Awesome.

I lived on Hemingway and Charlesgate. Yeah. That was your, we were just, it was like all the same, you're probably in the same apartment I was. Where, what number were you in? Well, I was over on a way now you're going to really make me think of it. I still remember some of mine. Mine was like right next to Park Drive, is that right? No, Park Place. Park. Park Place is monopoly. Yeah. And then for a long time I was over on Beacon and then I eventually was like in the south end. So I moved around a lot, I kind of, I mean, so, I mean there, as you know, it's like you still study your instrument. So I was still doing all of that and I had a really great private vocal instructor and I was kind of going through that process and doing ensembles.

I actually grew up singing jazz. So I was like in this weird pocket in Idaho where there was this really great jazz education program. That's awesome. They were really excited about someone like me because Berkeley historically is a jazz school. But like there's just, it's just like a dying art. So, so it was kind of an interesting mix. And then I got, you know, in MPNE it was like, I mean it was fun. You would study just like all this classic stuff and it was a real mix between like the technical side of like learning about condenser microphones and like studying like the Beatles production, things like that.

So in that way it was like really a classic production base because you just studied like sort of the greats and, and then it was amazing because you just had access to the studios. So you could just go in there and none of the people in MPNE ever slept because the times when the studios were most available was in the middle of the night. I was sorry. You would just like go get all your friends together and go in the studio and make something. And it was, it was really, I mean that was the way we really learned. And it was like, I think I was like one of maybe four girls in that whole department.

I was going to say it was even when I was there like a few years later, like in synthesis there was maybe, I remember like two, two maybe three girls in who I am. Yeah. So really like after school, I came to New York and I made my living as an audio engineer for like 10 years and no women. It's just a very male dominated industry and that's been one of the nice things about the change in technology is totally because it's kind of nice to get, get the other half. What's an equalizer? An equalizer. Yeah. Yeah. It's a totally equalizer. Yeah. I don't think I, I don't think I had one female instructor at Berkeley the entire time I was there.

And I was over there over the course of like five years. Yeah. That was always, it is good to have women represented in most things, like in the creative arts, like not a big thing at all. So when, so when you moved to, let's, let's go by. So you graduated Berkeley and then you moved to New York, then 9/11 happened. When did you move to New York? Like what month? I moved on September 1st. Holy shit. Yeah. No, and I, I, I was like in boxes. I didn't. Yeah. And it just come to like help me move. I was 21. I mean, I was just really young and what was really bizarre about that day in particular is like, it was election day.

It was a Tuesday. And so I woke up, you know, I don't remember the exact time, but it was like, I woke up right at the moment when the first towers goes, went down, first tower went down because all these people outside were shouting. And I thought it was like something related to the election. And like the radio wouldn't work. I think I had a TV, but it was like still unplugged. Like I was just in boxes. So my dad and I walked outside and just like people were just like milling around in this weird space and there was white smoke everywhere and I saw someone from Berkeley. This was, it was really bizarre.

And I, now I don't even remember his name. He was this guy who was also someone in the voice department. And he was the one who told me what had happened. It was so strange, like one of those weird coincidences. And yeah, so that started, you know, really it was like months of just this really surreal space because I was right close to one of the main hospitals where like families would go to wait, you know, while people, while they were still just like pulling bodies out of the rubble. Just took a while. Yeah. It was a really long time. And really, I think there's a, there's a certain thing that happens in, I think, any community when something like that hits where it's just so, I don't know, you see the best of humanity.

Like you really, and in a place like New York where you never talk to anybody, it's just like everybody's in their box and they're like on the subway and they're like, Oh, fucking touch me. You know, just like, yeah, this was a time of really amazing community and it was so different than what was shown on television. Right. It was just, so I was really in a certain way that was like my welcome to New York and like this deep humanity in the city that I still just love so much. Yeah. Cause it's like your, it's weird to move to New York in just period. It's just very weird, especially coming from anywhere else.

It's not like no one, no places really like New York, but to have something like that happen and see this whole other side, I mean, that's a once in a lifetime got willing type of experience. That's totally nuts. So you, you've been, it makes sense because you've had like, I know Berkeley, like when we talk about Berkeley, we talk about it as a music college. One of the weirdest places on the East coast period that vortex right there in Boston is so I had, I was like white kid with dreadlocks for four or five years there and I totally no one batted an eye. That was like totally normal, totally.

That was like even better there. Yeah. That's perfect. It's like, of course, of course that gets there and the headphones listening electronic of course. Oh yeah. It's like a very weird kind of surreal place. I also think it has a lot to do with, I would wager Boston in general is just a weird city because there's so many young people relative to the population. They're all from other, a lot of them are from other places. I know it's so transient cause they move through like, oh, they're a summer and it's weird, like no one is there. It's a, it's really weird, especially that area cause there's so many, they're right there for people who don't know, there's Northeastern, there's the conservatory of music which Berkeley just merged with and there's what else, BU, BU people infiltrate through there.

Emerson is not that far away. There's just like a lot of colleges condenses area but when summer rolls around so many people leave, it's like empty. It's the weirdest place. But what I was saying is, I always got the impression and I was one of these people. There's so many people doing psychedelic drugs right in that area. Those dorms have the weirdest energy I have ever, ever, ever come across. So just so you know, I went to a five week program at, to Berkeley when I was in a sophomore in high school. I was like a summer thing and that's the first time I ever tried LSD and I was in the, and I, yeah, it's like 15 in Boston in the 270 dorms on Commonwealth, the weirdest building, just a freak building and I, this is a really weird building.

So weird. So weird. Really weird. I had a friend who I met there, I mean, we became friends. He was from San Francisco and he's like, Hey, listen, I have this stuff. It's called Sunshine LSD. Do you want to try it? And I had, I was reading about LSD. I was very interested in it. I had done like a school report on it that still exists on the internet. It was, oh, it's, it'll hit search for my name. It's like the first thing that comes up, it's can't escape that. Me and my dad helped me put it together. But yeah, so I had known about it, but obviously if, and if for anyone who's done a psychedelic, it's hard to explain or even prepare yourself for what the experience is going to be like.

So he was like, okay, I have some of this stuff. Let's try it. I ended up taking three tabs of the sunshine acid and trip for 18 hours about our 12, 13. I call my dad. I'm like, Hey, I think I'm permanently like this. So can you tell me what I'm supposed to do? And a weird thing happens when I take psychedelics. I have like a, I know that one, but I have like a weird predator, natural like calm about me. Even though inside of my head, I'm like, it could be eight million thoughts on top of each other. I'm freaking out. But I seem like super normal and composed. And he's like, you sound totally normal.

I'm like, yeah, I'm not. I'm not. Like I'm totally freaking out. I was like, Oh, get some orange juice. But that kind of set up my experience for like what Berkeley was like. And I continued in college and you meet a lot of people and it's a weird area. But it's interesting because I always felt like Berkeley was like this alternate mystical universe. And then for you, I'm curious if it had the same impact. And if it did, like that you went into a weird mystical in a completely different way experience by going to New York and having a tremendous global thing two miles away from your house. Yeah.

I mean, that's, that's nuts. I mean, I think it's, it always really struck me that in our culture, there's such absence of just the nurturing of the arts and the artist and kind of the reality is that connection between someone who's like kind of plugged in creatively is it's automatically linked in with all of the mysteries of life. Like that's, that's what we're tapping into as musicians, as painters, as sculptors, as actors, whatever it is. And so yeah, you get a lot of people in the same place, we're all figuring out how to do that. And it's a pretty fascinating environment. And just like all of the weird ego tripping happens of because it's like the music industry too.

We're talking about the fun, mystical, trans, you know, learn spiritual lessons thing, but it's also a microcosm of the music industry. And right when you and I were there, this is Napster type era. This is the whole thing is changing. I remember being in a music business class and like, none of this shit makes sense. This is wrong. Mechanical licenses. Sorry. That's not how this works anymore. Yeah. Yeah. And that, so, and since I was there like a couple years, cause all that moves really rapidly once it hit, it hadn't quite happened yet. So like the majority of my education was still the old dinosaur, which I think was really interesting to study, especially, I don't know, on the business side, on the production side because there's a lot in there that's really valuable and it's like, it's just like a library of creativity.

But so it's very interesting now like then once I actually came to New York and started recording and it was just like the landscape was so different, you were just like thrown in there. And now the fact that anyone can make their own album just for no money is like unprecedented. So what it kind of meant was like you had to, you had to work a lot harder for it back then. You had to invest a lot of money, you had to invest a lot of time, whether it was you were paying to go to a studio or you were paying, yeah, like $10,000 worth of gear that now today costs $100, it was just a really, and actually that's very akin to like, you know, now I work with Sharon Salzberg and when she first started meditating, there was no landscape.

Right. Like there were no meditation centers. You had to really want it to get it. And that's kind of what the music industry was still like then, whereas today there's a million yoga centers and meditation centers on every corner. Same with the music industry, it's just totally turned over. So this is this, I love this parallel because I didn't, I knew Brooklyn Yoga School was donation based only for some reason that didn't strike me as like a revolutionary, do you know what I mean? Like I didn't, but it is. So like the fact that I read the little bio on the site, I was like, I didn't know that that's how it started, the leap of faith that that must have taken to do and that it's working and has worked, that, what's interesting to me about that, this is where I think creativity in general musicians, artists and stuff, that's what I think is the future.

I think I don't know how it's going to evolve. I don't know the models that will emerge, but this direct support, I'm doing this with the synchronicity generosity experiment, right, I'm asking people to collectively raise money, we're going to send it to somewhere. Just because I think that type of mentality is pervasive across the creative arts, I think the music industry, we're seeing this now also with the mindfulness stuff too. We see these models or systems superimposed on to creativity, which is to be an artist as you said, or to be creative person, you have to tap into some stuff that doesn't really make sense in the world, right?

And it's from somewhere else and you're trying to do it, and the thought of even making that a living or self-sustaining is a daunting task for most people. So yeah, I just, I think the parallels are fascinating. So can you talk a little bit about starting Brooklyn, explain what Brooklyn Yoga School is? Yeah. Well, it kind of traces back actually to that same moment in time when I went to Berkeley, because when I went there, I was kind of looking for a way to take care of myself when I was there. And it was just such an intense experience and someone that I really trusted from Idaho recommended yoga to me.

Now I have to understand at that moment in time, that was not a thing. Yeah. Like not at all. I was one of the few people my mom used to go to a yoga teacher here, and I did yoga from when I was like 14 to like 18, and people thought I was insane. Like I was the only person my age, yeah, it was totally crazy. Yeah. Um, I got a VHS of Patricia Walden doing some, like, it was like a yoga journal basics VHS. I just really want everybody to think about the VHS part of that because every dad, but then we see on first play, you got to rewind it after you got, you really do, there's, there's a rewinding.

So that it was quite interesting, like I started doing that and very quickly, like within a month's time, I just had this like really strong connection to it and felt like, I got to do this every day. And I was somebody who like wasn't super duper disciplined, like in the world of Berkeley, there were people who would literally spend like seven hours a day in the practice room. I wasn't one of those people. Right. Neither was I. But for whatever reason, I just like, I did this and it, and at first it was like monumental. And then slowly it just became this thing that I did every morning before I had breakfast that I didn't really talk to people about.

That was 98. And so that just was like part of the kind of fabric of me for a long time going through school, going to New York. I have done yoga in a lot of random places, a lot of like weird people's houses and like, "Hey, I'm just going to go do my practice, it's fine" across the kind of on boats, like you name it, just like, that was just like eating for me. And yeah, got a lot of really weird looks. So when I came to New York, I kind of for, it was maybe seven years or so, I was really working on my music. I recorded an album. I was making a living as an engineer, but it was just a really volatile time in the industry.

And there was a lot of up and down of like getting a contract that seemed like it was going to come together and then it falling apart and going to London for universal records and then nothing and like that. And so I kind of reached a point where I was really burnt out and I just invested so much. And it was weird around that time I met a teacher. And I had never had one before, I had never even gone to public classes. I met in one retreat, my teacher, Dharma Mitra and Krishna Das, who have both played like really huge roles in my life since then. So I just started studying with him. Dharma lived here in the city and had a studio and in a very short amount of time, I just went deeply into that world and it was good timing because I needed to take a break from music and I was just like bloodying myself, creative, trying to get things done.

That's like the worst when you're like trying to finish a song and it's just like killing you. There's nothing worse than that. There's nothing worse. So I made a real decision to kind of step away from that and go into this younger world and pretty soon I was managing a center and just doing different things. And that all kind of led to me teaching, which was not something I ever planned on doing. It's like one of those like surprise, "Oh, you're going to have this whole part of your life." But it was really interesting because it pulled together a lot of different facets for me. Like teaching is a very creative forum for me and really the reason the core motivation for me of doing music has always been to help people in some way or bring about positive whatever you want to call it.

Absolutely. Vibrations. That is probably the best word for it. So this was like right on that same track and yeah, in 2010, I just had this idea that this was kind of the beginning of the real yoga boom and it was starting to get really popular. But here in New York, it would cost upwards of $25 to take a single class, which still seems absurd to me now, and so I just thought, this thought trickled down to my brain, what have you taught by donation? And then I said to that thought, "That's a crazy idea." Because I was like in debt, whatever, that's crazy here in New York. So I was like, "Okay, well, if that's what I'm supposed to do, then just put it in my lap.

It's going to work." Right, right. And like the next day, it was a weird series of events that brought me to opening BYS. Like the next day, someone gave me $1,000 and was like, "You should open a studio." I was like, "What is going on?" And then I found this really phenomenal space in the neighborhood where I lived in Park Slope that was way under market and just like a gorgeous space. It just like, all of these circumstances came together that were way beyond what my mind could rationally understand that it was just very clear, like, "This is what I'm doing." It's like a synchronicity of sorts.

Total... Do you know that word? I've never heard it, but I'm not really sure. Yeah. Synchronicity. That was a big window that opened and all these things just kind of came in. And it was still a lot of work. It was like raising a lot of money and it just sort of came into fruition. And so all of a sudden, like three months later, I was opening a studio and teaching almost literally all the classes. I was teaching like 25 classes a week. And we just had a vase there. Just a vase. It was just like, "I didn't even talk about money." Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was just like, "You know, let's just do it."

So now it's been like almost seven years of that. And we've slowly had to kind of implement a little more structure on the pricing. Sure. Eventually, people started taking money out of the vase and sort of putting it in. So we had to go to the box. Yeah, that's not what that is. I mean, it's been really interesting because really my motivation was to make the teachings accessible. Of course. And it wasn't to like break through the financial status quo of our culture, but I've learned a lot about that and just, you know, it's a really unusual thing to present someone with a situation where they have to choose the value of, you know, what they're interfacing with.

You're not going to tell them how much it's worth. I love it. It's interesting. I love it. But I also realized the inherent risk that can come along with something like that, which is why it's extremely impressive and gratifying to see when it works, right? Because you hope that like, I always think this. I always think, let's say there's someone in your community who is going through a hard time, like they're getting, they need chemo, but they have no money, right? And they're someone sick. If everyone around them in like a two mile square radius gave like five bucks, they're good to go like that type of thought.

It's like when you see the pictures of the Buddha's like, you know, the flowing pictures of the Buddha's like, there's one Buddha and then there's like five of them that spread out from that and five. And it's this huge tree. That's the way I think, I think what's expressed really in that is the teachings. But I think this is really fascinating because money I think is one of the most misunderstood and misused forms of energy or that we attach energy to in our culture. Obviously, right? I mean, this is like plan. I'm not like touching on anything crazy here. But I figure it out. I think I want to say about 10 years ago that money wasn't a bad thing, that it wasn't the root of all evil, that inherently it was a neutral property and that it could actually even be an expression of love and generosity and all of these things.

And I just, I get a sense in our culture that things are hopefully switching and this is all counterbalanced by what's going on in Cleveland right now. So just to take it with the grain of salt, but I get the sense that there is this kind of collective effort in realizing that we're maybe not working off of the same type of scarcity models that maybe we were taught, existed or exist and that there is a way to distribute resources in a way that is useful for everyone. So yeah, I just, I love to see when things actually work like that. So I'm also encouraged to hear you say like, you know, it's not like I just did a donation thing and it worked forever.

We never had to make any changes and it's been great. Like you do have to implement some form of structure and balance with what's going on. So that's cool. Yeah, and it's really, I mean, I just see it. It's a long game. So I have a piece and it's been really wonderful to be able to manifest really this whole community. I mean, what was so fascinating to me is the people who would show up at BIS were it was like they were willing to listen to me because they knew I was like, I wasn't trying to get anything from that. And that I just, I didn't see that coming and that just, that's a big moment for people that they're just really open and then for them to like, you know, have this exposure to a whole practice and lineage of yoga and all of these techniques that are supposed to help you for them to be open to that is, it's just a really good recipe for them to make some progress in their life and actually not just, you know, feel like shit all the time.

So, but it's a long, you know, it's a really long game for most people. The concept of generosity is it's, it was nowhere in their childhood. It was nowhere. I mean, it's just, it's not taught you when, even if it's in your childhood, when you start going out into the world, it's certainly not predominant there. No, it's looked, you know, it's, it's really considered almost a negative trait that like you have to be stupid to do that or, you know, unless you're like Mark Zuckerberg, you're never like, why would you give your money away? So that's exactly what I'm doing with these experiments. It's a trick.

It's, it really is a trick because I can almost guarantee and not because I'm some wizard or anything, but I have noticed as far as I know, yeah, but I have noticed that the more you give and not necessarily with the intention of getting something back, but the more you give openly, the more opportunities like that's like, it's related to the next day when you decided to do this, which is a benevolent thought, a donation based thing. It's not like I'm going to get rich from a donation based thing. Someone gave you a thousand dollars. You could rule that off to coincidence. You could rule it off to chance, but I think there is a fundamental law of the universe that works like that.

That's what this experiment is. Everyone who gives $1 to that thing, I really think is going to like, they'll be looking and maybe aware of a connection when something happens. And it's, it's hard to communicate that, right? I mean, you have to have some direct experience with that happening before you're like, oh, okay, that's a real thing. It can sound like woo woo, but like I've, I've, after a certain period of time when it just keeps happening, it's like, what are you going to say? Like that? No, this isn't? I don't think this is really real. Okay. Yeah. I think it's really underneath those principles are, are really being able to ground into a certain quality of abundance, like internal abundance, which is, um, something that Sharon always talks about, which is like, if you don't have any sense of inner abundance, like you have nothing to give from and that abundance, like who says that word, even it's just not even around, but once people have the experience of like, oh, wait a minute, it makes me feel good to buy a coffee for somebody that I don't know.

That's, yeah. Like it just starts to cut through the cultural onslaught of like scarcity and making me take take, take, take, don't need to, can't afford to give, give, give. It's too hard. It's a rat race. Yeah. I, I hope, and I think more people will tune into that as time goes on. And I also think there are people like you, um, there are people like me who are trying to do this in various ways. I, I want to show that, I don't know if the sharing account, I don't know, I don't really love that term, but that some type of economic system can evolve that allows that to be going on. And I hope it happens in the creative fields too.

I'm, you know, I hope, I think it really is going to take a few people in like the music realm to kind of stand up and become real examples of that because I mean for years that concept of just like passing the hat at a gig has existed, but I mean, it's the, the reality of what's going to happen if there's not a shift is that our culture will start to erode because there's not that creative force in it. Like that's the heart of any culture. I, so it, you know, it's interesting to me when I get into music conversations with people. You know, I just look back and I, and I'm not someone who's overly nostalgic for times that I didn't live in, but I just look back to even the 80s and listen to the top 40 songs from any year in the 80s and you'll hear maybe there's a similar theme, maybe they, they're different.

They're really, really different. And if you look at at least mainstream music now, there's, and there's so much other awesome music out there. I don't mean to say it's not there. But if you listen to what's popular, what's, people who are making money on streaming services, let's say, because that's the predominant model right now, it's pretty damn similar for the most part. You'll get a breakthrough artist here and there that maybe has a different sound for a song or two, but I mean, talk about a few groundbreaking albums having making money for labels anymore. That's not how it works. It's 360 deals where you have to go on tour and that's not a light.

I mean, I always thought if you want to be a rock star, that's great that you can go on tour. That's your life. But there's a lot of creatives out there who aren't going to do that. It's draining sometimes just to create the stuff I don't want to go on later, right? So yeah, I agree. I think it is going to take some big, big stuff. I also think it's like it's going to be a top bottom thing too. I think there are going to be people who realize and we see this where people are making, who are being successful, Amanda Palmer is a good example of someone who's done this direct to fan thing and it's working.

I hope that continues. All right. I want to switch, not really. It's barely switching gears. Yeah, let's barely switch. Let's talk. Yeah. Barely. Let's talk Kirtan because I have had the pleasure. I think the only times I've heard you chant are on New Year's with the 108 Chilises, which you help. It's, which is awesome. One of my favorite things. So I guess you met Sri Dharmamitra and Krishnadas around the same time and then did, how did you get tuned in to the KD stuff? The KD. Yeah. How did that happen? I mean, he was kind of, so Krishnadas is for people who don't know is a very well-known Kirtan singer and he's based out of New York.

And I guess he was, I would kind of go to things and I really liked sort of his feel and, you know, he would do workshops and just like poke holes and a lot of the like, spiritual narcissism that was going on and it was really great. And so my partner at the time, Jeremy, actually approached him about making a film about him, which was eventually released by Zeitgeist Films and had a really huge release One Track Heart. Great movie. Yeah, it's a great film. And during that time, we just kind of became like family with Krishnadas and I've worked with the team behind Krishnadas for many years now, helping out in a variety of ways.

But it really is just kind of a little family. And for me, it was just a real meeting of worlds because I loved like singing for me is such a really physical thing. And so coming to chanting and kind of finding it as a practice instead of as a performance was was a big thing for me and it took me actually many years to kind of shed the layers of like performance training. Totally, totally. I can imagine. I mean, it's hard enough for people. I mean, the Kirtan scene is so weird now anyway, but I mean, you know what I mean? Well, yeah, now that it's become a little bit more of a thing, there are a lot of people doing it.

Performance. Yeah. Yeah. It's a little bit of a hybrid, but really it's a practice where you like do this, you sing these mantras and it's like a, I mean, at its very core, it's like a concentration practice. It's like doing a pranayama or meditating on the breath or doing like I always say like triangle pose, but it's like a little less torturous than triangle pose. It's like you feel the same at the end, but you didn't sweat as much as the end, but yeah. So I, this was one of the like fun things surprises that happened at Brooklyn Yoga School is that when I was creating the programming there, we just made this Kirtan slot on Fridays and I knew a handful of people who had been leading in the New York area for a while.

And at that point, before we opened, Jeremy and I had sung a lot at Dharma's and that was part of his world too. So that was like another place I was kind of getting it from. Right. So we just like scheduled Fridays and there were maybe five of us who would rotate and do like once a month, but it just became this thing, this like really big thing. People would come from out of state. There would be just like a lot of people there and it wasn't, it wasn't who was coming for the Asuna classes, which was really interesting. Different group. Yeah. And it just became this like real nexus. It's become a real point of community where it's become a home base for these sort of main Kirtan walls in this area, like David Haas and Nina Rao and Shama Chapin and Angela Prasad and Amika Cooper and then also Jeremy and myself.

So eventually I just decided to make a little label to kind of like, we were already the thing. Yeah. Yeah. So just official. Yeah. I created the Voneras label and the Voneras, that word is taken from the Ramayana, which is the story of Hanuman and Sita and Raman. The Voneras are like the monkey and bear army that basically it's like the crew that like helps, they're like the helper guys. So yeah, so we've like done some live recordings and it's just a way to kind of support what everyone's doing and it's a really, it's a really beautiful community and it's actually, that's actually kind of like my secret favorite part of the YS.

Yeah. I'm not surprised. It's, it's, I, my first introduction to Kirtan was at the retreat, the Rambas retreat in 2013 and I, it was one of the things that I remember before we went. I was like, I don't know about this Kirtan, like I said, I don't, I don't know, like is it going to be weird? Is it going to be like, I don't know, like is, who are we chanting to? I'm like, I've been working, you know, with the, with loves to remember for like at least like for a year and a half, two years. And I still didn't really, so you went to a weird Berkeley too. And I went to a weird Berkeley. Yeah. I'm pretty open minded.

We don't even get into the fifth dimensional beings made of light and sound, I believe in the half horse, but this was like, I don't know about this. But obviously I went there and was blown away first by the musicality of what Katie was doing there was mind blowing, like I didn't expect it to be that musical as a thing and also just the raw energy of what it was. And I was hooked. And then that same retreat, I spoke about this when Nina came on. She was doing the Hanuman, Chilisa, I had just smoked a joint. A lot of my stories actually just go like that, just I'm sure that people are catching on to a theme.

Yeah, so we're in the back and I came in and Nina was just doing 11 Chilisa's in a row. And I sat in an upright position. I don't know why I was in the mood. I was like, I'm here, I went in Rome and I'll never forget what happened then. It was like a shock wave. I kept getting the weirdest, I didn't really know who Hanuman was, didn't really get the Maharaj to think, but I just kept getting these weird psychic visions in my head with eyes closed of a monkey kneeling at a throne. To the point where I was like, "Gotta stop this, this is too weird." So intellectually I'd go and be like, "No, no, I'm done."

Then tears, not crying, but tears become like, "What the," I would investigate it over and over and it happened. From that day I made a commitment to learn the Hanuman, Chilisa, which I've done pretty much every day since then. And I love that you describe Kirtan as a mindfulness thing because that is something I did not expect but is one of the most apparent things when you have a practice like chanting because you'll notice you can be thinking 10 different things and keep chanting these words and be like, "Holy shit, I'm here in the Chilisa, I'm 20 lines down and I was thinking of all this other stuff.

A, how is I doing that?" And B, what the hell is operating there that I'm able to do that? So I love that you describe it because I think that's, like we were talking about, Kirtan is going through a yoga boom, basically, it is becoming a very, I'm not surprised either, it's awesome. Even if you're doing it for a performance, at some point, I think by virtue of doing the chance, it's going to sink in that it's not a performance and there is something to get from it. But it is going through this very weird boom of performance stuff but just by doing a practice like that is weird how it changes your life, which sounds kind of nuts.

But it's not if you look back and see how mantra is such an important practice, not just with Kirtan, but even in Buddhism, right? I mean, all money Pime Hong is one of the first things I ever learned at all, spiritually stuff. So yeah, and I love that it's a fusion of music and spiritual stuff too. It's incredible. I mean, it's interesting. I often describe it as sort of that simplistic of a practice because there's like a little detour that a lot of people take, whether it's in, it's most often I've seen it in yoga, but you see it in chanting too, where people will have a positive experience and then they try to generate that over and over again.

So it's a trap and it's tricky because it's a really foreign thing to be like, what do you mean? Of course, I want to feel good. Why would I do this? But what happens if you're doing the practice and you don't get the hit you want, like then your left kind of shit out of luck and so do you just stop doing it? So in this way, like the practices are, they're a little complicated because they're working on these levels in us that, you know, just, it's not always obvious. Like you said, it's like you kind of just have to find a practice that really resonates with you and then sort of commit to it for a period of time without like looking for too much from it and then start to look at your life because that's the key.

I mean, really, if you're talking about integration and finding real change, you want to look at like how quickly you become a jackass in line in Starbucks, like that is where you have to look because you're miserable there in line, you're the one who's suffering and that's what, you know, we're trying to sort out is like, well, how do I have a life? Yeah. And something any daily practice gives you a reference point, right? That if you're really doing it every day through good times and bad times and everything in between, you then get a referential way of looking at what's going on. And then that gives you some level of awareness of potentially how to change or look at whatever it is, so understanding like the huge variety of states we go through, like that was what really struck me those first couple of years, I would do my practice and just like getting on the mat and one day you're just like, the next day you're like, yeah, yeah, oh my God, amazing.

It's like, that's the mind. That's like the range we're really dealing with as people and it's an amazing spectrum, but if you are solely at the mercy of that spectrum, that's hard. It's really hard and I think it's fair to say that a lot of people, if not most, are at the mercy of that because we're not taught to look in. So I want to go to your other hat, which is super cool, your Sharon Salzburg's assistant and that's like almost that does not do justice what you do for her because we've worked together and talked about a lot of different things. She ran her meditation challenge this year, which was incredible and had incredible results.

So this is something that's always interested in me. I have a guru named Karole Baba, but I also really gravitate towards Buddhism in a lot of different ways right now or really for the past five years, particularly Vajrayana, which is not what Sharon teaches, but still there's related. They're very good friends, exactly, they're very good friends. So you're in this cool, unique position where you have a yoga studio, Zukirtan, and you're also the assistant and working with one of the best Western Buddhist teacher right now. What does the world look like from your vantage point? You're getting like a heavy dose of Dharma all the time.

I mean, I'll start by saying like I have a lot of really amazing blessings really coming in my life that I don't. I don't know, but it's really remarkable. Sharon's one of the few people that I would kind of consider being in this role with and I was having like some health issues that were keeping me from teaching and was kind of just looking for something to stabilize with a little bit. And as it turned out, this role was Sharon opened up and Sharon's a longtime friend of Krishna. So I'd known her and she'd come to BYS a number of times. But if you'd asked me like five years ago, if I was going to be doing this, I would never imagined it.

And it's been a really remarkable thing for me, real gift and it's, I mean, all of these things I'm doing are all ultimately pointed at the same place. I really primarily view myself as like a student and like I'm just really lucky because I get to hang out with this phenomenal teacher Sharon right now. Yes, I, you know, book her schedule and organize events and create course like all these things I do. But really, I'm just like all eyes on her, she doesn't know that. But it's amazing. I mean, that's how that kind of one-on-one relationship is really how it traditionally is with a teacher, it's kind of like how the transmission happens and it's like, that's where you really see like how the practice unfolds because of course we have all these ideas of like what it's going to look like to be a compassionate person or person.

But you know, life is extremely complicated and we're constantly faced with scenarios where we want multiple things that conflict and, you know, it's just like it's not easy to figure that stuff out. So to really have someone who is steeped in 40 years of practice and just like solely focused on that, we just had the 40th anniversary of the incitation society which Sharon founded alongside with Jack Cornfield and Joseph Goldstein and that was a, I was like so happy to go to that party purely just to like sit in a room with those. Yeah, totally. Because they're just titans. I mean, if anyone has done meditation in the West, it is because of those three people and they're all just incredibly humble, they're just like, they just love the Dharma, they just love the teachings and it's really interesting to see how it shows up in their lives and yeah, it makes me really happy to be able to help Sharon and to, you know, this is one of the kind of catch-22s with people like that who are deeply grounded in a practice is the practice is slowly work away the part of you that is going to self-promote and get it out there.

It's, I mean, you know that. I know that. It's been my life for the past three years at least. It's weird. And it's, we're talking about like how to create self-sustaining or, you know, economic systems that allow this to continue and the teachers for the most part, the vast majority of them don't think about that. It's not in there. It's not, it's, it's the same way in that you didn't really think about what's the economic model that's going to allow BYS to succeed. Oh, I think the idea of a donation-based thing is a good idea. But what's paradoxical about that is I think because the intent and the aspiration are so pure.

If we want to say there, things can tend to work out. Yeah, how that charts over time is a different thing. But yeah. Yeah. Well, and it relies on people like me to come along and say, oh no, we need to take care of this person. And there is a definite need in, in all of these spiritual communities to really take care of the kind of elders and the teachers because it's just very unprecedented kind of what's happening. I mean, part of what was really interesting about the 40th anniversary is there were just a handful of different events. And at one of them, Joseph Goldstein was talking about the difference of how they received the teachings in Asia and then what could, what was appropriate to kind of bring in here into a totally different culture.

That they really had to just like, that was a real process for them to figure out simple things as like the kind of pronouns you use and just finding what's relevant here and what's really irrelevant because there are parts of the practices that are, they're made for sadhus and wandering monks and that is not our world at all. So you can, someone can take those teachings and really just misconstrue a lot of things because of those. So you need this generation of people like Sharon, Jack and Joseph and so now they're here in the West and they've, you know, brought in the Dharma, but there's not a structure in place that takes care of them.

Not only a structure in place that takes care of them, which I know you and I were trying to work towards developing that structure, there's also not a tremendous, and I've heard Sharon talk, we spoke about this when she came on this concept of lineage. There's not a tremendous amount of structure, the Dharma in the West at all. And you can see this plainly regardless of where you look, whether it's in the mindfulness stuff or, you know, looking where, you know, certain publications and things are trying to go to get attention and how to build, you know, advertising revenue, like there's nothing that really is in place outside of if you're going to, you know, IMS, if you're going to various places, Spirit Rock, wherever to study consistently and doing retreats and practices, it's weird.

It's a very weird and kind of transient. It's obvious. We're in a very transformational time. Let's say that. I mean, that's clear. Look at any part of life out there and that's pretty clear. I don't know how this stuff is going to evolve. But what I will say is in doing this podcast especially and just like in the world that we've both been in for the past few years, at the very least, it seems like a lot of people are tuning into it with genuine, really positively motivated ways of making this stuff work and not making it worth work to fulfill an ego as the primary goal or work to be successful in the world, like really getting, really transmitting Dharma and things that are going to help people, like with this, because we know, like we know because we're steeped in this stuff and it's hard not to be that you get old, you get sick and you die.

Most people don't think about that and yeah, exactly. Oh my God. It's true. Like, yeah. There's so many classes I've started with like, okay, so we're dying. Yeah. It's like it's so shocking. They just even say that. So we were just that the, you were there too, Minja Rinpoche, right? So here's a question. Now this is, this is unrelated to what we're talking about. So Richard Davidson called him Minja Rinpoche. I am 99.9% sure. The correct pronunciation is Minja. I'm, I'm trying to like prove this anecdotally because I want to, I want to, I want to know that's true. That's what's true. That's what's true.

It's Minja, right? I thought it was, I was like, he's more like Minja. Because like his father was Urgin, right? So I think what's funny to me is how nice of a guy, Minja Rinpoche, and we're both at this thing, he's such a nice guy that he's never corrected. Richard Davidson, they've known each other for decades and he's never said, that's not my name. It's like if someone's going like Nua for like, I would probably say that's, yeah, it's not my name. Yeah. Yeah. How awesome was that though? That was amazing. It was an amazing event. Yeah. Yeah. What you were saying about lineage, there's like this funny thing that somebody a long time ago asked Sharon, like, when did you make up this love and kindness?

Yeah. And she's like, oh, didn't make it up actually. It's just, it's a, I think it's very unprecedented what's happening where now in our culture where the majority of these teachings just, they're not a part of the culture. It's just a really different process. So, so you look at anybody who comes in contact with them and it's, it's just a, it's a different trajectory because they're coming from a different starting point. Right. It's so different than like in Thailand where it's a normal thing to go and feed the monks. It's just, it's part of it. So, yeah, it's really, there, there are a lot of people who are, you know, they study with lots of different teachers and then they form their own culmination and all of that. And, and I don't, it's interesting. I don't know, that we're really going to know for a while like what the result of that is and of course there are a lot of positives and negatives in any kind of process like that. But yeah, it's pretty fascinating that there's not that kind of container of lineage because that certainly was, I mean, you think about how long these teachings have been moving through individuals like person to person thousands of years and then suddenly we're just like, party.

It's pretty nice. And all that's are off like, okay, so it's, it's going to be pretty interesting to see. Yeah, not to mention the unprecedented access. We have this. I mean, I'm talking 15 years ago, I was me, I was the only person I knew within 10 years of me who was reading what I was reading. I remember, I guess that was 10 years ago too. There was a Vedanta and I'd wait there was a, there was a, I'd wait a Vedanta podcast that came out of the Vivic Ananda Society in Boston and I was listening to it at night. And like, I remember putting it on like to go to sleep and I had a friend staying with me and he's like, what the fuck are you listening to? He's like, this guy's just like a sneak in a rope a sneak in a rope a sneak in a rope and I was like, what the fuck is this guy saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's a good one. But it was, it's, it's really interesting now that, I mean, we're taught, we're in a podcast that's on MindPod Network, which has a whole subset of people. There's the be here now network with all the teachers, a lot of the teachers who are on MindPod Network. So there's, there's places to choose from. But with that, I mean, the pitfalls also amplify, it's really bounce around a lot. I mean, one of the things that I kind of return to when I'm like, overwhelmed by just how much is out there and how it's just a bit of a free for all is I really, I kind of return back to in the yoga sutras of Patanjali. This is kind of like the blueprint for classical yoga. It talks about kind of, it has like a framework for awakening these qualities in ourselves. But here's what's interesting about that is it's awakening something that's already in us. So it's not like we're finding something out there and becoming it really we're using all these tools to refine who we are. And you kind of, I think that's something at the end of the day, you can really trust and kind of land into and that like ultimately, I think people do really know like what is a good way to be in the world, what's, what's a way that feels good to interact with another person and what doesn't like, you see that all the time with kids, right? They like, they have to try it out. They have to like punch someone in the face and then see like, wow, that doesn't feel good to do that to somebody. And so I return to that again and again. And I think that's a really nice way to frame it also for students when they're, because there is a lot of kind of confusion and chaos on the path and all kind of, you know, you start doing these practices and shit opens up. And you're just like, what? Totally. You're there crying at the cure time. Yeah, yeah, exactly. What the fuck? Yeah, exactly. To kind of like ground it back down to like fundamentally who we are as humans and like what we want to do with our time here that is just so precious. You know, it gets simple pretty quickly. And I do think the like all those lineages are just, they're different doorways into that same place. Totally. I mean, I think that's the key there is most people want to be loved and they want to give love, which is a weird, that came out weird. That's not how I actually want that to sound. You know what I'm saying. Really, this has been awesome. I have one, one last thing I want to ask you and then we'll do this again. And when I'm up in New York, when we move, we'll get to doing it in person one. I want to come by BYS. I can't believe I never made that. Got a common thing. So, okay, practical tip. What is a practical tip that has that you could offer people listening that has helped you in your life could be anything. And it's meant to be a bit of a, you know, catch you off guard think about what it could be. So, that's normal. It's a normal reaction.

Yeah. Okay. Here's a practical tip. Are you ready? Yeah, I'm totally ready. Okay. So, when you buy potatoes at the store, if you keep them like in a dark place, they're going to last longer. So, you're saying the ears won't sprout up. If I, so you want to know something interesting, my sister told me this. This is very interesting. This is true too. Do you know if you keep bananas next to other things, those things will ripen faster? That's a fact. I've heard that about avocados. Yeah. So, if you don't want something to ripen or if you do want something to ripen, put a banana next to it and it'll, and this works for potatoes too. So, if you put a banana next to a potato, it won't last long. Do you want me to think of like a real answer? Yeah, I will. Okay. I think one of the biggest things for me has come out of the realization that not all of our suffering is a given. There are certain things that we encounter in our lives that it's just, it's painful. That's just, that's just the deal. But there's a lot of things in our lives where the suffering part of it is optional. It's like we can feel the pain, but we don't have to necessarily suffer. And I think kind of carrying that possibility really can transform a lot of things, a lot of different situations and a lot of the ways that kind of our sense of self can break down or the way that we lose sight of the things that are important to us. It's just one thing that I return to a lot that's like, okay, and in those moments when I really am suffering, I look for, I look to see what's what in that, okay, there's part of this that's just pure pain and I just feel that that's just the deal. But I can start to see the other layers that are there that really are optional and have come to just recognize like, like senior old friends like, all right, there's that part that like always thinks I'm whatever.

Well, you, you also secretly gave two, two pieces there, which is awesome, which is when you do recognize what's maybe not optional, leaning into it and feeling it, I mean, because a lot of people do not want to feel it, right? They don't want to feel the pain because it's too much. It's just too scary. It's going to hurt. But leaning into it. And then also like you're saying, this is the second arrow thing, you know, once you get hit with some an arrow, that's painful enough. You don't have to dwell on the fact that, oh, shit, I got an arrow on me nonstop. Pull it out. You deal with it, you know, get it up, push it through, push it through. Awesome. So awesome. This is really fun. This is fun. Yeah, right?

We'll definitely do it again. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. And have an amazing day. You too. Okay. All right. Bye bye. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Did you listen past the music again? Oh, man. You are a true fan. Write to me and tell me, and I will send you a little special something. Also, if you're listening past here, I'm going to tell you people, the dedicated people, there's going to be a cool book coming out from MindPod Network that I am putting together with my friend Brandon. A lot of big time people are going to be contributing on it. I think it's going to be something you're really interested in, so stay tuned for that. Just tease it out a little bit. As always, if you want to rate and review, you can be like Julie from the beginning of the episode. Give me a four star. Be brutally honest. Let me know how I could make this better. I would love that. If you want to donate to the podcast for the operational costs, that would be really tremendous. You can donate at NOAA, at Sync. Wait, what? No, you can't do that. Go to the website Syncpodcast.com and there's a donate button. There's a donate page.

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