January 2, 2019 • 35 mins
Sensualist and RasaLiving founder Donna D’Cruz shares how meditation can be key for turning life’s chaos into something else.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
It could be whatever you like, but touching your own feet,
touching your own head in a way that's sensuous. And
when you start loving and living in that way, you
become so much more radiant and so much more attractive
to everybody else around you, including maybe yourself. That's the
biggest game in town is how do you fall in
love with yourself? Hey, welcome to you Turns. This is
(00:37):
the podcast where we talk about all things change. I
am Lisa Oz and I am Jill Herzig. And you know,
as we've talked to various different guests on this podcast,
I feel like one theme comes up again and again,
which is the importance and the power of meditation. I
have taken so many pieces of advice that I've gotten
from our guests, and I'm us to have some sort
(01:00):
of a block. This is the one thing. And I
know you meditate, but I could not get myself to
do it at all in any form. Well, no, I
mean really, I'm gonna there's no point in my not
being honest here, right, which is why I guess today, Yes, yes,
(01:21):
we're getting help. I'm getting help. Well. Our guest today
is Donna da Cruz. She is literally the Queen of meditation.
She is probably the coolest meditator I've ever known and
makes it easy and anyone can do it with our technique. Donna,
thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you.
It's lovely to be here with the double LS. Tell
(01:44):
me a little bit about your journey to meditation, through meditation,
with meditation. It's a ride, you know, Lisa, and I
I hear you loud and clear. I think my journey
is I was born in South India, so I come
from Tamil Nadu, and so there's a certain vibration and
in frequency. I think that sort of permeates where you
(02:05):
are born. And so I'm born in a place of
India that is full of ancient mystics and yogi's but
it's also a place that actually um deeply has delved
into this idea of self realization and it's something that
I don't think we even used to understanding what that means.
So I come from that place. I was educated in
Australia and meditation and at TM was actually my my
(02:28):
first specific sort of introduction to it. And as a kid,
I would sit I had this cousin that came and
lived with us and stayed with us, and he was
a meditated and he'd gone on a wobbly road and
suddenly he was now this meditated. All I knew was
he were wore fierce white clothes and I would sit
outside his room while he closed the door and did.
I didn't know what, so I was like, what are
(02:49):
you doing in there? You know, as as only a
precocious kid did. And what I discovered and what I
felt was whenever he would come out of this room, um,
he would see me cross legged, see doing very peacefully.
And I just had this feeling that it was something
I had to know about. So at age seventeen, I demanded.
I was like, here's what's happening, family, We're all going
(03:10):
to meditate, at which time my father rolled up his
eyes and said, I'll see you in the garden and mom,
and unless this was your form of teen rebellions a
very healthy now we're doing this. We're doing this. I
was just convinced. And anyway, I went down my own
shaking path, down down the road of what is this mantra?
What is meditation? And um, Eventually I came to understand
(03:31):
that it's very easy, and you know, until at Lisa's point,
I think we've sort of walked down this road of
worshiping the struggle worshiping, you know what is difficult and
my path in consciousness, and I think we have to
be unabashed to actually say it's actually consciousness. How we eat,
how we love, how we live, how we walk, how
(03:52):
we talk, how we engage with the world through all
of the senses, is actually with awareness. And if there's
a job in the path of meditate Asian, it's to
actually open that doorway to self awareness, right, and so
it really just means to reflect upon, to look upon.
So what I would love to do is actually be
that sort of gatekeeper that busts down the myth of
(04:15):
the struggle around it and say, if you can breathe,
you can do it. There's no rules in it, you know.
And that's the thing, you know. The greatest teachers I've
actually had are the people that I serve in the
recovery space. So I have a weekly that I've been
doing it at a place called Phoenix House, which is
America's oldest drug and alcohol recovery facility, and now I
work at another spot called Education Alliance, where we look
(04:37):
at the whole ecosystem around sober living, which is really
very interesting, very disruptive, and hugely efficacious. And my my
service there is really about getting them to quiet and
down the mind, to turn chaos and confusion into something else.
And it's and its it's and it's a transcendent journey.
It's not like you just automatically, you know, sit cross
(04:59):
legged into in a state the bliss. You have to
go through your own path of what's uncomfortable, what you
want to hold back on, what you want to let
go of. And I think it's just very very easy,
which is why we use music. And I've I've sculptured
the experiences that I've created using music because, as you know,
Lisa like music. To see her on the dance floor, hello,
(05:22):
you know, it's it's actually revelatory, it's also a d G.
I forgot to mention that, well, I use music, you know,
that's the kind of world that I've chosen to pull
from because I know music has infinite power, right genre banding,
beyond time and space. Who cares, just get out out
there and shake it um. And so I use music
in the in the meditation process because it has helped
(05:44):
enormously in the recovery space to take that monkey mind
and bring it down to a place of um, let's
just say dialing it down right to, you know, to
when you're working with people in recovery, do you are
the meditations different? Do you feel like you sense a
different energy from those people? Do you guide them differently?
Or is it really just it's meditation meditation? Whoever? You know, everybody,
(06:10):
I think, whether you are in the space of recovery,
whether you're a CEO, whether you're a model, whether you're
a mom, or you're a truck driver, because you've actually
led meditation with all those kinds of them, the entire spectrum,
the full spectrum, because I see it as one thing,
and it's called the human being, right, not the human doing.
And that's the idea. Is you know that we all,
I think we all have more than a memory of
(06:33):
our own perfection. We all know that we're kind of amazing.
Yet the lie that we have been led and the
deceit has been around. We've got to struggle. We've got
to earn love, you've got to earn piece, you've got
to earn a place in society. You've got to earn
earn Earn, And I think if there's anything that's going
on in this shift, whatever however, and whatever that means
(06:54):
to you, there is something going on here that is
saying listen. Knowledge is for every body. There is a
great democracy now around knowledge. You know, if there's anything
around technology that it's supporting us is listen, check it out,
learn go. Whether you're talking to your doctor, whether you're
talking to you know, your financial expert, whether you're talking
(07:14):
to yourself or your kids, you have a right to
dig in there. And that's part of the journey of
self discovery, isn't It Is to go and do a
bit of work and don't look for what the parts
are that are difficult, look for the things that you
love that are easy for you. And that's what I
do in the space of Actually I don't even call
it meditation. We call it a dip into bliss because
I think we all have a well of bliss available
(07:36):
to us, and when we just shut down and shut up,
we tune into it. It's always there. It's the it's
the witnessed Eckart Toll, you know, the divine presence, whatever
your whatever your belief system is. When you shut up
the noise, something else is always with us. I love
how simple you make meditation and don't put any rules
(07:57):
around it, like you don't have to do it for
an extended period of time. What I was really impressed
with was you had one minute meditations. I loved that.
For a while Donna was saying just one minute meditation,
which even you could do. Joel and someone like me
who bizarrely rebels against I find the music helps significantly
because it's when when it's just you and nothing too
(08:21):
focus on other than a mantra. The monkey mind is
much harder to team if you give, if you throw
the monkey the bone of music, so to speak, then
you can sort of quiet everything absolutely well. There's a
you know the example when I when when I work
with kids, like I work at the Lower east Side
Girls Club, and there's good there are girls there are
my some of my favorites from six to seventeen years old,
(08:41):
and they are just at that beautiful formative time in life.
And um one of the one of the lessons that
I've taught them is when an elephant comes into a village.
There's a great story that says that if it's hurt
or if it's frustrated. If it's looking for its young one,
it will come through that village thrashing around and cause
absolute havoc. Some ely to the mind. Whether it's given
(09:02):
a piece of wood, it curls it's trunk around it
and gets very quiet because it now has an intention
and has a purpose. So similarly, the mind when given
a mantra, right, the mind shuts down at least it
starts getting quiet. And that's really the purpose of the
mantra is to help the mind be distracted, and it does.
(09:23):
I think if we were to actually collect data and
science around it, we'd see that it would probably do
a lot more because mantra can actually quiet and down
the mind. But the music can also help with breath.
The music can also help with within impacts heart, which
impacts blood pressure, etcetera. So there's there's there's a physiological
response as well that I think we might elicit through music.
(09:45):
But I don't really you know, I don't really care
so much about the science. I care, like my angelus says,
who cares about what I have said and what I do?
I care about how we make people feel and and
the greatest litmus test for me has been in that
space of recovery when someone's got so much noise and
so much trauma that they might be dealing with, if
(10:05):
we can give them, like Lista said, even if it's
a minute of self awareness, it's a minute where they've
now tuned into their breath frequency. They're now maybe looking
at themselves a little bit more kindness, a little bit
more compassion, a little bit more self understanding. And that
is how we can shift our own individual consciousness, which
is which is then connected to the collective consciousness. It's
(10:28):
not that complicated. Yeah, Self compassion and self understanding are
so important if you're trying to work change into your life,
whether you're working on cutting sober or you're working on
a U turn of any of any kind. And I
think that is why it keeps, it does keep coming
up in this podcast. And now you're making me very determined,
and we'll make it super easy for you. Like you're
(10:48):
obviously breathing and you're obviously present, so it's super easy.
You can do it in thirty seconds, you can do
it in twenty seconds. You know, you can do it
in that moment when you're about like on my way here,
getting cranky, with my dry over and the traffic and everything.
And I was like, well, it's that and or not.
So I can now be irritated and choose to be
in a in a place of irritation and be annoyed
(11:10):
and feel all my you know, yuckiness going on, or
I can say, Okay, I'm going to be okay, no
one died, no one's bleeding, and I'm okay. When we
come back, we're going to talk about your new form
of meditation, meditation. Yes, before the break, we were talking
(11:37):
about meditation and making it easy with meditation expert and
founder of Russell I think Donna to Cruz and now
I want to just touch on her most recent endeavor,
which is meditations is a solution for sleep. Can you
explain that to us? Well, a lot of the people
that I've been serving in as I say, you know,
(11:57):
from Wall Street to Palo Alta and down the street. Um,
in the last two years, I just started asking people,
how's your spirit, how are you doing, how are you sleeping?
And I became really alarmed when increasingly younger people, especially
younger women, started to tell me about some of the
stuff they were taking. Some of it was, you know,
med's legal and not and h and some of them
(12:20):
around self journeying. Um, you know drugs that people are
into at the moment. And I said, so, if you're
taking three or four or five things to get to sleep,
it begs the question what are you taking to stay awake?
And what are you taking to get up in the morning.
And so I went on this very interesting journey. I
started asking more people, and then I started collecting data
and and I realized, as CDC said, of us have
(12:43):
sought medical attention for sleep deprivation. I was like, that
is cuckoo to me, so very simply, you know, and
my fami, my dad always says, I don't want to
hear your your complaining Donna, unless you have a creative response.
So my creative response was, so, let's create around this.
So I know the space of music, I know the
(13:04):
space of meditation. Let's combine them. So I really just
combined those that happened to be gifted with the world's
most wonderful voice. Thank you just for all of us.
We all have gifts. We all have our gifts. The
only question is how will you serve and how do
you want to use them? So and you know, I
have never told people that it's a good way to
be good place to tell you. But I grew up
(13:26):
actually a terrible stammera I had. I had started and stammered,
and it was really really paralyzing, I'll say, And I
would pray that things weren't given to me, gifts were
not given. Please don't make me the school captain. Please
don't make me, you know, please make it something else.
And so I lived my life to speak so I
wouldn't have to speak. I went to speech therapy and
(13:47):
didn't all sorts of things. And and it's weirdly wonderful
and very very strange when I hear people say your
voice because of course their child, and you goes, oh, really, oh,
here it comes. You know. Now we've dealt with it
and and I talked to it all the time because
I've decided to love it, and that it can give
service and comfort and solace to people is just great,
(14:08):
great joy to me. So I hear that, so that
you know, that's just a little sidebar. But um so,
but to combine music and the the actual project is
called sleep Medetations, and it's got you know, I saw
a lot of science in it and a lot of
modern context because people like a s m are even
even um, you know Dr Os moment was saying, oh
(14:29):
a s m are so big, don, it's really giving
people great self. So it has a s mr. It
has um a certain frequency called soul fedia, which is
a really it's the soft fedia frequency we've all heard
when we've gone to ancient places or to churches or
synagogues and we hear this that certain codex in music
that makes you feel like I think I can sing
(14:51):
like an angel, or I think I feel something. You
feel that sense of elevation. So those codes have been
written into music to make us feel in an asset
and and and a descendant manner troubled, alarmed as well
as elevated and uplifted. So it's very it's very very specific.
So we have that in it, and we also have
probably the most important thing. It's also being done with
(15:14):
bin normal dummy head, so it sounds like it's you know,
in left and right. The most important thing that we
put in it is breath entrainment, and where we've taken
the breath from fifteen and sixteen breaths breath cycles per minute,
which is usually around this hyperactivity, in this this sort
of hyper vigilant way that we live down to six
breaths per cycle per minute, So we change the whole
(15:37):
breadth so that as you're listening to it, whether you
know how to meditate or not, because I will always
assume that there's more than a handful of people have
never done it, don't want to do it, probably will
never do it. So it's that's and that's okay. But
you are breathing, so we can change your breath and
we can take you from a place of panic and
anxiety and maybe even help some of the folks that
(15:57):
are taking the stuff that is robbing p bull of
dreams and dream states. We know it's so important to
a place where maybe they can just dial into breath. Well,
I have used it the past several nights, so I
haven't used it. Is it? Do you have to wear earphones?
Can you just put your iPhone on it? And that's
so cool about it is it lasts all night long.
So I're a person who has trouble falling asleep, You've
(16:19):
got a twelve minute meditation for that where I hear
you talking to me. But then you can also go
into a whole seven hour cycle which doesn't have your voice,
but is has all of these. I had no idea
until you just told me what it has. But it's
a brew of sort of soothing healing component. Are you
(16:39):
using it beautifully? That sounds and does a waker up
upper in the middle of the night, and you know,
so that's happened and it's still going on. That doesn't
it doesn't never drop you, It holds you. That's right,
And the idea is and I'm so pleased to hear
because that's exactly you know. There's there two versions of it,
(17:01):
one with in like let's call it guidance, right, So
there are the first twelve minutes because that's that that
first twelve minutes when you're getting into bed where you
start the anxiety process can be a real issue for people,
like stuff that's gone on during the day, etcetera, etcetera.
So we actually prepare you for sleep and then you
can choose to have the guidance you know, throughout the night.
(17:21):
And it's done in six, seven and eight hour cycles.
And then there's another version of it that's exquisitely done
with our music, right, So it gives you that journey. Um,
we've also got power naps, which you go for five
minutes or eight minutes, because I'm finding that a lot
of people they're at work, they're about to freak out.
Something you know, crappy is happening, So then you dial
into that. So use it. The idea is use it
(17:43):
as you need to go to the loop, close the door.
Take that five minutes instead of coming back with aggression
or something that's going to get you into a pickle later.
Take a breath and take a beat, and use use
your own inner light. You know. One of the things
that I heard you say to me us tonight as
I was falling asleep, so was UM. And I don't
(18:05):
remember your exact words, but basically, like the day is over,
you've done what you can do, you can't do anymore.
And the first time I heard it, I actually felt
a little bit of ajita around it, because I have
the world's most persistent finishers complex. And of course you're
never done until you're really done. That probably makes you
(18:26):
great at many things that you have. Yeah, but it's um.
It's a you know, it's a driver, it's a task
master master, an internal engine. That's a little merciless. And
the second time I heard it, I thought, that's right,
we're done with this day. We just are. I'll pick
this up tomorrow. And it's interesting, like, especially when you're
(18:48):
going through a transition, a time of change, you've got
to push hard, You've got to push yourself hard to
go into places that are kind of scary. But then
there's a certain point where you just have to stop
and say done. And it was just it was it
was kind of wonderful. That sounds like you have a
convert over. That's good. I didn't. Maybe I was meditating
and I just didn't realize it. Well, it is. I think,
(19:09):
I think, you know, part of this sort of overall deceit.
I think in consciousness are there are the rules. You're
supposed to do this however many times a day, and
you're supposed to do that. I think I think we
can do it all the time and living in a
place of whatever, whatever is comfortable awareness for you. And
to your point, you know, part of that other deceit is,
(19:31):
especially as women, I hear I hear this lament from
a lot of of of the younger women that I
work with. I'm supposed to do this I'm supposed to
accomplish that, you know, I have I have this intention,
I have that goal. And part of it is that
when we live so far in the future that we
forget how to just enjoy this. And in this there's
actually no fear, there's no discomfort, there's no anxiety, and
(19:52):
the joy. If we were really to drill down into
the space of consciousness where um meditation lives is you're
not not in the past where you've got your and
you know, you've grief or your sorrow, and you're not
in the future where you've got your fear and anxiety.
You're here right now and you're amazing, you know, And
the idea of the story gets broken that that in
(20:12):
a story that we tell ourselves, that gets fractured right
in the present moment because you're not in the past,
you're not in the future, and you're celebrating the fact
that you're kind of amazing and that you did these
things and that you create you inspire others. We don't.
We're not very good at telling ourselves that story. We're
more easily inclined to listen to what is critical and
(20:34):
what is the stuff that makes us because we're used
to that story, we're like yeah, as opposed to I'm amazing.
And I think the shift that we're seeing in consciousness
is whether we're whether we think of it as the
age of Aquarius or whether we just think that this
is part of out of our discomfort comes great awareness
and and and earning and making our way through that
(20:55):
as part of it. Um. I think it's it's releasing
all of those old stories and understanding you know what,
I'm actually gonna demand amazing food and find out where
I can get it. I'm going to do the same
before my water. I'm going to do the same for
my air. I'm going to do the same for the
relationships that uplift me as opposed to the ones that
made me feel uncomfortable and and don't serve me. You
(21:17):
mentioned dreams and consciousness and I and I think I
see a connection between what you do with meditation and
these sleep meditations, because there's something I think with with
all the you talked about, all the medication people have
been taking to get to sleep and wake up, you
can't dream productively when you're on those sleep sleeping pills.
(21:42):
And I do think that there's something about a dream
state that takes us that deals with our unconscious, the
way that meditation deals with our unconscious. So the integration
of what you do is really it's the mistress of
the unconscious, Lisa, I love it. Well, that's actually I
think that's the secret, you know. I think that if
(22:03):
there's one thing that we've really done beautifully in the
sleep meditations is when you look at the stages of
sleep and you look at like in Sanskript, you know,
we call it the awakening state. The doing state is
called the second state, which is the dreaming state, is
called swapner. And then there's the other state, which is
called whether you call it um somebody, but let's call
(22:24):
it the dreamless state. And we're we've I think UM
traditionally measured and looked at how important the dreaming state is, right,
because that's where we exercise fantasies, we exercise our frustrations,
we work through our stuff, and we can flip in
and out of that as we do throughout the night.
What we've done, I think, um, although it wasn't really
(22:45):
the intention, but I think it's it's happening, is in
the in the dreamless state. To your point, am I
in a state of meditation, what's going on. We're we're
able to widen that and deepen that, and that means
where we actually I think changing and expanding slow waves,
slow waves sleep. That's the part we want to get to.
(23:07):
That's the part that has no recollection of body, no mind,
no ego, no fear, no nothing. It's cosmic. So it
really is you go into a state of somebody. There's
a lot of discussions that I'm having in and I
think when we're looking at what is going on without
technology today and even whether you said, so, how do
(23:27):
I use it? Do I just put it on and
put my iPhone on on? Yes, your technology is on
all the time. We're on all the time. We don't
know what offers. And the idea here is to actually
more fully examine and and treat us to the off
you know, the the un the unbounded part, right, the
(23:48):
part beyond time and space, the part that, like I said,
no mind, no ego, no nothing, that's heaven. When come back,
we're going to dip more into heaven with data goes.
(24:09):
Before the break, we were talking with Donnald Cruz about
the heaven of a good night's sleep. Now I want
to talk about the bliss that is Donna's life when
she's not sleeping. I want to talk about some of
the U turns in your life where you've so so
many things with did the deejaying and being the sensualista,
(24:30):
which is the most sensuous person. Um, just talk to
us a little bit about because everything you do, by
the way, is is a celebration and nothing is without joy.
You walk into a room and you bring clouds of joy.
Talk to us a little bit about those other aspects
of your life. Now, your transformations there, Yes, it seems
(24:51):
like you're still transforming. You're all literally every day I
think every day I wake up that way, I go
to sleep that day. I struggle like everybody else, But
I've tried to dial down on the noise and the
things that are not serving me and celebrate what I
think can actually shift me and shift the people around me.
But you know, I came to America with three hundred
dollars and to telephone numbers. That was probably my biggest
(25:14):
U turn. But having grown up in Australia in my twenties,
you know, I came Um, I grew up, I was
born in India, came to Australia, and I just had
this feeling, much to my family's chagrin, that it wasn't
for me to live my life, you know, and stay
in Australia. I loved it. I loved the land, I
love the culture, fell in love with the Aboriginal people,
(25:34):
and I'm inspired by that. I felt like I wanted
to be in New York and I wanted to expand
and do anything. And and if there's one thing about
the consciousness and the psyche of America is especially in
New York City, is like it dares you to dream
and it also will support your dreams if you're willing
to engage with it. With her, I always think of
her as a her. So that was the biggest turning
(25:56):
point in my life. When everybody else thought I was
a mad person and said what are you doing? What
are you thinking? It was it was beyond thinking. I
just knew it in my in the viscera of me
that I was going to do that, and I do
it all the time. Do you become a DJ typically
a man's world, especially when you were first getting into it, Well,
I worked, I have I have a record label, and
it's a label that it's called Russell Music, and we
(26:19):
really explore culture and consciousness. And we've worked with d
Pack and many many artists around the years, and you know,
we've worked I remember when we did the Roumi project,
a lot of people were like, what is this this
Muslim music? What is that that you're doing, even even
some of the biggest publications. But I thought it was
highly questionable, and I said, this is not just the
sweet face of Islam. This Listen to what he's saying.
(26:41):
If I love myself, I love you. He's talking about
the oneness. And just for project um, well, it's called
a Gift of Love and it was really a Valentine
to Roumi because Roomy, I think, of all of the
of the mystics, was the one, and you know, certainly
it has been a great guide in my life. But
I think as a beyond the you know, he's he's
(27:03):
a metaphysical poet. He exists, existed in the thirteenth century,
and he was the one that said, if I love myself,
I love you. I am God, God is me. It
is one thing, and it's all of that is then
in the Vedanta and the and the Invaders, and many
of the wisdom traditions. All that idea of us being one,
of us being connected to breath and that breath being
(27:24):
the same for all is very much echoed in the
work of Remy and I, you know, I just became
a fan. And so we got a bunch of very
famous people who had known deep Pack and we're still
friends with him, from Rosa Parks to Demi Moore to Madonna,
um Martin Sheen to read a piece of poetry which
we then married with music and it is really really
(27:47):
powerful and beautiful, and so then we did the same
thing with a with a UM to Go project. But
all of the you know, I knew that world of music.
I have an encyclopedic um knowledge on certain types of
music around world music UM specifically and kill out music
and that sort of vibe. And one day I was
(28:08):
at a at an event for Billboard magazine and jelly
Bean Benitez, who ended up discovering Madonna, asked me if
I knew you know I was describing this music, and
I said, oh, I love this music that's playing. You know,
it's a it's a Brazilian somber beat, but the woman
singing in French. I love that twist and it's like, well,
how do you know? And I said, well, I earned
(28:28):
the license and uh. And he said do you know
how to DJ? And I was like yes, even though
I was just potting around at home, but I taught
myself and and I just played from the heart. And
I play very eclectically. I play music that is a
lot of I'll play you know, umasumak and something that's
like mystical and magical, as well as hardcore dance music.
(28:49):
Um and I've played around the world and for many
many strange, wonderful, weird, beautiful places and and and so
I just I do that because I think it shifts
conscious this when you move your body, when you actually
get it's another you know, it's another form of meditation.
Look at the medal levies from Turkey Roomy, the all
(29:09):
the you know, those whirling dervishes right hand to to
to the divine left hand through the heart access into
the ground and they twirl to the right and it's
just one of the most mystical, magical, transcendent things you've
ever seen. It's really something else. So um I've been
a fan of dance and where dancing, music and humanity
intersectors has always fascinated me. So that's where my DJ
(29:33):
work has sort of spun out of that. And I
have bling that headphones yes covered, yes, headphones, yes they
Well I did that really specifically because I wanted people.
I was like, I'm not a Harry Potter DJ under
the under the steps, so I was like, and I've
got black hair, so I need to have some situation
(29:54):
and maybe they sort of say this is no, this
is not a space man own. So it was not purposeful,
and I find it very funny because you know, when
I first started, a lot of meeting would ask me
those questions like what does it feel like? I said,
it feels like I have no idea what you're talk about.
Let's talk about music, and let's talk about how I
create that music and how and my label and all
the other things that are important to me because when
(30:15):
you when you talk about my sexuality, that's so minimizing.
It's so banal, you know, and we're not and lessons
the time that we have to talk about what's important,
which is music. But I will say that we've talked
about this as well. You are a very sexual and
sensual person and it's a big part of your identity.
When we talk about identity, it's different than what we're
(30:35):
talking about now. I'm I think that you bring this
sense of errors, the erotic into everything you do. Um
from the set the oils. You have a routine with
scented oils. And I've always been so in awe of
the way that you bring that that bigger sense of
(30:55):
when we talk other than you know, when you say
I'm not want to talk about sexual identity, You're who
you are at your core has a lot of that
erratic energy in it. I like it. I like to
think of it as as a sensuous nous and to
me that means connecting to your senses and using your
senses to elevate and expand your own existence in this
earthly plane, as well as I think connecting you to
(31:18):
other realms, right and other other other sheets of of consciousness.
And you know, we think of of those senses in
the five realms right as as we like to call,
you know, the five slits. But there's the sixth sense,
which is intuition, the seventh sense, which is your divine
connection to higher purpose. So you know, I I live
(31:38):
that way because I think we receive if you look
at the Chacoate system. You know, we think of it
as seven, but truly in the Vedanta, it's you know,
many many many feet above you, many many many feet
below you. So there's a there's an energy field around
all of us, using oils, using light, using touch, using
your voice, using music, and using you know, all of
(32:00):
the senses that we that we can discern at least
you know and explain. I think it connects us to
this body, and I think so so many times as women,
we are very disconnected from our bodies. You know, we're
more likely to buy something that will help, you know,
undimple our asses as opposed to as opposed to touching
(32:23):
your body. Take that oil and rubb when's the last
time you actually rubbed your body and you actually use
an iove ador. We use long um long loving touches
down the down the bone of the body and then
on the joints. It's around and circular. It's done with
iovetic oils, but it could be rose oiled to open
the heart, it could be whatever you like. But touching
(32:43):
your own feet, touching your own head in a way
that's sensuous, and when you start loving and living in
that way, you become so much more radiant and so
much more attractive to everybody else around you, including maybe yourself.
That's the biggest game in town is how do you
fall in love with yourself? And when you first here
to this country and you had three hundred dollars in
(33:03):
your pocket and two telephone numbers? Were you able to
be this joyful when you were under that kind of
pressure and strain? I mean, is this just something that's
so core to you or have you learned it over
time as you've as you've kind of established yourself here.
I've made it a practice, for sure. But I was
born that way. I've been like that like that since
(33:24):
I was a kid. My mom and dad always tell
me that I've been very social and I would always
visit all the neighbors and I would tell them stories
every day and every night. And that's just part of
my um my way of learning as well. Because I
think people would say, you know, I don't know if
this is available to me. I'm under so much stress
right now and I'm going through something and it sounds
like a wonderful way of being. But what do you
(33:46):
say to someone who's just like you know, I don't
think I have time for this. I don't think I
have time to to lavish that kind of care and
attention on myself. Yeah. Um, you know, I serve at
a herb a facility every week and I see the
very best and the very strangest of things in that world. Um.
(34:08):
I see people that have become disenfranchised and certainly don't
know what that means that if I say to them, all,
you know, you have to touch yourself and do these
things and have these practices, I'll get a lot of
cocked eyebrows, for sure. But I think that you know
that there is a path. You have to figure out
what's right for you and tune into the frequency of
what works for you. And if that means that I have,
(34:31):
I will stop and listen a little bit easier that
I'll actually make, even if it's two minutes of time.
I had a practice for some of the young girls
that I was working with. You know, everybody has to
brush their teeth every day. You have to brush your
hair every day, at least I hope you do. So
take that moment to look into your eyes and instead
(34:51):
of looking at the crinkles or the wrinkles of the
stuff that's not cute or you or you might want
to criticize, to say, I am beautiful, I am aware, air,
I am present. Right those three that takes no more
than ten seconds to do, and you've you've already changed
I think possibly the whole atomic structure of what you
(35:11):
want to even here. It's it's not easy, but I
think we're very well versed in making things more difficult
than they need to be. So choose joy. Such beautiful advice.
Thank you so much. Welcome, Thank you, Danna and everyone.
You can find those sleep meditations at sleep meditations dot
com and connect with us at the trans podcast
It could be whatever you like, but touching your own feet,
touching your own head in a way that's sensuous. And
when you start loving and living in that way, you
become so much more radiant and so much more attractive
to everybody else around you, including maybe yourself. That's the
biggest game in town is how do you fall in
love with yourself? Hey, welcome to you Turns. This is
(00:37):
the podcast where we talk about all things change. I
am Lisa Oz and I am Jill Herzig. And you know,
as we've talked to various different guests on this podcast,
I feel like one theme comes up again and again,
which is the importance and the power of meditation. I
have taken so many pieces of advice that I've gotten
from our guests, and I'm us to have some sort
(01:00):
of a block. This is the one thing. And I
know you meditate, but I could not get myself to
do it at all in any form. Well, no, I
mean really, I'm gonna there's no point in my not
being honest here, right, which is why I guess today, Yes, yes,
(01:21):
we're getting help. I'm getting help. Well. Our guest today
is Donna da Cruz. She is literally the Queen of meditation.
She is probably the coolest meditator I've ever known and
makes it easy and anyone can do it with our technique. Donna,
thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you.
It's lovely to be here with the double LS. Tell
(01:44):
me a little bit about your journey to meditation, through meditation,
with meditation. It's a ride, you know, Lisa, and I
I hear you loud and clear. I think my journey
is I was born in South India, so I come
from Tamil Nadu, and so there's a certain vibration and
in frequency. I think that sort of permeates where you
(02:05):
are born. And so I'm born in a place of
India that is full of ancient mystics and yogi's but
it's also a place that actually um deeply has delved
into this idea of self realization and it's something that
I don't think we even used to understanding what that means.
So I come from that place. I was educated in
Australia and meditation and at TM was actually my my
(02:28):
first specific sort of introduction to it. And as a kid,
I would sit I had this cousin that came and
lived with us and stayed with us, and he was
a meditated and he'd gone on a wobbly road and
suddenly he was now this meditated. All I knew was
he were wore fierce white clothes and I would sit
outside his room while he closed the door and did.
I didn't know what, so I was like, what are
(02:49):
you doing in there? You know, as as only a
precocious kid did. And what I discovered and what I
felt was whenever he would come out of this room, um,
he would see me cross legged, see doing very peacefully.
And I just had this feeling that it was something
I had to know about. So at age seventeen, I demanded.
I was like, here's what's happening, family, We're all going
(03:10):
to meditate, at which time my father rolled up his
eyes and said, I'll see you in the garden and mom,
and unless this was your form of teen rebellions a
very healthy now we're doing this. We're doing this. I
was just convinced. And anyway, I went down my own
shaking path, down down the road of what is this mantra?
What is meditation? And um, Eventually I came to understand
(03:31):
that it's very easy, and you know, until at Lisa's point,
I think we've sort of walked down this road of
worshiping the struggle worshiping, you know what is difficult and
my path in consciousness, and I think we have to
be unabashed to actually say it's actually consciousness. How we eat,
how we love, how we live, how we walk, how
(03:52):
we talk, how we engage with the world through all
of the senses, is actually with awareness. And if there's
a job in the path of meditate Asian, it's to
actually open that doorway to self awareness, right, and so
it really just means to reflect upon, to look upon.
So what I would love to do is actually be
that sort of gatekeeper that busts down the myth of
(04:15):
the struggle around it and say, if you can breathe,
you can do it. There's no rules in it, you know.
And that's the thing, you know. The greatest teachers I've
actually had are the people that I serve in the
recovery space. So I have a weekly that I've been
doing it at a place called Phoenix House, which is
America's oldest drug and alcohol recovery facility, and now I
work at another spot called Education Alliance, where we look
(04:37):
at the whole ecosystem around sober living, which is really
very interesting, very disruptive, and hugely efficacious. And my my
service there is really about getting them to quiet and
down the mind, to turn chaos and confusion into something else.
And it's and its it's and it's a transcendent journey.
It's not like you just automatically, you know, sit cross
(04:59):
legged into in a state the bliss. You have to
go through your own path of what's uncomfortable, what you
want to hold back on, what you want to let
go of. And I think it's just very very easy,
which is why we use music. And I've I've sculptured
the experiences that I've created using music because, as you know,
Lisa like music. To see her on the dance floor, hello,
(05:22):
you know, it's it's actually revelatory, it's also a d G.
I forgot to mention that, well, I use music, you know,
that's the kind of world that I've chosen to pull
from because I know music has infinite power, right genre banding,
beyond time and space. Who cares, just get out out
there and shake it um. And so I use music
in the in the meditation process because it has helped
(05:44):
enormously in the recovery space to take that monkey mind
and bring it down to a place of um, let's
just say dialing it down right to, you know, to
when you're working with people in recovery, do you are
the meditations different? Do you feel like you sense a
different energy from those people? Do you guide them differently?
Or is it really just it's meditation meditation? Whoever? You know, everybody,
(06:10):
I think, whether you are in the space of recovery,
whether you're a CEO, whether you're a model, whether you're
a mom, or you're a truck driver, because you've actually
led meditation with all those kinds of them, the entire spectrum,
the full spectrum, because I see it as one thing,
and it's called the human being, right, not the human doing.
And that's the idea. Is you know that we all,
I think we all have more than a memory of
(06:33):
our own perfection. We all know that we're kind of amazing.
Yet the lie that we have been led and the
deceit has been around. We've got to struggle. We've got
to earn love, you've got to earn piece, you've got
to earn a place in society. You've got to earn
earn Earn, And I think if there's anything that's going
on in this shift, whatever however, and whatever that means
(06:54):
to you, there is something going on here that is
saying listen. Knowledge is for every body. There is a
great democracy now around knowledge. You know, if there's anything
around technology that it's supporting us is listen, check it out,
learn go. Whether you're talking to your doctor, whether you're
talking to you know, your financial expert, whether you're talking
(07:14):
to yourself or your kids, you have a right to
dig in there. And that's part of the journey of
self discovery, isn't It Is to go and do a
bit of work and don't look for what the parts
are that are difficult, look for the things that you
love that are easy for you. And that's what I
do in the space of Actually I don't even call
it meditation. We call it a dip into bliss because
I think we all have a well of bliss available
(07:36):
to us, and when we just shut down and shut up,
we tune into it. It's always there. It's the it's
the witnessed Eckart Toll, you know, the divine presence, whatever
your whatever your belief system is. When you shut up
the noise, something else is always with us. I love
how simple you make meditation and don't put any rules
(07:57):
around it, like you don't have to do it for
an extended period of time. What I was really impressed
with was you had one minute meditations. I loved that.
For a while Donna was saying just one minute meditation,
which even you could do. Joel and someone like me
who bizarrely rebels against I find the music helps significantly
because it's when when it's just you and nothing too
(08:21):
focus on other than a mantra. The monkey mind is
much harder to team if you give, if you throw
the monkey the bone of music, so to speak, then
you can sort of quiet everything absolutely well. There's a
you know the example when I when when I work
with kids, like I work at the Lower east Side
Girls Club, and there's good there are girls there are
my some of my favorites from six to seventeen years old,
(08:41):
and they are just at that beautiful formative time in life.
And um one of the one of the lessons that
I've taught them is when an elephant comes into a village.
There's a great story that says that if it's hurt
or if it's frustrated. If it's looking for its young one,
it will come through that village thrashing around and cause
absolute havoc. Some ely to the mind. Whether it's given
(09:02):
a piece of wood, it curls it's trunk around it
and gets very quiet because it now has an intention
and has a purpose. So similarly, the mind when given
a mantra, right, the mind shuts down at least it
starts getting quiet. And that's really the purpose of the
mantra is to help the mind be distracted, and it does.
(09:23):
I think if we were to actually collect data and
science around it, we'd see that it would probably do
a lot more because mantra can actually quiet and down
the mind. But the music can also help with breath.
The music can also help with within impacts heart, which
impacts blood pressure, etcetera. So there's there's there's a physiological
response as well that I think we might elicit through music.
(09:45):
But I don't really you know, I don't really care
so much about the science. I care, like my angelus says,
who cares about what I have said and what I do?
I care about how we make people feel and and
the greatest litmus test for me has been in that
space of recovery when someone's got so much noise and
so much trauma that they might be dealing with, if
(10:05):
we can give them, like Lista said, even if it's
a minute of self awareness, it's a minute where they've
now tuned into their breath frequency. They're now maybe looking
at themselves a little bit more kindness, a little bit
more compassion, a little bit more self understanding. And that
is how we can shift our own individual consciousness, which
is which is then connected to the collective consciousness. It's
(10:28):
not that complicated. Yeah, Self compassion and self understanding are
so important if you're trying to work change into your life,
whether you're working on cutting sober or you're working on
a U turn of any of any kind. And I
think that is why it keeps, it does keep coming
up in this podcast. And now you're making me very determined,
and we'll make it super easy for you. Like you're
(10:48):
obviously breathing and you're obviously present, so it's super easy.
You can do it in thirty seconds, you can do
it in twenty seconds. You know, you can do it
in that moment when you're about like on my way here,
getting cranky, with my dry over and the traffic and everything.
And I was like, well, it's that and or not.
So I can now be irritated and choose to be
in a in a place of irritation and be annoyed
(11:10):
and feel all my you know, yuckiness going on, or
I can say, Okay, I'm going to be okay, no
one died, no one's bleeding, and I'm okay. When we
come back, we're going to talk about your new form
of meditation, meditation. Yes, before the break, we were talking
(11:37):
about meditation and making it easy with meditation expert and
founder of Russell I think Donna to Cruz and now
I want to just touch on her most recent endeavor,
which is meditations is a solution for sleep. Can you
explain that to us? Well, a lot of the people
that I've been serving in as I say, you know,
(11:57):
from Wall Street to Palo Alta and down the street. Um,
in the last two years, I just started asking people,
how's your spirit, how are you doing, how are you sleeping?
And I became really alarmed when increasingly younger people, especially
younger women, started to tell me about some of the
stuff they were taking. Some of it was, you know,
med's legal and not and h and some of them
(12:20):
around self journeying. Um, you know drugs that people are
into at the moment. And I said, so, if you're
taking three or four or five things to get to sleep,
it begs the question what are you taking to stay awake?
And what are you taking to get up in the morning.
And so I went on this very interesting journey. I
started asking more people, and then I started collecting data
and and I realized, as CDC said, of us have
(12:43):
sought medical attention for sleep deprivation. I was like, that
is cuckoo to me, so very simply, you know, and
my fami, my dad always says, I don't want to
hear your your complaining Donna, unless you have a creative response.
So my creative response was, so, let's create around this.
So I know the space of music, I know the
(13:04):
space of meditation. Let's combine them. So I really just
combined those that happened to be gifted with the world's
most wonderful voice. Thank you just for all of us.
We all have gifts. We all have our gifts. The
only question is how will you serve and how do
you want to use them? So and you know, I
have never told people that it's a good way to
be good place to tell you. But I grew up
(13:26):
actually a terrible stammera I had. I had started and stammered,
and it was really really paralyzing, I'll say, And I
would pray that things weren't given to me, gifts were
not given. Please don't make me the school captain. Please
don't make me, you know, please make it something else.
And so I lived my life to speak so I
wouldn't have to speak. I went to speech therapy and
(13:47):
didn't all sorts of things. And and it's weirdly wonderful
and very very strange when I hear people say your
voice because of course their child, and you goes, oh, really, oh,
here it comes. You know. Now we've dealt with it
and and I talked to it all the time because
I've decided to love it, and that it can give
service and comfort and solace to people is just great,
(14:08):
great joy to me. So I hear that, so that
you know, that's just a little sidebar. But um so,
but to combine music and the the actual project is
called sleep Medetations, and it's got you know, I saw
a lot of science in it and a lot of
modern context because people like a s m are even
even um, you know Dr Os moment was saying, oh
(14:29):
a s m are so big, don, it's really giving
people great self. So it has a s mr. It
has um a certain frequency called soul fedia, which is
a really it's the soft fedia frequency we've all heard
when we've gone to ancient places or to churches or
synagogues and we hear this that certain codex in music
that makes you feel like I think I can sing
(14:51):
like an angel, or I think I feel something. You
feel that sense of elevation. So those codes have been
written into music to make us feel in an asset
and and and a descendant manner troubled, alarmed as well
as elevated and uplifted. So it's very it's very very specific.
So we have that in it, and we also have
probably the most important thing. It's also being done with
(15:14):
bin normal dummy head, so it sounds like it's you know,
in left and right. The most important thing that we
put in it is breath entrainment, and where we've taken
the breath from fifteen and sixteen breaths breath cycles per minute,
which is usually around this hyperactivity, in this this sort
of hyper vigilant way that we live down to six
breaths per cycle per minute, So we change the whole
(15:37):
breadth so that as you're listening to it, whether you
know how to meditate or not, because I will always
assume that there's more than a handful of people have
never done it, don't want to do it, probably will
never do it. So it's that's and that's okay. But
you are breathing, so we can change your breath and
we can take you from a place of panic and
anxiety and maybe even help some of the folks that
(15:57):
are taking the stuff that is robbing p bull of
dreams and dream states. We know it's so important to
a place where maybe they can just dial into breath. Well,
I have used it the past several nights, so I
haven't used it. Is it? Do you have to wear earphones?
Can you just put your iPhone on it? And that's
so cool about it is it lasts all night long.
So I're a person who has trouble falling asleep, You've
(16:19):
got a twelve minute meditation for that where I hear
you talking to me. But then you can also go
into a whole seven hour cycle which doesn't have your voice,
but is has all of these. I had no idea
until you just told me what it has. But it's
a brew of sort of soothing healing component. Are you
(16:39):
using it beautifully? That sounds and does a waker up
upper in the middle of the night, and you know,
so that's happened and it's still going on. That doesn't
it doesn't never drop you, It holds you. That's right,
And the idea is and I'm so pleased to hear
because that's exactly you know. There's there two versions of it,
(17:01):
one with in like let's call it guidance, right, So
there are the first twelve minutes because that's that that
first twelve minutes when you're getting into bed where you
start the anxiety process can be a real issue for people,
like stuff that's gone on during the day, etcetera, etcetera.
So we actually prepare you for sleep and then you
can choose to have the guidance you know, throughout the night.
(17:21):
And it's done in six, seven and eight hour cycles.
And then there's another version of it that's exquisitely done
with our music, right, So it gives you that journey. Um,
we've also got power naps, which you go for five
minutes or eight minutes, because I'm finding that a lot
of people they're at work, they're about to freak out.
Something you know, crappy is happening, So then you dial
into that. So use it. The idea is use it
(17:43):
as you need to go to the loop, close the door.
Take that five minutes instead of coming back with aggression
or something that's going to get you into a pickle later.
Take a breath and take a beat, and use use
your own inner light. You know. One of the things
that I heard you say to me us tonight as
I was falling asleep, so was UM. And I don't
(18:05):
remember your exact words, but basically, like the day is over,
you've done what you can do, you can't do anymore.
And the first time I heard it, I actually felt
a little bit of ajita around it, because I have
the world's most persistent finishers complex. And of course you're
never done until you're really done. That probably makes you
(18:26):
great at many things that you have. Yeah, but it's um.
It's a you know, it's a driver, it's a task
master master, an internal engine. That's a little merciless. And
the second time I heard it, I thought, that's right,
we're done with this day. We just are. I'll pick
this up tomorrow. And it's interesting, like, especially when you're
(18:48):
going through a transition, a time of change, you've got
to push hard, You've got to push yourself hard to
go into places that are kind of scary. But then
there's a certain point where you just have to stop
and say done. And it was just it was it
was kind of wonderful. That sounds like you have a
convert over. That's good. I didn't. Maybe I was meditating
and I just didn't realize it. Well, it is. I think,
(19:09):
I think, you know, part of this sort of overall deceit.
I think in consciousness are there are the rules. You're
supposed to do this however many times a day, and
you're supposed to do that. I think I think we
can do it all the time and living in a
place of whatever, whatever is comfortable awareness for you. And
to your point, you know, part of that other deceit is,
(19:31):
especially as women, I hear I hear this lament from
a lot of of of the younger women that I
work with. I'm supposed to do this I'm supposed to
accomplish that, you know, I have I have this intention,
I have that goal. And part of it is that
when we live so far in the future that we
forget how to just enjoy this. And in this there's
actually no fear, there's no discomfort, there's no anxiety, and
(19:52):
the joy. If we were really to drill down into
the space of consciousness where um meditation lives is you're
not not in the past where you've got your and
you know, you've grief or your sorrow, and you're not
in the future where you've got your fear and anxiety.
You're here right now and you're amazing, you know, And
the idea of the story gets broken that that in
(20:12):
a story that we tell ourselves, that gets fractured right
in the present moment because you're not in the past,
you're not in the future, and you're celebrating the fact
that you're kind of amazing and that you did these
things and that you create you inspire others. We don't.
We're not very good at telling ourselves that story. We're
more easily inclined to listen to what is critical and
(20:34):
what is the stuff that makes us because we're used
to that story, we're like yeah, as opposed to I'm amazing.
And I think the shift that we're seeing in consciousness
is whether we're whether we think of it as the
age of Aquarius or whether we just think that this
is part of out of our discomfort comes great awareness
and and and earning and making our way through that
(20:55):
as part of it. Um. I think it's it's releasing
all of those old stories and understanding you know what,
I'm actually gonna demand amazing food and find out where
I can get it. I'm going to do the same
before my water. I'm going to do the same for
my air. I'm going to do the same for the
relationships that uplift me as opposed to the ones that
made me feel uncomfortable and and don't serve me. You
(21:17):
mentioned dreams and consciousness and I and I think I
see a connection between what you do with meditation and
these sleep meditations, because there's something I think with with
all the you talked about, all the medication people have
been taking to get to sleep and wake up, you
can't dream productively when you're on those sleep sleeping pills.
(21:42):
And I do think that there's something about a dream
state that takes us that deals with our unconscious, the
way that meditation deals with our unconscious. So the integration
of what you do is really it's the mistress of
the unconscious, Lisa, I love it. Well, that's actually I
think that's the secret, you know. I think that if
(22:03):
there's one thing that we've really done beautifully in the
sleep meditations is when you look at the stages of
sleep and you look at like in Sanskript, you know,
we call it the awakening state. The doing state is
called the second state, which is the dreaming state, is
called swapner. And then there's the other state, which is
called whether you call it um somebody, but let's call
(22:24):
it the dreamless state. And we're we've I think UM
traditionally measured and looked at how important the dreaming state is, right,
because that's where we exercise fantasies, we exercise our frustrations,
we work through our stuff, and we can flip in
and out of that as we do throughout the night.
What we've done, I think, um, although it wasn't really
(22:45):
the intention, but I think it's it's happening, is in
the in the dreamless state. To your point, am I
in a state of meditation, what's going on. We're we're
able to widen that and deepen that, and that means
where we actually I think changing and expanding slow waves,
slow waves sleep. That's the part we want to get to.
(23:07):
That's the part that has no recollection of body, no mind,
no ego, no fear, no nothing. It's cosmic. So it
really is you go into a state of somebody. There's
a lot of discussions that I'm having in and I
think when we're looking at what is going on without
technology today and even whether you said, so, how do
(23:27):
I use it? Do I just put it on and
put my iPhone on on? Yes, your technology is on
all the time. We're on all the time. We don't
know what offers. And the idea here is to actually
more fully examine and and treat us to the off
you know, the the un the unbounded part, right, the
(23:48):
part beyond time and space, the part that, like I said,
no mind, no ego, no nothing, that's heaven. When come back,
we're going to dip more into heaven with data goes.
(24:09):
Before the break, we were talking with Donnald Cruz about
the heaven of a good night's sleep. Now I want
to talk about the bliss that is Donna's life when
she's not sleeping. I want to talk about some of
the U turns in your life where you've so so
many things with did the deejaying and being the sensualista,
(24:30):
which is the most sensuous person. Um, just talk to
us a little bit about because everything you do, by
the way, is is a celebration and nothing is without joy.
You walk into a room and you bring clouds of joy.
Talk to us a little bit about those other aspects
of your life. Now, your transformations there, Yes, it seems
(24:51):
like you're still transforming. You're all literally every day I
think every day I wake up that way, I go
to sleep that day. I struggle like everybody else, But
I've tried to dial down on the noise and the
things that are not serving me and celebrate what I
think can actually shift me and shift the people around me.
But you know, I came to America with three hundred
dollars and to telephone numbers. That was probably my biggest
(25:14):
U turn. But having grown up in Australia in my twenties,
you know, I came Um, I grew up, I was
born in India, came to Australia, and I just had
this feeling, much to my family's chagrin, that it wasn't
for me to live my life, you know, and stay
in Australia. I loved it. I loved the land, I
love the culture, fell in love with the Aboriginal people,
(25:34):
and I'm inspired by that. I felt like I wanted
to be in New York and I wanted to expand
and do anything. And and if there's one thing about
the consciousness and the psyche of America is especially in
New York City, is like it dares you to dream
and it also will support your dreams if you're willing
to engage with it. With her, I always think of
her as a her. So that was the biggest turning
(25:56):
point in my life. When everybody else thought I was
a mad person and said what are you doing? What
are you thinking? It was it was beyond thinking. I
just knew it in my in the viscera of me
that I was going to do that, and I do
it all the time. Do you become a DJ typically
a man's world, especially when you were first getting into it, Well,
I worked, I have I have a record label, and
it's a label that it's called Russell Music, and we
(26:19):
really explore culture and consciousness. And we've worked with d
Pack and many many artists around the years, and you know,
we've worked I remember when we did the Roumi project,
a lot of people were like, what is this this
Muslim music? What is that that you're doing, even even
some of the biggest publications. But I thought it was
highly questionable, and I said, this is not just the
sweet face of Islam. This Listen to what he's saying.
(26:41):
If I love myself, I love you. He's talking about
the oneness. And just for project um, well, it's called
a Gift of Love and it was really a Valentine
to Roumi because Roomy, I think, of all of the
of the mystics, was the one, and you know, certainly
it has been a great guide in my life. But
I think as a beyond the you know, he's he's
(27:03):
a metaphysical poet. He exists, existed in the thirteenth century,
and he was the one that said, if I love myself,
I love you. I am God, God is me. It
is one thing, and it's all of that is then
in the Vedanta and the and the Invaders, and many
of the wisdom traditions. All that idea of us being one,
of us being connected to breath and that breath being
(27:24):
the same for all is very much echoed in the
work of Remy and I, you know, I just became
a fan. And so we got a bunch of very
famous people who had known deep Pack and we're still
friends with him, from Rosa Parks to Demi Moore to Madonna,
um Martin Sheen to read a piece of poetry which
we then married with music and it is really really
(27:47):
powerful and beautiful, and so then we did the same
thing with a with a UM to Go project. But
all of the you know, I knew that world of music.
I have an encyclopedic um knowledge on certain types of
music around world music UM specifically and kill out music
and that sort of vibe. And one day I was
(28:08):
at a at an event for Billboard magazine and jelly
Bean Benitez, who ended up discovering Madonna, asked me if
I knew you know I was describing this music, and
I said, oh, I love this music that's playing. You know,
it's a it's a Brazilian somber beat, but the woman
singing in French. I love that twist and it's like, well,
how do you know? And I said, well, I earned
(28:28):
the license and uh. And he said do you know
how to DJ? And I was like yes, even though
I was just potting around at home, but I taught
myself and and I just played from the heart. And
I play very eclectically. I play music that is a
lot of I'll play you know, umasumak and something that's
like mystical and magical, as well as hardcore dance music.
(28:49):
Um and I've played around the world and for many
many strange, wonderful, weird, beautiful places and and and so
I just I do that because I think it shifts
conscious this when you move your body, when you actually
get it's another you know, it's another form of meditation.
Look at the medal levies from Turkey Roomy, the all
(29:09):
the you know, those whirling dervishes right hand to to
to the divine left hand through the heart access into
the ground and they twirl to the right and it's
just one of the most mystical, magical, transcendent things you've
ever seen. It's really something else. So um I've been
a fan of dance and where dancing, music and humanity
intersectors has always fascinated me. So that's where my DJ
(29:33):
work has sort of spun out of that. And I
have bling that headphones yes covered, yes, headphones, yes they
Well I did that really specifically because I wanted people.
I was like, I'm not a Harry Potter DJ under
the under the steps, so I was like, and I've
got black hair, so I need to have some situation
(29:54):
and maybe they sort of say this is no, this
is not a space man own. So it was not purposeful,
and I find it very funny because you know, when
I first started, a lot of meeting would ask me
those questions like what does it feel like? I said,
it feels like I have no idea what you're talk about.
Let's talk about music, and let's talk about how I
create that music and how and my label and all
the other things that are important to me because when
(30:15):
you when you talk about my sexuality, that's so minimizing.
It's so banal, you know, and we're not and lessons
the time that we have to talk about what's important,
which is music. But I will say that we've talked
about this as well. You are a very sexual and
sensual person and it's a big part of your identity.
When we talk about identity, it's different than what we're
(30:35):
talking about now. I'm I think that you bring this
sense of errors, the erotic into everything you do. Um
from the set the oils. You have a routine with
scented oils. And I've always been so in awe of
the way that you bring that that bigger sense of
(30:55):
when we talk other than you know, when you say
I'm not want to talk about sexual identity, You're who
you are at your core has a lot of that
erratic energy in it. I like it. I like to
think of it as as a sensuous nous and to
me that means connecting to your senses and using your
senses to elevate and expand your own existence in this
earthly plane, as well as I think connecting you to
(31:18):
other realms, right and other other other sheets of of consciousness.
And you know, we think of of those senses in
the five realms right as as we like to call,
you know, the five slits. But there's the sixth sense,
which is intuition, the seventh sense, which is your divine
connection to higher purpose. So you know, I I live
(31:38):
that way because I think we receive if you look
at the Chacoate system. You know, we think of it
as seven, but truly in the Vedanta, it's you know,
many many many feet above you, many many many feet
below you. So there's a there's an energy field around
all of us, using oils, using light, using touch, using
your voice, using music, and using you know, all of
(32:00):
the senses that we that we can discern at least
you know and explain. I think it connects us to
this body, and I think so so many times as women,
we are very disconnected from our bodies. You know, we're
more likely to buy something that will help, you know,
undimple our asses as opposed to as opposed to touching
(32:23):
your body. Take that oil and rubb when's the last
time you actually rubbed your body and you actually use
an iove ador. We use long um long loving touches
down the down the bone of the body and then
on the joints. It's around and circular. It's done with
iovetic oils, but it could be rose oiled to open
the heart, it could be whatever you like. But touching
(32:43):
your own feet, touching your own head in a way
that's sensuous, and when you start loving and living in
that way, you become so much more radiant and so
much more attractive to everybody else around you, including maybe yourself.
That's the biggest game in town is how do you
fall in love with yourself? And when you first here
to this country and you had three hundred dollars in
(33:03):
your pocket and two telephone numbers? Were you able to
be this joyful when you were under that kind of
pressure and strain? I mean, is this just something that's
so core to you or have you learned it over
time as you've as you've kind of established yourself here.
I've made it a practice, for sure. But I was
born that way. I've been like that like that since
(33:24):
I was a kid. My mom and dad always tell
me that I've been very social and I would always
visit all the neighbors and I would tell them stories
every day and every night. And that's just part of
my um my way of learning as well. Because I
think people would say, you know, I don't know if
this is available to me. I'm under so much stress
right now and I'm going through something and it sounds
like a wonderful way of being. But what do you
(33:46):
say to someone who's just like you know, I don't
think I have time for this. I don't think I
have time to to lavish that kind of care and
attention on myself. Yeah. Um, you know, I serve at
a herb a facility every week and I see the
very best and the very strangest of things in that world. Um.
(34:08):
I see people that have become disenfranchised and certainly don't
know what that means that if I say to them, all,
you know, you have to touch yourself and do these
things and have these practices, I'll get a lot of
cocked eyebrows, for sure. But I think that you know
that there is a path. You have to figure out
what's right for you and tune into the frequency of
what works for you. And if that means that I have,
(34:31):
I will stop and listen a little bit easier that
I'll actually make, even if it's two minutes of time.
I had a practice for some of the young girls
that I was working with. You know, everybody has to
brush their teeth every day. You have to brush your
hair every day, at least I hope you do. So
take that moment to look into your eyes and instead
(34:51):
of looking at the crinkles or the wrinkles of the
stuff that's not cute or you or you might want
to criticize, to say, I am beautiful, I am aware, air,
I am present. Right those three that takes no more
than ten seconds to do, and you've you've already changed
I think possibly the whole atomic structure of what you
(35:11):
want to even here. It's it's not easy, but I
think we're very well versed in making things more difficult
than they need to be. So choose joy. Such beautiful advice.
Thank you so much. Welcome, Thank you, Danna and everyone.
You can find those sleep meditations at sleep meditations dot
com and connect with us at the trans podcast
Road to Somewhere News
Hosts And Creators
Lisa Oz
Jill Herzig
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