December 3, 2021 • 29 mins
Devi Brown serves as the Chief Impact Officer at Chopra Global and is the voice of daily meditation on the Chopra wellness app. A wellbeing educator, author of Crystal Bliss, founder of Karma Bliss, a founding board member of the Mental Wealth Alliance, host of Black Effect Network podcast Dropping Gems, a seasoned broadcaster, and multi-modality healing practitioner.
Devi is devoted to spiritual connection meant to aid in the healing of intergenerational trauma and internal liberation. Her work is rooted in weaving ancient and modern practices into tangible healing tools that support emotional growth and radical self-love.
Devi shares her journey as a hip-hop broadcaster, her love of connecting with people, burnout experiences, the power of meditation, starting her own business, and how to become our best selves.
Host IG: @itstanyatime
Guest IG: @devibrown
Listen to her podcast: Dropping Gems
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, money Movers, Welcome back to Money Moves, the daily
podcast determined to give you the keys to the Kingdom
of financial stability, wealth and abundance. Welcome money Movers to
the Money Moves podcast powered by Greenwood. Our expert this week.
(00:22):
Serves as the Chief Impact Officer at Chopra Global and
is the voice of daily meditations on the Chopra Wellness apps.
She is a well being educator and author, the founder
of Karma Bliss, and a founding board member of the
Mental Wealth Alliance, host of the Black Effect Network podcast
Dropping Gems, a seasoned broadcaster and a multimodality healing practitioner.
(00:46):
Someone whose voice I have listened to many many times,
who is truly as beautiful on the outside as she
is on the inside. The incredible spiritual Hilller, Debbie Brown,
Please welcome to our podcast. I'm so grateful to be
here with you. Thank you so much, Thank you so much.
(01:07):
I feel like already I am vibrating at a higher
level just having you grace our screen. And I'm so
excited to share you know more about you and your
journey so that you can empower so many, many, so
many of our listeners and audience to take their lives
to a higher level. M thank you so much and
(01:28):
thank you for this gorgeous work that you're sharing with
the world. Like the impact that you're making is so
powerful and it's so needed. We need that financial routing,
we need that spiritual routing, that mental emotional healing, um
all holistically full circle. I was just gonna say, you know,
you were all about empowerment, inner peace and overall self love,
but the holistic aspect of looking at how we can
(01:50):
both you know, be a tune to ourselves and at
the same time achieve success and wellness in our lives
so that we can truly live are fully off indicated lives.
So I'm an appreciative of this and you being here today.
So I just want to dive into Debbie, you know,
and what you just spoke to, like abundance and is
(02:12):
our birthright? Yes, And I think that we're just now collectively,
especially within black and brown communities, really able to embrace that.
For centuries we've been on this path of forced resilience,
this idea that life is to be endured and not enjoyed.
And I think that we are at that big paradigm
shifting moment in human history right now, where we're all
(02:33):
realizing that we are worthy of more. We are deserving
of more. It is our birthright to have ease, abundance,
and grace flow into our lives. And we're looking to
really like share our gifts and powerful new ways and
you know, make a wage that creates generational freedom and
generational wealth. Yes, and that is so true. You know,
(02:54):
it's so interesting to even hear. I just did a
meditation this morning, and I use that mantra all the time.
Abundance is my birth right. So I just hope that
those listening can really take that in and feel what
feel your the power of your words, and be able
to put it forth into their daily lives, because that's
what this podcast is about. Money Moves is about creating
generational wealth and abundance not only in our bank accounts,
(03:16):
but for our families, for our souls and spirituality. So Debbie, again,
thank you so much, But I want to take us
back to you know how you sort of got started
on your journey. Um. You know, you you're working with
incredibly visionary grades like Deep oct Oprah and you know,
helping so many different spirits all across this country can
(03:37):
you tell us how you started in radio and entertainment UM,
and then we'll sideway to where you are now. Yeah,
thank you for that. You know, I think when I
think of my story in my life, it's just for me.
It's a representative of the way that God's whispers really
guide the path. How that kind of deeper inner knowing
(03:57):
that we can't even fathom or really see. You know,
the vertical of the long term view of UM has
always been available to us, and there's always been whispers
that have guided us. And so you know, I'm the
only child raised by a single parent, and by nature
of that, that means I'm always inside my own head,
inside my own heart, investigating UM. And so I kind
of hit the perfect path because I've always been a seeker.
(04:20):
I've always been deeply curious about the world and deeply
curious about myself. So when I when I started my
professional working life, I started in broadcasting. And so when
I went to college, I thought, I either want to
be two things. I want to be a psychologist or
I want to be a news anchor, kind of two
opposite ends of the spectrum. But I kind of feel
like I've done both. That actually makes perfect sense somehow right.
(04:46):
I was like, so, actually I knew what I was
doing a retine UM, But I started my path in
broadcasting and really an underground hip hop and l A specifically.
It was an era of time where we were the
underdogs and WRAP and the music. And I was on
the radio at that time and working with like a
lot of the young emerging WRAP talent of Los Angeles
that has since gone on to take a huge space
(05:08):
in the world. And you know, when I was in radio,
what I fell in love with about radio was the
ability to connect. I think overwhelmingly, aside from like the
celebrity or music industry perks or you know, interview opportunities
that came with it, it was the day to day
talking to my listeners, hearing from people from all over,
(05:30):
the demographic of Los Angeles and what mattered to them,
what interested them, what made them feel seen and heard,
and so through that I was. I was working in radio,
but then I was also working in the community and
taking on different projects and I was the Community Action
Director and so many different things UM. And you know,
while I was in that, it really unlocked in me
(05:51):
this desire to create a space to be a soft
place to land for, you know, to to allow them
to feel seen, to feel heard, to to feel experienced,
you know. And that was the thing that really guided
me through close to a fifteen year career of working
in entertainment. I also had a chance to work in
(06:12):
TV and do a bunch of fun, amazing things. Um
but at a certain point I needed more, you know,
at a certain point. The way that especially that culture
of entertainment was set up when I was working in it,
it was all about judgment. Everything was rooted in coming
up with this really fast opinion. Even if he didn't
know what you were given an opinion on, you had
(06:32):
to come up with something, and you had to be
in judgment. You were constantly telling like the intricate workings
of someone else's life from an outside perspective. And I
got to a point where I couldn't stomach it. It
just wasn't an alignment with how I wanted to think,
how I wanted to feel, or how I wanted to
share myself in the constraints that I had, and so
(06:52):
mix in with that, I was like one of the
youngest executives at the time. UM, I was a music director.
I was really young I was like the only women
doing that, and by nature of that, I got burned out,
and by nature of like some of the excess that
was around, I got burnt out at a really young thing.
And did you recognize it as burnout? Like because now
you know you're on this very spiritual and holistic path, right,
(07:15):
did you recognize it then as burnout? And were you
as a tuned as you are now or was Has
this sort of been the evolution of your journey? So
I'm definitely evolved, um, But I think in many ways, yeah,
this has always been my path. I didn't always have
the language for it. I didn't always know how to
share it, but it has always been my path. Um.
(07:37):
I was a kid who I was in middle school
with the self help book, you know, like I, I've
always been fascinated by transformation, fascinated by the human spirit
and human emotion, and so I did always resonate with this,
and I was always in some degree studying ways to grow,
to enhance myself, to become more of me. Um. But
(07:58):
you know when I when I was being the burned out,
I didn't quite know that it was like my existential crisis.
At the time. I didn't know that it was like
me figuring out a whole new way of living. But
I knew that I couldn't continue as I was. I
didn't have all the wise of why I couldn't. I
definitely didn't have the next step in mind, but I
knew something had to shift, and that I was being
(08:20):
called to powerfully shift and that if I didn't, that
whisper from God would have turned into like catching a
fade from God, and I was not available for that.
I did not want to argue with God. I didn't
want to fight. I wanted to surrender. And so that
led me to my very first meditation or treat almost
ten years ago with deepak Um at one of his locations,
and that's where I learned to meditate. And everything about
(08:42):
my life changed. After I learned to meditate, and I
knew that I was called to help people heal and
to help people to understand themselves more deeply. So eventually
that led me to become certified in this work. I
have multiple certifications and so many different areas of healing
and deep in my own practice. I started my own
business and now my full circle I am back with
(09:03):
Deepac at Choper Global um in deep gratitude of being
able to share this powerful work with the world. Absolutely, UM.
I will say, you know, we've all just come out
of this world in global pandemic where we've all been
shut down, locked in, facing so much uncertainty. And this
was actually the first time I learned to meditate. I
(09:24):
hadn't really meditated before the pandemic, and I was exposed
to it through just different apps, and I am so
grateful for it. I have probably put in thousands of
hours now, um, and it's become such an integral part
of my life and I'm just so grateful for it.
And I'm also so grateful for what you are doing
with DEEPOC, exposing especially black and brown communities to being
(09:47):
able to have this tool that I think is truly
life changing. And you know, as our in our community
in particular, we carry a lot of this with us
and just to be able to have the tools and
expose so many more hearts to this is just like
really truly prolific work. Oh my god, thank you for
saying that. And I'm so happy that you're meditating. It
(10:09):
is the greatest gift. It is the biggest misconception is
that it's hard or it's expensive. Can you tell us
a little bit more about your work as Chopra's Chief
Impact Officer, And you know, I I love that this
is a full circle moment for you. Yeah, you know,
it's so beautiful. And I think that that in deepox
(10:30):
works so incredibly and powerfully speaks to divine flow, to
receptive energy, to the synchronicities in our lives and the
greater stories being told. So when I look back at
my path of purpose, I'm just like, you know, it
may not make sense from now outside looking in, but
it actually makes perfect divine sense for me. I'm like, oh,
that's where that dot connected, That's where that twist happened. Um.
(10:53):
But my work with Chopra Global is so so important
to me, and what it's really rooted in is giving
access to all to this healing work UM, specifically communities
of color. So often I think that sometimes by way
of programming and sometimes just by lack of knowing, lack
of organic kind of seed planting of this work, these
(11:17):
rooms are often very very white and very specific demographics.
And you know, when I first came into this space
as someone that was looking to heal, It's like, why
am I the only person that looks like me in
these rooms that can't just speak because of price point.
You know, what are the other barriers to healing that
we have up that need to be disarmed? And I'm
a believer that communities of color deeply need and deserve
(11:40):
this work at every level. Like we're not just working
through the curriculum of spirit that we came to this
earth with. We're also working through major ancestral healing, major
intergenerational trauma, you know. And very often we don't naturally
find this work because either are families of origin or
systems of leaf keep us looking at healing in one
(12:02):
specific way or keep us looking at God in one
very specific way. Um. And also because sometimes we just
don't always know that this is happening and available for us,
especially if you don't live where I live in Los Angeles, right,
I don't live in New York or those coastal cities
that have more access, you know. And so meditation, you know,
I think is so it seems so mysterious to people,
(12:26):
But it's sitting still and being quiet, that's it, which
is exactly and that is that is sort of the
beauty of it. Um that I that I've learned to
love about it because society makes us be like go,
go go. And you know, I think something you said
was super interesting because on money moves, we want to
dispel a lot of the misconceptions that may may or
(12:48):
may not have been handed down to us through previous generations, etcetera.
And I think that this is exactly one of them.
Being able to be open and vulnerable about where you
are with yourself, with your traumas, I mean even spoke
to you know, as people of color, like the genetic
imprinting that we perhaps don't even know what has been
passed on. So being able to break those myths and
(13:10):
talk about it openly, I think is also the key
to just not only creating generational wealth, but generational freedom.
M absolutely, And you know, I think so often what's
also kept so many from the work, it's just not
even believing that you deserve it and not knowing why
(13:32):
you don't think you deserve it, you know, And so
then you just are wrestling with this inner chaos and
this inner shame. And the deeper truth is that we've
arrived at really the first moment in human history where
there is ease to access this work. But we can
look at all of the structures at place, all of
the compounded complex stress and post traumatic stress that has
(13:53):
been placed on us, and we can know that, hey,
we didn't get this work sooner. My parents, my grandparents,
my great grandparents, didn't this work sooner because of structural oppression,
because of systemic racism, because of all the things that
have kept everyone bound throughout human history. You know. But
now that we've arrived at this point where we can
speak our truth, where we can move away from this
(14:14):
path of forced resilience, where we can focus on self
and allow ourselves to feel and it's safe to feel,
it's a perfect opportunity to really dive into and savor
this work of self. It is and I love that.
And I think you know something else you said, It's
just sometimes we believe we don't deserve it. And I
think the same comes from like our dreams, you know,
(14:37):
we're we're like folks are scared to dream, like, well,
I can have what this person has, I can have
with this person. And it's it's about cultivating that mindset
and that intention and just believing that your dreams are
your reality. And I think the meditation is the perfect way,
um to achieve some of that. Yeah, likewise, it's meditation
(14:59):
is delicious. That's how I view it. I love that
really challenging at first, but it's only because we're not
used to being with ourselves. So as soon as we
can disarm that and just say, this feels uncomfortable because
it's new, not because it's wrong, not because I can't
do it. There is no perfect it's just new um.
And then the to me, the greatest gift of meditation
(15:19):
is it really teaches you the deepest truth of who
you are. It cultivates a need of this natural gratitude.
It creates space inside, more space for you. You kind
of unpack and pull out so much of your story
that doesn't serve you so many ways that maybe pain
has become your identity and you're able to kind of
get to the best parts of who you are. This
(15:41):
is so beautiful. And what's so beautiful is like you
have now taken something that you deeply passionately love and
been able to create a business around it, support yourself
and like everything feels so perfectly aligned. Can you talk
about like the business aspect of what you're doing and
how you're able to you know, make something that you're
super passionate about, but also make a living, because I
(16:03):
think that's so important for people to realize that you
can make your passions into your livelihood. You can absolutely
make all of your passions into your livelihood, but you
also have to move it past passion and you have
to educate yourself. That's something I want to make really clear,
because in this space of wellness, it's not just about positivity.
It's not just oh I believe in being positive, and
(16:25):
let's sit down and be still and now pay me
your money to tell me that, you know, thank you
for saying that. Yeah. I think it's important, you know,
because in this day and age, for so many, it
is about fast money and it is about Okay, I'm
trying to hit this lick. I'm trying to get this
bag because right now wellness is on trend or X,
(16:45):
Y and Z is on trend, and so let me
step into this space. Um and for me, it's about
my own healing. It's about deeper legacy. It is how
will this show up in the world. And so I
think if you are passionate about something and you want
to turn it into a business, have reverence for the
calling on your life, have revents for your gifts, and
(17:05):
invest in yourself real tools that will make whatever you
dive into more than like getting the bag or hitting
the lick, and turn it into lifelong legacy that you
can then use as a springboard into new passions and
new areas. You know, I am a positive person, yes,
but I'm not selling positivity. I believe in deep, deep
shadow work. I have been, you know, I have probably
(17:28):
spent the equivalent of an Ivy League education on my
own education over the last ten years on my training
and trauma, my training and somatically my training and energy work,
my training and psychology. And so I recognized that this
was my calling. It was something that I was intuitively
and naturally good at, and I had cultivated a really
(17:50):
vast gift of communication to share it through my previous career.
But it's through all the deeper work and through all
of the investment of myself and actually creating like the
systems and creating the way for this to be my
life's work, you know. So I do believe follow your
passion because your purposes in your passion, but go deeper
(18:11):
than just using it to make money. And see how
it can actually be reflective of the larger story of
your life. Being told. Oh I love that. I mean,
so many gems in there, so many gems in there. Um.
Can you talk? Because I was super excited and incredibly
inspired by your partnership with Alicia Keys, with Choprah and
(18:32):
the twenty one day um Meditation Retreat. If if if
I'm saying that serious, how that came about, and I'm
sure you're rolling it is bringing in other women of
color um onto his platform as well. Oh so beautiful.
And as much as I wish I could take credit
for that, Deepak and Alicia actually beautifully old friends that
(18:53):
and she has been so steeped in this work for
so long, um, but it was, it was really wonderful.
I felt like it was such a merger of my
just of having interviewed her and entertainment and really loved
the music for so long and then now with this
beautiful programming. So the program that we did with Deepak
and Alicia was called the Divine Feminine Pathway to Wholeness,
(19:14):
And so you know, what we really linked into was
the power of sacred femininity, the power of the kind
of tender warrior um, the strength, the power, and the
grace of women. And there was a gorgeous twenty one
day meditation series that they each voiced UM in service
to their individual lenses of how to kind of cultivate
(19:34):
that archetypal energy within ourselves. And it was millions of
people around the world joined us for it, and it
was so powerful and people can still do it too.
It's on our app so if you download the choper
appids right and there. Um. Yeah, it was so powerful
and I loved working on that with both of them.
And Alicia is so deeply authentic and so deeply committed
(19:56):
to bringing this work into a greater audience, UM, into
sharing her gift. I love it. I'm I'm serious. It's
so funny because your voice is so malipulous and nice
to listen to. So I'm listening to you and I'm going, yeah,
so I gotta like, I gotta wake up here. No,
I'm just okay, but it is it is so lovely
to listen to. So Okay, now you've left radio, you're
(20:20):
back doing this spiritual work. UM, can we talk about
your podcast now that you have dropping gems, because I mean,
this is just more of you doing the work and
what made you decide to sort of be a creator
on that space. Yeah, so my podcast dropping gim's. I mean,
you know, I did work in radio for over a decade,
and so my natural kind of where I find my
(20:42):
ease is in communicating. And I was having such beautifully
expansive conversations with so many friends in both the hip
hop community but also within the spiritual communities, and I'm like,
I need a press record of mews and share them, um,
And so I pulled the trigger on it about I
started my podcast, I want to say two years go.
We're now Gratefully with my Heart Media and the Black
(21:03):
Effect Network from Charlemagne the God, and the show is
really centered on making higher consciousness tangible and I use
a lot of my life as the case study for that.
I really study myself and study my process. I'm really
always in study of deeper spiritual work, and I kind
of I apply it and then I share how I
experienced it, and I invite other people in for the conversation.
(21:26):
And so we've had some really powerful guests, We've had
some really interesting stories, um, and I love to demystify
things that you know, maybe everyone isn't open to but
it has been a part of my life, like you know,
having your birth chart done and using that as a
useful spiritual tool. So I just did my humanity on
the show. I recently just did my human design chart. Actually,
(21:47):
oh yeah, I had an incredible, incredible soilitator of human
design on my show recently. Um we we've had different
spiritual teachers, acupuncturists, um, sexual healers, people that work with
blue healing, just really really expansive all the ways in
which you can heal. I I feature on my show.
(22:08):
So you know, even talking to you make it all
seem so easy and like you've just sort of come
to this place. Um along this like downhill, you know,
water pathway. Can you talk about some of the like
key obstacles that you've faced in the past couple of
years to get to where you are now. I don't
want people to Leaven think that it's always beds of roses. Um. Well,
(22:30):
so you know, here's the thing, it's always it is
always actually easy because it's always about switching the lembs
of perception. But easy does not mean puppies and rainbows.
You know, easy does not mean I'm positive all the time, right,
deep spiritual work, healing work is about also greeting your shadows.
So it's not easy in the sense that I just
(22:51):
you know, I'm just like, oh, love and lights. It's
like I'm also sometimes in in tears for hours, and
I'm greeting past versions of myself. I'm moving myself through
grief in meditation, I'm allowing myself to feel. Spiritual growth
is rooted and allowing yourself to feel and transcending those
(23:11):
feelings and dissolving any barriers that we have up against
receiving our own love. And so it's a it's a
work of the crevices. It's about getting into the darker,
deeper parts. That's the work of spirit. But it doesn't
have to be cloaked in fear, and it doesn't have
to be cloaked in difficulty. It is something where I
(23:31):
can wake up and say, Wow, I'm feeling really heavy today,
I'm feeling kind of down today. Okay, let me go
sit down, let me see where that is, what wants
to come out, what wants to be known to me?
What am I supposed to heal in this moment. It's
more about the work of diligence. I love that and
I'm this is just such a word and such a
(23:53):
message for so many because I think just hearing it
and planting those seeds UM helps people prepare them for
like how they can best heal self. Debby, I love
that you've come to this UM and approach this this
work which is a gift to so many, not only
as a way to form legacy, but also as a business.
Can you talk about how you've come to understand your
(24:15):
worth in this and how you price this out for
so many other wellness healers UM or spiritual leaders in
this industry. Yeah, thank you for this question. You know,
I think the biggest thing that I encounter when I
speak with people that are looking to specifically work in
wellness as their life's worker, as a path. Usually in
the beginning of it, there's the sphere of charging this spear,
(24:37):
of turning it into something that you monetize, turning into
a business. What I found is that really the deeper
layer of that is also spiritual opportunity to do shadow work.
You know, a lot of it, especially for women in
this space, is rooted in this idea of being a martyr,
this idea that has been modeled for us and thrust
upon our sutriarchy, that everything you do that is insert
(25:00):
pervious to others or that is for healing, it's just
you depleting yourself. But then no, no, no, that's yo.
Don't worry about me, you know, And I rebuke all
of that, like it's about a core tentative. Spirituality is
about energetic exchange. There should always be benefit from both
parties when doing business. And it's not selfish and it's
not wrong. It's a tenant of spirituality. What is the balance,
(25:24):
what is the receptive flow? The giving and receiving. It
has to happen in tandem. And so I think you know,
for any any of that are watching this and maybe
connecting to this work and struggling with prosperity, you want
to price yourself fairly and whatever that means to you, right,
But you also have to know that you deserve abundance,
(25:45):
that you are worthy, that the work you've cultivated and
the way you serve and help other people is absolutely
worth something, and you deserve to have a life of softness,
a life of ease, and a life of abundance as
well as you help others. You know, and so when
I think of my own work, like I do work
at various price points. Like I work in wellness at
an executive level, I also work on a talent level,
(26:07):
and I also sometimes do more intimate exchanges. And so,
you know, the way that I occupy space. The biggest
the biggest piece that's important to me in any work
that I do is that there's a debility inability to
democratize it for all that need it. And so I
might do that in a couple of different ways. If
I know that I am you know, contracted to speak
(26:30):
at an event or lead a retreat, and that retreat
may cost between five thousand and ten thousand dollars to attend,
I also try to make whatever I know that I'm
teaching there more accessible to people wherever they are, so
that they can do this work from home, so that
they can do this work for friends. So I try
to offer and create my teaching at different levels. So
(26:52):
an advanced case might be here, but then I also
will find a way to teach similar themes at maybe
a thirty dollar webinar a price point. So I want
to make sure that I'm meeting everyone where they're at.
But I am also available to maximize my energetic potential
um in each moment. Absolutely, and even I mean as
simple things as your podcast, it's still a gift. There's
(27:14):
still learning there, there's still ways that you can reach
and reach such other people as well. And I completely
understand this in um I started my career as a nurse,
so I completely understand the idea for especially for women
in this that we're just supposed to give endlessly and
care for others, you know, at whatever price points. So
I appreciate you, you know, speaking on that for so
(27:35):
many because I think it's it's a struggle for people
to understand is it okay to charge for this or
add value to something that should really you know, that
is such a gift. Yeah, And I think really research
to you know, find the industry standard of other people
where there are similarities, because I think something that is
happening now, largely because of social media, are still entrepreneurism
(27:58):
is really beautifully on arise and expanding. I have noticed
that some people are just making up prices, you know,
some people are just like I do this, it's five.
It's like okay, but how do we quantify what that costs?
So it's actually sustainable, right, because price gouging is not sustainable,
you know. So it's like I think that we should
(28:19):
still hold ourselves as at a level of dignity in
our offerings UM, and then also find plans to make
sure that the work that we're doing is available to
as many people as possible, irregardless of their socioeconomic background. Yeah. Absolutely,
And it's funny. I think there's a lot of different
platforms out there like clubhouse, etcetera, where everyone is basically
(28:39):
raising their flag as the expert putting setting their charges
and prices at whatever level. So it's also up to
us as consumers to do the research and find someone
that you're properly connected to that like yourself, has done
the work, has the expertise, has educated themselves over you know,
whatever amount of time they've been committed to UM being
in that industry. Deby, I feel like we haven't even
(29:01):
approached the tip of the iceberg with you, and I'm
so grateful for your time here today of course. Okay,
Money Movers, we're gonna take a quick break and be
back with more of the Money Moves podcast powered by Greenwood.
Thank you so much for tuning in Money Moves audience.
If you want more or a recap of this episode,
please go to the bank Greenwood dot com and check
out the Money Moves podcast blog. Money Moves is an
(29:29):
I heart Radio podcast powered by Greenwood Executive produced by
Sunwise Media, Inc. For more podcast on I heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts from.
Hey, money Movers, Welcome back to Money Moves, the daily
podcast determined to give you the keys to the Kingdom
of financial stability, wealth and abundance. Welcome money Movers to
the Money Moves podcast powered by Greenwood. Our expert this week.
(00:22):
Serves as the Chief Impact Officer at Chopra Global and
is the voice of daily meditations on the Chopra Wellness apps.
She is a well being educator and author, the founder
of Karma Bliss, and a founding board member of the
Mental Wealth Alliance, host of the Black Effect Network podcast
Dropping Gems, a seasoned broadcaster and a multimodality healing practitioner.
(00:46):
Someone whose voice I have listened to many many times,
who is truly as beautiful on the outside as she
is on the inside. The incredible spiritual Hilller, Debbie Brown,
Please welcome to our podcast. I'm so grateful to be
here with you. Thank you so much, Thank you so much.
(01:07):
I feel like already I am vibrating at a higher
level just having you grace our screen. And I'm so
excited to share you know more about you and your
journey so that you can empower so many, many, so
many of our listeners and audience to take their lives
to a higher level. M thank you so much and
(01:28):
thank you for this gorgeous work that you're sharing with
the world. Like the impact that you're making is so
powerful and it's so needed. We need that financial routing,
we need that spiritual routing, that mental emotional healing, um
all holistically full circle. I was just gonna say, you know,
you were all about empowerment, inner peace and overall self love,
but the holistic aspect of looking at how we can
(01:50):
both you know, be a tune to ourselves and at
the same time achieve success and wellness in our lives
so that we can truly live are fully off indicated lives.
So I'm an appreciative of this and you being here today.
So I just want to dive into Debbie, you know,
and what you just spoke to, like abundance and is
(02:12):
our birthright? Yes, And I think that we're just now collectively,
especially within black and brown communities, really able to embrace that.
For centuries we've been on this path of forced resilience,
this idea that life is to be endured and not enjoyed.
And I think that we are at that big paradigm
shifting moment in human history right now, where we're all
(02:33):
realizing that we are worthy of more. We are deserving
of more. It is our birthright to have ease, abundance,
and grace flow into our lives. And we're looking to
really like share our gifts and powerful new ways and
you know, make a wage that creates generational freedom and
generational wealth. Yes, and that is so true. You know,
(02:54):
it's so interesting to even hear. I just did a
meditation this morning, and I use that mantra all the time.
Abundance is my birth right. So I just hope that
those listening can really take that in and feel what
feel your the power of your words, and be able
to put it forth into their daily lives, because that's
what this podcast is about. Money Moves is about creating
generational wealth and abundance not only in our bank accounts,
(03:16):
but for our families, for our souls and spirituality. So Debbie, again,
thank you so much, But I want to take us
back to you know how you sort of got started
on your journey. Um. You know, you you're working with
incredibly visionary grades like Deep oct Oprah and you know,
helping so many different spirits all across this country can
(03:37):
you tell us how you started in radio and entertainment UM,
and then we'll sideway to where you are now. Yeah,
thank you for that. You know, I think when I
think of my story in my life, it's just for me.
It's a representative of the way that God's whispers really
guide the path. How that kind of deeper inner knowing
(03:57):
that we can't even fathom or really see. You know,
the vertical of the long term view of UM has
always been available to us, and there's always been whispers
that have guided us. And so you know, I'm the
only child raised by a single parent, and by nature
of that, that means I'm always inside my own head,
inside my own heart, investigating UM. And so I kind
of hit the perfect path because I've always been a seeker.
(04:20):
I've always been deeply curious about the world and deeply
curious about myself. So when I when I started my
professional working life, I started in broadcasting. And so when
I went to college, I thought, I either want to
be two things. I want to be a psychologist or
I want to be a news anchor, kind of two
opposite ends of the spectrum. But I kind of feel
like I've done both. That actually makes perfect sense somehow right.
(04:46):
I was like, so, actually I knew what I was
doing a retine UM, But I started my path in
broadcasting and really an underground hip hop and l A specifically.
It was an era of time where we were the
underdogs and WRAP and the music. And I was on
the radio at that time and working with like a
lot of the young emerging WRAP talent of Los Angeles
that has since gone on to take a huge space
(05:08):
in the world. And you know, when I was in radio,
what I fell in love with about radio was the
ability to connect. I think overwhelmingly, aside from like the
celebrity or music industry perks or you know, interview opportunities
that came with it, it was the day to day
talking to my listeners, hearing from people from all over,
(05:30):
the demographic of Los Angeles and what mattered to them,
what interested them, what made them feel seen and heard,
and so through that I was. I was working in radio,
but then I was also working in the community and
taking on different projects and I was the Community Action
Director and so many different things UM. And you know,
while I was in that, it really unlocked in me
(05:51):
this desire to create a space to be a soft
place to land for, you know, to to allow them
to feel seen, to feel heard, to to feel experienced,
you know. And that was the thing that really guided
me through close to a fifteen year career of working
in entertainment. I also had a chance to work in
(06:12):
TV and do a bunch of fun, amazing things. Um
but at a certain point I needed more, you know,
at a certain point. The way that especially that culture
of entertainment was set up when I was working in it,
it was all about judgment. Everything was rooted in coming
up with this really fast opinion. Even if he didn't
know what you were given an opinion on, you had
(06:32):
to come up with something, and you had to be
in judgment. You were constantly telling like the intricate workings
of someone else's life from an outside perspective. And I
got to a point where I couldn't stomach it. It
just wasn't an alignment with how I wanted to think,
how I wanted to feel, or how I wanted to
share myself in the constraints that I had, and so
(06:52):
mix in with that, I was like one of the
youngest executives at the time. UM, I was a music director.
I was really young I was like the only women
doing that, and by nature of that, I got burned out,
and by nature of like some of the excess that
was around, I got burnt out at a really young thing.
And did you recognize it as burnout? Like because now
you know you're on this very spiritual and holistic path, right,
(07:15):
did you recognize it then as burnout? And were you
as a tuned as you are now or was Has
this sort of been the evolution of your journey? So
I'm definitely evolved, um, But I think in many ways, yeah,
this has always been my path. I didn't always have
the language for it. I didn't always know how to
share it, but it has always been my path. Um.
(07:37):
I was a kid who I was in middle school
with the self help book, you know, like I, I've
always been fascinated by transformation, fascinated by the human spirit
and human emotion, and so I did always resonate with this,
and I was always in some degree studying ways to grow,
to enhance myself, to become more of me. Um. But
(07:58):
you know when I when I was being the burned out,
I didn't quite know that it was like my existential crisis.
At the time. I didn't know that it was like
me figuring out a whole new way of living. But
I knew that I couldn't continue as I was. I
didn't have all the wise of why I couldn't. I
definitely didn't have the next step in mind, but I
knew something had to shift, and that I was being
(08:20):
called to powerfully shift and that if I didn't, that
whisper from God would have turned into like catching a
fade from God, and I was not available for that.
I did not want to argue with God. I didn't
want to fight. I wanted to surrender. And so that
led me to my very first meditation or treat almost
ten years ago with deepak Um at one of his locations,
and that's where I learned to meditate. And everything about
(08:42):
my life changed. After I learned to meditate, and I
knew that I was called to help people heal and
to help people to understand themselves more deeply. So eventually
that led me to become certified in this work. I
have multiple certifications and so many different areas of healing
and deep in my own practice. I started my own
business and now my full circle I am back with
(09:03):
Deepac at Choper Global um in deep gratitude of being
able to share this powerful work with the world. Absolutely, UM.
I will say, you know, we've all just come out
of this world in global pandemic where we've all been
shut down, locked in, facing so much uncertainty. And this
was actually the first time I learned to meditate. I
(09:24):
hadn't really meditated before the pandemic, and I was exposed
to it through just different apps, and I am so
grateful for it. I have probably put in thousands of
hours now, um, and it's become such an integral part
of my life and I'm just so grateful for it.
And I'm also so grateful for what you are doing
with DEEPOC, exposing especially black and brown communities to being
(09:47):
able to have this tool that I think is truly
life changing. And you know, as our in our community
in particular, we carry a lot of this with us
and just to be able to have the tools and
expose so many more hearts to this is just like
really truly prolific work. Oh my god, thank you for
saying that. And I'm so happy that you're meditating. It
(10:09):
is the greatest gift. It is the biggest misconception is
that it's hard or it's expensive. Can you tell us
a little bit more about your work as Chopra's Chief
Impact Officer, And you know, I I love that this
is a full circle moment for you. Yeah, you know,
it's so beautiful. And I think that that in deepox
(10:30):
works so incredibly and powerfully speaks to divine flow, to
receptive energy, to the synchronicities in our lives and the
greater stories being told. So when I look back at
my path of purpose, I'm just like, you know, it
may not make sense from now outside looking in, but
it actually makes perfect divine sense for me. I'm like, oh,
that's where that dot connected, That's where that twist happened. Um.
(10:53):
But my work with Chopra Global is so so important
to me, and what it's really rooted in is giving
access to all to this healing work UM, specifically communities
of color. So often I think that sometimes by way
of programming and sometimes just by lack of knowing, lack
of organic kind of seed planting of this work, these
(11:17):
rooms are often very very white and very specific demographics.
And you know, when I first came into this space
as someone that was looking to heal, It's like, why
am I the only person that looks like me in
these rooms that can't just speak because of price point.
You know, what are the other barriers to healing that
we have up that need to be disarmed? And I'm
a believer that communities of color deeply need and deserve
(11:40):
this work at every level. Like we're not just working
through the curriculum of spirit that we came to this
earth with. We're also working through major ancestral healing, major
intergenerational trauma, you know. And very often we don't naturally
find this work because either are families of origin or
systems of leaf keep us looking at healing in one
(12:02):
specific way or keep us looking at God in one
very specific way. Um. And also because sometimes we just
don't always know that this is happening and available for us,
especially if you don't live where I live in Los Angeles, right,
I don't live in New York or those coastal cities
that have more access, you know. And so meditation, you know,
I think is so it seems so mysterious to people,
(12:26):
But it's sitting still and being quiet, that's it, which
is exactly and that is that is sort of the
beauty of it. Um that I that I've learned to
love about it because society makes us be like go,
go go. And you know, I think something you said
was super interesting because on money moves, we want to
dispel a lot of the misconceptions that may may or
(12:48):
may not have been handed down to us through previous generations, etcetera.
And I think that this is exactly one of them.
Being able to be open and vulnerable about where you
are with yourself, with your traumas, I mean even spoke
to you know, as people of color, like the genetic
imprinting that we perhaps don't even know what has been
passed on. So being able to break those myths and
(13:10):
talk about it openly, I think is also the key
to just not only creating generational wealth, but generational freedom.
M absolutely, And you know, I think so often what's
also kept so many from the work, it's just not
even believing that you deserve it and not knowing why
(13:32):
you don't think you deserve it, you know, And so
then you just are wrestling with this inner chaos and
this inner shame. And the deeper truth is that we've
arrived at really the first moment in human history where
there is ease to access this work. But we can
look at all of the structures at place, all of
the compounded complex stress and post traumatic stress that has
(13:53):
been placed on us, and we can know that, hey,
we didn't get this work sooner. My parents, my grandparents,
my great grandparents, didn't this work sooner because of structural oppression,
because of systemic racism, because of all the things that
have kept everyone bound throughout human history. You know. But
now that we've arrived at this point where we can
speak our truth, where we can move away from this
(14:14):
path of forced resilience, where we can focus on self
and allow ourselves to feel and it's safe to feel,
it's a perfect opportunity to really dive into and savor
this work of self. It is and I love that.
And I think you know something else you said, It's
just sometimes we believe we don't deserve it. And I
think the same comes from like our dreams, you know,
(14:37):
we're we're like folks are scared to dream, like, well,
I can have what this person has, I can have
with this person. And it's it's about cultivating that mindset
and that intention and just believing that your dreams are
your reality. And I think the meditation is the perfect way,
um to achieve some of that. Yeah, likewise, it's meditation
(14:59):
is delicious. That's how I view it. I love that
really challenging at first, but it's only because we're not
used to being with ourselves. So as soon as we
can disarm that and just say, this feels uncomfortable because
it's new, not because it's wrong, not because I can't
do it. There is no perfect it's just new um.
And then the to me, the greatest gift of meditation
(15:19):
is it really teaches you the deepest truth of who
you are. It cultivates a need of this natural gratitude.
It creates space inside, more space for you. You kind
of unpack and pull out so much of your story
that doesn't serve you so many ways that maybe pain
has become your identity and you're able to kind of
get to the best parts of who you are. This
(15:41):
is so beautiful. And what's so beautiful is like you
have now taken something that you deeply passionately love and
been able to create a business around it, support yourself
and like everything feels so perfectly aligned. Can you talk
about like the business aspect of what you're doing and
how you're able to you know, make something that you're
super passionate about, but also make a living, because I
(16:03):
think that's so important for people to realize that you
can make your passions into your livelihood. You can absolutely
make all of your passions into your livelihood, but you
also have to move it past passion and you have
to educate yourself. That's something I want to make really clear,
because in this space of wellness, it's not just about positivity.
It's not just oh I believe in being positive, and
(16:25):
let's sit down and be still and now pay me
your money to tell me that, you know, thank you
for saying that. Yeah. I think it's important, you know,
because in this day and age, for so many, it
is about fast money and it is about Okay, I'm
trying to hit this lick. I'm trying to get this
bag because right now wellness is on trend or X,
(16:45):
Y and Z is on trend, and so let me
step into this space. Um and for me, it's about
my own healing. It's about deeper legacy. It is how
will this show up in the world. And so I
think if you are passionate about something and you want
to turn it into a business, have reverence for the
calling on your life, have revents for your gifts, and
(17:05):
invest in yourself real tools that will make whatever you
dive into more than like getting the bag or hitting
the lick, and turn it into lifelong legacy that you
can then use as a springboard into new passions and
new areas. You know, I am a positive person, yes,
but I'm not selling positivity. I believe in deep, deep
shadow work. I have been, you know, I have probably
(17:28):
spent the equivalent of an Ivy League education on my
own education over the last ten years on my training
and trauma, my training and somatically my training and energy work,
my training and psychology. And so I recognized that this
was my calling. It was something that I was intuitively
and naturally good at, and I had cultivated a really
(17:50):
vast gift of communication to share it through my previous career.
But it's through all the deeper work and through all
of the investment of myself and actually creating like the
systems and creating the way for this to be my
life's work, you know. So I do believe follow your
passion because your purposes in your passion, but go deeper
(18:11):
than just using it to make money. And see how
it can actually be reflective of the larger story of
your life. Being told. Oh I love that. I mean,
so many gems in there, so many gems in there. Um.
Can you talk? Because I was super excited and incredibly
inspired by your partnership with Alicia Keys, with Choprah and
(18:32):
the twenty one day um Meditation Retreat. If if if
I'm saying that serious, how that came about, and I'm
sure you're rolling it is bringing in other women of
color um onto his platform as well. Oh so beautiful.
And as much as I wish I could take credit
for that, Deepak and Alicia actually beautifully old friends that
(18:53):
and she has been so steeped in this work for
so long, um, but it was, it was really wonderful.
I felt like it was such a merger of my
just of having interviewed her and entertainment and really loved
the music for so long and then now with this
beautiful programming. So the program that we did with Deepak
and Alicia was called the Divine Feminine Pathway to Wholeness,
(19:14):
And so you know, what we really linked into was
the power of sacred femininity, the power of the kind
of tender warrior um, the strength, the power, and the
grace of women. And there was a gorgeous twenty one
day meditation series that they each voiced UM in service
to their individual lenses of how to kind of cultivate
(19:34):
that archetypal energy within ourselves. And it was millions of
people around the world joined us for it, and it
was so powerful and people can still do it too.
It's on our app so if you download the choper
appids right and there. Um. Yeah, it was so powerful
and I loved working on that with both of them.
And Alicia is so deeply authentic and so deeply committed
(19:56):
to bringing this work into a greater audience, UM, into
sharing her gift. I love it. I'm I'm serious. It's
so funny because your voice is so malipulous and nice
to listen to. So I'm listening to you and I'm going, yeah,
so I gotta like, I gotta wake up here. No,
I'm just okay, but it is it is so lovely
to listen to. So Okay, now you've left radio, you're
(20:20):
back doing this spiritual work. UM, can we talk about
your podcast now that you have dropping gems, because I mean,
this is just more of you doing the work and
what made you decide to sort of be a creator
on that space. Yeah, so my podcast dropping gim's. I mean,
you know, I did work in radio for over a decade,
and so my natural kind of where I find my
(20:42):
ease is in communicating. And I was having such beautifully
expansive conversations with so many friends in both the hip
hop community but also within the spiritual communities, and I'm like,
I need a press record of mews and share them, um,
And so I pulled the trigger on it about I
started my podcast, I want to say two years go.
We're now Gratefully with my Heart Media and the Black
(21:03):
Effect Network from Charlemagne the God, and the show is
really centered on making higher consciousness tangible and I use
a lot of my life as the case study for that.
I really study myself and study my process. I'm really
always in study of deeper spiritual work, and I kind
of I apply it and then I share how I
experienced it, and I invite other people in for the conversation.
(21:26):
And so we've had some really powerful guests, We've had
some really interesting stories, um, and I love to demystify
things that you know, maybe everyone isn't open to but
it has been a part of my life, like you know,
having your birth chart done and using that as a
useful spiritual tool. So I just did my humanity on
the show. I recently just did my human design chart. Actually,
(21:47):
oh yeah, I had an incredible, incredible soilitator of human
design on my show recently. Um we we've had different
spiritual teachers, acupuncturists, um, sexual healers, people that work with
blue healing, just really really expansive all the ways in
which you can heal. I I feature on my show.
(22:08):
So you know, even talking to you make it all
seem so easy and like you've just sort of come
to this place. Um along this like downhill, you know,
water pathway. Can you talk about some of the like
key obstacles that you've faced in the past couple of
years to get to where you are now. I don't
want people to Leaven think that it's always beds of roses. Um. Well,
(22:30):
so you know, here's the thing, it's always it is
always actually easy because it's always about switching the lembs
of perception. But easy does not mean puppies and rainbows.
You know, easy does not mean I'm positive all the time, right,
deep spiritual work, healing work is about also greeting your shadows.
So it's not easy in the sense that I just
(22:51):
you know, I'm just like, oh, love and lights. It's
like I'm also sometimes in in tears for hours, and
I'm greeting past versions of myself. I'm moving myself through
grief in meditation, I'm allowing myself to feel. Spiritual growth
is rooted and allowing yourself to feel and transcending those
(23:11):
feelings and dissolving any barriers that we have up against
receiving our own love. And so it's a it's a
work of the crevices. It's about getting into the darker,
deeper parts. That's the work of spirit. But it doesn't
have to be cloaked in fear, and it doesn't have
to be cloaked in difficulty. It is something where I
(23:31):
can wake up and say, Wow, I'm feeling really heavy today,
I'm feeling kind of down today. Okay, let me go
sit down, let me see where that is, what wants
to come out, what wants to be known to me?
What am I supposed to heal in this moment. It's
more about the work of diligence. I love that and
I'm this is just such a word and such a
(23:53):
message for so many because I think just hearing it
and planting those seeds UM helps people prepare them for
like how they can best heal self. Debby, I love
that you've come to this UM and approach this this
work which is a gift to so many, not only
as a way to form legacy, but also as a business.
Can you talk about how you've come to understand your
(24:15):
worth in this and how you price this out for
so many other wellness healers UM or spiritual leaders in
this industry. Yeah, thank you for this question. You know,
I think the biggest thing that I encounter when I
speak with people that are looking to specifically work in
wellness as their life's worker, as a path. Usually in
the beginning of it, there's the sphere of charging this spear,
(24:37):
of turning it into something that you monetize, turning into
a business. What I found is that really the deeper
layer of that is also spiritual opportunity to do shadow work.
You know, a lot of it, especially for women in
this space, is rooted in this idea of being a martyr,
this idea that has been modeled for us and thrust
upon our sutriarchy, that everything you do that is insert
(25:00):
pervious to others or that is for healing, it's just
you depleting yourself. But then no, no, no, that's yo.
Don't worry about me, you know, And I rebuke all
of that, like it's about a core tentative. Spirituality is
about energetic exchange. There should always be benefit from both
parties when doing business. And it's not selfish and it's
not wrong. It's a tenant of spirituality. What is the balance,
(25:24):
what is the receptive flow? The giving and receiving. It
has to happen in tandem. And so I think you know,
for any any of that are watching this and maybe
connecting to this work and struggling with prosperity, you want
to price yourself fairly and whatever that means to you, right,
But you also have to know that you deserve abundance,
(25:45):
that you are worthy, that the work you've cultivated and
the way you serve and help other people is absolutely
worth something, and you deserve to have a life of softness,
a life of ease, and a life of abundance as
well as you help others. You know, and so when
I think of my own work, like I do work
at various price points. Like I work in wellness at
an executive level, I also work on a talent level,
(26:07):
and I also sometimes do more intimate exchanges. And so,
you know, the way that I occupy space. The biggest
the biggest piece that's important to me in any work
that I do is that there's a debility inability to
democratize it for all that need it. And so I
might do that in a couple of different ways. If
I know that I am you know, contracted to speak
(26:30):
at an event or lead a retreat, and that retreat
may cost between five thousand and ten thousand dollars to attend,
I also try to make whatever I know that I'm
teaching there more accessible to people wherever they are, so
that they can do this work from home, so that
they can do this work for friends. So I try
to offer and create my teaching at different levels. So
(26:52):
an advanced case might be here, but then I also
will find a way to teach similar themes at maybe
a thirty dollar webinar a price point. So I want
to make sure that I'm meeting everyone where they're at.
But I am also available to maximize my energetic potential
um in each moment. Absolutely, and even I mean as
simple things as your podcast, it's still a gift. There's
(27:14):
still learning there, there's still ways that you can reach
and reach such other people as well. And I completely
understand this in um I started my career as a nurse,
so I completely understand the idea for especially for women
in this that we're just supposed to give endlessly and
care for others, you know, at whatever price points. So
I appreciate you, you know, speaking on that for so
(27:35):
many because I think it's it's a struggle for people
to understand is it okay to charge for this or
add value to something that should really you know, that
is such a gift. Yeah, And I think really research
to you know, find the industry standard of other people
where there are similarities, because I think something that is
happening now, largely because of social media, are still entrepreneurism
(27:58):
is really beautifully on arise and expanding. I have noticed
that some people are just making up prices, you know,
some people are just like I do this, it's five.
It's like okay, but how do we quantify what that costs?
So it's actually sustainable, right, because price gouging is not sustainable,
you know. So it's like I think that we should
(28:19):
still hold ourselves as at a level of dignity in
our offerings UM, and then also find plans to make
sure that the work that we're doing is available to
as many people as possible, irregardless of their socioeconomic background. Yeah. Absolutely,
And it's funny. I think there's a lot of different
platforms out there like clubhouse, etcetera, where everyone is basically
(28:39):
raising their flag as the expert putting setting their charges
and prices at whatever level. So it's also up to
us as consumers to do the research and find someone
that you're properly connected to that like yourself, has done
the work, has the expertise, has educated themselves over you know,
whatever amount of time they've been committed to UM being
in that industry. Deby, I feel like we haven't even
(29:01):
approached the tip of the iceberg with you, and I'm
so grateful for your time here today of course. Okay,
Money Movers, we're gonna take a quick break and be
back with more of the Money Moves podcast powered by Greenwood.
Thank you so much for tuning in Money Moves audience.
If you want more or a recap of this episode,
please go to the bank Greenwood dot com and check
out the Money Moves podcast blog. Money Moves is an
(29:29):
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