August 14, 2024 • 68 mins
In this episode, Cynthia Marks interviews Bibi Kasrai, who shares her journey from Iran to becoming an influential figure in the culinary and mindfulness spaces. Bibi discusses her upbringing in a unique and intellectual family, her experience during the Iranian Revolution, and her eventual migration to the United States through Moscow and Afghanistan. She highlights her professional journey, which includes working at the World Bank and studying at Harvard, before finding her true passion in cooking and teaching. Bibi also talks about her initiatives during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as creating content focused on happiness and minimalism, and her latest venture into organizing retreats that blend yoga, ancestral food practices, and art therapy. The conversation delves into themes of resilience, finding one's true self, and the importance of living a meaningful and happy life.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:05):
Hi, I'm Cynthia Marks.
I head up the Holistic
Psychoanalysis Foundationestablished by my late husband, Dr.
Bernard Bail.
Welcome to.
And now, love, Bibi comes to usfull of enthusiasm.
Welcome, Bibi.
She's creative, resourceful,smart and curious.
(00:28):
We are just getting to know one another.
But I can clearly feel the warmth and loveshe exudes.
I truly mean that Bibi left
Iran at the age of 17.
She ended up studyingat the University of Moscow
and later earned an MBA at Harvarduntil 2009.
(00:51):
Bibi was a journalist,a world traveler, and an executive
looking for some other sortof satisfactions.
She decided to hang up those diplomasand begin a new journey
with the goal of helping others
find inspiration and happiness.
So here you are.
Thank you. What a beautiful introduction.
(01:15):
And can you write it for me?
Well, it's all true, I think.
So there's so many things to talk about,and we're not going to get to all of it
today. No.
But I want to know how you ended up here.
That's a giant question.
How did you end up leaving Iran?
I mean, it sort of in a nutshell, you'regrowing up there from the age of 1 to 17.
(01:38):
You saw that country completely transform
and you lived in a situationwith your parents.
That was pretty unique.
I think, relativeto the rest of the community.
Tell us a little bit about all that.
Yes, it's a very open ended question.
It is going to takethe rest of the podcast thinking back.
(01:59):
Our perspective is differentthan living in that situation.
Looking back, I think I was very sheltered
in a very unique family.
You don't wake up and think, my parentsare famous or my parents are decent.
That no matter who you are,I parents are rich, my parents are poor.
(02:19):
You know, circumstances come and goand you realize certain things.
But your normal is your normal. Exactly.
Your normal is your normal.
You don't have an idea that I really amgrowing up in a unique type of family.
Very intellectual.
You know,my mom was a American learned designer,
(02:41):
you know, then goes to Paris and works,you know, into your studio.
Then comes to Iran.
My father was already famous at the time
as a contemporary poet in a countryknown for poetry, Like there were five
or six people startingthis new contemporary poetry movement.
(03:02):
But by the time my mom and my dad met,you know, she was very well
established in her career.
My dad was already famous for their time.
They married late.
When I come along,you know, not only it's me,
but I have an older sisterwho my parents adopted,
which was also very weirdfor Iran for their times.
(03:24):
You know, I mean,everything they did was so unconventional
that I didn't understand at the time.
Again, that's the normal.
So it's the three of us, me, my brother,my older sister,
my mom insist on putting usin a French school system,
which creates reallythe first tension between my parents.
(03:45):
My dad is like, No,she has to go to a normal school,
so she learns what our society is about.
Meet all sorts of peoplefrom all walks of life.
My mom, like know with your life style,we're going to be in trouble.
They have to learn other languages.
We are going to become one day.
You know, she saw the doomsday so he did.
(04:06):
Yeah.
And there was there was nothingreally publicized about that doomsday.
She just was. Yeah.
You know, my father was kind of alwayson the margin of being a dissident
poet, was censored, was certainjobs were not allowed for him.
So there was that.
So my mom was like, no, my kids have to bewell versed in languages.
(04:28):
And it just so happened that betweenthe three of us, I really loved languages.
So not only I went to a French school,but I wanted to learn more so Spanish.
So learning was given to usfreely, whereas other things
that spoiling kidsat that time for my peers
were not easily thrown at us.
(04:51):
They had the means to.
My mom had the verymy father now was a civil servant
who always cared about his poetry mostly.
But my mom, no, I mean, had a great careerand great clothing.
And I always say upstairs, downstairs,the upstairs of our house was like,
this lady's and this.
(05:12):
Back then, you know, we received the Vogue
and Elle and fashion magazines
and downstairs, all these revolutionarieswould come in the rooms,
feel the salons and talk about ideasand like dictatorship and this and that.
And I was like, I always say,I don't know how I didn't end up.
I am crazy. But, you know.
(05:34):
What do you do with a thirstfor both of those in my upstairs,
in my downstairsthat there's always something going on?
Grade The teacher said, you know,who do you know?
Do you have that in America?Who you want to become?
You write an essay? Yes.
You want to become when you grow up.
They gave us that.
And everybody wanted a doctor or engineer.
Astronomerwas like the big thing at the time.
And I literally wrote,I have a big dilemma
(05:58):
and they make you read thatin front of the class.
And I said, I had a dilemma upon which.
I reflected. All week.
I didn't know if I want to becomeSophia Loren or Ernest or Che Guevara.
The kids are looking at me.
The teacher panicked, called my parents.
It's like she can not say that name.
(06:19):
In school you are going to get in trouble.
And my father is like you.
Genetically, you are not, Loren,
You are not. Good luck.
So I grew up like that.
And we go to the national exam.
So the revolution happened.
We stayed after the revolution.
My parents being very idealist,thinking things are going to get better.
(06:40):
Society is not going to get worse.
It's going to get better.
That's what we all want to believe.
So what did you see see
changing in your communityor in your or in Iran?
I'm an atheist, but I'm not anti religion.
If you said I'm religious, I'm like,good for you, it helps you.
We saw the rise
(07:02):
of religious fanaticism little by little.
our big goal is to fight imperialism.
Well, let's wear the veillike no, it's not that.
All at school,all of a sudden things change.
We're in an all girl.
I was in school at school,and then I'm in an all girls school.
(07:22):
And French is bad now.
We should learn just Arabic.
Why we are Iranians?
Why should we learn Arabic?
And how old were you then? About?
I was 15.
16 when I switched.
All of a sudden, from five to age 16,
It's all Frenchschooling with Persian in a school.
(07:44):
And then now it's you go to the school
literally at the end of your streetand you wear something.
I would have.
Arguments, you know, in the Frenchschooling system, it's
all about curiosityor what they call it on the mall.
It annoys when you are like,why this works the way it does?
(08:05):
Why is this put like this?
What is composition? What is you?
The more what you ask, the better it is.
So it's like a ramped up curiosity. Yeah.
Very well said.
And then all of a sudden it's like, no.
The way you pray and the way you enterthe bathroom is with your left like.
Or I'm like. Not. I'm why we are teacher.
(08:28):
Why we all wear the veil in a classroomwhere we are all girls.
You say that it's not goodfor the eye of the man
to glance upon your hair,but we are all women.
You're asking too many questions.
So my great forI was always a very good student.
So everything 20 out of 20.
(08:49):
And then they could not subtract anything
from the facts at that timeother than give you the discipline.
Great.
I was 12 out of 20.
and my mom said, like, what's the thing?
And they said, because she hasso many question, she drives people crazy.
(09:10):
I want the American audience to hear this.
Our religion teacher said one day, Ladies.
As of today, if your parents ask.
You to peel cucumbers or eggplants
or zucchini, you should say no.
my gosh.
You say, my God, I didn't.
(09:31):
I honestlyit didn't even register with me.
I go home and we debate.
We are coming from a familywhere we debate.
You know,some families were like telling my dad,
Your kids have zero respect for you.
They always talkand and my father like that.
So what, we are at lunch.
(09:51):
And I said, you know what?
Something happened.
Like, my mom never askedme to peel anything any way
because I was not into that.
And I said, today our teacher said.
That you are at the agewhere if your parents ask you to peel
vegetables like cucumbers and eggplants,and so you should not do it.
(10:12):
My mom and dad were like made.
I remember this.
My dad, like said.
You know what?
Look, that's my mom is like, moody.
You go to the school, get their stuff out,we can teach them at home.
Between the two of us.
My mom said between the two of us.
Like we don't have enough.
We could teach her.
(10:33):
Well. I'll teach the other.
Not this one.
They are like, What good does it do?
And I am like, What?
My dad's nothing.
It's just sitting there thinking.
So I go back to school and I ask my.
Classmates because they grew up inthat system and they're like,
(10:54):
But then we debated.
I debate itwith people who came to our house
and at the time thought,this revolution is taking us forward.
And my dad always let me debatewith older leaders.
It's like, tell them I said, you know,
what would you feelif you had this always around your head?
You know, they're like, Well,our issues are bigger right now.
(11:17):
Our goals are big.
Later in life when, you know,I lived in the Soviet Union,
I understood that everything
has to be fought for right there.
And then if you think that somethingveers off and it's wrong, it's wrong.
So true experiences in life,we learned that.
(11:38):
But then I startedseeing the diminution of women
in that country and where we are going.
And prior to this experience,well this sort of evolved to be
when you were ten or nineyou didn't feel this
oppression of women in our house. No.
(12:00):
But it was there in Iran.
I didn't see it with the eyes of an adult.
But I can see nowother families of friends,
like when they did that in my household,
my father always, democracy is killing me.
You know, like whenever we did somethingor said something is like,
(12:22):
it's my doing,you know, I really didn't feel it.
I really never feltmy mother is oppressed.
I never felt me and my sister.
If anything, the opposite.
My aunt would say, why you makeMandela is my brother to my mom.
Like, why do you make him wash his socks?
But not the girl says,Because I don't want his future wife
(12:44):
to sayyour mom didn't do that to my daughters.
They couldn't take care of them,so I didn't see it.
Looking back, was it dare? Yes.
Well, I.
Guess so, because you mentionedthat some of the girls in your girls
school, just when it cameto the conversation about the cucumber,
already knew thatthat was not an acceptable thing to do.
(13:06):
Whereas in French school.
There was not per se, sex education.
But there were lots of foreigners
from other countries,you know, including a lot of French kids.
And yeah, we knew about sex.
I personally did not experience it,but I saw, for example,
(13:26):
somebody in therewhere you put your pencils and pencil box
and some pills like this numberedand they said, what is dieses?
That's for contraception. And I'm. Wow.
well, she had sex.
Never did it occur to my mind that
the cover story and this is even taboo
(13:49):
probably for me to say that as an IranianI would imagine.
And so would you say that.
Do you feel that when you when you startedthis conversation about the cucumber
and you knew that that is not an okaything, do you second guess yourself or
step over what you'd like to say and say,okay, do I really want to say this?
No, no, no, no, no, no.
(14:10):
Because I'm 58.
I have a daughter who is 23.
I just feel like everything.
If we don't shame people on eatingor exercising, we are not shaming them
for having healthy, healthy sexual life.
Yeah, Women in Iran.
My grandma was married when she was 14.
(14:33):
They came to ask for her.
Hand and I was listening to her.
I said one way like,How did you feel about that?
What did she say?
She said, I had a knot in my stomach.
They said, Tomorrowthey're going to my father.
You know, said to me, your dadand your to be married.
That's just like you cannot ask.
(14:55):
You cannot question your parents.
My sister was like,Did you ask no questions? No.
I asked my step mom. Like,what does he do?
And they said, he's a painter.
And I the only painter I had in my mind'seye was the guy who came twice a year
and painted the house.
And they looked terrible. God.
She didn't even imagine this painter,you know, like fine arts.
(15:19):
She said I was lucky the minuteI saw him from behind the window.
He looked very nice. Beautiful.
Was he much older than her? Yeah.
And did they remain married?
Yes. Yeah, very.
She said. You know, at the time,love was like that.
We got used to each otherand he took care of me.
(15:40):
And that would be kind of unusual for itto fall into a really good place.
No, some people.
Say that arranged marriages.
I have my own opinion,although my non arranged marriage
ended up in divorce. I have my opinion
about arranged marriages,which I mean, I could never do that.
(16:01):
So there was some amount
perhaps of matchmaking on parentsparts to see if this could be.
Yeah, the families are goodif you know, they check out certain, but
you imagine the trauma of a 14 year old?
Not at all.
I just can't even.
And then to knowand maybe you spoke with her about this
that this is going to be a traumatic,traumatic and scary experience.
(16:25):
But on the other hand,to not really question it, Right.
I am supposed to go through this
that 14 yearold might not have the wherewithal to say,
wait a minute,I've got some questions about this.
It doesn't feel right.
I mean, it didn't feel right.
But you're not allowed to question it.
and then the ladywho was supposed to take care of her.
Said, you know,I will always be. With you.
(16:47):
We go to Tehran, I take care of you,you know, things like that.
But talking of burn art and his theory
of the imprints in the womb, I alwaysI didn't talk to my grandma like that
because I was so youngwhen we left each other for the last time.
But if I had to.
Talk to her now, it's like the imprint.
With the first time she got pregnant, she.
(17:08):
Had the 16 year of age difference,which my oldest uncle and 18 with my mom.
I mean, they were like sisters.
Yeah, My mom took care of her to me.
That world that these people in Iran,they think the young brides, you know,
they're like I read the other day,an eight year old died of
(17:30):
hemorrhaging, bleedingbecause she was a child bride.
Yeah, that society does not sit
well, obviously, with someone like meand with this generation
and with this uprising that we see. Yes.
So I want to get on to youmoving out of Iran.
(17:51):
But but I have this question,which is knowing at me, I, from my
perspective, want all women to feel likethey have the same rights as every agency.
And I don't think all women feel likethey deserve the same rights.
And that could be because of this imprint
eons of mistreatment,a belief that matches
(18:12):
that of their husbandor the men around them.
From my perspective, that's not healthyfor women individually or at large.
But do we have the rightor how do we impose this better
life on these people who already thinktheir life is as it should be?
Curious about thatbecause who am I to instill
what I think is proper education?
(18:35):
I think education is the keyempowerment, love.
And maybe it starts with lovebecause you can't convince someone
to educate themselves.
Everything starts with lovebecause love makes us more curious.
Loves makes us more generous,love makes us more open,
courageous,willing to adapt and learn love
(18:58):
really love ithand-in-hand with education.
A lot of timeeducation goes with discipline
and my way or the highway and this way.
But to love which educationI see in the younger generation,
although they are likesome of the most oppressed population
I know in the world, in this systemthat's been in place for 45 years,
(19:22):
thanks to the Internet,thanks to social media,
thanks to what they see,there are a lot of bad stuff
they see also,but they are more opening up
and by opening up,they are more curious to devour
this new information and this new thingsif channeled in the right way.
(19:42):
I think they are learning.
I mean, I am working with a lot of kids
who now have been injured in Iranand or out a couple of them.
I have bonded really well with them.
One of them, thank God, after two years,just last week, this day, she got out
of Iranand out of Turkey and now into Germany.
(20:03):
And when you say injured hurtbecause they've expressed an opinion that.
Bullet's in their eyes,raped in the prison, injured
by their parents being given by arrangedmarriages, you know,
in the most deprived regions of Iran,like Baluchistan, even university,
even the worst form of universitywe have in Iran opened up her.
(20:26):
I said,How did you come from this family to here?
I mean, their journey.
She said, You know what opened my eyes?
It's stupid series on TV,which she's in Baluchistan.
And you know, the TV thing is in Tehran,the capital.
And the parents said to their kid,now that you have done your homework
(20:49):
and you had dinner and you gobrush your teeth and sleep, good dream.
She's like, I was the personnel.
I was the maid of my parents.
The fact that the kids preoccupationshould be their homework
and brushing their teethopened up a new world to me.
So I wanted that world.
I mean, the bar is this low. Yeah.
(21:10):
For her. Yeah.
Was to university.
Gets arrested, raped in prison, touching.
But working with them.
I see. Okay.
The world she knows so much is so bright.
So I have a glimmer of hopein this darkness that I see.
(21:31):
But I think they have to be injectedwith love.
So. And I think according to Bernard,basically
his work is to get us all to a placewhere we act from love.
And once we are unencumbered by the trauma
that was given to us even before birth,we can be that.
(21:51):
We can be that love.
We can operate from a place of truthabout love and I think that we can
at this point, we can only do itone individual at a time like you are,
and hope that hundreds of years from now,maybe we've improved as a society.
But I mean, I think a lot of uslook at this endeavor of trying to heal
(22:13):
women's position in the world and think,my God, that's just an impossible.
Question for you.
Because, I mean,you know how I learned about
Bernard's total accident,but why was he so.
Attacked. About this theory, Why
it was so controversial,Why it's not more widespread?
(22:34):
Why? I know it'sbecause it's not the pills you take.
But people go to therapy.
People go seek therapeutic methodsto heal themselves. Yes.
So why was he why his theory,
which is so beautiful, was attacked.
I think, on several different levels.
He was attacked.
Meanwhile,he always had a thriving practice,
(22:56):
so there was always a group of peoplewho were interested in his methodology.
For the longest time,he was treating his patients
through basically a Freudian method,but ultimately discovered
that he wasn't seeing successfor his patients and he wasn't
seeing success in his own treatmentbecause he was always being treated.
(23:18):
He was in supervision and was working with
some of the world's mostrenowned therapists, which was fabulous.
He had these great
intellectual conversations with them,but he walked away thinking, Well,
that was a great intellectualconversation, but have I grown now?
Haven't grown, haven't grown?
And he became more and more disillusioned
(23:38):
and he sat back and said,I'm just going to forget everything.
I'm just going to forget everything.
My patients aren't getting better.
I'm not getting better. And he.
How old was he when I think he was.
In his early sixties?I can't say for sure.
So we just started talkingwith his patients and asking his patients
to say, share their dreams.
And he started writing downthe information in their dreams.
(24:01):
And after hundreds and hundreds of
these interviews with his patients,he discovered
that everybody was sort ofcoming to the same thing,
that if you can figure out that your dream
is a conduit to your unconscious,
and in there liesthe real you and your dreams are provide
(24:24):
writing that keythe set of keys for you to get there.
Basically, they're saying, here'sthe trauma that you've had
and you keep dreaming about X, Y, and Zand that x, Y, and Z.
Those bits are trash in your barrel,so let's get rid of it.
He discovered that not all of this happenswhen you're three or four years old.
(24:45):
You come prepackaged when you're born.
You've already had to do thingsin a feeling way
to create survival for yourself.
You need to keep your mom safe.
She doesn't need to worry aboutall the stress that she's put on you.
You've decided to take this stressso that she's
okay so she can help you survive.
(25:05):
That idea of having been imprinted
by your experiencewith your mother in the womb
and once you are an infantand then as you progress as a child,
was not acceptable to his community,who was very much
wrapped up in a Freudian method,they didn't want to go there.
(25:26):
It just seemed too much.
I mean, first you have to agreethat there's an unconscious
and that your unconscious is giving youmessages.
You have to agreethat perhaps what you've been doing,
the way you've been treatingyour patients is not correct
or is just an adjunct, or thatthere's more, That's a lot to come to.
And how scary is that?
(25:46):
If I think about these things,am I going to lose my patients?
How do you establishthat completely new paradigm in a world
that's so set and so conservativejust didn't fly?
It didn't fly and he tried and tried.
He went to every conference.
He was a professor at UCLAand he was just shut down.
I can't believe.
(26:07):
That that's the part about his lifethat I don't his theory
I don't understand why it seems so
in a way intuitive to some of us.
But and to others, it's really scary.
I mean.
Because Freud was also controversial.
Yes, Controversial. Yes.
I told you the other day,sometimes the zeitgeist
(26:30):
or the tsunami is behind usand pushes us and our ideas forward.
And sometimes it's in our faceand it's early for the time.
I think so.
And he wasn't able to accomplishwhat he wanted to in his lifetime.
How sad it was for him.
It was such a disappointment.
And at the very end of his life,he said to me,
(26:51):
If you can move this forward in some way,please do.
And that's what you're doing.
He didn't burden me with it,and it took me some time to come around
to actually having the lights go offand the energy
come where I said, Yes,let's let's do this.
I mean, I really love it.Gives us courage.
That's exactly what I said.And that's all it is.
(27:11):
Because I'm not educated in this.
I mean, I'm a layperson.
I wasn't analyzed by this man,but I absorbed like a sponge
everything that he had to offerbecause he loved me so much.
And I was so kind by him.
No, no, I. Didn't know. That.
No, I am simplyhis wife and a giant sponge.
(27:32):
I dream every day. Is that normal?
I dream and I.
Everybody. Does every day.
Everything that when I tell people,they're like.
And some of them are scarybecause they are so scary.
Do I seem like an outlier to people?
Well, and everybody dreams every day
or every night,but most of us don't believe we do.
(27:54):
Those of us who believe we do don'tremember them often enough.
And I think there are ways
that those of us who don't remembercan train ourselves to remember.
But now what are we going to dowith all this information?
I mean, it's completely valuable,
but we aren't trained ourselvesto know what to do with our dreams.
As far as I can see, the authority onthis is Bernard,
(28:16):
and we have this little group of peoplewho know that this message that he wanted
to share with the world is preciousand they're trying to move it forward.
We've got some young therapists
that are treating their patientswith this methodology.
But the reason we're hereis to make that grow, whatever that means,
even if it means as individuals,
(28:36):
we just become curious about our owndreams and write them down and
and truly believethat they are something to be respected
and that there is information therethat can help us grow.
Thank you for sharing the story.
I'm interviewing you.
I know. I'm so sorry.
This is all about. You.
Know. It's great.
I think it's it's fascinating.
(28:58):
I'm sorry if I took no direction.
But what's going to happenhere is I can't always be interviewing
this small group of peoplethat know so much about Bernard.
I want to interview people like you.
You're so unique and you have a giftthat can be given to the world.
And you're an example of living a life.
Now, I'mnot sure that you always felt this way.
(29:20):
It seems like maybe you did.
That comes from a place of feelingthat you know
that the best pathyou can walk starts from a place of love.
So you know that.
And if we can help people understandthat Bernard's work gets us there,
then seeing what you're doingis nothing but motivation.
I cannot get such a huge credit because
(29:42):
although I grew up in a very my parentsnever told us what we should do,
even when we asked them, What do you thinkwhen I grow up I should do?
They said, Whatever you wish to do.
My brother one at one timesaid he loved magic as a kid.
He said, I want to be a magician.
My dad said, Become the best magicianyou get.
And my mom would.
(30:03):
Say, How much?
When you tell himthis is going to take this.
And run with what you want.
Our plan to work in the circus is like.
However, because I was good at schools,
meaning good to the teachers,good to my parents.
Then I became good to my bosses.
Then I became a good employee.
I became a good wife.
I became a good you know,nobody is a good mother ever.
(30:25):
Because if kidsmake you feel like poop, but,
you know,because of all these things at some.
Age is like why I.
Fulfilled my duty to everyone. What?
What do I want? What does Bibi want?
What makes me happy?
I mean, you go to to school.
I wanted to be a journalist.
(30:46):
Then certain things happen.
Certain things change.
Life throws curveballs at you,so to speak.
Then I became I said, okay,I work for the World Bank.
Then my boss again, I was a good employee.
My boss is like.
you should get your.
MBA and you should go to Harvard.
Harvard Business School. Why?
(31:06):
I have a masters. Why?
no, no, no.
Trust me, in America, they respect him.
Okay, so because of him, you go, and thenyou come out there like, you're so good.
You should do marketing and.
Okay, but is that what I really want?
Then you do that, you excel at that you'regood at that Is that now you make money.
(31:26):
And because you make money and you paythe mortgage and you pay the bills.
so you're good.
No, none of this matters.
And then finally I said,
for stress relief,I cook and everybody loves my cooking.
And what if I cooked for children andI taught them and then adults go and then.
Everybody says,
I want to become a.
Cook?
You know, 16 years ago,you were a vice president.
(31:49):
Now they look at you as their mateor as their cook.
They put all this.
They inject their own beliefsand their fears into you,
and you have to fight with that.
Again, this tsunami right now, everybodywants to be a cook on the on Instagram.
You know, like whatever.
So you do that and you are finally,little by little, one spoon at a time,
one recipe at the time you find yourselfand you say, I'm good at that.
(32:12):
And they like that.
Then doesn't mean anything.
At my age.
You transform again, you change yourself.
You don't have to be the. Best at it.
You can be the happiest at it.
And you do that and you are like,You get divorced.
You're like, I'm never going to fallin love again because love is bullshit.
You're not. But that's B.S.
(32:33):
If life is this energy given to us,that is called life or Chee
or whatever is in youfor as long as you breathe.
Life is beautiful. Yes.
Tell us again what that
says.
You really want to know that? Yes.
Our reason the gazebo lasts.
(32:53):
Then they get all the toshka He did,and the Paul body just got RPF roses.
Roxanne showed that her Koran paydoes that in the home, which has the home.
She got no home lost.
Yes, Yes. Life is beautiful.
That's all it says.
But it's a part of one of my father'sepic poems
about writtenin one of the darkest points in his life.
(33:17):
And Iran's history about doesn't matterwhat happens.
Your brother is in prison,your friends are getting executed.
You live in extreme poverty.
Life is beautiful.
Life is an eternal bonfire scenefrom everywhere.
If you feed it,it's for everyone to be seen.
(33:39):
If not, it dies.
And it's your responsibilitythat you didn't keep the fire alive
That spreads that message I just started.
I'm not into tattooing.
I'm not a Gen Z or I'm not a millennial.
I just, you know, the last two yearsthis has been my constant.
So I finally said, you know, I'mgoing to have it tattooed as part of me
(34:03):
because it's really good reminder.
It is.
And it is part of you.I mean, you're living that life.
I'm trying to until I don't want to,you know, all of us, when we come
to this podcast or social media,we have an alter ego
that we want to show off to the worldthat I am here now, am better than you.
And then you turn, you go behind the door.
(34:24):
You can come.
The life is not about theI have plenty of things
I've done badly that if given the chance,I will try to do better.
That's the best thing I can do.
I can feed a little bit of fire.
I can be better.
I can mend amends with people.
A year ago, I went to a family memberor ex family member.
(34:47):
I said, You know,I want to invite you for lunch
and I want you to sit in front of meand tell me why you think I'm an asshole.
my. Goodness.
They didn't want to take that meeting,you know?
So it's okay.
I do what I have to do and people all.
It's their responsibility.
(35:07):
If they want to live angry or they want tolive happy, that's the best we can do.
So we are not perfectand we don't live in the perfect world.
And we all have had childhood traumas.
I am lucky enough to have learned thatI have PTSD.
You know, the dayI've done a lot of therapy,
(35:28):
but the day my therapist said,it was very funny.
She didn't even say, I am I know.
Is like, I'm building. And like,I put PTSD.
I'm like, PTSD.
Isn't that for soldiers and whatnot?
It's like, no, it's for a kidwho saw her father arrested at age five
and her aunt at age nine and at age 12,So people coming and showing their
(35:52):
torture marks.
No, that's not that'syou can see the best parents in the world.
Yes. You were in the most secure roomor family or writing or whatnot.
No, it comes back to haunt you.
You have to get rid of your anger,your traumas, love. Yes.
(36:12):
But it is really something.
How much we even, I think, unconsciouslyprotect our experiences,
because whatever that isand all that trauma that you experienced,
that was your experience,that was your normal.
And if you speak to it, somebody elsemight say, my God, that's that's trauma.
How do how are you even sitting before me?
(36:34):
But we're so good at resilient.
Yeah.
And to delete.
Yeah,but that's we can't just keep doing that
because we're just perpetuating
the issues, the war, the mistreatment,the poverty, all of that.
People who resist.
In your cultureless in the American culture
(36:56):
going to a therapist are talking aboutit is like playing tennis.
But in some cultures it's so much taboo.
It's like, I'm not crazy.
I don't have any issues and look at me.
I make so much money,look at me, I'm so gorgeous.
Look at my wife and my pool and my house.
Why do I need therapy?
(37:18):
We Americans are like that too. Really?
I believe so, yes.
I think there's just so much resistanceto looking at oneself, to not saying that
that what you present tothe world is not a presentation
of the perfect life of happiness,and it's glowing on the outside.
But open those doors.
Yeah.
(37:38):
I mean, you see these postcardsyou guys send every year during Christmas?
Everybody looks like the Ralph Lauren.
Yes. And wingslike angels behind them. Yes.
And then the next year they got divorced.
And all those ideas thatthis sort of perfect Thanksgiving dinner.
And it's almost as if you're right.
(37:58):
You have that, too. Yeah.
It's almost as if for part of my life,I would keep that card over there and
it's Thanksgiving and go back to itand make sure I've got all those right
elements in that photographthinking that I could just
transfer that to my life now.
So I'm going to shift a little bit.
So you ended up going to Moscowand how old were you then?
(38:21):
Well, another trauma, because five years
after the revolution,they came to arrest my father.
We were at home and he wasn't.
And by the time he realizes that we arearrested, he's coming.
And then they said, no,they're no longer here.
(38:42):
He they realize they think that the personwho drove my father
didn't see the car that my uncle camewith is like, they're gone probably.
And they left.
He took my father to hide him somewhere.
And the Guardians of the Revolution
who were with us and we were on their homearrest.
(39:03):
They gave up
and we went to my grandma's house,They sealed the house and everything.
So a lifetime of memory behindthose closed doors.
And we go to my grandmaand my mom is masterminding our
our escape from Iran with smugglers.
We are French educated.
So we thought of going to France.
(39:24):
The smugglerstook us to Afghanistan, to the Pakistan,
and there was war in 83 in Afghanistan.
So we were there.
And from there we it took us a long time
and no hope to go anywhere near France.
So they made us fake documents, Afghani
(39:45):
documents to send us as studentsKhadra future
Khadra of their revolution to Moscow.
But lucky for us, the perestroika
or Gorbachev came soon afterwe were there.
Otherwise, I would have definitely beenone of those who end up in the gulag.
(40:07):
because of my march.
Yeah.
And the country that we saw us growing up.
my God.
It's on the other side of the Caspian Sea.
The things of the revolution.
Everybody has education.
Everybody has health care,everybody has a home.
Good things are happeningwhen people are treated as equal.
And at Moscow State, the very intellectualI must say, Milia,
(40:30):
the school of Journalism.
You know, I learned Russianin a very accelerated method.
I go to school very sick, very different,very from the way we dressed, you know,
coming from kind of like comfortable upper
middle class to looking like a babushka.
And we see everything around us.
(40:51):
And then you look, you know,I again, as a curious child,
I look at the placeswhere the system are rotting.
The termites are eating up as easyas asking like,
how come we don't have things to eat?
But like, this kid, that kid,their fathers, their parents are diplomats
and they have a special storeand like, a special store, like,
(41:14):
you know, although my Russianwas not up to par to them,
they really helped me was a great peoplethink, I was like, starved.
But yeah, it was a different lifestyle,but intellectually very stimulating.
The kids would comewhen they got to like foreign literature.
I was a bookworm, so they would ask meif we had to return Manhasset.
(41:37):
They would ask me about himor if we had to do Balzac
or Baudelaire or whatever was in the worldliterature.
They would ask me questionsand I would tell them.
So you were the CliffsNotes? Exactly.
I was the cheat,not exactly the CliffsNotes.
So they wouldthen take me and introduce me.
(41:59):
They were like.
let's go sneak into Bulgakov's house.
And Bulgakovwas forbidden in the Soviet Union.
And they we snuck in.
Now it's the Bulgakov museum.
Tell us what that means.
Well, Bulgakov was also a dissident,
and his masterpiece was Masterand Margarita.
It's a love story,allegory of everything that happened.
(42:23):
And he was forbidden.
And they gave me a copy,and they helped me read it.
And they took me to this places
or that many sages of artists underground,they took me.
So this coincidedI was really riding the wave.
Gorbachev came to our school and gavea speech, you know, like this whole thing.
(42:45):
So it was amazing.
What a rich.
Experience, that journey as a journalistand then opening up of the Soviet
Union and working, that was very powerful.
Then I finishand I think, now finally I go to France.
But no, another setback.
I can't go to France this timebecause I have a
(43:07):
Afghani passport and France was not there.
So then one thing and anotherand somebody says, go to him.
I got an invitationfor a wedding of a cousin and I go
with nothing like literally nothing,
because in Afghanistan now, the Mujahideenand the Taliban are coming to power.
If I go back.
(43:27):
Yeah.
They know I'm not Afghani.
What happens to us?
I can.
And my father said, Bibi,you have to get out of here.
My mom got off out of there, wentto Vienna, to her sister to get us out.
There were glitches there.
Anyway, long storyshort, by miracle and by me being me
like accidental,I'm like the Forest Gump of life.
(43:49):
You know, I'll go to the American embassywith a terrible French accent.
I do not speak English very well.
It's like, you speak French?
I say, yeah, I speak French.
They happen to speak French.
You know, I got a visa.
I got a visa, a tourist visa to come here
and stayed with my mom's familyin Fairfax, Virginia.
(44:13):
And my visa is about to expireand being deported.
I filed for political asylum.
I went to look for a job.
I got a job at the World Bank.
How I got that job is a wholeNetflix series and where it got me.
So, you know, riding waves of lifethat was filled with trouble, too.
(44:34):
I mean, that was not the American dreamas we see it in the movies.
And for example.
I mean, literally my first apartmentwith a roommate,
my first salary, I was doing
slave work at odd hours.
I was paid $600 a month.
(44:56):
I had to get an apartment in Virginia
with a roommate to pay 300,
and the rest of the 300 was bus passand the same baloney sandwich every day.
and things like that.
And you were going into DC? Yes.
Well,you were working for the World Bank then?
Not at the beginning.
(45:16):
Not when I got the I.
Yeah.
No, that led to that later,which was a lucky break.
I was from 630 600 a month.
You know, justthat's a change in lifestyle too.
So what was it, 1992?
That's great.
Yeah.
Well, and you had these parentswho sort of lived on the edge of
(45:39):
what was typical
or maybe not even on the edge.
I mean, didn't that giveyou kind of a good base or a strength
to know that you could alwaysaccomplish something?
I'm not even speaking financially,but you could find your way.
Yes. Yes.
Although the Afghanistan and Soviet Union,
(46:01):
something I never had growing upwas financial anxiety.
That thing changedbecause in Soviet Union,
for example, the first three or four days,I didn't even
nobody took care administratively asI didn't have anything to eat, you know?
And then the value of moneyfor the first time without my parents
(46:25):
became very apparent to methat you starve to death
if you don't have moneyor if you have 90 rubles
a month, and then you don't manage that,you know. Yes.
That kids.
You don't think about. The captive.
Yes. Yeah.
So that gave me financial trauma, whichI had actually therapy helped a lot with.
(46:47):
But the love of parents,I think, love the security
that love envelopes you as a child,which is very important.
That sense that yeah, whatever happensyou can write, you can overcome.
Yeah. Yeah.
As long as you're workingfrom that place of love.
So you were here in Fairfaxand then you ultimately ended up
(47:11):
with the World Bank and then you went onto get your Harvard MBA
and by then, were you no longerworking with the World Bank?
Yeah.
My boss was like an amazing person
and became my first mentor.
Really, in America.
And he was going to leave to goto Indonesia or Singapore at the time,
(47:35):
I think.
And I was frustratedbecause I was so involved
with the privatization in the Soviet Unionthat I saw the corruption
and I saw the methodology
used that really impoverishedthe good people.
I knew because I would go monthlyto the Soviet Union and back.
And I saw the methodologythat at the time I didn't agree with it.
(47:58):
So there was there was some amountof internal discomfort
associated with the jobyou were doing. Yes.
And one thing I learned isif something goes against the grain
and this is my dad,bless his soul and his art,
was that maybe when you go down a path,the first few steps as you,
the rest is gravity takesyou don't go there.
(48:21):
If only we could all recognize that.
Yeah, Life is comfortable.
They pay you, You fly business class,you fly first class.
You are a 24 year old.
They treat you as a queen.
You rub shoulders with Gorbyand ministers.
Don't fool yourself.
My teachers were starved.
My professors, good people.
They were starving.
(48:41):
I remember one time I went to visit themand I had this.
I mean, it was so humiliating for meand I had to put $100 bills in envelopes.
And when I said goodbye to themto leave it on the table so it was awful,
or how my siblings and my fatherlived there, I mean, yeah, they.
(49:03):
Went through that humiliation.
It was probably still somethingyou just internally to do.
I mean, to be ableto help them on some level.
When I confided in my boss,I said, You know,
I travel with people who, on their expense
report to put their shaving creambecause to be reimbursed.
And then I cannot reconcile.
(49:23):
The two says, Baby,you cannot change the system.
You can just get yourself out of it.
You know, if I stayed right now,I would have been a retired
member of the World Bank.
I would have been seen, like you know,some big deal with a good retirement.
I just I couldn't.
So he told me,you have to apply to business school.
(49:45):
I said, business school.My business school.
Like I said.
I have a master's degree.
It's like nobody gives a shit about Moscowstatus.
It's a great university. It truly is.
But here you are in the United States.
Here you know, in 94it was like, Go, just do it.
You're smarter.
Look at these assholes you work with.
You're smarter than themall. Just go do it.
(50:05):
I said, I don't have the money.
It's like,Have you heard of the Harvard Endowment?
I said, No. What is it?
Obviously, I got a scholarship.
Yeah, to go. So then that took you.
You now you were out of the World Bankand you were moving on to.
Boston, Massachusetts,and started this school.
Everybody'ssuper smart, and so it's smart.
(50:28):
But isn't that interesting howwe just assume everyone else is smarter?
Yeah, though.
Well, I'd never assumed everybody smarter.
I didn't, honestly.
And then I go to this schoolbecause my background
is in the humanitiesand they all came from this.
They were or they were didjunior work at Goldman Sachs.
(50:50):
Rice. And McKinsey.
And like they knewthe answer to every case that.
Like, who are these people?
What are they talking about?
so I'm going to fail.
And I took me to a very steep learningcurve.
I'm so because my family, if you ask themwhat is the stock market
or what is profit and loss and not their.
(51:12):
World.
Cash flow and stuff like that,it was like, Yeah, another world.
And I learned all of thatand I learned very fast.
And I went again.
My life took a left turn on Albuquerqueand I just, you know,
and I became thatsome marketing executive and.
(51:32):
I did a like I did that a few years.
Good money, good salary, good career.
I'm like, this is not for me.
We raised the money.
They're like, Do you want to moveto Los Angeles and do that from here?
I said, No, I will not raisemy kids in Los Angeles one day.
I said, Is that my purpose in life?
To make other people, rich people,richer and famous people more famous?
(51:56):
And we had the at the time
my kids were littleand we were having dinner and I said,
this cucumbersand tomatoes are very special.
I want you to first smell themand then eat them.
And they're like I said.
what would you thinkthis tomatoes are grown.
You said in the supermarket.
(52:16):
okay. Yeah.
It's time for me to rethink all of this.
Harvard's cooking girl was born.
That's quite the moment.
It's almost a message from the universe.
But that's how I pretty much
my journey is that, yeah,I did 12 years of that,
(52:38):
and it grew from kidsto parents From parents.
Then I built the first corporateteambuilding events around cooking in
the world, the first corporate teambuilding, breaking bread, companionship.
The word companion is wheatbread, breaking bread.
I did that around corporate,so from all over the world are now
(52:59):
looking to come to Harvard cooking girl,bringing their teams.
Then COVID happenedand COVID put a stop on everything.
How long did you have your Harvard course?
It was the longest employment.
I it still is because I'min some sort doing that.
Yeah. Yeah.
But the break was of COVIDand for the first time I work from home
(53:22):
behind the computerand I help a young entrepreneur who
social change entrepreneur,who wanted to do what my dream always was
to democratizing, giving $1 at a time,
everybody giving just $1 a monthwhat's called the dollar donation club.
And I helped him to that to eradicate
(53:45):
plastic from our oceans, you know,clean up the environment, do that.
And this was because you couldn'tdo what you had been doing for 12 years.
From home and meetingswith people on Zoom meetings.
That's not for me.
That's a. Tough one.
Yeah. The 12 years of your Harvard.
Cooking.
Girl,that was something that was satisfying.
Very much so.
(54:05):
I love the connection with people,the banter,
the joy, you know, throughcooking, teaching, mentoring.
So many students, like five or 600
people came underand went from all over the world.
People who spare.
It's weird, like people from Yale andPrinceton and Harvard and SDSU and UCLA.
(54:28):
I know their parents were like, Why.
Are you doing this?
Why don't you do all the love of it all?
It was very gratifying.
It was really the most gratifying thing.
And then I after COVID, I start,I lost everything.
Obviously, I lost my studio.
I had to donate all the equipment,everything I invested in.
(54:49):
And then I started again from my kitchenand then renting a kitchen
and doing stuff that I love to do.
And so this was different.
Yeah, in a different way.
But still, I do a lot of corporate.
And then I started my retreatbecause I saw there is so much thirst
(55:10):
for not being one person in one framedoing one thing.
Because during COVID, I did thiscapitalist series with the minimalism
and like leaving lightsand leaving really with less.
So capitalist, not capitalist.
Yeah, capitalist,you know, it's the best ism.
(55:31):
How are you Happy.
And does that have something to dowith taking a moment to find happiness in
something that you might have otherwisenot even thought about or felt about?
Like what? What does a capitalist do?
The biggest influence on my lifeis the influence of Japanese culture.
You know, the ikigaifinding or happy place.
(55:53):
Where is your happy place?
Not happy in the way. Like, I'm happy.
I have.
We are.
I'm high but happy in You do something
you obviously have to provide for yourselfand your family.
You have to be paid.
You have to be happy.
You have to be content with what you do.
It has to be shot.
It has to have meaning.It has to have purpose.
(56:15):
So ikigai, as I learned ikigai,
I started to not teaching it,but preaching it.
Part of that during COVIDwas making little videos of that.
I'm happy to list dot com ones.
I walk a coffee,you take things a moment you take
for yourself a conversationlike we have doing all of these.
(56:38):
And people are like,Why don't you teach it to us all?
So in one of those experiences,let's say the bonsai video,
are you explaining to your listenersor viewers
how to find the happinessin that experience?
No, it's just mostlyyou don't even see me.
You see my hands again.
The Japanesethink it's about negative space,
(57:00):
not the things you say or show the stuffin between the lines that you see.
You know, to cultivate a bonsai, it's
like cutting your own fingers so you can,you know, make the things grow.
It's about the experience
of doing something and cuttingeverything looks beautiful.
But when you have negative space,it looks even more beautiful and things
(57:23):
like that. Arts therapy.
Why we do yoga or visualization is not
because you have to show to someoneYou can do this right?
Get in the most twisted positionit possibly can.
Yeah, It's taking it to a placewhere there's some amount of comfort,
not physical comfort, but.
But emotional comfort coming from it.
So is that what Ikigai? Yeah.
(57:45):
Is is finding your path
to finding your placewhere there is emotional satisfaction.
A good place in the world.
If I have to make a translation of it,it's what speaks to me.
And that means being good to yourselfas an individual.
Which then actuallyit's like a Venn diagram
(58:06):
when they want to explain to youthe ikigai and then imagine a drop here
that tricklesif you're good, it's the butterfly effect.
If you are in your happy place,people around you are.
I always say,I want my friends to be happier than I,
because when your friends aremiserable, you are miserable
in order for you're miserable.
(58:27):
you're so selfish.
And then.
Here again.
Describe that to us.
It's a more northern Scandinavian idea.
Perfect guy.
Not in the same sense.
I lost a lot.
I lost pretty much 90% of my
I don't want to call it my wealthbecause my wealth is not defined by that.
(58:50):
But I had to lose my houseand I became a minimalist.
So I just gave away all my booksother than the books
that were assigned for me,not because I read a book.
It was before Marie Kondoor what's her name?
Yes, the the organized fashion specialist.
I didn't even know her at the time,but ten or 12 years ago.
(59:12):
So I got rid of a lot of things.
But what motivated youto get rid of your books?
Because I wanted to leave, to be happy,to live with less
and then see where I see my comfort.
When I started getting rid of stuff,
it was like having less weighton my shoulders to the clothes.
(59:33):
You don't.
Wear the.
Shoes you don't need the books.
You read the books.Okay, It's here and here.
So could you really feel a change inside?
amazing.
I live in the people who judge youand don't know you.
They're like,Are you happy in a two bedroom house?
I'm like, Yeah, I use this room to sleepin this room to entertain.
(59:55):
And my kitchen and, my office,
I could live with less.
Honestly, I feel like this place,if I ended up here,
I can live here very happy.
So when you when you transitioned to this,you had come from a place
where you basically lostalmost everything.
When you lost almost everything, I think
(01:00:15):
a lot of us would be panickingor coming from a place from fear.
And maybe you did too.
But how did youhow did you get yourself out of that?
Or were you just forced tobecause you had now all of these things
that were completely different financially
and you couldn't support the lifethat you had, the way that you had?
Of course I'm scared, you know.
Of course,when you have two kids in private
(01:00:37):
colleges, when you lose your studio,you lose your house,
you're hit with a lawsuit,you feel all of these things.
I would be a liar if I said I didn't.
But it's also the power of love, the lovein your friendships, in your community
that supports you when you supported them,the love of your companions
(01:00:59):
In the worst time in Afghanistan,my mom had a lot of anxiety
about where my kids are going to end up,and my father always said
they're going to end up well,and my mom had a fight with him.
So how are you.
Always so sure?
And his answer was.
Because we were good people.
And that to mewas such an unrealistic answer.
(01:01:21):
But now I remember thatbecause we were good people.
And look at what happened to you,
you know, partially because of thatof coming from good people.
So this life that you live now with less
accouterment is different.
It's more satisfying. Is it is it better?
Are you happy? I am happy.
(01:01:42):
When all the people I have unresolved
issues with become happy with me or with.
Themselves.
So that may mean that they become happy
with themselves,but still unresolved with you.
Yeah. That's got to be hard. Yeah.
Because you have to learnthat it's out of your control.
(01:02:02):
That's hard.Yeah. Yeah, that's for me is hard.
Do I have existential problems? Yes.
Do I pose as somebody who is happy?
I wake up in life.
I don't love you.
I want that guy on the movie set.
No, but I try to remember.
People think I have too much empathy,but it helps.
Too much empathy helpsyou because when something happens,
(01:02:25):
you put yourself in the shoesof the person who has lost a child
or the person who has lost a dear one or.
And you have to do that in orderto be coming from a place of love.
Exactly. Exactly.
I don't even understandwhat too much empathy would be.
Some people say you get too investedin other people's problems.
(01:02:46):
You just want, I am a problem solver.
I'm a little bit like men.
I am not my girlfriend.
No, I'm not one of those girlfriendswho you say, this happened.
I would say, yeah.
my God.
too bad.
I'm not like that.
And it's badbecause it irritates some people.
I'm like,let's do this. Let's have a plan.
(01:03:07):
Let's do that. Now, what about this?
What about you do thisand they don't want to hear that.
I see.
But that is a sort of empathy.
I think it is. Yeah, but I don't know.
We all have issues, but having honestly,
what I come to understandby the fact that you have less.
You have less to worry about.
(01:03:28):
my gosh, what a relief that is.
There aren'tso many balls to hold in the air.
I don't worry if I leave my door open.
Like if they come, what are they?
no. There are a couple of thingsI really like.
They go back to my childhood, but like,what are they going to steal?
They're probably going to leave somethingand go.
And the more I leave it, the more like.
Last week I took the coffee like my friendsaid, What's the.
(01:03:51):
Poor coffee table to you?I said, I don't know.
I just got rid of the coffee table.
I put it to Tammy flooring and,you know, like cushions.
And I like I like that.
So the less you have,the less you want to have.
So you're sharing this.
You've learned so muchfrom living this way
with anybody who wants to pay attention.
So how do we find out about you?
(01:04:12):
You're still operating as the capitalist.
And so if we Google you.
yeah.
You're there.
I operate as the capitalist dot com.
I operate at the Harvardcook as the Harvard cooking girl.
I operate on Instagram as everybody else.
I ever since Instagram existed,I had maybe 3000 followers.
(01:04:37):
The next day I wake up,I have 40,000 followers.
my God. In like 90 days. Why?
Because something somewhere I said that
either did for someone orI mean, people who don't believe in karma.
Honestly, you do something,and next thing you know, a friend
like Bobby or Seun come in and get like,you should do this.
(01:04:57):
Listen to podcastsyou should do. I'm like, Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you for it'snot soliciting is that and I operate.
I hope I can operate one dayas the best version of me.
Well, I think you have a lot to offer.
You think?
Yes. And I think we need. That to my kids.
(01:05:19):
You could say that to my kid.
Okay, well, let's fact each other.
Children.
So you also are working onI'm sure this is first
small groups, because a retreat can reallyonly be these small groups.
But is that something newthat you're doing?
Very new.
I just want to have it's an experimentfor myself to get 12 people.
(01:05:41):
Women only. Women only.
They don't know each other.
They probably don't know me.
I want to offer yoga.
I want to offer curated talks about
I believe that the futureis going to be ancestral.
I think we are going to go backappreciating slow food, appreciating life
(01:06:02):
with no cell phones,appreciating one on one conversations,
appreciating the nature that feeds us
so that in every molecule we eat,there is no microplastics.
I believe we are going to get there.
I want to believe.
I want to believe that, yes.
I hope we don't climb up this hilland reach disaster before we get back to.
(01:06:22):
Yeah, I hope the climate changeis going to we are going to help.
It's not going to resolve itself. No.
But we need situations like thiswhere people believe us.
So I want to create this curated talksabout these issues, but I want to blend it
with food from the blue zone is yoga
visualization, sun beating, art therapy.
(01:06:44):
How I heal and shoot my souland teach it to other people.
How we make productsthat are good for our skin.
But we can do it at the kitchen table,things like that.
It may be an experiment like the wayI started over Cooking Girl and go
somewhere.
It may fall flat on its facebecause people don't see any value in it.
(01:07:05):
Well, you're just starting this up, right?
Yeah, well,I'm very curious to see how it goes.
And so your plan is that during the courseof a retreat, is it a one day ritual?
You'll go through several different. Yes.
And and your your guests would then
maybe recognize themselves in two or threeor all of the events of the day
(01:07:26):
and start to see a source of happinessor well-being or comfort.
Obviously, those that are coming
are certainly curiousabout improving some aspects of life.
It's me.
There are people like not they go leave us
and they dream that what they knowin their bones is good.
And sometimes again I go back,sometimes the zeitgeist is ready for it,
(01:07:49):
and sometimes they're like,What did she say?
Yeah, not ready.
Let her aside.
Well,I think you have so much to offer us.
And I am so gratefulthat you were here today, and I'm excited
to talk to you more.
I want to learn more from you. boy.
Yeah.
No, that's the old boy.
That's the whole point of this.
(01:08:09):
So we're going to have more conversationswith Bibi.
So please join us again and.
We look forward to having you commentand talk to us about what you think of.
And now, love. Bye for now. Thank you.
Hi, I'm Cynthia Marks.
I head up the Holistic
Psychoanalysis Foundationestablished by my late husband, Dr.
Bernard Bail.
Welcome to.
And now, love, Bibi comes to usfull of enthusiasm.
Welcome, Bibi.
She's creative, resourceful,smart and curious.
(00:28):
We are just getting to know one another.
But I can clearly feel the warmth and loveshe exudes.
I truly mean that Bibi left
Iran at the age of 17.
She ended up studyingat the University of Moscow
and later earned an MBA at Harvarduntil 2009.
(00:51):
Bibi was a journalist,a world traveler, and an executive
looking for some other sortof satisfactions.
She decided to hang up those diplomasand begin a new journey
with the goal of helping others
find inspiration and happiness.
So here you are.
Thank you. What a beautiful introduction.
(01:15):
And can you write it for me?
Well, it's all true, I think.
So there's so many things to talk about,and we're not going to get to all of it
today. No.
But I want to know how you ended up here.
That's a giant question.
How did you end up leaving Iran?
I mean, it sort of in a nutshell, you'regrowing up there from the age of 1 to 17.
(01:38):
You saw that country completely transform
and you lived in a situationwith your parents.
That was pretty unique.
I think, relativeto the rest of the community.
Tell us a little bit about all that.
Yes, it's a very open ended question.
It is going to takethe rest of the podcast thinking back.
(01:59):
Our perspective is differentthan living in that situation.
Looking back, I think I was very sheltered
in a very unique family.
You don't wake up and think, my parentsare famous or my parents are decent.
That no matter who you are,I parents are rich, my parents are poor.
(02:19):
You know, circumstances come and goand you realize certain things.
But your normal is your normal. Exactly.
Your normal is your normal.
You don't have an idea that I really amgrowing up in a unique type of family.
Very intellectual.
You know,my mom was a American learned designer,
(02:41):
you know, then goes to Paris and works,you know, into your studio.
Then comes to Iran.
My father was already famous at the time
as a contemporary poet in a countryknown for poetry, Like there were five
or six people startingthis new contemporary poetry movement.
(03:02):
But by the time my mom and my dad met,you know, she was very well
established in her career.
My dad was already famous for their time.
They married late.
When I come along,you know, not only it's me,
but I have an older sisterwho my parents adopted,
which was also very weirdfor Iran for their times.
(03:24):
You know, I mean,everything they did was so unconventional
that I didn't understand at the time.
Again, that's the normal.
So it's the three of us, me, my brother,my older sister,
my mom insist on putting usin a French school system,
which creates reallythe first tension between my parents.
(03:45):
My dad is like, No,she has to go to a normal school,
so she learns what our society is about.
Meet all sorts of peoplefrom all walks of life.
My mom, like know with your life style,we're going to be in trouble.
They have to learn other languages.
We are going to become one day.
You know, she saw the doomsday so he did.
(04:06):
Yeah.
And there was there was nothingreally publicized about that doomsday.
She just was. Yeah.
You know, my father was kind of alwayson the margin of being a dissident
poet, was censored, was certainjobs were not allowed for him.
So there was that.
So my mom was like, no, my kids have to bewell versed in languages.
(04:28):
And it just so happened that betweenthe three of us, I really loved languages.
So not only I went to a French school,but I wanted to learn more so Spanish.
So learning was given to usfreely, whereas other things
that spoiling kidsat that time for my peers
were not easily thrown at us.
(04:51):
They had the means to.
My mom had the verymy father now was a civil servant
who always cared about his poetry mostly.
But my mom, no, I mean, had a great careerand great clothing.
And I always say upstairs, downstairs,the upstairs of our house was like,
this lady's and this.
(05:12):
Back then, you know, we received the Vogue
and Elle and fashion magazines
and downstairs, all these revolutionarieswould come in the rooms,
feel the salons and talk about ideasand like dictatorship and this and that.
And I was like, I always say,I don't know how I didn't end up.
I am crazy. But, you know.
(05:34):
What do you do with a thirstfor both of those in my upstairs,
in my downstairsthat there's always something going on?
Grade The teacher said, you know,who do you know?
Do you have that in America?Who you want to become?
You write an essay? Yes.
You want to become when you grow up.
They gave us that.
And everybody wanted a doctor or engineer.
Astronomerwas like the big thing at the time.
And I literally wrote,I have a big dilemma
(05:58):
and they make you read thatin front of the class.
And I said, I had a dilemma upon which.
I reflected. All week.
I didn't know if I want to becomeSophia Loren or Ernest or Che Guevara.
The kids are looking at me.
The teacher panicked, called my parents.
It's like she can not say that name.
(06:19):
In school you are going to get in trouble.
And my father is like you.
Genetically, you are not, Loren,
You are not. Good luck.
So I grew up like that.
And we go to the national exam.
So the revolution happened.
We stayed after the revolution.
My parents being very idealist,thinking things are going to get better.
(06:40):
Society is not going to get worse.
It's going to get better.
That's what we all want to believe.
So what did you see see
changing in your communityor in your or in Iran?
I'm an atheist, but I'm not anti religion.
If you said I'm religious, I'm like,good for you, it helps you.
We saw the rise
(07:02):
of religious fanaticism little by little.
our big goal is to fight imperialism.
Well, let's wear the veillike no, it's not that.
All at school,all of a sudden things change.
We're in an all girl.
I was in school at school,and then I'm in an all girls school.
(07:22):
And French is bad now.
We should learn just Arabic.
Why we are Iranians?
Why should we learn Arabic?
And how old were you then? About?
I was 15.
16 when I switched.
All of a sudden, from five to age 16,
It's all Frenchschooling with Persian in a school.
(07:44):
And then now it's you go to the school
literally at the end of your streetand you wear something.
I would have.
Arguments, you know, in the Frenchschooling system, it's
all about curiosityor what they call it on the mall.
It annoys when you are like,why this works the way it does?
(08:05):
Why is this put like this?
What is composition? What is you?
The more what you ask, the better it is.
So it's like a ramped up curiosity. Yeah.
Very well said.
And then all of a sudden it's like, no.
The way you pray and the way you enterthe bathroom is with your left like.
Or I'm like. Not. I'm why we are teacher.
(08:28):
Why we all wear the veil in a classroomwhere we are all girls.
You say that it's not goodfor the eye of the man
to glance upon your hair,but we are all women.
You're asking too many questions.
So my great forI was always a very good student.
So everything 20 out of 20.
(08:49):
And then they could not subtract anything
from the facts at that timeother than give you the discipline.
Great.
I was 12 out of 20.
and my mom said, like, what's the thing?
And they said, because she hasso many question, she drives people crazy.
(09:10):
I want the American audience to hear this.
Our religion teacher said one day, Ladies.
As of today, if your parents ask.
You to peel cucumbers or eggplants
or zucchini, you should say no.
my gosh.
You say, my God, I didn't.
(09:31):
I honestlyit didn't even register with me.
I go home and we debate.
We are coming from a familywhere we debate.
You know,some families were like telling my dad,
Your kids have zero respect for you.
They always talkand and my father like that.
So what, we are at lunch.
(09:51):
And I said, you know what?
Something happened.
Like, my mom never askedme to peel anything any way
because I was not into that.
And I said, today our teacher said.
That you are at the agewhere if your parents ask you to peel
vegetables like cucumbers and eggplants,and so you should not do it.
(10:12):
My mom and dad were like made.
I remember this.
My dad, like said.
You know what?
Look, that's my mom is like, moody.
You go to the school, get their stuff out,we can teach them at home.
Between the two of us.
My mom said between the two of us.
Like we don't have enough.
We could teach her.
(10:33):
Well. I'll teach the other.
Not this one.
They are like, What good does it do?
And I am like, What?
My dad's nothing.
It's just sitting there thinking.
So I go back to school and I ask my.
Classmates because they grew up inthat system and they're like,
(10:54):
But then we debated.
I debate itwith people who came to our house
and at the time thought,this revolution is taking us forward.
And my dad always let me debatewith older leaders.
It's like, tell them I said, you know,
what would you feelif you had this always around your head?
You know, they're like, Well,our issues are bigger right now.
(11:17):
Our goals are big.
Later in life when, you know,I lived in the Soviet Union,
I understood that everything
has to be fought for right there.
And then if you think that somethingveers off and it's wrong, it's wrong.
So true experiences in life,we learned that.
(11:38):
But then I startedseeing the diminution of women
in that country and where we are going.
And prior to this experience,well this sort of evolved to be
when you were ten or nineyou didn't feel this
oppression of women in our house. No.
(12:00):
But it was there in Iran.
I didn't see it with the eyes of an adult.
But I can see nowother families of friends,
like when they did that in my household,
my father always, democracy is killing me.
You know, like whenever we did somethingor said something is like,
(12:22):
it's my doing,you know, I really didn't feel it.
I really never feltmy mother is oppressed.
I never felt me and my sister.
If anything, the opposite.
My aunt would say, why you makeMandela is my brother to my mom.
Like, why do you make him wash his socks?
But not the girl says,Because I don't want his future wife
(12:44):
to sayyour mom didn't do that to my daughters.
They couldn't take care of them,so I didn't see it.
Looking back, was it dare? Yes.
Well, I.
Guess so, because you mentionedthat some of the girls in your girls
school, just when it cameto the conversation about the cucumber,
already knew thatthat was not an acceptable thing to do.
(13:06):
Whereas in French school.
There was not per se, sex education.
But there were lots of foreigners
from other countries,you know, including a lot of French kids.
And yeah, we knew about sex.
I personally did not experience it,but I saw, for example,
(13:26):
somebody in therewhere you put your pencils and pencil box
and some pills like this numberedand they said, what is dieses?
That's for contraception. And I'm. Wow.
well, she had sex.
Never did it occur to my mind that
the cover story and this is even taboo
(13:49):
probably for me to say that as an IranianI would imagine.
And so would you say that.
Do you feel that when you when you startedthis conversation about the cucumber
and you knew that that is not an okaything, do you second guess yourself or
step over what you'd like to say and say,okay, do I really want to say this?
No, no, no, no, no, no.
(14:10):
Because I'm 58.
I have a daughter who is 23.
I just feel like everything.
If we don't shame people on eatingor exercising, we are not shaming them
for having healthy, healthy sexual life.
Yeah, Women in Iran.
My grandma was married when she was 14.
(14:33):
They came to ask for her.
Hand and I was listening to her.
I said one way like,How did you feel about that?
What did she say?
She said, I had a knot in my stomach.
They said, Tomorrowthey're going to my father.
You know, said to me, your dadand your to be married.
That's just like you cannot ask.
(14:55):
You cannot question your parents.
My sister was like,Did you ask no questions? No.
I asked my step mom. Like,what does he do?
And they said, he's a painter.
And I the only painter I had in my mind'seye was the guy who came twice a year
and painted the house.
And they looked terrible. God.
She didn't even imagine this painter,you know, like fine arts.
(15:19):
She said I was lucky the minuteI saw him from behind the window.
He looked very nice. Beautiful.
Was he much older than her? Yeah.
And did they remain married?
Yes. Yeah, very.
She said. You know, at the time,love was like that.
We got used to each otherand he took care of me.
(15:40):
And that would be kind of unusual for itto fall into a really good place.
No, some people.
Say that arranged marriages.
I have my own opinion,although my non arranged marriage
ended up in divorce. I have my opinion
about arranged marriages,which I mean, I could never do that.
(16:01):
So there was some amount
perhaps of matchmaking on parentsparts to see if this could be.
Yeah, the families are goodif you know, they check out certain, but
you imagine the trauma of a 14 year old?
Not at all.
I just can't even.
And then to knowand maybe you spoke with her about this
that this is going to be a traumatic,traumatic and scary experience.
(16:25):
But on the other hand,to not really question it, Right.
I am supposed to go through this
that 14 yearold might not have the wherewithal to say,
wait a minute,I've got some questions about this.
It doesn't feel right.
I mean, it didn't feel right.
But you're not allowed to question it.
and then the ladywho was supposed to take care of her.
Said, you know,I will always be. With you.
(16:47):
We go to Tehran, I take care of you,you know, things like that.
But talking of burn art and his theory
of the imprints in the womb, I alwaysI didn't talk to my grandma like that
because I was so youngwhen we left each other for the last time.
But if I had to.
Talk to her now, it's like the imprint.
With the first time she got pregnant, she.
(17:08):
Had the 16 year of age difference,which my oldest uncle and 18 with my mom.
I mean, they were like sisters.
Yeah, My mom took care of her to me.
That world that these people in Iran,they think the young brides, you know,
they're like I read the other day,an eight year old died of
(17:30):
hemorrhaging, bleedingbecause she was a child bride.
Yeah, that society does not sit
well, obviously, with someone like meand with this generation
and with this uprising that we see. Yes.
So I want to get on to youmoving out of Iran.
(17:51):
But but I have this question,which is knowing at me, I, from my
perspective, want all women to feel likethey have the same rights as every agency.
And I don't think all women feel likethey deserve the same rights.
And that could be because of this imprint
eons of mistreatment,a belief that matches
(18:12):
that of their husbandor the men around them.
From my perspective, that's not healthyfor women individually or at large.
But do we have the rightor how do we impose this better
life on these people who already thinktheir life is as it should be?
Curious about thatbecause who am I to instill
what I think is proper education?
(18:35):
I think education is the keyempowerment, love.
And maybe it starts with lovebecause you can't convince someone
to educate themselves.
Everything starts with lovebecause love makes us more curious.
Loves makes us more generous,love makes us more open,
courageous,willing to adapt and learn love
(18:58):
really love ithand-in-hand with education.
A lot of timeeducation goes with discipline
and my way or the highway and this way.
But to love which educationI see in the younger generation,
although they are likesome of the most oppressed population
I know in the world, in this systemthat's been in place for 45 years,
(19:22):
thanks to the Internet,thanks to social media,
thanks to what they see,there are a lot of bad stuff
they see also,but they are more opening up
and by opening up,they are more curious to devour
this new information and this new thingsif channeled in the right way.
(19:42):
I think they are learning.
I mean, I am working with a lot of kids
who now have been injured in Iranand or out a couple of them.
I have bonded really well with them.
One of them, thank God, after two years,just last week, this day, she got out
of Iranand out of Turkey and now into Germany.
(20:03):
And when you say injured hurtbecause they've expressed an opinion that.
Bullet's in their eyes,raped in the prison, injured
by their parents being given by arrangedmarriages, you know,
in the most deprived regions of Iran,like Baluchistan, even university,
even the worst form of universitywe have in Iran opened up her.
(20:26):
I said,How did you come from this family to here?
I mean, their journey.
She said, You know what opened my eyes?
It's stupid series on TV,which she's in Baluchistan.
And you know, the TV thing is in Tehran,the capital.
And the parents said to their kid,now that you have done your homework
(20:49):
and you had dinner and you gobrush your teeth and sleep, good dream.
She's like, I was the personnel.
I was the maid of my parents.
The fact that the kids preoccupationshould be their homework
and brushing their teethopened up a new world to me.
So I wanted that world.
I mean, the bar is this low. Yeah.
(21:10):
For her. Yeah.
Was to university.
Gets arrested, raped in prison, touching.
But working with them.
I see. Okay.
The world she knows so much is so bright.
So I have a glimmer of hopein this darkness that I see.
(21:31):
But I think they have to be injectedwith love.
So. And I think according to Bernard,basically
his work is to get us all to a placewhere we act from love.
And once we are unencumbered by the trauma
that was given to us even before birth,we can be that.
(21:51):
We can be that love.
We can operate from a place of truthabout love and I think that we can
at this point, we can only do itone individual at a time like you are,
and hope that hundreds of years from now,maybe we've improved as a society.
But I mean, I think a lot of uslook at this endeavor of trying to heal
(22:13):
women's position in the world and think,my God, that's just an impossible.
Question for you.
Because, I mean,you know how I learned about
Bernard's total accident,but why was he so.
Attacked. About this theory, Why
it was so controversial,Why it's not more widespread?
(22:34):
Why? I know it'sbecause it's not the pills you take.
But people go to therapy.
People go seek therapeutic methodsto heal themselves. Yes.
So why was he why his theory,
which is so beautiful, was attacked.
I think, on several different levels.
He was attacked.
Meanwhile,he always had a thriving practice,
(22:56):
so there was always a group of peoplewho were interested in his methodology.
For the longest time,he was treating his patients
through basically a Freudian method,but ultimately discovered
that he wasn't seeing successfor his patients and he wasn't
seeing success in his own treatmentbecause he was always being treated.
(23:18):
He was in supervision and was working with
some of the world's mostrenowned therapists, which was fabulous.
He had these great
intellectual conversations with them,but he walked away thinking, Well,
that was a great intellectualconversation, but have I grown now?
Haven't grown, haven't grown?
And he became more and more disillusioned
(23:38):
and he sat back and said,I'm just going to forget everything.
I'm just going to forget everything.
My patients aren't getting better.
I'm not getting better. And he.
How old was he when I think he was.
In his early sixties?I can't say for sure.
So we just started talkingwith his patients and asking his patients
to say, share their dreams.
And he started writing downthe information in their dreams.
(24:01):
And after hundreds and hundreds of
these interviews with his patients,he discovered
that everybody was sort ofcoming to the same thing,
that if you can figure out that your dream
is a conduit to your unconscious,
and in there liesthe real you and your dreams are provide
(24:24):
writing that keythe set of keys for you to get there.
Basically, they're saying, here'sthe trauma that you've had
and you keep dreaming about X, Y, and Zand that x, Y, and Z.
Those bits are trash in your barrel,so let's get rid of it.
He discovered that not all of this happenswhen you're three or four years old.
(24:45):
You come prepackaged when you're born.
You've already had to do thingsin a feeling way
to create survival for yourself.
You need to keep your mom safe.
She doesn't need to worry aboutall the stress that she's put on you.
You've decided to take this stressso that she's
okay so she can help you survive.
(25:05):
That idea of having been imprinted
by your experiencewith your mother in the womb
and once you are an infantand then as you progress as a child,
was not acceptable to his community,who was very much
wrapped up in a Freudian method,they didn't want to go there.
(25:26):
It just seemed too much.
I mean, first you have to agreethat there's an unconscious
and that your unconscious is giving youmessages.
You have to agreethat perhaps what you've been doing,
the way you've been treatingyour patients is not correct
or is just an adjunct, or thatthere's more, That's a lot to come to.
And how scary is that?
(25:46):
If I think about these things,am I going to lose my patients?
How do you establishthat completely new paradigm in a world
that's so set and so conservativejust didn't fly?
It didn't fly and he tried and tried.
He went to every conference.
He was a professor at UCLAand he was just shut down.
I can't believe.
(26:07):
That that's the part about his lifethat I don't his theory
I don't understand why it seems so
in a way intuitive to some of us.
But and to others, it's really scary.
I mean.
Because Freud was also controversial.
Yes, Controversial. Yes.
I told you the other day,sometimes the zeitgeist
(26:30):
or the tsunami is behind usand pushes us and our ideas forward.
And sometimes it's in our faceand it's early for the time.
I think so.
And he wasn't able to accomplishwhat he wanted to in his lifetime.
How sad it was for him.
It was such a disappointment.
And at the very end of his life,he said to me,
(26:51):
If you can move this forward in some way,please do.
And that's what you're doing.
He didn't burden me with it,and it took me some time to come around
to actually having the lights go offand the energy
come where I said, Yes,let's let's do this.
I mean, I really love it.Gives us courage.
That's exactly what I said.And that's all it is.
(27:11):
Because I'm not educated in this.
I mean, I'm a layperson.
I wasn't analyzed by this man,but I absorbed like a sponge
everything that he had to offerbecause he loved me so much.
And I was so kind by him.
No, no, I. Didn't know. That.
No, I am simplyhis wife and a giant sponge.
(27:32):
I dream every day. Is that normal?
I dream and I.
Everybody. Does every day.
Everything that when I tell people,they're like.
And some of them are scarybecause they are so scary.
Do I seem like an outlier to people?
Well, and everybody dreams every day
or every night,but most of us don't believe we do.
(27:54):
Those of us who believe we do don'tremember them often enough.
And I think there are ways
that those of us who don't remembercan train ourselves to remember.
But now what are we going to dowith all this information?
I mean, it's completely valuable,
but we aren't trained ourselvesto know what to do with our dreams.
As far as I can see, the authority onthis is Bernard,
(28:16):
and we have this little group of peoplewho know that this message that he wanted
to share with the world is preciousand they're trying to move it forward.
We've got some young therapists
that are treating their patientswith this methodology.
But the reason we're hereis to make that grow, whatever that means,
even if it means as individuals,
(28:36):
we just become curious about our owndreams and write them down and
and truly believethat they are something to be respected
and that there is information therethat can help us grow.
Thank you for sharing the story.
I'm interviewing you.
I know. I'm so sorry.
This is all about. You.
Know. It's great.
I think it's it's fascinating.
(28:58):
I'm sorry if I took no direction.
But what's going to happenhere is I can't always be interviewing
this small group of peoplethat know so much about Bernard.
I want to interview people like you.
You're so unique and you have a giftthat can be given to the world.
And you're an example of living a life.
Now, I'mnot sure that you always felt this way.
(29:20):
It seems like maybe you did.
That comes from a place of feelingthat you know
that the best pathyou can walk starts from a place of love.
So you know that.
And if we can help people understandthat Bernard's work gets us there,
then seeing what you're doingis nothing but motivation.
I cannot get such a huge credit because
(29:42):
although I grew up in a very my parentsnever told us what we should do,
even when we asked them, What do you thinkwhen I grow up I should do?
They said, Whatever you wish to do.
My brother one at one timesaid he loved magic as a kid.
He said, I want to be a magician.
My dad said, Become the best magicianyou get.
And my mom would.
(30:03):
Say, How much?
When you tell himthis is going to take this.
And run with what you want.
Our plan to work in the circus is like.
However, because I was good at schools,
meaning good to the teachers,good to my parents.
Then I became good to my bosses.
Then I became a good employee.
I became a good wife.
I became a good you know,nobody is a good mother ever.
(30:25):
Because if kidsmake you feel like poop, but,
you know,because of all these things at some.
Age is like why I.
Fulfilled my duty to everyone. What?
What do I want? What does Bibi want?
What makes me happy?
I mean, you go to to school.
I wanted to be a journalist.
(30:46):
Then certain things happen.
Certain things change.
Life throws curveballs at you,so to speak.
Then I became I said, okay,I work for the World Bank.
Then my boss again, I was a good employee.
My boss is like.
you should get your.
MBA and you should go to Harvard.
Harvard Business School. Why?
(31:06):
I have a masters. Why?
no, no, no.
Trust me, in America, they respect him.
Okay, so because of him, you go, and thenyou come out there like, you're so good.
You should do marketing and.
Okay, but is that what I really want?
Then you do that, you excel at that you'regood at that Is that now you make money.
(31:26):
And because you make money and you paythe mortgage and you pay the bills.
so you're good.
No, none of this matters.
And then finally I said,
for stress relief,I cook and everybody loves my cooking.
And what if I cooked for children andI taught them and then adults go and then.
Everybody says,
I want to become a.
Cook?
You know, 16 years ago,you were a vice president.
(31:49):
Now they look at you as their mateor as their cook.
They put all this.
They inject their own beliefsand their fears into you,
and you have to fight with that.
Again, this tsunami right now, everybodywants to be a cook on the on Instagram.
You know, like whatever.
So you do that and you are finally,little by little, one spoon at a time,
one recipe at the time you find yourselfand you say, I'm good at that.
(32:12):
And they like that.
Then doesn't mean anything.
At my age.
You transform again, you change yourself.
You don't have to be the. Best at it.
You can be the happiest at it.
And you do that and you are like,You get divorced.
You're like, I'm never going to fallin love again because love is bullshit.
You're not. But that's B.S.
(32:33):
If life is this energy given to us,that is called life or Chee
or whatever is in youfor as long as you breathe.
Life is beautiful. Yes.
Tell us again what that
says.
You really want to know that? Yes.
Our reason the gazebo lasts.
(32:53):
Then they get all the toshka He did,and the Paul body just got RPF roses.
Roxanne showed that her Koran paydoes that in the home, which has the home.
She got no home lost.
Yes, Yes. Life is beautiful.
That's all it says.
But it's a part of one of my father'sepic poems
about writtenin one of the darkest points in his life.
(33:17):
And Iran's history about doesn't matterwhat happens.
Your brother is in prison,your friends are getting executed.
You live in extreme poverty.
Life is beautiful.
Life is an eternal bonfire scenefrom everywhere.
If you feed it,it's for everyone to be seen.
(33:39):
If not, it dies.
And it's your responsibilitythat you didn't keep the fire alive
That spreads that message I just started.
I'm not into tattooing.
I'm not a Gen Z or I'm not a millennial.
I just, you know, the last two yearsthis has been my constant.
So I finally said, you know, I'mgoing to have it tattooed as part of me
(34:03):
because it's really good reminder.
It is.
And it is part of you.I mean, you're living that life.
I'm trying to until I don't want to,you know, all of us, when we come
to this podcast or social media,we have an alter ego
that we want to show off to the worldthat I am here now, am better than you.
And then you turn, you go behind the door.
(34:24):
You can come.
The life is not about theI have plenty of things
I've done badly that if given the chance,I will try to do better.
That's the best thing I can do.
I can feed a little bit of fire.
I can be better.
I can mend amends with people.
A year ago, I went to a family memberor ex family member.
(34:47):
I said, You know,I want to invite you for lunch
and I want you to sit in front of meand tell me why you think I'm an asshole.
my. Goodness.
They didn't want to take that meeting,you know?
So it's okay.
I do what I have to do and people all.
It's their responsibility.
(35:07):
If they want to live angry or they want tolive happy, that's the best we can do.
So we are not perfectand we don't live in the perfect world.
And we all have had childhood traumas.
I am lucky enough to have learned thatI have PTSD.
You know, the dayI've done a lot of therapy,
(35:28):
but the day my therapist said,it was very funny.
She didn't even say, I am I know.
Is like, I'm building. And like,I put PTSD.
I'm like, PTSD.
Isn't that for soldiers and whatnot?
It's like, no, it's for a kidwho saw her father arrested at age five
and her aunt at age nine and at age 12,So people coming and showing their
(35:52):
torture marks.
No, that's not that'syou can see the best parents in the world.
Yes. You were in the most secure roomor family or writing or whatnot.
No, it comes back to haunt you.
You have to get rid of your anger,your traumas, love. Yes.
(36:12):
But it is really something.
How much we even, I think, unconsciouslyprotect our experiences,
because whatever that isand all that trauma that you experienced,
that was your experience,that was your normal.
And if you speak to it, somebody elsemight say, my God, that's that's trauma.
How do how are you even sitting before me?
(36:34):
But we're so good at resilient.
Yeah.
And to delete.
Yeah,but that's we can't just keep doing that
because we're just perpetuating
the issues, the war, the mistreatment,the poverty, all of that.
People who resist.
In your cultureless in the American culture
(36:56):
going to a therapist are talking aboutit is like playing tennis.
But in some cultures it's so much taboo.
It's like, I'm not crazy.
I don't have any issues and look at me.
I make so much money,look at me, I'm so gorgeous.
Look at my wife and my pool and my house.
Why do I need therapy?
(37:18):
We Americans are like that too. Really?
I believe so, yes.
I think there's just so much resistanceto looking at oneself, to not saying that
that what you present tothe world is not a presentation
of the perfect life of happiness,and it's glowing on the outside.
But open those doors.
Yeah.
(37:38):
I mean, you see these postcardsyou guys send every year during Christmas?
Everybody looks like the Ralph Lauren.
Yes. And wingslike angels behind them. Yes.
And then the next year they got divorced.
And all those ideas thatthis sort of perfect Thanksgiving dinner.
And it's almost as if you're right.
(37:58):
You have that, too. Yeah.
It's almost as if for part of my life,I would keep that card over there and
it's Thanksgiving and go back to itand make sure I've got all those right
elements in that photographthinking that I could just
transfer that to my life now.
So I'm going to shift a little bit.
So you ended up going to Moscowand how old were you then?
(38:21):
Well, another trauma, because five years
after the revolution,they came to arrest my father.
We were at home and he wasn't.
And by the time he realizes that we arearrested, he's coming.
And then they said, no,they're no longer here.
(38:42):
He they realize they think that the personwho drove my father
didn't see the car that my uncle camewith is like, they're gone probably.
And they left.
He took my father to hide him somewhere.
And the Guardians of the Revolution
who were with us and we were on their homearrest.
(39:03):
They gave up
and we went to my grandma's house,They sealed the house and everything.
So a lifetime of memory behindthose closed doors.
And we go to my grandmaand my mom is masterminding our
our escape from Iran with smugglers.
We are French educated.
So we thought of going to France.
(39:24):
The smugglerstook us to Afghanistan, to the Pakistan,
and there was war in 83 in Afghanistan.
So we were there.
And from there we it took us a long time
and no hope to go anywhere near France.
So they made us fake documents, Afghani
(39:45):
documents to send us as studentsKhadra future
Khadra of their revolution to Moscow.
But lucky for us, the perestroika
or Gorbachev came soon afterwe were there.
Otherwise, I would have definitely beenone of those who end up in the gulag.
(40:07):
because of my march.
Yeah.
And the country that we saw us growing up.
my God.
It's on the other side of the Caspian Sea.
The things of the revolution.
Everybody has education.
Everybody has health care,everybody has a home.
Good things are happeningwhen people are treated as equal.
And at Moscow State, the very intellectualI must say, Milia,
(40:30):
the school of Journalism.
You know, I learned Russianin a very accelerated method.
I go to school very sick, very different,very from the way we dressed, you know,
coming from kind of like comfortable upper
middle class to looking like a babushka.
And we see everything around us.
(40:51):
And then you look, you know,I again, as a curious child,
I look at the placeswhere the system are rotting.
The termites are eating up as easyas asking like,
how come we don't have things to eat?
But like, this kid, that kid,their fathers, their parents are diplomats
and they have a special storeand like, a special store, like,
(41:14):
you know, although my Russianwas not up to par to them,
they really helped me was a great peoplethink, I was like, starved.
But yeah, it was a different lifestyle,but intellectually very stimulating.
The kids would comewhen they got to like foreign literature.
I was a bookworm, so they would ask meif we had to return Manhasset.
(41:37):
They would ask me about himor if we had to do Balzac
or Baudelaire or whatever was in the worldliterature.
They would ask me questionsand I would tell them.
So you were the CliffsNotes? Exactly.
I was the cheat,not exactly the CliffsNotes.
So they wouldthen take me and introduce me.
(41:59):
They were like.
let's go sneak into Bulgakov's house.
And Bulgakovwas forbidden in the Soviet Union.
And they we snuck in.
Now it's the Bulgakov museum.
Tell us what that means.
Well, Bulgakov was also a dissident,
and his masterpiece was Masterand Margarita.
It's a love story,allegory of everything that happened.
(42:23):
And he was forbidden.
And they gave me a copy,and they helped me read it.
And they took me to this places
or that many sages of artists underground,they took me.
So this coincidedI was really riding the wave.
Gorbachev came to our school and gavea speech, you know, like this whole thing.
(42:45):
So it was amazing.
What a rich.
Experience, that journey as a journalistand then opening up of the Soviet
Union and working, that was very powerful.
Then I finishand I think, now finally I go to France.
But no, another setback.
I can't go to France this timebecause I have a
(43:07):
Afghani passport and France was not there.
So then one thing and anotherand somebody says, go to him.
I got an invitationfor a wedding of a cousin and I go
with nothing like literally nothing,
because in Afghanistan now, the Mujahideenand the Taliban are coming to power.
If I go back.
(43:27):
Yeah.
They know I'm not Afghani.
What happens to us?
I can.
And my father said, Bibi,you have to get out of here.
My mom got off out of there, wentto Vienna, to her sister to get us out.
There were glitches there.
Anyway, long storyshort, by miracle and by me being me
like accidental,I'm like the Forest Gump of life.
(43:49):
You know, I'll go to the American embassywith a terrible French accent.
I do not speak English very well.
It's like, you speak French?
I say, yeah, I speak French.
They happen to speak French.
You know, I got a visa.
I got a visa, a tourist visa to come here
and stayed with my mom's familyin Fairfax, Virginia.
(44:13):
And my visa is about to expireand being deported.
I filed for political asylum.
I went to look for a job.
I got a job at the World Bank.
How I got that job is a wholeNetflix series and where it got me.
So, you know, riding waves of lifethat was filled with trouble, too.
(44:34):
I mean, that was not the American dreamas we see it in the movies.
And for example.
I mean, literally my first apartmentwith a roommate,
my first salary, I was doing
slave work at odd hours.
I was paid $600 a month.
(44:56):
I had to get an apartment in Virginia
with a roommate to pay 300,
and the rest of the 300 was bus passand the same baloney sandwich every day.
and things like that.
And you were going into DC? Yes.
Well,you were working for the World Bank then?
Not at the beginning.
(45:16):
Not when I got the I.
Yeah.
No, that led to that later,which was a lucky break.
I was from 630 600 a month.
You know, justthat's a change in lifestyle too.
So what was it, 1992?
That's great.
Yeah.
Well, and you had these parentswho sort of lived on the edge of
(45:39):
what was typical
or maybe not even on the edge.
I mean, didn't that giveyou kind of a good base or a strength
to know that you could alwaysaccomplish something?
I'm not even speaking financially,but you could find your way.
Yes. Yes.
Although the Afghanistan and Soviet Union,
(46:01):
something I never had growing upwas financial anxiety.
That thing changedbecause in Soviet Union,
for example, the first three or four days,I didn't even
nobody took care administratively asI didn't have anything to eat, you know?
And then the value of moneyfor the first time without my parents
(46:25):
became very apparent to methat you starve to death
if you don't have moneyor if you have 90 rubles
a month, and then you don't manage that,you know. Yes.
That kids.
You don't think about. The captive.
Yes. Yeah.
So that gave me financial trauma, whichI had actually therapy helped a lot with.
(46:47):
But the love of parents,I think, love the security
that love envelopes you as a child,which is very important.
That sense that yeah, whatever happensyou can write, you can overcome.
Yeah. Yeah.
As long as you're workingfrom that place of love.
So you were here in Fairfaxand then you ultimately ended up
(47:11):
with the World Bank and then you went onto get your Harvard MBA
and by then, were you no longerworking with the World Bank?
Yeah.
My boss was like an amazing person
and became my first mentor.
Really, in America.
And he was going to leave to goto Indonesia or Singapore at the time,
(47:35):
I think.
And I was frustratedbecause I was so involved
with the privatization in the Soviet Unionthat I saw the corruption
and I saw the methodology
used that really impoverishedthe good people.
I knew because I would go monthlyto the Soviet Union and back.
And I saw the methodologythat at the time I didn't agree with it.
(47:58):
So there was there was some amountof internal discomfort
associated with the jobyou were doing. Yes.
And one thing I learned isif something goes against the grain
and this is my dad,bless his soul and his art,
was that maybe when you go down a path,the first few steps as you,
the rest is gravity takesyou don't go there.
(48:21):
If only we could all recognize that.
Yeah, Life is comfortable.
They pay you, You fly business class,you fly first class.
You are a 24 year old.
They treat you as a queen.
You rub shoulders with Gorbyand ministers.
Don't fool yourself.
My teachers were starved.
My professors, good people.
They were starving.
(48:41):
I remember one time I went to visit themand I had this.
I mean, it was so humiliating for meand I had to put $100 bills in envelopes.
And when I said goodbye to themto leave it on the table so it was awful,
or how my siblings and my fatherlived there, I mean, yeah, they.
(49:03):
Went through that humiliation.
It was probably still somethingyou just internally to do.
I mean, to be ableto help them on some level.
When I confided in my boss,I said, You know,
I travel with people who, on their expense
report to put their shaving creambecause to be reimbursed.
And then I cannot reconcile.
(49:23):
The two says, Baby,you cannot change the system.
You can just get yourself out of it.
You know, if I stayed right now,I would have been a retired
member of the World Bank.
I would have been seen, like you know,some big deal with a good retirement.
I just I couldn't.
So he told me,you have to apply to business school.
(49:45):
I said, business school.My business school.
Like I said.
I have a master's degree.
It's like nobody gives a shit about Moscowstatus.
It's a great university. It truly is.
But here you are in the United States.
Here you know, in 94it was like, Go, just do it.
You're smarter.
Look at these assholes you work with.
You're smarter than themall. Just go do it.
(50:05):
I said, I don't have the money.
It's like,Have you heard of the Harvard Endowment?
I said, No. What is it?
Obviously, I got a scholarship.
Yeah, to go. So then that took you.
You now you were out of the World Bankand you were moving on to.
Boston, Massachusetts,and started this school.
Everybody'ssuper smart, and so it's smart.
(50:28):
But isn't that interesting howwe just assume everyone else is smarter?
Yeah, though.
Well, I'd never assumed everybody smarter.
I didn't, honestly.
And then I go to this schoolbecause my background
is in the humanitiesand they all came from this.
They were or they were didjunior work at Goldman Sachs.
(50:50):
Rice. And McKinsey.
And like they knewthe answer to every case that.
Like, who are these people?
What are they talking about?
so I'm going to fail.
And I took me to a very steep learningcurve.
I'm so because my family, if you ask themwhat is the stock market
or what is profit and loss and not their.
(51:12):
World.
Cash flow and stuff like that,it was like, Yeah, another world.
And I learned all of thatand I learned very fast.
And I went again.
My life took a left turn on Albuquerqueand I just, you know,
and I became thatsome marketing executive and.
(51:32):
I did a like I did that a few years.
Good money, good salary, good career.
I'm like, this is not for me.
We raised the money.
They're like, Do you want to moveto Los Angeles and do that from here?
I said, No, I will not raisemy kids in Los Angeles one day.
I said, Is that my purpose in life?
To make other people, rich people,richer and famous people more famous?
(51:56):
And we had the at the time
my kids were littleand we were having dinner and I said,
this cucumbersand tomatoes are very special.
I want you to first smell themand then eat them.
And they're like I said.
what would you thinkthis tomatoes are grown.
You said in the supermarket.
(52:16):
okay. Yeah.
It's time for me to rethink all of this.
Harvard's cooking girl was born.
That's quite the moment.
It's almost a message from the universe.
But that's how I pretty much
my journey is that, yeah,I did 12 years of that,
(52:38):
and it grew from kidsto parents From parents.
Then I built the first corporateteambuilding events around cooking in
the world, the first corporate teambuilding, breaking bread, companionship.
The word companion is wheatbread, breaking bread.
I did that around corporate,so from all over the world are now
(52:59):
looking to come to Harvard cooking girl,bringing their teams.
Then COVID happenedand COVID put a stop on everything.
How long did you have your Harvard course?
It was the longest employment.
I it still is because I'min some sort doing that.
Yeah. Yeah.
But the break was of COVIDand for the first time I work from home
(53:22):
behind the computerand I help a young entrepreneur who
social change entrepreneur,who wanted to do what my dream always was
to democratizing, giving $1 at a time,
everybody giving just $1 a monthwhat's called the dollar donation club.
And I helped him to that to eradicate
(53:45):
plastic from our oceans, you know,clean up the environment, do that.
And this was because you couldn'tdo what you had been doing for 12 years.
From home and meetingswith people on Zoom meetings.
That's not for me.
That's a. Tough one.
Yeah. The 12 years of your Harvard.
Cooking.
Girl,that was something that was satisfying.
Very much so.
(54:05):
I love the connection with people,the banter,
the joy, you know, throughcooking, teaching, mentoring.
So many students, like five or 600
people came underand went from all over the world.
People who spare.
It's weird, like people from Yale andPrinceton and Harvard and SDSU and UCLA.
(54:28):
I know their parents were like, Why.
Are you doing this?
Why don't you do all the love of it all?
It was very gratifying.
It was really the most gratifying thing.
And then I after COVID, I start,I lost everything.
Obviously, I lost my studio.
I had to donate all the equipment,everything I invested in.
(54:49):
And then I started again from my kitchenand then renting a kitchen
and doing stuff that I love to do.
And so this was different.
Yeah, in a different way.
But still, I do a lot of corporate.
And then I started my retreatbecause I saw there is so much thirst
(55:10):
for not being one person in one framedoing one thing.
Because during COVID, I did thiscapitalist series with the minimalism
and like leaving lightsand leaving really with less.
So capitalist, not capitalist.
Yeah, capitalist,you know, it's the best ism.
(55:31):
How are you Happy.
And does that have something to dowith taking a moment to find happiness in
something that you might have otherwisenot even thought about or felt about?
Like what? What does a capitalist do?
The biggest influence on my lifeis the influence of Japanese culture.
You know, the ikigaifinding or happy place.
(55:53):
Where is your happy place?
Not happy in the way. Like, I'm happy.
I have.
We are.
I'm high but happy in You do something
you obviously have to provide for yourselfand your family.
You have to be paid.
You have to be happy.
You have to be content with what you do.
It has to be shot.
It has to have meaning.It has to have purpose.
(56:15):
So ikigai, as I learned ikigai,
I started to not teaching it,but preaching it.
Part of that during COVIDwas making little videos of that.
I'm happy to list dot com ones.
I walk a coffee,you take things a moment you take
for yourself a conversationlike we have doing all of these.
(56:38):
And people are like,Why don't you teach it to us all?
So in one of those experiences,let's say the bonsai video,
are you explaining to your listenersor viewers
how to find the happinessin that experience?
No, it's just mostlyyou don't even see me.
You see my hands again.
The Japanesethink it's about negative space,
(57:00):
not the things you say or show the stuffin between the lines that you see.
You know, to cultivate a bonsai, it's
like cutting your own fingers so you can,you know, make the things grow.
It's about the experience
of doing something and cuttingeverything looks beautiful.
But when you have negative space,it looks even more beautiful and things
(57:23):
like that. Arts therapy.
Why we do yoga or visualization is not
because you have to show to someoneYou can do this right?
Get in the most twisted positionit possibly can.
Yeah, It's taking it to a placewhere there's some amount of comfort,
not physical comfort, but.
But emotional comfort coming from it.
So is that what Ikigai? Yeah.
(57:45):
Is is finding your path
to finding your placewhere there is emotional satisfaction.
A good place in the world.
If I have to make a translation of it,it's what speaks to me.
And that means being good to yourselfas an individual.
Which then actuallyit's like a Venn diagram
(58:06):
when they want to explain to youthe ikigai and then imagine a drop here
that tricklesif you're good, it's the butterfly effect.
If you are in your happy place,people around you are.
I always say,I want my friends to be happier than I,
because when your friends aremiserable, you are miserable
in order for you're miserable.
(58:27):
you're so selfish.
And then.
Here again.
Describe that to us.
It's a more northern Scandinavian idea.
Perfect guy.
Not in the same sense.
I lost a lot.
I lost pretty much 90% of my
I don't want to call it my wealthbecause my wealth is not defined by that.
(58:50):
But I had to lose my houseand I became a minimalist.
So I just gave away all my booksother than the books
that were assigned for me,not because I read a book.
It was before Marie Kondoor what's her name?
Yes, the the organized fashion specialist.
I didn't even know her at the time,but ten or 12 years ago.
(59:12):
So I got rid of a lot of things.
But what motivated youto get rid of your books?
Because I wanted to leave, to be happy,to live with less
and then see where I see my comfort.
When I started getting rid of stuff,
it was like having less weighton my shoulders to the clothes.
(59:33):
You don't.
Wear the.
Shoes you don't need the books.
You read the books.Okay, It's here and here.
So could you really feel a change inside?
amazing.
I live in the people who judge youand don't know you.
They're like,Are you happy in a two bedroom house?
I'm like, Yeah, I use this room to sleepin this room to entertain.
(59:55):
And my kitchen and, my office,
I could live with less.
Honestly, I feel like this place,if I ended up here,
I can live here very happy.
So when you when you transitioned to this,you had come from a place
where you basically lostalmost everything.
When you lost almost everything, I think
(01:00:15):
a lot of us would be panickingor coming from a place from fear.
And maybe you did too.
But how did youhow did you get yourself out of that?
Or were you just forced tobecause you had now all of these things
that were completely different financially
and you couldn't support the lifethat you had, the way that you had?
Of course I'm scared, you know.
Of course,when you have two kids in private
(01:00:37):
colleges, when you lose your studio,you lose your house,
you're hit with a lawsuit,you feel all of these things.
I would be a liar if I said I didn't.
But it's also the power of love, the lovein your friendships, in your community
that supports you when you supported them,the love of your companions
(01:00:59):
In the worst time in Afghanistan,my mom had a lot of anxiety
about where my kids are going to end up,and my father always said
they're going to end up well,and my mom had a fight with him.
So how are you.
Always so sure?
And his answer was.
Because we were good people.
And that to mewas such an unrealistic answer.
(01:01:21):
But now I remember thatbecause we were good people.
And look at what happened to you,
you know, partially because of thatof coming from good people.
So this life that you live now with less
accouterment is different.
It's more satisfying. Is it is it better?
Are you happy? I am happy.
(01:01:42):
When all the people I have unresolved
issues with become happy with me or with.
Themselves.
So that may mean that they become happy
with themselves,but still unresolved with you.
Yeah. That's got to be hard. Yeah.
Because you have to learnthat it's out of your control.
(01:02:02):
That's hard.Yeah. Yeah, that's for me is hard.
Do I have existential problems? Yes.
Do I pose as somebody who is happy?
I wake up in life.
I don't love you.
I want that guy on the movie set.
No, but I try to remember.
People think I have too much empathy,but it helps.
Too much empathy helpsyou because when something happens,
(01:02:25):
you put yourself in the shoesof the person who has lost a child
or the person who has lost a dear one or.
And you have to do that in orderto be coming from a place of love.
Exactly. Exactly.
I don't even understandwhat too much empathy would be.
Some people say you get too investedin other people's problems.
(01:02:46):
You just want, I am a problem solver.
I'm a little bit like men.
I am not my girlfriend.
No, I'm not one of those girlfriendswho you say, this happened.
I would say, yeah.
my God.
too bad.
I'm not like that.
And it's badbecause it irritates some people.
I'm like,let's do this. Let's have a plan.
(01:03:07):
Let's do that. Now, what about this?
What about you do thisand they don't want to hear that.
I see.
But that is a sort of empathy.
I think it is. Yeah, but I don't know.
We all have issues, but having honestly,
what I come to understandby the fact that you have less.
You have less to worry about.
(01:03:28):
my gosh, what a relief that is.
There aren'tso many balls to hold in the air.
I don't worry if I leave my door open.
Like if they come, what are they?
no. There are a couple of thingsI really like.
They go back to my childhood, but like,what are they going to steal?
They're probably going to leave somethingand go.
And the more I leave it, the more like.
Last week I took the coffee like my friendsaid, What's the.
(01:03:51):
Poor coffee table to you?I said, I don't know.
I just got rid of the coffee table.
I put it to Tammy flooring and,you know, like cushions.
And I like I like that.
So the less you have,the less you want to have.
So you're sharing this.
You've learned so muchfrom living this way
with anybody who wants to pay attention.
So how do we find out about you?
(01:04:12):
You're still operating as the capitalist.
And so if we Google you.
yeah.
You're there.
I operate as the capitalist dot com.
I operate at the Harvardcook as the Harvard cooking girl.
I operate on Instagram as everybody else.
I ever since Instagram existed,I had maybe 3000 followers.
(01:04:37):
The next day I wake up,I have 40,000 followers.
my God. In like 90 days. Why?
Because something somewhere I said that
either did for someone orI mean, people who don't believe in karma.
Honestly, you do something,and next thing you know, a friend
like Bobby or Seun come in and get like,you should do this.
(01:04:57):
Listen to podcastsyou should do. I'm like, Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you for it'snot soliciting is that and I operate.
I hope I can operate one dayas the best version of me.
Well, I think you have a lot to offer.
You think?
Yes. And I think we need. That to my kids.
(01:05:19):
You could say that to my kid.
Okay, well, let's fact each other.
Children.
So you also are working onI'm sure this is first
small groups, because a retreat can reallyonly be these small groups.
But is that something newthat you're doing?
Very new.
I just want to have it's an experimentfor myself to get 12 people.
(01:05:41):
Women only. Women only.
They don't know each other.
They probably don't know me.
I want to offer yoga.
I want to offer curated talks about
I believe that the futureis going to be ancestral.
I think we are going to go backappreciating slow food, appreciating life
(01:06:02):
with no cell phones,appreciating one on one conversations,
appreciating the nature that feeds us
so that in every molecule we eat,there is no microplastics.
I believe we are going to get there.
I want to believe.
I want to believe that, yes.
I hope we don't climb up this hilland reach disaster before we get back to.
(01:06:22):
Yeah, I hope the climate changeis going to we are going to help.
It's not going to resolve itself. No.
But we need situations like thiswhere people believe us.
So I want to create this curated talksabout these issues, but I want to blend it
with food from the blue zone is yoga
visualization, sun beating, art therapy.
(01:06:44):
How I heal and shoot my souland teach it to other people.
How we make productsthat are good for our skin.
But we can do it at the kitchen table,things like that.
It may be an experiment like the wayI started over Cooking Girl and go
somewhere.
It may fall flat on its facebecause people don't see any value in it.
(01:07:05):
Well, you're just starting this up, right?
Yeah, well,I'm very curious to see how it goes.
And so your plan is that during the courseof a retreat, is it a one day ritual?
You'll go through several different. Yes.
And and your your guests would then
maybe recognize themselves in two or threeor all of the events of the day
(01:07:26):
and start to see a source of happinessor well-being or comfort.
Obviously, those that are coming
are certainly curiousabout improving some aspects of life.
It's me.
There are people like not they go leave us
and they dream that what they knowin their bones is good.
And sometimes again I go back,sometimes the zeitgeist is ready for it,
(01:07:49):
and sometimes they're like,What did she say?
Yeah, not ready.
Let her aside.
Well,I think you have so much to offer us.
And I am so gratefulthat you were here today, and I'm excited
to talk to you more.
I want to learn more from you. boy.
Yeah.
No, that's the old boy.
That's the whole point of this.
(01:08:09):
So we're going to have more conversationswith Bibi.
So please join us again and.
We look forward to having you commentand talk to us about what you think of.
And now, love. Bye for now. Thank you.
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