April 14, 2025 • 58 mins
What if our current mental health crisis stems from something as fundamental as our disconnection from our own nervous systems? In this transformative conversation with yoga master Rod Stryker, we uncover why slowing down might be the most revolutionary act in today's hyperactive world.
Rod shares his remarkable 50-year journey from psychology student to Hollywood actor to internationally respected yoga teacher. The turning point? A profound realization that yoga was offering him the self-understanding he'd been seeking through academic studies – an embodied philosophy touching something deep within him that formal education couldn't reach.
As our discussion unfolds, Rod clarifies a critical misunderstanding: what most Americans practice as "yoga" is actually just "asana" (the physical postures). True yoga, he explains, is a quality of attention and presence that can happen with or without physical movement. T
Perhaps most valuable are the practical insights Rod offers about nervous system regulation through practices like Yoga Nidra – a state between meditation and sleep that provides profound rest without requiring the discipline of seated meditation. His upcoming book on this practice promises to make these powerful techniques more accessible to those who need them most.
Ready to experience the difference that even five minutes of stillness can make in your life? Visit RodStryker.com or download his Sanctuary app to begin your journey toward greater presence, wisdom, and genuine w
Spiritual guru, two-time #1 best-selling author, and higher consciousness advocate Shaman Isis (aka Cynthia L. Elliott) is on a mission to turn the tide of the mental and spiritual health crisis with mindfulness practices, incredible events, powerful content, and motivational storytelling that inspire your heroes journey! Learn more about her books, courses, speaking engagements, book signings, and appearances at ShamanIsis.com.
Ready for a life transformation? Ready to bring your dreams to life? Then you will want Glowup With Shaman Isis: The Collection of inspiring books and courses filled with life lessons and practices that raise your vibration and consciousness.
Ready for a life transformation? Ready to bring your dreams to life? Then you will want Glowup With Shaman Isis: The Collection of inspiring books and courses filled with life lessons and practices that raise your vibration and consciousness.
GlowUp with Shaman Isis: An Edgy Podcast for Transformation and Higher Consciousness
Are you captivated by inspiring personal stories, hero’s journeys, and reflections on spirituality's place in modern life? Tune in to GlowUp with Shaman Isis, the bold and uplifting podcast by spiritual rockstar, 2x #1 best-selling author, and veteran podcaster Cynthia L. Elliott—aka Shaman Isis.
Discover more at ShamanIsis.com or SoulTechFoundation.org.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Well, hello, hello, hello and welcome to Glow Up
with Shaman Isis.
I'm your hostess with themostest Shaman Isis, also known
as Cynthia, to my friends andfamily, and I am really jacked
for today's episode becausewe're interviewing a true yogi
master, a true teacher, RodStryker.
Thank you so much for coming onthe show.
I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I'm thrilled to be here.
I'm thrilled to be with you.
Thank you, cynthia, I have toask right off the bat how long
have you been practicing yoga?
Well, I actually startedformally practicing it when I
was 19.
I'm now 67.
So if we do the math, it'sgetting right up there.
(00:41):
It's a bunch of years, decades.
I used to think it was 40, butit's actually now, well, more
than 40 years getting close tothink it was 40, but it's
actually now more than well.
More than 40 years gettingclose to 50 years.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Well, well, I'm gonna have to unearth some of your
history because on the show.
We like to share people'sjourneys.
Um, I I have to just ask out ofI'm dying of curiosity that the
acting transitioning into beinga yogi.
Uh, how did that happen?
Speaker 2 (01:04):
wow, okay.
So, um, you know the actinglife, I gotta say so.
Let me just first say that Iwent to college thinking I
wanted to be a psychologist andI had some experiences in high
school that really, um, thatreally uh, I don't know.
I just immediately sparked apowerful interest in human
(01:26):
psychology and how we interactand how we learn to know
ourselves and things like that.
And, in truth, probably whatwas going on was psychology was
affording me this view, a way ofseeing and beginning to
understand who I was, never mindwho other people were.
I then discovered yoga as I wentto school, studying psychology,
(01:47):
philosophy in university,university of Denver, and then I
moved back to LA and I had beendoing yoga on my own right,
still a junior in college, and Imoved back to LA because I
really had lost interest.
I was no longer enthusiasticabout philosophy or psychology,
(02:09):
at least studying in that way.
And, oddly enough, cynthia, Itell you the truth, the minute I
started experiencing yoga, Ifelt like I had discovered what
I was hoping to find in mystudies in school, in university
.
There was a way, something waslike this embodied philosophy,
something was touching me and Iwas feeling a deep part of
(02:30):
myself that I'd probably beensearching for for a long time.
Fast forward, I moved back toLA, didn't finish college Friend
took me to a yoga class and itwas the first time I'd
interacted with a teacher.
Live, that was great, but nowit's really.
Well, what am I going to do?
What am I going to do?
(02:51):
And you know, I grew up in LosAngeles and I think maybe anyone
who's grown up in Los Angelessooner or later has said to
myself well, you might as welljust be an actor, right.
I said to myself well, youmight as well just be an actor,
right.
But truly, I kind of fell inlove with the craft and the
thing about acting allows youit's not just to play other
(03:12):
parts, but it also is a kind ofway of exploring yourself that
maybe you're afraid to do inlife?
Yes, you get to feel differentstreets and some streets, listen
, I've always been a really good, straight, pretty straight
laced guy, so you can be anactor in a part that's dangerous
, passionate, that's violent,that's sexy.
(03:36):
So you get to experience all ofthese different parts of
yourself and I got to be honestwith you.
I was still doing yoga, butacting was affording me this
other kind of experience ofmyself that I didn't know in my
childhood and it just gave mesomething altogether different
to play with and yeah, and itstayed with me for quite some
(03:57):
time.
I mean, if you're interested,I'll tell you about how it ended
, but I will let's we can fillin some blanks before that how
it ended, but I will let's wecan fill in some blanks before
that.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Yeah, yeah, I uh, uh.
So did you enjoy act before weget too deep into yoga.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
I want to.
Did you enjoy acting?
I did, you know I did.
I did not enjoy the business ofacting and it's a, you know
it's a serious business.
It's not like you're in anyother town in america other than
maybe new york or san francisco, where people do regional
theater.
They do the local theater.
It's not about getting famous.
(04:33):
In la you're probably acting inorder to be famous and you're
encountering other people whoreally want to make money off
you as an actor.
So the thing it's a business.
And uh, I I used to kind ofthink about my people I knew who
were still in other towns andstill just did acting for the
(04:54):
love of acting.
But in la that's really hard todo.
Even small plays are showcases.
So everyone's trying to be seenand everyone's trying to get
famous and get the soap wrong,get in the movie and get the
series and and and, by the way,everyone's looking at you to do
that.
It's not just, as I said, alocal kind of theater thing that
(05:14):
could be fun.
So I enjoyed.
There's a craft there, goodacting craft.
I mean it's a, it's a skillthat you can develop and that I
kind of really enjoyed right upto the end.
But the business did not.
That was not my thing and Ithink, ultimately, I'm probably
too sensitive for the amount ofrejection that you get as an
(05:36):
actor.
I just I don't think I had theheart, I don't think I had the
skin for it.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Well, I think somebody.
So I acted to make money verysimilar to you in New York in
the 90s and and I had to have aconversation with myself one day
because I was like, why are youskipping half the auditions?
(06:08):
It was like because you don'twant it.
You don't want it enough.
Look at all these people whowant it so desperately.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Like it's time to, like you know, move on with a
career yeah, and and I mentionedthe end of it you, at the time
I was dating, I was in a veryserious relationship with
someone who had had a career inHollywood.
She was a bit older than I was,but she was really a wise
(06:36):
person and I told her about my,like you, kind of reaching this
point.
Where am I meant for this?
Is this something I really wantto do?
And yet it was also this kindof reaching this point.
Where am I meant for this?
Is this something I really wantto do?
And yet it was also this kindof thing like if you've been
dreaming about something longenough, it's hard to give up the
dream, even if it's no longeryour dream, if that makes any
(06:57):
sense, you still want the thingthat you've been wanting for a
decade.
Part of you doesn't want towalk away from it because then
you got to well, what's the nextdream?
You got to figure that out.
But I remember we were havingthis conversation, I remember
where we were at the time andshe said listen, and now I had
been teaching yoga for about adecade and, as I said, it's the.
(07:20):
It's now barely 19.
Let's see where are we at?
It's right around 1990, barely,maybe late 80s, and she says
listen, let's just, let's justbe clear.
She said you know the onlydifference what you do and what
you do actually helps morepeople than what jack nicholson
(07:40):
does.
At the time he was just as biga movie star as there was he.
He gets paid a lot more thanyou do, but you actually make
the world, you actually dosomething for the world that he
doesn't do.
And it stuck in part becausewho she was and her experience.
But it really began to speak tome and it gave me permission to
(08:00):
walk away and, like you, itjust wasn't my dream.
It wasn't my dream so, but thatthat conversation made a
difference.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
When you were doing.
I'm dying of curiosity aboutthis because I lived in.
California in the nineties,early nineties, and I don't
remember yoga being very as aspopular as it is now.
Is that my imagination?
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Was I just looking in the wrong place?
No, no, no, no, no, you're 100%right, it was.
I mean, when I told my fathermy father wanted me to be a
lawyer or a doctor or somethingyou know typical and when I told
him I was like getting seriousabout teaching yoga, there was
just a long pause on the phone.
I mean, there is no way it wasa career.
(08:47):
There was just no way.
No one was doing yoga basicallyin the country in the early 80s
Other than you know.
People were doing yoga, some inLA, some in New York.
A few celebrities were doing it.
No, you're 100% correct.
I remember, though I canremember the day driving down.
I was in LA and I was drivingdown the street Century City,
(09:10):
just outside Beverly Hills, andI saw this giant billboard for
Macy's, I think, and it had apart and they were selling a
sweater, but they had a personin the yoga pose and I went.
I literally thought to myself,oh, things have just changed and
that was actually sorry.
That was 2005 and it would be,and that was the beginning.
(09:35):
And, by the way, they weren'tdoing those billboards in, say,
ohio or illinois.
That was la, and that was thefirst time I saw okay, it's,
it's gone, it's gone, it's gone,something's happening here.
And because I was in LA at thetime and I had been teaching
then for 10, 15 years, you couldreally say that LA was kind of
(09:57):
where, where kind of it happened, where yoga became something
different.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Yes, that celebrity started doing it.
There was that famous to to youknow, madonna suddenly
publicized the fact that she wasdoing yoga.
There was that famous orinfamous moment where Sting went
on the Tonight Show and he doyou remember this, and he and he
.
I'm doing yoga now and I canhave sex for eight hours I
(10:26):
remember this because I was likethat's gonna hijack the message
that I mean hijack it.
You know it went in on so manydirections simultaneously one,
of course, people wanted to doyoga, to have sex for a straight
eight straight hours and thentwo it, you know everyone.
The whole thing got so spun outand and there were just little
(10:47):
things here and there.
That's that started to buildthis snowball.
And so by the late 90s andearly actually around 2010,.
2015 is where it becamesomething.
It really Teacher trainings,exploding yoga studios, and yoga
studios were now's explodingYoga studios.
Yoga studios were now the newaerobic studios, if you remember
(11:08):
those things.
Oh yeah, I taught aerobics and Irecently became a yoga teacher,
so yeah, Okay, you know, Ilived around the corner when I
was in LA from the Jane Fondaaerobic studio.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
I was going to bring her up because I remember her
and Allie, I forget her namebeautiful, very famous actress
when I was a kid, kid when I wasin my 20s and 30s.
Anyway, there were two reallyiconic women who really pushed
forward the yoga in terms ofcelebrity.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Allie McGraw, that's it.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Yeah, that was it uh, that's it, yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Yeah, that was it, okay.
Well, she was actually theperson I was talking about, who
I was dating, who was the onewho, um, suggested the only
difference between JackNicholson and I was that I was
doing more for the world and hewas making more money.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
So talk about an icon to have that conversation with.
I mean for your perspective itwould be different, but but you
know that's somebody with suchexperience.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Yeah, and a really bright as I said early on, even
when I didn't disclose her namejust an exceptionally bright,
well-read, worldly person who'd,you know, been married to Steve
McQueen and, and, uh, robertEvans, the head of Warner
Brothers, who's the godfatherall this kind of stuff.
So she'd seen it all.
She'd seen all of what LA wasand what acting was and what
wasn't, and, you're right, shewas one of the people who put
(12:29):
yoga on the map, Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
So in my one of my books I wrote about, you know,
when I first started to reallylearn about yoga, I was kind of
surprised by some of the thingsthat I was learning, because
when, when yoga first becamepopular, it felt like we took
the clothing and the outfits butwe didn't like carry over the
yogi lifestyle into America.
It's like we like tocommercialize stuff but we don't
bring over the wholeness.
(12:52):
The holistic wellness aspectsseem to be kind of missed by a
lot of the people who arechasing the trend.
Would you agree with that, oris that just my perception of
that?
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Anyone listening to us right now and not seeing me.
You're not seeing me nod,because what I'm, what I'm doing
right now, is going.
I'm in.
What you're saying isabsolutely right now.
On the one hand, by pulling outthe, if you will, the
philosophy but more subtleaspects of it and making it
about exercise.
(13:20):
That's, in part, what made itpopular.
On the other hand, it alsodiluted its impact so
significantly, and really you're100% right.
Yoga is about the mind.
No doubt you can.
You know.
Here's the big confusion.
Let's just clear this up.
What happened was there's a wordyou know, yoga is a Sanskrit
(13:43):
word and there's another word,it's called asana.
Now, asana means pose orposition or posture or seat, and
you know this is what everyonethinks of as yoga, as you go to
class and you do these postures.
But yoga is not necessarilyasana and asana is not
(14:06):
necessarily yoga.
In other words, you can doposes and not necessarily
experience yoga, because yoga isa quality of attention, a
quality of perception, a qualityof relaxation, and you can do
yoga, experience yoga and notnecessarily do the poses Right.
So what happened in thiscountry?
(14:30):
What happened was we shouldhave just been saying I'm going
to asana class and we would havereserved the yoga part for
effectively calming the mind andbecoming more present.
That's really what yoga is.
It's about being present.
You know, I used to say thisthis is one of my messages early
(14:52):
on.
And listen, we go to cirque desoleil you remember cirque de
soleil, right where, feet on thehead, they're doing the most
crazy stuff you could possiblyimagine beyond, beyond, beyond,
the most advanced yoga poses.
But we don't.
We go there for the show oftheir physical beauty, capacity,
(15:13):
all that.
We don't go there becausethey're spiritual giants, you
know.
And so that means that movingyour body a certain way, it can
be beautiful, it can bechallenging, it can be wonderful
, it can be a lot of things, butit isn't necessarily yoga.
And you nailed it, you exactlyare right.
(15:34):
And to this day, we're kind ofstill in this confused world.
What really is yoga?
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Yeah, as a woman I get a little bit irritated.
I mean, I grew up in gyms, I'veworked at three over my
lifetime, took kinesiology,exercise, physiology all this I
was going through didn't want toknow what I wanted to do when I
got older.
And one of my pet peeves is theoutfits that women are expected
to wear to work out.
I mean they're super cute but Idon't know if I would wear them
(16:04):
to work out and I feel like.
I feel like it's like sellingus on the lifestyle over the
practice, the spiritual side ofit.
But you know, maybe that's justmy own prejudices.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
No, you know, it's true.
Unfortunately it became part ofthe thing, especially in LA,
new York, san Francisco is andyou know we don't have to name
the companies that promoted thisidea of like if you didn't, you
know really promoting the bodyorientation of it.
It was listen again, we bothknow aerobics.
(16:36):
As I said, I lived near thejane fonda aerobic studio, so I
would see women, mostly women,coming and going with.
You know, the same kind ofoutfits, more or less just wind
back about 20 years, 10 years.
So, yeah, the outfits didn'tchange much.
I think they got rid of thosehigh, what were those called
(16:57):
those knee leg warmers?
I still wear them of course youdid, of course you did I'm a
baby of the 80s.
It makes me feel like I'm 12again yeah, but to be honest,
listen, uh, listen, uh.
You know I do to this day.
I do yoga every morning and I'mwearing some loose $20 old Navy
(17:18):
sweatpants and I don't know thedifference.
I, you know they don't.
That's my yoga.
There's no.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
You don't have to have a tight outfit on to do
yoga, to understand yoga, that's, that's for sure uh, can we
talk for a little bit about, uh,raising human consciousness and
, uh, yoga, because I I so forthe mission of all the work that
I do?
Uh, the magazine everythingceltic foundation, which I
started a year ago, is to raisehuman consciousness as a answer
(17:48):
to the mental health crisis, andone of the things that I talk a
lot about is is the power ofyoga to help you get command of
your experience.
What are your thoughts on onyoga as a tool from from mental
fitness?
Speaker 2 (18:02):
and the mental health crisis.
This is, this is well, I didn't, I didn't know we had this in
common.
This is one of my favoritesubjects as well and I think,
look, even what you're bringingup is so relevant today and so
meaningful in two ways.
One is our relationship withourselves and two it's the
relationship we have with eachother, just the global, the
(18:23):
cultural, the societal, like.
We don't all have to have thesame opinion, that's my opinion,
but let's honor each other asbeing human and I and now so
it's an indirect way ofanswering your question but
without a measure of selfregulation.
So you know, just speaking veryplainly and basically, our
(18:47):
nervous system really has an onswitch and an off switch.
On is sympathetic, we'reactivated, we're stimulated,
we're more aggressive, we'reactually more afraid, we're more
angry, more reactive, and thenyou flip the switch the other
way and it's calming andrelaxing and centering and
(19:10):
replenishing and restful, andyou sleep better and you become
more responsive and more patientand, neurologically speaking,
the front of your brain comesonline.
So when we're stressed, we'rein the most primitive part of
our brain where anger and fearand, by the way, that's the
default mechanism.
Our brain, we're anger and fearand, by the way, that's the
(19:32):
default mechanism, and for goodreason.
We're trying to protectourselves, so we're always on
lookout.
For does this make me angry?
Does this make me afraid?
Is this worthy of fear?
And, to your point, is yoga isbrilliant.
It's brilliant.
Wow, look at that, it'sbrilliant.
I didn't do that on purpose.
(19:54):
I don't even know how ithappens.
I don't even know how ithappened.
It was whatever.
It descended from above.
That was wild.
What was I saying?
Yoga is brilliant forself-regulation.
You know what we were sayingbefore.
It's not a fitness thing,listen.
Regulation, you know what wewere saying before.
It's not, it's not a fitnessthing, listen.
I, uh, I do yoga every day, butI also do for my ex.
(20:15):
I don't consider it exercise.
I do high intensity intervaltraining, I'll do rowing, I'll
do.
You know, I do some weights.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
That's my exercise.
Yoga is my medicine.
I love that Cause I you'veyou've just explained to me one
of the things that I reallystruggled when I had my
spiritual awakening, like I lostthe weight, I was able to fast
for two months.
It was the weirdest thing.
Talk about being another, likebody.
I went from being 80 poundsoverweight to suddenly being
able to fast for two months.
If that's not spiritualintervention.
I don't know what is but I lostall the weight.
But I really struggled with, um, adding yoga to sitting sitting
(20:51):
.
Still, it was a struggle for meand uh, and I ended up taking
hot yoga near me and I wasliving in new york for my book
launches and I took hot yoga andfor 260, I committed to doing
it every day for 60 days and Ionly missed two times, and that
is the when the flip, the switchwas flipped.
It was that constant exposure toit and I realized that switch
was flipped.
(21:12):
It was that constant exposureto it and I realized that it was
my mental health it was helping, not my physical health as much
, although I did look amazingwell, listen, the hot hot yoga
or stanga yoga.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
There are some very active styles of yoga and I
gotta say, if else, what theydefinitely do?
They definitely condition thebody, but they force us to pay
attention and ideally we'relinking our breath to movement.
And even that small thing.
It sounds so simple, but when Icoordinate breath to movement
(21:44):
again, this is part of theprefrontal cortex, it integrates
me and so I will, in thebeginning at least, experience a
certain level of mental clarityand capacity to be focused or
attentive.
However, some of those moreactive forms of yoga still
dysregulate the nervous system.
(22:06):
They don't necessarily calm usdown.
If you did do it for a year,two years, three years, so six
months, nine months a year,anything might be helpful, but
we have to become more selectivein time.
So, to your mental healthquestion.
Such a great topic.
I hope we can continue tounpack it a little bit.
(22:27):
The idea here is that when youlook at how much we're
overstimulated in our culture,how much is coming at us, this
is all new.
A hundred years ago, ournervous systems were in an
entirely different, encounteringentirely different world, and
that's the nervous system thatwe've all had and shared for
(22:49):
thousands of years.
And so just in the last, withsocial media and whatnot, the
last 20, 30 years, we're askingour nervous systems to deal with
stuff that they're not trainedto deal with.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
I love that you said that, because it's what it is it
is.
I passionately believe that weare literally walking around
with gaslighting devices in ourhands and our bodies are just
simply not, and that's why wehave such a huge mental health
crisis.
We're gaslighting andfear-mongering through social
media and through news media andjust media in general.
Anybody wants to sell clicks topeople 100%.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Listen, the technology was developed
ultimately and continues to beenhanced, to make money, not to
spread health and wellness.
You know the people who aremaking money on social media
from the actual technologyitself.
In fact, many of them don't lettheir kids use their phones.
(23:45):
You know that, right?
I mean, you go through the listand the actual developers of
the technology forbid theirchildren from using it because
they know the impact on it.
And I would say, yes, that's amassive contributor to the
mental health crisis we're in.
And you know, I still myyoungest kids are still
(24:07):
teenagers, teenagers, and theyare having to deal with certain
aspects of life and having toprocess things because of the
technology that my older kidsdid not.
You know, 15, 10, 15 yearsolder.
We're making it harder andharder for human beings to find
(24:30):
that rhythm where we can adapt,which means to consistently
adjust to what's happening inour environment, what's going on
in our relationships, and to doit in a way that's not reactive
but is adaptive.
You know and those two thingsare real, listen, this is
scientific the better I amadapting.
(24:54):
So life is always changing.
This is a traditional view ofyoga and I think we can all
admit life is changing, mybody's changing, the world is
changing, the weather ischanging, people's opinion of me
is changing, everything ischanging.
(25:26):
So how do I adjust to thosechanges?
My capacity to adjust to thosechanges will to remain steady in
constant change determines howwell I will grow older, how well
I will live, how the quality ofmy relationships.
And so yoga and this is the partof yoga where I really I mean
(25:48):
this is an element of yoga thatI really emphasize we can
determine the direction ofchange.
We can influence the directionof how we respond to changes in
our life, and the most criticalthing that I'd want everyone to
understand is some of us, someof how we encounter and respond
to life, is in our control.
(26:09):
We have to slow down.
We have to choose 5, 10, 20, 30minutes a day where we slow
down, we give our nervoussystems time to adjust and only
then, by coming back to what youknow, strengthening our process
of what's called homeostasis,our ability to continue to adapt
(26:30):
efficiently.
And, by the way, our brains arenot meant to be in
hypervigilance.
We're not meant to be.
We can't sustain highlystressed states indefinitely
before we get sick, before weact out, before we suffer either
physically or mentally.
We're just not meant to behyper activated.
We have to get still once in awhile hyper activated.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
We have to get still once in a while.
Yeah, it's, uh, I think that'swhat led to uh, most of my
audience knows my spiritualjourney because I shared in a
couple books, but I, uh, Iburned out and I mean I I had
worked for 30 years like I hadworked since I was a teenager
but I I had done nothing butwork and I didn't have a real
life of my own.
I was masked, highly masked, andconstantly, was constantly
(27:16):
trying to manage everythingaround me.
Um, because I was trying toengineer very particular
outcomes and and that makes youreally great at marketing and PR
and running an agency.
But it sucks as a human being.
And I woke up one day and Icould not schedule, keep uh like
any like.
I couldn't even like look at acalendar, check my email, like
(27:37):
that's how burnt out I was.
And it took, um, it took beingquiet for a long time, actually
I'd say almost two years beforeI was able to start to function
again as a as a human being and,uh, definitely meditation and
yoga huge part of that healingjourney.
My nervous system wasabsolutely shot.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
I really hope people take in what you just said.
I really do.
I mean, that's real.
And again, it's not because youare weak, it's not because you
don't have good intention, it'snot because it's simply, it's
neurological.
It's like we're.
We are human beings who, fortens of thousands of years, knew
(28:18):
what cycle the moon was in.
We'd spend time in nature, we'dgo to sleep not long after it
got dark, we'd wake up before itgot light.
All of that's been thrown outNow.
Those are the things that theyseem kind of basic.
All of that's been thrown outNow.
Those are the things that theyseem kind of basic and yet they
really don't have a lot of playin our current lives, you know,
because of modern life.
And yet, without that linkage,our body and our brain is going
(28:42):
to suffer and it's only a matterof time if we don't break it up
.
As you said, it took time, ittook silence.
Now, the one thing I would sayis that yoga has some things to
contribute protocols, if youwill, strategies to speed up the
time of that healing, in otherwords.
Uh, notwithstanding how burntout you were, it took two years.
(29:06):
It took what it took.
I'm sure there wasphysiological repair and
emotional, psychological repair.
You know, we have to kind ofrecoalesce ourselves Right, and
I've I've been through thosestages.
I've been through plenty ofstuff in my life, so I
understand that.
Luckily, there are protocols,like you mentioned yoga,
(29:26):
meditation, no-transcript repair.
(30:21):
So, as I said, there arestrategies where we can be more
effective at repair and renewaland finding balance and, and you
know, know, it's one of thosethings that that I'm trying to
provide and uh, and I'mdedicated to because I know the
effectiveness in my life, I'veseen it in the lives of others,
seen in the lives of my kids.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
So yeah, yeah, I'm really glad we took this turn in
the conversation, to be honestwith you oh, I'm glad to hear
that you know I, uh, I think, um, we help other people know that
what healing is possible bybeing authentic, and it took me
such a long time to learn to beauthentic uh it wasn't that I
wasn't nice to people, but I Idid not know who I was and
(31:04):
that's a strange experience tohave at 50, to wake up one day
and be like I don't know who thehell I am.
But I'm going to go do the workand it was.
You know it's not and this iswhat I was.
We said earlier about thespiritual journey not for the
week of the faint of heart,because it was the.
It got hardest at my year yearthree uh of trying to really
really understanding that mynervous system had been shot and
(31:25):
that cptsd was going to besomething I would have to manage
.
But I think, people need to hear.
Like you know, we have enoughperfection.
We, so many people, and I thinkthe vast majority of human
beings on the planet, are livingin the lowest vibrations
because that's, um, that's thevictim mentality uh that we're
trained into, uh, thinking isnormal and uh, it's such a
(31:47):
miserable, miserable place tolive and watching that
transformation in people's lives, when they begin to see that
you know that it is possible toheal from anything and that you
can actually drive your lifeexperience, that you can
actually choose your perception.
Now, I'm not perfect.
I certainly have my days whereI still get triggered every once
in a blue moon, but the vastmajority of my experience is
(32:08):
really beautiful and that'sthat's due to spiritual
practices.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
You know, yeah, yeah, well, said, I think, um, two
thoughts I had first of all, um,I just want to make sure anyone
listening to what you said,because it really comes out of
deep experience and growth andevolution and discovery.
But it's as if I just want toagain just acknowledge that
we're not bad.
In other words, you were notbad for where you.
You know the thing that got youto this place of burnout.
You were driven, you weremotivated and, as you said, you
(32:45):
were nice, for the most partright, you were making a
positive impact as youunderstood it at the time.
And again I want to say it's,look in part, psychological, but
it's also even more basic thanthat.
It's our neurology.
We are geared to fundamentallylook at the world and try and
figure out what's dangerous andwhat do I need to push back on?
(33:06):
What is the source of my anger?
So what do I have to be angryabout?
What do I have to be fearfulabout?
That's what the social mediaalgorithms are.
Totally it's like.
It's like just pulling us inlike chum for sharks.
It's just like if there'ssomething to be angry about, if
there's something to be afraidof, it gets higher priority in
(33:27):
your social media scroll period.
That's just how they work it,so it really is like they're
working with our neurology, ourprimitive brain.
So no one's bad for looking atthe ambulance as you're driving
by slowing your car down andchecking it out.
So, number one, I just kind ofwant to say to everybody we're
(33:49):
all doing the best we can withwhat we know, right?
But now I also want to say this, and and your, your story
speaks to that, which is, youknow, the buddha described the
process of uh, becoming awake.
But I means awake, you know,the awakened one is naturally
(34:09):
and this is his quote, it quoteit's to go against the stream.
To do what you did and to do forany of us, to take
responsibility for ourselves, isto actually step out of the
norm, is to actually step out ofthe flow, because most of us,
where we'll look, most of ourpoints of reference on the
(34:30):
landscape of the world, arepeople who are swept up in the
anger and the fear and the basicprimitive responses.
And, uh, to go against thestream is what you did.
And anytime we make that choiceto get quiet, to still
ourselves, to reflect, we'regoing against the stream it's
(34:54):
nice to see, it's nice to see inmy lifetime, uh, the change.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Well, I like that we shifted away from organized
religion, because I could give awhole talk on on the problems
with it.
I mean, it did provide astructure for us on which we
were told how to think andbehave and you know what, how,
what to do, and, frankly,apparently a lot of us needed
that.
And the collapse of organizedreligion is is one of those
other leading factors, alongwith cell phones, to, to putting
(35:18):
people in this victim mentalityand survival paradigm, which is
the bottom of the consciousnessscale, and, uh, I just think
it's so important to spread thatmessage.
Um, I wanted to hear a littlebit more about what you're up to
these days, because I knowyou're a busy man.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
Well, thank you.
I am actually on the finaldraft of the book about this
practice called Yoga Nidra thatI shared with you, and, for
those that don't know, this isthis extraordinary practice,
that Yoga Nidra is both apractice, but it's also a state,
(35:59):
a state of awareness, and it'sa unique state that hovers
between, say, the height ofmeditation and sleep.
And so, as you slowly begin to,you do it lying down, and so,
in a way, for many people it'san opportunity to enter into a
meditative experience, but to doit without the hardcore
(36:22):
discipline of sitting as youwould in meditation and
meditation.
Anyone who's tried it knowsthis, probably has had the same
experience, which is that whenyou start meditating, you find
out not, you don't findnecessarily and discover the
meditative state.
You discover how distracted youare the moment you start
focusing.
(36:42):
You find out how hard it is tofocus.
Yeah, right, and so, unlikemeditation, what yoga nidra
allows us to do, instead offinding that rhythm of
meditative awareness throughconcentration, it asks us to
relax, and it's, and it shows usthat behind the movement of the
(37:04):
mind is an enduring state ofease, and sleep is the entry.
So I've been teaching that.
I was one of the firstAmericans to start teaching it
around the country and Iproduced recordings for that and
then that would become thebasis of my app.
(37:24):
I have an app called Sanctuarywith Rod Stryker and there's a
hundred meditations on it andthen there's 50 different yoga
nidra practices.
So that's still alive.
I'm still contributing to that.
That's still alive and well.
I'm writing, I'm still creatingcourses.
In a few weeks I'll go to twoweeks I'll be in Europe and I'll
(37:47):
be teaching in Europe.
And I'm not doing less In myold age.
I'm basically just doing thethings that I love.
And I think to your point cancreate the greatest difference.
And I just mentioned one otherthing about that app.
I did mention that I have twoteenagers.
I have a twin twins, daughterand son, and you know they're
(38:10):
just 17, just turning 17.
And I see the level of stressin their lives and and to be
honest with you, it actuallyit's um, it's it's, in a way, a
hard thing to talk about.
And a important thing to talkabout is a dear friend of mine
uh, his, um, his wife's umdaughter at the age of 15, uh
(38:31):
committed suicide about, um,this was about a year and a half
ago and, um, I was so struck atthis memorial was standing, we
were standing graves aregraveside and there were at
least 50 young people, so therewas several hundred people, but
there were 50, uh, teenagersthere, her, her classmates and
(38:53):
they were inconsolable and Iwent home and I was so moved and
I was so disturbed by and bythe way, not a big surprise, we
know this happens within thenext six weeks two of her
classmates killed themselves.
Yeah, it has a, it has thiscluster thing that happens.
And I then determined that,okay, this app, most people who
(39:15):
are going to use this app areadults.
And I then determined that,okay, this app, most people who
are going to use this app areadults.
But what I want to do is giveany teenager anyone who has a
subscription can give the giftof the meditation, yoga, nidra
practices to a teenager, Becauseboth of us it sounds like we
share this common interest, thispassion.
(39:37):
For how do we bring, how do welook at and begin to create some
kind of effect on thepervasiveness of mental illness
in this country?
And it's not hit anyone harderthan teenagers.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Oh yeah, when I share the statistic that the number
two cause of death in youngpeople is suicide, it absolutely
shocks people and I'm like thatis stunning, it's stunning,
it's stunning.
And yet, you know, we'resuperheroes with cell phones
that allow us to have access topowers that we've never had
before access to information,access to everything that a
(40:11):
person could possibly use.
Yet we're facing this, and Icare really deeply about this.
It's actually going to make meget teary-eyed yeah, used, yet
yet we're facing this and I, I,I care really deeply about this
is actually gonna make me getteary-eyed yeah, I hear you
warren me too, me too it's just,uh, there's a way forward and
we live in a world that is, thathas been built to keep us
(40:32):
distracted and it's like sosimple.
I mean, to me it's so simple.
You know, it doesn't have to beabout religion, it doesn't have
to be um about, um, your family.
You can literally learn thetools and get in command of your
life experience and when youknow there's a solution and and
yet pushing it forward is, Imean, I've I've come up against
so much like I don't sayresistance, but it's been a
(40:54):
challenge to get thisconversation off the ground, to
talk about raising humanconsciousness as the answer to
the mental health crisis,because people don't like
talking about mental healthstill.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
Yeah, yeah, you know, and yeah, no, thank you.
Every time I think about thisyoung girl who I had had dinner
with several times, who nolonger is alive.
Every time I moved to the edgeof tears, for sure.
And, moreover, to watch theimpact that that loss had to her
friends, and that even two morefelt justified and in doing it.
(41:27):
And so, you know, when I watchmy kids, my teenagers, and
they're both ambitious and theyboth are straight A students,
and God you know, amazing,amazing, it's a gift.
I don't know what we did right,but we did something right.
But still, the level of stressthat they experience and they
(41:49):
literally look at me.
Last night I was sitting atdinner and they said you know,
I'm stressed.
I said, well, let's talk aboutit.
How about we go do a practice?
How about we just take fiveminutes?
You can.
Five minutes, you can changeyour state, and what people
should know is the tools to Oneremedy some of the impact that
(42:11):
that modern life is having on usand to find a better way,
because I think we're bothbelievers that when we slow down
, there is an inner intelligencethat allows us to really make
the best decisions in the moment, decisions that are not driven
by our most primitive instincts,they're not driven by our
(42:32):
psychological conditioning, butthey really are like our own
inner guidance, our own innerwisdom, and that thing wants us
to thrive.
It's always ready to help usfind the path to thriving.
But if we don't slow down, wecan't be with it.
We can't hear it.
It gets drummed out by all ofthe noise, either internal or
(42:57):
external yeah, one of my bigconcerns.
Speaker 1 (42:59):
I have an 18 year old son as well.
Um, one of my big concerns forthem is that, you know, I don't
think, I don't think we we quiteunderstand or have really
accepted this as a society thatwe we allowed the technology to
come in and sort of take overeverything.
We're all like yeehaw, look atall this technology we have, but
we never had a conversationabout how, putting a superpower
(43:20):
device and all the world'sinformation in the hands of a
child, what kind of long-termimpact that was going to have,
the speed, the constant, youknow, and that we're seeing that
in the statistics that aregoing on.
So you know, I talked to my sonand I try to tell him it's
almost like I want to get abunch of professional athletes
together that meditate and havethem do a whole campaign
(43:41):
together because he wouldbenefit from it.
But he's like I can't sit still.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
Yeah, yeah.
Well, listen, you know thisbook, dopamine nation begins to
help us understand it.
I mean again, I keep going back.
There are elements of this thatare just in our nervous system,
our neurology, and we are.
We're slaves to it.
The interesting thing, like yousaid, like the technology came,
there was never a conversation,there was never like a manual
(44:06):
about OK, this is the thresholdwhen it's effective and helpful,
and this is the threshold.
If you pass it, it actually ispathological.
We know that the more time youspend on social media this is
this is not a newsflash, butI'll say it anyway the less
happy you are.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
Ooh, yes.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
It's just.
It's just.
All of the research confirms itagain and again.
The more time the less happy.
Meanwhile, the thing isdelivering.
So you know what I heard whenthis I heard this about I was I
gave a presentation at the aspenideas festival about a decade
or so ago and there was aneurologist there and it's when,
(44:46):
really, the first of theresearchers coming out and she
said do you?
She presented this idea andbasically it explains why you
and I, why we have all seen this.
Have you seen four or fiveteenagers sit at a table and
they're all on their phones andthey're not interacting.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
They're texting each other sometimes.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
Ask yourself, you know, ask yourself why they're
not looking at each other's eyes.
You know why are they notactually eye contact?
You know why there's moredopamine.
You know why are they notactually eye contact.
You know why there's moredopamine.
They're literally getting abigger hit of dopamine by being
(45:27):
on their phone than they wouldbe by looking in each other's
eyes.
Now what happens is themultiples of dopamine you get
it's okay, we do the little bitof the science the dopamine hit
you get is so big on your phonethat your brain then dulls your
dopamine receptors.
Now what happens is socialinteraction used to give you
(45:48):
dopamine.
Like if you and I were sittingin the same place and I was eye
to eye with you, cynthia, I'dget a hit of dopamine.
That's why we were motivatedsit around the fire and talk to
each other in the old days andall that well, now what happens
is it's too dull.
The brain is dulled by thedulling down of the neural
receptors to dopamine becauseyour phones deliver so much that
(46:12):
your brain can't tolerate it.
So now what happens is you andI have a conversation without
our phones and it's too dull.
We've been dulled only to beable to, in a way cope with how
much dopamine phones create.
So it's really math.
It's just, in a sense, math whywe're addicted to those things
(46:35):
oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
I think that's why uh they, I talk about this.
I uh in my speeches onconsciousness, the um, uh, the
timing of the fourth industrialrevolution, the age of ai, and
one of my three books was on ona ai and its opportunity for the
fourth industrial revolution toput america's dream back on the
(46:56):
map.
Because we, you know, we sentall our jobs and our you know
talent and skills uh, way a longtime ago because of capitalism,
um, but um, I believe that theage of ai happening at the same
time as the age of aquarius, andthe level of you know we
finally reached that we neededenough people to reach higher
consciousness to tip over intothe age of aquarius.
It was the only thing that waskind of holding us back, uh,
(47:18):
from that label of enough peoplebeing reach higher
consciousness to tip over intothe age of Aquarius.
It was the only thing that waskind of holding us back from
that label of enough peoplebeing in higher consciousness.
It's like I really believe thatthat is not an accident that
we're there's so muchconversation finally around this
topic.
It's so important and reallythe cure to me is the cure that
that, no matter where you live,no matter what language you
speak or what your you knowfamily history story, is just
(47:42):
keeping it as simple as teachingsomeone how to raise their
human consciousness by usingtheir triggers for growth, and
we don't talk about religion orprayer or whatever it is that
will distract somebody.
I really think that's theanswer.
Speaker 2 (47:55):
And from where I sit, I just want to remind anyone
listening to what you just said.
It's not just the knowledge ofwhat you just said, it's not
just knowing that.
That's true.
The question is how youimplement.
So, unless there's a livingexperience that allows you to
(48:18):
remember who you are, again,it's not even a story whether
you apply a Christian overlay onthat, or Jewish or Muslim, it
doesn't matter to me.
The bottom line is that if weregulate ourselves, what comes
forward is the kind of wisdom.
Now, in Sanskrit, the languagesof yoga, it's called prajna, and
(48:40):
prajna means the light ofwisdom.
But you could ask what is thelight of wisdom?
So, basically, what it's sayingis when your mind gets quiet,
it's not empty.
The emptiness gives rise to adiscovery.
And what's that?
It means that, inherently, eachof us is compassion.
We're held together by a senseof love, if you will.
(49:02):
Some people call it coherence,but the state of coherence is a
kind of holding the trillions ofcells.
Why are they all workingtogether in concert?
It's called cohesion.
Another word is love.
Okay, and the Buddha says ourbasic nature when we get still
(49:27):
again, this is cross-cultural,it's everyone on the planet we
get still, there's love andthere's the light of wisdom.
And what is the the light ofwisdom?
It's the insight that allowsyou to be more free.
And, um, you know the gift that?
(49:47):
The gift I was given is todiscover that at relatively
young age.
I remember the first time I satdown to meditate and I was
amazed that it didn't takethinking.
In fact, when I began toquieten my thoughts, there was a
(50:09):
treasure there and I had noidea.
I just had no idea that quietyour mind down and you're okay,
and wisdom comes forward abouthow to expand and express that
okay to others, to yourself, tothe world.
Speaker 1 (50:30):
So true, the gift of learning to be quiet has been.
I used to spend and I knowother people can identify with
this I was always in my head,always overanalyzing everything,
always trying to control everyaspect I could.
That was a trauma response fromunhealed trauma, and I didn't
(50:52):
know that at the time.
I just thought I was being typeA.
It's so funny when you lookback and you're like all that
time you were, you're so type.
A and it's like no, it was justa CPTSD response, but I would
lay in bed at night.
Now You'll find thisinteresting because you talked
about sleep and yoga nidra.
I went 20, well, it wasprobably more than 20 years,
never sleeping more than 45minutes, such profound trauma
(51:16):
that I could not sleep.
I heard everything and Iremember when I first started my
healing journey and it was justthis extraordinary gift to get
to a place where I just rememberone day realizing that my mind
was no longer spending hours inbed at night on the carousel of
thought.
You know hours I would spendtwo hours at least in bed at
(51:38):
night on the carousel of thought.
You know hours.
I would spend two hours atleast in bed at night on that
carousel.
And it was a, it was amazing.
I was.
I stayed sane.
And to get to a place where Icould actually, you know, not
only sleep two hours, which isunheard of for me, but, um, to
feel rested and to not have alot going on here.
(51:59):
I never realized that nothaving a lot was actually a
really good thing.
Speaker 2 (52:05):
Well, we don't get a lot of reward for that.
I mean, you're right.
I mean, listen, you know welive in a highly transactional
world and I get it.
You and our worth is very much.
Listen, you know, it's one ofthe great things about our
country and one of thechallenges of our country.
If I'm not generating value, Ihave no value.
I'm only as good as the value Igenerate, and the brain has to
(52:29):
go out and do a lot of work togenerate value.
And, um, you know it, it's agreat place if you're ambitious,
but it also, if we don't getoff the treadmill of our
ambition, we can get really sick, you know, mentally or
emotionally, physically orwhatever.
Speaker 1 (52:44):
Yeah, Rod, I could keep talking to you for like
another hour.
You're so fascinating.
Speaker 2 (52:52):
And we should do this again sometimes because you
bring a lot.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I appreciate where you'recoming from in having these
conversations.
Speaker 1 (53:03):
Thank you.
Yeah, it's been anextraordinary journey.
If our listeners wanted tocheck out your work or follow
you on social media, where wouldthey go?
Speaker 2 (53:14):
Rod Stryker Rodstrykercom is the website.
Uh, rod striker official oninstagram and uh, you know the
app is named sanctuary and Ireally, you know, I just want to
again encourage people to uh,consider they don't.
We don't have to take a lot oftime.
A little bit of time will makea lot of difference and I really
(53:35):
try, try and remind people, goagainst the stream.
Just five minutes, 10 minutes,20 minutes can make a huge
difference in your life and thepractice.
You mentioned, yoga nidra.
Just one more plug for that.
It's not just a method of apower nap, it also helps us
sleep or go back to sleep.
(53:55):
And you know, long before, 20years before, there was
something called COVID.
The World Health Organizationsaid sleep loss was actually the
pandemic of the time.
20 years earlier, earlier andright before COVID, the World
(54:21):
Health Organization said mentalillness is the new pandemic.
And so we have to.
We have to take steps and in asense, unfortunately, we have to
go against the stream becauseeveryone around us is caught up.
There's very few.
I know it's a voice and youmentioned that it's gaining
momentum the opportunity to goagainst the stream, to regulate,
to raise our awareness.
We are gaining momentum.
(54:43):
Look, we're having thisconversation, uh, but I would
again just offer that we we oweit to ourselves.
We shouldn't postpone ourhappiness and there's no reason
to wait, and that we take thesesteps that can make us better
inside as well as outside, andhow we relate to each other.
Speaker 1 (55:07):
I appreciate your, your.
It's so nice to interviewsomebody with with so much
experience.
I mean you've really seen thetrend.
You've seen the transition.
You know the shifts in yogafrom when you were doing it in
(55:29):
college to through the 90s andto now, and wisdom is priceless,
so thank you.
When is your book coming out?
Speaker 2 (55:35):
You know it won't be out till early next year.
These things take a while, andpublishing dates take a long
time.
I'm looking forward to sharingit, though, with the world and
you know it really is aninvaluable practice and I'm
trying to help people understand, both from a scientific and
even from a spiritualperspective, why it does what it
does.
In the end, it's just aboutencouraging people to do it.
(55:58):
You know that's where it comesdown to.
Speaker 1 (56:03):
Well, you guys.
Thank you so much for joiningus today for Glow Up with Shaman
Isis Rod Stryker.
Thank you so much for coming onthe show and sharing your
experience and wisdom.
For those of you who are notfamiliar with my work'm, shaman
isis also known as cynthia to myfriends and family, and uh uh,
I've written three books, whichyou're going to go check out on
(56:24):
my website shaman isiscom,unleash the empress, which
shares my spiritual practices,um, the ones that helped me lose
a ton of weight.
Memory mansion this year is myjourney from catholic orphanage
to prd new york city, pr divaa,to learning to love myself.
And then the third book is ANew American Dream Conscious AI
for a Future Full of Promise,and it's more of an academic
(56:46):
analysis of how we can use thefourth industrial revolution to
benefit humanity.
But if you're not alreadyworking on raising your human
consciousness, I highlyrecommend it.
Go visit shamanicistcom.
And if you're not alreadysubscribed, what are you
thinking?
This is intelligent listening,so please subscribe.
And thanks again, you guys, forlistening.
Speaker 2 (57:05):
Bye.
Well, hello, hello, hello and welcome to Glow Up
with Shaman Isis.
I'm your hostess with themostest Shaman Isis, also known
as Cynthia, to my friends andfamily, and I am really jacked
for today's episode becausewe're interviewing a true yogi
master, a true teacher, RodStryker.
Thank you so much for coming onthe show.
I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I'm thrilled to be here.
I'm thrilled to be with you.
Thank you, cynthia, I have toask right off the bat how long
have you been practicing yoga?
Well, I actually startedformally practicing it when I
was 19.
I'm now 67.
So if we do the math, it'sgetting right up there.
(00:41):
It's a bunch of years, decades.
I used to think it was 40, butit's actually now, well, more
than 40 years getting close tothink it was 40, but it's
actually now more than well.
More than 40 years gettingclose to 50 years.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Well, well, I'm gonna have to unearth some of your
history because on the show.
We like to share people'sjourneys.
Um, I I have to just ask out ofI'm dying of curiosity that the
acting transitioning into beinga yogi.
Uh, how did that happen?
Speaker 2 (01:04):
wow, okay.
So, um, you know the actinglife, I gotta say so.
Let me just first say that Iwent to college thinking I
wanted to be a psychologist andI had some experiences in high
school that really, um, thatreally uh, I don't know.
I just immediately sparked apowerful interest in human
(01:26):
psychology and how we interactand how we learn to know
ourselves and things like that.
And, in truth, probably whatwas going on was psychology was
affording me this view, a way ofseeing and beginning to
understand who I was, never mindwho other people were.
I then discovered yoga as I wentto school, studying psychology,
(01:47):
philosophy in university,university of Denver, and then I
moved back to LA and I had beendoing yoga on my own right,
still a junior in college, and Imoved back to LA because I
really had lost interest.
I was no longer enthusiasticabout philosophy or psychology,
(02:09):
at least studying in that way.
And, oddly enough, cynthia, Itell you the truth, the minute I
started experiencing yoga, Ifelt like I had discovered what
I was hoping to find in mystudies in school, in university
.
There was a way, something waslike this embodied philosophy,
something was touching me and Iwas feeling a deep part of
(02:30):
myself that I'd probably beensearching for for a long time.
Fast forward, I moved back toLA, didn't finish college Friend
took me to a yoga class and itwas the first time I'd
interacted with a teacher.
Live, that was great, but nowit's really.
Well, what am I going to do?
What am I going to do?
(02:51):
And you know, I grew up in LosAngeles and I think maybe anyone
who's grown up in Los Angelessooner or later has said to
myself well, you might as welljust be an actor, right.
I said to myself well, youmight as well just be an actor,
right.
But truly, I kind of fell inlove with the craft and the
thing about acting allows youit's not just to play other
(03:12):
parts, but it also is a kind ofway of exploring yourself that
maybe you're afraid to do inlife?
Yes, you get to feel differentstreets and some streets, listen
, I've always been a really good, straight, pretty straight
laced guy, so you can be anactor in a part that's dangerous
, passionate, that's violent,that's sexy.
(03:36):
So you get to experience all ofthese different parts of
yourself and I got to be honestwith you.
I was still doing yoga, butacting was affording me this
other kind of experience ofmyself that I didn't know in my
childhood and it just gave mesomething altogether different
to play with and yeah, and itstayed with me for quite some
(03:57):
time.
I mean, if you're interested,I'll tell you about how it ended
, but I will let's we can fillin some blanks before that how
it ended, but I will let's wecan fill in some blanks before
that.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Yeah, yeah, I uh, uh.
So did you enjoy act before weget too deep into yoga.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
I want to.
Did you enjoy acting?
I did, you know I did.
I did not enjoy the business ofacting and it's a, you know
it's a serious business.
It's not like you're in anyother town in america other than
maybe new york or san francisco, where people do regional
theater.
They do the local theater.
It's not about getting famous.
(04:33):
In la you're probably acting inorder to be famous and you're
encountering other people whoreally want to make money off
you as an actor.
So the thing it's a business.
And uh, I I used to kind ofthink about my people I knew who
were still in other towns andstill just did acting for the
(04:54):
love of acting.
But in la that's really hard todo.
Even small plays are showcases.
So everyone's trying to be seenand everyone's trying to get
famous and get the soap wrong,get in the movie and get the
series and and and, by the way,everyone's looking at you to do
that.
It's not just, as I said, alocal kind of theater thing that
(05:14):
could be fun.
So I enjoyed.
There's a craft there, goodacting craft.
I mean it's a, it's a skillthat you can develop and that I
kind of really enjoyed right upto the end.
But the business did not.
That was not my thing and Ithink, ultimately, I'm probably
too sensitive for the amount ofrejection that you get as an
(05:36):
actor.
I just I don't think I had theheart, I don't think I had the
skin for it.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Well, I think somebody.
So I acted to make money verysimilar to you in New York in
the 90s and and I had to have aconversation with myself one day
because I was like, why are youskipping half the auditions?
(06:08):
It was like because you don'twant it.
You don't want it enough.
Look at all these people whowant it so desperately.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Like it's time to, like you know, move on with a
career yeah, and and I mentionedthe end of it you, at the time
I was dating, I was in a veryserious relationship with
someone who had had a career inHollywood.
She was a bit older than I was,but she was really a wise
(06:36):
person and I told her about my,like you, kind of reaching this
point.
Where am I meant for this?
Is this something I really wantto do?
And yet it was also this kindof reaching this point.
Where am I meant for this?
Is this something I really wantto do?
And yet it was also this kindof thing like if you've been
dreaming about something longenough, it's hard to give up the
dream, even if it's no longeryour dream, if that makes any
(06:57):
sense, you still want the thingthat you've been wanting for a
decade.
Part of you doesn't want towalk away from it because then
you got to well, what's the nextdream?
You got to figure that out.
But I remember we were havingthis conversation, I remember
where we were at the time andshe said listen, and now I had
been teaching yoga for about adecade and, as I said, it's the.
(07:20):
It's now barely 19.
Let's see where are we at?
It's right around 1990, barely,maybe late 80s, and she says
listen, let's just, let's justbe clear.
She said you know the onlydifference what you do and what
you do actually helps morepeople than what jack nicholson
(07:40):
does.
At the time he was just as biga movie star as there was he.
He gets paid a lot more thanyou do, but you actually make
the world, you actually dosomething for the world that he
doesn't do.
And it stuck in part becausewho she was and her experience.
But it really began to speak tome and it gave me permission to
(08:00):
walk away and, like you, itjust wasn't my dream.
It wasn't my dream so, but thatthat conversation made a
difference.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
When you were doing.
I'm dying of curiosity aboutthis because I lived in.
California in the nineties,early nineties, and I don't
remember yoga being very as aspopular as it is now.
Is that my imagination?
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Was I just looking in the wrong place?
No, no, no, no, no, you're 100%right, it was.
I mean, when I told my fathermy father wanted me to be a
lawyer or a doctor or somethingyou know typical and when I told
him I was like getting seriousabout teaching yoga, there was
just a long pause on the phone.
I mean, there is no way it wasa career.
(08:47):
There was just no way.
No one was doing yoga basicallyin the country in the early 80s
Other than you know.
People were doing yoga, some inLA, some in New York.
A few celebrities were doing it.
No, you're 100% correct.
I remember, though I canremember the day driving down.
I was in LA and I was drivingdown the street Century City,
(09:10):
just outside Beverly Hills, andI saw this giant billboard for
Macy's, I think, and it had apart and they were selling a
sweater, but they had a personin the yoga pose and I went.
I literally thought to myself,oh, things have just changed and
that was actually sorry.
That was 2005 and it would be,and that was the beginning.
(09:35):
And, by the way, they weren'tdoing those billboards in, say,
ohio or illinois.
That was la, and that was thefirst time I saw okay, it's,
it's gone, it's gone, it's gone,something's happening here.
And because I was in LA at thetime and I had been teaching
then for 10, 15 years, you couldreally say that LA was kind of
(09:57):
where, where kind of it happened, where yoga became something
different.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Yes, that celebrity started doing it.
There was that famous to to youknow, madonna suddenly
publicized the fact that she wasdoing yoga.
There was that famous orinfamous moment where Sting went
on the Tonight Show and he doyou remember this, and he and he
.
I'm doing yoga now and I canhave sex for eight hours I
(10:26):
remember this because I was likethat's gonna hijack the message
that I mean hijack it.
You know it went in on so manydirections simultaneously one,
of course, people wanted to doyoga, to have sex for a straight
eight straight hours and thentwo it, you know everyone.
The whole thing got so spun outand and there were just little
(10:47):
things here and there.
That's that started to buildthis snowball.
And so by the late 90s andearly actually around 2010,.
2015 is where it becamesomething.
It really Teacher trainings,exploding yoga studios, and yoga
studios were now's explodingYoga studios.
Yoga studios were now the newaerobic studios, if you remember
(11:08):
those things.
Oh yeah, I taught aerobics and Irecently became a yoga teacher,
so yeah, Okay, you know, Ilived around the corner when I
was in LA from the Jane Fondaaerobic studio.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
I was going to bring her up because I remember her
and Allie, I forget her namebeautiful, very famous actress
when I was a kid, kid when I wasin my 20s and 30s.
Anyway, there were two reallyiconic women who really pushed
forward the yoga in terms ofcelebrity.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Allie McGraw, that's it.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Yeah, that was it uh, that's it, yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Yeah, that was it, okay.
Well, she was actually theperson I was talking about, who
I was dating, who was the onewho, um, suggested the only
difference between JackNicholson and I was that I was
doing more for the world and hewas making more money.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
So talk about an icon to have that conversation with.
I mean for your perspective itwould be different, but but you
know that's somebody with suchexperience.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Yeah, and a really bright as I said early on, even
when I didn't disclose her namejust an exceptionally bright,
well-read, worldly person who'd,you know, been married to Steve
McQueen and, and, uh, robertEvans, the head of Warner
Brothers, who's the godfatherall this kind of stuff.
So she'd seen it all.
She'd seen all of what LA wasand what acting was and what
wasn't, and, you're right, shewas one of the people who put
(12:29):
yoga on the map, Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
So in my one of my books I wrote about, you know,
when I first started to reallylearn about yoga, I was kind of
surprised by some of the thingsthat I was learning, because
when, when yoga first becamepopular, it felt like we took
the clothing and the outfits butwe didn't like carry over the
yogi lifestyle into America.
It's like we like tocommercialize stuff but we don't
bring over the wholeness.
(12:52):
The holistic wellness aspectsseem to be kind of missed by a
lot of the people who arechasing the trend.
Would you agree with that, oris that just my perception of
that?
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Anyone listening to us right now and not seeing me.
You're not seeing me nod,because what I'm, what I'm doing
right now, is going.
I'm in.
What you're saying isabsolutely right now.
On the one hand, by pulling outthe, if you will, the
philosophy but more subtleaspects of it and making it
about exercise.
(13:20):
That's, in part, what made itpopular.
On the other hand, it alsodiluted its impact so
significantly, and really you're100% right.
Yoga is about the mind.
No doubt you can.
You know.
Here's the big confusion.
Let's just clear this up.
What happened was there's a wordyou know, yoga is a Sanskrit
(13:43):
word and there's another word,it's called asana.
Now, asana means pose orposition or posture or seat, and
you know this is what everyonethinks of as yoga, as you go to
class and you do these postures.
But yoga is not necessarilyasana and asana is not
(14:06):
necessarily yoga.
In other words, you can doposes and not necessarily
experience yoga, because yoga isa quality of attention, a
quality of perception, a qualityof relaxation, and you can do
yoga, experience yoga and notnecessarily do the poses Right.
So what happened in thiscountry?
(14:30):
What happened was we shouldhave just been saying I'm going
to asana class and we would havereserved the yoga part for
effectively calming the mind andbecoming more present.
That's really what yoga is.
It's about being present.
You know, I used to say thisthis is one of my messages early
(14:52):
on.
And listen, we go to cirque desoleil you remember cirque de
soleil, right where, feet on thehead, they're doing the most
crazy stuff you could possiblyimagine beyond, beyond, beyond,
the most advanced yoga poses.
But we don't.
We go there for the show oftheir physical beauty, capacity,
(15:13):
all that.
We don't go there becausethey're spiritual giants, you
know.
And so that means that movingyour body a certain way, it can
be beautiful, it can bechallenging, it can be wonderful
, it can be a lot of things, butit isn't necessarily yoga.
And you nailed it, you exactlyare right.
(15:34):
And to this day, we're kind ofstill in this confused world.
What really is yoga?
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Yeah, as a woman I get a little bit irritated.
I mean, I grew up in gyms, I'veworked at three over my
lifetime, took kinesiology,exercise, physiology all this I
was going through didn't want toknow what I wanted to do when I
got older.
And one of my pet peeves is theoutfits that women are expected
to wear to work out.
I mean they're super cute but Idon't know if I would wear them
(16:04):
to work out and I feel like.
I feel like it's like sellingus on the lifestyle over the
practice, the spiritual side ofit.
But you know, maybe that's justmy own prejudices.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
No, you know, it's true.
Unfortunately it became part ofthe thing, especially in LA,
new York, san Francisco is andyou know we don't have to name
the companies that promoted thisidea of like if you didn't, you
know really promoting the bodyorientation of it.
It was listen again, we bothknow aerobics.
(16:36):
As I said, I lived near thejane fonda aerobic studio, so I
would see women, mostly women,coming and going with.
You know, the same kind ofoutfits, more or less just wind
back about 20 years, 10 years.
So, yeah, the outfits didn'tchange much.
I think they got rid of thosehigh, what were those called
(16:57):
those knee leg warmers?
I still wear them of course youdid, of course you did I'm a
baby of the 80s.
It makes me feel like I'm 12again yeah, but to be honest,
listen, uh, listen, uh.
You know I do to this day.
I do yoga every morning and I'mwearing some loose $20 old Navy
(17:18):
sweatpants and I don't know thedifference.
I, you know they don't.
That's my yoga.
There's no.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
You don't have to have a tight outfit on to do
yoga, to understand yoga, that's, that's for sure uh, can we
talk for a little bit about, uh,raising human consciousness and
, uh, yoga, because I I so forthe mission of all the work that
I do?
Uh, the magazine everythingceltic foundation, which I
started a year ago, is to raisehuman consciousness as a answer
(17:48):
to the mental health crisis, andone of the things that I talk a
lot about is is the power ofyoga to help you get command of
your experience.
What are your thoughts on onyoga as a tool from from mental
fitness?
Speaker 2 (18:02):
and the mental health crisis.
This is, this is well, I didn't, I didn't know we had this in
common.
This is one of my favoritesubjects as well and I think,
look, even what you're bringingup is so relevant today and so
meaningful in two ways.
One is our relationship withourselves and two it's the
relationship we have with eachother, just the global, the
(18:23):
cultural, the societal, like.
We don't all have to have thesame opinion, that's my opinion,
but let's honor each other asbeing human and I and now so
it's an indirect way ofanswering your question but
without a measure of selfregulation.
So you know, just speaking veryplainly and basically, our
(18:47):
nervous system really has an onswitch and an off switch.
On is sympathetic, we'reactivated, we're stimulated,
we're more aggressive, we'reactually more afraid, we're more
angry, more reactive, and thenyou flip the switch the other
way and it's calming andrelaxing and centering and
(19:10):
replenishing and restful, andyou sleep better and you become
more responsive and more patientand, neurologically speaking,
the front of your brain comesonline.
So when we're stressed, we'rein the most primitive part of
our brain where anger and fearand, by the way, that's the
default mechanism.
Our brain, we're anger and fearand, by the way, that's the
(19:32):
default mechanism, and for goodreason.
We're trying to protectourselves, so we're always on
lookout.
For does this make me angry?
Does this make me afraid?
Is this worthy of fear?
And, to your point, is yoga isbrilliant.
It's brilliant.
Wow, look at that, it'sbrilliant.
I didn't do that on purpose.
(19:54):
I don't even know how ithappens.
I don't even know how ithappened.
It was whatever.
It descended from above.
That was wild.
What was I saying?
Yoga is brilliant forself-regulation.
You know what we were sayingbefore.
It's not a fitness thing,listen.
Regulation, you know what wewere saying before.
It's not, it's not a fitnessthing, listen.
I, uh, I do yoga every day, butI also do for my ex.
(20:15):
I don't consider it exercise.
I do high intensity intervaltraining, I'll do rowing, I'll
do.
You know, I do some weights.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
That's my exercise.
Yoga is my medicine.
I love that Cause I you'veyou've just explained to me one
of the things that I reallystruggled when I had my
spiritual awakening, like I lostthe weight, I was able to fast
for two months.
It was the weirdest thing.
Talk about being another, likebody.
I went from being 80 poundsoverweight to suddenly being
able to fast for two months.
If that's not spiritualintervention.
I don't know what is but I lostall the weight.
But I really struggled with, um, adding yoga to sitting sitting
(20:51):
.
Still, it was a struggle for meand uh, and I ended up taking
hot yoga near me and I wasliving in new york for my book
launches and I took hot yoga andfor 260, I committed to doing
it every day for 60 days and Ionly missed two times, and that
is the when the flip, the switchwas flipped.
It was that constant exposure toit and I realized that switch
was flipped.
(21:12):
It was that constant exposureto it and I realized that it was
my mental health it was helping, not my physical health as much
, although I did look amazingwell, listen, the hot hot yoga
or stanga yoga.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
There are some very active styles of yoga and I
gotta say, if else, what theydefinitely do?
They definitely condition thebody, but they force us to pay
attention and ideally we'relinking our breath to movement.
And even that small thing.
It sounds so simple, but when Icoordinate breath to movement
(21:44):
again, this is part of theprefrontal cortex, it integrates
me and so I will, in thebeginning at least, experience a
certain level of mental clarityand capacity to be focused or
attentive.
However, some of those moreactive forms of yoga still
dysregulate the nervous system.
(22:06):
They don't necessarily calm usdown.
If you did do it for a year,two years, three years, so six
months, nine months a year,anything might be helpful, but
we have to become more selectivein time.
So, to your mental healthquestion.
Such a great topic.
I hope we can continue tounpack it a little bit.
(22:27):
The idea here is that when youlook at how much we're
overstimulated in our culture,how much is coming at us, this
is all new.
A hundred years ago, ournervous systems were in an
entirely different, encounteringentirely different world, and
that's the nervous system thatwe've all had and shared for
(22:49):
thousands of years.
And so just in the last, withsocial media and whatnot, the
last 20, 30 years, we're askingour nervous systems to deal with
stuff that they're not trainedto deal with.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
I love that you said that, because it's what it is it
is.
I passionately believe that weare literally walking around
with gaslighting devices in ourhands and our bodies are just
simply not, and that's why wehave such a huge mental health
crisis.
We're gaslighting andfear-mongering through social
media and through news media andjust media in general.
Anybody wants to sell clicks topeople 100%.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Listen, the technology was developed
ultimately and continues to beenhanced, to make money, not to
spread health and wellness.
You know the people who aremaking money on social media
from the actual technologyitself.
In fact, many of them don't lettheir kids use their phones.
(23:45):
You know that, right?
I mean, you go through the listand the actual developers of
the technology forbid theirchildren from using it because
they know the impact on it.
And I would say, yes, that's amassive contributor to the
mental health crisis we're in.
And you know, I still myyoungest kids are still
(24:07):
teenagers, teenagers, and theyare having to deal with certain
aspects of life and having toprocess things because of the
technology that my older kidsdid not.
You know, 15, 10, 15 yearsolder.
We're making it harder andharder for human beings to find
(24:30):
that rhythm where we can adapt,which means to consistently
adjust to what's happening inour environment, what's going on
in our relationships, and to doit in a way that's not reactive
but is adaptive.
You know and those two thingsare real, listen, this is
scientific the better I amadapting.
(24:54):
So life is always changing.
This is a traditional view ofyoga and I think we can all
admit life is changing, mybody's changing, the world is
changing, the weather ischanging, people's opinion of me
is changing, everything ischanging.
(25:26):
So how do I adjust to thosechanges?
My capacity to adjust to thosechanges will to remain steady in
constant change determines howwell I will grow older, how well
I will live, how the quality ofmy relationships.
And so yoga and this is the partof yoga where I really I mean
(25:48):
this is an element of yoga thatI really emphasize we can
determine the direction ofchange.
We can influence the directionof how we respond to changes in
our life, and the most criticalthing that I'd want everyone to
understand is some of us, someof how we encounter and respond
to life, is in our control.
(26:09):
We have to slow down.
We have to choose 5, 10, 20, 30minutes a day where we slow
down, we give our nervoussystems time to adjust and only
then, by coming back to what youknow, strengthening our process
of what's called homeostasis,our ability to continue to adapt
(26:30):
efficiently.
And, by the way, our brains arenot meant to be in
hypervigilance.
We're not meant to be.
We can't sustain highlystressed states indefinitely
before we get sick, before weact out, before we suffer either
physically or mentally.
We're just not meant to behyper activated.
We have to get still once in awhile hyper activated.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
We have to get still once in a while.
Yeah, it's, uh, I think that'swhat led to uh, most of my
audience knows my spiritualjourney because I shared in a
couple books, but I, uh, Iburned out and I mean I I had
worked for 30 years like I hadworked since I was a teenager
but I I had done nothing butwork and I didn't have a real
life of my own.
I was masked, highly masked, andconstantly, was constantly
(27:16):
trying to manage everythingaround me.
Um, because I was trying toengineer very particular
outcomes and and that makes youreally great at marketing and PR
and running an agency.
But it sucks as a human being.
And I woke up one day and Icould not schedule, keep uh like
any like.
I couldn't even like look at acalendar, check my email, like
(27:37):
that's how burnt out I was.
And it took, um, it took beingquiet for a long time, actually
I'd say almost two years beforeI was able to start to function
again as a as a human being and,uh, definitely meditation and
yoga huge part of that healingjourney.
My nervous system wasabsolutely shot.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
I really hope people take in what you just said.
I really do.
I mean, that's real.
And again, it's not because youare weak, it's not because you
don't have good intention, it'snot because it's simply, it's
neurological.
It's like we're.
We are human beings who, fortens of thousands of years, knew
(28:18):
what cycle the moon was in.
We'd spend time in nature, we'dgo to sleep not long after it
got dark, we'd wake up before itgot light.
All of that's been thrown outNow.
Those are the things that theyseem kind of basic.
All of that's been thrown outNow.
Those are the things that theyseem kind of basic and yet they
really don't have a lot of playin our current lives, you know,
because of modern life.
And yet, without that linkage,our body and our brain is going
(28:42):
to suffer and it's only a matterof time if we don't break it up
.
As you said, it took time, ittook silence.
Now, the one thing I would sayis that yoga has some things to
contribute protocols, if youwill, strategies to speed up the
time of that healing, in otherwords.
Uh, notwithstanding how burntout you were, it took two years.
(29:06):
It took what it took.
I'm sure there wasphysiological repair and
emotional, psychological repair.
You know, we have to kind ofrecoalesce ourselves Right, and
I've I've been through thosestages.
I've been through plenty ofstuff in my life, so I
understand that.
Luckily, there are protocols,like you mentioned yoga,
(29:26):
meditation, no-transcript repair.
(30:21):
So, as I said, there arestrategies where we can be more
effective at repair and renewaland finding balance and, and you
know, know, it's one of thosethings that that I'm trying to
provide and uh, and I'mdedicated to because I know the
effectiveness in my life, I'veseen it in the lives of others,
seen in the lives of my kids.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
So yeah, yeah, I'm really glad we took this turn in
the conversation, to be honestwith you oh, I'm glad to hear
that you know I, uh, I think, um, we help other people know that
what healing is possible bybeing authentic, and it took me
such a long time to learn to beauthentic uh it wasn't that I
wasn't nice to people, but I Idid not know who I was and
(31:04):
that's a strange experience tohave at 50, to wake up one day
and be like I don't know who thehell I am.
But I'm going to go do the workand it was.
You know it's not and this iswhat I was.
We said earlier about thespiritual journey not for the
week of the faint of heart,because it was the.
It got hardest at my year yearthree uh of trying to really
really understanding that mynervous system had been shot and
(31:25):
that cptsd was going to besomething I would have to manage
.
But I think, people need to hear.
Like you know, we have enoughperfection.
We, so many people, and I thinkthe vast majority of human
beings on the planet, are livingin the lowest vibrations
because that's, um, that's thevictim mentality uh that we're
trained into, uh, thinking isnormal and uh, it's such a
(31:47):
miserable, miserable place tolive and watching that
transformation in people's lives, when they begin to see that
you know that it is possible toheal from anything and that you
can actually drive your lifeexperience, that you can
actually choose your perception.
Now, I'm not perfect.
I certainly have my days whereI still get triggered every once
in a blue moon, but the vastmajority of my experience is
(32:08):
really beautiful and that'sthat's due to spiritual
practices.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
You know, yeah, yeah, well, said, I think, um, two
thoughts I had first of all, um,I just want to make sure anyone
listening to what you said,because it really comes out of
deep experience and growth andevolution and discovery.
But it's as if I just want toagain just acknowledge that
we're not bad.
In other words, you were notbad for where you.
You know the thing that got youto this place of burnout.
You were driven, you weremotivated and, as you said, you
(32:45):
were nice, for the most partright, you were making a
positive impact as youunderstood it at the time.
And again I want to say it's,look in part, psychological, but
it's also even more basic thanthat.
It's our neurology.
We are geared to fundamentallylook at the world and try and
figure out what's dangerous andwhat do I need to push back on?
(33:06):
What is the source of my anger?
So what do I have to be angryabout?
What do I have to be fearfulabout?
That's what the social mediaalgorithms are.
Totally it's like.
It's like just pulling us inlike chum for sharks.
It's just like if there'ssomething to be angry about, if
there's something to be afraidof, it gets higher priority in
(33:27):
your social media scroll period.
That's just how they work it,so it really is like they're
working with our neurology, ourprimitive brain.
So no one's bad for looking atthe ambulance as you're driving
by slowing your car down andchecking it out.
So, number one, I just kind ofwant to say to everybody we're
(33:49):
all doing the best we can withwhat we know, right?
But now I also want to say this, and and your, your story
speaks to that, which is, youknow, the buddha described the
process of uh, becoming awake.
But I means awake, you know,the awakened one is naturally
(34:09):
and this is his quote, it quoteit's to go against the stream.
To do what you did and to do forany of us, to take
responsibility for ourselves, isto actually step out of the
norm, is to actually step out ofthe flow, because most of us,
where we'll look, most of ourpoints of reference on the
(34:30):
landscape of the world, arepeople who are swept up in the
anger and the fear and the basicprimitive responses.
And, uh, to go against thestream is what you did.
And anytime we make that choiceto get quiet, to still
ourselves, to reflect, we'regoing against the stream it's
(34:54):
nice to see, it's nice to see inmy lifetime, uh, the change.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Well, I like that we shifted away from organized
religion, because I could give awhole talk on on the problems
with it.
I mean, it did provide astructure for us on which we
were told how to think andbehave and you know what, how,
what to do, and, frankly,apparently a lot of us needed
that.
And the collapse of organizedreligion is is one of those
other leading factors, alongwith cell phones, to, to putting
(35:18):
people in this victim mentalityand survival paradigm, which is
the bottom of the consciousnessscale, and, uh, I just think
it's so important to spread thatmessage.
Um, I wanted to hear a littlebit more about what you're up to
these days, because I knowyou're a busy man.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
Well, thank you.
I am actually on the finaldraft of the book about this
practice called Yoga Nidra thatI shared with you, and, for
those that don't know, this isthis extraordinary practice,
that Yoga Nidra is both apractice, but it's also a state,
(35:59):
a state of awareness, and it'sa unique state that hovers
between, say, the height ofmeditation and sleep.
And so, as you slowly begin to,you do it lying down, and so,
in a way, for many people it'san opportunity to enter into a
meditative experience, but to doit without the hardcore
(36:22):
discipline of sitting as youwould in meditation and
meditation.
Anyone who's tried it knowsthis, probably has had the same
experience, which is that whenyou start meditating, you find
out not, you don't findnecessarily and discover the
meditative state.
You discover how distracted youare the moment you start
focusing.
(36:42):
You find out how hard it is tofocus.
Yeah, right, and so, unlikemeditation, what yoga nidra
allows us to do, instead offinding that rhythm of
meditative awareness throughconcentration, it asks us to
relax, and it's, and it shows usthat behind the movement of the
(37:04):
mind is an enduring state ofease, and sleep is the entry.
So I've been teaching that.
I was one of the firstAmericans to start teaching it
around the country and Iproduced recordings for that and
then that would become thebasis of my app.
(37:24):
I have an app called Sanctuarywith Rod Stryker and there's a
hundred meditations on it andthen there's 50 different yoga
nidra practices.
So that's still alive.
I'm still contributing to that.
That's still alive and well.
I'm writing, I'm still creatingcourses.
In a few weeks I'll go to twoweeks I'll be in Europe and I'll
(37:47):
be teaching in Europe.
And I'm not doing less In myold age.
I'm basically just doing thethings that I love.
And I think to your point cancreate the greatest difference.
And I just mentioned one otherthing about that app.
I did mention that I have twoteenagers.
I have a twin twins, daughterand son, and you know they're
(38:10):
just 17, just turning 17.
And I see the level of stressin their lives and and to be
honest with you, it actuallyit's um, it's it's, in a way, a
hard thing to talk about.
And a important thing to talkabout is a dear friend of mine
uh, his, um, his wife's umdaughter at the age of 15, uh
(38:31):
committed suicide about, um,this was about a year and a half
ago and, um, I was so struck atthis memorial was standing, we
were standing graves aregraveside and there were at
least 50 young people, so therewas several hundred people, but
there were 50, uh, teenagersthere, her, her classmates and
(38:53):
they were inconsolable and Iwent home and I was so moved and
I was so disturbed by and bythe way, not a big surprise, we
know this happens within thenext six weeks two of her
classmates killed themselves.
Yeah, it has a, it has thiscluster thing that happens.
And I then determined that,okay, this app, most people who
(39:15):
are going to use this app areadults.
And I then determined that,okay, this app, most people who
are going to use this app areadults.
But what I want to do is giveany teenager anyone who has a
subscription can give the giftof the meditation, yoga, nidra
practices to a teenager, Becauseboth of us it sounds like we
share this common interest, thispassion.
(39:37):
For how do we bring, how do welook at and begin to create some
kind of effect on thepervasiveness of mental illness
in this country?
And it's not hit anyone harderthan teenagers.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Oh yeah, when I share the statistic that the number
two cause of death in youngpeople is suicide, it absolutely
shocks people and I'm like thatis stunning, it's stunning,
it's stunning.
And yet, you know, we'resuperheroes with cell phones
that allow us to have access topowers that we've never had
before access to information,access to everything that a
(40:11):
person could possibly use.
Yet we're facing this, and Icare really deeply about this.
It's actually going to make meget teary-eyed yeah, used, yet
yet we're facing this and I, I,I care really deeply about this
is actually gonna make me getteary-eyed yeah, I hear you
warren me too, me too it's just,uh, there's a way forward and
we live in a world that is, thathas been built to keep us
(40:32):
distracted and it's like sosimple.
I mean, to me it's so simple.
You know, it doesn't have to beabout religion, it doesn't have
to be um about, um, your family.
You can literally learn thetools and get in command of your
life experience and when youknow there's a solution and and
yet pushing it forward is, Imean, I've I've come up against
so much like I don't sayresistance, but it's been a
(40:54):
challenge to get thisconversation off the ground, to
talk about raising humanconsciousness as the answer to
the mental health crisis,because people don't like
talking about mental healthstill.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
Yeah, yeah, you know, and yeah, no, thank you.
Every time I think about thisyoung girl who I had had dinner
with several times, who nolonger is alive.
Every time I moved to the edgeof tears, for sure.
And, moreover, to watch theimpact that that loss had to her
friends, and that even two morefelt justified and in doing it.
(41:27):
And so, you know, when I watchmy kids, my teenagers, and
they're both ambitious and theyboth are straight A students,
and God you know, amazing,amazing, it's a gift.
I don't know what we did right,but we did something right.
But still, the level of stressthat they experience and they
(41:49):
literally look at me.
Last night I was sitting atdinner and they said you know,
I'm stressed.
I said, well, let's talk aboutit.
How about we go do a practice?
How about we just take fiveminutes?
You can.
Five minutes, you can changeyour state, and what people
should know is the tools to Oneremedy some of the impact that
(42:11):
that modern life is having on usand to find a better way,
because I think we're bothbelievers that when we slow down
, there is an inner intelligencethat allows us to really make
the best decisions in the moment, decisions that are not driven
by our most primitive instincts,they're not driven by our
(42:32):
psychological conditioning, butthey really are like our own
inner guidance, our own innerwisdom, and that thing wants us
to thrive.
It's always ready to help usfind the path to thriving.
But if we don't slow down, wecan't be with it.
We can't hear it.
It gets drummed out by all ofthe noise, either internal or
(42:57):
external yeah, one of my bigconcerns.
Speaker 1 (42:59):
I have an 18 year old son as well.
Um, one of my big concerns forthem is that, you know, I don't
think, I don't think we we quiteunderstand or have really
accepted this as a society thatwe we allowed the technology to
come in and sort of take overeverything.
We're all like yeehaw, look atall this technology we have, but
we never had a conversationabout how, putting a superpower
(43:20):
device and all the world'sinformation in the hands of a
child, what kind of long-termimpact that was going to have,
the speed, the constant, youknow, and that we're seeing that
in the statistics that aregoing on.
So you know, I talked to my sonand I try to tell him it's
almost like I want to get abunch of professional athletes
together that meditate and havethem do a whole campaign
(43:41):
together because he wouldbenefit from it.
But he's like I can't sit still.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
Yeah, yeah.
Well, listen, you know thisbook, dopamine nation begins to
help us understand it.
I mean again, I keep going back.
There are elements of this thatare just in our nervous system,
our neurology, and we are.
We're slaves to it.
The interesting thing, like yousaid, like the technology came,
there was never a conversation,there was never like a manual
(44:06):
about OK, this is the thresholdwhen it's effective and helpful,
and this is the threshold.
If you pass it, it actually ispathological.
We know that the more time youspend on social media this is
this is not a newsflash, butI'll say it anyway the less
happy you are.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
Ooh, yes.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
It's just.
It's just.
All of the research confirms itagain and again.
The more time the less happy.
Meanwhile, the thing isdelivering.
So you know what I heard whenthis I heard this about I was I
gave a presentation at the aspenideas festival about a decade
or so ago and there was aneurologist there and it's when,
(44:46):
really, the first of theresearchers coming out and she
said do you?
She presented this idea andbasically it explains why you
and I, why we have all seen this.
Have you seen four or fiveteenagers sit at a table and
they're all on their phones andthey're not interacting.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
They're texting each other sometimes.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
Ask yourself, you know, ask yourself why they're
not looking at each other's eyes.
You know why are they notactually eye contact?
You know why there's moredopamine.
You know why are they notactually eye contact.
You know why there's moredopamine.
They're literally getting abigger hit of dopamine by being
(45:27):
on their phone than they wouldbe by looking in each other's
eyes.
Now what happens is themultiples of dopamine you get
it's okay, we do the little bitof the science the dopamine hit
you get is so big on your phonethat your brain then dulls your
dopamine receptors.
Now what happens is socialinteraction used to give you
(45:48):
dopamine.
Like if you and I were sittingin the same place and I was eye
to eye with you, cynthia, I'dget a hit of dopamine.
That's why we were motivatedsit around the fire and talk to
each other in the old days andall that well, now what happens
is it's too dull.
The brain is dulled by thedulling down of the neural
receptors to dopamine becauseyour phones deliver so much that
(46:12):
your brain can't tolerate it.
So now what happens is you andI have a conversation without
our phones and it's too dull.
We've been dulled only to beable to, in a way cope with how
much dopamine phones create.
So it's really math.
It's just, in a sense, math whywe're addicted to those things
(46:35):
oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
I think that's why uh they, I talk about this.
I uh in my speeches onconsciousness, the um, uh, the
timing of the fourth industrialrevolution, the age of ai, and
one of my three books was on ona ai and its opportunity for the
fourth industrial revolution toput america's dream back on the
(46:56):
map.
Because we, you know, we sentall our jobs and our you know
talent and skills uh, way a longtime ago because of capitalism,
um, but um, I believe that theage of ai happening at the same
time as the age of aquarius, andthe level of you know we
finally reached that we neededenough people to reach higher
consciousness to tip over intothe age of aquarius.
It was the only thing that waskind of holding us back, uh,
(47:18):
from that label of enough peoplebeing reach higher
consciousness to tip over intothe age of Aquarius.
It was the only thing that waskind of holding us back from
that label of enough peoplebeing in higher consciousness.
It's like I really believe thatthat is not an accident that
we're there's so muchconversation finally around this
topic.
It's so important and reallythe cure to me is the cure that
that, no matter where you live,no matter what language you
speak or what your you knowfamily history story, is just
(47:42):
keeping it as simple as teachingsomeone how to raise their
human consciousness by usingtheir triggers for growth, and
we don't talk about religion orprayer or whatever it is that
will distract somebody.
I really think that's theanswer.
Speaker 2 (47:55):
And from where I sit, I just want to remind anyone
listening to what you just said.
It's not just the knowledge ofwhat you just said, it's not
just knowing that.
That's true.
The question is how youimplement.
So, unless there's a livingexperience that allows you to
(48:18):
remember who you are, again,it's not even a story whether
you apply a Christian overlay onthat, or Jewish or Muslim, it
doesn't matter to me.
The bottom line is that if weregulate ourselves, what comes
forward is the kind of wisdom.
Now, in Sanskrit, the languagesof yoga, it's called prajna, and
(48:40):
prajna means the light ofwisdom.
But you could ask what is thelight of wisdom?
So, basically, what it's sayingis when your mind gets quiet,
it's not empty.
The emptiness gives rise to adiscovery.
And what's that?
It means that, inherently, eachof us is compassion.
We're held together by a senseof love, if you will.
(49:02):
Some people call it coherence,but the state of coherence is a
kind of holding the trillions ofcells.
Why are they all workingtogether in concert?
It's called cohesion.
Another word is love.
Okay, and the Buddha says ourbasic nature when we get still
(49:27):
again, this is cross-cultural,it's everyone on the planet we
get still, there's love andthere's the light of wisdom.
And what is the the light ofwisdom?
It's the insight that allowsyou to be more free.
And, um, you know the gift that?
(49:47):
The gift I was given is todiscover that at relatively
young age.
I remember the first time I satdown to meditate and I was
amazed that it didn't takethinking.
In fact, when I began toquieten my thoughts, there was a
(50:09):
treasure there and I had noidea.
I just had no idea that quietyour mind down and you're okay,
and wisdom comes forward abouthow to expand and express that
okay to others, to yourself, tothe world.
Speaker 1 (50:30):
So true, the gift of learning to be quiet has been.
I used to spend and I knowother people can identify with
this I was always in my head,always overanalyzing everything,
always trying to control everyaspect I could.
That was a trauma response fromunhealed trauma, and I didn't
(50:52):
know that at the time.
I just thought I was being typeA.
It's so funny when you lookback and you're like all that
time you were, you're so type.
A and it's like no, it was justa CPTSD response, but I would
lay in bed at night.
Now You'll find thisinteresting because you talked
about sleep and yoga nidra.
I went 20, well, it wasprobably more than 20 years,
never sleeping more than 45minutes, such profound trauma
(51:16):
that I could not sleep.
I heard everything and Iremember when I first started my
healing journey and it was justthis extraordinary gift to get
to a place where I just rememberone day realizing that my mind
was no longer spending hours inbed at night on the carousel of
thought.
You know hours I would spendtwo hours at least in bed at
(51:38):
night on the carousel of thought.
You know hours.
I would spend two hours atleast in bed at night on that
carousel.
And it was a, it was amazing.
I was.
I stayed sane.
And to get to a place where Icould actually, you know, not
only sleep two hours, which isunheard of for me, but, um, to
feel rested and to not have alot going on here.
(51:59):
I never realized that nothaving a lot was actually a
really good thing.
Speaker 2 (52:05):
Well, we don't get a lot of reward for that.
I mean, you're right.
I mean, listen, you know welive in a highly transactional
world and I get it.
You and our worth is very much.
Listen, you know, it's one ofthe great things about our
country and one of thechallenges of our country.
If I'm not generating value, Ihave no value.
I'm only as good as the value Igenerate, and the brain has to
(52:29):
go out and do a lot of work togenerate value.
And, um, you know it, it's agreat place if you're ambitious,
but it also, if we don't getoff the treadmill of our
ambition, we can get really sick, you know, mentally or
emotionally, physically orwhatever.
Speaker 1 (52:44):
Yeah, Rod, I could keep talking to you for like
another hour.
You're so fascinating.
Speaker 2 (52:52):
And we should do this again sometimes because you
bring a lot.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I appreciate where you'recoming from in having these
conversations.
Speaker 1 (53:03):
Thank you.
Yeah, it's been anextraordinary journey.
If our listeners wanted tocheck out your work or follow
you on social media, where wouldthey go?
Speaker 2 (53:14):
Rod Stryker Rodstrykercom is the website.
Uh, rod striker official oninstagram and uh, you know the
app is named sanctuary and Ireally, you know, I just want to
again encourage people to uh,consider they don't.
We don't have to take a lot oftime.
A little bit of time will makea lot of difference and I really
(53:35):
try, try and remind people, goagainst the stream.
Just five minutes, 10 minutes,20 minutes can make a huge
difference in your life and thepractice.
You mentioned, yoga nidra.
Just one more plug for that.
It's not just a method of apower nap, it also helps us
sleep or go back to sleep.
(53:55):
And you know, long before, 20years before, there was
something called COVID.
The World Health Organizationsaid sleep loss was actually the
pandemic of the time.
20 years earlier, earlier andright before COVID, the World
(54:21):
Health Organization said mentalillness is the new pandemic.
And so we have to.
We have to take steps and in asense, unfortunately, we have to
go against the stream becauseeveryone around us is caught up.
There's very few.
I know it's a voice and youmentioned that it's gaining
momentum the opportunity to goagainst the stream, to regulate,
to raise our awareness.
We are gaining momentum.
(54:43):
Look, we're having thisconversation, uh, but I would
again just offer that we we oweit to ourselves.
We shouldn't postpone ourhappiness and there's no reason
to wait, and that we take thesesteps that can make us better
inside as well as outside, andhow we relate to each other.
Speaker 1 (55:07):
I appreciate your, your.
It's so nice to interviewsomebody with with so much
experience.
I mean you've really seen thetrend.
You've seen the transition.
You know the shifts in yogafrom when you were doing it in
(55:29):
college to through the 90s andto now, and wisdom is priceless,
so thank you.
When is your book coming out?
Speaker 2 (55:35):
You know it won't be out till early next year.
These things take a while, andpublishing dates take a long
time.
I'm looking forward to sharingit, though, with the world and
you know it really is aninvaluable practice and I'm
trying to help people understand, both from a scientific and
even from a spiritualperspective, why it does what it
does.
In the end, it's just aboutencouraging people to do it.
(55:58):
You know that's where it comesdown to.
Speaker 1 (56:03):
Well, you guys.
Thank you so much for joiningus today for Glow Up with Shaman
Isis Rod Stryker.
Thank you so much for coming onthe show and sharing your
experience and wisdom.
For those of you who are notfamiliar with my work'm, shaman
isis also known as cynthia to myfriends and family, and uh uh,
I've written three books, whichyou're going to go check out on
(56:24):
my website shaman isiscom,unleash the empress, which
shares my spiritual practices,um, the ones that helped me lose
a ton of weight.
Memory mansion this year is myjourney from catholic orphanage
to prd new york city, pr divaa,to learning to love myself.
And then the third book is ANew American Dream Conscious AI
for a Future Full of Promise,and it's more of an academic
(56:46):
analysis of how we can use thefourth industrial revolution to
benefit humanity.
But if you're not alreadyworking on raising your human
consciousness, I highlyrecommend it.
Go visit shamanicistcom.
And if you're not alreadysubscribed, what are you
thinking?
This is intelligent listening,so please subscribe.
And thanks again, you guys, forlistening.
Speaker 2 (57:05):
Bye.
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