Dylan Werner - How A Marine Firefighter Became a World Renowned Yogi

Full transcript: Dylan Werner on London Real

2:26 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today’s… Yoga is everywhere these days. We see classes on every corner, but what is yoga?

2:42 Is it a movement practice? Is it a mental practice? There’s a massive debate on, and that’s why I was really excited to speak with Dylan Werner this week, who is known as one of the leading yogis in the world. He’s got massive following on Instagram, known for these really strong movements and hand balancing, and he says that yoga is really union, and he had an incredible journey of finding this practice. He started off as a Marine, he became a firefighter, but he never found peace until he found this yogic practice.

3:10 So I was really happy to talk to him. He’s got an incredible journey, really deep, really controlled with his consciousness, and he has a radical view about what yoga is, and he says, you know what, you don’t have to agree with me because I’m doing this for me ultimately to find out what my meaning is in life. So sit back and enjoy this incredible conversation with Dylan Werner. This is London Real. I am Brian Rose.

3:34 My guest today is Dylan Werner, the former US Marine Corps firefighter and wrestler turned world famous yoga instructor. After finishing your tour in Iraq, you spent eight years as a paramedic and firefighter in California, then you found yoga through martial arts and later realized you wanted to dedicate your life to the practice. Today you’ve given more than 400 workshops in over 60 countries, taught at some of the world’s most prestigious yoga studios, and have a massive following on social media.

3:58 Dylan, welcome to London Real. Thank you for having me. Great to have you here. You know, we got a lot of cool things to discuss. I thought I’d kick it off by talking about human movement, because if you look at London Real for the last six or seven years, you know, I’ve had this journey with some pretty cool movers out there, and, you know, whether it was Dorian Yates, who kind of had me do yoga for the first time, you know, four years ago, and then Ido Portal with movement, and people like Elliott Hulse, and the body is the mind, like, I’ve kind of got an education that this body is not just part of the equation.

4:31 And I was just wondering about your journey with movement, you know, and did you have people that kind of showed you the way? Yeah, movement is an exploration of self. It’s, it’s understanding who you are. I think what brought me into yoga, because I’ve always been a mover, when I was five years old I started lifting weights. Someone gifted me this whole Hogan Hulkamania workout thing, and I had, like, these three pound weights and it’s a workout poster, and I would sit in my room because I’d kind of, like, a sad childhood.

5:02 I was an only child and also the oldest of eight, but that’s a whole another weird story. But okay, so weird family dynamics. Yeah, weird, weird family dynamics growing up. So I spent a lot of time by myself, and in that time I found kind of fitness and I was into that. And this was your own thing, like your family didn’t have a fitness history?

5:23 No, my, my, my dad wasn’t into fitness, my mom wasn’t, no one in my family’s ever done fitness. This is pre-internet, this, this is, yeah, this is pre whole Hogan inspired, you know, Hogan, and at the time I didn’t even really know who Hulk Hogan was. I was born in 1980, so it was kind of that WWF before this WWE, right, you know, that was like a popular thing, and so I had these weights and I was always small, as always the smallest one, and so I wanted to be big, right, and so I started working out of my own, and I got into wrestling really young, and I think wrestling really under help me understand my body and how to move and how to move other people as well, which surprisingly has helped me a lot as a yoga teacher because yoga is about creating connections, and we are, we are so interconnected in ourselves.

6:17 So this is like an idea called bio tensegrities, where everything in the body is under tension and compression, but we’re so interconnected that whatever I do in my body, if I move a lot of hand like this, it affects my entire body, but if I reach out and grab your hand, whatever I do affects your entire body, right? Introduces all these new degrees of freedom. So I understood this first as a wrestler, and I know you do, you do BJJ? Yeah, and so you understand, like, how you move someone else, you could adjust their weight and submit them however you want, but when I took this into yoga, it was more like, how can I create space by establishing an inaction that is one rather than two?

6:55 And when you’re a really good mover of your own body, you become a good mover of other people’s bodies, and so this is kind of like my first understanding of really moving. And then from there I just, I did lots of stuff. I was growing up in Southern California, I was into snowboarding and wakeboarding and to start rock climbing at a really young age, and rock climbing is what I did for a long time before I even got into yoga, and yoga is one of those things that introduced me, oh sorry, rock climbing is one of those things that made me want to do yoga more, because the yoga practice helped my rock climbing.

7:34 It did in the beginning, and then eventually yoga took over because there was something more than just movement, or at least for my entire life, everything, so something missing. I had always been a mover, but yet there was something missing, right? And I explored kind of everything, like I tried to always, how can I just be the better was not the only thing I wanted to do, and I had all these goals. I wanted to be a firefighter, so paramedic, and I know I wanted to be a hero, I think, like, oh, like I just wanted to be bigger than what I was always kind of like, oh, Hogan, kind of like whole Hogan.

8:13 Yeah, I didn’t think we’d come back to that so much, but yeah, it’s interesting to hear that you said that kind of wrestling, which is obviously in martial art, combat with another human being, and I guess you probably did freestyle wrestling in high school, or you moved to Greco-Roman quickly? So I did collegiate in high school. Okay, and freestyle a little bit in high school, and then after high school when I joined the Marine Corps, I was on the All Marine wrestling team, and that’s when I got into Greco, so it’s mostly Greco and a little bit of freestyle training, and that was the majority of my Marine Corps career, except for the little bit of time I spent Iraq, but most of my time in Marine Corps was spent wrestling.

8:50 Like, wow. So I wrestled one year in high school at Torrey Pines High School, and before that I was like the skinniest, geekiest science kid, and I went to this Torrey Pines High School, which was like the Beverly Hills 90210 of San Diego, and my dad lived there, and I transferred in my junior year, and there was only one kid in class that no one else wanted to talk to, and I talked to him, and he said, Brian, let’s go wrestling. So in the course of two months I went from the skinny kid to, like, this bigger kid, and I got put through some of the most strenuous things.

9:19 I didn’t even comprehend what it was like to be in the wrestling room, and we weren’t even a top school, but it taught me a lot about exertion, about control, about pain thresholds. But I only did it one year, but it was something I really value, you know. But it’s weird, I, most people would probably think, how could that ever apply to yoga? And I want to talk about yoga, but most people see that as kind of a singular activity, but you saying it’s not necessarily a singular activity and you can learn something from that martial arts part.

9:49 Yeah, it looks more, what I, with the wrestling of martial arts or moving somebody else, that comes in to teaching yoga and assisting other people, because when you assist somebody into, into a pose, you’re essentially creating space for them to go deeper, the space for them to explore, and you create this connection, this, this unity or this oneness, which is really what I think, we all have it, have a different opinion of what yoga is, just, just like most things, we define things with words, and to define anything with a word you, you have to create some sort of boundaries around it. You being like a scientist person, you understand that to understand something you break something down, you create its limitations. Most things we understand it by the opposite.

10:37 We only understand light by darkness, or darkness by light, hot by cold. I can, there’s a beautiful saying that I love that a blind person will never know darkness, and it’s really helped to teach me perspective because without light, how can someone know darkness? So we define things like this, and everyone’s always trying to define what yoga is, but the second that you draw a line in the sand, you create a division, there’s two sides. So yoga means union, it means connection, it’s so to put yoga into a box by that very nature with language, which we use to understand things, immediately makes so we can’t understand what it is.

11:22 Yeah, I think it was Terence McKenna that said, I don’t know who discovered water, but it certainly wasn’t a fish. And I think his point was is that, you know, sometimes we’re in this reality and we don’t know we’re in there and we’re trying to define things. He also said that after you come out from, say, a plant medicine ceremony, which I’ve had a few, people try to ask you what happened, language cannot even begin to explain what happened, so we’re really limited by our language.

11:47 Exactly. some say it’s like, you know, I call it a prison in some way because all these words have these different meanings. You know, it’s funny because I was just with Sadhguru and he said exactly what you just said when he defined yoga. I said yoga means union, everything in your experience becomes one, all existence is just one energy, and it’s interesting that you just said the exact same thing. And a lot of people want to know what it is, and a lot of people have different versions of what it is.

12:16 Right. The thing about truth, and while you, you constantly hear the same thing over and over from different people, set in different ways, because truth is, there’s only one truth, it’s a parent, it’s self apparent, and when you, when you realize what it is, that’s the only thing you want in your life, and you move after that. There really is only one truth. So in yoga though, the word for truth is satya, and satya means unchanging. Well, if we know that the universal truth of nature is that everything is changing, everything in the universe is continuously moving through growth or decay, nothing is ever staying the same.

12:56 Like in mathematics we have things that are constants, but if I were to take something, if you go to Greenwich and in youth and you look at, like, what a foot is or a meter, like, or even where Greenwich is, it’s not even where it was when they, when they made Greenwich Mean Time. You know, it’s, it’s moved quite a, quite a bit because everything is continuously changing. And so how can something be true if we, if our definition of truth is that which does not change?

13:25 Because if it’s true then it’s always true, it always was true, it always will be true. And if everything is changing and there’s not one in the physical world that we know that is unchanging, then that means nothing is true except for one thing, which is the present moment. The present moment is this window that we have that has been here since, I mean, time, time is only a way that we understand the present moment. It’s actually illusion. Yogis, yogis called this maya.

13:58 Maya means not as it appears, you know, like they’re like a magician doing a trick, it’s not what it seems to be. And we spend so much time thinking about time, the future and the past, which time, when we, when we think about time, we never think about time is now, as present. That’s, that’s truth, that’s actually what we’re seeing. And so for us to be true is for us to be here, to be present, to actually be in this moment, to live our life in this moment without the stories that we create, the projections of ourself in the future, the ideas of ourselves, and in the past, or the stories that we bring from the past.

14:35 All these things bring us out of the actual reality, which is now. And all the truths that you’ll understand about life, the, the truths that are unchanging, you understand them in the present. And so when you talk to people that are, that are seeking for the truth, for spirit, for spirituality, this idea of what spirituality is and you don’t like that word. It’s not that I don’t like that word, it’s like we define everything. So and we have different definitions of what spirituality is.

15:07 If you, I looked it up in the dictionary because I think I wrote in a, and a blog or a post or something, I wrote mind and body connection, because that’s what yoga is. When you talk about movement and what brought me into yoga, it was understanding that my mind is not different than my body, and it’s not different than my spirit, but spirit is, is such an interesting word that’s defined in so many different ways. If you’re religious it’s your soul, it’s this thing that is also unchanging that moves on to heaven or whatever, hell, or it’s something separate from you, though, right?

15:37 Generally the way that that spirit in that way is thought of, the body is different than the spirit, but the way that I think about spirit is nature, and there’s three types in nature. We have inner nature, which is our spirit, it’s ourself. We have outer nature, which is what we’re continuously moving away from, which is why we can’t understand what it is to be here, because we are so far out in distractions, we’re so far away from what truth is. We are distracting ourselves because we’re scared of the third nature, which is true nature, which is the unity of all things and really understanding our self as not separate from everybody else.

16:17 It’s this removal of ego. And for you, yoga was the way to first feel that? The first way to feel it was jumping out of planes. Okay. I accomplished everything that I thought I wanted to in life.

16:34 I put out goals, and I think I saw a TED talk with you talking about that, like getting all the things that you want, and I think anybody that goes out and sets goals and then accomplishes them realizes that this isn’t it, this isn’t the way, there’s, there’s nothing in goals because goals. Learning goals, or did the goals also pull you along the journey? There’s, there’s, there’s nothing in goals because goals are always going to be in the future, and so therefore they’re never in reality, and once they become reality you realize that they’re no longer a distraction, and so you get there and you feel like, I need another distraction, right?

17:12 Okay. Yeah, so yeah, there’s, I, I have goals, but my goals are, they’re a little bit different. My goal is to be my best self every day because we, we have two choices, we grow or we die. That that is the change that the universe is, is telling us, you’re either growing or you’re dying, and nobody wants to die. And so we need to continue to stress ourselves, to challenge ourselves, because all growth happens through stress and challenge, it’s how life emerges.

17:42 It’s a bit of a dichotomy, isn’t it? It is, it is a weird dichotomy, but if you want it, expression, challenge implies almost a goal because I want to do this thing, but we want to also not be goal-oriented in yoga. It’s a balance of the idea of santosha, which is contentment, and tapas, which is your desire to give you your best. So when you learn those two things, when you learn to be content with who you are and at the same time give your best, you’ll find peace.

18:06 Right, and is that something that’s never attainable, attainable for a brief moment, something to dream about, or something that yogis can do? It’s an interesting thing that you said, attainable, because that has the idea that there’s something to obtain, and that’s, as soon as you think that, you’ll never get there. But if we want both of those things at the same time, that’s the other one, want, what you know, that the Buddha said, the root of all suffering is wanting what you don’t have or not wanting what you do have.

18:36 Okay, so, but if I go to practice and I’m thinking, you know, you just mentioned these two practice, it’s, it’s yet it’s part of this, it’s hard to identify them and not want them, right? It’s it’s not the desire to, it’s more like a drive just to give. When you give something, you don’t want anything in return, not when you’re, when you’re truly giving. We’ve become a society of takers, so we treat everything as resources. Nature is a resource and so we, we just take from it and we don’t give to it, and we think that there, this is that something to obtain, obtaining is taking, mm-hmm, you know, we’re getting something from it, and then we carry that on to the relationships we have with other people, with our friends and our family and our loved ones, and we take from them like they have something to give to us, and we define this as love, and we think that it’s other people’s jobs to make us happy, and really all it is, is this attachment.

19:28 There’s no connection there. When you start giving and, and stop taking, stop trying to obtain something, then you start being, and that, and that’s really what, what yoga is, and that’s what truth is, it’s about being. You don’t have to do anything, it’s, it’s simple. And yes, there is, there is that, like, I don’t want to die and I want to grow, and in that, and I’m subject to this as everybody, I don’t want to die, I know I will, I’m more okay with it now than I ever have been, but yeah, now yoga also looks like a physical practice, and when I go watch people doing the physical practice, they’re trying to do certain things.

20:12 So right, by definition I do have these kind of my career goals. Now I can go in there with a giving mentality of, okay, but you just said those two things again where I’m gonna do my best and be satisfied kind of thing, right? Well, the defining yoga again, so everything that I say about yoga will slightly be untrue in a sense, but it kind of helps us to understand. Yoga is not something that you do, it’s not something you obtain, it’s not something to go to, it is a state of being.

20:48 It’s actually, it’s you realizing the truth, it’s a word that describes it, and at its root, from, from Pali, it means, you sure, to yoke, or to bring together, as there’s not two, there’s one. Everything else that we do that we call yoga are tools that we use to obtain, and it’s just like you use any kind of tools to build a house or bake a cake or paint a picture. It’s, it’s the tools that help us to bring us to that point, which ultimately is here. Yoga is the journey that brings us to the present moment where you’ve always been, but sometimes you have to go over there, and you have to go over there, and you have to go over there to realize that you’ve been here the entire time.

21:33 It’s how we understand things by the opposite, just like we need light to understand dark, we need there to understand here. Yes. and the tools themselves are some of these, all right, yes, physical practices, because the mind, the body and the, the spirit or the nature are one, right? And so we use the mind to understand the connection to the other two. We sit down and we meditate, and we use, sorry, we use the body to understand the mind and the spirit.

21:59 We use the mind, we sit down and we meditate to understand the body and the tendencies of the body. Let me ask you a question. You, you wrestled, you know, and competitively, right? So you, you know, and for people that don’t understand the wrestling room, again, it’s, it’s a very intense martial art. I, and I’ve done jujitsu and Thai boxing and boxing, but wrestling, it, it’s probably one of the most intense, of one person trying to break into the one spirit, and it can be pretty all-encompassing.

22:25 You also climbed, but you never had that mind-body connection in those sports until you came to yoga, or did you? I always did. Okay. And I think that’s why I’ve been a chaser of extreme sports, and I told you the first time I really, really felt it, under, so it was skydiving, because have you ever been skydiving? Twice.

22:45 Yeah, intense. When you’re there and you’re jumping out of a plane, you’re present. Yeah, and you have no choice, there’s, there’s nothing that you can do other than be present with what’s happening, because it’s nothing that you’ve experienced before. But imagine you do that a hundred times, or 200 times, or a thousand times, or ten thousand, whatever it is, it eventually will become mundane or routine, or, you know, I would jump a lot and in my jump I’d be thinking about my next jump, or how quickly can I pack my pack, or if I have enough time to make five or 10 jumps in that day, or whatever it is.

23:21 It’s dangerous to you, right? Yeah, yeah, in, in a sense. And the only difference between yoga and wrestling and gymnastics or anything is the intention behind it. Everything could be a tool towards yoga: playing with your kids, cooking a meal, walking through nature, sitting by a stream, all those things can bring you to here. It’s the intention that, that guides you, it’s the intention that tells you to be here, to cultivate awareness, to relax, to settle into what this is, and that, and that’s all yoga.

23:58 It sits over the tools of yoga, it’s an intention and essentially a pathway that you follow for that attention to find unity and connection. Knowing what you know now, would you have jumped a different wrestle different if you had kind of thought it from a yogic perspective? You know, I would. Everything I would have done in my life before now would have been better, and not only that I would have been better at it, but how I would handle every situation would be better.

24:27 What do you mean by that? It’s taking versus giving. It’s when we project ourselves into a false reality, which means into who we were or who we want to be, it takes us away from the truth. The more that we place our self in the middle, as, as we are, because everything that we know happens to our experience, so it’s really hard to remove yourself as the experiencer. You know, we are, everything is subjective, but subjectivity can never be truth, can never be objectively true.

25:07 And so how can you experience something that’s true and real and make choices that are real if you yourself aren’t seeing them as how they actually are? In in yoga it’s called vasana, and vasana literally means smear, like if you were to smear paint on something, or if you were to put on a pair of red glasses, everything that you see is red. So if you go to paint a picture and you pull out your paints and you start painting it, or I don’t know if you’ve ever worked on your computer with the, the the f.lux thing, so it turns the screen orange, and then you try to edit, if I edit photos because I’m a photographer, and then try to edit photos and not realize that your screen’s orange, and then, and then you look at it and like, why am I color so messed up?

25:56 You know, this is, this is how we treat, like, we, we treat life as how we see them, not how they are. And so when you are mindful and aware and you remove yourself from that, you start seeing things as, as they are rather than how you are. And if you make decisions on how things, how things are, then the results of those decisions, those, made, that happens, the choices that you make, you, you’ll actually get what you are set out for, the intention that you put into it.

26:28 But if you start, you know, it happens all the time with relationships that we have, if we get in a fight or with someone that we love, or an interaction with a stranger or something, you only see things how you’re seeing them, and a lot of times it’s from the emotion. So emotions are one of the worst vasanas that we have because it alters our minds so much, this modification or in the, that’s pretty, it changes you so much. So once you learn to remove those emotions, or even understand that you have them and stop looking through them and you see things as they are, the choices that you make are, it’s, it changes everything.

27:03 So you wish you had made different choices? I wish I would’ve made so many different choices. What a lot, a lot of the choices that I wish I would have made different, it’s hard to look back and say I wish I would have changed things, because I am finally at a place where I’m happy with who I am, and so if I change those things, would I be who I am now? But also looking back, if from that, if the things I think that I would change the most are how I’ve treated a lot of people in my life, because I’ve thought I was a victim.

27:40 You know, when, when you’re in a conflict and you think that you’re a victim, you’re seeing things as you are. So when I was, uh, I don’t think I was going to talk about this, but it’s, it’s good to get in these kind of things. So when I was growing up as a young kid, I had a stepmother who was very cruel to me. She was a little bit physically abusive to me and, and mentally abused me a lot. She had alcohol problems and everything else, and I spent my whole life until a few years ago feeling like I was abused and in a victim from this, because I only saw things, first of all, as not who I am but a five, ten to thirteen year old boy, so that’s not, that’s not me, that was somebody else.

28:30 My memories that I happened there might not even be real because we create so much. If we go back to our past, we think it things how things happen, that’s not how they happened. We have so many layers of glasses on top of that that we see situations distorted, and then we remember things through emotions, and if the emotions were heightened and the scars are there, nothing is true that you think happened. Right, but something also did happen. But something also did happen, but what would have effects you now is, if you get in a fight when you’re a kid, you don’t feel that the pain from the fight later on, you feel the emotional response from the fight later on.

29:13 But if I think back to when I was a kid and my stepmother who was, you know, early 20s, not ready to be a mom, my mom had me when she was 19, my stepmom was younger than my mom, and so it’s back like that, and I actually see things as how she saw them, and I removed myself as somebody that has to deal with this kid that she probably didn’t want to be a mom of, her problems, everything in, and it wasn’t about me. And as soon as you realized that it’s not about you, and then you no longer have to carry that role of being a victim, you know, I don’t, like, I have to carry that, that this is something that I did, it’s just something that happened. There was a physical thing, but why am I carrying that emotional baggage with me?

29:57 It’s like you ever seen that show Hoarders? Yeah, so I actually have a friend who works on that show as a camera guy. Okay, and I worked as a paramedic for, and a firefighter for eight years, so going into these houses of hoarders, it’s the craziest thing, it’s, it’s an absolute sickness, and it destroys people, it destroys who they are, it destroys their families, anybody that they come in contact with. And how you cure a hoarder is you throw away their, that’s what they do, they go in there and they go, do you need this?

30:36 And, yeah, I need that. Yo, you need this VCR box from 1980? You don’t even have the VCR anymore, but this is who this, you need this. And so systematically, getting, teaching them to get rid of the things that they don’t need, they create space. What we don’t realize is that we’re all hoarders.

30:57 We’re carrying around our past, we’re carrying around all the garbage from your, when you’re a little kid. I carry around the garbage from, cause I, it would be amazing if this guy’s watching it, but I remember the third grade, Trevor Jenkins called me Lord Weiner, and, and that liked her me, because your last name Werner, Wiener? Yeah, ah, yeah. And then it was dildo Wiener, and you know, it’s like names, names hurt when you’re a little kid, when you’re fragile and you don’t have an identity.

31:24 Now it’s like, you know, something, called you a name, you don’t care because you don’t have any identity to that, but when you’re a little kid and you’re trying to form that, you got, stuff sticks with you. Now it doesn’t stick with me, doesn’t bother me if someone calls me dildo Wiener or what or any other nature. Remember Trevor Jenkins? I, I remember a great goalie named, Trevor, oh, it’s such a great bully name, and I think he moved to San Diego. Uh-oh, words, but anyways, so that’s some of the things you were hoarding.

31:49 Uh, no, I wasn’t really hoarding that, but I was hoarding a lot of stuff from my childhood for sure. And you were able to see this through yoga? Through, yeah, well, I mean, yoga’s just a word to define understanding how things are, and it was when I understood how things are. You don’t have to be a yogi to do this, anybody can do this, but without the yoga practice you probably wouldn’t have had this realization. Yoga was the route that I took.

32:13 Okay, but it wouldn’t have necessarily happened through skydiving or mountain, rock climbing? It didn’t for me. Right, right. Okay, so yeah, and I think that’s really, you know, yoga’s, some people like to define themselves as yogis because they like Warrior Two. I just, if you went 150 years ago, people weren’t doing Warrior Two, they weren’t doing any asanas, and there’s a lot of yogis, you go to India, there’s everyone say yogi, no one does yoga.

32:40 It’s like, so what, what we think, explain that. I mean, we think yoga is stretching and poses and, and whatever, but it’s those are only just tools to, to this. And so if you understand that where you’re going is here, and, and if you understand that you want to see the truth, it doesn’t matter what those tools are. I think meditation is one of the greatest tools that we could use. Yoga, the physical part, is just a moving meditation through the body to understand the mind, to understand presence.

33:17 Nature is an even stronger one. When you sit in nature, because you look at nature, nature is in itself in perfect harmony and balance in its natural state, and we are nature. Alan Watts said, you know, we think that we came into this world like we’re an alien or something separate, something different from this planet, but we came out of this world like leaves from a tree, and we really are that, and, and, you know, the leaves, the leaves are the same as the tree, the tree is the same as the leaves, and it’s saying that the, the drop of the water, drop of water is the ocean or whatever.

33:58 That, yeah, you know, when we are able to see this connection and start to see ourselves as one, then, then it’s, it’s all this pathway to truth. And yet what are the species, the kind of engineers ourselves away from nature in so many ways, it kind of cleverly pushes us to these other places. It’s, it’s when you can, when you have to be confronted with yourself, and that’s what the present moment does, is it confronts you with who you are, and there’s nothing to hide behind, there’s, there’s nothing to, to see things different, and so you have to face all those things.

34:43 I remember you talking about fear as fears, is you have a fear and that’s a calling, hard for you to walk into that? Well, most people are afraid to look at themselves in the mirror, most people are afraid to see who they really are, to see inside their soul, to be honest with themselves, but that’s what we need to do, and that’s when you see that that VCR box is useless and you’re able to throw that away, that all this stuff, this past that you’ve been hoarding, that you’ve been holding on to, it’s just garbage. Yet you’ve occupied your life with it so much that you have no space for anything real to take place.

35:16 And Buddhism, it’s, there was talking about emptying, it’s about becoming empty. Well, MTA is a process, you know, when you think like this glass here, as I drink it I’m making it empty. Right now it’s full, it’s delicious, and as I drink more of it it’ll eventually become empty, but once it’s empty, it’s spacious, that means that there’s room to fill it with something. Well, if that was filled with urine, you know, I’m not gonna drink it, it’s, it’s, it’s full, that’s just garbage.

35:53 Listen, I don’t want, I don’t want what’s in there for me to put something to make that vessel, we’re vessels, we’re containers that hold nature, to make that useful I have to empty out what’s in there to fill it with what I want, but we are, we can’t do that because we don’t want to confront what that is, because there’s honesty there. And some of these practices of yoga can get us there, it gets a lot of people there. I mean, I’ve had my own experiences there where meditation didn’t do something that a physical practice sometimes associated with yoga would get me to.

36:29 Right, yeah, see that, you see that. Well, I, I think what sees that, I, I think what it is with the physical practice is it makes it easy for the mind to focus and, and bring us to here. There’s a sutra that code, it’s called yoga sthira sukham asanam, which means the asana has ease and effort, and we’re looking for this, this sense of ease, and we find it through the effort. It’s, it’s that understanding light through darkness. When you put the body through a lot of effort, it actually makes it easy for the mind to be here.

37:02 It’s why meditation is so hard, because it’s so easy with the body, you’re just sitting there, and so now the mind has nothing to latch onto, has nothing to channel it, it’s free to explore. Meditation is a much harder practice than physical asana, at least from my experience, being somebody that’s always loved movement and gone that way. So it was really the, the hard physical movement, it was the handstands and, and all those things that, and the idea that I am supposed to be here, there’s an intention behind it, because I’ve done physical stuff my entire life, but I’ve never done it with the intention to understand who I am while doing it.

37:42 Let’s talk about, let’s talk about yoga then. Okay. Now because I mean, what, well first of all, I mean, you were doing martial arts in 2001 and you got exposed to yoga for one of the first times, right? Yeah, and that’s when you were like, okay, this is something, there’s something here, I need to explore. No, actually, so I kind of say that was my first experience with yoga, but I didn’t understand what yoga was then.

38:12 It was, you know, I was doing asanas and stretching in Warrior Twos and boat pose, and in boat pose my grandmaster would come by and then he would, he was like five feet tall, if that, old Korean guy, this late 70s, early 80s, and he’d, he’ll kick me super hard in the stomach. He was an intense dude, super intense. I once saw him changing a light bulb on a ladder, and the, it was on it, on a mat, you know, and it gave way and he lost his balance and he’s like way up there, you know, 12, 15 feet, and he just did a little roll, got up, and then climbed back, picked the ladder up, climbing back up there, you know.

38:47 I’ve never seen, but anyway, so he, he brought, like, the sense of yoga that martial arts does of mindfulness and meditation and all that, but not in the way that, not in the way that I understood. We all need it, it’s like you, you tell somebody something over and over and over, and then somebody else tells them that, that person the same exact thing, and then they tell you, oh, I just figured it out, this person told me, you’re like, that’s what I’ve been telling you forever. It’s, it’s sometimes we just need to hear in a different way from somebody else, and because I wasn’t ready also for that, I wasn’t ready, I was still just wanting to play in a rock band and do my thing and travel around and be a kid having fun.

39:33 I wasn’t, I wasn’t ready to explore who I was yet. It wasn’t until later, which I didn’t even know I was ready, explore who I was yet, but I knew that something was missing in my life, I knew I was, I knew that I was unhappy, and it was because I got everything that I wanted. Okay. I know I, I think I needed to get everything that I wanted to realize how unhappy I was because I always thought that if I got everything that I want, I’ll be happy, if I get everything that I want, everything will be okay.

39:59 What were you getting? Well, it was like, yeah, like, what were you getting? Like, I want to be, I wanted to mean successful, I wanted to have a job that paid my bills, I wanted to have more than what I needed, you know, I think that’s, we think success is getting a little bit more than what you need. Yeah, so that was one of the things, financially successful. I wanted to have a career that people admired and looked up to, so that’s why I became a firefighter, everyone likes firefighters.

40:28 I wanted to own a home, bought a house. I wanted a fancy car, I bought a ridiculous sports car. I wanted a beautiful girlfriend, I had a superhot girlfriend, and yeah, I had joy with all those things, and not saying that, that they weren’t good things and that there’s anything inherently wrong with any of that, but looking for those things and acquiring them just left a bigger hole. So this is, I think Yuval Noah Harari in his book Sapiens, he talks about the squirrel dilemma.

41:05 Once there’s this was a squirrel that went up and got an acorn and then ate it and then felt satisfied, everlasting sad satisfaction, and then died because it didn’t have a desire to go out and get another one. We’re programmed to have this sense of wanting more as soon as we get something, and it’s inherent to who we are, and so if we, if we live our lives like that, we’re never going to be satisfied, or never, we’re never going to be content. So I think I needed all those things to be like, okay, this isn’t the way.

41:45 About ten years later you decided to go in? Yeah, ten years later I was a firefighter, had all those things, this is actually before the girlfriend, so I was like trying to go to dance classes to meet people or whatever, and then I was invited to yoga class. I went to yoga class, and two weeks before that I, I started doing handstands. I went to a Cirque du Soleil show, okay, and I saw these people doing handstands. I’m like, that’s so cool.

42:14 So I went back to my rock climbing gym and there’s, like, a little workout area. I started doing handstands in there. Okay, learned how to do handstands, showed up to this, this power yoga class, and the, the owner, the studio, was actually from my martial arts place. Yeah, so I knew who he was. We used, I think we dated sisters, like he did it once, I, sorry, dated another, a long, long time ago, but it was a comfortable space for me to walk into because at that time no one was doing yoga, or no men were doing yoga.

42:45 Yeah, people forget, like, ten years ago or even 20 years ago, there’s just not a thing there, there was a couple, there’s a couple, but is, you know, yoga was for girls still at that time, and it’s, it’s crazy how much it’s changed. But so I went in there and was doing handstands and it just, it, it felt cool and it was a good workout, and then I met this girl that I dated for five years, and and even then I still don’t think I understood what it was. It was, as when I went and did a teacher training, which was shortly after that, way too early for me to do a teacher training, but I’m kind of an extreme person, so whatever I go after, I go after it as hot, as hard as I can, I put everything into it.

43:34 Yeah, he’s like, I was, I was still just so goal-oriented. I’m in the way that I put everything that I have into whatever I’m doing, but I don’t do it expecting something out of it. I, you know, the question, I think one of the questions that was sent to me before coming on this show is, what’s my goal in five years? And no idea, I don’t have a goal in five years, I don’t want to set a goal for five years, when you, when you start projecting into something that’s not real and you put expectations into that, whatever happens unless it falls in line that of that expectation that you want is, you know, it’s going to leave you unhappy, and then when you get there you’re gonna realize that it’s not what was going to make you happy either.

44:31 So no more goals for you, but no more future goal, future goals, okay. Right. And so you kept practicing and kept practicing, did your teacher training. I did my teacher training, and I think there’s a pose in yoga called Tadasana, which means Mountain Pose. My teacher, he basically said he wanted me to find Mountain Pose in a handstand, which it wasn’t like that.

45:00 Mountain Pose is just standing straight up with your arms at your side, it’s the most simple pose that you can do, but it’s, what does it mean to be a mountain? You know, if you look at a mountain, there’s so much life that happens on the surface of it, and it’s surrounded by change and everything is going on, but then at the core of it it’s still, it’s, it’s centered, it’s here, it’s present with all the life that’s happening. And when you could find that in something that’s difficult, like a handstand, then you start to understand a little bit more of, about what it’s about.

45:34 And I think that was one of my first times of understanding presence, where, that was my choice to be present, because I’ve been present many times but I didn’t know I was present. Hmm. I was just a thrill seeker before that, and I think where a lot of thrill seekers come from, they, they, they’re present, but they don’t understand that that’s why it’s so enjoyable. Right, so you’re jumping out of planes and you don’t realize that that’s the time to be there and be present, you’re thinking about the next jump.

46:03 Right, right. And once I understood that about yoga, I didn’t need to jump out of planes anymore. Right, interesting, isn’t it? Yeah, I really just had a flashback myself, like, I was so, I, when I got to London I was flying helicopters. That was my thing, and that was, I think, I’m sure I was doing it to, like, thrill-seeker die or something, but I had my first Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu lesson and I never went back ever again, and I only realized it a year later that I hadn’t gone to fly helicopters, because I just, some other connection was happening, something, I don’t know, deeper or spiritual, I don’t know, he was pulling me at that right time in my life as well, it kind of pulled me on this other jerk.

46:41 So for you there was a point where you just decided, I’m gonna do yoga because it makes me happy, and I don’t need to make sure it’s a job? I lost my job. I was teaching yoga on the side for fun and I got laid off. So this is, this is, I don’t normally share this full part of my journey, because it’s in a way it’s a little bit embarrassing, but also I don’t care anymore. Yeah, so I got laid off because of budget, and in that time I was like, I was just, well, I’ve worked ten years to get this job, and being from California, you know how hard it is to actually become a firefighter there.

47:23 It’s, it’s quite a challenging thing, there’s a lot of competition. It’s just weird because I feel like it’s, looking back, it’s a little like a mediocre job there, so you’d only go this high and it just stops there. And it’s prestigious, it’s, yeah, I mean, so I get laid off, I’m okay with it because I understand why the city ran out of money. I was, when the last was hired, first ones fired. I call it my teacher and I go, are you, what, can I come teach for you?

48:00 And he’s running teacher trainings down in, in Mexico, actually no, it’s in Bali, so I went to Bali, taught a teacher training out there for two months, and then I get a call saying we had some people moved to another department that got hired to a different fire department and there’s a space open, would you like to come back? So I came back and I was put on probation as part of the, the standards, the, the MOU, used the memorandum of understanding that that’s put in place. So I was on probation again, which is basically you’re not protected by the union there for six months, had to do all the, the probationary stuff that I had to do the first year.

48:39 I’d been there for four years. On the last day I show up to work and my captain’s gone, my, my partner’s gone, engineer, and there’s one of the chiefs there and he said, okay, well, we decided that we’re gonna let you go, you’re not a good fit for this department, which that was one of the hardest things for me because I’ve always had this, I’ve always fought trying to belong to something and trying to be good enough, and here is something that I worked so hard to be, and then to be told that you’re not good enough for this, but it’s not you’re not good enough because your job skills aren’t good enough, you’re not gonna firefighter-paramedic, because you just, we just don’t like you, which was basically what it was. My captain didn’t like who I was, he didn’t think I was a good fit.

49:32 I was a yogi, I was doing my own thing a lot, I was a free thinker, and that destroyed me, it destroyed me, and I went home crying not knowing what I was going to do with my life. The only thing I’ve ever wanted was to be a firefighter. So I sit down on my couch and I’m like, okay, well what are my skills? I play music and I do graphic design on the side and I teach a little bit of yoga, and here’s, like, a job that paid the bills that was good. So I started going into graphic design, trying to get little jobs to cover my mortgage, which there’s no way that that’s going to happen, so I had to rent out my house and move, and I decided to, to teach yoga.

50:18 I said, I don’t care, this is what really makes me happy, and I’ve been on that, that, that journey to understanding self, spiritual journey, it’s understanding myself for about three years, for three years as a teacher, four years total. So I moved to LA and started teaching full-time, and then now I’m here. That was eight years ago, suddenly, you know, something like that. Wow. And now you’re here, and now I mean, you know, your, your world known, you know, you’re known as one of the, the guys who did yoga.

50:56 It’s funny cuz, like, we were talking before this, like, I don’t know why you invited me on this, this show, and I’ve been thinking about this a lot, about why, why am I here, and you know, we think about the meaning of life, and this is one of the great philosophical questions everyone asks, like, what is the meaning of life, which is, in my opinion, the stupidest question you could ask. Everything is impermanent, we know that, and so it doesn’t matter whatever you do, whatever anybody does, nothing’s gonna last, everything is going to fade away, so how can you find meaning? Impermanence, but it’s the wrong question of what is the meaning of life.

51:42 The question is, what is the meaning of my life, because that’s what’s important. So when you understand what is the meaning in my life, which is not an easy question, it’s a really hard one and people struggle with that, but it’s a, it’s a much better one than what, what is the meaning of life? Once you figure out what the meaning of your life is, and the beautiful thing about that is you create it, you get to create the meaning of your life. No one tells you, no one says that, you know, Brian, you’re gonna, you’re going to inspire the world by telling stories.

52:17 No one told you to do that. You went and tried to find meaning and all kinds of other things, went to MIT, you have made lots of money, and, and for some reason you decided none of those things were your meaning. You chose what your meaning was. The second part is the easiest part, which is, what is my purpose? I believe whenever you find what your meaning is, your purpose is simply to share that.

52:46 For me, my meaning was to understand what truth was, because I know that if I’m not in the truth, if I’m somewhere else, I’m suffering, and no one wants to suffer. And I found so much joy and content and happiness, and it’s not there all the time, I’m constantly searching to be here, to relax, to let go, to surrender, to open up, to be present, and then share that with other people, because if you found something that was so important to you, that means so much to you, why would you not want to share that? And so this gives us the, the greater purpose.

53:37 Tony Robbins talks about that, our six essential needs: certainty, uncertainty, we need to have shelter, know how things are coming, we need to know, there has to be some sort of variety in life, we need to have purpose and meaning in our life, we need to have growth, and then the last two, the, the most important of our, of our higher self, is loving connection and contribution, and this is what makes us human, this is what makes us special, as these last two things that we could create connections with each other, to love each other, to, and then we could give to that. So I don’t know where I was going with this, but this is what you’re doing now with your life, this, yeah, this is, this is my life now. How come we miss that give part a lot of times, and, you know, Western culture, Western media, social media, you know, that, that because I’ve had a lot of people in that chair that basically says you’re here to be of service, you know, that is ultimately what we’re doing here, but no one ever gets told that.

54:57 We both grew up in America and we were both taught that you got to service yourself, right? You have to get mine. I think that that’s kind of the popular version. Well, here’s the reason, because you’re told that it’s about you, but here’s the aunt, here’s the truth, but it’s not about you. That’s what I tell myself almost every day when I sat in this chair, you know, when we’re sitting there, in the back of my mind I’m thinking this, it’s not about me.

55:26 When you think it’s about you, then that’s when you want to build you up, that’s where the ego comes into that. When you think that there’s something to obtain because you’re at the center, for, you know, for millennia we thought that the earth was the center of the universe, and we still treat it like it is, you know, we think that we’re the center of reality, and we treat life like it’s the center of reality. Once you realize it’s not about you, it’s about us, then it’s not about taking anymore, it doesn’t even need to be about giving, it’s about sharing.

56:06 That’s, it’s an exchange. Do you think your popularity is just a sign that you’re in the right space, because it is happening? I, I don’t even care about that, I think it’s all fake. You’re the one posted the pictures on Instagram. So I post the pictures on Instagram for two reasons, in videos, the great videos, just because I want to share something.

56:35 It’s, I think the confusion, and it’s, it’s a really easy one to confuse is, hey, look at me, but that’s not at all. We were talking about Ido Portal, he, when I first saw the stuff that you can do, is how amazing it is. I wasn’t thinking about, oh, look at what he can do, I was thinking about, I wonder if I could do that, and that inspired me down so many paths. That’s why, that’s why I share that stuff. I’m not going, like, hey, look at me, I’m going, like, I can do it, you can do it.

57:07 I’m just some dude, there’s nothing inherently special about me, there’s nothing different. I did some things that were cool, I did lots of things that weren’t cool for many years. I’d go to work, come home, clean my pool, sit on the couch, drink a cup of coffee, you know, now I’d live out of a suitcase and I’m homeless and I travel around and I teach people how to look at themselves. And you share on social media so people can see what they could do. That’s the pictures and the videos, and I like to write a lot on there.

57:43 Yeah, it’s, it becomes a little bit of a blog post, and so sometimes I write things that are meaningful, important, I wish everything that I wrote was meaningful and important, and sometimes it’s just, like, just me sharing my life and my experience or a thought that I have that is not important. I used to put a lot of stress on that, thinking that I had this responsibility to maintain a certain level, but then I went back to, it’s not about me, who cares, you know, people are going to take what they want to. And once you start to become comfortable with yourself in that way and you accept yourself, that you don’t need to live up to anything, I think that’s one of the greatest lessons that I have ever learned.

58:29 My whole life I was trying to prove to everybody that I was good enough. I think from the time I was a little kid, for my, for my stepmother, I wanted her to love me, so the whole time I was, I was trying to do things to be in her favor, to get her attention so that she would love me, and then I had, why I was that, I was the dork kid through school and high school, and that was always trying to get people to like me, and because I was always trying to get people to like me, no one liked me. I was, I was never a cool person, never, which is, it’s the craziest thing for me now to have, you know, 600 something thousand followers on Instagram and people, you know, I meet people and they’re like, oh my god, you’re so amazing and everything, and I think you’re so cool, and I’m like, not, yes, that’s, if you knew me, if you really knew me, I’m not cool, there’s nothing, there’s nothing about me that is, that is even a little bit cool.

59:34 I think you’re pretty cool. We talked about yoga, I thought we’ve been talking about yoga this whole time. We have, we have, and that’s the beautiful thing, and I was just thinking to myself, we haven’t talked about yoga, but actually that’s all we were talking about. But some people know what yoga is because they went and took a class or they watch one of your videos or they watched something that is this practice, and I would just love it if we could just talk about what is that practice that most people know and what isn’t it, because you said something like no one was doing Warrior Two 50 years ago, if you go into India everyone’s a yogi, and I would just love to get your thoughts, um, raw on what it is and what it isn’t.

1:00:14 Okay, so this is, this is a, let’s put it into a box or a quick so that we can understand it and then hopefully we’re able to take it out of that box. Okay, that’s a good way, very scientific way, good way to put it in the box so we know what it is and then we’ll take it out. Okay, cool, I like that. Okay, but to just understand that, we can understand the whole by the sum of its parts, right? We cannot, we cannot lose.

1:00:34 No way, I agree. So yoga is this very old thing, it was very religious, its roots are in Hinduism, it goes back to, like, if you read the Bhagavad Gita or the Mahabharata, these very old Indian texts of what yoga is, and that’s broken down into, yeah, bhakti yoga, which is the yoga of devotion, this is singing and love and space of bhakti is kind of like love, love or devotion. You have Gyan yoga, which is knowledge, jnana means, means wisdom, and this is a very intellectual part of yoga, understanding the truth, and a lot of people that, that go into this path, or at least historically, is like, is, I’m not my body, you know, something greater than my body, this is, this is not who I am, and so you’ll see like these sadhus doing these defiances of holding their arms up over their head for 20 years or doing, yeah, those kinds of things, that actually happens, that stuff, right, that, that stuff happens, that they’re saying I’m, I’m denying this false reality, I don’t, I don’t believe in it.

1:01:46 Then you have the Raja yoga, which is Patanjali yoga, this is the eight limbs path, and, and part of that is, Raja means that king or great, and then you have hatha yoga, or sometimes called ashtanga yoga, which is actually the eight limbs, and this is like the, the physical part of yoga. All of them are yoga, they’re all like the same, same path, and I think a good way to look at this is, if the goal is to, is to essentially be liberated, that’s the goal of yoga, freedom, and we come to a mountain and at that peak of the mountain is freedom, and we look and there’s all these different ways up the mountain, and that, and that’s the, that’s the misconception with yoga, with, with most things, that we think that the path that I along is the path because it’s the one I understand, and we forget all the other paths around the mountain.

1:02:41 Some journeys are harder than others, some create growth in some areas that others don’t, but at the end of every path, when you’re, when you’re working towards the summit, is the same. And so this is the tools of yoga, once we understand that the summit, it’s the same, it doesn’t matter what it looks like we’re all going to the summit, then you can understand what you’re doing is just a tool. So before the turn of the century when yoga was coming to the West, there’s this guy’s name, this is a quick history lesson and what yoga is, guy named Vivekananda, Swami Vivekananda.

1:03:13 He was very much a Raja yogi, the, the yoga of Patanjali, the, the Yoga Sutras, this kind of thing, which wasn’t about movement. Movement, asana, is only mentioned twice in the Yoga Sutras, and when they’re talking about it, it’s really talking about a seated meditation. So they say Shiva is the, is the father of yoga because it shows him seated in a, in a lotus or a cross-legged position, and this is the first yoga pose. But if we look back to what yoga poses are, if you look back at the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, which is an old yoga book, or the, the Shiva Samhita, or the Gheranda Samhita, these very old texts that, that talk about movement, there’s not a lot of poses and nothing that looks like a yoga class that you’re going to go to at any of your local yoga studios, other than maybe Sukhasana or Padmasana, so these seated positions, a couple other poses in there.

1:04:09 The UK, our Britain, invaded into India around the turn of the century, and at that time bodybuilding was a big thing, and so you had all these white Westerners coming in to India where you have a lot of people that weren’t into fitness, and there’s this cultural change where the, the men of India felt very effeminate to that, and so they wanted to work into bodybuilding, and so that what they took was something that was theirs, which was yoga, that had this type of fitness in it, and they adapted a lot of things into it. Some of it came from Swedish gymnastics, some of they came from something called nature’s cure which came from the West, which was this idea of, let’s heal the bot, let’s heal the ailments of the body through movement, through what the body does.

1:05:01 It’s not something that actually was inherent to yoga, it was using the body to heal everything else, to heal the mind, you again, you know, that’s moved into that, but the, the warrior poses and stuff came from gymnastics, calisthenics. This all, a lot of this took place around Mysore in India, which is where Ashtanga yoga came from, which is very physical type of yoga, but also at the time there’s the Swami Vivekananda who was saying, like, that this physical yoga is not yoga. It’s funny because we, one of the things I get all the time, the handstands I do and all the, the hollow backs and the crazy stuff, is people go, that’s not yoga, because I think yoga’s supposed to look like something.

1:05:46 This is us putting yoga into a box, right? You know, if it doesn’t look like my picture of yoga, then it’s not yoga. You reject that? It’s not that I reject it or not, it’s, it’s that’s that person’s experience. You only understand the things by how you define it.

1:06:03 Everything is like that, and some of the greatest things that we think that we all understand are like that. If we both talk about love, it’s, I understand what love is, you understand what love is, we have completely different definitions of it. It’s not my job to tell you what you think about love is wrong, and, and that’s what I’ve learned about yoga, it’s not my job to tell somebody that what their opinion of yoga is wrong. When I started into it I wouldn’t have thought half the stuff that I think is yoga is yoga.

1:06:30 So no, no, it’s not wrong. I think if you could see it from an outside perspective, it’s not yoga because yoga, even I’m Pattabhi Jois, you know, Ashtanga, he said yoga is an internal practice, everything else is circus, and that, that saying has, has helped me a lot, but what’s helped me more is to getting back to, I have nothing to prove. Why am I trying to prove that I’m doing whatever I’m doing is yoga? But it is to you, and that’s all that matters. It’s all that matters.

1:07:14 And so I did no idea that a lot of this other, the moves that we might typically associate it with yoga’s is fairly modern, like the last hundred years or so. All, all yoga that you see is modern yoga. That’s fantastic. Yeah, for something I guess most people wouldn’t know, that they would assume that all this stuff was kind of passed down through books and techno, but what’s important about anything, like you grew up in San Diego, you remember Dogtown and all that, like skateboarding?

1:07:37 Yeah, how that came up, he, before skateboards just had a tail and, and no nose, how are you supposed to kickflip on that thing? Yeah, right. Edie, it’s, he had all these things, and if skateboarding stayed that way it probably would have died because they would have got really stale, but you see is it progresses and moves and changes like everything in time. You look at any kind of religion, yoga is a movement, but not in the movement as we move, it is a, it is a movement as in a, it’s how society is changing, it’s a cultural change, and unless it changes with the times it’s going to die.

1:08:14 Religion has done it, and could you imagine if the Catholic Church was how it wasn’t in the medieval times? Yeah, you know, you’re just going out and murdering people, eh, going on crusade. So it’s a good point. Yeah, it is, but it’s still the Catholic Church, it’s still the Holy Catholic Church, it still has this the same roots that it, that it’s had for, you know, what are 2000 years or so, yoga’s is 5000 years old, it’s got roots, it’s got history, but for it to, to stay relevant to the times it has to check, has to change with the people.

1:08:50 And so, to finish up, a lot of these practices are recent, it was combined with this English going into India, and now it’s kind of what we now would see when we go to one of our studios, and it was really the Westerners that came into, into India, and through Mysore with these different practices, and, and as Iyengar and Pattabhi Jois sent it out into the West, that yoga is taken off, it’s still, I think yoga as we see modern yoga is much bigger in the West than it is in India. Yeah, India still view it as it’s different, but it’s actually come, modern yoga has come from the West back to, back to India, but it’s funny because we all go to India thinking that we’re trying to find this yoga, and then we go there and we see people that are doing japa, you know, there, there were malas and going through and saying Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, you know, we see all these different practices and, and chanting mantras and, and having satsang, and we’re like, well, this isn’t yoga, where’s, where’s all the Warrior Two in this, why are these guys wearing these weird dhotis and stuff?

1:10:02 So you harp on the Warrior Two sometimes, it’s immoral to a symptom of someone trying to say that yoga’s this. Yeah, because, because Warrior Two really be can’t came from gymnastics, Swedish gymnastics. Okay. It was brought in through the Danes, and it was, but yet it is this, like, everybody that sees a Warrior Two pose goes back to yoga, which is, it’s just again, it’s how do we define something. I want to, I want something that’s really clear, I want to be able to point my finger at and say, that’s that, rather than taking the words away from it.

1:10:38 Right, anything else we should put in the box before we get rid of the box about yoga? About yoga, I think it, I think it’s a beautiful thing, and even in the box it’s a beautiful thing. It’s a beautiful practice for us to understand this pathway, for us to move into this. The box is helpful. It is, and I don’t think how anyone is doing their journey is wrong, and I don’t try to push my ideas of what I think yoga is on anybody else, and if someone does on me, I don’t take offense to it.

1:11:15 If the tools work for that person, might change them. If I see somebody hammering in a nail with a screwdriver and it’s doing the job, I’m not going to be like, hey, what you’re doing that wrong, it’s working, I keep doing it. You know, I had my first yoga, proper yoga session with Dorian Yates down on the beaches, amor pea, and for him, as a bodybuilder who couldn’t probably touch his toes when he was training, for him now doing the splits and it’s a big part of his life, doing the yoga practice.

1:11:45 And so I got back to London and I, I found someone to do yoga with and I did it for about a year, year and a half, and, and I found it amazing and found a great heat mind-body connection, but I, I did, I did say at the end, and maybe this is a reflection of my own personality and things that I need to work on, but I got to a point where sometimes I felt like it was just very particular, like this has to be this and this has to be this and this has to be this, and sometimes I just didn’t want it to have to be something really specific, and so I got to this point where sometimes I would just be frustrated going to a class, and again, maybe that also just is a reflection of who I am, and, you know, that I gravitated more towards, like, the breakdancing stuff I do and hand balancing I do now, which it’s just something I can do a bit more that doesn’t make me feel like I’m not doing it right.

1:12:31 Right, something sighs, it makes a hundred percent sense. It, there’s, as I think it’s important for people to understand that there’s as many styles of yoga as there are teachers, and some people are very alignment based and very particular about certain things, it needs to be like this and it needs to be like this. What’s important is, what is the intention behind what you’re doing? I changed how I teach poses all the time based on what my intention is, and it’s also important that the, that the pose fits the body, that the body doesn’t fit the pose, and you’re using it for a reason.

1:13:03 You know, if I’m doing, doing a pose, what am I trying to get out of it? And that’s where the alignment comes from. If I’m doing a hip opening pose, my alignment should hope the hips, and that’s really the only important thing about alignment, other than that is bringing awareness to what you’re doing, and there’s millions of ways to do that. My, my classes are very dynamic and they move a lot and there’s a lot of things, and I am particular about alignment things, but it’s not, it’s not like you’re doing it wrong.

1:13:35 There is no right and there’s no wrong, they don’t, the only tech, like, technical wrong ways, if you’re hurting yourself from it, and, or if there’s no intention behind it. So a lot of times, like, I tell my students that, that it’s, it’s about sensation, it’s not about destination. If you’re going to a class where everything is about getting into a pose, you’re thinking about destination, your, your old logos, it’s about the journey, and that’s, that’s what yoga is, it’s about the journey.

1:14:06 So why we always trying to get to the destination when you, when you’re in the journey, you’re experiencing the journey, ins, it’s the sensation, and when you understand that, then you’re always there. It doesn’t matter if the foot is turned out of the right angle or if the knees perfectly at 90 degrees, and important to you, do you feel it? Does it do something? Does it have the effect for positive change? Because remember that’s what it comes down to at the end, I’m changing and everything else is changing, which direction my changing is, is it, am I growing or am I dying?

1:14:44 And yet all of your opposes are strong, accurate. I mean, the stuff you do, you’ve worked really hard on, and it’s, you know, fascinating to watch. And I got a little bit of a background in hand balance and in change, like two years, which means I can on a good day hold a hand balance, huh, but, you know, you’re doing all sorts of really dynamic stuff where your form has to be on point. Why do you do that? It’s a, it’s a tool.

1:15:10 When, like any tool, if I’m, if I’m a sculptor and I go out and I take a piece of marble and I take a small little chisel, it’s the wrong tool, it’s not gonna, it’s not going to do what I need, so I take a big chisel. And someone’s beginning yoga, they have a tool that’s very grow, it’s tangible, does a lot of things without a lot of skill, and it works exactly the way it should for them, and eventually you need to move on from that tool to get a little bit more precise, move towards your ear intention, and that’s why poses change, that’s why you see people approach more and more difficult things, because it needs to be a little bit more precise, and it’s, it’s that same thing of abusing the body to help the mind find ease. If it’s not challenging for the body, then it’s going to be challenging for the mind.

1:16:04 For me to do a regular handstand is a very easy thing for me to do, I could have a conversation in it and close my eyes, I can move my body in all kinds of different ways, so I need something that helps bring me more to the present, it helps to reinforce the intention that I have, that’s why things get exact and precise, and why poses change, and why there’s hard things out there, it’s just you’re changing the tool, and when you understand that, then it’s, it’s not so much about that tool that you’re using, it’s just the appropriate tool for the job. Why do you love hand balancing so much? But what was the one arm, like that, Jamie, and there’s a few things that hand balancing has taught me.

1:16:44 I think one of the, the first ones was patience. It’s a lot of patience, a lot, a lot of patience, and the other one I’ve learned it from hand balancing and I’ve learned it from meditation is forgiveness, because you have to be kind of soft on yourself. It’s not going to happen the first time, the second time, the hundredth time, or the thousandth time, it’s, it’s just not, and so you have to be okay to, tip, I don’t like this word failure, because failure is this projection of, of the future thing.

1:17:24 You know, we think that we’re failing, and we’re only think that we’re failing because we’re deciding to give up, and we think that we’re never going to do it again. Most people that, that accomplish great things in their life never failed. They say, oh, I failed so many times, but I got back up, that’s not a failure, that’s just a step, you’re just moving up the steps, it’s just an attempt. You got to, got to put the practice in, we learn things through repetition.

1:17:49 So why do we, why do we, if I know it’s going to take me a lot of times, why do I think my repetitions are failures? They’re not failure, so just repetitions, and once I stay out of the future of, like, this is never going to happen, I’m not failing, I’m just doing. And so you have to, you have to find that and love yourself a little bit to let go of this idea of that there’s anything, and just give it your best. I think hand balancing is such an amazing tool for that, understand, things come up, your fears, your insecurities, your doubts, all those, all those things come up, it’s a confrontation with who you are.

1:18:28 You still love it? Love it. I love, it, so I love it so much because, because I’m okay with myself, and that’s the definition. My definition six months ago would have been harder, because you would have been angry, you’re judging yourself, or it would have been fast enough, or, yeah, and I worked so hard, it’s, not saying, yeah, I’m not, my faults have brought me to where I am, and I’m only here because of my faults, because of not being okay with who I was, but I’m much happier being okay with who I am now, then trying to be here.

1:19:12 Everything happens, my, my teacher, and one of my teachers, he says that it’s exactly as it should be and it can’t be any other way, therefore it’s perfect. However, anything has ever happened in your life or is happening is perfect because it can’t be another way, and once you realized that this is absolutely perfect, I might not understand it, but it can’t be another way, but you’re able to accept the truth and, hopefully, yourself. I think, I think that, like I said, truth is such an easy thing, and it always comes down to a couple different pathways.

1:19:53 Once you start getting to the top of that mountain, all those, all those different routes start to merge together, all the different paths start to kind of yield into one. Hmm, one thing I see in your hand balancing is a guy that you’re definitely, well, I could see it’s a product of a lot of fighting, you know what I mean? You know, I have a hand balance instructor and he’s, he was, I think, doing one arms ten years ago, and he’s put me through the paces, and again, I trained Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and I remember one time I was learning the armbar and I had been training for maybe six months, and I asked my strictly instructor, I said, how many times do I have to do this until I get good at it?

1:20:28 And he said, like, a thousand, and it just boggles my mind, you know, but I can tap people out with it. But with him Holland’s mean, it’s like I’ve been going, like, two years now and now I can maybe, it looks like I’ve been training, it’s like, it’s so ruthless when it comes to, like, you really need to put the time in, and yet I do still enjoy every session because I find it challenging and fascinating and being still with my mind. But one thing my instructor always says is that, you know, you know, fight for that balance, you know, fight for it, and didn’t so you can hold that and learn and have that period, because I find the hand balancing is you only have a few seconds when you’re in balance where you can practice being in balance, and if you don’t fight for it, it’s kind of like you lose the time.

1:21:06 And is that an accurate assessment of you? But I think that’s perfect. Okay, yeah, I thought had a fight for a lot of things, but it’s, what does that mean, fight for a lot of things? Yeah, well, I think life is, life is always going to be a struggle as long as you make it a struggle, and I’ve made most of my life a struggle. Now I, I don’t make it so much of a struggle, but I still do, of course, because I’m working through this like anybody else.

1:21:39 I don’t have things figured out. I like to think I do, but I know no one, I think, really does fully have things figured out. There’s like three, three, three ways to acquire things or should be better or to grow or, I don’t really know what the way to say it. So we have, we have those things that we’re born with, we all have natural abilities, certain affinities to be good at some things, our genetics lead us to that. Then sometimes those things are things that we are that are obstacles, is obstacles away?

1:22:23 Yeah, and those, those are things that are given to us as opportunities, right? Then we have the things that are given to us by other people, whether it’s our parents, a situation. I was born a white male, that’s, I mean, what kind of, what better advantage can you have in this world in Southern California, like, and, and yet it was no cakewalk. Yeah, there’s no cakewalk, but still, even my worst thing, I mean, if I was born in the slums of the Philippines or, he, it’s like that, that is a huge thing that was given to me.

1:23:02 And then we have effort, as I say three, I don’t know, I’m not good with counting, so then we have the effort. So we have those things, and how much effort that we put into something, so we take the things that are given to us, we take the things that we’re born with, and we take the effort that we put into it to acquire whatever, but that will only ultimately bring us so far. No one will ever move or surpass, get to their goals through effort. The last and final thing to ever go to where you really need to go is surrender, and when you learn to stop contracting, you’re relaxed.

1:23:38 And I found this in my arm balance practice more, that I tried a lot of times, effort comes off as contraction. If you go outside and it’s cold and you tense up like this, you just gonna shake more, you make things worse. If I go into an arm balance and I try harder and I fight it here, so now you’re talking about your teacher telling you to fight that? That works to a certain point, but eventually you have to stop fighting, and this is true through all things in life, and eventually you have to surrender.

1:24:14 Another way to say about, to talk about surrender, is you have to relax or stop contracting, and once we learned how to do that, then we could come into peace, to be how we are, and start to open up our awareness. So you have awareness and attention, this word attention, you know, we’re all looking for this focus, it’s a very interesting word because it’s a tension, and if we move into attention without first relaxing, without first letting go and surrendering, then we actually contract and it’ll never take us to where we need to go. It has to, it has to work around this idea of surrender, and once you could do that, then you’ll, you’ll find yourself worried where you ultimately are.

1:25:12 Tell me about nature, because I know it’s important to you, and I know you had kind of like a 9-day nature vision quest that you did a couple years ago, and I’m finding myself much more drawn into nature, and to where I’m just like, okay, something’s going on here, where I seek it out, I swim in ponds, it’s just like this thing where I really appreciate it, I appreciate the deep connection, but it took me a long time to actually appreciate it, and this is coming from a place like California that has beautiful parts and ugly parts, right? But tell me about you and your connection with nature. And nature is, it’s a reflection of the truth of the self.

1:25:54 So you have your inner nature, which is what we’re all working to understand, I think, not all of us, I say all, but some people just don’t give a thank you, some people don’t want to be aware, some people have no desire, and you see that, that, that’s one of the sicknesses, the people don’t want to be aware, but it will catch up to them somehow, what moment or, or does not leave or go kill ourselves and become extinct, right, but it will result in some kind of disconnect or some kind of thing happening if you don’t know yourself, won’t it? If I go out to a field and I say, I see a beautiful field of flowers, I know it’s a beautiful field of flowers and it’s growing there and it’s alive and it’s vibrant, and there’s a connection there, and they’re all connected to each other, but then I go to a single flower and I pull it from the soil, and as soon as I pull it from the soil, I remove it from nature because I want it, and now it becomes separate, and as soon as it becomes separate, it dies.

1:26:55 It’s no longer part of what it was. This is what we’ve done to ourselves, we’ve been, you know, we’re the leaves from the tree, but then we come in here and we make lots of nice little right angles, everything comes in a package, we have no idea where our food comes from, we have no idea where our water comes from. You know, where it, where’s, where’s the water source in London? Where are we actually getting the water from? Is it aquifer, or, like, do we know where this is?

1:27:19 All I know is I go to the tap and I turn a little thing and then out comes water. There’s no connection to that stream, is, there’s no connection to the fruits or the vegetables or the, they just go to Whole Foods, well, I want that. And so we’ve, we’ve done this for convenience, and we’ve, we’ve made things really easy, and in that convenience and these soft comfy chairs and stuff, we, we’ve created a separation, and that’s where the sickness says has come from.

1:27:50 Returning to nature is getting rid of that sickness, it’s coming back to the source, which is self, because nature is self. Stop seeing it as something different, start seeing it as, as your essence, as your being, as the, the primordial life that fuels everything. You know, we, we like to think of ourselves as different. You look different than me, so you’re different, right? But you’re not.

1:28:27 So in the body there’s, we have about 37 trillion cells, human cells that make up who you are, make up who I am. You have about a hundred trillion bacteria in your body, three times the amount of bacteria than human cells. You’re more not you than you are you, and each one of those cells has its own function and life and kind of thing that it goes through, grows, dies, replicates, but you don’t identify as being separate. Seven billion people in the world, in the world, and yet we think that we’re all separate instead of thinking that we’re all one.

1:29:14 I take a string of lights, of, like, Christmas lights, and they’re all pretty different colors, and I go, oh, there’s a bunch of pretty different lights, and I plug it into the wall and it lights them all up from the same source. Our problem is we identify as an individual that, rather than identifying with a source, what actually makes us shine, what actually makes us glow. Once we start to returning to nature is returning to that source, to actually identify with who you really are, because without that we don’t shine, we don’t glow, we don’t, there’s no connection.

1:29:49 When the leaves fall from the tree, they die. So a practice isn’t enough, you have to get out there and return. Yeah, I mean, there’s, there’s things that you can do, but ultimately when you really, when you really want to understand the self, you need to return to nature. Tell me about the vision quest and, like, what it is and the, vision quest is kind of a weird name, and people think a lot of different ways about it, and some people. I think you, you had your ayahuasca experience?

1:30:21 Yeah, I did, and those were powerful, and honestly when you’re, tell me about these, we’re all connected in nature and we’re all one, I mean, these are the messages I get hit pretty hard with when I do have those plant medicine ceremonies. So yeah, but I know you can also get those messages doing a lot of different things, just, just being present, I mean. So essentially the whole thing was, I sat with my teacher, went through these things called the twelve, twelve guiding principles, which was created by John P.

1:30:48 Milton, it was someone that’s done this practice of vision questing or returned to nature or the way of nature, and it’s about seeing things as they change, understanding that, committing to the truth as truth is freedom, to relax, to cultivate the, the ancient, the energy of nature, and to that, essentially to return to nature. So I went out there, this isn’t in Sweden, in the forest, and July or August, August, still pretty cold out there, raining, rained almost every single day, and is basic, it was a very simple thing, but it was one of the hardest things that I’ve ever done, and I mean, I fought in Iraq and I’ve done, I’ve done a lot of hard, crazy things, but nothing is harder than having to confront yourself for that long. Once the, the first thing that comes up is, is you needing distractions.

1:31:48 I didn’t have any paper, no pen, no foam, I wasn’t supposed to survive, not supposed to make a fire, I’m not supposed to, I had a little bit of food, just, just enough to survive, no clothes. You, naked? Naked. Wow. The, the reason why you saw, like, everyone, so I’ll post a picture of me in nature without clothes on, yeah, and people like, attack otherwise you naked, and you’re just, you, just people don’t understand what it is to be naked, like, we, we think we define ourselves by the clothes that we wear.

1:32:26 I know you dress in a nice suit because you are playing that role, you’re putting out this, this image of almost who you, who you think you should be, or you’re identifying with, not saying that’s a good thing or a bad thing, I do the same thing everybody does, but when you remove all those things that make your image, when you, then you just stripped down to who you are, there’s nothing left but you. You actually start to understand who you are, and to take off all those things as you’re in a way you’re removing your identity or your false identity, cuz that’s not who you are, you’re not this nice suit, and so that’s why it’s important to go out and do this naked. Yeah, and you’re also alone, so you remove culture, because the culture is the other thing that we’re trying to adhere to.

1:33:17 I’m supposed to act a certain way or be a certain way, oh, now there’s no one there. I sing songs of the Force. Yeah, yeah, one cuz I was half losing my mind sometimes, and others just because I was, I was like getting back to that primordial, like, this is who I am, and, and life, and the first, but the first thing that came up was, like, I’m so bored. I would need something, I need to be somewhere else, my mind needs to be somewhere else, I need to be distracted, because now, now I’m with me, I don’t like that.

1:33:51 What was the hardest day, like you said, what is it, day one, day two, day five? Probably day three, cuz by day three I was fighting still. I was still fighting really hard, I was still fighting being here, and this is, I mean, I’ve been a yogi for, for like seven or eight years and practicing this and, my, you know, traveling around the world and teaching, and I was, one of the hardest things because my life is, my life is so good, my life is so good, I can’t ask for a better life, it’s amazing what I get to do, I have everything that I want and everything that I need, and I am surrounded by love and I get to give so much love to people, and now here I am with those, those two that I talked about, contribution and loving connection, those, those immediately came up the hardest because the other way for thinking about those in your law.

1:34:49 I know I, I felt the absence of those. I was in the most beautiful pristine nature, on this lake that you ever seen, Forrest Gump? Yeah, you know, when he’s running and he sees in the mountains, oh, I don’t know where the sky begins and, you know, the earth ends. And yeah, it was, it was literally like that, the most beautiful nature I’ve ever seen, and all I want to do is take a picture and share it with anybody, or talk about the experiences or the things that I learned.

1:35:18 I didn’t talk about it, it’s a really, anybody for a long time, like actually what it was, because I didn’t understand how to talk about it, because what I learned there is no words. I actually learned what the difference between connection and attachment is. I could talk about it all day and I could intellectualize with you where you think that you know, but you’ll never know until you know. It’s like love, I could talk to you about love all day, but until you’ve been in love, how are you supposed to understand that?

1:35:45 So these are the things that started to come up, and it was the first, the first lesson that I went through with my teacher before I went out that made the biggest impact, which was relax. Three days I was contracted, I was fighting, a second that I was able to just be like, I’d sit on a rock just out in the middle of the lake, this is rock, come up and I, you like this, start crying, just let, I mean, even thinking about it brings tears back to my eyes, and just let everything go, for any reason other than to let go, and open my mouth and let spit and drool come from my mouth, my nose would start running, and I would just sink deeper into what it meant to relax, to actually stop fighting. And then I realized something, that my entire life I wasn’t trying to prove to other people that I was good enough, I was trying to prove to myself that I was good enough, and what I realized is I had nothing to prove.

1:37:17 The second that happened, I felt the biggest weight just dropped from me, and so much freedom, and I broke down crying and I did not stop crying for like six hours. No, and it was like I knew what it meant to relax, I knew what it meant to release, to not contract, and I’m still riding that high. I guess that was a couple years ago? Yeah, it was a few years ago. I’m actually looking right now to doing a course, actually, with, with John Pete Milton, so he does this thing, the Way of Nature, and there’s pretty intense.

1:37:57 Okay, but, uh, it takes more than that, I mean, that was nine days naked in the wild. Yeah, it’s way more intense than that. Okay, what, longer periods, or longer periods, like the, there’s one that he does which is called, it’s like he has a 28 day one, and I’m like a 42 day one, but to get into the 28 day one you have to do four days, which is in an 8-foot circle that you’re not allowed to leave, no food, very little water, no shelter. I had, I saw at shelter, I still had a tent and sleeping bag for at night, so it wasn’t like dying, I wasn’t freezing, and I, and I had water, but no food, no shelter, no sleep for four days in an 8-foot circle to prepare yourself as a 28-day journey.

1:38:41 He gets way more intense, but if you can’t do that, you’re not ready for it, cuz it’s not about fighting, it’s not about going out there and, like, we go out with all this testosterone thing and I have something to prove and I can do this and I can make it through that, and the second that you do, you’ll never make it, you will fail, in the sense of failing, like every time, you just will not be able to until you get rid of you. I mean, it’s not about me, it’s not about this, it’s not about surviving, it’s about being and letting go and to stop contracting against everything, and then you’ll understand it’s a relaxation or surrender, they’re the same thing. Okay, okay, the same thing.

1:39:28 And is that gone now, or is it something you still have to kind of, you know, and even that, that boy that was abused by his stepmother, is that something you still got to kind of keep an eye on, and does it come up sometimes, or? Well, that one, that one’s really, that one’s gone, that we’re sure, I don’t, kind of a hundred percent gone, actually, most, most those kinds of things. My PTSD from Iraq, that’s gone. Okay, none of that, you know, there’s, it’s because I let it go.

1:39:54 I really, in the true sense, let it go, but I still have emotions and things still do affect me, they affect me different, and I’m quicker to move away from that. You know, I just had something that happened to me yesterday and it, it shook me up, and my immediate, that my immediate choices I wanted to make were affected from the emotions that I was having, and then I had to be like, okay, these are, this is not the reality, this is how I feel, and as soon as I let that go, I was able to actually move from a place of love, of how I’d wanted to, those you talked about, they give you that person back with those choices. I wish I was able to stop and be like, okay, this is not, this is not how it is, this is me being affected by my emotions and changing the situation to something that it’s not, and not how I want to react.

1:40:48 I want to react from a place of love without the smear on the doubt, the smear without the, without the boss, and I’m like, I just want to, I want to see things how they are, and, and then to move forward, and let me tell you, if you start making choices from a place of love, there’s so much better, even every choice you make, that’s important. And this realization that you don’t have anything to prove to anybody, is that something you think you’re gonna have to still remember and process all the time? Yeah, always, because that’s ink, that’s ingrained in my DNA is to prove something, and then I have to realize it’s not about me, I’ve got nothing to prove, nothing to prove, myself.

1:41:25 But now you saw it on that vision quest for the first time, so now it’s like, okay, I really know, I, I can identify that that’s there, and now you can run that filter. Yeah, before it just reacts on its own, maybe, hopefully, it’s a big, the, the, is you know, you don’t, you’re not in control of it. Yeah, that, that’s, that’s the, the, the major obstacle is we think that we are in control of our mind, and that’s so false. You more you meditate, the more you, you realize that I have no control of what’s going on up here.

1:41:57 Yeah, the only thing that controls this is my practice. It’s like an animal, when you train an animal it behaves better, you’re not in control, that animal, that’s an illusion, you know. You have a real addict, I had the most amazing dog and it would listen and do whatever, but if, if there are fireworks going off or something like that, it wouldn’t listen to anything that I said, they’re just, it was more affected by its emotions than what I wanted it to do, and we have to realize this about, about the mind, that if we train and we practice really hard, then we could train it to be, do more what we wanted to do on it, right, but there are still gonna be things that are is gonna set it off.

1:42:39 The better we train the mind, the less those types of things arise. Yeah, I was reading a book one time, I said, the analogy is like a rider on an elephant, you know, trying to guide the mind, you know, and sometimes it can be in control, but ultimately it is an elephant. And John Joseph’s food training for the Ironman last year said, well, I think I said Prabhupada, which is the, think that the originator of Hare Krishna, said every day you have to wake up and be your mind with a shoe, that’s it.

1:43:05 Please didn’t know. And yeah, I think I’m, and that’s your practice. Yeah, and John talked about that, to whatever it is your practice, but it’s there for a reason, it’s there to try to get that brain to be somewhat on, on board with the plan, right? Yeah, you mentioned PTSD, thoughts on that? You know, I’ve had Jocko Willink, the US Navy SEAL, and for him he said, you know, he found a new mission, and he deals with a lot of guys that come back that have these symptoms, and he always encourages them to find new mission to move forward.

1:43:37 Do you think yoga is a way to process this, or that a lot of other things going on? I, I don’t even want to attempt to go out there and start to try to understand or to act like I don’t know what PTSD is, because we all experience it so different. For me there was a lot of hard things that I had to go through, but the biggest one was through yoga, and this is something that, like, I love, I’d love to be able to share this, to be like, this is, this is all you have to do, but I don’t think that’s a possibility for most people.

1:44:11 It’s what got me through it, which it was, it was basically one day I had it and the next day I did it. One day I had it really bad, the next day I didn’t. I said, this is not my story, this is not who I am, it’s who I was, those things happened as events, I’m different, and I let it go. Surrender, it’s the analogy that I like to use, and this is not just for PTSD. PTSD is a really hard one because people can’t let it go, it’s, it’s so in there.

1:44:49 Some people can, but most people it’s, it’s a daily, that’s a daily struggle because it was such an emotional event or something was so hyper, hyper reality that he can’t, it’s hard them to let go, or becomes part of their narrative, or what is it? It’s because I think it becomes part of their narrative, they associate that with who they are. So if I, if I want to make a sandwich, I go to the cupboard, I pull out some flour, take out some water, some yeast, throw it on the counter, take some peanut butter and jelly, smear it on top, and I have a delicious sandwich, right?

1:45:22 We didn’t break the flow. Yeah, we did, that’s flour, water, yeast, all those things you move together, make a dough, you let it rise, put in the oven, bake it, and now it’s bread. Yeah, but we think though is we’re bread now. This is where the result of those things, but we’re not those things, and you can never take bread and then break it back to what it was. So this is, this is again not understanding what reality is, not being in the present moment, to live in the past, you’re living in a past version of yourself that is not yourself, and once you realize that, that’s me, yes, it brought me to what I am, but it went through a lot of changes to get here, and now that it is, it is something completely different, and whatever it is now can never be what it was.

1:46:18 When I realize that, but that’s not me, so why am I going to associate with that? Why am I going to identify with those things? Yeah, I, I’ve grown from that, it’s brought me here, but I’m somebody different now. This is also how we need to treat other people. When we form relationships, we, we treat people like we know who they are by who they were instead of who they are, because of their different every time you, you’re with somebody, they’re different, they’re changing.

1:46:52 We are dynamic people, we, the world is a dynamic place that’s continuously changing, and you have to treat it as what it is now, which is a beautiful thing because it allows a lot of opportunities for people to be better, not to hold people to what they were, and we were horrible at that. We put somebody in prison and now they’re their criminal their entire life. Yeah, and we label them that, we don’t let them change, or somebody that’s wrong to you in a certain way, they’re always going to be that person that wronged you in that way, that they’re not allowed to get better and change.

1:47:29 But then for you, you know, all the, the shitty things that you’ve done in your life, and you know you’re not that person, so why don’t we, it’s all ending these lessons that we learn about. Okay, so that’s not who I was, that’s not who I am now, I need to let those go, that go works for everybody else, works. All this thing of understanding this, this moment, this window into the ever-changing universe we get to see through, and we get to see things as they, as they are.

1:48:00 Second you step out of that, second you start looking somewhere else, and all, all kinds of things go wrong. Would you suggest someone, like, start a relationship with their body though, as something that’s essential, like whether it’s yoga or any type of movement, or because it’s such a, a practical way of the, blowing in the mind aren’t different, right? But there’s one. Yeah, so of course, if you don’t feel good in your body, how are you gonna feel good in your mind?

1:48:26 There’s this, the body is the vessel, it’s the container for the nature, for the mind, and the nature for who you are. If you take a cup and you poke holes in it, it’s not gonna be very good at holding whatever you’re trying to put into it, and it’s gonna have, it’s gonna leak, it’s not gonna do its job. The container has to be strong, it has to feel good. The body’s natural inclination towards anything is pain, it’s, it’s our way that we stay safe in our environment.

1:49:04 No, we like, too much of anything is always gonna be pain. If I just sit here without moving, eventually I’m going to feel pain, so I have to move. When you feel good on, in your body, when you feel good about your body, it’s so much easier for the other stuff, you’re actually able to hold the things that you find important and valuable. I had a conversation with a friend about a year ago, and I loved this girl to death, beautiful girl, over the years she’s gone through a lot of stuff, put on some weight, it hasn’t felt very happy about herself, but she’s a, she’s a social worker and spend a lot of time trying to get well in her head, and I’m like, well, are you doing any movement, you do anything?

1:49:49 And she’s like, no, not doing anything like that, I’ve been trying to become happy first before I start running and exercise and all that. M’ling, well, how do you ever think you’re going to be happy, get the mind right, if you never feel good about your body? It doesn’t mean we all have to be skinny and attractive and all those things, but we, we have to at least feel good about what we’re doing. Even if you look at somebody who is grossly overweight and they start moving towards being less grossly overweight, they’re going to feel so much better about themselves, and you look at these people that are a thousand pounds, they get down to 600 pounds and they feel like a million dollars because they’re experiencing change for maybe the first time in their life that has not gone towards death, but they actually started growing, they actually started to create.

1:50:41 So it’s, it’s essential, movement is essential. You stop moving, you start dying. You stop moving, you start dying, that’s, people die when they get old because they just, they stop growing. Yeah, it’s not, I’ve, like, I go back to looking at my grandmaster, I don’t even know if he’s alive anymore, but he, he never stopped growing, he was always training, always strong, and you look at Dharma Mitra, he’s, I think he’s 79 or 80 now, Oliviana. Dharma Mitra is the, he’s the OG yogi.

1:51:25 Okay. He is, he’s an amazing yoga teacher from New York. Okay, and yeah, he’s like 79 or 80s, you’ll see pictures of him doing no handed head stance still that he could, he’s probably way more flexible than I am. This just never stopped moving, it’s never stopped his practice, in his mind sharp and his body sharp, he’ll die because we all die, but he’ll die growing. The hard part for us is the mind continues to grow, well, hopefully, as long as we don’t have any diseases, we continue to push it, and so it kind of goes like this, but the body is, is more like this, it drops off, and we feel the body start to die before the mind starts to die, and so then we start to feel our own mortality and it puts us into a place of depression.

1:52:19 But if you could keep your body growing, even if it’s not as good, there’s, there’s a sane, like, you’ll get better at every pose in yoga, or you’ll get, eventually get worse at every pose in yoga, you get to a certain point of getting better, but then all your poses get worse, except for Shavasana, which is corpse pose, so final flow, you do at the end. It is if you can keep your body in a way where you feel like you’re still building it, you’re going to, you’re gonna be happy till, till you leave your body, and then you go join the source, nature. And what are you gonna be doing when you’re 80, your handstands and no-handed head stands and what?

1:52:54 It, I mean, I’m hoping I don’t plan on, on stopping what I’m doing any time. I, I’m better now than I was last year, better now than when I was thirty, thirty eight. Now my body does more things, because I look at the other people I went to school with and I don’t know if any of them are, they’re actually more fit and their body and now than they were when they’re thirty or when they’re twenty. Eventually, like all things, nothing’s permanent, it’ll, it’ll die and I won’t continue to get better, but I’m always going to give it my best, there’s no reason to stop.

1:53:40 And you’re still trying to master certain practices and you’re still traveling the world teaching other people, so I know you don’t have goals, but you’re doing that because you want to do more, right? And they have purpose, see a purpose, right? And what is, what is that purpose then, what does that look like if you keep doing what you’re doing? Do you want to just, to share, okay, with as many people as possible, whoever wants, ever wants to make a connection with me, it doesn’t matter if I’m just sharing with one person, right now I’m just sharing with you.

1:54:11 I know we have all these cameras, one, two, three, five cameras, yeah, around us to 600k, so we have, we have six cameras, and we’re doing this because a lot of people are going to be watching this. You know, hi everybody, I hope about something that I say speaks to you, and if it doesn’t, maybe you’re entertained, or something that you said speaks to them, but right now this is just about the connection between me and you. When I talk to you, you look at me in the eyes, that’s not it, that’s not something that’s normal.

1:54:44 Go, go, go to it, to any, any place where you walk up and give an order and look at everybody that’s standing in line giving the order, the person that’s taking the order, if they don’t even give him the respect to look at them in the face, who’s all have, you know, a number two with, like, extra mayo and slopped all over it, and here’s the money. Yeah, we’ve lost so much connection, and we, it’s not even human anymore what we’re doing. We have social media, which is great, I have this opportunity to connect with so many people in that way, but in that it’s also created so much disconnection.

1:55:25 Yeah, when I was a kid, I wanted to see my friend, got on my bike, rode my bike to their house, knocked on the door, if they weren’t home I turned around, riding my bike home, but if I wanted to make a connection with somebody, I went to them. Now it’s just like, it’s, we’re so lazy that there’s no effort there, but we need back in fact, they know nice. I saw somebody who’s like, okay, I put an effort to see you, now let’s spend some time together. Mmm, we don’t need, we don’t need effort anymore to connect with people, which is, I don’t know if it’s sad or good, or I mean, it’s not inherently one or the other, it could be both, that’s just how we take it.

1:56:07 I think it’s why I like the show, because I can’t a one-on-one real connection for, you know, at least some time that we’re in here. Yeah, and I think that’s why people appreciate it too, because they can be a part of a one-on-one connection again, something that maybe they haven’t been a part of maybe a long time. You know, I have friends of mine say, hey, let’s, let’s go meet somewhere for dinner, and I’m like, why don’t you come by the studio and sit in the chair, cuz a lot of real conversations, right outside there’s distractions, and I feel like we’re never really connecting, you know.

1:56:35 I love this setup that you have in here, there’s no table in between us. Yeah, you know, the chairs, you look at every talk show, their face in the can, they’re facing the camera. Yeah, because it’s a performance, because there’s, because it’s easier on, on a social level, on a human social level, males normally don’t face off and talk to each other because it’s confrontational. If you, I just observe for a while, when you talk to people standing up around anywhere, men are always shoulder-to-shoulder, they talk to each other like this, sideways.

1:57:15 Already look at a group, it’s always men are talking sideways, because women, they don’t have that naturally engrained, they usually face each other and talk. When men talk to women, see, usually like this, but this, this is so vulnerable for so many people to, that’s as soon as set doubt. I’ve seen the show, but to actually be in the chair, in the room, because he don’t really catch it so much from the angles, because that here’s the angle from here, these cameras are seeing me, those cameras are seeing you, but to be here and to feel this connection is what it’s about.

1:57:46 This is, if we could make this with everybody, then you’re actually getting to share whatever your stories, you’re hearing people. You talked about, like, you, what you do is you listen, you’re out here to listen. No one ever learns anything by opening their mouth, but yet we all think that we have something to say that’s more important than listening. Right now I’m talking because, I mean, you, it’s kind of my role, and when I teach I talk, other than that, if I’m, if I’m out with a group of people, I’m usually the quiet one, I’m usually the one listening.

1:58:26 There’s a little saying when I was in the Marine Corps, so that this, this symbol right here, you have two ears, one mouth, for a reason, you know. Listen twice as much as you speak. Would you give from the Marines? Oh, what I get from the Marines, I loved it, actually. Apart from having to go and do what Marines do, which is what?

1:58:50 Kill people. Yeah, essentially that’s, that’s it’s, I joined in 1999, Clinton was president, for some reason I never thought I’d go to war, I was going to go and be a firefighter as a aircraft firefighter, crash fire rescue, that was my primary job. Went through that schooling and, and all the combat stuff, and then after that was one of my unit, was there for a little bit, tried out for the wrestling team, got to leave my unit and then go wrestle. I did that through the season, and when the season was over, go back to my unit and play Marine firefighter.

1:59:27 So it was, it was amazing. I’m, it’s 18 to 22. I had a lot of goals there. I went into the Marine Corps because I wanted to be a firefighter outside of the Marine Corps, and I knew that being in the military would help towards that path. When I was a younger kid, everything that I looked at was a staircase, everything was like this step led to this step led to this step led to this step, and that’s how I approach life, and I, if the goal was too lofty, I just break it down into smaller steps, but that still was, you know, now looking back on it, still the wrong way to look at it because I was always trying to go somewhere.

2:00:09 Hmm. Which is really, it’s, it’s really hard because there’s, like, my old self that’s like, just be better and do things and inquire more stuff and get more of this and be, but that got you here. Yeah, which got me here in a sense, but here is always going to be here, wherever you’re going is always going to be here, but the version of you might not have existed, and we like this version, right? Yeah, it’s perfect because that’s what it is. So when we try to change the present, that’s where the biggest problems coming, that is when the Buddha said, not wanting what you have, that is one of the biggest problems that people have.

2:00:53 It’s not, not so much wanting what you don’t have, that one’s an easy one because you could get that, it’s not wanting what you have, because that’s saying I’m not comfortable with who I am, I’m not comfortable with, with this, and so we’re, that’s, that’s the one that that all of us, myself included, and fall into, you know, a trap, right, of not wanting what you have, not wanting what you have, thinking that it could be better, right? That’s, that’s, that’s what it is, not wanting what you have is, I think it could be better, whatever is this, I think it could be better. We spent all this time trying to make time.

2:01:39 You know, there’s so much stuff that we do that we’re trying to create time, build up vacation, build up money so that we could enjoy time, except for we don’t know how to enjoy time because we’re not, once we get to the point where we could enjoy time, we’re thinking about something else, so we’re not actually present with that time that we have. If you spend time alone with yourself, I think one of the reasons why you’ve liked your, your plant-based spiritual journey is that you’ve had, is because it’s, it was a tool, and of course I’m speculating because I have no idea what your experience is, but it was a tool that allowed you to be here a little bit easier, and then you’re like, wow, this is the truth, and so all these things that are coming, we’re arising now, and then you got to see them and be with them rather than trying to be somewhere else, and so therefore you have this big spiritual change in you and you are like, wow, this is all the stuff that I’ve been avoiding, this is all the stuff that I’ve distracted myself from, trying to be successful, trying to make money, trying to create relationships, trying to acquire, that I’ve distracted myself from what’s actually really happening, but then you take something that says, hey, this makes it a little bit easier.

2:02:47 It’s a tool that’s, yeah, it’s a tool, like there’s lots of different tools to get there. Yeah, and that’s exactly what it is, you know, it’s, it’s forced me to be present with it, and there’s no other place to go, and so you just deal with it and you grow, and you can see the things that you normally wouldn’t see, not dissimilar from a vision quest. Okay, so my vision quest, there is no, no drugs or plants or anything like that, it’s just me and nature, actually.

2:03:13 Okay, I’m gonna share this with a bunch of people who, okay, I’ve, because I was a Marine and then a firefighter, I never did any drugs, on marijuana, not that marijuana or cannabis, you know, not that I think that’s a drug or thing, but never did in any substance, any mind-altering substance or legal substance, I should say, right, other than alcohol. Like last month with my buddy, we went to Scotland and just into the nature, we went so deep into nature where there was not a sign of people, and we took some mushrooms, maybe some tea, went out there into nature and just hiked through nature and was there for, like, nine hours, we, we hiked out, and I, I didn’t have, like, there’s no life-changing experiences because there’s, there’s nothing that I needed to change, but it was just, it was such an amazing connection that I had formed in the mushrooms were from the place that I was in, and I was just in beauty nature.

2:04:13 And hiking, and the colors of everything was amazing. Big dose, small dose? I think it was like, I’m not really good with what doses are. No, too big, this my first and only time I’ve ever done it, so it’s about five grams. Okay, did you have to, like, sit down at some points, or could you keep walking the whole time?

2:04:32 There is one point where, well, I wanted to sit down and just be like, oh my God, look at all this, and my buddy had a little bit more experience, was like, dude, we got to keep going. You, you have to stay macro, once you get micro we’re screwed, you’re just gonna be sitting there playing with the grass for the next Ted out. Are you think I can’t get to ya, there’s nothing wrong with that, but he’s like, we, he was on a bit more of a mission to, like, hike through there, where I was just like, I’ve never experienced anything like this, this is amazing, and I feel, I felt, I felt great, and the whole thing was such an amazing connection.

2:05:05 Different way to connect? Yeah, just a different way to connect. And so that’s, I think that’s important when we look at different journeys and different pathways, so we just see them like that and we don’t put too much importance on the tool. It’s a hard thing to do because we look at, we look at tools as goals. You know, we think a handstand as a goal, but it’s a tool, or getting, doing any kind of movement as, as a goal, but they’re all tools, like if, if you’re a builder and you take your hammer and you’re really proud of this hammer, and so you sand the handle and you lacquer it up and you make it all nice and you polish it so it’s not rusty, and then you hang it on there, like, look how great that hammer is, and then someone’s like, hey, can you, uh, passionate hammer, I need to nail this in, you’re like, no, you know, my hammer is perfect, like, it loses its purpose.

2:05:58 So we, I like to think of things as tools, all that are moving towards the, the universal truth. Yeah, I think you know, meditation and yoga and hand in hand stands, at handstands and mushrooms and, you know, vision quests, they all have their way of kicking you to it, and, you know, to hear back to ya, hear, exactly, yeah, here, here. It’s such a hard place to be, it’s, it’s so simple, yet so hard, like, it, like, why can’t I just be here? I mean, most people watch this right now and they’re, if they’re honest with themselves, admit it’s very hard to be here.

2:06:36 I know, and I get this message almost every other week, because all the wise people that sit in that chair, guess what, guess what, they say the same thing in different ways, right? But if they’ve been around, even Mr. Pena and Mr. Yates and all these people basically say, well, you’re saying, you know, it’s this universal wisdom, maybe these truths you’re talking about, you know, said in different words, but it is that same kind of thing. Yeah, being here, we’re all connected.

2:07:02 Ram Dass, Be Here Now. That’s my first teacher training I went through, there’s a girl, I had this little belt around her neck and it rang, like, and I’m gonna, did she, like, be here, be here, be here, it was a little neurotic, but sometimes we need, we need things like that blatant in our face. And I teach my meditation workshops, I tell them, okay, so yeah, future, past and story, our future story past, basically the three states that aren’t here, you’re either, to, in the future somewhere, your mind is in the past, where it’s just making up, that’s as I get the workshop, it’s a three and a half or four hour workshop where I’m lecturing pretty much the entire time, and I go, when your mind wanders, I want you to write down how it’s wandering, label it F, S, or P, one of those things, recognize how is it wandering.

2:07:56 I’m going to do something that I want to do in the future, I’m projecting something in the future, I’m just making something up, or I’m thinking about something that happened, Kenny. I can’t even make it through that explanation without people’s minds wandering to somewhere else. Yes, unless we’re talking, and there the mind constantly to go somewhere. When you’re able to recognize that, you’re able to start to understand where the mind is going, that it’s actually moving.

2:08:24 Until you get to that point, you’re never gonna be here because you’re not even aware that you’re not here, and I think that’s, that’s one of the problems, most people aren’t aware that they’re not hearing, so it sounds like a silly thing, be here, of course I’m here all the time, but they don’t realize that they’re not here, right, until that, that place of awareness happens. There’s not even a problem with, like, me, makes me want to ask you, are we gonna make it? That’s the question, like if people don’t have this awareness, which means they’re not in their true nature and then we don’t appreciate nature, are we gonna make it?

2:09:02 I mean, we’re all gonna die no matter what. Okay, let me ask a different way, like, is is, is a society, human race, gonna make it? Is, is you’re right, you have a daughter, right? Yeah, I’ve a daughter and two sons. Daughter and two sons, okay, are they gonna have a big, gonna make it to where they have kids?

2:09:19 That’s that’s a good question. Yeah, cuz, cuz that’s tryin, I years, I have a feeling that I’ll make it through my life and, and die at whatever point that I’m supposed to, and there’s this whole talk about 2050, if we don’t change, if we stop you, if we don’t stop using the world as a resource and start giving back to it, then I think it’s, we’re a really interesting time, and it’s, it’s crazy that we are at, alive at this point in history. People have been around, I mean, some sort of sapien has been around for millions of years, and yet it’s in this, this generation, our short little time on this planet, that we actually have the choice of are we going to ruin it forever early, are we, nature will eventually, like, once we leave it’ll come back and survive, but that’s us, that’s thinking that we’re different than nature, we are nature.

2:10:17 Yeah, once we learn to get back to that. So I don’t know, there, it’s a hard one because people, yeah, I don’t, I don’t like to label us all as, as one certain way or not, but if we keep working towards capitalist, capitalism and acquiring something and having more than what we need, then I don’t, I don’t think we’re gonna make it very far, though. That can’t coexist with us making it? Or, yeah, if we can’t, everything is interconnected and interdependent, everything in the universe, like when I shook your hand and how I move, you move, well, this happens on a global scale, everything is interconnected and interdependent on what we all do, and so we, right now we’re not making the right choices.

2:11:22 I was just in China teaching out there and I went to buy a piece of fruit from the store and it was wrapped in this foam thing that was then wrapped in plastic, and each single one of those was, was double wrapped, ever, every piece of fruit, there’s absolutely no reason, then they give it to you in a plastic that, and it’s like the, the mat, nice. Yeah, Europe’s like four hundred and fifty million people or something like that, all of Europe, mm-hmm, counting the UK. America is about three hundred and fifty million people, and we’re starting to make some choices in the right area or the right way anyways towards reusing, reducing, recycling, but then you look at China, who is over a million in half, like, yeah, 1.5 million people, India 1.4 million people, a billion, yeah, they’re more, sorry, billion, sorry, 1.5 billion and 1.4 billion people, and this is what, how they are doing things, or I mean, look at one of those, the cruise ship industry, like, one cruise ship is worse than a million cars.

2:12:33 Yeah, and it’s, that is something that is absolutely unnecessary, there’s no, I mean, yeah, that’s, look, I’ve been on a cruise before, like fifteen or twenty years ago, but I was on a cruise, that’s not something that’s necessary and that is something that is just so bad. It’s not, it’s not going to stop because people are paying for it, and because people are paying for it, someone’s making money from it. And yeah, we look at voting, and though it’s such a big, important thing and we think we need to elect these politicians and to make changes, but that’s not how changes happen.

2:13:11 We had, we had a Obama and now we have Trump, and yeah, they do completely polar opposite, and yet the world is in the same state with both of them. We want to point the finger and say that our leaders are the problem, but we are the ones voting with everything that we buy and everything that we do, and so we’re, we’re just fueling the problem. Leaders can only do so much, so I don’t know, well, you’re, you’re the answer to your question is I have no idea.

2:13:50 I have hope in my heart, and if there’s, I’m technically an influence or whatever that means, so I don’t, I don’t want to, there’s awareness, so you look at, like, I’m just trying to build awareness. We don’t need to build awareness, people know this, we need to motivate action, and it starts with the action that I take, the actions that you take, and I, unless other people also take action, then yeah, we’re duped. Mmm, maybe, uh, what what scares you, besides that, anything else in your life that scares you?

2:14:32 What’s, I could be scared of, I don’t know, I used to be scared of not being enough, maybe I was, I was, yeah, I was scared that people wouldn’t like me, and now I don’t care if people like me, there’s not nothing to be scared, I was scared out. Yeah, I would not be good enough, or I wouldn’t amount to anything, or wouldn’t be successful, or, and now, I mean, it’s also really easy to say these things because I have more than what I need and I have my health. I think, yeah, an easy one is, what would scare me would be to lose my health, to lose my ability to move would be a hard one for me to deal with, not saying, like, I don’t think I could get over, I think I could, but that would be a hard one.

2:15:28 Other than that, you know, we’re all, we’re all gonna die, something, without, without death there is no life, and I think that’s an important thing to remember. We, we live in this kind of culture where we want to deny that death is, is something that happens to all of us, we want to hold on to life so hard that we contract into it, kind of comes back to the idea of surrendering. We, we are able to value what we have so much because we know it’s not permanent, and so you could spend your time focusing on the fact that it’s all going to end, which is future, or enjoy what you have right now and actually be here and live with the time that you have.

2:16:20 So I don’t know, not really, that’s a hard one. That’s a good question. That’s a pretty good answer. I knew it being by movement, there was a UFC fighter named Dominick Cruz, and he was, you know, you know, the champion, like hundred forty five pounds, and he blew out his knees and he had to sit home, San Diego as well, and he just had never at a point in his life where he couldn’t release through the physical, and it’s just at some point he’s like, I just had to give up and just be okay with the fact that I couldn’t move, and once I, once I did that, I was okay, but it was very hard for him.

2:16:53 And yeah, it’s surrender. Yeah, or relaxing. Yeah, yeah, me not, when you showed that body of language, it was just fascinating to watch, cuz, like, that was like that for me, that was surrender or relaxing. Yeah. Dylan, I always ask everyone a few questions at the end.

2:17:10 I’m gonna ask you, if I can give you a phone and you could call up the 20 year old Dylan and give that young man a bit of advice, what would you tell him? You’re in the Marines at this point, right? Yeah, as in the Marine, so that must be crazy. That’s such a really challenging question. If I say one thing to him, or even multiple things, I wouldn’t say anything.

2:17:48 I wouldn’t say a single thing. Let him do his thing. Yeah, because it obviously worked. I was, one of my friends was talking about meditation and stuff, and we’re all sitting down at a circle at this festival, and he asked, he said, who loves themselves? Raise your hand.

2:18:19 And I was the only one that put my hand up, which kind of blew me away, it four to one that I’m confident enough to know that I love myself. That’s probably my, the greatest, if you talk about accomplishments, that’s my greatest accomplishment I’ve ever made, that it’s the greatest thing I’ve ever done in my life. The single greatest thing is that I could love myself, but to see how many people that don’t, that can’t honestly be like, I love myself, it’s really hard to form connections with other people, it’s really hard to love other people if you can’t love yourself first, really hard to save the planet if we, yeah, we don’t love ourselves too, because if you don’t love yourself, you’re trying to destroy yourself, whether you know it or not, there’s pain, and so you try to fuel that pain with pain.

2:19:18 But when you could love yourself, you could, you could start being a mirror for other people so that you could reflect the love that they have. Second part of the question, best advice you haven’t received, could have come from a parent or a drill sergeant or a yogi or, I don’t know, why, it’s not gonna serve you out there to kind of elaborate the question, why will never serve you. That’s a hard one because I’m someone that loves why. Hmm. But I don’t actually, I don’t want to talk anymore about that, tool, tool around with that, really think about it, it’s kind of deep.

2:20:29 Well, you asked a deep question. Okay, I’ll give a little hint into that. Why is you wanting to think, you wanting things to be different than what they are. When you say, why is this, why is this, that’s you wanting things to be different. We never say why is, why about something that we want it to be that way, right?

2:20:54 Right. So the question itself is, it’s a reflection of how we feel about ourselves, and when you’re not asking it, so this, this was, this, this was the question that my teacher gave me right before I went on the vision quest. He said, you’re gonna be bored. You could ask what, who, where, when, how, all good questions. What is your secret tree?

2:21:27 What is your secret water? How do you live in harmony? How do you surrender? But why will never lead you anywhere. He didn’t say like that, he said why won’t serve you.

2:21:47 Why is you wanting things to think about things to be different than what they are? Every time you ask why, you just want it to be different, you are not being here. Yeah, it’s good, it’s, it’s a hard one because we’re society, culture is because of why, you know, I think it’s ingrained to kind of think, it was ingrained in who we are. Yeah, it’s good. Last question: to that twenty year old that’s watching us, listening to us, and maybe for someone who has no concept of that physical practice being a part of who they are, you know, maybe it about that woman that you mentioned earlier, and I’ll just say that because it’s something that, you know, you have intimate knowledge with, but for someone that might not even understand that concept, you know, that there’s the body as the mind, the body is everything, it’s all one thing, how would you, what advice would you give to them if they want to even explore that, you know, or even if they don’t believe that, or what would you say to someone who is kind of shocked, know that, you know, it doesn’t know what to do with that information?

2:22:52 Yeah, I feel like I’ve already said it, you know. We only know what we know through experience, and, you know, nothing else beyond that, and so until you explore something through experience, you’ll never understand it. That’s really it. If you want, if you want to understand something, you need to experience it.

2:23:38 Your, you are your greatest teacher and your, your only teacher. No one has ever taught you anything, which is, it’s a weird thing and it’s kind of almost comes off as an egotistical thing, but when you really think about it, people have only shared with you their knowledge, and you took it and you put everything that who that you are, every, every part of you and who you are and what your coming with, and you adapted that to who you are and learned through your experience, and then it’s something else.

2:24:16 If I, you know, this, if I give a talk to a room of a hundred people and I share my experience and exactly, I’m exactly what I know, what I want to teach, what I want to share, everybody’s gonna get something different because they’re teaching themselves, essentially. When you realize that I can’t, I can’t know anything until I do it, you become an explorer, you actually start to, like, live life rather than speculating and judging. You don’t, we don’t do stuff because we think it’s gonna be a certain way, we have this idea because we think we know, but how can you know until you do?

2:25:05 Go do it. Go do it. Dylan, I really appreciate coming on. I love the Wu-Tang socks. If anyone doesn’t collect those things, representing.

2:25:15 Ah, you know, you ask a very strange question in the beginning, which is, why am I here? But I think it’s pretty obvious why you’re here, and I’m so glad you came here, and you know, I always know it’s a great show when we don’t talk about what the person does for a living, but even though we did, you know, but, uh, I really appreciate the journey you’ve been on, and honestly, a few things just kind of flagged me when I just heard about you and your story, and, and you know, I’m so glad that we had John, because, you know, and I think a lot of people don’t realize that sometimes they see someone out there, maybe someone also that’s, you know, in an influencer in these things, and they say, oh, that’s what they are, but you know, usually those people who have gone through these fascinating journeys, and everyone actually has, and it’s everybody’s journey, as fast, everyone’s changed, fascinating, and so it’s funny.

2:26:01 So I think sometimes we see someone in the media and we just get a two-dimensional version of them and fairly, and that’s what I love, what we do here, so I get to find it. You’re this fascinatingly intricate dude, so thank you for dropping the science on us, really appreciate it. Now I feel very, very blessed to be here, and yeah, as long as I tell myself it’s not about me, I feel okay being here, but once I started thinking like anything else, then I immediately don’t feel like I deserve it, which is another huge lesson that I’ve had to learn, I think we all have to learn.

2:26:37 Yeah, I think that’s great advice, anyone out there, like I always tell, like, my students whenever getting anxious, just think about why are you doing that? You’re doing it so someone else can be inspired and learn, and then it all, it usually washes away, most of it does. So well, it’s, it’s this has been a great experience, so thank you so much. Thank you for what you’re doing and, and just, yeah, it’s great, you didn’t, we need more people like you. Well, I’m trying to go do what you’re saying earlier, I’m trying to share the world with my purpose, right?

2:27:09 If we could go out there and reflect the best in others, there’s, what else is there? Amen to that. All the best in your journey, maybe next time you’re around, maybe we’ll do some movement together. Yeah, I love watching your stuff, thanks so much for that, it’s really inspiring, and yeah, it shows some greatness of humanity, that’s what I see, so appreciate it and wishing you all the best, and how about we get a hug too?