 Hello everybody. Welcome to day 22 of our shadow work challenge. We are so close to the end of this challenge. Not the end of shadow work shadow work never ends. But I hope you guys are feeling a sense of pride and a sense of accomplishment since you really stuck it out and been there for yourself through thick and thin through all of the things this this up this challenge has been brought up for you and made challenging for you. That's why it's called a challenge, right? So before we look at day 22 and day 23, I do want to talk a little bit about triggers. Now again, triggers are something every human being deals with. You will continue dealing with them until the day that you die. They will always be there. But triggers are there. They're like your golden nuggets. Like they're sacred. They're things to show you, right? If you weren't triggered by something and there isn't some attachment that you have to the outcome of that thing. And I've noticed that with a lot of people, they're getting very triggered by the ashton yoga, which is good because that means that the the the practice is doing its job. The ashton yoga is designed to piss you off. It's designed to to trigger your ego. And I wanted to kind of bring that up because this happened from a lot of people. They've been very shocked at how difficult this is. And so something that to think about for yourself. Are you triggered because you thought it was going to be easy? Because if so, if that's the reason, then you can maybe take a look at how you were programmed by Western yoga, by the infiltrated yoga, right? Because the Western yoga, 99% of the yoga that you see isn't actually yoga. If it's not ashtonga, if it's not Iyengard or if it's not Sivananda, then it's not traditional yoga. And traditional yoga, if you study the Yoga Sutras, is supposed to be difficult. It's supposed to be. If it weren't difficult, it wouldn't be life changing. If it weren't difficult, you wouldn't be able to watch and observe your reactions to the difficulty. And so it's supposed to be difficult. Now, I've noticed too, because I think a lot of people thought it was going to be easier, they're upset with themselves for not being able to just do it, to do it right the first time. But I want to remind you guys, you are considered a beginner for the first 10 years of your ashtonga practice, the first 10 years. And so I asked somebody this morning, this is a very honest question because I think sometimes we feel like when we're a beginner at something, we're somehow not valuable or we're somehow not worthy. And so I think a lot of times people like to skip, or they want to skip the beginning part and just go to the advanced. But that's not possible. And as I've said before, the easiest students to teach are the beginner and the advanced student because both the beginner and the advanced student know that they know nothing. However, the difference between the beginner and the advanced student is that the beginner and a beginner's mind, there are many possibilities. In an advanced person's mind, there are few. And so being a beginner is an incredible place to be. It's my favorite place to be. Whenever I get new students to the ashtonga practice, I'm always jealous of them. I'm jealous that they're just now starting this journey. And they're just now discovering everything because there's so many possibilities. It's like a whole new world opens up to you when you start to study this, this theory and practice this theory. But once you've been doing it for 16 years, like I have for 20, 30, 40 years, like other people have 50, 60 years, like some people have, the possibilities become few, right? And even though the more you do it, the more you become more, I don't want to say enlightened, but more like comfortable with your own understanding of life. It's still not as exciting as when you first discover the practice when your body starts first starts to have these breakthroughs. That's exciting. And then after a while, the breakthroughs aren't as exciting anymore, because you've gone through it so many times. And so being a beginner at ashtonga yoga is such a beautiful face. It's an amazing face to be to where to be. So I would really, for those of you who are being triggered by it, I would really journal about that and ask yourself some of the hard questions. You are worthy. It doesn't matter your level of experience. You're still the same. You still have the same flicker of light as the person who's been doing it for 20 years. It's that's their chapter 10. This is your chapter one. I've said before, do not compare. Do not compare your chapter one to somebody else's chapter 10. First of all, that puts a lot of added pressure on you to try to leapfrog all the way to chapter 10. Second of all, there's a lot of value in chapter two through chapter nine. There's a lot of lessons that if you try to leapfrog all the way to the end of the book or all the way to the midway point of the book that you are missing. Be that beginner. Be that new student. Enjoy being that beginner. Enjoy having the beginner's mind. I hope that makes sense. I hope that helps you guys who are struggling with that a little bit because maybe it is a western world thing too where we feel like we have to be perfect all the time, but that's not why you came to earth. You didn't come to earth to be perfect. There's no point in humaning if that's the role that you're going to play is the role of perfection because the interesting parts are the messy parts. That's where the trigger is where you're frustrated. That's when I say that's juicy. That's where it's juicy. It's boring. Somebody like for me if I do primary series boring. I've done it for so long now. Nothing interesting anymore about it. When I watch a stong on earth, even though I think he's an incredible teacher, it's boring for me to watch his practice. It's boring. I've seen that a thousand times. I do that myself. But you know what's interesting? What's juicy? Watching a new person do it. Watching their reactions. Watching their own self-discoveries. Pratsyahara which is one of the limbs of yoga, self-study. So watching them have that realization about themselves through the difficulties of the practice. Watching them stumble. Watching them fall. Watching their body change. Watching a posture that used to be a struggle, not be a struggle anymore. That's what's juicy. That's what's interesting. The beginner student is the interesting student, not the advanced student. All right. So change your perspective. Tell yourself that it is absolutely okay to be a beginner. Not everybody was born. Listen, ashtanga nurse, myself, everybody out there who practices ashtanga yoga was not born practicing ashtanga yoga. Many moons ago, ago I was a beginner. We all have to start somewhere. And again, I think for a lot of people, it's the programming from the Western yoga as well because for most people all they are familiar with is fake yoga. And they're so indoctrinated by the fake yoga and seeing the fake stuff that when they're confronted with the real stuff and it's not how they expected it because we have reality and we have expectation, right? Rarely does our expectation meet the reality that it triggers that idea that they thought they had over a subject. When the idea they thought they thought they had over a subject isn't even the subject anyway because the Yoga Alliance is bullshit. All right. So that's interesting too. So maybe ask yourself that. Did you have a false sense of, you know, I get it all the time. I have people come to my class and they start they hurt and they're crying and they're sweaty and they look at me. I thought, they're like, I thought this was supposed to be easy. Nothing in life that is good is easy. Nothing that is life changing is easy. Why? Because of friction. We need the heat. We need the friction in order for there to be a revelation. We need the friction. If something's easy, there's no friction. If you're not sweating, there's no friction. So this practice is designed to give you literal friction, literally in your body, literal friction, sweat, pain, discomfort. If it didn't do that, then it would not be life changing. All right. So where those triggers are, where you find yourself having this like breakdown because you thought this was going to be easy and it's not, well, there's your friction. That's where it's juicy. It's like I say too, we've talked about it before, you know, many times. The only time we don't practice is if we have a fever or for women when you're on your period. Every other time we practice. So when you got a cold, actually somebody in the single group, I won't say who wrote that they practiced, they were congested and they did an exercise and they actually were surprised that they felt better after it. It's like, yes. So we've been conditioned to think that the body is something we don't have control over. That shit just happens to the body and we just have to be slaves to our body. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Your body is responding to your mind, your thoughts, your psyche. And sometimes when we're congested, sometimes when we're sick, it is a detox. And even though we're detoxing, we still need to continue the work, right? So if every time we got sick, we just stopped what we were doing and didn't exercise our practice, then we would be going in a rut. Because the body would go back to the way it was, we'd work, work, work, work, work, hit that detox again. We stop and then we go back to the beginning. But what if we work, work, work, work, work, hit that detox and instead of stopping, we kept going. Doesn't mean that when you're sick, you're going to have a full on exercise or a full on practice. No, of course, you're going to modify. You might only do like sun salutations that day. Or you might only do like 20 minutes of bar. It's not going to be a full blown workout, right? But it's still something just to keep the blood pumping. Again, keeping that blood pumping is what's flushing everything. And you know, Tommy Joyce had this famous quote, practice all is coming. He's got a lot of famous quotes, but one of them was practice all is coming and a lot of people think that what he meant was practice makes perfect. And yes, that is a side of that quote. But no, no, no, no. What he meant was practice literally all is coming. The good, the bad, the ugly, the happy, the sad, the depression, the anxiety, it's all coming, all of it. But you don't stop practicing. If we only practice when we felt good, if we only exercise when everything was great, nothing would change. I exercise six days a week, four to five of those days. I'm not in a good mood when I'm exercising or practicing. I'm not I would rather be in bed or I'm thinking about like watching a reality show or something or doing laundry. Really only like one day a week do I feel like a fucking rock star when I'm practicing. But again, that's why at the beginning of the practice I talked to you guys about motivation and discipline. Motivation is that energy of that one day a week where you feel like a rock star, it doesn't do anything. It shouldn't be taken seriously. Discipline, however, that's the golden nugget. When you're able to have your alarm go off early in the morning, I've been up since two this morning, early in the morning and that voice in your head is like, oh my god, just stay in bed. The bed is all warm and comfortable. Everything's great. Your head is egos going, oh, you've done enough. You should just sleep in today. It's no big deal. But then you go, no, I'm going to get up and I'm going to do my work. That's discipline. That's sadhana. That's most of the 16 years of my journey on this path has been discipline and sadhana, not motivation. So you guys are doing great. If you're triggered, that means it's working. That's good. Just keep working through those triggers. We want you to be triggered because again, that's where the match is going to strike the matchbook. Without the triggers, there would be no change. All right. Just make sure you're not projecting those triggers out onto other people. Instead, journal. That's why journaling is really good so that you can pull that energy out and examine it for what it is and go about your day. All right. So if you have any questions about that, just ask me down in the comment section below. All right. So here we are Tuesday, November 22nd. That's today. Get up, make your bed up. Let me know. I thought I would have more of a more comments about the whole make your bed up thing, but some people have commented and said they already made their bed up, which is awesome. Is this something for people who don't make your bed up? Has this been a huge struggle for you to start making your bed up or have you noticed a change in your day by making your bed up? I don't feel like my day actually starts until my bed is made up. I make my bed up. Very first thing I do before I exercise, before I do anything, I make my bed up. And I can't imagine at this point at almost 40 years old not making my bed up. And it just, it just, I feel like it's like it's kind of a self-respect thing too to make your bed up, you know, to keep it. And when you get into the bed at night after making it up, it feels better. So let me know if you guys are one of those people that didn't make your bed up and now you're starting to and how it shifted and changed you. It's like the feng shui thing, right? It's like everything is energy. And so when there's chaos, when the bed isn't made or the house is messy, there's chaos. And so start to notice that like for me, I'm very organized and very anal retentive, OCD about so I'm very clean. And so my house is always very, very organized and very, very clean. And so that's just part of me too being Vata. But at times in my life when that maybe hasn't been the case, that's when things have been a little bit more chaotic for me anyway. And so your body is your temple, but your house is also your safety zone and your temple as well. And so if the house is messy, then your temple is messy. Are you noticing a correlation between physical fitness and making your bed up, cleanliness, organization, all that kind of stuff? Because most of the people that I know who are very physically fit, who take care of themselves, who are working through their shadow work all the time, whether that be through yoga running, whatever, are also very organized in their own personal life too. They're also people who make their beds up and have very clean houses and then people who tend to not be in that mindset of work tend to be lazier in their houses. So are you noticing a correlation between your home and your body? Just something interesting to observe, right? This is all, all we're doing as humans is we're just experimenting as Patanjalene says, we're just observing, right? And so how is something as simple as making your bed up, change your day or change your outlook on yourself? Or have you also noticed that people who are tend to be more physically fit tend to do the hard stuff, the shadow work stuff tend to really give life that a lot of energy when it comes to that? Have you noticed that their houses are also very organized and clean versus the opposite? Sometimes you see and this is just a general thing. It's not at the rule. It's just generally speaking. Have you noticed that people who are more lazy and don't make excuses about why they can't exercise or make excuses as to why they can't eat healthier or, you know, take care of themselves? Have you also noticed that their houses are also a bit of a wreck? How does the exterior temple of the house match the interior temple of the body? Because, you know, in Ayurvedic, you can't be as pure as your environment. So if you are taking care of yourself and doing shadow work and following the dosha diet, your home life needs to match that vibration. It can't, your home life can't be messy, right? You can't have shoes everywhere and dirty clothes lying everywhere and bed unmade and dirty towels laying everywhere and dirty dishes just piling up in the sink every day. That vibration of that messiness does not match the vibration of your interior work as well. And so just an interesting correlation. Again, let me know if you guys have noticed that and if making your bed up and doing the shadow work has it made you become more organized in your home life too either consciously or subconsciously. Maybe this is the first time you're thinking about it and you're like, wow, she's right. I do find myself actually now folding the laundry right after it comes out the dryer or I do find myself loading the dishwasher a lot faster now. Where's the correlation between that? All right. Last meal should be between 5 and 7 p.m. No snacking after 7 p.m. And again, for today's exercise, you pick from all the exercise videos we've done up to this point, same as yesterday. The next day, I think tomorrow too, you're going to be picking your exercise as well. And this again is an experiment for you without having me to guide you, without having me to say either do this exercise or pick from these two exercises, you now have the ability to pick your own. And so how do you feel about that? Are you overwhelmed by that decision? Do you find yourself excited that you don't have me telling you what to do or do you find yourself picking the exercises that are really easy for you? Or are you picking the exercises that challenge you? And if so, why? Why for everything? Why are you picking what you're picking? And there's no wrong answer here. It's just for you to start to under that, again, that pratyahara, that self-study as to why you're picking certain things. All right. So during your morning shower, do the five minutes of cold shower. And again, as I've been so impressed, so many people are so changed by this cold shower. I knew you guys would be though. That was probably the biggest pushback I got when I started this challenge was doing the five minute cold shower. But everybody seems to really be benefiting from it. I know people in the signal group are taking like 10 minute cold showers now. I mean, it's so, it does something to you. It stimulates you in ways that I can't even explain. So I'm so glad you guys are having benefit to that. Again, the all meditation food journal as we've been doing this whole time. Since we're nearing the end of the challenge, have you guys had benefit with the food journal? Are you starting to have a better understanding about what foods work for you and what foods don't? And are you noticing where you were programmed? So like, I'll use it again for me. Like, you know, there's that saying, an apple a day keeps the doctor away. Well, no, it doesn't. For me, if I ate an apple a day, I'd probably be in a hospital because my body can't handle it. It's too vata and I'm too vata. It can't handle it. But there was a time in my life where I would like force myself to eat apples because I thought they were healthy. And then when I stumbled across the dosha system, I was like, Oh, this makes so much sense. No, I can't eat apples. I can't eat broccoli. I can't eat cauliflower. I can't eat grapes. Those foods are too vata. The vata of those foods is too potent for me because I'm already fucking vata. So it's too much. It's too much. Now, if I cook the broccoli, or if I cook the cauliflower, or if I cook the apple, that's a different story because it changes the chemical compound of the food to a different type of energy that my body can take. Right? So is this starting to like, are you starting to have revelations like, Oh my gosh, I've been forcing myself to eat green beans every night. Then I end up with a terrible stomach ache. And now I understand that I can't, that even though I thought green beans were healthy, they're not healthy for me. So I've been hurting myself by eating them. Is there some sort of like revelation happening there, especially against we've been doing this for a while now? Are you starting to realize some things about yourself? And are you feeling better? The more that you realize what foods you can and cannot eat and you start to course correct, are you starting to feel better? Are you starting to have a more enjoyable life because your stomach isn't upset or food they're not causing you anxiety or depression, which is another question for you guys. I said that I've said that before. Food reactions, reactions to food isn't just stomach aches, gas, bloating, diarrhea, whatever, or rashes on the body. It can also look like depression. It can also look like anxiety. Certain foods can cause you to have depression. It's different for every person. So the food that causes you to maybe have anxiety or be depressed might not be the same for your kid or your husband or your friend because we're all different energies. So if you had revelations about that, are you like, oh my God, I can't eat green beans. I thought I was doing something good for my body because I've been told I've been programmed to believe these are good foods but they're not for me. And so with that liberation, with that knowledge, because knowledge is power and knowledge protects, are you able to then cut out the foods that hurt you and are you feeling better in your life? Are you just having more energy and having a better outlook on life because now you are taking in the appropriate food for you? Let me know. Alright journal, questions to ask yourself. Once again, you got to pick your own workout. Did you pick the same one as the day before or did you try something different? Why? In picking your own workout, are you going for the exercises that are too easy? Are you picking the ones that are too challenging in both cases? Why? No wrong answer here, just observations. That's all. You're just the watcher right now. If you picked one that was too easy for you, do you often avoid challenges in life? If you pick the one that was too hard, are there times in your life where you are too hard on yourself or carry too many expectations for yourself? Regardless of your answers, take some time again to sit and allow yourself to drop into your body. What is your body telling you? Are you sure it's your body talking and not your ego? For the remainder of the challenge, what are some new goals you want to set for yourself? List five things you like about yourself and three new things that you want to improve. Take a moment's day to observe nature in the northern hemisphere where in the season of autumn or fall, as we say in the States, how beautiful is this time of year? Nature knows faith. Nature knows faith better than humans know faith. In the autumn months, the trees have no problem releasing their leaves to death. They accept because they know in the spring life will return again to their branches. What can you learn from this? Are there times in your life where you have held on too tightly clinging more to fear than faith? What are some things that you can let go of? That's going to be a hard one. That's a real hard one for me. I think it's hard for a lot of people letting go of things and just having faith and just knowing that everything, you know, if you sit back and look at your life, we've all been through hard stuff in our lives. You always came through it. You were always taken care of. And so that's something to remind yourself that there is a higher purpose. There is a higher consciousness that will always provide for you. And any hard times you do go through is your karma anyway. All karma is is work. It's just a work. It's just things to learn from it so you grow. And so for me, a lot of the bad things I've been through in my life, I'm actually grateful for now because they liberated me in a sense. They brought me to a deeper place of understanding. It's like my friend Cindy says, without suffering, there can be no mystic because there can be no mystic without questioning. And if we're not suffering, there's no pain, then we don't question. And so I hope that through this experience, you guys are also starting to learn that there's no such thing as bad luck or good luck. It's all just karmic reactions to things to give your soul a chance to know itself. And if you lived a life where nothing bad ever happened, what a boring life that would be, right? It's like I said with the yoga practice, I'm bored by pretty practices. If I had to watch myself practice, I'd be fucking bored. If I had to watch, I'm watching our stronger nerves. I love them to death. I'm so glad he's out there, but it's boring for me. I've seen that. I know what that looks like, but when someone comes in and they're stumbling and they're struggling, that's when it's interesting. That's when it's juicy because that's when we have something to work with, that resistance, that struggle is what gives us something to work with. And that's where it's juicy. Right? Okay. Look three people in the eyes today and smile. And then once again, same bedtime routine tomorrow, Wednesday, November 23rd. Once again, you're going to make your bed up. Actually, no, sorry. Tomorrow, I've given you an assigned work out again. So the last two days you picked your own workout. Now you're going to have an assigned workout. So you're going to either do the 45 minute kickboxing or the half primary series with the stronger nurse. Again, sometimes when I, a few times in this challenge, I gave you the option between the kickboxing and the yoga. And that's for a specific reason. Now I picked this today because Thursday is Thanksgiving. So a lot of people have a lot of tension and a lot of stress around the holidays, especially since we've come to this crazy timeline. Even before we came into the Great Awakening, I know people were very stressed out about seeing their family at holiday sometimes because of tension and stuff like that. And so I'm trying to kind of teach you how to manage that stress. So if you're coming to a holiday where you're going to have to see family members that really trigger you and that really bring you to a place of wanting to like punch a wall, then now you have the tools and the knowledge to understand energy better. And so those triggers also create that energy that's in you. I mean, you know, like when you just want to like scream or just want to go like run and not stop and you just want to bolt and that's energy that's being created by a thought, right? And so if you know you're coming up to some stressful family event on Thursday, then tomorrow the kickboxing might be good for you because it will help you get that aggressive energy out or transmute it rather, take that heavy lead and transmute it to the gold through the practice, the alchemy of exercise. Now again, for someone like myself, anger is not how I process triggers. So the asha yoga would be what would help me reground myself, right? Because yoga is very grounding, especially the primary series is very grounding. And so that would be someone like for me, I would benefit more from the yoga before a stressful family event in the kickboxing, because it would ground me back to dissipate pushing the energy back into the earth. So it just depends on different people, depends on your dosha, it depends on how you react to these triggers as to which exercise is going to be the best modality for this particular situation. And again, that's one other thing I'm really hoping people are learning about this experience is that exercise is like a magic potion. It's like a prescription. That's what we call yoga, which is your prescription. So when you are feeling that aggression and you do perhaps maybe struggle with anger issues, a way to handle that is to transmute that energy through kickboxing, okay? If you do have a hard time grounding yourself, a way to handle that is through yoga. So you're taking the energy in a very literal way and you are very literally transmuting it through the practice of exercise. That's why they call exorcisms, exorcisms. They're exercising a demon out of someone. You're exercising that energy into an appropriate way, all right? Okay, so you're doing the five minute cold shower and then you're going to do some reiki again with Emmy. Again, I did that intentionally because tomorrow's Thanksgiving. So you're going to do some reiki tomorrow on Wednesday. Sorry, tomorrow's not Thanksgiving. Thursday is Thanksgiving. We're looking at Wednesday tomorrow. Tomorrow's challenge today right now. All right. So tomorrow you've got a lot of heavy journaling to do. Kind of what we spoke about today for Tuesday. So journal fear is false evidence appearing real. When is fear dominated your life? Reflecting back to yesterday's journal entry, which is today's journal entry. When has fear, sorry, where were there times in your life where fear dominated you over faith? I meant to say where or were, let's see, correct that. Were your your fears greater than your faith? If so, what were those times? What did those times where faith one teach you or where fear one teach you? How can you start practicing letting go and having faith like the way nature does each year in the autumn time? Since Thanksgiving is tomorrow, Thursday, are there uncomfortable situations with family and friends you're fearing right now? If so, what are they? And India, my teacher often says, why fearing? Why are you fearing? Why fearing? If you're not American, are these situations with the holidays coming up that are causing you stress like Christmas or New Year's? Is continuing exercise journaling meditation program after the challenge going to help you navigate the more difficult situations in life? How is this challenge helped you navigate these things so far? List five things you like about yourself and review the three things you want to improve about yourself that you wrote about yesterday. Biggest question, at what point have you been afraid of yourself? Let me read that again. At what point have you been afraid of yourself? What about you? Did you fear? Look through people in the eyes and smile at them and then the same bedtime material and we'll look at Thanksgiving tomorrow on Wednesday when we're reviewing Wednesday again. Alright you guys, so once again, let me know down in the comment section below all the questions I asked in this video, how everything is going and I just got off with tomorrow so that should be released later on. We had a very interesting conversation this morning so that should be coming up a little bit later on today here on the channel. I will obviously put it in the signal group once it's out all that kind of stuff so I hope you guys are having a wonderful day and I will talk to you soon. Bye.