 Hello everybody. Welcome to day three of our shadow work challenge. I just got off recording with Catherine Edwards. That episode will be up on her channel tomorrow where we go deeper into the initiates path and what energy in the body, held energy in the body looks like, how it comes up in the body, all that kind of stuff. So once she loads that video tomorrow, I will be sharing it on my community tab for you guys. So our private signal group is literally like the place to be. Every time I look down at my phone, there's more people in and everyone's talking to each other and helping each other through this challenge. And I'm so, so, so excited. But of course today was the day that you guys started your journey into Ashtanga Yoga. Now, as I said before, in the course of this challenge, there's not going to be much yoga because you do absolutely need a teacher. And so this was just a way for you guys just to kind of be introduced to traditional yoga. Of course, a lot of people are coming from Ashtanga from like the fake yoga world, which would be like Vinyasa flow. You know, there's only like three real yogas and that's Ashtanga Iyengard and Sivananda Yoga. Everything else is kind of a bastardization of that. And so that's why I wanted to include traditional yoga because traditional yoga is incredibly powerful as it's supposed to be. If you caught yesterday's day two episode, I did it with Emmy where she spoke more about her entry into the Ashtanga world. And I told more stories from India, all that kind of stuff. So I do have some stuff I want to show you guys. So I know in the signal group, Stephanie just put a link up for the Kino McGregor Ashtanga book for people who want to get more acquainted with the Ashtanga system. I'll put a link to that in the description box as well. But another great book to read is a book called the Yoga Mala. And this was written by Shri Kepa Tabi Joyce, where he speaks about the more esoteric aspects of this practice and how your actual yoga practice should be like your mala beats, where the movement between each posture is the thread between the bead and the bead being the posture. And so this is a really great book for those who are super interested in understanding the more ethical esoteric aspect of this practice. I've also had people that wanted to know some books about more are you Vedic help, which is going to be coming up. We're going to be starting to look at that this Saturday, which will cover this Saturday. But some good books I pulled that I have from India. A lot of my books are actually in India in my chest there. But this is Help Healing and Beyond by Deskachar. And Deskachar is the son of Chris Macharia, that's Chris Macharia, who was the person who was responsible for bringing yoga to the West. And also this is Yoga Makaranda, the nectar of yoga, which again goes into more of the holistic healing. So these are just a couple of books that I have here that are really good to get into more of the different perspective of energy and body. If that's something that you are interested in doing some self study yourself, I'll put these links again down in the description box below. I will also be adding in our video with Emmy from yesterday down in the description box below as well. I had some questions from people in the signal group that I'm going to cover here on this channel. Somebody asked about Downward Facing Dog. If their whole foot should be on the floor for Downward Facing Dog or up on their toes. And the answer is both. So it depends on your level of flexibility. So my heels touch the earth, but a lot of people's heels don't touch the earth. The most important thing is that when you're in Downward Facing Dog that you're pushing your heels down, even if they don't touch the earth. So I don't want you to come up on the balls of your feet. I want you to press your heels down to get a stretch in an opening in the Achilles heel, but if they don't touch the earth yet, that's no big deal, right? So just keep the energy pushing down and Downward Facing Dog. Some people asked about body sensations like tingling, numbness. That's going to happen. You're moving energy and especially the thing about bar and yoga is that they're done barefoot. They're done barefoot for a reason to realign the foot. And actually now I do all exercise barefoot. Your choice with the kickboxing and the dance, if you want to put shoes on, you can, but I always do it barefoot because the foot needs to move and extend and spread. And from us wearing shoes, sometimes our feet are a little bit fucked up. And so something that's going to start to happen and stuff can talk more about this. I know she's really experiencing this is that the foot's going to have to like crack back open again and realign itself, which then is going to cause the whole body to realign itself. Yeah. And same thing with the hand, especially with the wrist. Wrist pain is very common in the beginning. It's nothing to worry about. You just have to push through it. It's your wrist getting stronger. You're using your wrist in a very, very different way. And so this is all very normal. This is not I don't want people to be a hyper don't be a hyper contract. You're not that you're not that breakable. OK, any if you're feeling pain and sensation. Good. You're doing it right. You're moving energy. You're creating new pathways. It's not going to feel nice most of the time. Right. It's it's going to feel like numbness. It's going to feel like tingling. It's going to feel like a pain in the hip. It's going to feel like a little bit of back discomfort. People are talking about having a sore back. Well, yeah, you absolutely will have a sore back doing this. Let me tell you why, especially if you're an adult when we are children, we have these little muscles that run up our spine. When we're children, if you watch child, a child could climb a tree, no problem. They can do a back bend, no problem. We play as kids, right? Our body, our body knows how to move. Our ribs know how. My students will say I'm so fascinated by the rib cage because it's supposed to move. These are joints. Everything's supposed to be movable. But when we get into high school and college, university and our jobs, we sit at a desk all day. And so we stop play. And so what happens to the spine is it becomes immobile. And those muscles, those little tiny muscles that run up the spine go into atrophy, which means they kind of like die a little bit. They're still there. It's like a deflated balloon. And so when you start to bring life back to the spine, when you start to bring energy back to the spine and start to crack the spine open again, which literally is what you're doing. You're going to crack it open again. It's going to be sore. OK, don't just like your bicep gets sore, just like your quadricep gets sore. So is your back. So those muscles that deflated, that went to atrophy, you're now blowing them back up again. And so those muscles are going to get sore. It will pass. Don't freak out about your back. I know we've been trained to freak out about our backs. We need those muscles to come to life so the spine can be held upright. Why do we need the spine held upright? Because Shoshuna runs down the spine, the path of energy that Kundalini lives in, right? We need that. It's like a hose. If you know, if you bend a hose, the water can't get through the bend. But if the hose is straight, the water can go through the hose. Same with your spine. If Shoshuna is all slumped, that energy is going to get stuck. But the more we crack it open and reshape those muscles like molding clay, the pipeline called Shoshuna can then pull that Kundalini energy up, that Christ consciousness energy up through your spine into your upper, your upper brain, basically. OK, so super important. Don't freak out. It's just part of the process. You got to do this. You kind of have to trust the process. Something I talked about with Catherine Edwards. You are going to feel different emotions coming up with all these different exercise modalities. That's why I picked different exercise modalities. The three or four modalities we're working with here are bar, yoga, kickboxing and dance. I picked them specifically for a reason. The dance is more for entertainment on Sundays to give you a fun, a Sunday fun day exercise. It's not as serious, although it could trigger some emotions. The kickboxing is going to really work for some people and it's not for others. As I said with Catherine Edwards, we talked a lot about anger issues. There are a lot of people who do have anger issues. What is anger? Anger is extreme hurt. That's all anger is. And so for some people that extreme hurt comes up as frustration, violence, anger and the kickboxing is going to help you channel that energy. Now, for me, my extreme hurt comes up as self-sabotage. It doesn't come out as anger towards other people. It comes as come through as self-sabotage. And so that's where I have to work. So that's why the bar and the yoga are more effective for me emotionally than the kickboxing. Kickboxing also is really good for people who felt like they have had their power taken away from them, especially women who maybe have had some issues with. I have to be careful how I say that R-A-P-E, anything like that, the kickboxing can be very effective to help you regain some of your emotional power and strength. But just watch yourself and again, just observe yourself. Just journal. You know, you can't do this. The only way you can do this wrong is if you quit. That's the only way that you can do this wrong is by quitting. Okay? Even if you have to crawl to your yoga mat or even if you only get five minutes in, even if you sobbed through writing your journals or you're dropping F-bombs while in that cold shower, that's dropping the F-bombs during the cold shower is what makes this fun. I mean, I said this, Lou Catherine, watching someone who has a beautiful yoga practice is boring to me. Cirque du Soleil does it better as my teacher says, it's boring. What's interesting is the messy practice. What's interesting is seeing the person who is a little overweight and a little tight and they're sweating and they're having a hard time balancing and they're dropping F-bombs but they keep going forward and that's what's interesting. That's what's juicy. There's resistance there, there's friction there. Let's watch that. The person with the clean practice, boring. The person like me who could just take a cold shower and I'm boring. The person who reacts and has a screen bloody murder in the shower, that's what's interesting. Then journal about it, right? Somebody asked about taking a cold shower at night. You can do that. Cold does can help you sleep, cryotherapy which is the refrigerator can help you sleep. However, I would be more careful with the cold shower ice bath because I don't know if you guys noticed but taking the cold shower also gives you a push of energy of adrenaline. And so it could, if you take it too close tonight to your bedtime, it could have the opposite effect where you have like unsettled energy in your bed. And that's part of the reason why I put your hot bath, salt bath at night. So there have been times where I will, like if it's at my rest day or if it's a noon day or something and I'm not, if I'm on my period or something, I might take a hot bath in the morning instead of a shower and salt bath just to relax. And usually those days where I take hot baths in the morning are the hardest days I have. I always kind of stay a little tired. So that's why I have you doing that at night. The magnesium, the epsom salts will penetrate into the skin, into the fascia and will start to relax the muscles and that will help you with muscle repair. You are still gonna get sore. It's fantastic. We love it. We love a good sore day. We love it when our quads are sore and our butts sore and our abs are sore. That means the body is activating and turning on but the salts will help with that. Also drinking the two liters of water will help flush soreness as well. I would suggest somebody talks about being up all night peeing. Maybe stop drinking all that water by like four o'clock in the afternoon just to give your body a chance to flush the water. Maybe don't drink closer to bedtime. I'm getting such an incredible response from people about turning off your electronics an hour before bed. So many people are finding it very easy to fall asleep. Yes, yes, isn't that amazing? And going bed before 10 people, I have people saying that it changed their next day just being asleep before 10 o'clock, absolutely. And you're gonna see why that is this Saturday when you do self-study Saturday and you study the Dojas because 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. is pit to time. It's fire time. So if you try to go to bed in that window of time, it's gonna be nearly impossible to fall asleep but 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. is kappa time. It's cocooning time. So it's easier for your body to fall asleep. So many people I'm hearing are having an incredible experience getting up early. I know it's hard to get up early. We've got some really awesome people talking about the alarm going off and being mad. I'm still mad when my alarm goes off 16 years later but there is quite a magical, a magical thing about being up at dark 30 when it's still dark outside and the world around you is still asleep and you're sweating and going, it helps you go into yourself. It's the Vata time of day. 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. is the Vata time of day. So that's the cerebral time of day. It's also the time where we find Brahmamurtha which is time of God. It's why in a lot of faiths, people have quiet time early in the morning. So this workout, now quiet time where you're just sitting down reading and writing is not gonna be as effective as actually moving your body because again, your body is information highway. It's the expression of your soul. This is how you experience God is through your body. And so doing the yoga, doing the bar, doing these specific exercises at that time of day is going to give you a clearer, more precise experience with the divine, all right? And that's why we do it so early in the morning. Now, if you can't do it that early in the morning due to your job and it was some people said they have to be at work at 5 a.m., totally fine. You do it right after work then. You do it right after your work. Like when you were a kid, you went to school and then right after school you had after school activity. That's basically what you're doing. So when you get home from work, just immediately get on your mat. Immediately do it so you don't have time to distract yourself. Yeah, let's see. What else was asked? Let me look here for a second just to make sure I got everything that was asked. Okay, yes, we are in a clip season. So you might be even more emotional, that's okay. Don't worry about it. Just work through it, journal through it. Interesting things are gonna come up in this challenge. It's just the way it is, all right? It's just the way it is. And just see it as interesting. You're your own reality show, right? You think the real housewives of Beverly Hills is messy? Wait till you see your own reality show, yeah? And you just journal about it. You just keep journaling. I know today we also added in looking three people in the eyes and smiling at them. I wanna hear how that worked for you guys. Now tomorrow, yeah, let's see, yeah. Look three people in the eyes and smile at them. Okay, so tomorrow is Friday, November 4th. Now your rest days during this challenge are Saturdays. I pick Saturdays for a reason. That's traditionally our rest day in Ashtanga Yoga because it's the day of Saturn. And Saturn is the planet of Father Time. Saturn is also the planet of Karma. And so it should be a day of reflection, okay? So Saturday you rest. So if that makes you feel better, if you're really sore about practicing tomorrow, then you got one more day and then you get to sleep and then rest. So for tomorrow, sorry, grub hub is here with my lunch. So that's what my dog is barking. So you do a 20 minute again of the Ashtanga Yoga, the beginners, or 30 minute bar with Marni Alton. Or you can try both of them. Again, I say your rest day is tomorrow. So if you want to try both today, you can do it. Now the 30 minute bar with Marni Alton is different. From the 45 minute bar you did the first two days. And I want you to do the 30 minute bar because she does different movements in this class that I want you to experience. She also has a girl in the back who's a little heavier set. And so you get to see her modifications as well. Now again, cold minute shower. And then your new challenge for tomorrow is to do one thing to help another person. So this could be opening a door for someone to buying someone lunch, to donating clothes to a charity or simply telling someone how beautiful they look. No kind is too small. So you could literally just tell someone they look beautiful today. Or if you want to buy someone lunch, if you can't afford that, buy someone lunch. If you go to Starbucks or whatever, pay for the person behind you if you can't, if you can afford it. And just see how that helps you during your day. It's really not about them, it's about you and your vibration. All right, and look three people in the eyes and smile. So this is your first option to do an oil bath tomorrow night. Now, I know this is gonna be a learning curve for a lot of people. I do have a link here to me explaining oil bathing, which I will also link in the description box below. So traditionally with oil baths, what traditionally is supposed to happen? We're not following tradition here and I'll tell you why. Traditionally, we are supposed to take our oil baths very early in the morning on our day off. I tried that for a while, but it would make me so groggy during my day off that I stopped doing it on my day off and I started doing it the evening before my day off. And then I come to find out that most of my peers in the Ashtanga world also do it the evening before their day off because they experienced the same thing. So what we're gonna do, Friday night oil baths, you're gonna place towels, old towels, not your fancy guest towels or old towels on the floor of your bathroom, cover your body and cast your oil. So yes, you are going to get butt ass naked. I would not wear underwear because the castor oil is gonna ruin it. Just get butt ass naked, put your hair on top of your head. Then you don't have to worry about that unless you have a man butt, but when they put your hair on top of your head and then you're gonna cover your whole body and castor oil. Now I will heat my castor oil up on the stove just a little bit because it's cold. So I'll just go ahead and heat it up. That's up to you. If you can handle it being on there cold, that's fine. But if you wanna heat it up on the stove, that's fine too. And then you are going to rob the castor oil all over you. Once it's all over your body, I want you to self massage. So especially where you're sore, I want you to take it if you're sore in your bicep. I want you to really, really self massage the oil into your bicep. I do it on my face a lot because I carry a lot of tension in my jaw, my neck. I rub my feet, I rub my calves and you're gonna keep applying more castor oil as it starts to drive. You're gonna be a hot slippery slidiness, okay? Now, traditionally you do want to put it in your hair to massage the head. However, however, I don't put castor oil in my hair because it takes forever to get the castor oil out of your hair. We're talking days. So that's why I don't put castor oil in my hair because my hair will look dirty forever if I can't get it out, okay? So you traditionally wanna sit with the oil on your body for 10 to 60 minutes. If you're new to oil bathing, I would gear it more towards the 10 minute side, maybe 20 minutes. I actually do about 90 minutes when I do my bed doing this forever because it will, it can knock you out, okay? So once you're not in an actual bathtub, right? You're sitting on the floor of your bathroom with towels rubbing oil into you, covering yourself in oil. Once the time is up, get into your shower. Now, a lot of the castor oil you get in the United States is easy to come off. It's not as thick as the one they sell in India. So you can use like an exfoliant body wash. So if you don't have an, like bar soap might not take it off but if you go to the grocery store, just get like soap that has like the exfoliant beads in it that will help get the castor oil off. I would turn the shower really warm to help it kind of come off and continue to drain off your body. If you do have very thick castor oil, like the kind I use from India, you're gonna need what's called soap nut powder. And I will put that down in the description box below. So you'll take the soap nut powder, you'll put it in a bowl and you'll add water to the bowl and mix it up. And then you'll use that. You'll cover your body in that to wash the castor oil off. Now I said this before, soap nut powder is very, very, very messy. And so that's what I wanna warn you guys about. It's going to get everywhere. And so it's literally gonna look like someone had explosive diarrhea in your bathroom and it's soap nut powder. So just be aware of that. It might not matter to you because you can just wipe it off the shower after you're done. Now, once you're done, I don't want you going out and having dinner or partying with your friends or drinking alcohol once you've done this, okay? Especially for tonight because the castor oil is meant to pull toxins out of your body. It's pulling heat and inflammation out of your body. That's why I want you to do it the day before your rest day too, to give you over 24 hours to allow the body to heal and recuperate from the work you've done this week, okay? So you do expect your nose to be running a lot after this is over for a good 30 minutes to an hour because it's loosened up all these toxins, okay? As you guys know, I put tampons up my nose that might help you too, I don't know. But once you're done and you're all bathed and you've gotten it off, I want you to put your pajamas on and I want you to get into bed. Even if you're watching movies for a little while, I want you to go ahead and get into bed. So once you get your body to relax, an hour before you go to bed, turn off your electronics reading, right? Whenever I do oil baths, I'm not a heavy sleeper. I'm a very light sleeper. I don't get, I'm not a person who needs a lot of sleep. I sleep like six hours and I have fine. But when I do oil baths, I will kid you not, I will be out for like 13 hours, like dead to the world, like best sleep of my life. So that's another reason why I figured out doing this tonight before, because it gives you a really hard night sleep. And also that sleep is allowing the body to recover and build. And then Saturday, you might feel a little bit calmer on Saturday from it, just to observe it because Saturday you're resting from exercise, okay? Again, I will put the link that I have here in the description box so you can watch that as well. And then Saturday is your Saturday self study. This is your rest day. So I rest day from exercise, sleep in an extra hour if you can, if you can sleep in an extra two hours, do so. We just don't want you sleeping all day because then that will kind of manipulate the energy and we want you to be aware of controlling that energy. And you are gonna be studying the DOSHAs this Saturday. A lot of people have asked me, where do I find the test to figure out what DOSHA I am? And a lot of these online tests aren't really gonna give you a full breakdown of what you are and are you made it Dr. Will. But the more you study Pitta, Bhattakapa, all three of these, the more you're gonna, you're gonna probably be able to diagnose yourself, okay? So you're gonna take notes in your journal about each DOSHA. What are the times of days associated with the DOSHAs? Again, this is gonna help you with your digestive system, understanding when the different energies are during the day. How does this affect your day? This is why you've been going to bed before 10 p.m. during the challenge, all that kind of stuff. And I have links here where I've spoken about the DOSHAs. And then this is going to also bring you to sound bowl healing. You're gonna do a sound bowl healing on Saturday as well. Here's the link. And then I have a video with Shanti and I talking about sound bowl healing because she's an incredible artist when it comes to sound bowl healing. And you can actually book a session, a three-deal session with Shanti for 15% off by just saying my name to her. So that's something that really affects you on your dress day, laying down and lying down allowing the sound bowl healing to kind of penetrate your skin. You can also talk to Shanti for more information about that. But this link right here is free. But if you wanna go deeper, then here is the information to contact Shanti. You will then journal again Saturday and then you will go to bed early preparing for Sunday and we'll get into that later. But I just wanted to kind of bring that up for you for this challenge. All right, let's see here. Let me go and pull up the exercises again. So once again for tomorrow, you are going to be doing the 30 minute bar with Marnie Alton, that's what this looks like. And so I have the volume down because of copyright. So I wanna show you here. She is going to have a, there's a bigger girl here. So she's gonna show you some modifications here. This might help you going forward. If you're really new and you're really learning your body, just follow this girl here. She gets, does more different moves in this one. A lot of squats happen in this one to really get to those inner thighs. More dance stuff here. Again, she does it without shoes. As I said, same reason why we do yoga without shoes to get the foot to wake up to get. So the arch of your foot, I have a pretty high arch of my foot if you guys can see that. The arch of the foot is what is directly associated with your digestive system. So if you have a flat foot, you're gonna struggle. The more you exercise, the more you practice pulling that arch up, the more it's gonna help your digestive tract as well. And that comes from doing this stuff without shoes. All right, you also again have the option to do this or Ashdanga nurses 20 minutes of beginner friendly fundamental sequence or you can do them both together, your choice. All right guys, I think that's about it for today. Let me know how you're doing down in the description box below. If you have any more questions, join our signal support group so you can meet new friends and have all the support y'all. We are over 500 people. I don't care if it's November 29th and you email me, I will send you this template because it's never too late to start healing yourself. You just shift the day. It's no big deal. So you guys tell your neighbors, this is incredible. I'm so excited. You are the storm. Nothing can stop what's coming and you are healing yourself and you're going through that dark night of the soul and that's incredible. So love you guys and I will talk to you soon. Bye.