 Hello everybody, welcome to day four of the challenge. I hesitated there because I'm like, this is day number whatever, 16 years later for me, but day four for the challenge. And I'm so happy I of course did a video with Shanti yesterday. I've talked with Emmy this week because it ain't as easy as it's Stephanie. No, it is not easy. And Stephanie is in a hotel. So if you see her internet go in and out a little bit, that's why, so we're working with what we got. So Steph, let's talk about this because we know in our awesome group on Signal, I think it's easy to conceptualize like the dark night of the soul, like to think about it happening and to think about going through it. But once you're in it, it's nothing like you had thought it was gonna be. It's a hell of a lot harder, isn't it? Because the person you're going up against is you. Yeah, so let's talk about your experiences, Stephanie. What's going on? All right, well, first starters, I started Mysore officially and had my first blood class today. And I've been doing the Mysore, what? What would you say, a week now? But then about a week, I would say. Yeah, about a week. And it's one thing to do yoga in your own home and you will cry and you will go through a little dark night of the soul, but when you're actually being adjusted by a teacher and your organs are being smushed and you're sweating profusely on a yoga mat, shit starts coming up. And with me, I'm facing every fear in the book that I've ever had in the last week. So sorry, I'm getting sick. Period already. That's what, it's got to come out. This is why I'm glad a lot of us on like Emmy and Catherine are willing, and I've had a lot of conversations off camera with the people participating with us and they're willing to come on and be vulnerable because I think sometimes, you know, what we're so used to seeing with spirituality is the fake spirituality. Where people sit on camera and it's all delusional. It's like, oh, and it's gonna be rainbows and butterflies and just, you know, toxic positivity, all that, that's not, as I've said, no, spirituality is you finding your own spirit, which is in your fascia. And the thing is on this journey too, when you start to do this work, just expect people are gonna attack you too. That's something else I've been dealing with this week. So I've been accused of weird ass shit that I would have never expected to come out of people, I thought I was close to, and yes, I'm talking about it and they might not like it, but I'm gonna talk about it anyways. Not saying names, but this week has been a week from hell. But it's that friction, like you said, Bryce, that's going to put me up to the next level on my own path. And I'm fully aware of what's going on, and but it doesn't make it any easier. I'm grateful I know what's going on because I understand that this is part of the path that my soul has chosen. And I just have to kind of lean into it, accept it, breathe through it. Again, it's not any easier, but I'm aware. Awareness is so much better than not. If I went through this unaware, holy hell, I would be not good. So yeah, the spiritual path is not for the faint of heart by all means, and you're gonna cry lots of tears. You're going to almost go through this identity crisis in a way because you are shedding old layers and you're growing new layers. Well, it's the ego death, that's the ego death. Yeah, so I am realizing what's surfacing right now is the deepest, deepest, darkest things that have really held me back in my life. And where I've abandoned myself, where I've cheated myself, where I've put myself down, let myself go, the things that I've done to myself because of past traumas. You know what I mean? So I'm kind of staring at myself in the mirror and having to face that. And I just came down here to get my Reiki attunement, not knowing it was going to create, sorry, I'm clicking things off my screen here. Okay. Does that sometimes. Not realizing that I was walking into a shit show of my own death of the old me. Yeah, and again, I want to reiterate that because I think in the fake spiritual world, we see this as supposed to be this really fun, amazing process, but, and I hope you don't mind me saying this, you had said in your chart that there was something coming at this time and a transformation. And now after 16 years, when I hear that, I'm like, oh, oh, much, much pain coming, much pain coming, you know. Anytime you get that, you're like, okay, yeah, much pain is going to be coming as my death is going to be coming. And I'm like, oh, I'm going to get my Reiki attunement and my teacher would say much pain coming because that's the only thing that's going to transform you. And, you know, one thing that when people ask, well, how do you tell the difference between fake spirituality and true spirituality? If you're delusionally thinking about something outside of yourself, a story, that's not, that's your ego masquerading as your intuition or your spirit, true spirituality is you coming face to face with you and realizing that the late, yes, we all are in these meat suits. We all created this hologram of a world to know ourselves and it's very real as far as like pain being real. It's very real as far as what's going on, but at the same time, it's not real. And that is what the real ego death brings us to. You know, I think I've explained it for me. It's like when I went through a really big ego death back in like 2017 where I was literally like sobbing for a month or two straight, like to the point where I almost got like, I can't say this word on YouTube, but like leaving, I wanted to leave the earth plain, basically that's how bad it got. And what I was intuitively like what I was dealing with was the fact that Bryce doesn't really exist. And that one day when my body dies, this identity will no longer exist. And so in saying that and really thinking about that and really owning that, what does exist then? I don't know. I don't know what that eternal soul really looks like, but ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, that's why we took these incarnations was to then find for the soul to know itself. And so when you see, when you find that pain come up, when you're facing these old fears, what you're facing is the crumbling, what Stephanie is facing is the crumbling of Stephanie. This fake, it's like the chocolate Easter bunnies, you know, when you pop them and they crack open. So you who you think you are is this fake chocolate Easter bunny. I'm finding something while you talk. But while you're not really that fake chocolate Easter bunny, what you are is that gooey caramel inside of it. Right? The chocolate Easter bunnies just hold the caramel in. Once you break it and eat it, you're left with a caramel. But you as the chocolate Easter bunny don't know that you're actually the caramel inside, you're not the, and when you ask the chocolate Easter bunny who's lived your whole life as the chocolate Easter bunny, you know, you've dealt with your bunny ears, you've dealt with your body, you've put yourself in the refrigerator, so you won't melt. You've done all these things to care for the Easter bunny and then you challenge the Easter bunny and you realize the Easter bunny doesn't even exist anyway. Yeah, all of a sudden the Easter bunny goes, oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. I almost have it, hold on. I wanna break it down into hero cards here. What am I going through? I'm just trying to find the right card here. But the beautiful thing about the Soul II, I will say this, so with Stephanie's situation and everybody's situation, your soul, when your soul was in its form before it took its body, it goes, I know what I need to work on, this is fun. This is what I'm gonna do to myself. This is the agreements I'm gonna make with other people and this is what we're gonna do because everybody, every soul is on the journey of learning itself, right? Every soul is, whether you're an older soul or younger soul, everything is still on that same journey, right? And so you, in your infinite wisdom as the soul, not as Stephanie or as Bryce or as whoever, as your soul sat down and you were sitting with God and your guys, you're like, this'll be real fun. You know, it'll be great. This is what I'm gonna, this is the obstacle, this is the puzzle I'm gonna present to myself in this particular meat suit, right? And now you're in the meat suit. It's so funny in the Casio PM forum, they talk about the love one. They talk about like, sometimes the guy, because we in our spirit form see these lives as so fast. It's so quick that we think we're like the overachievers. We're gonna just jam all this stuff into this life so we can get through these lessons and sometimes our spirit guides and God has to be like, whoa, Nelly, that's too much. Thank God. You gotta pull it back a little bit, but you know, okay, you know, the whole side of there, you know, because when we get down into these meat suits, we're like, we don't remember who we are. And so we have to go to that amnesia and then that part of that discovering who we are is breaking the amnesia, which means breaking the bunny suit to find the caramel and breaking that bunny suit. That is so, I mean, I still struggle with it. I struggle with the aging process. I talked about that with Emmy coming up on 40 years old, I haven't had a baby yet. And so that's something that bothers me, you know? And so I struggle with that attachment to that nature, which in reality, my soul doesn't even fucking care because it's gonna keep living anyway. My soul's like, girl, you've had millions of babies in the past, like you just don't remember. Like you've had that experience and it might come with a bit flip of the timeline. But as of now, that's something I have, even after going through the dark night of soul, that's something that I have struggled with, you know? And so it's that breaking down of that nature. But go ahead, talk to us and talk tarot to us. And I talk tarot to you. So I've been this for a long time. You know that, right? The Hanged Man. What's the tower card? It's a tower card moment. Because it's bringing in death and rebirth. So for those who know the tarot, I just wanted to put an analogy out there to, or a demonstration. And with this really, these three cards are actually the spiritual path. It's not really the temperance card, okay? And the star card. It's really these three cards is the spiritual path. And it's funny because as a young kid, I mean, I'm talking, I think I started saying this when I was like 10. I would say this to adults that were having issues. I would look at them and say, as a small kid, oh, so you're going through a lot of stuff. That means you must have a really big purpose in life. I said that at 10 and they just looked at me and go, what? But I think my soul just knew at a very young age that those who carry purposes that are big to, their purpose is to really help humanity and be that healer or whatever it is. You can't help somebody get through hell without understanding hell first. You got to walk through hell first before you take that step and help somebody else through hell. Yeah, that's something. That's the, we talk about reincarnation a lot and the born again thing. And yeah, but also it means in this life too. If we look at the Jesus story, if you will, as like a metaphor instead of an actual sacrifice, but a metaphor, what did he have to do to ascend? He said, he had to go to the underworld. He had to go to the underworld for three days to ascend. So if we see that as a metaphoric story, which comes from a lot of the Greek and ancient Egyptian stories of the underworld, right now Stephanie's in the underworld. And the funny thing is, this is what mythology doesn't tell you though. You're going to go back multiple times. It's going to be fun. You're going to, and you think you've conquered it once, like, oh, you got this now. No, you're going to be buying lakeside property in the underworld. That's how many times you're going to be going, you might as well just own some property down there because you're going to be coming back so many times. But every time you go in through that, it's like the valleys and the mountains, the valleys and the mountains. And so you break a layer off, another layer comes off, another layer comes off, right? And so, and so, and I was saying this, I can't remember. I think it was with Shaunty. You know, Sri Swamy Sachitananda and his commentary on the yoga sutras, which by the way guys, we have one spot left on our yoga course. I know I haven't mentioned that in a while because we've been so focused on the challenge, but I'll put a link down if you want to do the intense yoga course. But Sri Swamy Sachitananda in his commentary, and I'm going to paraphrase the way he says this. When you're going through the dark night of the soul and you go through that total obliteration of you and then you come out the other side, that is actually when you can enjoy life because you see the humor in everything because it's not permanent. Yeah. That's when you realize it's literally not permanent. And one of my favorite poems is by John Dunn, it's called Death Be Not Proud. And it really talks about the whole poem is like kings and poppers suffer the same fate. We all have the same finish line. So why do we have ego? If we all have the same, we're all gonna, no one gets out of this world alive. We all have to go through this. And if we look at Death Be Not Proud in the reigns of spirituality, I guess in high school, if that was my favorite poem at like 14 years old, I guess that was the universe pointing me in what path I was going to be going down because what 14-year-old is obsessed with John Dunn? But if we look at that at the reigns of spirituality, it doesn't matter. I said this with Marnie Alton. You know, we see Marnie Alton, the bar teacher is being this beautiful woman in her mid-40s, this great body. We think she has it all, but then when she talks about our life, we see her underworld. So it doesn't matter, a king and a pauper. It doesn't, if you perceive someone, if there's jealousy and you perceive someone, if it's triggering something in you, it's not about that person because that person also has their underworld to go through. Does that make sense? And so we start to see that these triggers are really about you, you know? And no one escapes this. No one can excuse their way out of this, this work. If you don't do it this life, you'll just get stuck in the Samskara of coming back to third density until you finally decide, I should probably do something. Now let's talk about the mysor and the adjustments and the physicality because a lot of people, and I've actually really blamed this on Christianity. I think I blame everything on Christianity with this idea of not using, that you're not, you know, not using the body as a facilitator of this, but the body is the information highway. That's all it is. And so we have these chakras that are in our body that hold information and Stephanie is reading through Eastern Body, Western Mind on her channel. That'll late on the next episode, but I will get there. That's okay. You don't have to take that responsibility if someone wants to buy the book and read ahead of you. They can, you know, don't, you don't have to carry that burden. And so when I think sometimes in these more transcendent religions, we are supposed to like hide the body or be ashamed of the body or the body is in us. So, you know, don't be prideful in the body, but that's not what this is. Your body, it's cleaning house. Your body is the only thing that's gonna allow you to proceed information about you. And so if you're not working out, if you're not sweating, if you're not doing that, then you're not doing the spiritual work period end of story point blank. Can you explain more of that Stephanie? Cause that's kind of a epiphany I think you've had over this last year. Well, and I dig into this with my tarot card readings. Don't come to me for a tarot card reading if you don't want me to tell you not to work out because you're gonna, and by the way, it comes up in my energy readings with everybody. If you're not working out, it literally will come out because it comes out because why you have a body because spirit's like, you want shit to happen, make it happen. Okay, so anyways, I'm kind of a tough tarot card reader. I'm just gonna be honest with you. I mean, that's just how I work. I just got tough love. I give tough love by multiple people, including you, Bryce. In a good way. It's always, it's always in a loving way though. And I need that, but honestly, coming from a reader standpoint, and now I'm getting racy attuned, there's no way I could continue this path without working out. There's just no way. If I go to a tarot card reader, my first question to that reader is, and I've had one reading in the past 20 years. Okay, I had one in high school that didn't know anything about tarot, but this person does work out and they understand what shadow work is. So I allowed them to read my energy because they do that work. Anyways, what starts to happen is, I like to make the analogy of like the junk drawer. Okay, there's so many people who just want to know their Akash, you know, your Akashic records. They wanna know, they're so obsessed with who was I in a past life. Trust me, I had that obsession at first too, especially coming out of Christianity where they don't teach this stuff. It's like, ooh, I lived other lifetimes. I wonder. A new toy. It's like a new toy. A new shiny toy. So yeah, January, December, I went through that obsession. But let me tell you, what will slap you in the face if you're obsessed about it? It will absolutely slap you in the face. And you'll get knocked on your ass and you will have to suffer that ego death to that, you know, which I went through. So, you know, sorry, I think another, any other, sorry, you'll have to cut that out. Okay. So, anyways, sorry if a dog is barking. We have room service over here trying to go to rooms. But anyways, I as a channeler could not do the work I do, the way I do it if I did not take care of myself. Because what happens is, yeah, you're clearing house so that you can receive information. You can't receive information if your whole body is just troughful of this stagnant energy, not doing anything. Because then it's gonna cause mass chaos within you to receive that energy, right? You know, it's gonna put you into a state of delusion. Can we pause on that for a second? Cause yeah, it's bringing you to, so let's talk about that. So if you have trapped energy in your body, that's caused by your own wounds, right? That's building on itself. It's causing something in the body. And then you go to try to channel. You're not gonna be able to channel. What's gonna happen is you're gonna attract stories that attach to those wounds. So it's delusions. It goes into delusions. And actually an Eastern body, Western mind, she gets into that with the six chakra delusional thinking. The serious, this is serious. Very serious. I've seen it so many times that I could have easily went that path. And I mean, I had to learn that almost a complete hard way to completely go there. And honestly, if I didn't have friends like you or Shanti or other people tomorrow too, cause as of a year ago, this path was very new to me. It's not new to me in terms of my past life stuff. Cause I know I've done this in past lives, but it's new to me in this lifetime. And I came back with amnesia. So I had to kind of get a crash course on spirituality in a very fast time of timeframe, you know? So you have to, it humbles you, it humbles you. And you really kind of have to surrender your fears and you just have to let it all, you have to let all that old programming go. You're dying a death to yourself. And in the meantime, while you're building the new body, you're gaining new information. And then you can channel someone's energy with their permission, you know, you can go to that, that tarot card reader or that Reiki Healer or that hypnosis therapist or whatever, whatever modality that they dabble in, right? Some dabble in all of them. But the thing is for a channeler, it's a channeler's responsibility to take really good care of themselves physically, mentally and spiritually. And yeah, there's just no way I could do the work that I do without putting in my own work. I've been working on myself. And on the bright side, the more I do this work, the better I channel people. The more, you know, I don't want to say accurate readings, but the more divine it seems, I'm not channeling myself, my ego. It's kind of like, you know, in Reiki, it doesn't deplete you because what I've been learning is you are just the vessel and the God energy is coming down through your vessel and out through your hands to heal. Well, as a tarot card reader, I was getting depleted of energy. Which is one reason why I stopped doing or setting up personal readings and was just doing my courses. But now I'm learning that I don't have to be depleted of my energy because now that I know better, you do better, right? You say that. I can then allow the God to channel through me. I'm not working so hard to channel on my own energy. I'm allowing God to channel through me because I'm now, first of all, I, you know, you can't have ego in the readings. I'm sorry if I'm rambling on. I'm kind of like, I'm in all different places in my head right now. But I mean, there's so many different layers to this. I can, I could go on and on and on, but it's really essential to be working on yourself, even if you're not channeling, even if you're not a healer, because especially if you do wanna know your Akashic records and all of that stuff, you're not gonna get the information. I say this in readings, people wanna know their past life stuff and I'm like, I'm only gonna give you what God allows me to. Well, why are you so worried about the past life when you haven't conquered this one yet? Yeah. So, I mean, I will read on it, but I give a fair warning. Like, if you're not doing your work, I'm probably not gonna get much information on you. Yeah, that's not. And a lot of times that past life interest is on escapism. Yeah. And I mean, that's what I was using it for too, but it's not like it's a purposeful thing. It's a subconscious thing. Oh, the ego is very sneaky that way. Oh, it's very sneaky. Very sneaky that way. Yeah. Very, very sneaky. The artful dodger, you know? It's artfully dodgy. And it's something they keep wanting me to say, because this isn't truth of what she's talking about, guys, is that regardless of whether you're telling it, you're coming, my question to you guys, this is the biggest spiritual question. Are you in a place of equanimity? Can you in your life do everything you can to better this world? But if the world doesn't better, are you gonna be okay with that? And if the answer is no, then you haven't evolved spiritually. I know that's hard to say. And Stephanie knows I get so frustrated. I am so ready for certain people to get arrested. There are two people I want to see arrested. I know it's coming out so fucking ready for it. Like, yeah. And Stephanie and a bunch of others are like, come on, let's do this now. I don't even give a shit about the politicians at this point. Anyway, but then I have to work on myself. Well, if something changes and the timelines change, am I gonna be okay? Am I gonna find peace? Because the opposite of war is not peace, guys. The opposite of war is creation. So what is peace? Peace of mind should be something you carry within you, regardless of what's happening outside of you. Because the only thing that you can control, the absolute only thing you can control in this world is how you react to the action. That's it. That is literally it. Now we've talked about this a lot, Stephanie. We go, especially if you've lived a life where you feel like you haven't had control and you've been thrown around a lot and there's been a lot of abuse, you start to get very, it's like that's why people have eating disorders to be honest with you, like anorexia is a form of control. It's a way of you trying to control things. But in reality, most of the control people they have is only an illusion anyway. Let's look at 2020, for example. I had just started my own shala. I'd been authorized because real yoga takes years to be able to do this. And I had finally been able, I was pushed out of the nest to go and be a senior teacher myself. And so I started my own shala. I was building it, it was getting packed. I was driving the suburbs every morning. I had a packed student basis. And then what happened? Lockdown. And because the studio where I was running my shala was new, it could not survive the lockdown. So after I had worked that whole, all those years and got to that point where I was at the top of my career, it always taken away from me. And so I had to, at that point when I went on YouTube, I had to release even the identity of being an ashtanga teacher. I had to even release that. Now little did I know, little did I know that God was gonna end up using that education on the YouTube platform. I didn't know that at first when I started my channel, I wasn't even talking about that side of my life. And look what we're doing now. So there's always, that's where that faith over fear comes but being able to release, like Stephanie, did you ever think you weren't gonna be a medical assistant? I wanted to expand and become a doctor or a therapist but it's so funny because I said, one day I was just, I was driving to work and God's like, you're gonna be a doctor one day. I'm like, I don't have enough money to go to medical school. No word out of God. Six months later, started to figure out stuff and God's like, not that kind of doctor. And it's always when I'm driving in the car or in the shower. Or peeing. Or peeing. That's a great, that's when lots of outlets come in. And I'm like, okay, so what do you mean? God didn't say anything. Six months later it goes by something like that. I'm just making up a number here but months go by. God's like, you're a healer. Okay, so what does that mean? Nothing, I get nothing. Months go by. See how this works. I'm taking myself, I'm working on myself. God gives me bit by bit and it doesn't come overnight. People just expect, oh, I'm gonna remember these past life things and yadda yadda. Overnight, no, the more you put in the effort, the more you receive back. Yeah, you happen because there's an equal exchange between you and God. So I am, right now I am going through is that complete ego death, right? Doesn't mean I'm not gonna have ego because humans have egos. I mean, I think that's a misconception. The ego serves a purpose. It's places to keep you alive, basically, that's it. Yeah, it serves its purpose but when you're going through the ego death, it's that, like you said, Bryce, I'm not Stephanie. I'm just in the avatar of Stephanie in this lifetime. I'm a soul of love and light and you're shedding these layers of this, identity of what people have pinned on you or what you've perceived yourself to be and all these different programs and you're shedding, it's the onion and you're shedding the layers of the onion and as much as it's a necessity and needs to happen, it's like the butterfly coming out of the cocoon. It is not a comfortable process whatsoever. You know, I was just talking with Shanti and Shanti did say though, she made a good point, she goes, it's as uncomfortable as you allow it to be. Doesn't have to be uncomfortable. You're in control of how uncomfortable it is. So what did I just say? The only thing you can control is your reaction to the action. Yeah, even the action that's in here. So that kind of got me there because I was like thinking, oh my God, I have to go through this hell, hell, hell but I'm kind of making it my own hell instead of just breathing through it and just letting it go and doing what God is gonna do and so it's, you have to kind of recreate yourself into the authentic you and I have these, part of my issue right now is if I were to tell my family what I'm up to right now, I don't talk to them but if I were to tell them that I'm kind of bouncing around from hotel to hotel on just, and I'm not trying to make anybody feel bad for me here but I'm not rich. So it's kind of scraping by, kind of on a whim, they'd say, oh, you're irresponsible, Stephanie. This is very irresponsible. So that's always in the back of my head am I being irresponsible about what I'm doing? But I know divinely this is at my path. I'm not being irresponsible. This is what I signed up to do. That's why I did it. Nothing happens on accident and I have to go through this and I have to release what expectations my family has on me because it is now formed into, that's my own expectation on myself. So I need to switch perspectives because even though I might not agree with my family on most things, it still became an expectation to myself like as a programming, when I became a medical assistant, I didn't, I did it because I wanted to help people but I also did it because the expectation in my family is you go to college and you get a real career. You don't go to tech school, none of that. No, you go to college and you get a career. What that wound me up was debt with student loans and misery in a corrupted field. So did I have to go through that? Oh, absolutely, because now I can take that knowledge and I can apply it in a more holistic way. Well, it gave you the friction. Yeah, so, and I could see things. Whereas if I never went through that experience, probably wouldn't understand, well, obviously now I'd probably understand how corrupt medical world is but I really know how corrupted it is. I noticed it many, many years before 2020 and I had always been saying there's something up here and I don't understand it, but one day I guess I will but this is not right. But when you start to go through this, and you're peeling back the layers, you start to see how every part of your life has really formed you into who you are and where you have to work on yourself. Like everything is just, it's coming up like a volcano, erupting. Well, and it's like, so, you know, this is what Shanti would say. You know, like you're seeking your family's acceptance. Where are you not accepting yourself? Well, she said that to me and then she left it off at that. She goes, okay, now I'm being told to shut up. So I'm gonna let you go now. I love Shanti. She's talking really good at the tough love. Like she's real good at it. Oh yeah. She's real good. She's like, okay, you got betrayed. Where are you betraying yourself? But it made, and when she was talking to me, she could, because she can see, you know, I'm not, we weren't even on the, we were just on the phone. We weren't even FaceTiming or anything. And she goes, okay, I know you just, you saw where I'm going with that. So I'm just gonna shut up, bye. So anyways, when she said that I'm like, yeah, yeah. Because I've allowed someone else's expectations to become my own expectations of myself instead of forming my own, taking back my power. You know what I mean? So I need to start loving myself. I need to stop abandoning myself. Cause yeah, I do go through this, I go through this all the time where I don't think I'm worthy enough. I don't think I'm good enough. And it's because of rejection and neglect or whatever the trauma might be. And this is all now surfacing. So yeah, I got to cry through it. I got to yell about it, punch a pillow, whatever I got to do because it's painful, but it has to come up. I'd rather heal than allow it to still stay as a stagnant energy enemy and then keep going through this cycle after cycle over and over and over again. I'd rather get through this. This life, guess what? I don't want to do this in the next life. I was gonna have to go back again. Let's just get it over and done with. Yeah, well, that's also the importance of having a teacher too. Because when shit is this hard, if Stephanie didn't have a someone to like push her and keep her and to our talk her off the ledge, she would have quit by now. I have amazing people to talk me off the ledge right now. Like really amazing people to talk me off the ledge, which is really good that, you know, Bryce, you started the group because something I've noticed in the group is everybody's encouraging each other. It's like, yeah, everybody's doing their own individual workout. They're not doing it in front of anybody. They're not journaling in front of anybody. Excuse me. But they're coming together as a unified family and encouraging each other when one is down. When the ones... They're helping each other up, yeah. So it's really, you know, it's an individual thing, but there's teamwork also involved too. And so, you know, each individual is working on themselves, but it's, I think it's been an incredible four days to see the transformation already within the group of people that have decided to sign up for the challenge. And it's accepting too. Like that, you know, that's the one thing that I've learned out of all these years is when you're going through these dark... You can tell when someone's going through a darkness, that you can tell it in their face that they're going through stuff. You can see it, but they're, they can't hide it, you know, because it's presented itself so, you know, we're good at hiding it before we don't want to hide it anymore, you know? And... I don't hide things well though. Well, yeah, when you're learning to just let it come out. And the thing is, is like, I think sometimes, especially in how we have raised, we think that when we're uncomfortable or if it's wrong, and I shouldn't be pr... But to have a teacher say, yeah, this fucking sucks. This is awful. However, it's an opportunity to change that person. That's what I love about Ram Dass so much is that he's the one, when I say guys, look at it as interesting, that's where I got it from. People really need to read his stuff because I mean, I've just tapped into one of his books and his, he went through this shit, big time. I mean, I'm reading about his little biography put in, what's the book you got me? The... A Polishing the Mirror. Polishing the Mirror, recommend that book highly. I'm only like a couple of chapters in and I left it at home. I wish I brought it with me because I could read that, but I mean, just a couple of chapters I'm in because I, you know, me, I read about 10 books at the same time. But it will really open up everyone's eyes to understanding what this is all about. Cause I mean, that man went through a lot of stuff. He went through a lot. And he was, let's talk about Ram Dass for a second. Just so you guys understand, his birth name is Richard Alpert. He was born to a upper middle class Jewish family in New York. He became, I believe a professor at Harvard, one of the elite schools of psychology. And so he was put into, and a lot of his, I'll post his channel down in the description box. You can go through and listen to a lot of his talks. And so he was this professor at this Ivy League school. He had all these expectations put on him from his family as we all do that he was living. And he ended up long story short when psychedelics came about. He ended up doing a study that was approved by Harvard to do some psychedelics like acid. And he ended up becoming addicted and he got fired from his job. He lost everything. He ended up in India, high as a kite. And that's where he kind of stumbled into his guru, name Crowley Baba, who they called Maharaji. That was his guru. And that's where his life, so in a lot of his books that you read or even his commentary, I think I have it on the Bhagavad Gita, he's pulling from his own experience of being able to say these hardships you go through are part of the, it's part of it. It's part of the process. And we talked a lot yesterday. I think I talked to you offline about this, but I know I did some shows talking about the initiates path. The initiates path is one of one shit show after another. And I told you, I keep laughing with Stephanie. I keep saying everything for you this time is gonna come at the 11th hour, you know that, right? Because the universe is gonna make you get to this point, and we didn't even talk about this. And I think this is fair to say, I think a lot of people are this way. We get to the point, especially in our 30s and 40s where we start preparing for fear instead of living in faith, right? And so when you take the initiates path, the most important thing you understand is faith. And so what's the universe gonna do is gonna push you and push you and push you. Are you gonna run away? Are you gonna run away? Are you gonna run away? You know, because before this Stephanie with the circumstances you're in, I would guess that if this was five years ago, you would have already gone back home. Oh yeah. Yeah, right? And I'm not one to easily give up. I'm kind of stubborn that way. You know, if I had to boil down to, I know it won't happen, but if I had to literally sleep in my car until I was done with this course, I mean, I would. Because I don't give up easy like that. But I have, you know, also I am homesick. So that is something I'm going through. But I know that deep down, you know, I've seen enough miracles in my life to where I had to really put all of my faith in God. And yeah, at the 11th hour, I think I've told this story, I don't know how many times of when I was a single mom and I had literally $1 to my name left. And I was going on a job interview, I just graduated from, no, I, sorry, I had moved and I needed to find full-time work in the medical field. And I needed to go to this job interview when I was on the gas light and old car and was gonna go put the gas in my gas tank. And I looked up at the sky and I said, God, I know, I didn't say, can you help me? I said, I know you will help me. There was a difference in my wording. I said, I know you will get me from, I didn't ask for gas, I didn't ask for money. And I said, just help me not just, I know you're gonna get me back home without running out of gas in my gas tank. So pulled up to the gas pump, ready to put in my dollar. And some random lady said, I know you need this, swipe your card and say fill your tank. And I didn't even fill my whole tank, I filled the three quarters because I didn't want to take your money. She insisted. And so I will always forever, I think I had, I went through that, I just froze. I think that was one little piece of, I'll always remember that. And I think I lean on that story a lot because that showed me God never abandons us at all. And we just have to ask for help. It's okay to ask for help, but you gotta be one thing I have to learn in this, you have to be willing to receive. That's something I have an issue with. Yeah, and I do too as well, but you also have to be willing to do the work. Yeah, I mean, so I'm just gonna come to you. Like God knew, okay, you're working hard, you wanna get a job, you're going to a job interview to make money. I was trying to put in the work to get to doing something where I'm earning more money from my son and I, okay? So I hold onto that particular story for dear life because that is, I think God showed me early on that happened in 2012. So, and I went through quite a dark night of the soul that year too. I was bit by a very viciously, been a spider that year. I had mold poisoning. I was sick for seven months straight. I literally bruised her up so badly, almost broke it like cause I was coughing so much. So I was going through a lot of stuff then and it's funny cause when I had my chart done with Tamar, that year stood out as that was like an initiation year for my psychic abilities to start coming online. So I see how that works. It's, I was about to say, it just doesn't happen. No, I see people like, are like, you know what? There's no God cause there's so much pain and suffering in the world. No, it's because there's pain and suffering in the world. You, nothing, God's not gonna, you didn't go through amnesia to then just have someone float down on a sky and say, here you go. Here's all your work. It doesn't work that way. It does not work that way. It doesn't work that way. I don't know how many times we have to say that people still sometimes don't get it. And there's no exception to the rule. There's no exception to the rule. None. I don't care how old you are. I don't care what disabilities you have. We have two 80 year old people doing this challenge right now. When you told me that, I was like, they get it, that's amazing. They get it. And yeah, some of the exercises are gonna have to be modified, but they're doing it. And every time somebody tells me, oh, I'm this age, I'm like, and? It's just a number. You have a body. You have a body. Then you have things to work through. You know, either you do it now or you do it in the next life, you know, or a hundred lifetimes from now. God, I see people resistant and say, no, that's their ego. That's their ego taking over. And I just go, okay, see how far that attitude gets you. Cause the ego is always gonna bring you down the path of destruction, of literal destruction, not controlled demolition. What Stephanie is going through is controlled demolition. Hmm. What the ego takes you through is destruction. You know, it's, you know, and the world's trying to, you know, with this whole body positivity, which that's what the bad guys do. They have a great sentiment, but the organization is not so great. And we have this whole body positivity movement, which yes, you should always love yourself, regardless of what size you are. But you should also be working on yourself. Yeah, you don't want to just stay standing. I mean, think of water sitting in a jug and there's no filtration. It's just sitting there. What happens is starts to get moldy, algae. It starts to grow funky stuff, smell bad. Our bodies work the same way. Yeah. So let's say someone is overweight. I've said this to you before, Stephanie. I don't see someone as overweight as fat. I see them as wounded. So you've got this extra weight on your body, right? That's your body telling you. Your body is literally communicating with you that there is a wound here that you need to deal with or underweight or underweight. But usually I see this more with overweight, where they resist it more. Underweight usually you have to pull the back a little bit. But let's look so sometimes with the body positivity, people think, oh, I can just be this way and it's fine. No. Your body is literally telling you that there's a wound that only you can take care of. How many people have you known, Stephanie, that have gone on a crash diet, lost a bunch of weight and then gained it right back again? I'm one of them. I know tons of people. I haven't had a good friend I was working with. She did the Atkins Diet or the Keto. Hold on, they're here. Yeah, so if somebody is overweight, sorry guys, we had to pause it for a second, if somebody is overweight and they're thinking that the body doesn't matter and they're living and that I'm not working out, I'm not doing this, and they're living in their ego, and that the body positivity should be you loving yourself along the journey. And I'm not saying like I tell, I said at the beginning of this challenge, I said do not weigh yourself. I don't not want anyone weighing themselves. I haven't weighed myself in like five years. I don't weigh myself, I haven't since 27. I was 27 years old, like so, but what you're doing is you're working on the wound, you know, and that is, I told you Stephanie, one of my teachers a long time ago, if I didn't see him for like six months and he gave me stuff to work on. When I saw him again, if I had gained weight and my practice was a mess, he'd be pissed off. They didn't work on myself. Obviously the body always tells the truth. But if I had stable, if I had stable weight, my bot, my practice was still a mess. He wasn't upset because obviously I'd been working on it. It just hadn't broken through yet, if that makes sense. And so you have to kind of watch yourself because the ego is tricky, the ego is slide, it's tricky. And the ego can come out as intuition. Oh yeah, yeah. You know, I get emails on a time where people intuitive about me. I'm like, that's your ego, honey. That's your ego. Your intuition should be about, not about my research should be about, that's your ego. I think a lot of people have a misconception that ego is like something that makes you stuck up or think you're better than everybody. And when you think of like the egotistical jock or something from high school or something like that, it goes much more beyond that. It can give you this delusion. Yeah, the most egotistical people I know are people who are not jocks. My dog is getting in everything. They're not the most egotistical people I know are not jocks. They're not, there's people who aren't doing shadow work. Yeah. And that's sad, that's really sad. And when they project out, a lot of times people who are in their ego, when their ego is challenged, they project out instead of taking that and working on themselves. And I wanna, this, this has come up a lot to you guys. Your triggers are your gold. The things that trigger you are the most important aspect of your journey here on this earth. And as long as you're in a human body, you're always gonna have triggers. So, and I think people also think, oh, I'm triggering you, so you're weak. It's not, no, no, it's just your work where you need to work on yourself. I mean, I have triggers. I know I have triggers. I know, and I know exactly what they are. And as time goes on, I'm gonna develop different triggers and get past the old ones. This is the way life presents itself. And we need to stop, I don't know, bashing people because or thinking low on people because, oh, well, they're being triggered. Okay, so, great, that shows them where they need to work on themselves, great. Yeah, absolutely. And it's, if someone's telling you they've totally healed themselves or they've gone, they've walked through that, they haven't. I think that's the biggest sign of their health. They're completely healed. You'd be dead. How are you being alive? You'd leave your body, game over, you pass the exam. Yeah. All right, well, let's talk about Mysore because this is super important when we talk about because I think a lot of people are still really confused by fake yoga versus real yoga and the integrity that lies between the two. And I've seen that a lot with the challenge of emails and questions I'm getting. I'm like, guys, Vinyasa flow is not yoga. It's not yoga, honey. That's, it's not. It's just not. I don't know what else to tell you. If your teacher went through a 200 hour teacher training, they're not a yoga teacher. They got scammed, basically. In my opinion, I have to say because the Yoga Alliance is nasty. They got scammed and now they're scamming you. So let's talk about, so I'm just gonna say you've been practicing with Todd, who is a senior teacher here in the Southeast. He's the person that brought- He's a phenomenal teacher, by the way. Yeah, he's a phenomenal best teacher. If you're in the Atlanta area, I highly suggest it. So can you explain, because Todd's kind of a quirky guy. Like he's very introverted in a lot of ways. He's very quiet. But his teaching, the way he teaches, it's tough yet loving at the same time and very encouraging. He's going to push you to where he thinks you can go, but you don't think you can go. But then he shows you, you can go there. So for starters, I just wanna say if you think that you're not good enough to walk into a Mysore room and you're scared to walk into a room of thinking people are doing these back bends and they're folding up like a pretzel, I'm here to tell you that there are some people that do that, absolutely. But there's people that are less experienced than me in that Mysore room and I've only been doing this for four months. It's the as Todd says it's the only true all levels class and it's all levels. Like this morning I did a live class because he invited me to live class because he felt I was strong enough to do it. And I got through it. I only went up to Navasana, which is what? That's halfway. That's for the primary series? Oh, halfway. Okay, I thought it was quarter. No, you're half way there. So, and by the way, Navasana is where you're kind of like a V, you know? And I, when I first did that. You know bit knees, you know bit knees. When I first did that pose, I thought I was going to literally die. And there's Bryce saying, you just don't want to do it. You can do it, but you just don't want it. Listen, I can do it. I can do it. And I'm doing it. So, there's that ego, that's another reason, the way that ego pops out. We, but it's what my point is, if you think you can't do something, what you do is you work your way up to it. You're not going to just do it. You work your way up to it. That's my point. I'm not like bragging. No, no, no, but when you, no, no, no, what I was saying when you thought you couldn't do it, that was your ego. That was your ego saying, oh, this is uncomfortable. I can't do it. That was the, and that's what I saw because I knew she could do it. I was like, oh no, she's letting her ego go direct. Oh, someone doesn't want us talking about it. Michael. No, it's my internet. It's my internet. Spray some holy water here. Be gone, you witches. Be gone. Spray mine, but I'll just fake it. Good tension is there. But I just wanted to say that it's an all levels thing. There's heavier people in the class. I'm not, I was thinking I was going to be the biggest shamu in the class. No, no, no, no, no, no. So you've got to get that out of your head. And nobody freaking cares what you look like and what you're doing. No, but the only person that is watching you is the teacher making sure that he or she is adjusting you correctly and showing you the correct way to do it and breathing through it and stuff like that. So I mean, their job, teacher job has got to be very difficult too because my source hard to teach. That's why it takes like years to become a mysore teacher. Yeah, I ran my mysore program. Like you have to have finished up to a certain point in the asanas. So into like third series in order to teach mysore because you have to be able to teach people. And let's talk about the more quote-unquote advanced students. Are they assholes? Not at all. Not at all whatsoever. Everybody just minds their own business. I mean, it's, and everybody seems very, everybody's calm and everybody is more or less, they're working through their own pain. So, you know, I got done at Navasana today, did my three closing poses at the end, rested and then I watched the rest of it. And I observed and I could tell they're going through their own pain. They don't give a shit what you're going through because they're going through their own shit. They're focused on their own stuff. They're really focused. Yeah. So let's hit on the ego too. Cause like I was telling you when I, when I noticed that Stephanie's ego, so we think about the ego as being like this nasty narcissistic thing, but the ego is also the opposite of that too. So like people who, you know, will see like a thin fit person and project their insecurities onto that person, that's their ego projecting their insecurities. So if someone doesn't want to come to Mysore because they're afraid because they're overweight or they don't know what they're doing and they're afraid of the judgment, that's their ego. And that's sense too, right? Even it works in multiple different ways. Multiple ways. And I'm here to tell you, like in an authentic yoga class, everyone's going through their own hell. And that's why Todd will tell you there are six different series in Ashtanga yoga. It's so that everyone, regardless of what their athletic ability is, is being challenged at all times. And there's only one person living that's finished all six series. That's my teacher in India. I don't want to go past, I keep telling people, they laugh at me, but I don't want to go past fourth series cause fourth series looks like a fucking exorcism. When I see someone practicing fourth, which you really only see in India, it's like, because they have to, their body is being bent in ways that don't seem humanly possible. I literally have a hard time watching fourth series. And I know a lot of very senior teachers who will not go there, whenever Strat tries to give them the next posture, they go, I'm good, I'm good. No, thanks, I'm good. So, you know, at a certain point, there's just like, it's enough is enough. And so, so every person in that class from the person who's just learning the sun salutations to the person who's in third series, advanced series A, they're in their own hell. The advanced students have the fitter bodies and maybe I could tell they're still in their own hell, but then their face might be calmer because they've been doing it for longer, but they're still being triggered. And that's why they come back every day and do it over and over again, because they've learned that, that with every new movement, there's going to be a new obstacle, there's going to be a new discovery, there's going to be a new friction that's presented. And if they don't do it, they did it by themselves, they wouldn't have the buoyancy of the teacher there to keep them on track, to keep them, because what the body does too, and this is why the adjustments are so important, is if there is an issue in your hip, what the body is going to do is it's going to avoid the hip. It's going to not want to touch that, but the teacher is going to see that and come in and talk about the adjustments, Stephanie. What are the adjustments like in traditional yoga? So first of all, Tad knows, just knows, he senses things, like, as if he were a Reiki practitioner. I think he's like a savant shaman to be honest with you. Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm going to go over a couple of adjustments that I've had. So number one, you're going to feel like things are going to pop. I was pretty darn sure I was going to have my shoulders pop out. They have in my sleep, so I carry a lot of shit in my shoulders. And so that happens, and it's painful, but the key is you got to breathe through it. I, Tad and I were talking about this. I tend to hyperventilate a little bit because I start to panic. And so that's part of my work that I have to work through and I'll get it. I was taught the wrong way in athletics because I was an athlete in high school and we were taught to breathe in the nose and out the mouth. You don't, that's a no-no in yoga. And so I have a hard time breathing through things. So I need to relax through it. Now, during some of the more pretzel type of postures, like, you know what the names are. Fascinists. Yeah, the four, A through D. I was, I can't do it by myself yet, but Tad was able to remove the binding towel and get me to bind. And then he adjusted my shoulders and all of my organs felt like they were crushing and I could not get a breath. And that was a little intense, but I know I'm detoxing since that. Like that's one of the reasons why I'm heavily detoxing. Yeah, well then it's not supposed to feel good because the teacher is gonna help you open up new pathways and the organs. There's no way you can do this by yourself. No, no. So, you know, I always say don't worry about flexibility of the body. We're more concerned about strength, but the one flexibility we do want to look at is organ flexibility because not only is that healthy for your organs to remain flexible, so you get older, but your organs also carry emotions. And so it's gonna come up and the organs, the more you twist, that's why the twisting is important. That's why the back bending is important. A lot of it is with the kidneys too, the way you position your feet and everything with the kidneys and that's where fear is. Yeah. So I think that's where, see I think my suffering, my hardcore suffering is gonna come through the primary series because I, my biggest thing is fear. I've dealt with fear all my life. So I can tell there's certain asanas where I know I'm gonna, I could easily lose my shit by crying. You know what I mean? Or getting angry. Some of them I actually literally get angry. Yeah. Because these, like you said, is controlled demolition. These poses are- There's alchemy to them. They're choreographed in such a way that it's releasing the energy in a specific way for you to then transmit the energy, right? Am I saying it correctly? Yeah, there's this particular value of our patterning in your body. These are like tunnels in your body that are energetic. And what we have to do is we have to open those up so energy can flow through, so it can release. It's literally like breaking the dam down. And so when you're some, there's only gonna be so far you can do that with yourself. And then an outside force is gonna have to come in and do help you crack into that. And we don't, you know, in the fake yoga world, you have these like sweet little adjustments where they rub your back. That shit happens in real yoga. It's brutal. No. We call it- Well, even let's talk about bar too. There was things I was doing in bar that I would have never recognized if you hadn't recognized it. You know, you did bar with me a couple of times when you were up near my end of the woods, my neck of the woods. And I thought I was engaging my arms, but I wasn't. But I've been working on that now, guess what? That's the heart area, the heart chakra. So ever since I've been really working on that, I haven't had any asthmatic issues. And now Todd has knee back bending, which apparently I was a lot more open than I thought I'd be doing that. But it's because I really was working hard to engage in the arms. And I do yoga more than I do bar now, but at the same time, it helped release that. Part of me, so now I can do the back bending stuff because that's all the opening here. So- So your stomach, I mean, that's, but I always tell my students, back bending is stomach opening. Yeah. Oh, it opens. I have nobody asked about the lower belly and how come that's so hard. Well, let's talk about the lower belly. That's what the back bend, I always say, if you wanna six pack, do back bends. That's how you're gonna get a six pack. When I'm heavily engaged and big time back bending, that's when my stomach's the skinniest. It's because you're detoxing that the upper, now your core, your abdominal system is very thin muscles. They have to be thin muscles because your body, your, your, your, organs need to be able to move, right? And they're also sensitive muscles with the nerve endings cause you got more nerve endings on the front body than the back body because this is where your vital organs are. And so there's a lot that's happening. That's why a lot of people get very triggered by core exercises or back bending is because a lot's happening in a very sensitive area. And the more triggered you are in a particular physical expression, the more you need to be doing it cause there's information there. And I'll tell you a story about, and Todd is a very, you know, I've had, I've worked with multiple teachers in my life and he is not my teacher, but I was, before I had gone off to do my own, actually he was the one that like literally kicked me out and said, you can't code, you can't assist me. Cause I was assisting him in the mice or room. And I got an authorized, but I was still assisting him and I was running these, my courses always sold out. I was running these courses. They were my courses. He always made that clear. These are your courses as an independent contractor. You, these are your babies. But at that time I was at this point where I could not assist him anymore. And he was the one that was like, you got to go do your own program. Like you can't, you can't be an assistant. You have to be the main teacher. And that's when I left, but there was one point when I was assisting him. Todd, Todd's very, a theoretical himself. He's very psychedelic himself as a person. He's very psychic. He's had a lot of, you know, he was the kid at 22, ran off to India because he wanted the esoteric, you know? And he, he, he's, he, I believe he is a shaman. I think that he himself is actually, he's actually by nature a shaman. And we were, we had this student once, years ago and the drop back stand up where you come into back when you stand up, you see it happening in life, my student drop back stand up. And the student, every day I would assist her with a drop back stand up where I stood there and pulled her up. And I kept getting so frustrated because I was like, she can do this by herself. Like she does not need me here. Why is Todd having me do this? And I would send the office with him and argue with him. I'd be like, I'm not gonna say her name, but like we'll call her Jane, Jane, Jane Doe over here. She can, why are you having me assist her? This is a pissing me off. She can do it by herself. She's fine. And Todd was like, there's something in her back that I'm not happy with. There's something when I adjust her, there's something in her spine. So I was like, I don't know what it is. I'm feel, I'm not happy with it. So time goes on. At that point, I started talking more about my struggles with autoimmune issues and the practice and all the stuff about the energetic body. And I was sitting in the lobby at AYA one day and this particular student sat beside me. She just finished practice. She was putting her shoes on and she was like, hey Bryce, I meant to ask you. I saw some of your posts about autoimmune and it was fast because I have lupus. And I was like, are you kidding me? She was like, I have lupus and I've struggled with lupus my whole life. And I was like, have you told Todd this? She goes, no, I haven't, I've never said anything but I was just curious. And I was like, we'll talk to Todd about it. And I went back in the room and I was like, Todd, she has lupus. He goes, that's what I was feeling in her spine. That's why I wanted you there to support her. He didn't know what it was, but he could feel it. He could feel the energy and that she needed that support. Even though her body at that moment could do it, she needed me there because there was something. So that's how good he is. He can tell, when he adjusts people in Utti Dhaas, Apatangustasana girls, there's something in our ankle where he says he can feel when girls are fertile. There's some pulsing that happens in the ankle that he can feel it. And then he sees when they have their period because they don't come in. And so he's like, oh, I can feel when a woman's fertile. But he's so in tune to that. And that's what makes him an amazing teacher because he got that from, the hands on that's part of that padam pada is the transmute, a padam pada means transmution of knowledge from student to teacher. You're not gonna get padam pada from a book. You're not gonna get padam pada from a course. You're gonna get it from a teacher one-on-one with you. So your attunement with Cindy. Cindy is also heavily pushes the exercise with she's actually touching. She goes by Eastern body, Western mind too. Yeah, and she's actually transmuting that to you in the course. You have to be there live in person. You know, in the Mysore room, Todd's putting his hands on you. There's information that's coming through his hands into your body that's padam pada. That's the transmution of knowledge, right? And I'm telling you, when a teacher touches you in an ashtanga room, it is moving energy. It has nothing to do with anything else, but moving that energy. And Todd's good about that. He's good about like being hard on students, but also laughing with them too. Oh, he laughs. He laughs with them, yeah. He laughed at himself this morning because he goofed up with one of the count timing. Oh, every teacher. I will tell you a funny story. Sharot messes up every class. Like every teacher messes up every class. There's one little oops you make. And one time Sharot messed up. He called the posture before the posture that was to come. And everybody went into the posture that was to come instead of what he called. He goes, oh good, I was just testing you. You know, just make a little job and just test you. Todd just laughed at himself where he'll, if someone goofs up on something and the student laughs, because it's not like this time serious. I mean, it's serious, yes. But it's not so rigid where there's no room to just, oh, the humor. Yeah, I'll never forget. There was one day I was assisting him and it was Sukhda Sukhnasana, which is a transition at the end of where speed or spread, you come up and come down really fast. And it's a posture that scares a lot of students because it does invoke a lot of fear, but once you figure it out, it's really easy. Well, there was a one student we had in the class and she kept doing this over and over. She would just kept doing the posture over and over again. It just got sloppier and sloppier and sloppier. And finally, Todd was watching her sitting on his little stool. He has a little stool at the front of the room. He's sitting there and he finally looked and he goes, you make that look really hard. And everybody would see that happening. Plus it out laughing because Todd was just watching her and it just got, he was, you just make that look really hard. I think he said to me a couple of times, I had an epic fail and he's like, nice try. Go back and do it again. I'm like, and I'll just look at him and go, Todd, I was going to get out of that one. He knows I'm joking though. He literally has eyes in the face. He does have eyes. He goes, did you? Go back and do it. I want to see it. God bless him if he ever has a child because you can't get away with shit. No. He just has eyes in the back of his head. But you think him afterward or the teacher afterward because you're not going to get far if you don't have that. No. And he loves his students. Like I think if he were a millionaire, he would still be teaching because he just loves it. It's his life work. It's, it's what, and I think that's, you know, he's talked about opening up a bigger yoga school where there isn't like an actual yoga, like that's where people can come and take courses and learn the Ayurvedic. He's an incredible chanter. His Sanskrit is perfect. He's really fast. Yeah, he's perfect. Our Indian students always say that Todd's one of the best chanters. He's got a, Yeah, he, you could tell he, he knows what he's doing. Yeah. He knows what he's doing. He studied, he lived, basically lived with a guru. And he was receptive to the teachings. And so therefore he was able to then take the teachings and send it out into the world. And, you know, I, so third series, advanced series A is, so primary series is physical therapy. Second series is neuro therapy. Third series is ego therapy. Third series is beautiful. Third series is a gorgeous series. And the potency of these, these practices. So with third series, Patabi Joyce was very strict about third series, advanced series A, that you were only to practice third series with a teacher present. You were never to practice by yourself at home third series. Why? Because it's ego therapy. And so if it's not done properly, it will have the opposite effect where it will plot narcissism instead of humility. And Todd was practicing third series when Guruji died. When Guruji died, he stopped practicing third series because his teacher died. And so he took that seriously, the potency of third series, that now that his teacher was dead, he was gonna put third, put third series away. He still teaches it. We have students at AYA who are in third series. He still teaches it, but he won't practice it himself because his teacher is no longer living. When he's in India now, what used to piss me the fuck off, when he's in India now because Sharath was one of his peers, he could do whatever he wants in that shala. Whenever an assistant walks up to Todd to do something, Sharath's like, no, no, no, don't touch old student. Like basically he's already proven himself. He went through the fire with Guruji. He knows what he's doing. I will, Sharath will help him. No one else. Because none of the other assistants there are at his level of teaching. So he will not let them touch him. That's the level of respect that Sharath has for Todd, is that no assistant can touch him. So it's pretty major. Sharath's book, he used all of Todd's pictures. They're very close relationships they have. And so, and that's the thing about Todd too, is Todd is extremely humble. Extreme. Yeah, he's not egotistical at all. And you can tell in his teachings, he's more or less, he's concerned about, his concern is making sure you're getting the right adjustments and you're not gonna hurt yourself and all of that kind of stuff. Like he's not like, oh, look at me. Like, no, you know, there's no feeling of superiority. You respect him because yeah, he's worked his ass off to get to the top, but he doesn't act like he's better than anybody whatsoever. And he's respectful of your individual level. So I'll tell you all a funny story, a good story about him once too. And I first started assisting with him. We had a student there who worked for the CDC. This was years before 2020. And we have a rule in Ashdango where when you're learning to do inversions like headstands or handstands, you don't use the wall. The wall can enable you and you gotta get strong. And so we, you know, you're just gonna have to fall over basically. And this student, she practiced all of second series. So she can do, you know, if you're practicing that the last part of second series, there's seven different headstands that you go into and you like flip out of. And I heard you say, oh, that's the fun part. You know, that's the fun part of second. But every time she got to this point in the practice, she would pull her map to the wall. She wouldn't touch the wall, but she had the wall there. And I would sit there and watch her. And I said to Todd one day, I was like, why are you letting her do this? This isn't allowed. It's like, why are you? And she's in second series. She doesn't need the wall. And Todd said, listen, she's really high up at the CDC. She can't make a mistake at her job. This was before 2020, before we learned about corruption. But I don't think she was corrupt. But he was like, if she makes a mistake in her job, the world suffers. So if she needs to have a little bit of a security blanket and yoga in order to go about the real practice was just her job. Like he saw her real yoga practice was her job. What kind of friction was that? And this morning yoga practice was her just calming her mind down before going into her real practice, that he was gonna let her do that. And so he also gets to know students as far as what they do for a living. He's probably gonna teach a housewife differently than someone who's an attorney. He needs to know what their life is like because that's gonna dictate to him what their karma is. And can he help them process their karma or is he gonna hinder them? You know, he's the one that says the hardest thing about a teacher is allowing karma to happen to people. You know, you do the best you can to stop certain things from happening to your students, but at some point you have to back away and just let it happen, because that's their karma. You can't get in the way of that, you know? And so, and I say that because I wanna express that when we're looking at coming into this world of shadow work and self-healing, the teachers, even though there's no teacher in this challenge, this challenge is meant to be kind of a beginning step for everybody, the teacher is very important, but the right teacher is very important. I would never tell you to be vulnerable with someone who just finished a 200 hour teacher training because they don't know what the fuck they're doing. But someone who's studied with Patabi Joyce for that long, yeah. Do you trust Todd as teacher, Stephanie? Yeah, and yeah, I'm thankful. I already kind of, I don't know him well, well, you know, I know him through you, but even if I didn't, I, you can feel someone's energy, obviously. So for me to get into these positions where he's literally taking my shoulders and putting them in a certain way, if I had a narcissistic teacher or a teacher who did not understand the energetic body or how the body works and any of that kind of thing, I'd be freaking out and I'd probably avoid going to class because I have had subluxing of my joints before where they have popped out a little bit. Not full dislocation, a mild dislocation. I can wake up and get a mild dislocation. Since doing yoga though, I haven't had a single dislocation though. Fascinating, but yeah, interesting. So this is something I've noticed because it would happen to me often and since I've been doing this, no, nothing. So for me to trust him especially and the four last pastures that I do before the, well, the four last ones before Navasana where I stopped the practice, he has had to adjust my shoulders in such a way where this is probably where I do start to hyperventilate because my shoulders are anything in this area right here, even to be touched in that area is a trigger for me. Something I've always noticed going for a full body massage. I had to do that like a deep tissue massage. I will tell the massage therapist do not go under the arm. Which is their place the massage therapist should be going. Now you know that. I know, it's a trigger point. So my shoulders are a big trigger point for me but I do trust Todd enough to put me in pretzel position. And I know that I'm not gonna have an injury and if I were to, I think you'd be able to adjust me back. Like I have that faith in him that I know he knows what he's doing and he was taught by a really reputable guru. Guru, yeah. So I mean, he had the best training he could possibly have in this particular life, you know. Oh yeah, time period. So I've had to, I mean, don't get me wrong. I still have to breathe through it the proper way. I still get a little bit hyped up and that's probably where he starts noticing my hyperventilating a little bit is the shoulder area. So I know I'm always kind of jealous that people have Todd as a teacher because he can't, once someone's seen you naked, they can't be your teacher. So we're going, but, you know, but it's, it's, and that's why I don't practice my sore there in the morning because that's why I practice at home because there's no point because he's not my teacher. Conflict of interest, really. Conflict of interest. And I mean, there was a point where I was practicing when I would get done assisting and start practicing and the students would always laugh because they kept saying that they needed to get me the bell to ring because he would ignore me. Like I could be in the middle of the room and he would literally ignore me because I'm not in. And I would say something to him, like at one point he wanted me to do some extra posture work. And I kind of complain and he goes, well, I'm not your teacher, so do what you want. Like, you know, because that's his thing, he's not my teacher. And so if I needed his help in something, like I literally would have to like dog whistle him over to like adjust me, you know, but he wouldn't, he didn't just be the way that he would adjust Stephanie because it was not, the energy was different. And so I just stopped, I mean, they would laugh. They were like, one Christmas party, they were like, we're gonna go buy Bryce a bell so she can just ring it when she needs to hunt. Or if I was practicing in the room and the room got crowded, I would be having more practice, he'd be like, I need you to help me. So I'd have to stop practicing, like halfway and start adjusting. So I just thought, you know what? Now that my, I mean, when I started teaching in my own shell, I never went in any way except for my courses, but I was like, I'm not even gonna, it's better for me just to practice at home because it's, and then for the students who don't know who I am, they are confused as to why he's ignoring me, you know? So, you know, it's a, oh, I would get mad at him because he would have the propensity, he would go to adjust me and he'd have the propensity to step on my hair. Like I'd have it in ponytail and my head would be down and suprasari to see, you know, where your hands are like this behind your back. Well, once your hands touch the floor by themselves, you then have to flip them this way and get pulled down so he would come adjust me with them this way. But I would have my head on the floor and he puts his leg in between your back and your arms and every time he would step on my damn hair and he'd be like, tuck your chin more. I'm like, I can't. I'd be like, I'm something like, Todd, I can't. You're stepping on my hair. I can't move. But he wouldn't do it to any other student. He would only step on my hair. And I think it's because he wasn't fully engaged to adjusting me. He was too busy. That's, by the way, that posture that you're talking about, it's another triggering posture for me because it's all the shoulder. Well, it's getting you to core too. So that prosery to see is also getting you to really use your core because at some point, the shoulders aren't gonna go any further. So the core is gonna have to pull them in further. So it's teaching your body the connection between the two. So, yeah, guys, if you're ever in the Atlanta area, I don't have people email me about practicing with Todd. He is a senior teacher. Absolutely 100% would be considered a senior teacher. Just email. So if you're a new student to the practice, you need to email him directly. It's on the website at shangyogatlanta.com. You can email him directly so that he don't just show up, let him know you're coming so he can prepare for you. So we have like, there's like, now I think there's like four assistants at AYA that work under Todd. And so if he knows that a new student's coming in, specifically to work with him, he will make sure he has his assistants on staff that day to work with the other students so he can specifically work with you. And that is a lot. You know, a lot of people try to make the excuse so I don't live near an Mysore program. A lot of people don't because Mysore programs typically flourish in cities. Like, so Stephanie, we found a Mysore program in Boston that would be her closest, which like 45 minutes away. You know, a lot of a little over an hour, but I mean, if I were to do that once a week, I mean, I would do it. Yeah, a lot of people do that. A lot of people drive an hour in every morning to practice with the teacher. So that's normal. You're not an exception to the rules if you live in a small town, that's normal people do that. We have students at AYA that are living Birmingham, Alabama, which is like two hours away. And so like once a month, they drive into Atlanta and they'll spend like the night in Atlanta just to work with Todd. Todd knows when they're coming in. So that's what I did with David Garig when I was flying to Philadelphia to work with David. That's normal for Ashdanga because Ashdanga shalas are not everywhere. So you have to, I now have to fly to the other side of the fucking world to see my teacher. That's normal. So I wanna, I want to express that if you live an hour away from a mice or a shala, that's not an excuse, not to go. You pick one day a week. Even if you have a family and you're busy, you pick one day a week and you contact the teacher and you develop a relationship with the teacher. Cause just that one day a week and the rest home practice is going to change, change, change how you practice. All right. You have to watch. There's no excuse. Stephanie, I've told you a lot of stories about what people have gone through with this practice, haven't I? Yeah. And after hearing them and don't use your kids. I hear that one in my readings all the time, but I have kids. So you need it more. And most of the people I know when Ashdanga has kids. Yeah. You know, that's why I tell you like, especially on Sundays, a lot of times the kids come to my store and they just call her in the back of the room. And you can see how it's like, like in my store, like they have a space to like kind of color and, yeah, I mean, it's not like the whole room is taken up by Ashdanga. I mean, you, I haven't seen any kids in my store with Todd, but I'm sure like it's happened before. Oh yeah. It will happen again. They usually come on Sunday a lot of times. So we, like, if you notice someone with their cell phone by their mat when they're practicing with the screen face up, it's probably because it's a mom who left her kids sleeping at home and came to my store. Yeah. We have moms who leave their like eight, nine year olds by themselves in the morning. My son's been staying home by himself for like, he started around eight, nine years old, a little at a time. And I know that's my trigger some moms out there, but obviously you got to let your kids go to a some extent as long as you're not going to burn the house down or anything like that. One of her students was so funny. She was like, I don't even think my kids know I leave in the morning because they sleep right through it. She goes, I still sleep straight through it because the thing is it's so early in the morning. So I try to get there as early as possible, except for one hotel would lock me out. Taken out my dog and I couldn't get back in. So I'm like knocking on the door, let me in. I got to go to yoga. And so I had to leave because they opened up the doors at six o'clock. So I had to leave later for that hotel, but excuse me. We see students tired. Yeah. We have our first students. We don't officially open till 5.30, but our first students start coming at like five in the morning. Yeah. So I try to get there. I get like there at 5.30 by the time I get back, Tyler is still snoozing. Yeah. The dog is all excited to see me, but he's still snoozing. So there are literally no excuses are there. And payments, Stephanie, what have you learned about payments with these holistic? Oh, they will help you. You're trying to make yourself a better person. I shouldn't say that. You're trying to, you're on a journey that's tough as it is. They're gonna work with you, trust me. And I was scared to ask for help. And it was a big deal, was it? No. What does Shanti say to you? Oh, she helps people all the time. Yeah. Most of our students on our payment plan or something like that, teacher would rather have you there. So you can't use money as an excuse. You can't use distance, time as an excuse. Don't not use your, do not do that to your children. Do not project that onto your children. Don't use them as an excuse. We've talked about that with Emmy too. When there's a will, there's a way. Emmy's got five kids. All different names, by the way. And she's still doing it. So, she's still doing it. So those excuses, that's your ego. Yeah, that's the subtle way of your body just saying, I don't wanna do it. Yeah. And then blaming it on something else. Yeah. Yeah. And Tess, I've done it. I've done it. I've done it so many times. I think we all, we all go through it. So, if you legitimately just don't want to and you're not ready. So, you just have to acknowledge it to say, I'm not ready to. Yeah, don't come up with it, because it's gonna piss the teacher off. It's what it's gonna do. Because you don't know what that teacher's been through to get where they are right now. And that's a slap across their face. If you say, oh, it's too far, that's a fucking slap across the teacher's face because you don't know what that teacher went through to get to where they are. All right, so you need to hold respect for the practice and the lineage and just be honest. Just be honest. I'm not ready yet. Okay. Come back when you are. We'll be here. Yeah. So, yeah. So anyway, guys, I hope that helps you guys work through all the spiderwebs, the cobwebs that we're going through in this practice. We'll go deeper into it. I'm trying to do a daily video with the challenge update. Some days it will be with guests. Some days it'll just be 20 minutes with me. One thing about castor oil bathing tonight, I wanted to remind you guys, it's not an actual bath. I've tried to explain this, I think multiple times now, but it's not, you're not putting oil in a bathtub. Watch the video, the link to the video that I have on the challenge sheet. I explain it. You're literally putting it on your body and you're sitting with it on your body for a certain time. Make sure you're in a heated room because you're gonna get cold or hot. You can heat that. So what I usually do is I put the castor oil on the stove and heat it up on the stove. Yeah, I've done that. Yeah. I'm just gonna rinse it off. It shouldn't be too hard on your tanks because your body's gonna absorb a lot of it. All right, so do not get in a bathtub and then put oil in the bath. That's not it. You might wanna warn about the hair. I have warned about the hair before, but I'll do it again. Traditionally, you do wanna put it on your head because it's gonna get the energy cycles of the scalp, but women is gonna take days to come out. So I never put it on, I usually just pull my hair up into a bath. It was less. Now, with me, it easily comes off my hair because I haven't put it in my hair before. My hair is too thick. It holds up. I have very ass-nicky hair though. I have ass-nick hair. I have very coarse hair. I do straighten it and stuff. I have very kinky, very coarse, dry hair. I froze. So for me, it's not a big deal. But for other people, I have very thick hair. And so I do a lot to straighten it too, but it gets stuck in there. And I mean, there was one time when I first met Todd, I literally came into my summer day. I was like, my hair looks dirty, but literally can't get this oil out. He had to get me special soap nut powder just to help me get the oil out of my damn hair. You can't put coconut oil in your hair. Now, I, as a boss at coconut oil, it's not really good for me, but if it's on the hair, it's a little bit different. So that's something you can do for your hair. That comes out easily. But yeah, guys, do not put castor oil in your actual bathtub. It is called an oil bath, but it is not an actual bath, okay? It's just putting it on your body and then showering it off. So, hope that makes sense. And then self-study Saturday tomorrow, you've got doshos. You're gonna be studying your doshos and you're gonna be doing your first sound bowl healing tomorrow. So no exercise tomorrow, guys. Rest day, Saturday is rest day. And then Sunday, you get the really fun Sunday. Fun day, you're gonna be doing sweating to the oldies with the good old Richard Simmons. So anyway, we'll catch up with you guys later. Are you really having him do that? That's great. I love it. I think he's, because his dancing stuff is not, it's, I'll talk about it more on Sunday about why I picked this. There's a reason why I picked him, okay? And we're gonna talk about that on Sunday, okay? As to why, I didn't just randomly pick shit, did I, Stephanie? Mm-mm. I froze. That's all right. My internet connection is a little wobbly. Yeah, no, you were very methodical with what you chose and you pretty much all the challenge part of it, like the journaling, I think you were just channeling. Yeah, I was channeling for that. But the exercise, it's like, I think what sometimes when you channel when God uses you, he used my education on energetic body and then so that my brain could accept it and know how to do it. But there's a reason why I picked Richard Simmons, guys. I know it's funny. That's part of the reason why. But we're gonna talk about that maybe tomorrow when we prep for Sunday. I'll talk about why I picked Richard Simmons. So anyway, guys, let me know if you got any questions down in the comment section below. If there's anything you're struggling with, like really struggling with, just reach out to us, join our signal group. Signal group's going really well. And sometimes Stephanie and I and the other moderators can't be in there because we're filming and stuff but we've got, I've got Mornay and they're moderating, Shanti, Catherine Edwards, Emmy, Stephanie, Jan, Sal, there's a few other people in there. So, you know, keep the conversations going. It's a hard road but this is literally what we signed up for when we came to Human. This is what we signed up for. So we didn't sign up to sit around eating popcorn and watching the Kardashians. How boring is that? We came to Human and this is part of Humaning. So we love you guys and keep going. When you're at, what did Winston Churchill said? What was he saying? When you're going through hell, keep going? I guess, I don't know that saying. When you're going through hell, keep going. So, all right guys, we'll talk to you soon. Bye everybody. Bye.