 Good morning everybody. Well, it's morning as I record this. It's 8 30 a.m. Tuesday, November 8th here in Atlanta, Georgia on the east coast of the United States. Obviously this video will go up in a few hours from now. So good morning. Good evening. Whatever time of day it is that you are watching this. This is our daily check in for our 30 day shadow work challenge. And I am just so incredibly proud of you guys. I, of course, we know we have the signal support group, which again, I'll put the link to that in the description box below. Please join us if you would like to. It is a private group. So click on the link and we will let you in. One of the administrators will let you in. And I kept it private because I wanted to be a safe place for people to really be vulnerable and not have their vulnerability shared publicly. And I'm just so proud of everyone. I don't get to interact as much in the group as I would like to. I have a couple of administrators who are subscriber friends of mine and they can interact more with filming and stuff. I just don't get to hop in as much as I want to. But what I do see when I'm able to hop in and read, I am just tickled pink that you guys are really diving into this work and you're understanding it. And it's so, you know, Guru used to say 99% practice, 1% theory. And what he meant by this is the theory of shadow work is pretty easy to understand. Like when we talk about it in an intellectual way about your body is your GPS system, it's information highway, the pains come up, you observe them, you honor them, you work through them because the physical pains are actually emotional pains manifesting in the physical. That's really easy to intellectually understand. That's the theory. But the practice to actually put that understanding into practice is a totally different story. It's a totally different story when the reality of the pain comes up and your life around you starts to shift and change and become a little chaotic because so much is coming up. It becomes a different ball game. And that is why so many people end up quitting shadow work is because they feel like they're doing something wrong because it's hard. But actually because it's hard, it means you're doing something right. Yeah. And I'm watching the conversations happen in the support group and people are getting it. You're absolutely getting it and you're acknowledging that it's hard and you're instead of running from it, you're leaning into it. And the more you lean into it, the more the stuff is going to come up, the more the stuff that comes up, you're going to get an opportunity to clear it. And clearing it might take some time. You know, it's layered and that's okay. And it's like I was watching a therapist talk last night about pressure release, pressure release, pressure release, which is what we do in the physical practice and in shadow work. We're pressuring, we're creating a friction to all of a sudden there has to be a release. And that release might come in tears. That release might come in having a migraine headache for a little while. That release might come in having some stomach issues where you're purging either coming up or out. If that's what I'm talking about, that's a purge. Your release might come in a fit of laughter one day where you just find everything that happened to me once. I was in like the total dark night of the soul and I was actually driving at the time. And then all of a sudden there's a Sanskrit word for this and the sutra is called Pratibha, a flash of illumination. Pratibha, just flash of illumination. All of a sudden I just saw the humor in all of my suffering. And all of a sudden I had this like intense realization that all of my suffering was caused by me. And I just started laughing and then all of a sudden it went away. That realization kind of went away and I came back into my body but it was like this flash of illumination where the universe was like, yes, pain is real but it's real enough for you to understand it's not real at the same time if that makes sense. So this morning you guys did the kickboxing and I'm already seeing some incredible conversations around the kickboxing. Again, I'll reiterate, if you're new to this, I picked four different modalities of exercise for this challenge. Yoga, bar, kickboxing and dance. And I picked these four modalities for very specific reasons. Now again, with the kickboxing this is high intensity exercise. It's not going to work for everyone. In fact, the people it's probably going to work the best for in all honesty are people who are Vata Kappa or Kappa Vata, who don't have a lot of pitta because this is going to engage that fire element for them that they're missing. So usually like for a physical aspect people who are like that do good with stuff like this. Now on an intellectual and emotional point of view, if you have anger issues, kickboxing is a great modality to work through those anger issues. For women who have been R-A-P-E-D, kickboxing is a great healing modality because a lot of women who've been in that situation who will do kickboxing and they get their power back. They feel like they can take their power back through it. Today you're also doing another 15 minute all meditation. You're going to do this again tomorrow and I know people are having very different reactions to the all meditation and I want to tell you that if you're feeling anger arise or frustration arise during your meditation, you're not doing it wrong. You're probably doing it right. Because that's kind of when the mind has to focus on something, the ego is going to try to distract it. And so all you need to do is just acknowledge it, journal about it. Oh my God, I got frustrated in my meditation. Oh my God, anger came up in my meditation. We're also looking at this. This is a form of what we call japa meditation. This is a very beginner level of japa meditation. So what is japa meditation? It's mantra meditation. And so, you know, there's other mantras that teachers will use like Om Navashivaya, or the Ganesha mantra, Om Gana Patayana Ma. That's another mantra people will use. But the Om is kind of for the beginner, right? Because it's a very easy word to say and it's a very vibratory word. And you're not even saying it. I'm just having you listen. You can start saying it with the recording if you want to. But that vibration, remember, vibration is one of the elements of Ayurveda. And so the Sanskrit is a light language. And so when the Sanskrit vibrationally runs through your system, whether you're saying it or you're hearing it said to you, it's going to pull up emotions, alright? So if you felt the frustration and the anger, good. That means the meditation pulled something up for you. It did its job. So now all you got to do is go journal about it and work through that emotion. Again, you're keeping your food journal today. And then you're going to be journaling about your experiencing kickboxing. But again, if kickboxing was too much for you, then you just did the bar. No big deal. Look three people in the eyes and smile at them. Now let's go ahead and look towards tomorrow, Wednesday, November 9th. Now I pulled you back a little bit with the exercise tomorrow because of the kickboxing you did today, right? So we're learning how to yo-yo with energy, how to juggle the energy. And because I have been exercising six days a week for over a decade. And so for me, my body is used to it. But if you're new to exercise, doing six days a week is going to be a shock to the system. And so this is why I pulled you back a little bit today and I'm doing a little bit of an easier day on tomorrow, Wednesday, because today, Tuesday the 8th, you had a very high intense exercise. And so tomorrow you have the choice of either doing just the 20 minutes beginner ashtanga with ashtanga nurse, or you do a 30 minute bar class with Marnie Alton. So this is the other bar class I'm doing with Marnie Alton. Now if you are someone who is used to exercising like me, you can do them both together. So that's a 50 minute interval of exercise, okay? So it's going to be a little bit less intense tomorrow. It's just going to be exercises that are purposely, again, triggering certain muscle groups to continue the purging process, but pulling back just a little bit to allow the body to recover from the kickboxing. So I guarantee you, if you've never kickboxed before, you're probably going to wake up tomorrow morning sore. That's okay. Acknowledge the soreness and get back on the mat and do the 20 minute yoga or the 30 minute bar and just move through the soreness, okay? Don't not exercise because you're sore. That's the worst thing you can do is to skip an exercise because you're sore. All right. Then you're going to do the on meditation again for the third day. And then you're going to journal again. And then you're going to, again, look through people in the eyes and smile at them. Okay. So then we'll get to Thursday, November 10th tomorrow because that's the third of the way into this challenge. Now there's a topic that I wanted to talk to you guys about. And this is kind of, after reading some of the conversations in the signal group, I thought this would be something really to point out to people, especially in this Western world too. I think this, I'm going to know this concept probably affects a lot of people, but I think it really affects us in the Western world more because of the way that our culture is structured. And I'm not saying anything bad about, I love being a Westerner. So I'm not saying it's just accepting what the culture is and working through your programming through the culture. Now, there was this man named Alan Watts. He died some time ago, but he was one of the Western teachers who kind of brought Western, excuse me, Eastern philosophy into the Western world. His books are brilliant. I've read a lot of his books. I listened to his recorded talks a lot. He's kind of like a rom-dos. He really understood Eastern philosophy and was able to teach Eastern philosophy in a digestible way for Westerners. And again, this does go back the biggest difference spiritually between the Eastern religions and philosophies and the Westerns is eminence and transcendence. So I'm going to reiterate that again. So we've talked about this before. So in the Western world, that's predominantly Judeo-Christian. Even if you're not Jewish or Christian, you're living under a Judeo-Christian culture. And this is a culture where at the heart of it, with the spirituality, we are taught that we have fallen short of God's grace. And so we are taught that we have to do things to get to God's grace. So we have to either accept Jesus as our savior or do all these things in order to be good enough for God. And even that isn't secure enough because when you die, you didn't have to go through judgment where you're either going to be cast into the pits of hell or into the enchilada of heaven. And so this culture, even if you're not raised in that form of religion, this culture does have an implication on your self-worth. All right? Inmanence, however, in the Eastern philosophy is that God is everywhere. And there's nothing you have to do to prove yourself to God because God is everywhere. God has always been inside of you. He's never left you. He's in the flowers. He's in the moon. He's in the sun. He's in the stars. He's in the animals. He's everywhere and you're a part of it. And so that immanence is where we get this idea that when bad things happen, it's not a punishment, it's an opportunity to learn and grow closer and to remember who you are. So in the immanence faith, we have forgotten that we are that spark of God. We have forgotten that we carry the fractal of light inside of us. And so this karma that comes up, this friction, is so we can release our attachments to what isn't real and remember what is real. And so that's the biggest lesson. So in the transcendent world, in the Western world, the bad things that happen to us is God is punishing us and we're bad people. But in the Eastern philosophy, that's not true at all. It's the opposite. It's that you're given an opportunity to remember who you are. And the only thing that's going to get you uncomfortable enough to ask those questions and go on that journey is friction. So that's the big difference. I hope that makes sense. So what happens now with self-worth from a Westerner? Now, Alan Watts, why I brought him up is somebody asked him once, what's the big question? Like, what's the big question that we all ask? What's the point of life? What's the point of life? And Alan Watts, after all of his years of studying Eastern philosophy and teaching it to Westerners, said it's simple. The point of life is to be alive. The point of life is to be alive. And the first time I heard that recording, I literally had chill bumps go down my spine. I had never heard something that resonated such truth. The point of life isn't to prove your worth. You're already worthy. You were born worthy. The point of life is now to be alive. And so what I want to say to you guys now, when these emotions start to come up, like anger, sadness, sometimes actually more times than not, we're not going to know from whence they came. We're not going to know why. We're having like panic attacks. You know, I was diagnosed. I've been very open about this on my channel. In my early 30s, I was diagnosed with a panic disorder that's called CPTSD. So that's complex post-traumatic stress disorder. So PTSD post-traumatic stress disorder, we see a lot with military people because one event will happen and it will change their neurological makeup. But with complex post-traumatic stress disorder, it's layers and layers and layers of small abuses and small events that create a stress disorder. And so according to my studies and what my therapist told me, complex post-traumatic stress disorder in a lot of ways can be harder to treat than PTSD because it's kind of like you are swimming out in a great void and you're feeling all these feelings and you're not 100% sure why you're feeling them, right? Usually it's more the abuse you suffered is more covert and not overt. What do I mean by that? I mean, if you had a parent that was like a narcissist and would say things to you growing up that devalued your work, that's more covert. It's not the beatings or anything like that that you can actually pinpoint, that's overt. And so sometimes the covert is where it's the hardest to like in the gaslighting start so you start to feel crazy and all these things start to happen that make it really hard to figure out why you're feeling this way. So the most important thing that we acknowledge that you are feeling this way, you're having the side effects of something happening, of some panic, some trauma, some anger, you're feeling that, that's the truth. You're feeling these, these emotions come up. These emotions are your thoughts, okay? So all emotions are our thoughts. Now, if you don't know why you're feeling this way, I'm going to challenge you to forget about the why. It's not important. As Shanti says, the why, the story, the reason you feel this way, and a lot of times that's just the drama, okay? That was just the catalyst. What we're working with though is the emotion. And we're going to look more at this later on in the challenge. We're going to start to get into childhood trauma and how to work through childhood trauma, especially if you don't have all the answers. But all I want for you guys, if you are at this place where you're feeling just wracked and you're crying and you're feeling hurt, come up, abandonment come up, all these things come up that you didn't expect to come up, that you've been pushing down inside of you, all I want for you to do in this moment is to feel it. That's all I want for you to do is to feel it. As Marnie Alton says, we feel things here. And as you feel it, you can cry if you need to cry. You can scream into a pillow if you need to scream into a pillow. You can smack a pillow if you need to smack a pillow. Let it come out. Let it surface. And then go journal about it. Go write about it. That's why they call exorcisms exorcisms. You're exercising the issue. You are exercising your own darkness. You are exercising your own emotions. You're exhausting them. You don't have to know why. You don't ever have to know why. Sometimes, as my therapist told me, sometimes it's important that we don't remember the story. There are some cases where the blocking, the not remembering is your brain's way of protecting you. But your body still understands what happened. And so that's the emotion we're working with. And so if you can't remember, thank your brain for blocking that. I understand that frustration. I have traumas from my youth that I vaguely remember but can't totally remember. And it actually frustrates me sometimes because I want to know the full story. But I have to respect the fact that my brain is doing what it needs to do so that I can have a healthy life. So my responsibility is to work with the emotion and not the story. So I don't pass that emotion down. When we push our emotions down, we don't acknowledge them and we bury them, we think we've hidden them but we haven't because those emotions will come out in different ways. They'll come out as self-sabotage. They'll come out as aggression towards other people. We know that most abusers as adults were abused as children so it'll come out that way. It'll come out with you being snarky towards someone and hurting someone's feelings through your words. It'll come out in other ways. And so what we want to do is let it come out in its full force and its full glory in a healthy way which is allowing you to feel the pain instead of trying to project that pain onto someone else because that's all that you're doing, right? Is you're trying to project it on to someone else because it's painful. And so allow yourself to feel it. You don't have to know why. Alan Watts, the point of life is to be alive so your point of doing this is to feel it to work through it, to honor yourself for the pain and the burden that you've carried and then let the burden go. Put the backpack down. Put the rock down. And this isn't going to happen overnight. This is going to, this is a whole life. This is going to continue. You're going to go through peaks and valleys through healing. You're going to go through your underworld where everything is dark and gloomy and then all of a sudden you're going to feel really good and at peace with everything. And that really good, that peace is going to last a few months and all of a sudden you're going to dive back down into the underworld again because there's layers to this. But the more you go to the underworld, the more wisdom you pick up from it and the more compassion, the more you start to understand your own pain, the more compassion you have for others when you see them in pain. I noticed that in myself with Mr. B's son, Hunter, it's all I'll say, I have a lot of empathy for him and I know people think I'm crazy. When I see him I get very emotional. I get very, I get very teary-eyed. I get very emotional. And I know he's done really bad things as an adult and he's going to have to pay the price for that. Absolutely. He's going to have to go through his day in court. But when I see him, what I see is a wounded child, a child that no one protected. And I think when that text message was released with his daughter where he said something along the lines of I'm not going to do to you what Papa did to me, there was a recognition there with him that he, something had happened. And unfortunately he wasn't able to stop the domino effect of that wound than wounding other people. And I know that's an extreme example, but that's where I saw my healing had started to work, was because I actually felt empathy for him. I feel empathy for his victims too, of course I do, which means I absolutely want him to have to face his day in court. But I also see the child that was hurt. And so when we start to do our own work, we have that compassion. We start to come from a place of the Christ, of the Magdalene. We come, you know, there's that verse in Corinthians and I was talking to Jessie, Jessie's a voter off camera about it and something she said really struck me. We know the whole love is patient, love is kind. There's also a part where it's like love doesn't keep records. And so when we heal ourselves more, we're able to come into a place of utter forgiveness for other people too. No, I'm not saying that if somebody has hurt you, that you have to allow them back into your lives. No, that's not what I'm saying at all. You can put up boundaries, but you come to a place of forgiving them, utterly forgiving them. Because the more you understand your own pain, the more you understand their pain and that what they did to you was just them acting out their own wounds. And you're not keeping score anymore. And for people, there are cases where if someone has really hurt you, the more you do your own work and if that person does their work, you are able to reconcile and have beautiful relationships because of that I've seen it happen. You know, nothing's impossible. But if we were at a place in this world where every single person went through this and really healed themselves and learned what karma really is, oh my God, we would have the most beautiful society in the cosmos. Because we would all be coming from a place of empathy, compassion, understanding, listening. That's why Ganesh, the Hindu deity Ganesh has big ears and a small mouth. He listens more than he talks. And so listen to yourself. Don't try to talk yourself out of something or don't try to talk yourself into a story. Just listen to the emotion. Acknowledge the emotion. Let the emotion play out with you instead of projecting it, holding it back and projecting it on someone else. Let it play out with you. What needs to surface will surface. What needs to heal will eventually heal if you allow it to come up. And I don't know what the healing is particularly going to look like for each person. It's different for each person. And so if you are, as Winston Churchill said, if you're walking through hell, keep going because the point of life is to be alive. You don't have to prove your worth. You don't have to have a story for why you feel anxiety in order to prove that you're worthy of feeling pain and anxiety. Just by the fact that you were born and you are breathing means that you are worthy to be alive with all the aches and pains that come with it. You don't have to have a reason why you're angry. You have nothing to prove to anyone. You literally have nothing to prove to anyone including God. God loves you regardless. He just wants you to remember who you are. Nothing to prove to him or her. Sophia, Mother God. You're a part of the universe. You're an intricate part of this universe. You're supposed to be here right now. Your energy, your vibration is a part of this. This greater whole. What was that song? If I wasn't here, would this all fall apart? Yeah, if you weren't here, this would all fall apart because we're all doing this together and your work is helping people around you including yourself. So just keep going. I'm so proud of each of you guys. This shit is not easy. It is not easy. It is hard AF. You don't quite realize what a basket case you are until you actually start to unpack everything but then once you start unpacking everything and moving through it, you realize like you got this. You didn't come this far to only come this far. You got this. I noticed people saying I only made it through half of this exercise or half of that. That's okay. There's no competition. The exercise modality, of course, over time you're going to get stronger and it's going to get easier. That again is just science. But the modality of exercise for healing is to show you things. To continue to show you things. To keep the energy moving and running. And yet this exercise is not something you're going to be doing this for the rest of your life. Now that you've started this shadow work challenge you're going to be exercising for the rest of your life. So think about what your body is going to be doing two years from now. That kickboxing you did this morning is going to be piss easy two years from now because your body is going to have fine-tuned itself. But what we're working with right now, especially in the beginning is everything you've got to unpack and unstick in order to move the energy so the body can fine-tune itself. Matter and spirit are working together. That's the Shiva Shakti. Yeah? So just acknowledge it, acknowledge your worth and know that you came here to be alive. To be alive. I'll leave you with a famous quote that the Tavi Joyce used to say you say practice all is coming. And so many people thought that quote meant well if you just keep practicing it'll get easier. Well yes, but that's not what he meant. When he said practice all is coming. He meant practice because all is coming. All is coming to you in your life. Moving forward. The heartache, the joy, the laughter, the sadness, the anger. Everything is coming so keep practicing. Keep working. Keep filtering that energy. You owe it to yourself. You are a child of light. The more your heart breaks, the more you allow your heart to break, the more the light can shine through. Alright guys, let me know how you're doing down in the comment section below. How did you like the kickboxing? I really liked that trainer. She makes me laugh sometimes. I've watched some of her other videos. So let me know how you liked her too. If you've never kickedboxed before, were you shocked by it? Was there something that you immediately learned from it? Are you excited to do it again a little bit later on? Challenge? Let me know how you're feeling. Are you already feeling sore from it? Are you expecting soreness? Again, if you wake up sore tomorrow, just do the 20 minute yoga. Just stretch it out. Do that energy, okay? It's going to get better. It's going to get easier. It's always darkest before the dawn and the best is yet to come. I'll talk to you all soon. Bye.