 Good morning everybody. Happy Friday November 18th. This of course is the 18th day of the shadow work challenge But before we get into the shadow work challenge, I do have one announcement or request rather Our son this Sunday. I am starting the yoga intensive online intensive and last night I was yesterday all day I was doing all the admin work to make sure that everybody who is registered for the yoga intensive Got their zoom link for Sunday and got their course manual and homework and all that kind of stuff now two things one Adam Cornwell, I have sent you a message on PayPal. I don't have your email address unless Somebody else registered under their husband's name or something and I have sent the appropriate person the information please let me know because Adam you are paid up and for the course, but I don't have your email address So I sent you a message on PayPal email me at yoga course online at gmail.com I'll put that email address down in the description box below so that I can send you All of your the things you need the zoom link for Sunday The manual the homework all that kind of stuff because I have no other way of contacting you So I do not have your your contact information So please please please reach out to me so I can get that stuff to you and get you ready for Sunday's course With that being said with this course we had basically two platforms So you are registering for the course through a strong yoga Atlanta's platform But the payments were coming through PayPal And so if by chance you thought you registered for the course But you only filled out the information on the square app. Go ahead and do the PayPal too I had a few people that were registered, but there was no PayPal transaction So go ahead and make sure if you're one of those people that that that got taken care of or if you again use a different email address With a PayPal just send it to me. Let me know and I'll send you I know one person did that So I'll send you the zoom link and then the manual and the homework and all that kind of stuff too So just want to make sure that everybody is accounted for obviously for this course I want to take the next couple of days to really make sure everyone who is registered is ready to go for Sunday I have had a couple people inquire about the extra seat I am gonna open it up to a couple more extra seats and for you guys for this Sunday last minute If you want to hop in and take the course I'll leave a couple of seats open for you guys for the people who've inquired about it But also we will be running this course again in January and so I know if people have asked about that as well I know this time of year for some people is quite chaotic And I know that there's a list of you who want to join in January I will be releasing the January dates for the next course very soon I just have to verify and confirm dates with Emmy since she's the one doing the reiki portion of this course And so that we can go ahead and get those dates up there. And yes, same as Stephanie if there's anybody watching right now that wants to buy Their girlfriend their boyfriend their mom their dad a friend a spot for the yoga course for Christmas If you contact me a yoga online course at gmail.com I can work that out with you I can create like a gift card or something or a little piece of paper that says You know, they have admissions into the yoga course coming in January If that's something that you want to do for your loved one for a gift. Just contact me. Let me know. I know That's a gift. I would love You know, just like the tarot course course stuff with Stephanie That's an awesome gift to give someone so just contact me and we'll work it out with you guys We are small businesses. So when you're dealing with with these courses You're dealing with Emmy and me face-to-face or possibly Todd at times because he's the right. He's the director of a strong yoga land So, you know, we're not corporations. We're small businesses And so we will do anything to help you guys Get a gift card or get that spot to your loved one for this holiday season If that's something that you would like to do. All right, so let's move on to the challenge So today is day 18 and man-o-man has it been quite an interesting week for our challengers We worked a lot with betrayal and a child had trauma this week So it's very normal to have kind of an emotional hangover very normal Don't try to distract yourself from the emotional hangover. Just be with the emotions allow yourself to be raw We're coming up next week to a very emotional week for a lot of people as we have Thanksgiving in the United States Coming up and as you'll see next week as I say, I do factor in Thanksgiving in this challenge and for our Challengers who are not Americans. I've used this as an opportunity for you guys to prepare for Christmas coming up for when you have to Face family members. It's like what Ram Dass says. You think you're so enlightened go spend a week with your family Right a lot of triggers are going to be coming up around the holiday season all that kind of stuff So today we are on Friday day 18th November Friday November 18th, which is day 18 Halfway point mantra. You didn't come this far to only come this far new challenge after the 10-day mark If you don't make up your bet if you don't make your bet up every morning start doing that now a new challenge after the 10-day mark your last meal should be between 5 and 7 p.m. No snacking after 7 p.m. It's allows you your digestive system at least 12 hours of rest between dinner and breakfast So you had a choice today either the 45-minute kickboxing or the ashtanga yoga with ashtanga nurse now I I picked these two specifically because you are dealing with a lot of emotions this week doing the Kwan Yen activation working on childhood trail up Trauma talking about yesterday. You did a lot with betrayal. What is betrayal that the the the The trauma of betrayal you can Google that and there are so many psychiatrists that have Tons of lectures and talks about that what trauma betrayal trauma actually does to a person? And so that's a really really really heavy top topic. And so for some of you you probably have a lot of emotions coming up this morning On Friday again, you're probably having a bit of an emotional hangover And so that is why I picked either the 45-minute kickboxing or the half primary series with ashtanga nurse now if you're someone that Feels betrayal feels hurt through anger if you go you just need to kind of just you know Punch and just be fast moving and kind of channel that energy out of you Then the 45 kickbox a minute kickboxing is what you're probably going to pick But if you're someone like me that needs to really sit in it and really activate the the the The anaerobic dealing into the the stored energy than the ashtanga was what you were going to pick There's no wrong answer here. It just depends on how you yourself perceive the trauma So that's why I gave you a choice between these two You're also going to be taking your five minute cold shower, which in our signal group I mean you guys are going over five minutes at this point, which is amazing these cold showers aren't just helping with Inflammation and blood flow, but there also is also something very spiritual about cryotherapy and cold therapy I can't really put my finger on what that is But I know everybody who is involved in either ice bathing or cryotherapy will tell you that there is a huge spiritual Aspect to the cold therapy and I think a lot of people are tapping into that and that's why they're loving it so much I knew that When I made this challenge, I knew that the beginning the cold shower was going to be one of the biggest pushbacks from people But was going to end up being one of the most life-altering Enlightening things to do and it's turning out to be so and I've heard so many people say that they didn't think they could do a Cold shower, but now they're freaking loving the cold shower. It changes you cold therapy absolutely changes you Okay, all meditation that we have this conversation in the signal group this morning about people who about your breath So breath your breathing is connected to your nervous system. It's also connected to the bundas so being able to move the breath from a more like Exterior experience to pulling it deep into the body to a more internal experience The breath is what connects you to God, right? It's that that woven link of energy that connects you to your source creator The pranic energy comes in on the inhale the upward moving energy the aponic energy comes extinguishes on the exhale moving down into deep into Mola bunda Well, we on a bunda is still that flying up experience So when we look at breath work now with pranayama practice so pranayama is breathing practice And I was saying this morning in the group now to do pranayama for the most part generally speaking Your body needs to be physically fit enough to handle the pranayama. Okay, so that's why in like traditional yoga You don't even touch pranayama practices until about 15 years into your practice Because you have to complete second series which is nerve therapy So your body has to be fully ready for that experience and pranayama practices get extremely intense. I I Really struggle when I do my pranayama classes with my teacher like that that pranayama with my Is more intense for me than the asana in the physical practice I sweat more in pranayama practice There's a lot of breath retention and being able to calm the nervous system down while you're on Purpose holding your breath up into your bunda up into shashuna And so there's a lot of things I know there's a story of one person in India who did a deep pranayama practice and something clicked in his eyes And he went blind for like a day So it's very very serious And so I want you guys to be aware of that and that's always telling the group this morning though But at the beginning levels of breathing what we notice is the breath is connected to the nervous system And so a lot of people are saying that the on meditation is triggering something where they feel like they can't breathe When they're in it and this is what I'm going to propose to you guys So I want you to sit and think about this when you're playing this on meditation All that's coming from the computer is the repetitive chanting of all that's all it is So the potency the activation is actually the vibrational energy within your own body within your own psyche Now as far as you not being able to breathe Nine times out of ten you are holding your own breath. This is all subconscious It's totally subconscious, but you are holding your own breath Let's think about this logically you click the YouTube of the on chanting you sit and you listen to it Nobody in that room is holding your throat. Nobody in that room is holding your bongs. You are by yourself The YouTube can't do anything to you the computer can't do anything to you So you are literally the one that's triggering that response. Okay, and that's okay That's what we want to happen so that you start to understand where you are doing things to yourself So something about the vibration of the arm is triggering the nervous system to then restrict the breath So what's happening when we do that subconsciously is the freeze response? We have fight flight freeze or font those are the four four responses to trauma. I'm a freezer I freeze response. So my friend Cindy said this really well one day. What's happening when we freeze is That we are trying to hit pause Stop the situation so that we can now remove the situation. So our ego is going, okay We're gonna stop we're gonna hit the pause button on the remote and then you're gonna remove yourself Okay, so that is what's happening with the all meditation. You are pitting up against the freeze response And so what I want you to do when you start to feel like you can't breathe is to tell yourself literally to breathe Don't try to follow a pattern of breath Tell your nervous system to relax if you have to even sit there and say, yo No one's in here with you. No one's doing anything to you right now You're doing this to yourself when you realize that you were the one doing this to yourself This is when we have the huge plot twist. This is when there's the power move, right? Because if you're doing this to yourself Then you can also be the one to heal yourself Okay, and so I want you to really really understand that to start to think about where you are Sabotaging and it's not sabotaging like it and necessarily a negative way, right? It's all subconscious most of our thoughts are subconscious anyway, but through this practice We're able to recognize these patterns Recognize where we're doing this and I talked about this yesterday on the signal group and I'll kind of reiterate The other day I did one of Marnie Alton's our long videos that that I really like on her on her actual platform with weights and the ball and stuff and She said something I've done this class before but I didn't hear what she had said until yesterday I heard something she said and I was like interesting what she's saying is actually in the second pot of the Osutras and a pair of raising what she said she said, you know We have these experiences in our life and these experiences that we have had in our life Shape our perception of future experiences. And so if there was something that was hard for you in the past Then any sense of memory around that will now be through the lens of that experience, right? What if we Greeted every experience as a new experience. What if we started to observe our nervous system and observe the patterning that the patterning that our Nervous system is causing us. I hope that makes sense So Patanjalina did in the second pot is and if you're doing the yoga online intensive We're gonna talk a lot about this speaks about how you start to control your own senses So in situations where you used to maybe be reactive Instantaneously reactive you start to be able to not be reactive You start to kind of calm down and observe this each situation as a new experience And so this is this is the tricks of the mind because again, I've talked about this and he's talked about this There's a sutra in the second part of that talks about how the mind will always start to gravitate towards pleasure To avoid pain even if that pleasure leads to pain And so we start to watch the tricks of the mind and again This is what Guruji's meant when he said yoga is mind controlling capacities you controlling your own mind So you are controlling your own nervous system. So what is the mind the minus thoughts thoughts are not real They feel real, but they're not real Okay, and so we have to understand that most it's one of my favorite quotes is don't believe everything you think Because most the time what you think isn't even real You know this whole life in itself is just a hologram anyway I mean, that's one of the biggest lessons is that even though the nervous system is is showing you this pain and that pain is how we learn It's how we understand and progress The identity that you carry as you so me the identity The identity I carry is Bryce is only me for right now. It's not the eternal me when I die One day this body this life will go back down into the earth never to be lived again It'll go it'll vanish it won't Bryce won't exist anymore But my soul will so what is my soul my soul isn't Bryce? Bryce is just an expression of my soul, but it's not actually my soul Right, so that's why the Shakti of the body is the Shakti and it's a beautiful instrument And it shows us what we have the potential to do and it gives us that resistance It gives us that GPS to break through these samskaras, but it's not the soul Okay, and so we have to understand that's when we become the watcher where we can just observe our life and shri swamis to teach Ananda says in his commentary that the minute we understand this the minute we fully understand this concept Then we really enjoy life life just becomes one big fun experience even the bad stuff because it's not permanent and it's not even real Okay, so I hope that makes sense. All right, so you're gonna be doing your food journaling today Questions to ask yourself again. This is what we talk a lot about betrayal. What is betrayal? Can you think back to one time in your life where you were betrayed? Who betrayed you what happened? How did it affect you going forward? Do you still hold resentment anger or hurt over the betrayal betrayals a big one betrayal trauma is huge as I was saying earlier Where have you betrayed yourself? Okay in your journal write a letter to the person who betrayed you Then in a letter tell that person you forgive him or her take a moment to close your eyes Take a deep breath and then let the breath go in this letter Tell that person you wish the best for him or her if you wish to tell him or her that you let them go Go ahead and do so it is up to you if you want to keep him or her in your life The most important thing for you to work on is you forgiving the person who hurt you. This is not for them but for you and These if these last few days have been emotionally challenging for you That's okay shadow work is not easy take a moment to add any extra thoughts you're happening Have you been more emotional? Have you felt anger coming up? Which again takes me back to why I had you pick between the kickboxing or the ashanga, okay? All right, you have your oil bath. Oh, hold on one second So if you're feeling anger come up don't fight it Let it come up the most important thing to note though is to do not do not project your anger onto anyone else because that's just building more karma for you if you need to grab a pillow go sit in your car and scream into the Pillow if you decide to do this exercise, please please turn all about this experience putting these exercises in here because I know of these Exercises I know people who do this and it helps them. Okay, you can even I think I've shared before on this channel I know someone who went through trauma therapy in a group and The trauma therapists actually had a dog bed. No dog a dog bed No animal nothing living on the bed just the bed and like a nerf baseball bat in the therapist would have people Wack the shit out of the dog bed Just to be able to get that aggression out if you have a punching bag You know if that's something you need to do which again takes me back to why I introduced kickboxing into Into this this challenge Okay, so you can take your oil bath tonight if you want to because tomorrow is your rest day also with the water Once again, I heard somebody talking about maybe thinking that the water was 64 ounces minimum. No 64 ounces maximum do not surpass two liters of water you run the risk of over hydration over hydration is worse than Dehydration you can literally drown out your organs. Okay, so 64 ounces of water maximum Okay, all right Saturday tomorrow November 19th. This is your rest day So if you can sleep in a little extra go ahead and sleep in especially if you're processing a lot of stuff Just a couple hours. Don't do anything. That's gonna like Keep you from like that. Don't sleep to escape sleep to rest So couple hours extra perfectly fine, but get up and be ready to greet the day so Saturday self study This Saturday you're gonna be studying what Reiki is looking into Reiki So what does Reiki take detail notes in your journal over the information you find on Reiki? So there's a lot of links here. I have about Reiki free to watch the reason why I want you to start looking at Reiki It's not so that you become a practitioner if you want to become a practitioner. That's amazing You can do that, but it's so that you start to understand what your life force really is like What is that energetic life force that is inside of you? So keep a journal over everything you eat today as normal questions to ask yourself for tomorrow Are you new to Reiki? If so, what did you learn from your research today? What are your thoughts on the energetic or spiritual body? Does this? How does this all connect to the chakra system the dosha system and the exercise program you have been on? Can you feel the energy running through you as you begin to confront? To confront and work on yourself is the energy running more freely through you is Reiki healing something you would consider in the future List five things you like about yourself and list five things you learned about yourself Through the tough work you did this week with childhood trauma and betrayal Exercise take a moment to sit with your back against the wall close your eyes and start to follow your breath Can take can you take your mind's eye deep into your body? Can you feel your energy moving up and down your spine make no judgment? Just take a moment to recognize the power of energy that runs through you add this experience and your thoughts on it to your journal today Before you go to bed tonight remind yourself that this work is very hard Remind yourself that you are strong courageous and a badass for taking yourself on And then once again you're turning off all your electronics and you're going to bed before 10 p.m And then we'll look at Sunday tomorrow. So again Friday today another emotional day working with the The concept of betrayal all that kind of stuff You've got you can do the castor oil sleep in a little bit tomorrow if you can and then start to look at the Reiki system Start to kind of see and experiment with what Reiki is now something else. I want to mention before we sign off for the day I Know that especially in the Western world. We have this like idea that we have to learn something. We have to learn something fast This whole system of shadow work and energetic healing is going to be something that you're going to be studying and studying and working with for your whole life So if you are feeling I know people are talking about how they are still struggling with trying to understand the doshas all that kind of Stuff don't pressure yourself to get it right away. This is a work in progress Okay, there's a difference between memorizing something to regurgitate it and actually knowing something Okay, when I first started working with the doshas First on myself with my Ayurvedic doctor in India and then I started to implement it and work with it with my students I had to look things up. I had to Experiment with things I had to really study and try to try to figure out which food was what energy all that kind of stuff But the more and the more and the more I worked with it The more I experimented with myself the more I got familiar with it with working with my students The more I started to understand it and now I don't have to look anything up Now I can pick up a food and I know exactly what dosha it is just because I I know it now It's not memorized by me. It's known by me And so that's what we're looking for and that's going to take time So please do not beat yourself up on this. It is it's um You know, we've gone through years in this matrix system You have been trained by the matrix to think of your life in a particular way Which is actually the exact the exact opposite of the truth And so now you're stepping back and you're pulling back those layers of programming to go to the eastern way of thinking Which is actually the true way of thinking that we're just energy. That's why so that's why this why this philosophy Is lasted so long because it just makes sense. It's common sense, right? It just makes sense And so don't beat yourself up if things are still difficult It's going to take time It's going to take time for these this this information to settle into your body and for these new patterns of thought To be created. I also want to address sickness. Okay So sickness depending on what's what kind of sickness that it is is a detox of your system Sicknesses as far as the western world is concerned Are something they've programmed us to believe are real that aren't real So if you ever have listened to shawn t talk about her experience with beating breast cancer She had breast cancer in her right breast. She did not do any western healing. She did all eastern healing She knew that was her issues with masculinity. And so she she tackled that and it went away Okay, so all these sicknesses we have Be careful labeling yourself with these sicknesses because these sicknesses are just illusions. It's all they are. They're just illusions Manifested by thought which thought is also an illusion All right, and so when we're looking at the practice I was telling someone this morning the only time we don't practice Is if we have a fever Why is this in the practice or in the workout? There is something that we call topis Topis means heat Topis is necessary. The heat is necessary for you to detox for you to change Patterns, so it's like a compost pile as I say when you compost and you burn it Right, you're burning away the old in order to create the new. That's why sweat is so important, right? We can't build the new on top of the old. It doesn't work that way, right? We have to get rid of the old up chuck it toss it out burn it up It's gone once it's burned up. It's gone and then create the new and we're constantly going to be doing that because the new You have now will eventually need to be burned away as well for another new to come in, right? It's never ending and so what what we do in the practice or the workout is we're generating heat in the body That's again the sweat so that your body can create that fire that topis to burn away the samskars burn away the old patterning But when you get a fever That's your body creating that topis that fire on its own without the practice or the workout there to ignite it And so having a fever is the only time we don't practice now We do have a phenomenon called the yoga fever, which I've spoken about when you first start this path this path You might find yourself at night having like a low gray fever and then you wake up in the morning It's gone. That's normal the body had you've done so much work The body is now rearranging itself totally normal nothing to worry about now So if you're congested, but you don't have a fever. Yes, you still exercise. It might have to be modified You might have to be gross mouth breathing for a while if your nose is clogged up But you still you still keep moving forward, right? Anytime we step off the path Our body is going to revert back to the way it was so what what we run the risk of happening is that if we keep Having a detox effect and then we stop exercising while we're detoxing We're just going to be going In a rut basically and so I know it's hard, but if you're congested if any of that you keep Keep practicing if you're hacking up and coughing while you're exercising. Who cares just keep doing it, right? That's you're doing it alone at home. Anyway, there's no one there to see you, you know So who cares just keep doing it, you know so that you can have that breakthrough And so you're not continually in this rut, you know If your back hurts keep exercising if your knee hurts keep exercising be mindful ask your back in your knee What they're trying to tell you usually with the back all it is is the back is weak They just need to get stronger. It's usually really simple people freak out about their back all the time But it's usually really simple. I mean I've got multiple herniated disc in my back and I have zero back pain zero But that's because I'm strong Right if I stopped exercising, I'm sure I would have a shit ton of back pain Right so so you can you can heal that pain by your own body Okay, you are your medicine Not any outside exterior thing you you're the medicine Okay, and it sucked. It's totally hard. I I get it like there have been days where I have been balling in pain On my map because my body hurts like it's part of it every person I know on this journey No one has had it easy. There's not one person on this journey who has had it easy So um, so you're not alone. Um, you just keep pushing forward You just keep pushing forward even if you have to crawl you keep pushing forward So all right you guys I'm super super super excited and about the yoga course starting this weekend And I'm really proud of you guys. You're almost two thirds of the way through So you should be very proud of yourself We're going to be drawing those for those prizes very very soon And um, and I'd love to hear what's going on with you guys. What kind of revelations have you had During these last 18 days. Is there something just so shocking that you're you're you've had a complete 180 Change of thought about something I want to hear that because I'm a westerner too I was just like all of you guys. I mean I've been doing this for like 16 years So now I'm pretty used to it But all this stuff was all revelations to me when I started studying the ancient scripture and then when I When I studied it, I was like, oh, this makes a lot more sense. This dude makes a lot more sense So um, so let me know how you guys are doing and I hope you guys have a fantastic weekend you all are bad asses and You know if you got to go cry cry you got a laugh laugh scream in the pillow beat the dog bad up The dog bad up not the dog the dog bad up if you need to do anything you need to do to process and transmute that energy All right guys, I'll talk to you soon