 everybody. I have an interview coming up in just a minute with Annika Lucas, who I'm still rattled by the story and have been ever since I recorded the interview, sold into sex slavery at six years old by her mother. horrific accounts that you can hear on YouTube. I just don't feel a need to kind of drill her and make her replay all that, especially when you had so many more interesting things to talk about. But you know, she's a sex life six years old, she's taken to a mansion at 10 years old and put into a dungeon room and a dirty mattress and just raped by the highest level people in government. If you think there's anything unreal about her story, dig into it. It's all just real. It's just crazy. Of course, these aren't really the questions that I'm interested in. As you know, my pursuit has been kind of this question of this extended consciousness realm and how that might be influencing what's going on. So here's some clips from this delightful chat. She really is an amazing person. Here's some clips. How do you feel when people just deny it? The collective denial is what is creating the evil at the moment. Things have definitely improved. Those people who are lashing out at me are just not looking so good anymore. They're just not looking like the scientists versus me, the crazy one. It doesn't look that way at all. I look like the sound solid person and they seem a little bit crazy. I still have feelings about it. I have feelings about what is happening in Belgium, which is where I'm from. When people found out that there was a network of politicians there that were involved in these extremely dark practices, we went from the whole country being an uproar to eight years later, one man convicted, basically. And the whole country completely silent about it. After bodies of children were found, he said when he was caught that he was a small cog in a giant wheel, and that he had friends in high places who would protect him. Everything in that case that had anything to do with the existence of this network, having any more prominent people involved was cut off from the case. There's another kind of evil associated with that. Yes, absolutely. There's degrees to which people are too scared for their own skin, you know, for their job or for their life. And that's fair. That's totally fair. Understandable. But it's fair. But let's go back to the first part of your conversation for the deeper kind of growth. For the soul, it would be best that you that you do whatever it takes. I'm more concerned with people who have little to lose, but whose opinion is just biased because of the brainwashing that comes from those same people in power who are committing these acts. That's a very secular view of things, which is okay as far as it goes. But what about Russ Dizdar, he dabbled in the occult, and now he spent the last 30 years working with victims of satanic ritual abuse. So a lot of people don't like that satanic ritual abuse thing. Yes, I'm a survivor of satanic ritual abuse. That's what happens in the halls of power. They're Satanists. So yes, that's what happens. And I also work with people who, like me, have survived this. Stay with us for Skeptico. Welcome to Skeptico, where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers, thinkers, and their critics. I'm your host, Alex Sekaris. And if you've been following along for the last few episodes of Skeptico, you know that my journey into a deeper scientific understanding of consciousness and spirituality has led me to the question of evil, the nature of evil, what we're supposed to do about evil, both personally and collectively. So I want to put that out there because I want to know, I want you to know where I'm coming from. The show today is going to be dark in a lot of ways, heavy, and it's not the direction that I want to go. It's just the direction where this thing has taken me. I know I'm preparing for this interview. I was swamped with all sorts of emotions, and I don't even have any direct connection with the experiences of today's guest, Annika Lucas. But then again, you know, maybe that's the real beauty of what Annika is doing with her work at liberation, prison yoga, and more broadly as an advocate for children that are subjected to the unimaginable horrors of sex crime, sex trafficking, ritual sex abuse, and all that other stuff that we want to pretend doesn't really exist and isn't real. So, Annika, thank you so much for joining me. Welcome to Skeptico. Let's talk about yoga. Yes, thank you for having me on. I guess anyone's journey inward or journey into the nature of reality would lead to the question of evil. And I see evil very much in the way that it is described in the yoga scriptures. That is to say, I see evil as ignorance. Ignorance of the self. You know, I totally get that. And I've had those kind of conversations before because I mentioned just in the few minutes, few seconds, we chatted before the interview that I haven't really talked about yoga on this show. And that's true for the most part. I mean, I have 400 shows and most of them are on science and parapsychology and near death experience and extended consciousness and things like that, that people can kind of approach the question of consciousness from more of a, like I said, kind of more of a guy kind of scientific standpoint. But the things I deal with is people who want to deny there is this extended consciousness out there, like yogis accept that as a given. I mean, it's part and parcel of what the yoga tradition is. And if you read like autobiography of a yogi, I mean, anyone who's ever read that book within the first first 30 pages, there's shapeshifting animals, teleportation, telepathy, all this stuff is just kind of a given. So I think there's a confusion when we talk about evil, and it's reduced down to a confusion or, you know, in the Buddhist sense, just kind of a misunderstanding. I mean, that's kind of like step three. Step one is it does exist. And I guess I want to kind of circle back to that. I mean, there is evil, right? Well, there's a lot of that's to say that in our realm, we all have it. We all are ignorant of our self or we wouldn't even have to be here. So it's all a matter of degrees, right? Everything is relative in our in our realm, in this realm of duality, everything's relative. What I'm trying to kind of bring this back, it exists. And you cannot use yoga or spirituality to bypass the reality of what happens here on earth. And I experienced what I think of as some of the darkest experiences, having to do with those who have the most power in the world, who are literally ruling the world. And what is actually going on in those strata of society. Because I think when you're talking about that, you're almost jumping ahead to a fantastic part of the story. Do you want to hear? Do you want me to tell your audience what happened to me? Not right yet, because I think it feels so it feels so yucky that you have to go and, you know, bear witness to it in that way. So let me continue with this. We're just having a chat here. Yeah, when you frame it in that way, I feel like you're jumping to the healing part of the story, which is a magnificent part of your story is your healing journey and the deeper understanding that you've come to regarding the transformation that you went through and the horrors that you endured and how you overcame those and were victorious over those. But I guess and the answers that this yielded this 30 year journey inward, the answers that this yielded as to how to move forward and to change the power paradigm to move out of this very dark place that we're in right now. There's my my two cents are in there too. Yeah, and that's good. Keep throwing in your two cents, because I can talk a lot. That doesn't always work so well. But I wanted to anchor this like with one of the first shows that I did that kind of solidified this for me is I interviewed a 20 year FBI guy. His last job was undercover with the manboy love association front, fake organization, fake political organization for organizing or pedophiles, right? So he was indignant because he had entered into this realm that he didn't really even know existed totally. And the horrors that he saw as an undercover guy, where he had to kind of rub shoulders with these people from the outside, he was stunned. And on the show, you could see his anger and his frustration. And that's something that you know that a lot of people can identify with. But there's also this element that I've encountered on this show of complete denial that so so I'm just trying to paint the whole thing here. I love that the recovery and the victory. But how do you feel when when you have to and that's why I guess I didn't want you to jump in and talk about your story right from the beginning. Because how do you feel when people just deny it or don't don't believe you or don't believe other people or don't because they don't believe that this could really be happening at the level that you're talking about. I mean, you get that, right? Absolutely. And I think the the collective denial is what is creating the evil at the moment. I didn't even speak out publicly about my past until I felt ready emotionally to withstand the personal the inevitable personal attacks, the disbelief that, you know, let's just say that when we're speaking of ignorance that there's just a lot. There's a lot out there, not as much as I expected or maybe, you know, the time when I started speaking out, just things have definitely improved. Those people who are lashing out at me are just not looking so good anymore. They're just not looking like the scientists versus me the crazy one. It doesn't look that way at all. I look like the sound solid person and they seem a little bit crazy. I still have feelings about it. I have feelings about what is happening in Belgium, which is where I'm from, when people found out that there was a network of politicians there that were involved in these extremely dark practices. Through the Dutru case in 96, we went from the whole country being an uproar and the international press writing about the Belgian pedophile network of VIPs to eight years later, one man convicted, basically. And the whole country completely silent about it after bodies of children were found. Yeah, let's just review that case for people who don't know. I mean, here's a case like for people who are in that denial mode. There's photographs, right? There's photographs of cages. There's photographs of... Well, one or two built dungeons to keep the children in. But he said when he was caught that he was working, that he was a small cog in a giant wheel and that he had friends in high places who would protect him. And then everything in that case that had anything to do with the existence of this network, having any more prominent people involved, was cut off from the case. And many people died mysteriously who had any kind of evidence or were ready to testify. So there's material out there but it's all been suppressed. And people who believed there was more to the story were labeled believers in Belgium and treated as stupid. And it was the intellectuals or anyone who wants to think of themselves as smart that labeled the other survivor who spoke up at the time as a crazy woman, the mythomaniac and so forth. And cited with the official story, even the smart people ended up siding with the official story and ridiculing anyone who thought there might be more to it. So, you know, I'm stumbling here without even approaching this because there's a million different questions. One, how did that affect you at the time when that story broke? And I guess the real, that's not really even the question I want to ask. That's like a fake question I was going to ask is, you know, when we talk about the nature of evil, we understand that sometimes we go along with things that we shouldn't go along with. And that's what you're referring to. If you, just for the protection, you could rationalize it for the protection of my family. Well, for the protection of my family, I couldn't expose that person for the protection of myself, for the protection of my life. There's another kind of evil associated with that, too. And I know you've thought deeply about it. Yes, absolutely. There's degrees to which people are too scared, simply. But then there is, in the public opinion, I think, which is a larger component. I mean, there's people who know and who don't say anything because they're too scared for their own skin, you know, for their job or for their life. And that's fair. That's totally fair, understandable. It's understandable, but is it, it's fair, but in terms of, let's go back to the first part of your conversation, for the deeper kind of growth, for our soul. Can our soul fully grow? No, for the soul, it would be best that you do whatever it takes. I mean, within reason, of course. You don't just throw your life away and no one, you know, for nothing, but within reason to do what is right is important and then you can die free, I think. And then you've, you, you, you have not committed evil. But what is the right thing? You know, it requires a lot of courage right now to speak up about these things. And of course it costs a lot of lives. So I'm more concerned with people who have little to lose, but whose opinion is just biased because of the brainwashing that comes from those same people in power who are committing these acts. And I found that the more someone is brainwashed, that's to say, the more that you accept the values of the materialistic society, of our capitalist society, the more you accept the values of the external, the more it actually seems to imply that trauma, personal trauma, remains covered. And so healing from trauma, from, for each person individually, I don't think you can live in this vertical power paradigm without having some trauma at this time. So it is for each person to look within and to heal as an active revolution. And of course it is healing, healing requires courage. Just as on a personal level you have your idea of what your childhood was like and you have a relationship with your parents and then you start going within in therapy and you realize that what you thought your childhood was is so far from what it actually was and you changed. And it's the same with the world. It measures up, you change and as you change and as your consciousness expands by the neural integration of all the different parts that were emotionally stunted during these moments of trauma or unmet emotional needs, all these parts need to find this reflection of their innate innocence, their innate purity going back to the beginning. And through these reflections we integrate the self and we literally create within our own body-mind system and a more egalitarian structure that makes us then less dependent on the out of values. There's a lot that you covered there and if people, I will play some clips into this show when I air it and you have a very powerful testimony as to what exactly happened to you and it's something that has gotten some traction. There's a half a million views of it which I think is fantastic in one way and that people are able to sit there and watch your horrific testimony of what happened to you and they're able to sit through it and 500,000 people are willing to do that. Awesome. Ted Talk you gave. Very popular, very revealing and very open on your part. I can play those in and I think that's almost a better way than to have you sit and recount what happened to you. So I want to switch back to what you just said though in terms of the vertical power paradigm. I think there's so much that you're throwing out and it's wonderful in a way that it kind of requires us to kind of connect the dots of the mind-body problem and the neural integration and the transformation that we go through and I understand it from a yogic perspective kind of even differently than maybe other people are taking that. But I want to go back and pick up on a very basic thing you said. In this power structure that is responsible for perpetrating these sex crimes against children is also there to influence the message that it gets reflected back. So the reason this stuff doesn't get through to the media. The reason that if you look up the reality of these crimes on google the first 20 pages you'll get is about hoaxes is part of the system. I mean it is baked into the system to make us do it. I've had interviews with academics who deny the existence of even a consciousness that could contemplate this kind of stuff. Absolutely and especially in academia unfortunately because the education the halls of education really are a perfect brainwashing tool. So I was abused by world leaders at the time in the late 60s early 70s as I was a child sex slave and one of those abusers was someone who influenced politicians. So it was in a way above the politicians and was sort of behind the scenes not completely but influencing you know had presidents in their pocket let's put it that way an American and also had major newspapers in their pockets controlling the narrative that goes out that is the narrative of the media that is the narrative of hollywood and there is so much brainwashing that is spinning a story that makes those in power look like they deserve their positions when in fact everyone knows that that's not accurate. Everyone knows that we vote for someone one of two people and then whoever becomes president we know that they're not going to do what we want them to do. We know that. We know that politicians are corrupt but we don't want to contemplate that what that actually means this corruption and the fact that these people are lifting themselves above us and that we are participating by giving away our power by looking up to certain people that are about even if we're looking down on them we're giving them all this attention we're not taking matters in our own hands we're not making sure that our politicians are doing what we need them to do we are not truly fighting for the peace that we all want. Well Anika I mean part of the tough part there is to truly accept the reality that you're exposing makes us pretty helpless to put that back in a in a political framework it is I mean it's it's inconceivable well I think for anyone it's inconceivable to me to think that politically I could change the kind of system that has amassed the kind of power that you're exposing that's just a reality I mean I'm just pragmatic I'm a yes I've been successful I know how to be successful I know how to accomplish great things materially but I don't know how to I and from that perspective I say no you do you can't win that game and I almost you know I like the way you shifted it before it the only understanding that I can come to it is some kind of spiritual understanding that I need to overcome and I forget how you put it but you put it quite brilliantly and beautifully that the the personal battle of trauma of overcoming of understanding my deeper spirituality is really the only way to win the larger battle how did you say it yes sort of like that I just want to address briefly the word helplessness because I understand that when I speak it is harder generally I've noticed for men who are more brainwashed than women to shoot into action and do something right away to to create the change you know to go save the children it's so upsetting to find out that this is the reality and that someone you may have voted for may be a profile that someone you liked and that you were fooled then and that you were wrong it's hard to admit that it's hard to assume that anyone who's made it to the top is so compromised that there's no way that they're not involved in something very dark so to accept it it's very difficult and men have a harder time with it I found then generally than women because of the the the privilege you know the more privilege you have the easier it is to avoid looking at you know dark realities and that's part of the system the privilege works as a cushion um and it's also at the expense of those who have less privilege so those with the least privilege or sort of carrying all the pain that those at the very top of this power paradigm are not feeling at all so I have to address psychopathy a little bit because it's difficult for most of us to understand what psychopathy is it's difficult to accept that people that look really good and have a good spiel would actually be raping children I mean it's so dark most of us can't imagine what getting in your near child like that we can't imagine it and so well they can't imagine it in your case a parent who begins sexually molesting their child at the the youngest of age and then sells them into sex slavery at six years old that's inconceivable people can really can't wrap their head around that but right right exactly that sickness that degree of sickness but my mother I would say is easier to accept because she's she's just a sick person that was never found out but she's a regular person you know you could find her image in one of those sensational stories let's say that we see every day in the news but when it's someone who is a trusted figure at the top of the power paradigm that is much harder because we have some kind of relationship with this person because we've seen them on tv or we've you know we've listened to their speeches and we've maybe been moved by their words and to accept that someone like that um is also engaging in you know like my mother only had power over me so in that she was you know at her worst but those people have power over the entire world and so if we want to wonder why there is no peace on earth yet when everybody really wants it just look at the power structure and again it's hard for us to to imagine that someone can actually be that way we can't imagine you can't imagine that a mother would do that you can't imagine that someone you might have voted for would do that but that is what because we don't really understand see we are all about reason we're all about reason and we like to take things from the physical world and you know use evidence and so forth and we're actually moving in a different era right now where feeling we we generally as as a people we do not understand feeling at all I've spent 30 years going through my past to reconnect all the reactions and feelings and physical reactions that have to be suppressed from the incident suppressed because they couldn't be expressed during the incident the traumatic incident because I had to survive in reuniting the suppressed feelings and reactions with their original cause or psychological cause consciousness expands and it is a work of increasing feeling that is one with consciousness feeling increasing your knowledge of feeling it is a a science that is not rooted in the physical and so it's easy in our world to dismiss it because of this horrendous imbalance that we have with preponderous focus on reason as more valid than feeling but in fact they work together we can't really you know a psychopath is someone who can especially a very successful one is someone whose reason works very well but in fact they're completely insane and so this reason and all this intelligence is used to hide the insanity the insanity comes from trauma from very early trauma from not getting a reflection of the self sure maybe I'm sure that that's part of it and I just sometimes wonder that talking about psychopaths which is you know a popular thing to talk about if that doesn't deflect away from the larger part of the consciousness question so let me tell you a little bit about my journey as I just told you you know in the show I've been not my personal journey but so I'm interested in big picture questions who are we why are we here so I'm interested in why science insists that we are merely biological robots in a meaningless universe and that this consciousness is an illusion there is no good or bad there because there is no consciousness really it's just we're biological robots I go that seems that makes sense that's absurd it's absurd you know it's it's no one has thought that throughout time no 90 percent of people on planet but that is consistently is the message the the paradigm that science operates in and if people don't accept that they just have to go look at science and that's what science says that's what neuroscience says that's what psychiatry says that's what it's built on right and you'll find exceptions people who are on the fringes of that but that's mostly so then my next part of my journey was to say okay there is a reality to consciousness that's pretty easy to establish scientifically is there a reality to extended consciousness we hear about spirits demons angels god all this good stuff is that is there any reality to that we really have to look no further than the near-death experience science and others or 200 peer-reviewed papers of people who have survived bodily death and have entered some extended realm and we know that they really have survived bodily death and the consciousness as we normally understood it required a brain and these people no longer have that brain function as we understand it and yet they're able to access it again for yogis like you and I it's like of course remember I read autobiography of a yogi and I've been on the mat for 30 years and I've seen the whole thing I know it but if I have to prove it that's where I'd go to point to prove it so the part that kind of concerns me a little bit when we start talking about psychopaths is it's a way that potentially that we shut ourselves off from the extended consciousness realm now I just interviewed a guy a couple days ago Russ Dizdar and I really enjoyed talking to him and he's all about satanic ritual abuse he's a Christian he's an evangelical I am not a Christian and I have a I don't really understand the evangelical vibe but yet he's at least in some respects I admire that he's at least engaging with although in a very narrowly defined way in understanding of how this extended realm might be working with the realm that is the physical realm because we know if we want to go find uh despicable evil people who do horrible things we can find them in any town hold on a moment because I speak about psychopaths because the psychopaths that I dealt with were ruling the world and are influencing the entire world and they were emotionally infantile so they were extremely smart people emotionally infantile who are influencing the entire world so why of course science will be given so much more importance and of course those scientists who hold those narrow views will get more screen time but it's important that we understand psychopathy because those are the people that are influencing us all day long and I want to and we are blind blinded by the reason so that we see someone who seems perfectly reasonable but is emotionally infantile and because we have not done the emotional work on ourselves we have not done the trauma work on ourselves we are not able to see that and this is what I wanted to say is this journey of mine into my own psyche through uh healing from that childhood trauma it's a spiritual journey there is no way that you can return to a moment trauma is fear of fear of death yes fear fear of losing the physical body and to heal you need to emotionally return to that moment with some faith that this time you'll survive or you can never return so anybody who is one of those psychopathic power addicts has never had courage has never had the courage to return to any of their personal trauma however small or you know it may seem they run they will keep running away from it and that world view from someone who is traumatized and basically only has the physical world to give themselves some kind of sense of self the more you're attached to external things to define yourself the more psychopathic you are if you look at a psychopath you know they are the ones who just get rid of the people below them and just climb climb climb without any concept you know without any sense of humanity for the people that they step over or they kill on their way up and brown nosing the people above them and putting down the people below them that's a very secular view of things which is okay as far as it goes but what about Russ what about Russ Dizdar he dabbled in the occult and now he's spent the last 30 years working with victims of satanic ritual abuse so a lot of people don't like that satanic ritual abuse thing I I think it's undeniable that there are that there are these extended realms that are influencing this realm and I don't want to go there and pack it into a very narrow biblical definition of it because I don't think that fits that doesn't fit with with everything I know but I don't want to deny it and talk about this in terms of secular psychopath the people not getting their needs met it is that it is the way in which each one of us can make a difference yes I'm a survivor of satanic ritual abuse that's what happens in the halls of power they're Satanists so yes that's what happens and I also work with people who like me have survived this that's most of my work now is working with survivors and many of them are survivors of satanic how do we unpack the satanic part of that for for you and I I mean that's not your I don't think that's your focus it's not my focus either but we have to deal with with with some reality there in a way that people can also wrap their heads around that and not just from the secular psychology standpoint but it I see it that way because it fits the trauma pattern it fits someone who has no sense of self who wants power to substitute their self-esteem maybe it sounds a little too simplistic but I was up close and personal with those people so I see what they do I was trained mind control training to release these powers and I can probably could still use them but the same powers are released if we do the work of integration of mind-body integration and that's done through trauma work it's the natural drug let's say it's the way it is spiritual work but the courage is the key without courage without see if someone remains afraid too afraid if you remain too afraid you will be you'll remain attached to the physical world and you remain attached to getting your value from outer things and we all do that to some degree so it's for each person to get out in our own personal way to go within and to simply face our own trauma we don't have to think about Satanism other than perhaps accept that people are engaging in that but I don't think we're meant so much you know so what if you have you know lots of people have experiences I had a near-death experience when I was in the network when I was a child I went to the other side I needed it I needed a miracle and it was it was offered you know the universe is completely reciprocally reciprocal and I use the word God I dare to use the word God but God is everything so I don't want to put too much focus on the satanic because it's just part of everything most important is I don't want to give that energy any power I think what you're saying is tremendously deep and powerful and I don't know if people get it or not but I get it on so many different levels when I get it on a on a yogic level you know I mean there's so many awesome yoga teachers and I've experienced so many awesome yoga teachers and I love that you're out there on the mat in prison and I want to talk about that and I want to talk about how you show up and how you show up for those for those incarcerated and how you help them heal because I think I understand that like I said I have some 30 years on the yoga mat that that I just I get it you know I just I just get it on a level that I I'd love to talk about the mind-body connection and stuff like that so I'm not always just in my head like this but I'll tell you the other way that I get it I spoke with just this last year I spoke with a wonderful woman named Claire Broad and she's a medium in the UK and we're talking about all her experiences and her mediumistic experiences and helping people and all that and I brought up the question with evil because it's been kind of a hot button question with me and she goes look I think in a way what you're saying she goes look for 20 years I've encountered this very very infrequently and the reason is because I always look to the light I always look above and then I related that back to one of my favorite yoga teachers Mickey Singer untethered soul it was just a yogi really you know you can put all these different Oprah Winfrey new age stuff but he's a freaking yogi and that's what he was from the beginning and he says the secret of the ascent is to always look up and I love that line I think there's a beauty and a truth to that that we don't have to dwell in the satanic we don't have to dwell in the occulted people who want to access power through you know you can access power through all these different ways so these people are accessing it through this extended realm who cares which is kind of what you're saying because we see people who are doing the same thing whether they're trying to get ahead in you know this way or that way it's all kind of the same so I hear what you're saying and I appreciate I just want to put a kind of an exclamation point on what you're saying is that to emphasize it too much to stare into the abyss and to focus on the satanic evil forces that are in play kind of misses the point because again like another great yogi teacher out there Eckhart Tolle says it's normal insane you know what's what what we call normal our day-to-day life is rather insane when we really step back and look completely insane normal everyday life is completely insane that's why so I went into prisons to offer what I received because of my privilege I had this opportunity to focus on healing so I went into the prisons and found people who had been through similar you know degrees of violence histories as myself and I just wanted to offer what I didn't receive because as a child no one came to give me hope as even though I was rescued I didn't have somebody come and say you're gonna be okay and when I was practicing yoga I didn't meet the teacher that was able to teach me so that I could feel you know I always had to overcome the whether it was the commanding language or whether it was the actual kind of feeling creepy feelings unsafe feelings from you know the vibration of the teachers there was so much to overcome in the way that yoga is generally practiced in order to have it work for me as a tool because I knew the first time I stepped on the mat oh this is it this is what I need at the same time I started practicing meditation with SRF with Self-Realization Fellowship Yoga Nandas Organization and I looked at the meditation practice as the real yoga and I looked at the yoga practice on the mat as the physical component of the real yoga and I guess I still do it's important to be healthy it's important for energy levels it's so important for physical therapy it's beautiful but the way that it's taught is just awful so I would come into the prisons and you know we don't use any commands at all nothing first of all everybody can participate or not and we keep repeating that that this is a time for you this is not my time here I'm not on a soapbox here this is time for each one of you to not get yelled at to not get commanded because that commanding language is a language of abuse I was a sex slave I know let me uh let me do another of the couple things about yoga because oh man we could we could talk for such a long time one I am very grateful that I started my yoga practice so many years ago because it's changed so much over the years and I live out here in Southern California and I just kind of chuckle sometimes when I go into yoga classes and these teachers are trying to grab power and grab control and do all these other things and that's how you train to teach it's unfortunate because my yoga teachers even you know my first yoga teacher was a very strong male guy who was very into the physical but there was at the same time just this kind of deeper understanding of the paradox that that we're immediately in the mind-body paradox that that is and that we're trying to use the physical in this crude way but we're really accessing something else from the beginning and so I had so many wonderful female yoga teachers who were all about the metaphor because it's all metaphoric you know it's like and I saw a little bit in the videos that you do of your practice it's all about connecting this physical with the metaphorical counter-reality that is the spiritual and it is a way of connecting that I think is wonderful I think there's so much potential with the mat but I think there are so many subtleties that you just did a beautiful job of outlining how it can be not fully realized so I don't know I just want to emphasize that and I guess at some point it has to lead into the potential for abuse there again because we have this power structure that we're setting up and I don't want to equate it with the kind of abuse that you've endured because we cannot but I work with me too victims in the yoga world particularly also that's another thing that I do it happened to me first of all and I say that to the degree that we try to teach yoga and fit it in the current power paradigm the hierarchy to sell it you know I'm sorry it doesn't really work well maybe it never did work you know my first teacher was a disciple of B.K.S. Aangar and Aangar came over to Dallas he was still alive and I did a class with him he was no shining light of you know and and Patabi Joyce is the other teacher out here where I live he's the one what who abused me so you know and these are the two primary V.S. first right so so we are blazing it's a dirty old man Patabi Joyce yeah who was who was a serial sex offender by the way serial sex offender I was the first person to write an article about what had happened and I really had no idea and now it's turning out thousands of women thousands of women were assaulted so yeah no shining light what do we do with this tradition what do there is no tradition we are we are inventing the tradition right we are inventing that everyone who shows up on that Matt everyone who is there for the person who starts crying when they do the first time they do triangle and their tears are rolling down their face that they don't understand that is the practice not these sage on the stage idiots that were kind of asked to perform the same kind of cycle of power displacement kind of thing but again I can point to trauma the perpetrators in the yoga world who need the power they need the power to substitute their self-esteem with status if you have no self-esteem so I know what it's like to go through life without self-esteem it's very very very very difficult and it's very uncomfortable because I really I I only started to begin to heal self-esteem in 2013 that was many years after I started therapy that I was 49 like beginning of self-esteem 49 years old without self-esteem life is very uncomfortable and I see I didn't have self-esteem so I'm extremely uncomfortable the only power that I didn't get addicted to was the power the female power of you know attracting men looking good whatever that's what I was addicted to that was the thing if I didn't have that I would have just crumbled and you know dissolved or something other than that there was always these choices that I could make do I choose the power and get to belong to the cool club and get to pretend or do I choose truth and so I was too much too afraid of power because of my experiences so I would choose truth and then I would suffer and I would be laughed at or whatever but not comfortable at all it's very hard and it's not as if when I got laughed at then I didn't necessarily think that I made a mistake or something but I would go to therapy go to what is underneath that discomfort or whatever occurred whatever emerged my reactions my emotions can be traced back to their psychological origin and once they're connected once you know courage is like a muscle too I keep bringing it to courage because it's the key to bringing us out of this physical realm that is all about reason and where there's no room for anything else the courage to face the fear of death literally emotionally but you're sitting in a therapist's office of your your by yourself or there's someone there that you begin to trust or there's someone that you just look up to and you just expect that they're going to be like a perpetrator but instead they're they're kind to you and so it's confusing and you start testing them because now that part that was never seen or heard or understood is just coming to life and you just compulsively are annoying this person and you expect they're going to reject you and then you're going to feel vindict you're going to feel that you're not lovable again and instead they affirm something positive about you and suddenly it hits you that you are not only that you are okay on a deeper level but that you were always okay and that what was done to you was actually the other person's stuff and you've been carrying it around for them you've been trying to carry it around for them yeah I mean there was like about a million things that you just touched on there that we but I'm talking about courage well yeah let me let me poke at that a little bit because that's what I like to do I like to poke people all right good I like to I like to be challenged good so number one you're going to have to understand that you've given an entirely different definition to the meaning of the word privilege right so I love the way that you say you go into prison because you're privileged because most people do not accept they would not associate your experience your life experiences with one I like in the United States oh yeah bullshit that's don't buy into that and see the the greater reality that we are all privileged and we're all underprivileged just like the whole feminine you know you're in this suit that you're occupying and you're playing the role of the costume fits and I know the script so I'll play the part and you're playing your part I'm playing my part but the woman male all that kind of stuff gets mixed up too and then also I think you also give a new new definition to the meaning of the word rescue that you are rescued rescued you were on the brink of being the in the final stage which is murder which so many of the people in this situation children both men and women face the final act is an act of murder and you were on the verge of that and you were rescued from that okay get I get it we'll use that term but actually I was in the sense that one of the perpetrators did negotiate to get me out that moment of what would be called weakness in the context of the network he did pay with his life for that no kindness goes unpunished and that ah there we go the the other thing I think that the courage thing I think is is interesting and I totally get where you're coming from I tell you like one I look at that I've rarely ever shared this kind of stuff but like one of the things I do I do an ice bath almost every day you know and I learned it from Wim Hof was just a yogi you know all this breathing and world records he's just a freaking yogi just listened to his account but so here's a guy who's I think it relates in a way his story is his wife is committed suicide he has three kids he's completely stunned traumatized doesn't know what to do he's walking along the street and he sees a lake frozen over and he goes I'm jumping in I don't want to kill myself but I'm jumping in and in that moment of that freezing cold water he gets a moment of clarity where that yacking voice that's telling us we're not worthy or we're super worthy or whatever we're privileged or we're a social justice warrior whatever the fuck it's telling us at the time that mind stops for him for a minute and he's able to observe and he says you know I don't know what it is but that's therapy for me and that's where I'm going and I think that that yoga can be that kind of therapy for people too I try and bring that to to the yoga mat of being of getting to that place that I relate more to the muscle part than the courage part because to me getting to that reality that I am merely an observer of this experience is the reality and I don't think you disagree with that at all but let's play around since you brought up the term the discipline of yoga the versus the courage of yoga and both well I'm not putting down but one word over another but what about the discipline you have to be disciplined and that helps in this regard but go ahead please I think of yoga obviously as the whole package to lead you to enlightenment that is to say to expand our consciousness to the point where we do not need to come back here to school to learn our lessons to learn that we are not this physical body to fully overcome fear of death to fully overcome our fears to um unite with the the the greater truer subtler part of our of our being that's the purpose of yoga is to find god and I mean it sometimes god is a charged word but it's to find enlightenment let's say so that's that's the purpose of yoga so I fit everything that goes into that so I think primarily meditation I found that to be a more broad scope practice let's say it's helped me on a deeper level it's helped me make sense of my story it's helped me see my story and my issues in a much larger context that I needed otherwise I would have never been able to so to get out sanely and the physical practice I I do I mean I don't want to and I obviously don't want to downplay it but it's really mostly for me a physical I mean the best physical exercise there is with because of the breathing and hey let's stop and pause for a minute on that and I want you to speak to you have a deep understanding of this stuff Anika and everything you're sharing is is so meaningful on so many different levels I hope I can put this interview together in a way that makes sense to people what is your deeper understanding of that mind body spirit connection as it physically takes place on a yoga mat because I think a lot of people as you're alluding to they go they do a studio yoga class or they encounter yoga and they they get it but they don't get it on that deeper level well again yoga is so broad that I think it works on every level so and initially for me it helped me be inside have my consciousness be actually in my body I had no body consciousness because of the abuse so I was completely dissociated from my body it brought me back into my body brought my focus my consciousness back in my body you already mentioned a little bit about your work with incarcerated people people who are in prison and bringing yoga and the unique challenges and opportunities associated with that what do you think is typically going on that is most misunderstood about someone who sits down on a yoga mat maybe for the first time and experiences something but doesn't understand what the larger context is so tell us about that and how that fits in with this non-profit business that you have liberation prison yoga I think what I find the most beautiful part of the work is not only to help people to relax to help people just through the language helping people understand that this is a time to just be that they don't have to do anything they don't have to be anyone that this is a time to just be and that can be whatever there is complete freedom in that to experience a little bit of sense of freedom of this relief of all the pressures not only from prison life but all pressures each one of our classes yes there can be a physical aspect to it depending but you know there's the focus is for me to help people feel completely comfortable on the mat and safe so knowing that there's nothing that I say that they have to do and that we're going I'm going to guide a meditation and this is always speaking to the self as the pure light within the the consciousness the pure consciousness beyond the body beyond circumstances beyond the physical world which informs us and it's just to provide some kind of an opportunity to go in and to tap into that source and to feel the nurturing and the sense of safety that comes from that there's a wonderful grounding part of it isn't it because it is so physical Anika thank you so so much this has been just a wonderful chat for me I've really enjoyed it for people who want to learn more about your work and follow what you're doing and maybe help your cause at liberation prison yoga but also want to find out more about your help and advocacy and helping for children who are enduring these kind of horrible crimes where should they go to learn more yes my my website is anikalucus.com great well we'll definitely have a link to that in the show and again thank you so much nice to meet you nice to meet you you're such a wonderful embodiment of that yoga spirit I really appreciate it thanks again to Anika Lucas for joining me today on Skeptico the one question I tee up from this interview and it's the question I keep drilling at and I'm not really I think totally connecting with people on this but I'm going to keep pounding on it is does evil exist in the extended consciousness realm so we can listen to Russ Dizdar awesome guy and he's saying hey these guys are satanist and they're practicing it which has these crazy parallels with like Dr. Hugh Urban Ohio State University but even when you hear Anika as beautiful as she is and speaking about this she's still talking about it from this kind of secular psychological angle which is a huge part of it no doubt but doesn't it make a difference that they are actively trying to connect with beings entities spirits in the extended consciousness realm and asking those spirits those entities to help them in these horrible evil deeds they are committing in this world doesn't that matter it sure as heck seems to matter to me love to hear your thoughts on it as usual the place to do it is the Skeptico forum where you can connect with other people who like to talk about this stuff be sure to visit the Skeptico website and download all these shows for free listen to them know ads or anything like that just see if they you think they're as important as I think they are and pass them along to whoever you think needs to hear about this stuff thanks so much for joining me it's so terrific having you along for the ride and I can't tell you how much I enjoy when I hear people who say I listen to the show and it got me thinking or it made me mad or whatever I just love the fact that this magical thing happens where I talk into this microphone alone in my little room here and I somehow connect with you I think that's magic until next time take care bye for now