Become One Living
Welcome to the BecomeOne Living Podcast. While yoga maybe the entry way into a deeper understanding of self, we invite you to dive even deeper into your practice. Here we will explore the transformative power of yogic philosophy, anatomy, and mindfulness.
In each episode, we embark on a journey through the rich
tapestry of yoga, drawing from various traditions and perspectives. From the ancient
teachings of The Gita to the mystical insights of the Akashic records, we delve
into the timeless wisdom that has guided seekers for centuries.
We bridge the gap between science and spirituality, exploring
the fascinating intersection of neuroscience and anatomy with yoga. Discover
how understanding your body's inner workings can enhance your practice and
overall well-being.
We also explore cutting-edge techniques like Internal Family
Systems and Neurosculpting, offering practical tools for personal growth and
self-discovery. Our goal is to equip you with a holistic toolkit for navigating
the complexities of modern life.
We’ll share our endless hours of study and insights, providing
you with a deeper understanding of yoga's core principles and how they can be
applied in today's world. Whether you're a seasoned practitioner or just
beginning your practice, there's something here for everyone.
Delve into the world of challenging entrenched beliefs, welcoming fresh perspectives, and unraveling unnoticed habits through our podcast. Join us while we discuss a wide range of topics and how yogic principals can weave its way through all facets of life. The good, the bad, and the ugly.
Join us on this enlightening quest for self-discovery, healing,
and personal transformation. The BecomeOne Living Podcast is your guide to
unearthing ancient wisdom for modern-day living.
Subscribe today to embark on a thought-provoking journey towards a more enlightened and informed self.
Become One Living
Maximizing the Moment: Meditating Using Dhyana
In this episode, Dan and Jody as we continue to go through the 8 limbs. This week we share the practices of Dyhana. This episode promises to illuminate the path to self-mastery through the art of Dhyana and Dharana, offering a challenges who are entangled in the chaos of modern existence. Our personal trials and triumphs in taming the restless mind serve as a testament to the power these disciplines hold in achieving clarity and a serene state of being. Whether you’re a seasoned practitioner or new to the practice, you'll discover invaluable insights into overcoming the common hurdles of stillness amidst life's relentless pace.
As we wade through the depths of stress and trauma, we encounter meditation not just as a practice, but as a vital component of healing and self-discovery. Join us in unraveling the importance of creating a safe haven for reflection, a necessity often overlooked in the rush toward mindfulness. Through candid discussions, we share the layers of our own meditation journeys, offering practical strategies for integrating this ancient wisdom into the fabric of everyday life. As we unfold the narrative of inner transformation, we invite you to find solace in the stillness within and cultivate a practice that extends beyond the meditation cushion, into the vivid tapestry of your daily experiences.
We would love to hear from you! Email us at becomeoneliving@gmail.com or reach out to us on Instagram at BecomeOne Living.
And we're back again for another episode of Become One Living. I'm Dan. This is my wife, Jo. Hi she's a forever yoga person. A forever yoga, I mean just forever.
Speaker 2:I feel. I want to feel like I came out of the womb wanting yoga, but I don't know if that's true.
Speaker 1:Well, you've certainly done enough work to get us all the way to a place where we can at least have a conversation about the dhyana, one of the limbs of yoga, one of the more down the road limbs of yoga.
Speaker 2:Yes, become one living. It's a podcast where we share ancient tools for modern living. How can you apply the yogic tools, the tools of the system of yoga, in your life now, in the world we live in, not go live in a cave and meditate and shut down everything? So we have been talking about in past episodes the eight limbs of yoga, which create the system of yoga.
Speaker 1:And include tools like, say, breath, say movement, tools that can create a pathway or a journey or a lifestyle that supports being in the world in a way that is healthy.
Speaker 2:And self mastery or self leadership.
Speaker 1:Realization.
Speaker 2:Yes, these tools, these limbs say are you looking at how you engage in the world? Who are you in the world? Then? The second one is how are you with yourself?
Speaker 1:And everyone listening. You're invited into this conversation because I'm not sitting here pretending that I'm an authority, but my teachers and the things that I've heard along the way are that if you want to be in the yoga community, you have to at least understand that these things are out there. Now Jodi, on the other hand, is really pursued the tools investigated, the tools used, many of the tools, so much so that today you have a meditation practice that's a couple hours a day.
Speaker 2:Yes, my meditation practice is now two hours a day, and that's actually what we're talking about. So the seventh limb of the limb path. Diana is actually when you start to meditate.
Speaker 1:Right and if you see the pathway there. So the limb before Diana Dharana is about concentrating. If you can't home your ability to concentrate for a periods of time, then meditation is still off. It's still a distant task or tool that you'll be able to develop, but we all have, it's available to all of us. It's just a matter of how do you want to incorporate this or do you have the desire to incorporate this in your life?
Speaker 2:And the skill set and the capacity. When I hear Diana, I think do I have the capacity to be with something wholeheartedly for a certain amount of time? That is why we need to go back for a moment to concentration is when you choose something to focus on. And if you don't understand your behavior, if you all listening, don't understand why you do something or how you do something and your actions are unconscious, automatic, like getting in a car, we don't have to think about how to drive anymore. Some of the habits that we do along the way behavior wise, they become unconscious. We don't even know we're doing them. That's why we have to concentrate on one thing and choose that thing wisely and focus all our attention into that one thing, whether it be a mantra, your breath, a candle, something you're choosing.
Speaker 2:Now you practice that. Your mind will wander 999 million times in the beginning and you may feel you can't do this. How does anyone do this? I'm no good at this. No one's good at concentrating. At first, the way our brain is wired is to be able to stay alive. So neurologically we're wired to pick up multiple sensory at multiple times. Everything is coming in. So concentration is saying hold up, hold up, I know you're here, but I'm focusing on this and I'm going to stay with this, no matter what.
Speaker 1:So Dorana is where I get stuck. It's not where I get stuck, but it's my favorite limb, because I've been able to accomplish things in my life with. What I attribute to is the discipline to concentrate for long periods of time on a task, so I have a certain affinity for that one. That limb concentration and concentration is required, or is that skill that precedes your ability to meditate? So, again, the tools. Like you want to shake out your body neurologically, you want to shake out your body, you want to move your body, you want to get connected to your breath, you want to be able to concentrate on things, and this is all kind of like a pathway to the more advanced, so to speak, abilities or tools.
Speaker 2:Yes, the most three limbs are considered mastery of self, and that is because they're more subtle. They're not. They have nothing to do with the outer world.
Speaker 1:They're subtle and they're powerful. The recent thing I've come across is the harder it is for you to sit, the deeper your realization. So anyone that's listening don't write this off and pretend like that oh I'll never do that, or it's just not useful, or I can't make money doing that or anything like that. It's like it's all available to all of us and it supports a great way of life.
Speaker 2:Can we pause one second? Can you move in? Because you keep moving back and it's echoing. Oh, okay, so it's just me, because when you step back it echoes. So is that okay that it echoes? Okay, so it's his not echoing when he goes back. It's just I hear him echoing because he steps back. It's not through. You don't hear that, okay, sorry, damn.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah.
Speaker 2:You'll tell him okay, that's great. I think it's me with the mic hearing him. Okay, okay.
Speaker 2:Great, okay, I Was. I Appreciate so much how much you've used Dharana and the importance of that. As you mentioned. You get fixated on that, or that's your one, because all that it has offered you. All the other limbs Lead you to this place of drawing in and drawing in, and I want to read you something by Carl Jung. Your vision will become clear Only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside dreams, who looks within awakes. To me, dianna is about waking up and moving inside, because everything we need is here to see clearly. So what is the difference between these two limbs? One is you're trying to concentrate on one thing. The Other is you can stay there for long periods of time uninterrupted. That's meditation in the world of the yoga sutras is Okay, I'm focusing on this, and in the beginning my mind's all over the place. Or I can't sit still, or I can't do this, or this is here, I'm thinking. After a while, that object and you Start to become one, and your focus never leaves that object for a longer period of time without interruption.
Speaker 1:Can you talk a little bit about your experience with the changes or the feelings or I'm not sure what the word is what comes over your system when you're able to sit for long periods of time in meditation? I Don't mean because most people it's just like I tried to meditate, I tried to mean. I mean you can hear that, yeah, any, any conversation that has meditation in it is with a human, is Current day, right now. It's like oh yeah, I tried to do that. I did it for 30 days. I did a 30 day challenge.
Speaker 2:And then you stopped right, but.
Speaker 1:But I feel like that there's a reason why that happens and I because in my mind I feel like it's because you're the human is not Understanding that you need to do it long enough until you feel what happens.
Speaker 2:Until you feel peace, until you feel love and grace. Those are abstract to me, words. They're very abstract, and Hold this for a moment, dan, because I want to share with you all that Meditation one is different to everyone. I just want to say that I'm talking about traditional yoga meditation sitting still sitting in silence, and being with one point, one thing, no matter what If you've experienced a lot of stress, if you work in a stressful environment example nurses- Firemen, policeman yeah, policeman first responders and even even corporate jobs high, high, high and and teachers now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, stressful.
Speaker 2:If you have a lot of stress, if you're a caregiver, let's say this if you lit, if you're alive right now and you're inundated with information and the world is very stressful, let's be real it will be challenging for you to sit still. And If you've experienced trauma, sickness, illness, it's gonna be even harder to sit still. Because for me, experiencing complex trauma since a child and living in an environment with a lot of uncertainty, I Never understood why I could not meditate until I realized I didn't feel safe To slow down.
Speaker 1:So feel that feeling safety, the feeling of being safe or safety, is almost a prerequisite or a requirement for the human system.
Speaker 2:Yes, I rarely Tell my students or my clients close your eyes, sit still, don't move, meditate unless they've been with me for months or years and I know their capacity to be with their stuff. If I'm just working with a new client and they come in and they have a lot of stuff to unpack in yoga therapy, I don't force them to close their eyes. I Don't force them to be still because I don't know what they've been through if they're not sharing it and I don't know what they're experiencing. I Want to my friends listening. Please hear this and tell everyone. I want to normalize not being able to meditate. I want to normalize the repulsion to meditate, the fear to meditate, the I don't need to meditate. I want to normalize that and then let people know that, after everything I've experienced in my life, if I can sit still with myself for two hours, anyone can, and it's taken me 30 years 29 to 30 years of practicing yoga and to be able to sit still. Come back to well, first come back to my body that I've tried for many years to leave. Meaning running from stuff, overdoing right, exercising, watching TV, distracting. So one is you got to come home, get embodied and then you have to calm your nervous system, which took me years because I was stuck on. I was on my friends go time.
Speaker 2:I was that person that when I worked at a gym, I was a bodybuilder Y'all can you believe that I bodybuilded, I did mis-fitness competitions and when the owner of the gym I worked at came to me and said you are going to teach meditation, I laughed in her face. I also used a box and I trained with a semi pro, a semi pro golden glove boxer, and I physically wanted to hit her. At the time I was a kid thinking do you know who I am? I can't sit still, I'm a fighter.
Speaker 2:Now think of all this, these ideas we've created about ourselves. Then we go to yoga class and the teacher wants us to sit cross-legged, touch our thumb and index finger and, ohm, what the hell is that? So, coming back, if we clear out everything foo-fooey about meditation and we start to look at neuroscience, the reason we need stillness is because we have to transcend the limiting beliefs. Not transcend life, not live in the ethers, but go above the idea of I can't sit still. If you can't go above that or come back to your breath, even though it's there, you won't be able to get past these stories. Or people say, the ego that has become woven into the very fabric that you are. Our circumstances create us. We have to uncreate ourselves.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's so great that the eight limbs you know. Just you're making me think. Some of the words you're using is that you just don't jump to meditation.
Speaker 2:No, no, I mean I wouldn't suggest that, even though that was suggested on me years ago by my teacher. I understand why, but the resources we now know weren't available back then. I mean, you're talking 30 years ago. They weren't talking about trauma then. Everywhere is trauma now trauma, informed trauma, this trauma, that and I don't even just mean big T, little T, just chronic stress and Instagram and Facebook and inundation of information. I recommend slowing down, maybe starting with turning off your TV. Maybe start with not listening to the radio in the car.
Speaker 1:Shutting down electronics after a certain hour. Yeah, I suggest.
Speaker 2:Slowly, in the everyday world that you function in, you start to alter it there, and at first years ago, dan, I stopped listening to the radio. That's what I first started and then I stopped. I don't have TV. We don't have a TV. That doesn't mean we don't watch movies here and there, but we don't have a physical TV and I haven't had one for 20 years, and Dan and I are together 13. So he hasn't, we haven't had one in 13 years.
Speaker 2:So I suggest, start with those. And if my mom's listening to this, I love you, mom, but we go visit my mother and she is 77. She turns on the TV when me and Dan walk in. I'm like, hello, judy, that's my mom, that's my mom's name. I'm like yo, jude, we're here to talk with you. And she's like, yeah, I'm like, well, turn down the TV, why, right, yeah, but that's what I'm saying. It's not, I'm not saying anything about her, but that would be the first thing for her to do, dan would be just turn off the TV and the music once in a while.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then over time we can start to slow down. But the one thing you said I want to come back to I had to learn safety or I had to come to know that I never had felt safe in my life. That concept of slowing down was so foreign growing up. It was if I wasn't doing anything, I was a loser, or I wasn't good enough or I had to keep producing. So that concept of slowing down enough to be still felt like what if they get me? What if something happens? I know it may sound weird to you all listening and you may have a different experience about that, but what I'm sharing is the more we slow down, neurologically we're more susceptible to danger and primordial. We're wired to stay alive. So think about it Neurologically we're wired to stay alive, to be on alert. I'm asking you to slow down in the middle of a yoga room, let's say, and close your eyes in a room filled with 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 people. That is dangerous to our nervous system.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and cultivating that as a yoga teacher or a studio, let's say, yoga asana has become such a business and everyone sort of just presumes that well, concentrating in meditation and all that. I actually don't even know what people think about that, because it's so asana driven, but the business world almost gets in the way where it's like. I would love to come back to understanding, the understanding of why a yoga studio would lock the door so that when this class begins, the people who are present can feel like it will be uninterrupted, that they're safe, that it's calm, that the unit is together. Because you know, seven minutes into a class, when somebody comes rushing into the door, it changes. It's almost like knocking over the bowling pins. It totally destroys what's starting to happen.
Speaker 2:You just shared upon trauma informed management. In a yoga room People say I'm very strict If you're late you ain't coming in Y'all. If you want to come take my class in Jersey, or if we're traveling, I'd love to see you. If you're not on time, you're not coming in.
Speaker 1:And don't ask for a refund, because that's actually part of your learning. That's part of your learning.
Speaker 2:If you want to participate, don't even do it. You're not getting back. You signed up for this. Be on time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's part of the yoga I was telling somebody, it's like okay, tell me about the basics of a basketball game.
Speaker 1:Okay, you got five guys on the court on each team. Each has a coach. There's a boundary line. If the ball goes out of the boundary, then the ball goes to the other team and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And those are the rules, and they're like okay, okay, and I said now, there was this time when Michael Jordan approached Kobe Bryant and said you might be able to wear my shoes, but you'll never be able to fill my shoes. Now, is that in the book of rules of the NBA basketball? No, but that's part of the game. So showing up on time before the door locks is part of the game, of your learning, of learning that there's other things, that the importance of this lifestyle to support your greater life.
Speaker 2:If we go back. By the way, I love that because I love basketball.
Speaker 2:I grew up in the household with basketball and I love athletes because also, the mindset it takes, the work it takes to get into that flow state and accomplish something mind blowing. Going back to what you said, look at the yamas and the niyamas. We talked about those in other episodes. Those are the first two limbs of yoga. And one of them says how am I impacting the world? Well, my friend, when you're late for class and there's 10 people already in class and we're already dropped in and trying to calm down and you come in, my friend, you just impacted the whole.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and everyone begins to accommodate you and you feel like it's your right because you paid.
Speaker 2:I don't even know what people think. But I'll tell you this much I know what I think as a teacher. No, I feel as a teacher, I feel startled and I feel left brain. So now I'm in my left brain like, okay, let's get Sally late set up. Hey, you move over. You move over Now. That person that was there first, meditating, eyes closed, has to move because Sally was late and now everyone is back, limbic or stressed or more alert than we want them to be, cause we're trying to get people to go from out, out, out, in, in, in, in.
Speaker 2:And it is important to look at your behavior and your relationship with the world, because when you start to go deeper into these limbs and you sit with yourself, my friends, the first person you meet is yourself. Joseph Campbell talks so much about the myth of the heroes journey and we'll have a whole episode on this, but you can Google him and he talks about the heroes journey. Heroes journeys pretty much when everything in your life changes in an instant. Well, as you start to navigate this newness let's say meditation is new you close your eyes, it's uncertain, you drop in. The first thing you meet is you, and I got to tell you I didn't like me. That's why I didn't want to meditate. For years I was doing things to run away from myself. And now, over these years, I've built a capacity to sit with myself, even when I feel discussed, even when I feel hatred, even when I feel sick. For two hours, and I find that 90 minutes in all, of this dissolves and for the last 30 minutes I am floating in this deep. It feels pink, it feels warm, it feels so peaceful that I don't even know if I exist anymore.
Speaker 2:And there were times where, in the beginning, that freaked me out. I was like oh my God, where am I? I'm going to die. I felt like I was going to die. And now, after I've only been meditating two hours, 60 days or 70 days, I'm not sure. So it's extended that long, only 70 days. But even this morning I woke up and I said to Dan I'm going to sleep in and he goes good, good, let yourself rest Within five minutes. I was sitting up meditating because meditation was waiting for me. It was waiting for me. It's now part of my life.
Speaker 2:But I just want to go back again and say, if I didn't understand my, how I thought and how I worked, I wouldn't be able to sit still with that person. It's like sitting with an old friend. So meditation is, yes, it's about the mind, but remember all the stories, all the memories, all those things. They're there. So, yeah, my friends listening, no wonder why some of you don't want to meditate right Honor that be with that and then say I want to meet myself. I want to meet myself and in another episode we have where I share.
Speaker 2:I had brain surgery. Brain surgery was a wake up that I wasn't living life fully, I wasn't going in and experiencing it. And meditation, when I started meditating after, I said I want to meet life raw and I want to see clearly. Meditation prepares us to see clearly. So first we have to learn to concentrate. I'm going to stick with this and I'm going to stay with that, I'm not going to waiver. And then eventually that becomes so uninterrupted that we're meditating and, yeah, thoughts may be there, but we come back and the amount of time that we leave gets less and less and less. And then, underneath the rumbling and underneath the noise, there's this pond. I don't know why I think of water. It's a pond that's so still and so peaceful that I just sit there and I receive nourishment of the quiet and the peace that lives there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can only imagine that the contrast from that peace and stillness, the quiet, the calm, the absence of urgency to the way we have to make life in our material world, the whole other half of life, is just probably pretty powerful.
Speaker 2:When I come out of meditation, I'm now extending my meditation into my life. Meditation has not become my life yet and I'm being honest with you all because I really don't want you fooled that, oh, you're meditating, you're a better person, or I'm meditating and I know God, or the universe, or I can manifest more. Whatever you believe in, I want you to know that the way the brain works, it has to feel safe about the very thing that you're doing. If there is not that alignment, if there's a misalignment, you'll be fighting it and you won't be able to expand it into your world. Meditation is now so safe that when I get out and I start my day, I'm thinking Joe, are you rushing? Joe, you're already eating dinner and it's 9am. Do you see what I'm getting at? We want to skip these stages. There's actually stages in going deeper and making the system of yoga a lifestyle. It just doesn't happen and we live in a society of instant gratification. Oh, I'm a yogi. Okay, I don't even know what that means. You're a yogi. I'm not a yogi. I'm just a person who studied these tools to live a better life because I was suffering. I didn't learn these to share with you. It's just happening organically, because I work with people who suffer, and we suffer because of the stories that were created to help keep us alive and to help us function in our lives.
Speaker 2:Now, the only way that we can see clearly that those aren't true is if we slow down enough and make space enough. My friends, that's called witnessing. I'm sure you've heard this concept. We want to witness our thoughts. Witnessing happens in the prefrontal cortex, so witnessing happens in the front of your brain.
Speaker 2:Stress happens in the middle of your brain, so we want to get out of stress and move all the blood flow and the oxygen to the front of the brain to wake up and say, whoa, I just created a soap opera, and you know what do I mean by that. Let's say, someone didn't text you back. You texted someone. You didn't hear from them. You now have created a trilogy on what has happened. Oh, they're mad because I said that I didn't like their toenail polish, or their upset because Johnny was with Sally. You create all these stories and meanwhile, most of the time, I missed the text messages. So if we don't slow down enough and get enough space, we start to live those stories, and those stories create increased blood pressure, increased heart rate, lack of digestion, yeah contraction, contraction.
Speaker 1:Any stress in any category, whether it's emotional stress, a deadline, physical stress it causes the body to contract and we need space within the body for wellness. That's, you know, in body work. Essentially, you know what are we looking for? We're looking for a blockage. Well, why are we looking for a blockage? Because a blockage decreases flow of any kind. So you know, I mean, essentially, we want to live, even if it's a stressful moment. We want to live and be relaxed in the moment, to maximize our potential of being.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we want to relax and breathe, be in the moment with what is to maximize our potential or to maximize the moment. Wow, Dan, Meditation it's not a thing, it's a living, it's a living organism. Meditation. And before you try to meditate, you got to get to know it, Know if you're afraid of it, know your thoughts about it, know the stories you created, and then back out of it and say how can I do this to meet myself?
Speaker 1:So if it was something that somebody aspires to want to plug into their life whatever couple of things real quickly that they should plug in, including safety, creating a safe environment, and just a couple of things, Joe, that you'd want someone to know, they've got to plug in before they can even start to consider this.
Speaker 2:Okay, as we are wrapping up, I'm going to share just one or two things for you, and we'll have more episodes diving into how tos. But first and foremost, I would say do it in bed. Make it as easy as you can for yourself. My timer goes off, I sit up and I slide back against the bed. Do it where you feel the most safe and do it as soon as you get up. And here's the big one Set the timer for three minutes. It's still for three minutes. Just sit for three minutes. Awesome. Yeah, meditation isn't going to bring you transcendence or into this altered state. It's going to bring you into your heart. It's going to bring you inside so that you can see clearly.
Speaker 1:And recognize the greatest gift that you have here is you.
Speaker 2:Become one living and tools for modern living. I just love that. It's so fun to me. It's awesome. If you have questions or suggestions for a topic that Dan and I know anything about, of course, you can email us at become one living at gmailcom, and you can follow us at become one living. Thank you for listening and being part of this conversation. May we all have the courage and the tenacity to meet ourselves. Thank you, my friends.
