Become One Living

Living in Rhythm with Spirituality

Jody & Dan Episode 19

How do you live in rhythm with your spirituality? What do you do in life to feed your spirit? Join us on this episode as we uncover the nuanced differences between soul and spirit, and explore the invisible life force known as prana, or qi. Through Dan's unique experiences in a cadaver lab and insights from ancient practices like yoga and Chinese medicine, we'll shed light on how spirit can be observed and nurtured. This episode promises to deepen your understanding of breath as the essential link between our physical existence and spiritual vitality.

In our exploration of true spirituality, we’ll discuss the importance of living in harmony with nature and recognizing the spirit within all living things. We’ll delve into how societal challenges can obscure our true desires and how practices like deep listening and reverence for life can reconnect us with our spiritual journeys. From examining the influence of truth on the human spirit to sharing powerful personal anecdotes, including stories of healing, this episode is a heartfelt invitation to reflect on what truly feeds our spirit. Tune in and share your own experiences as we navigate these profound aspects of human existence together.

We would love to hear from you! Email us at becomeoneliving@gmail.com or reach out to us on Instagram at BecomeOne Living.

Speaker 1:

oh gosh, here we are back recording another session. What do we call these Episodes? Episodes of Become One? Living with Jodi Dahmerstad-Boysitz and her husband, me, dan, and today the topic is a huge topic, spirituality, which you know. It's kind of like jumping in the ocean.

Speaker 2:

Okay, let's just jump in. And why don't you start?

Speaker 1:

Sure. Well, I mean soul versus spirit, I mean you know which way do you want to go?

Speaker 2:

So spirituality is the study of non-physical things, and in yoga, spirituality we call prana. Prana means life force, and this life force, this prana, animates the human body. So let me let me backtrack to say this when people say I don't believe in spirituality, how don't you believe in spirituality? When people will say sometimes, oh, her spirit's low, her spirits are low, or oh, you're in high spirits, well, what do you mean if you don't think spirituality exists?

Speaker 1:

Right, I mean. Well, a chunk could be misunderstanding or meshing the idea of soul and spirit together.

Speaker 2:

And maybe religion.

Speaker 1:

And maybe religion.

Speaker 2:

As soon as you start opening up this book or this conversation of spirituality, everyone will have a preconceived idea of what spirituality is and think perhaps we're or other people are trying to guide you into this airy fairy, wooey kind of thinking. That is not of the earth, that's not here, that's not real. But there's so many things that we can't see that are real because they're happening. That's spirit. Spirit animates us and you can see it, as I just said, when someone says oh Dan, spirits are low today. Did you see that? How can we say that that doesn't exist when we witness that in people?

Speaker 1:

Right, so I mean. So there is a relationship with a physical in some sense.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

Right, although what we are speaking of when we explain somebody's spirit tends to be energetic, experiential and so less provable, or something like that.

Speaker 2:

but it to me is we are a conduit or a channel for the expression of the spirit right spirit is measurable. To me, the soul is not this. Your soul is unmeasurable, unattainable.

Speaker 1:

That's the more eternal yes but your spirit your spirit to me is measurable. Yes, when I did the cadaver lab with Gil, one of the first exercises we did after we said a prayer Tell them what a cadaver lab is, because some might not know.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so Gil Headley has created the opportunity by way of his business to afford people to work on dead bodies, work on them being open up the skin and see what's beneath the skin, and then see the muscles, etc. Etc. See what's inside the skull, cap, the brain and, um, spirit. How does that relate to spirits, bodies, up for just such an educational experience. And so the first, so cadaver, means to see for yourself, right. So that's what the whole educational experience is about to see the body for yourself, what's beneath the skin.

Speaker 1:

And we held hands and he asked us you know, what's the difference between us and these two bodies? And the essential was that the spirit of these two bodies has left. Yes, I can make up a story as to what this body was like and what their sense of humor was like, and if they were depressed or if they were happy, or if they died of something just was old age, or if they died of something catastrophic that was an early death. And you can start to make up all these stories, but the significance was that their spirit is gone. You, you can't tell that.

Speaker 2:

That's the difference between a living body and a body of the deceased is absolutely and that's also another word we could use is chi Chi, c-h-i ki, k-i. Prana these in qigong, tai chi, in yoga, prana these words and practices, and there's practices that help cultivate life force and spirit.

Speaker 1:

Right Versus soul, which, again, I believe, is that eternal energetic peace that goes on and on the soul of Jackie, the soul of Jody, the soul of David, that can go on and on and on.

Speaker 2:

And the spirit of things of the world. We learn through our body and in yoga, just as an example, the grossest, most subtle way to the spirit is your breath. And I say grossest meaning the body is the grossest thing. Thickest dent, then most dense, yeah, so what is the most subtle thing, thickest, most dense?

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

So what is the most subtle thing, before there's nothing else is your breath. So your breath. It's not that your oxygen is a life force. They're not saying that that's within the oxygen is a life force.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

Does that make sense? People think, oh, if I do vinyasa yoga and I breathe, I'm doing pranayama yoga. Pranayama exercises Not necessarily because prana, a yama, means to extend the life force. So if we're not doing exercises or techniques that extend the life force or add to the life force bank account, then it's not technically a pranayama, it's just breathing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and the metaphor that always comes to me in this is the breath is to the human as water is to the fish, right? So what happens when you take a fish out of water? You know what happens when you take the breath, the prana, away from human. So this fills you up with energy and essential yeah.

Speaker 2:

And there's many different beliefs. The yogis believe your spirit will be refilled through breathing, Like the less breaths you take, the more you'll live. Meaning, or the longer breath you take, means you don't have to take as many. Your life expectancy will be more longer and in Chinese medicine they believe you're born with a certain amount of life force.

Speaker 1:

Like a bank account. Yeah, they call that prenatal.

Speaker 2:

And then postnatal is. You can build your qi or your spirit through food and other activities, but once the prenatal that you were given in this lifetime is done, that's done. So you can only then do things in life. And that's where I want to bring this into. Is what do you do in life that feeds your spirit, right? Not your mind, I'm not saying reading books, intellect, but the spirit, your spirit, and it. Spirit to me is this pulse within us that longs to move, that longs to vibrate, that longs to thrive.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, well, it's such an interesting moment in history because, with artificial intelligence, it, like, you know what's the point, what's the point of of being, and I suppose the point of being is to experience life. Experiencing life and being is spiritual, uh, you know, and, and to describe something you just look out the window, you, you wouldn't describe, I wouldn't just use the same words to describe you as I would to describe some of my friends or or family members, or somebody that I'm looking at walking down the street, and so we each individually have a spirit that is unique.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that longs to be expressed physically through us. That's where you say, wow, she's so energetic or lively, or he's so peaceful. That, to me, is the Spirit's expression through you, and you shared something that pierced my heart. I want to go back to pierced my heart. I want to go back to we're, here on earth, in this spirit, in physical form, in limitation, to remember who we are we're, we're spirit, we're nature, we're regenerating, we're dying, we're growing.

Speaker 2:

This idea that we're separate from plants, we're separate from each other, it, it creates such a division and a death. And we have a social brain, by the way, my friends, and the social brain is when we feel connected and we feel safe. We grow. There there's unlimited potentiality. And if we don't express our spirit, we die, there's a death. And when we're low spirits, we feel like we want to die. And that's where people say you have to have a purpose. What if the purpose was life and experiencing what life has to offer? Not perfectly, not the way you want, but you get to experience yourself in this lifetime. What if that's the gift?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes the early childhood becomes the entrained or the problem of curtailing or suppressing the true spirit of little humans. And so sometimes a lot of our life is overcoming the entrainment of our own families to find our truest self. I think that, as shamans or practitioners, one of the requisites of becoming a really good practitioner is removing yourself from your nuclear and extended family. It's to go out into the world and make it on your own, essentially Discover your truest self in the world.

Speaker 2:

Not being in relationship to people that think they know who you are Right, and something you shared as a child. I would write a lot. I loved writing and I would say, oh, I'm writing a book or I'm writing poems. That's all I would do. And I grew up in a house with no artists. It was blue collar, mom and dad did cleaning, my brother was an accountant, my sister was artistic in many ways, but no artists, and it was as if my writing was thrown away. And as I moved through life, I felt the dying within me, like the spirits dying, like.

Speaker 2:

I love teaching yoga, but you know what? I really love this conversation, and I thought it was oh, I live for yoga. No, I live to live the yoga, to talk about my spirit and the spirituality in this way that your body is an instrument to know yourself. You want to take care of your body so you don't have pain, so you can experience the potentiality that exists beyond your limiting thoughts, beyond what you see. Because in the Course in Miracles I'm studying, I'm a minister, I'm a rev, I'm a reverend and soon to be a reverend. In the Course in Miracles, the first lesson is things only have meaning because you give it meaning. So this microphone only has meaning because I give it meaning. And if I say this microphone is crap, that's because I decide that. And again, that's yoga Coming in with memories, concepts, entrained programming. We lose that pulsation of spirit that innately, on its own volition, will guide us towards something yeah gosh.

Speaker 1:

I remember being seven playing the drums and my parents saying you're going to play out for, you're going to try out for baseball. I was like, oh my god, I don't even want to do that, you know um um so if you live in a household that supports your true nature and your own pursuits. I did that with my nephews the best that I could. James was communicative from early on. He was like oh, go for it, kid, go for it. Read and write and speak.

Speaker 2:

He's awesome.

Speaker 1:

He knows everything about sports and now he's working for a news channel what you said.

Speaker 2:

Why me and Dan? There's many aspects of our relationship I enjoy, and one is we support each other in creative endeavors. It's never. That's crazy, don't do that. When Dan said I want to make music and I want to play, I said listen, get the leather pants, go on tour. I'm not coming if it's after 10 pm.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's where I think. That's where each of us in the world can be our own worst enemy in terms of pursuing our truest nature. I feel like part of me wouldn't do that, almost out of fear and I'm not sure fear of what? Maybe it's fear of success. Maybe it's fear of being a failure. I don't know, we don't know, hang know.

Speaker 2:

We don't know Hang on, we don't know what part. So there's a part of you. Right, right, right, we're bringing in IFS. There's a part of you that, when I shared, that feels fearful. Like I don't know why I didn't go for that.

Speaker 1:

Right, you know, but again so, this guy that I'm interested in, david Hawkins, you know, one thing that caught my eye is this, and I'm going to say quote is actually fictional and their average level of truth is at a calibration level 190, as are slick-appearing spiritual magazines that glamorize fallacious fantasies of other dimensions and so on. And that only caught my eye in relationship to this conversation, because the way that you and I live and have conversations about spirituality and pursue it in your own right and in my own right is really a purer version of pursuing spirituality you can get caught up in, like the astrologer, the channeler, the medium religion, tarot card reader Tarot card.

Speaker 1:

All these things are so seductive Psychic. Religion, tarot card reader, tarot card All these things are so seductive, psychic, but it's really, they're just it could be a prey on a vulnerability. These people could be adept at seeing somebody's vulnerability and just sort of not supporting them in growing in spirituality, but exploiting that piece. Yes, so my greater point to this is it really is a personal, very personal journey, which is why I've kind of always felt a tug towards a spiritual journey versus religion for me.

Speaker 2:

Me too. I tried religion to find me me and it didn't work. And why spirituality works is I want to allow spirit to enliven me, to create and co-create with divine energy or innate energy. Dan is a body worker. If you're new to us and we've discussed this innate intelligence the body has, if the body has an innate intelligence to heal and create, you start out as one cell. When you come, when you're conceived and you turn into a trillion cells and each of these cells know what to do, then how can we not say there's another intelligent energy that's holding us all? I want to know that and live in rhythm with that. That's what I mean by spirituality. I want to live in rhythm. When it's hot out, I want to sweat. When it's cold, I want to hibernate, like how did we lose? That's what spirituality means to me is I'm sorry, I have an excited part. Right them like that or trees are alive.

Speaker 2:

It's like. No, they're not. It's.

Speaker 1:

Everything is so alive with spirit yeah, he reminded me of when we hosted a moda and kavi and nunu. Our dog barked and I shushed her and I'm gonna said you're, you're not allowing her true spirit, you know, and uh yeah, amodama is an amazing spiritual teacher and we were blessed to host her um and our.

Speaker 2:

We just had gotten our dog and she was barking, yeah, and.

Speaker 1:

Amona said you're, you're, that's her true nature. You gotta let her be her true nature, and I just took that and plugged it right in to to honoring people that I interact with, and myself too, oh my gosh. All right, so that's a journey. How do I begin to uncover, unearth or reveal, discover again, rediscover my, my true nature? And a lot of that can be done in just and practice and just being.

Speaker 2:

Most people can't be that. This goes back to almost every pod, every episode of our podcast we talk about is do you have the potential to just be as is and be okay? I'm okay with who I am. You don't have to like me, you don't have to agree with me, but I'm. I've done enough work to with who I am. You don't have to like me, you don't have to agree with me, but I'm. I've done enough work to know who I am and enough work to know when I'm not nice, I'm not cool, I, I and I can make amends for those things. And spirit to me. If my, if I'm not feeding my spirit, I'm dying.

Speaker 2:

When I have someone come in and they tell me something and they light up, I say go with that, I don't need to worry how they're going to do it. Like, one of my girls loves clothes and makeup. When she talks about clothing and when she walks in the room, everyone in the room turns. It's like I love that color. That's amazing. She brightens up the room. I tell her that that's her spirit expression, right, and and the clothes and the makeup and she wants to do this. I'm like go with that. Why can't we promote or support someone to follow their spirit, to follow what feeds their spirit. It's always how you're going to do that. Are you going to do this? It's like I don't know, but but it calls to me and that's what I was saying about us.

Speaker 2:

Dan has never said that's a cockamamie idea you have there that that was an old word, but he's never said joe, I can't believe you're going to do that. It's yeah, go for it. How are you going to do it? It's let's do it, Because if your spirit is pulling you, how could you quell that? How can you stop that? And I have a belief that a lot of the world is so angry or cranky or judgmental because they're not doing what their heart wants. And when I ask people what do you want? What do you want to do? You?

Speaker 1:

know what they say? I don't know.

Speaker 2:

I don't know. I don't know. We don't know what we want. We don't know what lifts our spirits.

Speaker 1:

What's happening. Well, some of the practices that would be considered spiritual practices, like sitting, take you there, but I don't know too many people who are able to sit. I mean it's not easy for me but I know that you've done quite a bit of sitting. But what I do know about myself is that I can listen quite a bit of sitting. But what I do know about myself is that I can listen, and I listen deeply, which is a spiritual. If there's something that you enjoy, let's see.

Speaker 1:

I'm trying to remember I think Hugh practices this but just the idea of revering other things people places, the idea of reverence towards life and things outside of yourself, helps build that capacity to strengthen your own spiritual journey. You know, this isn't something that you do again on a weekend workshop. This is a lifestyle that you learn bits and pieces and you plug them in and you integrate them into your life and slowly but surely it could be five years you get a hit and then it tools that support you along your journey to being the best being that you can be, or maximizing, or reaching and experiencing your own potential as a human being.

Speaker 2:

There's so much you said that is so powerful. The Course in Miracles is about healing the mind. Oh, that's what I wanted to share. What you're talking about is also a privilege. If you're in fight or flight, if you're worrying about finances, if you have a dis-ease, if you have a dis-ease, it will be challenging to create these practices to connect with something bigger, different, thinner, less subtle than the physicality that's calling to you every day.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, asterisk, but asterisk. There are tenacious people who literally use their challenge.

Speaker 2:

Yes, and it could be, congenital could be, but that's the goal is that's that's the goal in life to me is when you meet life with what it offers, it changes you, yes it and how does it change you. I'm not saying we need to suffer. What I'm saying is brain surgery was another way to a deeper spiritual connection to myself.

Speaker 1:

Yes, and you're not saying suffer. But it is worthwhile to keep in mind that transformation is a tall order, like the chicken hatching out of the egg. It's painful, it's painful.

Speaker 2:

It's challenging. I'm not taking that, I'm not minimizing that, but I don't want to say some people have to get hit over the head with a two by four right what and hit rock bottom.

Speaker 1:

That may be you, but I'm saying, if you, you don't always have to go that far yeah, and I'm just pointing out, I'm really just wanted to reflect and reveal the paradoxes that that abound, right, it's. It's it's kind of like some people's accessing some, some people's way of accessing their truest nature, literally like a lightning bolt, the pattern that it makes in the sky is the path of least resistance, right? So, yes, transition, we can imagine it in our minds. If it serves us, that it's going to be transition and transformation is going to be difficult. Or if we're really just sitting in ourselves and being our truest selves, well, maybe there's not much going on and it's so simple.

Speaker 2:

You said, I sit still, you listen. I sit still in silence and Dan listens. And there's a word in Sanskrit for for listening. It's called shravana. Shravana is from the upanishads, thousands of years ago, and it's an ancient tool for learning and being with someone. And shravana means that you shush, you don't think, you listen with all your senses, you listen with your eyes, you listen with your nose your mouth and you don't judge, and you almost don't even interact.

Speaker 2:

You don't contemplate either. It's, I'm here. You don't come up with an answer before the person's finished talking.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I love that. I listen so deeply, so often that I'll be interacting with somebody, and to me it's the best way of improvising conversation, and some people will say things that maybe I would like to expand on or I don't agree with, but if they keep going, I let them keep going so long that I even forget that I was going to want to expand on something. You just take in the person for what they're offering, completely until they're finished.

Speaker 2:

That's spiritual. To me, spirituality is healing our mind in the way of thinking black and white. Spirituality, to me, is continually regenerating.

Speaker 1:

Self-generating, self-generating and changing.

Speaker 2:

And how can we get back into the spirit and the rhythm of the world and the plants and nature? Because we're so far removed. Everything is in our reach. People don't move. We've become slugs. You don't have to do this, don't have to do that, it's. How can we come back to the rhythm of go to bed when it's dark, wake up when it's light. Right, sweat when you need to sweat, cool when you need to cool.

Speaker 2:

A time and a place for everything. Even eating, right, there's rhythms to eating. I wonder what it would be like if we all lived in accordance with rhythms of the world and our own rhythm, right. What works to me, that's nurturing and nourishing your spirit, and a question I offer you and Dan I'm curious how you feel lately is how is your spirit Like? I feel my spirit is low, low, even while I'm here talking to you on the podcast. I could still be here, because that's just a part, but yeah, my spirits feel a little depleted today. Okay, that's that's important, to check in with yourself, and that doesn't mean I'm gonna go try to pick up my spirits. It it's asking then did I do something to feed my spirit, to feed my soul?

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

What nourishes this energy in the body that sustains you?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's the paradox. So it's like the yoga practices it's important to practice on your own and it's important to practice in community. I feel the challenges and so that concept essentially, it's like when I talk to you, it's like taking responsibility right for things in life and all that stuff. And there's always the impasse where you're like, yes, yes, it's me, it's me, I got to go inward and I got to work on myself because it's my own journey and there's always the other, there's always the relationship right With my brother, my mother, my friends, my co-workers, my clients. It's like in the spiritual journey, you can never get hung up on something. You always have to be gently moving, gently moving just enough, because if you get hung up on something, you're missing. You're missing the dance.

Speaker 2:

Yes, yes, you're missing the dance because you made a story about something, because you didn't like it. We go back to the yoga and the neuroscience. That's spirituality and science. They're very much one in the same in many ways. And the science of it is if I'm stuck in this story and I'm still doing the same thing over and over again, then I'm not feeding my spirit, I'm draining myself.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Because I'm not growing. If you're not growing, you're dying. That's a quote. If you're not deepening your relationships with self, you're dying. And's a quote. If you're not deepening your relationships with self, you're dying.

Speaker 1:

And.

Speaker 2:

I apologize, I don't know. We'll look up who quoted.

Speaker 1:

Who said that that might just be from like the Shawshank Redemption Get busy living or get busy dying.

Speaker 2:

And that is what I've witnessed, or that's what my dad did. My dad just worked. What I've witnessed or that's what my dad did my dad just worked. My dad worked, worked, worked. My dad was a workaholic worked all the time cleaning, taking odd jobs, doing whatever he had to do, and as soon as he stopped working he died 66 years old. Done and what I mean? He was sick and what I mean. He was sick, copd, but it was as soon as they closed his business. Four weeks later he died. He had no love for anything else, no spirit. His spirit was dull, yeah, but the society we live in is get a job, work, put your head down, save money and retire. Yeah, but where's our spirit in that? Where's this life force? And is it being drained? Is it being filled, Sure.

Speaker 1:

I mean, and look, there's great risk. I mean, I think Gartoli it was like he sat on a bench for six years and didn't move right and then he started to write his books. I mean, that's a pretty big gamble to decide. You're going to sit on a bench for six years and not move. I mean, what did Paramahansa Yoga do for money? I mean, it's like Jesus a carpenter. I mean, like, what my point is is that we're entertaining and we've been fortunate enough to be able to actually play with these ideas. But I don't for one second pretend that this is an easy thing to do, right? I mean, and so I just wanted to balance that you know for listeners that it's like, yeah, this, you know economics, you know economics, you know, if you have a couple, children, etc. Etc. It's like yeah, no, no, we, we, we are a couple, that you know, we live pretty simply and and that living simply allows us to entertain these things. But otherwise I, I, you know, I might just be like your dad. That's how my dad was it just worked?

Speaker 2:

yeah, dr hawkins, dr david hawkins, we love his books. Power Versus Force, truth Versus Falsehood what's the name of this book?

Speaker 1:

Discovery of the Presence of God. What's the I? One Eye of the Eye.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, the Eye of God.

Speaker 1:

He's got a whole catalog of he's dead now, but he did amazing stuff.

Speaker 2:

He's a dead guy. He studied the vibration of people places and things.

Speaker 1:

He kinesiologically tested every sentence in his books for whether it was true or not.

Speaker 2:

Yes, and we discussed this a little in the trauma episode that lying makes the body go weak 50% weak or cursing.

Speaker 2:

And cursing. Yes, lying and cursing makes the body go weak, which means it turns off its innate ability to heal, to function, to produce cells, to do its job and its duties about 50% to 80% from distorting reality or holding things in. Now, if we just bring that back into place here for a second, what I just said, if you're lying, yeah, I love my job, I love my job, I love my job or I can deal with it. That's what I hear a lot. I could handle it Really and you really can't. That's a lie to yourself. So you're not going to have a strong spirit.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and that's not a complete sentence. It's kind of more like I can handle this and I just smoke a pack of cigarettes a day.

Speaker 2:

Or yes, or watch TV or complain or get mad, and I've done all these things to share. When Dan and I are sharing and talking about spirit, I had no idea that there was more than what was in front of me, and it took a lot of yoga and practice and brain training and curiosity to hear things that I couldn't even believe existed, and hear things that I didn't even think could happen, to the point where I healed myself from a stroke where the one doctor said most people wouldn't come back from this the way you did. That potentiality isn't in books. I had to believe in something bigger and more this innate intelligence that lives within. So you know we're just starting this conversation about spirit. This is just letting it Jumping in.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, becomeoneliving at gmailcom. I'd love to hear, we would love to hear your idea about spirit. What does spirit mean to you? What does spirit mean to you, what does spirituality mean to you? What do you do for that? And we will keep the conversation going on this. Thank you, and may you feed your spirit today yeah.

People on this episode