Episode 05 - Yoga for Increased Consciousness and Innovation with Navi Radjou
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SHOW NOTES
Yoga for Increased Consciousness and Innovation featuring Navi Radjou
Navi Radjou is a New York-based innovation and leadership thinker who advises senior executives worldwide on breakthrough growth strategies. A Fellow at Cambridge Judge Business School, Navi has served on the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Innovation & Entrepreneurship. Previously, he served as vice president at Forrester Research, a leading technology research and advisory firm in Boston. In 2013, Navi won the prestigious Thinkers50 Innovation Award – given to a management thinker who is re-shaping the way we think about and practice innovation. He delivered a talk at TED Global 2014 on frugal innovation (over 1.8 million views).
Navi co-authored Frugal Innovation: How To Do Better With Less, published by The Economist in 2015, as well as the global bestseller, Jugaad Innovation (over 250,000 copies sold worldwide). He is a sought-after keynote speaker and widely quoted in international media. Born and raised in Pondicherry, India, he holds dual French-American citizenship. He attended Ecole Centrale Paris and Yale School of Management. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. He is a life-long student of Ayurveda, Yoga, and Vipassana meditation.
IN THIS EPISODE:
In this episode, Navi Radjou discusses these topics:
You were raised in India. Tell us about your childhood and your connection to yoga and spirituality.
Was there a significant turning point in your life where yoga became something more for you?
You recently shared a posted on twitter:
In 1930, Albert Einstein, Nobel laureate in physics, met Rabindranath Tagore, Indian poet and Nobel laureate in literature. Art emanates from Heart + Soul + Body, Science is driven mostly by the Mind. To become conscious beings we need to integrate our body, mind, heart, soul.
I believe that science comes from the heart and the gut as much as it comes from the mind. Tell us more about this post and the connection of body, mind, heart, and soul.
Talk about your article on the symbol zero and the significance of letting go of that which no longer serves us. "Hence, I feel 2020 – dominated by COVID-19 – gives me once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to return to “zero state” to empty myself of all of my deep-seated fears and inhibitions once for all and regenerate my being so I can let my soul express itself unhindered."
What is important about the five koshas in your TedX Cannes talk.
How can yoga help us connect to true self?
You wrote the book on Frugal Innovation. How does this concept serve us in business and in life?
What do we gain from expanded consciousness?
LINKS
TED Speaker | Thinkers50 Innovation Award Winner
Coauthor: Jugaad Innovation, From Smart To Wise, and Frugal Innovation available on Amazon
Thrive Global article, Five Anxiety Busting Techniques to Keep You Sane During Covid-19
Thrive Global article, Want to Feel Happy? Empty Yourself
Navi Radjou on LinkedIn and on Wikipedia and on Twitter
Ted Talk, Creative Problem Solving in the Face of Extreme Limits
Featured Articles on Strategy + Business
Video: Innovation Frugale: Faire Mieux avec Moins
Video: Leading Wisely in a Conscious Society
Video: My inner journey to freedom - becoming the Indiana Jones of Consciousness
Peace Mantra With Lyrics | Om Purnamadah Purnamidam Purnat Purnamudachyate - ॐ शांति शांति शांति
Purnatva and Shunyata: The dance between fullness and emptiness by Natalie Rousseau
TRANSCRIPT
(Please excuse any errors in the transcription.)
Monica Phillips (00:00:05):
Welcome everyone to yoga philosophy for everyday living. This podcast is here to share with you what we can do to bring the wonderful ancient wisdom of yoga philosophy into our everyday lives. I'm so glad to be here with Navi Radjou. Welcome Navi.
Navi Radjou (00:00:57):
Thanks for having me on, Monica.
Monica Phillips (00:00:59):
You have such an incredible background and I've just been loving talking with you about all things, French, yoga consciousness, enlightenment...
Monica Phillips (00:01:13):
We'll have to find a way to work all of these topics into this conversation. You now live in New York. You had been living in Silicon Valley for a while. You grew up in India, and then at the peak of your career, you had a severe burnout. And we're going to hear more about how you found Ayurveda, whether you grew up with it or not. You mentioned Sanskrit, how you learned Sanskrit and then how that got you to where you are now in 2015. You co-authored "How to do Better with Less: Frugal Innovation." We both share a bad habit of buying too many books. When I moved back from Paris, I went with one backpack and a side bag, and I came back with that backpack side bag and then four bags of books.
Monica Phillips (00:01:56):
I can imagine.
Monica Phillips (00:01:57):
You said you bought how many books since you moved to New York?
Navi Radjou (00:02:01):
200.
Monica Phillips (00:02:01):
You have done some incredible work as serving on the World Economic Forum, Global Futures Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and advising senior executives worldwide on breakthrough growth strategies. Before that you were vice president of Forrester research, a leading technology research and advisory firm in Boston. And in 2013, you won the prestigious Thinkers 50 Innovation Awards. So how did you get to be so innovative?
Navi Radjou (00:02:43):
Partly it may be due to my multicultural background, right? Because I'm Indian. I am French, and now American for the past 20 years. I think innovation is synonymous with change. And I always had this desire for change, changing the world, I guess, you know, changing things around me for the better. So yeah, I think it has been ingrained in me. So I'm using my multicultural background to see how we can bring about change by combining insights, ideas, traditions, philosophies from East and West. So as we say, most innovation emerges from the combination of different things. And so I'm lucky enough to have these amazing ingredients that come from different parts of the world. So I'm focusing on creating the right recipe that combines and recombines these cultural ingredients from the three cultures that I belong to, to create innovative solutions that could be helpful for the whole humanity.
Monica Phillips (00:03:42):
That is so interesting because before we started recording, you were talking about intellectualism and snobbishness and how that is perceived and what you just said, I'm thinking, we know that diversity enhances organizations. It allows people to thrive because you get more perspectives. When we have a world view, we gain more. Even the sense of abundance versus scarcity. And as you just said it, I was thinking when we can travel and meet people from all walks of life, we build our empathy. And by doing that, we actually reduce our fear of the unknown. We reduce our hate of what we can't see and - this sense of, I can't see it, I can't feel it, I don't know it -- disappears because we do see it. We feel it. We connect with people and then that's maybe where that intellectualism connects to understanding the people.
Navi Radjou (00:04:43):
Yeah, I agree. I mean, you know, there is something controversial, I'm going to say now racism is well-known right. I mean, the sense that today, especially in America, everybody talks about it, but there's another type of discrimination, which is more subtle in I'm a liberal, but even our friends, liberals, I think practice that. It's called ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism is the idea that essentially my viewpoint or my kind of culture references, right? Or my way of doing things is superior to the rest of the world and America suffers from it. And I think that that's what the core of the problem today is that America still think we are number one in the world. And we have nothing to learn, you know, from the rest of the world. And liberals think that they have the right formula to build a better society. And it's very American-centric.
Navi Radjou (00:05:31):
I'm sorry to say that. So I think even liberals who are a bit more open-minded actually, they are not, they are very US centric, at least in this country. Remember the Michael Moore last documentary, right? We have to go around the world and look at, you know, the education system in Finland, the healthcare system in Cuba, or in France. The support for mothers in France, which has an incredible, only country in developed world with the highest fertility, because women can give birth to children because there's a welfare system to take care of them, right? So there are more civilized ways of living outside the U.S. That you are not aware of.
Monica Phillips (00:06:10):
Completely.
Navi Radjou (00:06:10):
So if you want to rebuild our economy and our society, I would say, even liberals, we have to go get inspiration from abroad. And it could be, as you said, by visiting those places. But I'll just conclude by saying that my dream is that every high school student in this country upon graduation before they enter college, they need to be given one year to travel.
Monica Phillips (00:06:34):
And to actually go to a different country,
Navi Radjou (00:06:36):
Different countries, right? And before college, because that's the age, right? 17, 18, where you are still a bit malleable. And at that time you go abroad spend one year, as you rightly said, go to Africa and go to India wherever. Right? And you see people who are different from you, first of all, the different world views, different cultural environments, different economic constraints. And I'm telling you, if you come back after that, you know, it's very unlikely one day you become racist.
Monica Phillips (00:07:06):
Because they become friends. Exactly. And then it's not other, it's friend, colleague ,partner. And the relationship evolves.
Navi Radjou (00:07:19):
Because it's not an anonymous person. Right. You know, exactly. Oh my God, I met that Indian girl or boy, right. I'm in touch with them. I exchanged emails with them. So it's not this other looks threatening. And because you actually became familiar with the other and the limbic system from a neuroscience perspective, doesn't like that familiar. So that's why this one year, I think we have to give to high school students is a way to make the unfamiliar familiar so that in the future, then familiar is no longer threatening since a politicians comes and says, the person different from us is dangerous. You're like, no, actually they could be cool.
Monica Phillips (00:07:58):
That permission to go out and seek to understand and seek to learn that I think is missing. I studied intercultural education in grad school. This was after living in France for a year and a half. And I wanted to do more globally. I just thought it was so amazing. So I met my wonderful advisor who has passed away Dr. Michael Page. And he had created the very first Peace Corps training program. In the sixties he had been one of the very first Peace Corps volunteers in Turkey in the sixties. And he saw this opportunity to help people learn how to be global citizens. And I thought, I just want to study with him. This is fascinating. Then I studied overseas again, two more times just in grad school. And I found out that only a half of 1% of Americans live overseas for more than I think it was three months. And I thought here I am in a program studying intercultural education in Minnesota of all places with a professor from California, another professor, Joseph Mestenhauser from Czech Republic who fled former Czechoslovakia in the forties, and students from 20 countries. And I get to learn about critical thinking in Czech Republic and diglossia of Arabic in Tunisia, from the students who are studying with me, who bring these perspectives. If we don't learn how to be curious and ask questions maybe that's because we aren't even shown that that's possible.
Navi Radjou (00:09:27):
That's true. And you're right. That you know, as a muscle per se, traveling is not about going to another country, but actually changing our perspective about that country. So you're right. Yeah. You can be sitting in Minneapolis or in Texas wherever, and you can create that exposure to other cultures right there. And that's one thing I'm worried about in America, right? I'm living in New York, right? We say, Oh, we are the most diverse city in the world. It means squat because you can be cool existing with other people of different nationalities. Hundreds of nationalities are present in New York, but doesn't mean that you really understand them. And that's a problem in this country. That's why there's something called diversity and there's inclusion, right? Integration. So diversity is just one dimension, right? It's how much cross-pollination happens. And even interracial marriage, I think I have - somebody told me - I'm maybe wrong.
Navi Radjou (00:10:19):
The statistics in New York is very low, extremely low. So there's not much if I may say so, mixing happening. So everybody is in a way peacefully coexisting with each other. So we are tolerating each other, but we are not really integrating with each other to create, you know, enriching each other so that we can move to a more conscious society. So we all know silos, very happy and claiming that - look how tolerant we are because my neighbor is Jewish. You know, the other neighbor is, you know, from Senegal and the other person is whatever refugee you know of. You are very open-minded. We accept people from all around the world, but we don't want to learn from them.
Monica Phillips (00:10:59):
I learned all of these really great pieces of information about life through movies. I write them down. I'm not super pop culture literate, but I do find all these references. And because I have a 12 year old, I've seen it more than my fair share of animated movies. But in Zootopia, this bunny wants to become a cop. Bunnies aren't cops bunnies are farmers, right? And so, Oh, that's so cute that she wants to be a cop. She graduated top of her class. She goes to Zootopia to be a cop. And they put her in charge of parking duty, but she ends up creating unity, solving the big case. And she also learns about her own judgment in this process. It's really beautiful. It's like, we might see you, we might say, yeah, we're going to sit at the same table, but we're never going to acknowledge each other's opportunities to grow. Right? We're going to see you as a label instead of the talent that you bring and the opportunities we have to enrich the world we live in.
Navi Radjou (00:11:50):
I think this is going to be an interesting issue. Deloitte consulting has found out that teams that are very diverse end up creating innovation. You know, that is really what we call breakthrough innovation. The groundbreaking innovations actually have come from teams where we respect each other's perspective and we try to build on each other's differences and ideas to co-create a solution because that solution is not only more innovative, it's more resilient because the people from different backgrounds have participated, right? As you said, the different issues that could arise in the future. So they can proactively come up with the ways to deal with them. So you end up building a company or an organization that is not only more innovative, but more resilient. And agile is what we need right now, right? In this complex environment where we operate the problem is, and I've seen that also. And this is very controversial, too. I've been to elite schools. Okay. One thing I learned is this, you can be in a room full of people with different skin colors, different genders, but all sharing the same elitist viewpoint. That's right. So I also learned the hard way that you can also find a group of people to be a homogenous, racially speaking, but they may have traveled widely. And those people may actually be even much more culturally sensitive than teams made up of different nationalities.
Monica Phillips (00:13:21):
So true. I also love the show, The Good Place. There are four main characters who are sent to the "good place," but it's, they're torturing each other and there's the main demon, right? And, this one guy, Jason, he's from Florida and he's kind of, he's not so bright, you know? And they joke about how low his IQ is and this and that. And then every once in a while, he will contribute to the conversation in way that is spot on in this one scene. I remember the demon says like, well, you died running a failed dance troop or something. And he says, no, no, Michael, we hadn't failed. We were pre-successful. He has this insight that is so beautiful. And he has so much optimism and, and hope he even recognizes, "I came from Jacksonville, Florida, it was hard." Right. And so he recognizes that he still wanted to try. Even though he didn't make it doesn't mean he couldn't make it. He just hadn't yet. And this word, I love the power of language as inclusiveness and empathy. This word "yet" can change everything for some folks when we believe in ourselves.
Navi Radjou (00:14:30):
It's not doomed right. That's what happens. Then you're closing it. You're saying that you will never be successful. You say no. I mean, I'm, I tried a hundred times and each time I'm anti chamber of success, I am getting closer to it.
Monica Phillips (00:14:45):
Yeah, exactly. So I want to ask you about your book, but I want to come back to yoga, which is what we're talking about here and how you came to yoga. Did you grow up with it?
Navi Radjou (00:14:57):
Yes. So what happened is that I grew up in Pondicherry, which is a former French colony in Southern India, made famous by the book and the movie the life of PI, which actually was set in that city. The city is among other things known for being the birthplace of a very famous Indian Yogi and philosopher named Sri Aurobindo and who developed something called Integral Yoga. So I was exposed to that from a young childhood and then, at school in this country we called physical education was provided by yoga teachers. I mean, at least somebody who was well-versed in yoga. We'll do some running, you know, like track running, but then we'll also do some asanas, but we didn't even know that we were doing yoga. Right. But that's what happened. So we were introduced to yoga without even knowing that we were doing yoga, but then the real interest in yoga was born 15 years ago when I had a severe health crisis, no Western doctors can help me. That's when I discovered yoga as a way to bring more serenity in my life, I was basically a workaholic. So essentially I was not having a healthy lifestyle. So yoga, essentially. I remember the very first day of practice. I can feel a shift. I started going to bed earlier. And the lifestyle changes were very quick to happen.
Monica Phillips (00:16:18):
What was that first yoga experience?
Navi Radjou (00:16:21):
It was in Boston. Actually, it was in a gym. She was a lovely yoga teacher. She was in her fifties, very kind. And one of the things that I liked with her is that we would always began the asanas lying down and often we don't do that in the West. We start with standing and then we, but the idea was that, you know, the nervous system, right, especially when you're coming end of the day from work, right to lie down and we'll do supta padangusthasana and a couple of other poses to do more stretching first and gradually warmup, then we'll go into the standing poses. And if I started with standing poses straight away, I think I would have hated it, but the effect it had on my nervous system, right? The parasympathetic nervous system, the way it quieted me down so quickly, I said, wow, there is something in this, right? And then the standing poses gave me more energy, but I felt more alive. So I was hooked.
Monica Phillips (00:17:14):
One class and you felt this incredible shift in your body and your energy.
Navi Radjou (00:17:18):
And that was a fascinating thing. Right? You can see I'm very energetic person. So I think the combination, this amazing combination of basically what we say in Sanskrit, right, it's the kind of the sattvic quality. Sattva is actually it combines the Rajasic, which is more active form of energy with the Tamasic, which is more kind of grounding. But of course, if it becomes too Tamasic it becomes lethargic, but Sattvic is this right balance. It's both grounding and energizing. And that's what I discovered through yoga
Monica Phillips (00:17:51):
I coach on mental fitness and it's like that calm, clear-headed, laser focused action that we're able to take when we understand where we are in our body. And we can get there with our mind because we are not sabotaging ourselves with our amygdala -- our fight, flight, freeze, please response we have. This parasympathetic nervous system is calm and it empowers us to do more. And it also allows us to see people and others more clearly.
Navi Radjou (00:18:17):
You know, I was alone in, in Boston. I had very few friends and I was going through the dark night of the soul. Right. Kind of thing. And I was very depressed actually. And I think if I didn't find yoga at that time, I don't know. I think something bad could have happened actually, because I was quite severely depressed. I was very good at work, but in my private life, it was in shambles. Right. I mean, it was really bad. So in a way, yoga allowed me to go within, you know, focusing on the inner connection rather than feeling bad that, you know, I don't have friends, I have poor social life. So I begin to, you know, the pratyahara, withdraw the senses in a way from the outside world, but they had all right, and begin to go within.
Navi Radjou (00:19:03):
That was lifesaving because I think it allowed me to overcome my depression and it went beyond that. Right. Thanks to yoga, I began to reconnect with my roots. What happened is that when I came to the US, I turned my back to my Indian culture altogether. Right. I was not eating Indian food. I was not watching Bollywood movies. Right. I wasn't reading anything in Hindi or in my mother, tongue Tamil - completely turned my back. So in a way I kind of uprooted myself totally. So when the yoga practice began, what happened is that I began to reconnect with India as well. And that led me to seek a new job where I can go to India, study India, and that led me to write three books in the last 10 years. So that's why I can trace back everything I've done in the last 15 years on a personal life and professional life to that first yoga class.
Monica Phillips (00:19:58):
That is incredible. And I love how you're touching on all of the eight limbs, which I cover throughout this podcast series. You wrote in a Thrive Global article about kind of this life-long anxiety that you've had. Was this before 15 years ago as well?
Navi Radjou (00:20:13):
When I was a child I faced, I think the medical term is childhood adversity, I think it's what they call it. And Kaiser Permanente actually did a seminal study in this country where they surveyed many kids and they look at the adverse circumstances they encounter as a child. It could range from physical abuse to verbal abuse, having siblings with mental illness, alcoholic parents, right? The different kinds of adverse situations that kids are exposed to that lead to major health issues, chronic illnesses. But then the devastating revelation from this study is that the children actually were severely exposed to these very adverse situations. The longevity, the life span gets shorter. So not only the quality of life, even the quantity of life, right, diminishes when you experience severe trauma. So in my case, I grew up in a dysfunctional family. My parents were fighting all the time and my mother was very weak when she, they conceived me.
Navi Radjou (00:21:19):
I was the last kid, the seventh kid. She had enough right with children. So I was kind of, you know, the extra project you didn't expect. So yeah, it was a dysfunctional family and I had other very traumatic childhood experiences and then something else, which I never shared publicly, but I will share today is also the fact that I went to a French school, a French school, you know, middle school, high school, and the teachers were - most of them racist. So they were judging us. For instance, you were not allowed to speak our own mother tongue right in class. And we were forced to speak perfect French and I was struggling with it. So that caused me a lot of anxiety because I couldn't fit in. I never felt at home in the French culture and the teachers didn't help us either.
Navi Radjou (00:22:07):
One teacher called us, we are just like a stomach on two feet. Right. Basically we have no brain. So there were other insults like this hurled at us that I think severely affected our self-esteem and self-worth. So it was a very toxic environment at home and at school. Right. These are the two places you hope to get some kind of sanity or at least if not happiness, but I was deprived of that. So yeah, it was my, my childhood, I would say up to 18 was like a nightmare. So having, you know, severe anxiety attacks and I didn't know what to do with it because nobody taught me yoga or pranayama back then. So then I came to France. Things got worse because culturally I was even more, you know, feeling alienated. I couldn't, you know, really understand the code, cultural code in France.
Navi Radjou (00:22:59):
I went to see a psychiatrist underwent some therapy, but that didn't really help. And then, you know, I went to Southeast Asia and worked for three years, then came to US and went to Yale. Unfortunately, I went bankrupt within the first semester of studies at Yale. So that created more anxiety as I had to drop out of Yale. And then I found a job in Boston. I was determined to make it in America, which I did. So I worked nonstop for six years, made it, you know, to vice-president position in a company in Boston. But then as I said, 15 years ago when I was 35, unfortunately I guess, you know, all the anxieties that I was hiding eventually like the volcano erupted.
Monica Phillips (00:23:44):
Right and that's exactly what happens is if we hide that, we bury it deep, like we were talking about - Bessel Van der Kolk's work, The Body Keeps the Score, it is going to come out. And sometimes that looks like hate. And sometimes it looks like fear and many other times it's anxiety and depression and stress that lead us to not recognize ourselves and not know why we're doing the things we're doing. And, it's that pushing, instead of allowing grace, we push for more, like you said, I made it right. Yes. And what did you have to say no to, to make it?
Navi Radjou (00:24:27):
That's correct. I think the reason I use the term will is because what happened is that when I go back to that Yale experience, which was 1998, 99, I felt abandoned by God, right? Until I was 28. So basically I say that, you know, I felt God was dead upon arrival to the US. What I mean by that is until I was 28. When I came to this country, I had this very intuitive, I can feel the presence of my guardian angels, the divine presence. Right. I could, I was always in touch with it. And then at Yale, when everything went downhill, I was seeking his or her divine presence right. Of God or goddess. And I couldn't feel it. And I think somehow that's when I wrongly told myself that maybe I need to apply will more than expect grace to save me. So that's why I have to will my way for six years, right. In this country to make it because I couldn't feel the presence of God and the grace. But then when I started doing yoga, then I did some Ayurveda therapy. Then I began to feel again, the divine presence in me. Right.
Monica Phillips (00:25:52):
Did you grow up with Ayurveda?
Navi Radjou (00:25:56):
I did. What happens is that in India most now, less, but in the seventies, we all do a fasting once a week, for example, and then twice a year, or once a year, we do this thing called purgation, right. Which is part of the Ayurveda, it's a cleansing program. And so they give us these herbs combined with Ghee, clarified butter, and you take them and they mobilize all the toxins in the body. And then one auspicious day, you do this mega purgation you let out everything out. And then you rebuild the cells, right. The tissues and cells, et cetera. And so we will go do that kind of detoxification and rejuvenation program in my family, my father would bring us the herb's and we hated that as a kid, but we will feel great, you know, after that. So yeswe grew up with exposure to Ayurveda and because we believe in cycles. So once a year you have to go through the cycle of cleansing and rebuilding the tissues. Then I lost touch with it. And for the past 15 years now, I've been doing this thing called Pancha karma, which is this annual detox program once a year.
Monica Phillips (00:27:15):
Do you also follow an Ayurvedic diet in terms of waking up, exercising and then eating, or, you know, having a process in your daily life?
Navi Radjou (00:27:26):
They call that the Dinacharya, right. Which is kind of the daily routine kind of thing to be blunt. No, at least since COVID happened. I think my Dinacharya went to the window. I'm not perfect, but I would say that, yeah, I'm doing my best to maintain a daily routine. The one thing that I never sacrifice is doing yoga and pranayama every day. So especially during COVID, I was doing like diligently right every morning, you know, it was like it really saved me, you know. I live next to a big hospital in Brooklyn. So you can imagine with all the ambulances coming, you know, here all the time, it was very scary and very you know, a tough period when COVID begin. So yeah, I would say having this kind of daily routine and the way to describe the routine is a, is a time you carve up your day, it's a date with yourself kind of thing, right? You kind of, you know, taking time to be with yourself and direct that energy, which is always outward facing to go within. And it's kind of yummy actually. Right? I know you, you start doing yoga, you feel a bit, you know, grumpy, grumpy, but then when you're on a Savasana, you're like, Oh my God, thank God I did that today.
Monica Phillips (00:28:44):
Because you have to have self-compassion in order to give empathy to others. And it is this incredible healing process. What is the yoga you do right now? I guess you do it online.
Navi Radjou (00:28:55):
Actually I do my own, you know, 30-minute practice. So what I did these days is that I kind of pick the ones that I feel I love doing. So I basically start with some stretching lying down first, and then I do several standing poses. Then I do tree, actually I learned gradually to stay several minutes in tree pose with eyes closed. So that has become like the kind of touchstone or very important Asana for me actually, because, you know, especially when the entire world collapses, right, this idea of standing on one foot with eyes closed, right, and finding that inner balance, I really realized that the tree sounds a simple pose, but it's very profound.
Monica Phillips (00:29:39):
Especially with eyes closed.
New Speaker (00:29:41):
Then I do some inversions either on a hand or headstand. Then I wind down with supta baddha konasana and other kind of lying down, but then I stand up and then I do 20 minutes Pranayama.
Monica Phillips (00:29:59):
Do you have a favorite pose?
Navi Radjou (00:30:01):
I used to hate the third pose, you know, and because I practice every day, last year, I'm proud to say that, you know, that has become one of my favorite poses now. So whether it's the tree or a warrior tree, it makes you vulnerable. Right. Because you're standing on one food, right. And in the beginning, it's kind of wobbly. Right. And then it comes gradually that point where you surrender to the pose and then doesn't matter, you're not seeking perfection. Right. You're just trying to be.
Monica Phillips (00:30:30):
We were talking about the parasympathetic nervous system. I love neuroscience. I think it's really interesting even knowing that our brain and our gut developed together in utero and share neurons and that we have more neurons in our gut than in our spinal cord. And then we have this Vegas nerve that runs from our brain. It connects down to our heart, our intestines, our gut. There's so much power in the gut. And so this embodiment of yoga is used a lot to treat anxiety. So you were talking about the anxiety and the noticing it practicing yoga. How have you found that to be healing? And what would you say for others who are listening? Because this is yoga philosophy for everyday living, what is that practice of yoga that everyone can connect to?
Navi Radjou (00:31:10):
I still suffer sometime from digestive problems. And I always know it's psychosomatic, right? In my case, all my digestive problems have nothing -- I can eat the healthiest food, right -- but I will still have some trouble digesting because my mind isn't relaxed. So that's when I realized I came to learn more about the vagus nerve and how much it's profound, the effect it has right on the heart rhythm or digestion and or mental wellness. So I would say start with some simple stretching because in America we like to overexert and try to achieve, like, you have to kind of muscle our way into being in a particular pose. And then also the proper culture shows these people like acrobats, right? Doing amazing stuff with yoga poses. But I would say no, do something that feels yummy to you and focus on things, especially for men, while listening, focus on poses that relax you more than give you energy because yoga is not a workout.
Navi Radjou (00:32:16):
If you want a workout, you can go to the Soul thing, you know, spinning class, whatever thing, Soul Spin, whatever it's called. But yoga, it's not about getting energy. Energy is a by-product. It's more about finding that moment of intimacy with a higher self. Experiment, with different poses. It's an iterative process, try different things. And then eventually like me, right? Settle on 10, 12 poses that really feel nourishing to you, right? And once you find them, please stick to it. Bruce Lee famously said, I don't fear the adversary who knows 10,000 techniques. But if you're the one who practiced one technique, 10,000 times. So at the beginning, it's okay to experiment with different techniques. There are different schools of yoga, as you know, and eventually it comes a point where you have to say, okay, this is my routine. And I'm going to create that routine. And you can always, right, adjust it on a daily basis. You can innovate a bit, add an extra pose, whatever, but the core needs to remain the same. And the reason I think that works is because it may sound very esoteric. It's like the mantra is right. They say the mantra is you have to recite at least 108 times because the mantra becomes effective. Like the old, right. You have to say minimum 21 times or 108 times. If you really have time, you can do it in a 1008 times or 10,008 times, but
Monica Phillips (00:33:44):
I thought it was 108,000 times.
Navi Radjou (00:33:47):
Practice the same thing. You have to repeat it certain times because after a certain number of times, my intuition tells me that it starts really awakening certain energy centers in you. That's why if you keep changing your practice all the time you go nowhere. So you have to stick to one kind of set of poses and do them diligently and with great commitment and you will see magic happen.
Monica Phillips (00:34:16):
My yoga mentor, Tiffany Russo says, can you flex your foot and bring your hamstring to the floor first before your heel touches the ground? So in the power of these words, noticing your body, what happens when you lift just one leg off the floor? Can you feel lighter in your hands? Notice? I don't know. Can I do that? Maybe not yet. Maybe I will be able to, after I practice a thousand more times. These subtle shifts in noticing our body and allowing just like you said, the energy channel, which in the chakras starts with the feminine energy at the bottom for all of us. Right? And then it comes up and it rises up to Shiva at the top. So there's this energy power that comes from the different shapes. This community, and even like a holding of ourselves, our inner center.
Navi Radjou (00:35:11):
And something you just said, make me think that when I say do repeatedly the same poses every day, you may think like it becomes monotonous a bit boring. Yes and no, because if you start a practice saying, I'm going to do this practice with the beginner's mind as if it's the first time I'm doing it, then you will notice these opportunities. But if you don't mechanically, you go in thinking muscle memory. Right. Or I know exactly what to do, then you never pay attention to those nuances. So that's why even today, right after, I don't know, 15 years of practice when I do the three, whatever every day is different. Right.
Monica Phillips (00:35:48):
Right.
Navi Radjou (00:35:48):
So it's funny.
Monica Phillips (00:35:49):
Yesterday, but not today. Yeah.
Navi Radjou (00:35:53):
Today's going to be interesting.
Monica Phillips (00:35:53):
Right. Even like what's happening in the world can change that. Yeah. Even what I love about the poses of yoga is that we can take a pose and then we can shift it. We could do Warrior 3, Virabadrasana III on our backs and then shift it to standing. Right. And noticing the strength of the pose. Is it also the same thing as you know, Uttita Hasta Padangusthasana. What do you notice about how you're holding your body? Where does the strength come from? Where does the stability come from? Maybe what changes is what's on the floor? The shape looks the same.
Navi Radjou (00:36:26):
Absolutely. Yeah. And what is the resistance? It also pinpoints to where you're blocking energy. Something is blocking here, right? So you make a mental note and then you can let it, you know? Deal with it.
Monica Phillips (00:36:38):
Yeah. And so we were talking about consciousness and I think this is really important. This blocking energy. What have you noticed about how yoga has changed how you approach the thinking world?
Navi Radjou (00:36:48):
What I noticed, and this is something I have to confess. One of my previous coaches told me that the evolution in consciousness, especially when you're healing from a lot of traumas from your childhood and whatnot, you go through the following phases, right. Which are fear first, then sadness, then anger, then love. I went to fear, as I told you, anxiety, right? All my life. Then I went to a lot of sadness because you finally realize what happened, the sense of loss. But it's only since last year I have been stepping into and owning my anger because I never felt I had a right to be angry. Right. And then me too started black lives matter happened. And in a way, the universe was telling me it's okay to be angry, especially if you're angry against injustice and tyrants that we saw in the last four years.
Navi Radjou (00:37:45):
Right. And today we are talking actually right. Is actually marks the Inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. So symbolically the last four years, I was feeling very angry with where the country is going. And I also begin to own my own anger. So yoga in a way, I see that also as a powerful tool to not just release, but allow you to embrace these emotions because we tend to label them as I shouldn't be angry. I should be peaceful. I say, no, it's okay to be angry, accepting myself, accepting. It's okay to be afraid. It's okay to be sad. It's okay to be angry. And then I'm stepping gradually into the notion of self-love because I have a self-critic who is so strong that I don't need outsiders, you know, to criticize me. Right. So my self-critique is by biggest enemy in a way.
Monica Phillips (00:38:41):
That sounds exactly like the work I do as a mental fitness coach with Shirzad Chamine who's a Stanford professor who wrote the book, Positive Intelligence. And it is about these saboteurs that we have that judge, ourselves, judge others, judge our circumstances. What is important to me about what you said is that we all have a different process of emotions and that's okay. And so accepting that and naming it is really important. Naming I am angry, helps us heal from that. Anger helps us shift our energy from I'm angry to what do I want to do about it? How do I want this to show up for me? Do I want to stay angry or do I want to go take action and make big, giant change? Also, we just celebrated the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And this power of people putting quotes up all over. Yes. I have read those. I have fortunately had this exposure since I was a child. And what are you doing about it? You say it. Do you mean it? Do you show up for someone else? Do you tell someone who's showing racism to help them understand why that's wrong? Do you call people out? Do you stand up for others and okay. Be angry. Right. And then what? And so you said self love it's then it's -- now what is possible?
Navi Radjou (00:40:02):
Anger. I think what I learned is that it's a repression. It's like a, a floor, right? It wants to go in a certain direction and you're blocking it. So anger is simply saying, you're not aligning your life energy in a particular direction so when I get angry, I would say, okay, maybe what I'm doing is not serving my higher self. What else should I be doing either on that particular day or, you know, maybe in a phase of my life? I see that anger is becoming more like a friend to me now. Right? Because it's kind of saying, Hey, you know, you should be doing something better as opposed to something which is trying to put me down. I think anger is a fire element, right? So I'm kind of learning to befriend, because I think becoming more conscious is to see light in everything. And I think that even fear as something positive to offer us like climate change, we better be afraid. As matter of fact, we need to be more afraid. We're having a winter here, which feels like spring in New York. People are all coming out in t-shirts, but I'm afraid. I think this is not right. So fear can also be good if you get the messages that it's telling you.
Monica Phillips (00:41:10):
And that fear allows you to notice what action to take, what new information do we need? What learning do we have to gain? What innovation needs to occur here so that we can change everything changes. How do we want that change to be impact? We want to have happen from the change. So you had mentioned this metaphor of the dimmer switch on consciousness. Talk about your new book that you're writing in this consciousness that we need.
Navi Radjou (00:41:34):
Essentially. It's a book that I began writing in 2015. So it's the sixth year and I've been dragging my feet. Long story short. I was very self-critical, kicking myself, asking myself why I'm procrastinating. Why can't I just get it done? And then I realized that there was reason is because among other things, this country has to go through four years of Trump. It was a wake up call and a collective awakening of our consciousness that happened. So that's one reason, I guess I was waiting to publish this book. The second thing is the climate change was kind of the background six years ago, but now it's on the forefront. So social issues, ecological issues, and COVID happened that also made people realize that, Oh my God, well-being is important. So the need to regenerate people, communities, and the planet is now commonly accepted, right?
Navi Radjou (00:42:24):
Nobody denies this. I was in a way working on the book while I was seeing that the world around me is shifting, but then there was also need for a change within myself because I lack the self-confidence to write a book on consciousness, because this is a topic that has been covered by Eastern spirituality or in Buddhism and Hinduism for thousands of years. And I was thinking, "Who am I?" This small little guy and trying to write not only a book on consciousness, but how to shift consciousness and not just at the individual level, but at the society level. So I was questioning my own credentials and thinking, am I legitimate? Is it legitimate for me to write about this very big topic? And that's when I came to conclude that I need to write this book more as an artist. I see that you have a painting behind you on the wall.
Navi Radjou (00:43:15):
So I have to paint this book rather than write this book. I have to sing this book rather than write this book. If I write this with an artist's sensitivity, from a heart, it will allow me to find the creative freedom I need to reinterpret what we mean by consciousness. Just to give you one example, this is a bit controversial to say, but we have been brainwashed into thinking for a long time that the material world is an illusion. Maya and then there's this kind of the spiritual reality dimension, which is in a way, let's say superior or better kind of thing. So we ended up becoming very frustrated. My God like you know I'm stuck in this Maya. And actually I'm going to write in my book that if I'm Neil and Morpheus gives me two pills to choose from, I will take both pills.
Navi Radjou (00:44:04):
That's being conscious. You are able simultaneously to be aware of the transcendent reality, the caustic reality and the subject reality that's being fully conscious because otherwise you're picking and choosing you are saying no, that transcendental reality is the ultimate reality and everything else is illusion. What the book is about is how can we live in this material world and accept the limitations of this material world, and yet be kind to each other. So we can essentially build a more caring, more inclusive, more sustainable society that actually allows each of us to maximize our potential and well-being while being respectful of the planetary boundaries.
Monica Phillips (00:44:54):
That's right. We were talking earlier about intellectualism and how it's misunderstood or how there's this rare superiority complex that may appear intellectualism. And then versus the likeability of others. When you said, why should I write this book? It's been written by so many incredible others who came before me, I think of the word access, because everyone has a different way of receiving information. And so when you even talk about this artist's view of consciousness, it's really beautiful. And the access that you will give will be to a different group of people who couldn't access this information before, maybe because they're never going to read the Rig vedas. So maybe it's because they know you or they've seen something else or they're familiar with you. And it's, we don't know about it until we notice it. And then we can become aware of it.
Navi Radjou (00:45:40):
You make a very good point. And I think you're exactly right. That's why, by the way, I'm going to open the whole book with personal stories, to what I say, artists, by that. I also mean that I need to write in a style that is very personal. I have to reveal myself because people connect with others to stories. If you start introducing the Vedas, first of all, it's, as I said, it's very pedantic and very inaccessible for most people, but it's not just that. Even if I make it simpler, let's say the Vedas, I cannot connect with the author. So I'm not just the messenger. The messenger is the message. And that took me a long time to understand because every, all my books, the three books I've written is as a messenger, as the observer of what's happening outside me. This is the first book when I, as the messenger is also the message. So I have to share my personal stories, all the hardships I went through and how these life experiences allowed me to become more conscious, but also begin to understand what is conscious of the first place.
Monica Phillips (00:46:43):
So fascinating. And it's this power also of when you name something and you share an experience, gives others permission to say the same thing, right? We were talking about the situation with incest in France right now and how taboo it is, but that now men are coming out and talking about their stories because one person did it. And when that one person does it, then others say, Oh, that happened to me. That's how me too started. That happened to me. I was afraid to talk about it because I felt like I was a victim. Now you've given my voice power and meaning and purpose. It's all of those things. When you share your story, that's what you give to others.
Navi Radjou (00:47:22):
You make a very important observation here. I'm going to give you an anecdote to exactly. I agree with you, right? First of all, incest in France, right now, it turns out that is a person who was my speech coach, Alexandre Kouchner actually ended up using social media, Twitter to start this hashtag called the #metooincest because his step-brother got abused by his stepfather. He basically used Twitter to make the world know about it is becoming as we speak a viral movement. So you're right. What happened is that you see other people now sharing their own traumatic stories, about how they were victims of incest as well. You're actually right, because it gives permission and on a personal level and connecting to the consciousness book, the way I came to agree with you on that point is the fact that six, seven years ago, I began to talk about the chakras.
Navi Radjou (00:48:15):
And I still remember the first public talk in France, which is the most Caucasian, rational society you can think of. I went on stage in front of 200 CEOs and I presented the chakras. I was thinking that they're going to think I'm a lunatic. First of all, people loved it. But then there was a woman who came to me and she said, I was surprised you talked about the chakras, but I thought she was going to say something negative. But then she said, I was surprised because I want to thank you because I've been struggling to introduce to chakras in my own talks. But today you gave us the permission to do so. That was the first seven years ago. That was a big aha moment for me where I said, look, I may be afraid to be a pioneer as Kamala Harris's mother says, "It's one thing that you became the first person of color in the White House, but make sure you're not the last one." Everything I'm doing right now is not about me. It's about actually giving the permission and the courage for other people. That means that it's another kind of #metoo. It's not the #metoo, as the victim, but me too can do what somebody else has achieved.
Monica Phillips (00:49:24):
And you also talk about the chakras on the TEDx stage in Cannes, which is super cool. The sense that the corporate world wouldn't want to hear about the chakras. Wouldn't want to hear about yoga. That it's too woo-woo. And I struggled with this for a long time because I grew up with yoga. I grew up with hippie parents. I pushed that aside. I went into the corporate world. I was professional. There was no room for that. And when I started my coaching practice, full-time in 2013. I started to allow a little bit more of this because I was working for myself. I didn't have to show up for someone else. I had to show up for myself. And I remember this moment, I brought this into group of women lawyers, and I said, we're going to do a visualization. There were some skeptics in the room at the end.
Monica Phillips (00:50:04):
One woman looked across the table and she said "for the first time in my life, you've given me permission to think with my heart." And I felt the power of her words from across this big giant mahogany corporate table. And I gave her permission. And when she said that she gave others in the room permission to say, maybe this is something I could try. Maybe I could be open to thinking with my heart. Also, maybe I don't have to force myself into this male culture. I could allow more feminine energy into the room. Or maybe I don't want to. That's fine too. Maybe if I want to, I can allow it. I find every time I show up with this heart, like you said, coming in to talk to 200 CEOs about chakras, there is so much power. And then this is a huge gift because they want it so much.
Monica Phillips (00:50:54):
And we think there's a separation. And it gets me to this point, you shared a post on Twitter recently in 1930, Albert Einstein met Rabindranath Tagore, poet and Nobel Laureate, who I quoted on Twitter today, actually. And how just this connection that art emanates from heart and soul and body and science is driven mostly by the mind. I actually believe we need all of it. And that was the point you made on Twitter that maybe science comes from the mind, but actually it's the heart and the gut, right? It's that gut instinct that allows us to imagine what we can't see or feel, that's the power of science. That's the power of innovation. That's where change comes from. Those things we can't see or feel that we know are possible. I believe is the secret to Silicon Valley where people are creating something that they've never seen before, but they can imagine it. That's not here. That's coming from the gut. The heart, this vision for something so much more.
Navi Radjou (00:51:50):
I lived 13 years in Silicon Valley and I left because I, I agree with you. I think there is a certain idealism and a certain, I mean, Steve Jobs particularly embodied that. He went to India and that's when he said according to his biography, that he began to trust his intuition more than his mind and the way open Apple stores was against the advice, the rational advice of management consultants, because he said, no, my intuition says it works. So I say the screw, the data, I'm going to do that. So yeah, sometimes we have to override the mind. It's the diktat and listen to your gut and your intuition. The problem right now, unfortunately, is that what's happening is that to get completely into an esoteric realm, we had the Saturn Jupiter conjunction and Aquarius in the next 16 months, I spent a lot of time reading about it.
Navi Radjou (00:52:37):
And one of the consequences of that is that science and technology will become dominant to simplify. It sounds good. And you saw that one of the Joe Biden tweet recently has been more about the fact that it would be listening to scientists. He has a scientific advisor now. One of the issues with that is that science has two limitations. If you look back the beginning of science, that is modern science, it's the enlightenment. And it led to what we call a scientific materialism, a scientific materialism as to limitations, not flaws, but limitations. One is that it's very analytical. So it tries to take something which is whole and breaks it into parts to understand how it functions. But as we know, we never can understand the whole by analyzing the parts. It's not possible. Integral philosophy or Eastern spirituality is focused on the whole because the whole is larger than the sum of the parts.
Navi Radjou (00:53:26):
So that's the first limitation of science is that it's too analytical. And it's trying to understand the cosmos from the integral parts. So it's more like bottom up. The second limitation is that, especially if we say with climate change, et cetera, is that it was developed as a way to control nature and dominate nature and extract more value out of nature in this sort of solution. We became very good at transforming raw materials in physical goods, faster, better, cheaper. So now we know that it has led to all kinds of consequences, whether it's the chemicals in our food, which is bad for the body or the carbon in the atmosphere, which is bad for the planet. Science has what we call negative externalities. On the one hand, it improves our quality of life, but it also has certain negative consequences. I always say that what we need is actually a new breed of innovators with the scientific mind, a social heart, and ecological soul.
Monica Phillips (00:54:29):
Why can't that exist right now?
Navi Radjou (00:54:32):
It's starting. Education is called the STEM science technology engineering maths. Now they're renaming it STEAM by adding A (art), but the reality is that in universities, you still have this chasm between humanities and science, that chasm has to be breached. I think they are trying in places like Finland, where they're introducing a new way of learning, where they break down the silos now between science and humanities and trying to understand social and historical phenomena through an interdisciplinary perspective, blending art and science, for example. So there are some early movements to bridge these two worlds, but predominantly my concern is that if science and technology will become more dominant in the foreseeable future, we need to make sure that it's the science and technology advancement is combined with a certain social sensitivity. And you talked about Silicon Valley. This is great, but only 10% of the world population can afford that - an iPhone. So amazing scientific and technological innovations have to be accessible for the majority of people, which is why, by the way, I wrote the book on Frugal Innovation - how do we use science and technology to develop products and services that are healthy, accessible, affordable, and not only do not pollute, but go one step further and maybe even regenerate the planet.
Monica Phillips (00:55:55):
My passion is that heart and belonging are part of everything we do. And that's exactly what you're talking about in this idea of science connected to the heart. And also what we talked about earlier, which is when we include more people in the room, men and women and different races of the same intellectual thought process, people from different ways of living who can see problems, see challenges, see solutions, different ways, and explore there, allowing the heart to be the epicenter of those conversations so that we're not exposing ourselves to more problems rather creating something that is inclusive to a better way of living.
Navi Radjou (00:56:36):
And some people - that's why we talked about multiple intelligence - the issue is that if I'm a scientist and I'm going to get a grant to pursue a research project, I can't say, Oh, I have a gut feeling about this. So that's the third weakness of science is evidence-based. If you are applying scientific project for grant, you need to back it up with a lot of data. If you are on the cutting edge of a field, there is no data. You actually are the trailblazer.
Navi Radjou (00:57:01):
All the great scientists, including Einstein, we know that they were, let's say bluntly, they were spiritual. There's like a sixth sense so to speak. That's why they can access what we call the Akashic field. Akashic records is a direct science, which is this pool of knowledge, which is waiting to be revealed that they can tap into deep meditation, Samadhi, for example, you can actually access that in another dimension and where the knowledge is waiting to be revealed. So in a way, what we call scientific Eureka or discoveries, bringing into consciousness that is something which is already there. Anyway, is there in another dimension. With due practice you can access that. And some people even claim that. Amit Goswami is a famous quantum physicist and he's written a book called quantum creativity. And he actually talks about how the greatest scientists, the way they access that Akashic field is when they learn to relax. America is working hard and great scientists do their work, but then they take a lot of long breaks.
Monica Phillips (00:59:08):
Yogaworks Teacher training. We talk about the eight senses, proprioception, this interoception. And it is that sense that you get when you tap into Samadhi. I'm so glad you mentioned that.
Navi Radjou (00:59:18):
And that's the royal pathway to creativity, right? The real breakthrough ideas. Otherwise, that's what I'm seeing right now. I see a lot of rehashing of concepts and ideas. And the reason I think is because we are not relaxing, we are not doing enough yoga so to speak, to access that higher dimension, the seven to eight. I think the universe wants us to evolve. Collectively, our consciousness has eevolved and the universe is conspiring in a way to help us do that. But as I say, grace meets will halfway. You can will up to a point, but then you have to surrender. And we don't know how to do that in a modern society because we are brainwashed and thinking that we have to -- even the language -- fighting COVID. We are going to kill the virus. So it's a very warrior and warrior like, and very masculine, actually.
Monica Phillips (01:00:08):
Garth Brooks sang amazing grace at the end of the Inauguration ceremony today. And yeah,
Navi Radjou (01:00:13):
It's not enough to sing them. Then you have to practice it. Here, everywhere in Brooklyn, Black Lives Matter, it's everywhere, the poster. There's a cynical part. Do you think that's enough to just put a poster on your store or a front window. It has to be embodied. It has to be practiced.
Monica Phillips (01:00:28):
My last question, cause I could talk to you for hours. It's so much fun. You turned 50 last year. Congratulations. You shared an article on Thrive Global about the power of the symbols and zero and letting go. And this is also the core theme of your book, Frugal Innovation, and the sense of letting go. I hear it. Literally letting go of clutter and metaphorically letting go of what's holding us back. Tell me more about that.
Navi Radjou (01:00:55):
Yeah. In Sanskrit, it's called the Sunya, which is emptiness. There's always been this rivalry, intellectual rivalry between Buddhism and Hinduism because from Buddhism perspective, Sunya or sunyata emptiness is just emptiness. There's nothing, but from Hindus and perspective, Sunya equals Purna. That means emptiness equals fullness. Actually there's a famous song, Sanskrit song. It starts with the Om Purnamadah Purnamidam Purnat Purnamudachyate Purnasya Purnamadaya. So essentially it says that the way I paraphrase is that from emptiness comes fullness. Yet emptiness remains full. That's the power of zero. From zero comes infinity. And that's why Indians, Arabic scientists in a way invented, I guess, together or separately, the zero sign and they venerated it. And one of the story I'm giving you an exclusivity from my book -- three years ago, my bank account reached zero. Of course, you panic. And it happened again last year during COVID. And for the first time I started looking at the zero and it's kind of interesting because in the bank account, it's a "0.00". So if you look at the zero, zero is basically the symbol of infinity. So as I started looking at the bank account, I got this flash of insight. I realized, Oh my God, the other side of zero is infinity. In a strange way it was liberating. I said, I'm not zero. Bank account is zero. I have zero, but I'm not zero. I am infinity.
Monica Phillips (01:02:23):
That power of separating what we have versus what we are.
Navi Radjou (01:02:26):
There is a famous psychologist called Eric Fromm who wrote a book called "To have or to be" not about "to be or not to be" it's about whether you build your identity around what you have. So if I say, what I have in my bank account is who I am, then I'm in trouble. It fluctuates all the time. But if I know a sense of who I am and I root myself -- famous sentence in Bhagavad-Gita [Sanskrit] which is rooted in self act. When you root in who you are, then -- like it happened last year, whether a bank account goes to zero, all hell breaks loose, you feel more grounded, you're not swayed by life. We embrace life.
Monica Phillips (01:03:05):
We talked about this also in the sense of mental health, cancer, depression. It's not, I am this thing. It's not who I'm being, it's what I have. And I can heal. I can get treatment.
Navi Radjou (01:03:17):
The main claim about Ayurveda and Chinese medicine is that we have the self-healing capabilities. We don't need medicine. We don't need something outside to heal us. So that means what that means that if you're not healing, that means that there's something blocking us from within. So all they focus on in Indian and Chinese medicine is to help you remove that block. It's why the term fighting cancer bothers me personally. And I think you can rightly say it's actually approaching cancer with love in a way. And if you look at the spiritual meaning of cancer for me, the way I interpret cancer is among other reasons, but it's a lack of self-love. There are some cells that go rogue because they didn't receive enough love from you, basically exponentially growing because they don't get enough attention, so to speak. So that's why you need to detach yourself from this disease, like a mother and embrace it and say, I'm here.
Monica Phillips (01:04:09):
And come in and do yoga and find what's inside the true self.
Navi Radjou (01:04:15):
There's so many amazing stories, right? Of people getting into yoga and the holistic wellness programs. And they're able to roll back chronic illnesses that all Western doctors gave up. And I think that's just at the cusp of, in the West, we call it integrative medicine. That's another term, but taking stuff from the East. And hopefully in coming years, my hope is that we will begin to, yes, scientifically understand yoga. As you know, we are trying to use scientific approaches to understand meditation and its scientific benefits, et cetera. But the problem is, as my coauthor explained, you have practices, principles, philosophies - the three Ps. The problem is in the West, we focused so much on the practices and the principles, we don't go below that, which is the philosophy -- why we are practicing it. We focus on the what, the how, but never on the why. So I would say that the real yoga revolution in the West is when we begin -- a new generation says, yeah, I'm going to take yoga classes to practice yoga. I'm going to try to understand as you have done in a yoga teacher program, the how, and that to me principles. But then we have to go into why.
Monica Phillips (01:05:18):
I shared this before. I decided to become a certified yoga teacher after practicing it all my life because I finally learned how to let go.
Navi Radjou (01:05:27):
Many people actually go to the teacher training program, which I would like to do at some point, just to deepen the understanding of the how.
Monica Phillips (01:05:34):
I knew all the Asana. I knew the breath. I had been doing those things. I had been practicing Bhakti flow and I had so much gratitude for all of these incredible teachers I had the chance to experience. Then when I finally realized what it was really about, I thought, Oh, I need to learn more about this. And I had exposure to the Bhagavad Gita growing up, but I didn't really understand it. And it is a complex stories, but now I've read 20, 30, 40,000 books on yoga, on anatomy and philosophy. And through these conversations like with you Navi, I learned even the layers, it was actually this beautiful story. This excavation in 1957 of a temple in Thailand, they came to excavate this temple and they were moving things and they found this plastic statue and they went to pick it up and they couldn't, it was too heavy.
Monica Phillips (01:06:22):
So they started carving away at it and what they found was -- I'm going to get this wrong now I've said it so many times, I'm forgetting - a 25,000 pound 18 karat gold Buddha, the most prized possession of the temples in Thailand. It was covered with plaster to protect it from the Burmese armies that had come through taking everything. So we're reading into a lot of the details because it's now 1957 and they're discovering it. But we live with these layers. We don't show our true selves. And this power of this story is these layers that we cover ourselves with could be uncovered. It's hard to get to that point of letting go and recognizing what we have inside and who we're being instead of what we're doing.
Navi Radjou (01:07:07):
The Buddha story is a profound one. The one you said because it was in a way wrapped in layers to protect, as you said, against looting or desacrilisé in French, but you apply that logic to us. What I've been thinking lately, just like in the Kundalini yoga with the chakras, they said that you don't want to activate your chakras too quickly because it could have very adverse effect on your nervous system. And your mind came to realize lately that made those layers, that we have are there to protect us also because with the right guru or the right inner guidance, you need to feel that carefully. Because if you get exposed too quickly to the inner core, it's like a nuclear power plant. That inner core is always protected inner sanctum because it's highly, highly energized. Sometime I glimpse at that, trust me, it's so powerful.
Navi Radjou (01:08:01):
That's why a simple atom -- imagine the energy it can release. The Anu in Sanskrit. And I think that that's infinitely small as to be wrapped in so many layers because it can unleash so much energy. So that's why the Asana everything is to create a safe inner structure that can contain that energy outburst when it happens. I think that's kind of where we are heading. So we already talked about is that essentially we say that the body's a temple of the soul, but it goes one step further is that literally your body becomes the vehicle of the soul, but that point where essentially you can have spontaneous healing, you can start healing others to get to that point. Otherwise they could also, if there's an outburst of energy, right, literally you can, you can burn. It's like a radioactive endometrial. I also think that essentially collectively we have come to a point where we are ready now to start peeling some of the layers, because I think we have matured in terms of consciousness enough to become more in touch with our collective soul.
Navi Radjou (01:09:04):
That wasn't the case. Even I would say 10, 20 years ago. But if you look at what happened the last couple of years, I can see that there's an acceleration. And by the way, Vivekenanda the famous Yogi philosopher famously said that yoga is a science of accelerating consciousness. So the point is that if we allow nature to evolve our consciousness, it will take centuries. So yoga is like being on fast track. And that's why I think we all have to be yoga so that essentially we can evolve. Our consciousness relate to the quickly given the big challenges we are facing, right? As humanity, climate change, social inequality. I think everything is coming. This conversation we are having is very timely because Inauguration happened today. The first woman of color in the White House, amazing things are starting and it's going to accelerate in the next 10 years. You're going to see an incredible acceleration, not only in the scientific realm. My hunch is that we are going to see miracles happening in the spiritual route.
Monica Phillips (01:09:57):
I believe it, I've experienced it. And the eras we live through are getting shorter and shorter and each switch in our revelations is quicker and quicker. And if we don't connect to the heart, we're going to miss something really important.
Navi Radjou (01:10:11):
This means that next few years, not to end on a sour note, but there'll be even more polarization because a lot of people resist.
Monica Phillips (01:10:19):
Because they have too many layers.
Navi Radjou (01:10:21):
So we need to be gentle as coaches and advisors. I'm doing my best as well to think about, okay, for each client, you need different approach. You need to catch all them. You know, you need to do whatever techniques needed to get them to open up. And I think the age, the era of one fit all, cookie-cutter approach to spiritual development is over. And that sounds controversial. But I think all the things we have seen up to now kind of mass-produced ways of doing things will be replaced by a different era, which is more like a do it yourself with the right support, which is exciting for me because everyone is unique, right? Different. So as coaches and consultants, we need to look at each client and say, okay, each is unique. Each person is unique. Each company is unique and then come up with a roadmap or advice, which is really tailored to them. And that's very difficult right now because we love mass-produced solutions.
Monica Phillips (01:11:18):
And ultimately when we uncover our layers, it's a very personal solution.
Navi Radjou (01:11:23):
We are expected to come save the company with, we are like the prophet. We bring the light. And now I say, no, I'm more like an advisor where I try to help you discover your own light. And as you rightly said, that means that I don't bring the solution. I help you uncover your own custom solution. And your solution is different from the other client I'm helping right now. And that's why, if you look at the consulting world, I see a perfect storm coming They have become so big so they basically come up with these cookie-cutter approaches to solving problems. That won't work.
Monica Phillips (01:11:54):
Well. That's what I love about coaching too. So I'm so glad you said that.
Navi Radjou (01:11:57):
It's a sacred work because we are not advising them at the mind level or the body level, but it's actually at the soul level.
Monica Phillips (01:12:04):
It's allowing people to see themselves more clearly, pretty powerful. Navi Radjou, thank you so much for joining me.
Navi Radjou (01:12:12):
Thank you so much for having me.
Monica Phillips (01:12:12):
This has been such a pleasure. I have learned so much from you and what an incredibly fun conversation.
Navi Radjou (01:12:18):
I also learned a lot from this conversation. Thank you very much.
Monica Phillips (01:12:18):
Thank you so much.