The Deeper Path of Yoga & Inner Transformation with Jennie Lee

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0:44 Denzel Washington, welcome to Inspire Vision. Our sole purpose is to elevate the lives of others and to inspire you to do the same. Jenny, Welcome to the show. Hey Doug, nice to be here. Oh I'm excited. And you tell me that you're in Hawaii right now. That is fantastic. I am. I'm based on the island of but wahoo. I love it here. Feel really blessed to live on the island. I'll bet that's amazing. I love Hawaii. When I've been able to get over there. It's great. Anyway, what I'd love for you to do is to share with the audience your journey. You know, I know that there's well I don't know, but you know, many people are doing certain things then all of a sudden they kind of have an Aha moment and they change directions, or maybe they've just discovered it from the get go, which is amazing if you have so share your journey with the audience of how you got to this point in what you're doing now.

1:40 Sure, well, I'll guess I'll backtrack to about thirty years ago. I was living in Los Angeles and working as an actor and practicing yoga physical yoga at the time, and I started going through some personal challenges in my marriage and was really looking for some solace, and I discovered the deeper teachings of yoga, the Yogic philosophies of life and how they can bring us into equilibrium and inner peace, and so started practicing meditation and more breath work and really understanding the principles of what it takes to live in an aligned way and through the Yogic perspective, which is, you know, five thousand years old and over time sort of fast forward ten years. I had gotten a divorce, I had moved across country, I was recently needing to re establish myself in the workforce after having a child, and I a decided to open a yoga studio because it was my love, it was my passion, and that really started the trajectory of where I am today. So today, I've been a yoga studio owner. I've been a yoga therapist for many, many years, counseling people individually through the many practices and philosophies of yoga. I've written three books on the topics of yoga and meditation and spiritual living

3:12 and self evolution. And I really love what I have been able to do for a career. I love all the people that I've gotten to interact with over the years, and you know, talking about aha moments, it's really one of my greatest joys to see someone awaken to their inner self, their their their beautiful, brilliant spiritual light and their joy and what really makes them that particular soul that they are and step closer towards that, towards embodying that, and as a guide for that journey. I feel really blessed to have met some extraordinary people over the years.

3:56 Oh that's fantastic, you know, And and you you made point, and I appreciate if you kind of expand on this, because so many times when I think of yoga, and I know most people think of yoga, it's I'm out there trying to stretch and trying to do this, trying to do that, which I can't do at this point in time. But when you talk about the higher level of yoga, and now you get into the whole philosophy of yoga, that's an entirely different thing. Can you kind of share with the audience what the difference is there? Sure? Well, one is part of the other, right, So the physical postures are a part of what's called the eight limb path of yoga, and they prepare our bodies and our minds to be able to sit in stillness and meditation, and so they make up a part of the yogic path. But the yogic path really is so much broader than just the postures that have become popular in the West. And my first book, True Yoga, It's called True Yoga was written because as a yoga teacher, I was trying to impart this understanding to my students in you know, hour long classes, and I just felt like there needed to be a bigger explanation available to them, but written in a way that was accessible and modern and sort of pragmatic for daily life. Because the texts that are the traditional yoga philosophy texts, the Bagavad Gita, the Upas, the blanking on the other one right now anyway, utris,

5:31 the yoga sutris. How can I forget that? It's what my book is based on. Well, brain faid, okay, yeah, so are They are all written fairly esoterically. So for the average student of yoga, the person who's going to go to a Saturday morning physical yoga class, it's not necessarily going to have time to absorb these teachings, these esoteric teachings, and so as a teacher, I really wanted to write a book that would boil them down in a way and apply them to daily modern life, that would make them useful for people, if you will. And you know, there's so many I'll just take one little example out of the yoga sutras. So there's the practice of ahimsa, and ahimsa for all intents and purposes is intentional, the intentional practice of peacefulness. So it's not enough to just not be violent. We have to go out of our way to bring peace into situations and into our own hearts and minds and lives. And this isn't easy.

6:41 Right on the day to day we live in stressful times and everyone that I talk to, their stress levels are really really high. So when you're working with a teaching like this and looking at what an ancient science of spirituality, which is really what yoga philosophy is, it's a spiritual science, it's the it's an inner science of how to align ourselves with the harmony that can exist within ourselves and within the universe when we're in right action right And so one of those principles is intentional peacefulness. And then we have to kind of break it down and look at, well, how do we do that? And so that how question is always what I'm working with students or clients on in terms of how to, within the context of their lives, really how to do that.

7:34 Okay, and you've written, as you say, you've written a few books. You've got your yoga one, and then there's a couple of other books you're written. Just share with the audience what they are and what they're Yeah. Sure. My second book is called Breathing Love and it's meditation in action is the subtitles. So the principle behind that book is meditation for me on the cushions, seated silent is a daily practice that is essential. And I can't do that and then get up off the cushion and go be a jerk in my life. Right, we have to carry the quality of meditation, the deep piece and equilibrium that we cultivate on the cushion. We have to carry it out into the crazy world that we live in and apply those. The same practices that we utilize when we're sitting and focusing and going inward in our stated meditation practice, we have to apply those in day to day life. So again pragmatic look at how to apply the principles of meditation into daily life. That's what that book is about. And then my third book is Spark Change and the subtitle is one hundred and eight Provocative Questions for Spiritual Evolution. So this draws upon the Yogic principle of self inquiry or swadyaya, and self inquiry is to me the other side of the meditation coin because we have to go inward to be still,

9:09 and then we also have to do a little bit of digging in there. So part of it is quieting the mind, but then part of it is engaging the mind and looking at our patterns, looking at our belief systems, looking at the obstacles that we hold within our own beings to those to that journey towards alignment and peace and inner harmony. And so that book is a compilation of questions that I've used with clients over the years to help them sort of navigate their inner. Landscape and to find ways to move through the obstacles that they feel in their lives and to initiate change.

9:51 At a very proactive level. Well, and I want to talk about all of those things. You know, one of the interesting things that you talk about is how long do you meditate each day? And what do you recommend and what do you recommend people? Number one? Number two, you talk about breathwork, but you didn't really talk about that. Is there a specific type of breath work? Because I've interviewed so many people with different ideas about how the breath work should be. What are your thoughts on that? Number one how long And number two breathwork. Okay, so how long? For sure, half an hour in the morning. If I'm being disciplined, I'll do half an hour in the evening as well. I don't always do that, but that's my ideal practice time. That's not what I would recommend to a beginner, though, because you do have to sort of work up to it, and I say just start with five to ten minutes and develop that habit of sitting down and getting quiet. Now, breath work is part of the sutra that has to do the yoga sutra that has to do with energy management. Fronta Yamana is energy, Yama is control of energy, So we can control our energy through the breath. And that's where all these diverse practices of breath work that are getting quite popular these days. It's sort of the next wave of yoga that's coming through the West and getting really popular because people are seeing that there's power in the

11:22 ability to control your breath. It will the breath naturally reflects our emotional state. So if you get angry, or if you have a sudden fright or something, your breath is going to get really constricted. And if you're trying to manage stress by doing breath work, Well, then you're going to want to elongate the breath, you're going to want to slow it down, You're going to want to control it in waves that would be opposite of what would happen if you had that anger or fright moment where it gets really constricted. Now, I'm not going to give a general I'm not gonna apply a general technique on a podcast like this because breathwork is very personal and it's very situational. And so when I'm working with a client, we're talking about what it is that they're experiencing in their lives in terms of stressors. I need to know about their physiology and any medications that they might be on. Do they suffer with anxiety, do they have depression? Are they going through some particular grief right now?

12:28 All of these things play into what breath work I might do with them, because however we manipulate the breath has an effect. And so I don't want to give some general practice and be counter into it, you know, counter productive for somebody, counter indicated. Sorry, that's not I'm losing my words today, counter indicated for someone who might have, you know, hypertension, or anxiety or something like that. So it is very specific to the person. Well, and you know what's fascinating to me, and you know, as I'm here in Thailand, I found very fascinating to learn a little bit more about Buddhism. And one of the interesting things is going back to the original teachings and then seeing what's happening now. It actually went from the one teaching of Buddha. Now I think there's four or five major differences that kind of oppose each other at least teach different things. And it's kind of the same thing with I would think with yoga, because you know, as I look at meditation and I've gone to some workshops and so forth with that, and I love meditating.

13:39 But what I've found is that there's a lot of you know, focus for many on you know, if this is what you want to be, then this is the affirmation you want to think about or say while you're meditating and so forth. And I'm not sure, I don't know the answers I'm listening to this is that part of the original yoga lots of of meditating and so forth you talk about, which I really appreciate, you know, finding that sense of peace and also be able to ultimately identify and do that introspective work and find out where things are happening that you don't want to be happening.

14:19 What are your thoughts on that, and what. Have you seen so on affirmation specifically, I feel that they can be very powerful. I would not say they're part of the original Yogic teachings. I'm trying just you know, scanning through my mind and all the studies I've done of the Yoga sutras, and I can't pull a passage that would specifically indicate that affirmation per se were recommended. That being said, I think how we hold ourselves, how we speak to ourselves, the way we think about ourselves, all of this is part of that inner work that we approach when we get when we quiet the outer world.

15:06 And so I think you could extrapolate that it's it's a natural progression, let's say, and maybe a more modern tool that is effective and is helpful. I mean, I do think that the yoga searchers talk about some scaras. So the words some scara has to do with neurological grooves and that come from repetitive thought. And there's also a suture that says, if a thought is causing difficulty, change it to its positive opposite. The practice is pratipak shababana. And so you know, we think about modern psychology. That's kind of a framework that we might find in modern psychology as well. So in terms of affirmation, if we're feeling low self worth, well we're going to do an affirmation that has to do with building more self esteem self confidence. But and it's for the point of changing those neurological groups, because the more we think of thought, the more it becomes kind of our reality and just the default system of our minds, and so it behooves us to choose positive thoughts certainly.

16:21 Well, and you know, you just brought up an interesting thing. You call them neurological groups. How how old is yoga? How how how long ago did that philosophy come to be? The first the first kind of markers of yoga, which were like hieroglyphic pictures of postures and meditation type imagery, was is like five thousand years old. So this is this is not new stuff. I was taking humanity so long to know. What's amazing to me is here they're talking about those neurological gurus and finally scientists have come up with the understanding that the neural and we call the neural pathways nowadays, but they can be changed and as you say, you know, you can literally change that from negative to the positive.

17:19 And it just is amazing to me these philosophies that are thousands and thousands of years old and how insightful they were at the time and they still are, which just amazes me. So anyway, that was one of the questions I have. But also as we talk about meditation, and you talked about how, you know, starting to discover those inner issues that we need to deal with, and I think that really has to do with curiosity, with creativity being able to go in and analyze the fact. I was watching the podcast the other day and it was it was a theological one just happened to be there.

18:05 But the whole point was, you know, our behavior, we don't behave in order to become, We behave and you kind of alluded to this, we behave the way that we are internally who we are spiritually, and I want you to talk a little bit about that and talk about how people who are experiencing things in their lives oftentimes don't realize that, you know what, they can change that. But in order to do that, they really need to do that introspective work and change inside themselves. Absolutely. There's a when I'm talking to young women about and that's going to apply to young men as well, about relationship. There's a kind of an expression, if someone shows you who they are, believe them, meaning, don't if someone is acting badly, don't think that they are something different than that that they're showing you who they are from because their behavior does reflect who they are, who they are internally at that moment. Now that's not to say that they can't change, but the change really has to come from the individual. It cannot come from anyone else outside of them. It has to come from I think often pain getting uncomfortable enough in our situation that we are in where maybe our behavior just keeps leading

19:38 us into suffering, into disappointment, into whatever it is, and we and then we kind of get to the point where we're tired of hitting our head against the wall, and we and we start to ask those inner questions of well, how can I how can I do something different? Like I want a different result here? How can I do something different, and it takes a tremendous amount of willillingness to then do that hard inner introspection. And one of the chapters in the third book that I wrote, Spark Change, is about willingness because when we initiate change, and this is something that is I think people don't realize. People will say, oh, I really want to change X, Y or Z in my life. I know I need to change this, so they have the awareness that they need to change, they have the desire to change, but they don't have the willingness to actually do the work of change because change is hard and it requires that we pattern interdrop right, We interrupt the patterns of behavior that we've been used to for so long. And unfortunately it's again these neurological groups. We default to the familiar, and even if the familiar is getting us nowhere or getting us nothing but summering, we still default to it a lot until we just get so tired of it.

20:55 And that's why I say I think Keane is often our greatest teacher, because we have to get to that point where we're so willing to do something different, no matter how hard it is. The great news, though, is that once you start coactively doing that inner work and moving towards positive change, it's like a snowball effect. It does actually get easier and it works. We are incredibly powerful beings and we can change anything that we really truly put our minds to. Well, and when you're working with someone and you know they're willing and I'm writing a little bit about that, and I call it bravery, but by I like the word willingness too. When you when you're working with someone and they go back and they identify some beliefs that have been imprinted on them, and I use the word imprinted because I don't think they really wanted that, how do you how do you help them? Number one? I guess I haven't number of questions, so I apologie as I do this all the time. Number one, when you're meditating, how do you consciously go in and start to identify those imprints that are causing the behavior that you really don't want? And then number two, how do you start to change those?

22:20 Okay, those are great questions, Doug, And I want to be clear that I don't teach meditation as a time for self inquiry. There are two separate practices. Okay, so meditation, according to the Yoga sutras, is really the time to quiet the mind. And so there are techniques that lead us towards quiet mind, such as the breath work, such as focusing on a mantra or a visualization of I often use a visualization of the breath within the body. And so with those tools we are focusing the mind on a single point in order to quiet the rest of the chatter. Self inquiry, the identification of those beliefs, those imprints that many of which come from very very early ages, precognitive kind of times, as we know, is different.

23:19 That's a different time. That's a more time when we are conscious. We might be journaling, we might be in dialogue with a coach or a therapist. We might be reading a book like the one that I wrote, that kind of working through a question and reflecting on it. It's a more active time. So that's to me, either a two sides of the coin of spiritual practice. So the meditation time to be going into deep stillness and really stilling the mind, and then the self inquiry time, which is the time to kind of chew on things and process it. Well. Then my question goes to this, if you're doing it separately, and I totally agree that you have to have that consciousness to be will go in and really identify that. But are you able then, with meditation to start to change those neuro pathways as you talked about, by when those things come up, being able to verbally affirm that, you know, I no longer do this, I am this way, and as we affirm that time and time again, and I happen to do that in my walking meditation out loud, nobody hears me because I'm walking, but I find that that helps. What are your thoughts on that? Is that something that through meditation and affirmation while you're meditating, that you're able to start to change those pathways and as you say, originally reverse and change those neurological grooves to a different groove.

24:48 So let's think of it. Let's think of it in two ways. So the like you're talking about a walking practice where you're audibly affirming things that would be counteracting, say these neurological groups that are maybe holding you in a negative pattern, that would be one side of the practice that's more of the active practice, like the self increase the active practice in meditation. The way that the neurological groups are getting smoothed out is not by affirmation, not during meditation. It's by not allowing your thought to go on the story train. It's about bringing it back to your chosen point of attention, whether it's the breath or the visualization, let's say, of light at the third eye, or the feeling of the breath moving up and down the spine, something that is more of the moment. Bringing the thoughts that inevitably wander off to all the old patterns or the days to do list or whatever distracts us, bringing it back, bringing it back, bringing it back so that the mind quiets down. It's kind of like redirecting the child that wants to do this and wants to do that, and you're trying to get them to sit down and do their homework. So it's like, no, we're going to do this right now. No, we're going to do this right now. And so every time we correct

26:19 and come back to that single point of attention, we are changing the grooves. But it's a different sort of practice. So both are important, but I utilize them at different times. Okay, And so you know, like we're walking. Meditation is promoted by a few well known individuals, and you mentioned that, so I know who you're talking about as far as up and down the spine. But the reality is that if I'm doing walking meditation, then that's really not the peaceful meditation that you're talking about. And quite honestly, I also do quiet too, but I think that's I really appreciate the distinguishment that you made with that that there are two elements of that. So really what I'm doing walking meditation and what many people are doing that they call meditation is really really conscious introspection or conscious yes whatever, rather than that peaceful meditation. So another question, because as I say, I do that a lot when you talk to people and teach them how to meditate, what are your thoughts about using music binural beats or the selfedgio beats type of thing, and you're shaking your head so I can't wait to hear.

27:36 So I think we need more vocabulary, right, So, like you said, I love how you reframed the walking meditation to conscious walking introspection or something. And that's great because it is more accurate if we're looking at the traditional definition of meditation from the Yoga sutras, and that's my basis of practice. They talk about meditation being a state of being, the state of being still. It's not a practice, it's not something The practices lead us there. So there are several practices prior to meditation, the focus and single point of attention and the management of energy and the postures and all these these are part of the aid Limb path, and so all of these things lead us to meditation, which is that state of being still. So to answer your question about the music, and I get this question all the time, well, can I do a guided meditation on you know, the insight at time or app or this about Yes, absolutely, I wouldn't call it meditation.

28:49 I would call it wonderful guided relaxation, A beautiful practice to do at the end of a stressful day, doing affirmations while you're walking, fantastic practice of introspection and repatterning of the neural grooves, listening to the binural beats, another wonderful way to relax the mind and the body. I love that kind of music. To me, It's not meditation. It's not traditional yogic meditation, which is stillness. So anything external, any external stimulus, is going to some degree be pulling our consciousness outward versus The intent of meditation is to turn our consciousness inward so that we have a sense of self or awareness that is beyond the physical, external self that we identify with on the day to day basis.

29:46 And that's why I would not recommend from a classical standpoint. So let's talk about the sense of self. And why do you think that's so important that you've actually differentiated all those different types of quote meditation to the original yoga meditation where you're really just focusing on breath work, which in effect is also focusing on something, but where you're doing that and really finding that stillness and that self. Let's identify, first of all, if you can, what is the self? You know, you talk about the soul, you talk about all of this, and obviously there's so many different things. And what I find is many people who are deeply quote religious, are a little bit worried about meditation.

30:34 They feel like it's pulling them away from their quote religious concepts. And yet you know, you talk about stillness, you talk about soul, what do you mean by that? Okay, So when we meet are born, we come into these bodies, we begin to have experiences immediately in the physical dimension, and we become extremely identified with our bodies, with our personalities, with the story and the and of what we're living, the people around us, the teachings that we're being given. It's all part of our physical experience. And we identify self as Doug, Jenny, you know, whoever, and with all that makes us up from the human standpoint, but from the yoga teachings we are, that is not all of who we are. It is It's like when we put on glasses to see something, and it would be as if I started to say, I'm these glasses. Well, no, I'm not the glasses. The glasses are just something that I'm seeing through. So the body, the personality, this self that is Jenny right now is just something that my soul is seeing through. It's like the glasses that I've put on that my soul has put on. The soul is the essence that is indestructible and everlasting and goes

32:08 on and on and on in different forms, and this form that I'm in right now is just temporary, and so I don't have the more I can know myself as more than this, I can still enjoy being Jenny and I'm meant to express through the Jenny personality right now, but to know myself as more than that gives me great peace and freedom because when the difficulties of being Jenny come up, I don't get completely lost in them. I can, in meditation step outside just for the moment in the stillness, and have an awareness of myself as pure peace for love.

32:54 And you know, you talk about peace, you talk about love, that inner soul, and what fashion me about that is that as I look at it, you know, we're here on this earth, We've got this physical body, and as you say, the soul is eternal. There's no question about that in my mind at least, And yet so often we tend to focus so much on this physical aspect of it, not realizing that if we could just return back to the qualities of the soul, the love, the kindness, all of those type of things, and it goes back to what I was talking about. As we become then our behavior reflects that. And so you know, as you talk about that, let's talk a little bit about love, because I know that you know and some of the talking points you shared with me. You know, one of the questions is what is it to live love and how do you how do you experience love as an individual, and how do you take how do you allow the mortal physical body to move away from prevention of that so that your soul can try really experience that, which then evolves into your physical ability to experience love too.

34:07 Oh, Doug, that that was a very convoluted question there. I know, you know, my my assistance and my dental practice would just go crazy because I would be talking to them and I come up with the three or four things that say, would you just stay with one? That's just I have I know where you were going though, So there is it's a great question to bridge off of the self question because there is personal love right that I experience with my friend's family, son, husband, whatever, animals. But then there's this universal energy of love. And so one of the things I talk about in my second book, which is called Breathing Love and which is very much about the practice of living love, is how do we tap into that universal energy of love more and more and more so that we're not limited by that personal sense of love because the personal sense of love, it gets very colored by our history, the ways that we've been hurt and disappointed the ways our desires, our particular you know, things that we're looking for gratification around, or that we have needs around, and so a lot of what we call love really isn't pure love when it comes to the personality side of things. That energy of love, the universal energy of love, is really the Gananda Parmhanza

35:38 Yogananda calls it the harmonizing energy of the universe. And so as we tap into that vibration, it's really an energetic vibration. And I do this when I'm in the stillness of meditation. That's what I'm That's why I'm there because I want to tap that every day and I want that to for through me and infuse me so that when I feel limited in my capacity to show up kindly or compassionately in a situation in my personal life, I can say, all right, this is me talking to myself. Deep breath, This isn't about me. Like God is love spirit, the universal energy of love is there. Let me draw on that, let me bring it through. I'm just the vessel and that's how I sort of practice it. But in order to be able to do that in the day to day circumstances where I might feel challenged. I've got to have that infusion every day in meditation. It really is my time to connect to love.

36:42 Yeah, I love that. And how do you experience that lasting happiness, that real love that I think everybody wants. Well, I think you only experience it when you start to have this sort of dual It's funny, I'm going to use a dualistic expression, but it's really about non duality. Right. So we hear the concept of nonduality, that we're all one and there is no separation between the personal self and that universal self. But when we start to have the experience of both, and we can toggle our consciousness between the egoic consciousness the human consciousness that we have to kind of work through, and it's our operating system for this world, so we have to use it. But if we can toggle back to that soul consciousness more and more and more, then we start to experience greater and greater, more lasting happiness. And I really think that all of the teachings of yoga have to do with that.

37:50 It's really going back to that higher self, that spiritual self of which we're all apart of the one that brings us to the lasting happiness. Can you imagine what the world would be like if they were able to if every individual were able to tap into them? Doug, Yes, I can. I can imagine it, and I hope that more and more people start being able to imagine it. I want to live in that world. As we close, here's my question for you. If if you could share a thought with the audience, a final thought, what would that be? You know, I've asked this question a lot of the end of interviews, and my answer often has to do with love. But today I'm gonna say something different. I would tell people not to apologize for joy. Joy is something that has gotten really squelched in the world today.

38:49 We are so focused on the challenges in the world that we miss the glimmers of joy, and joy is our true nature as much as love is. So embrace and celebrate your joy. Oh, I love it so question? How do people find you? My website Jenny Leecoaching dot com easy to find Jenny leecoaching dot com and happy to answer questions or connect with anyone there. And are people able to work with you if they don't live in Hawaii? Absolutely? I work with people all over the world and all different time zones, and it's fantastic that we live in the technological time that we can zoom and yeah yeah, happy to work with anyone anywhere. And my books are all on Amazon and all the major booksellers, so easy to find those as well.

39:40 Fantastic, Well, Jenny, thanks so much. This has been an interesting conversation and I really appreciate your insights that you've shared with the audience. So thank you, thank you, thank you doctor Doug. Folks, thanks for listening. I hope this is meaningful for you and look forward to having you join us again soon. So no mistay, the Count intend to continued n with year