Speaker 1: We don't realize how superhuman we are. We don't realize
Speaker 1: our own superpowers. We don't realize how our brain is
Speaker 1: just begging for us to tickle. Are happy to our chemicals, open,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 1: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 1: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking
Speaker 1: our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Rota Aggrawall. She's the
Speaker 1: co founder and CEO of Daybreaker, the Morning global dance,
Speaker 1: music and wellness movement in five continents with a community
Speaker 1: of almost a half a million people around the globe.
Speaker 1: Rata and her team recently launched a science backed platform
Speaker 1: called Dose by Daybreaker, and it's a first of its
Speaker 1: kind membership to practice joy using its method connected to
Speaker 1: the eight virtues of Joy. Her book Belong answers the
Speaker 1: questions how do I find my people and how do
Speaker 1: I create large and meaningful communities in the real world. Hi, Rota,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. It's so great to be here.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me. I'm really happy to have
Speaker 1: you on. We're going to talk about all the work
Speaker 1: that you do with your Daybreaker project, your Dose project,
Speaker 1: your book that's titled Belong, and we're really going to
Speaker 1: focus on joy as one of the themes of this.
Speaker 1: But before we do that, let's start like we always
Speaker 1: do with the parable. There's a grandmother who's talking with
Speaker 1: her granddaughter and she says, in life, there are two
Speaker 1: wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One
Speaker 1: is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and
Speaker 1: bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the granddaughter stops and she thinks about it for a second.
Speaker 1: She looks up at her grandmother says, a grandmother, which
Speaker 1: one wins, and the grandmother says the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. Yeah. So, first of all,
Speaker 1: as a new mother, I have a two year old daughter,
Speaker 1: I can just imagine myself sharing the story with her
Speaker 1: very soon, and as her lights are turning on, and
Speaker 1: she's just so verable and so curious and inquisitive to
Speaker 1: share this parable. I'm so excited to do that. And
Speaker 1: then I think for me, you know, in the work
Speaker 1: that I do, which is all around feeding your joy, self,
Speaker 1: feeding yourself that chooses to unlock the eight virtues of
Speaker 1: joy which we can get into, I just feel like
Speaker 1: it's such a perfect parable for the times, especially post COVID,
Speaker 1: to not live and feed in our stories of isolation
Speaker 1: and loneliness, but live in the story and feed the
Speaker 1: wolf that is kind of running towards possibility, running towards community, warning,
Speaker 1: towards belonging, which takes so much courage. And wolves are courageous.
Speaker 1: So I really really love all the sort of elements
Speaker 1: of this parable. Yeah, and wolves running packs, they are
Speaker 1: not alone. If you find a lone wolf, you have
Speaker 1: found a wolf that is sick. That's right. And it's
Speaker 1: interesting because, especially in this country, we sort of celebrate
Speaker 1: this concept of the lone wolf, the concept of rugged individualism,
Speaker 1: the concept of go at your own chart, your own course,
Speaker 1: and so it's, um, it's really nice to be on
Speaker 1: a podcast that celebrates this concept of wolf pack com unity,
Speaker 1: connection and how important collective joy is to really raise
Speaker 1: a vibration of our planet. Yeah. A friend of mine
Speaker 1: who's a zen teacher, he's actually in your neck of
Speaker 1: the woods. I don't know if he's in Brooklyn or
Speaker 1: but he's in the greater New York City area. When
Speaker 1: he was on the show, he told a story about
Speaker 1: when he was eighteen, he was riding a bus and
Speaker 1: there was some wise woman sitting next to him and
Speaker 1: she said, oh, you're a lone wolf, and he inside
Speaker 1: was very proud like, yes, that's me, I'm a lone wolf.
Speaker 1: You know. He was feeling proude and she's like and
Speaker 1: then she turned around and said, yeah, well, lone wolves
Speaker 1: are always sick. He just tells that story at such
Speaker 1: a moment of sort of breaking through that ego extance
Speaker 1: of like I stand alone and realizing like Oh wait,
Speaker 1: that's not the way to be. And you talk a
Speaker 1: lot about this in your work, but we're starting to
Speaker 1: realize the real costs of being isolated and alone. That's right. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: one in four Americans have zero friends to confide in.
Speaker 1: And his number has gone up after COVID, but it's
Speaker 1: tripled last thirty years. I mean, it's crazy, all the
Speaker 1: while things that happened to your body. I mean having
Speaker 1: poor social connections as a harmful to your physical health,
Speaker 1: as being an alcoholic, you know, twice as harmful as obesity. Um,
Speaker 1: we are more prone to depression and anxiety, all of
Speaker 1: sort of disease. Were more prone to violence, or more
Speaker 1: prone to not listening to one another, to cancel each other.
Speaker 1: There's so much that connects with I don't belong and um,
Speaker 1: the lack of safety and the lack of joy. And
Speaker 1: I think that's really what I am so excited to
Speaker 1: connect is the dots between belonging and joy and how
Speaker 1: you can't experience happiness joy if you don't belong, and
Speaker 1: you can't belong if you don't practice and feed your joy.
Speaker 1: And so it's so important to remember these two connections. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you a question because the work
Speaker 1: that you do is very interesting. You probably emerged in
Speaker 1: this space and correct me if I'm wrong, but for
Speaker 1: launching Daybreaker, which was a series of early morning, non
Speaker 1: substance abuse fueled right no substances, early dance parties that
Speaker 1: brought people together. So is this very high energy type
Speaker 1: of connection. And it's interesting because most of my belonging
Speaker 1: has happened in much more subdued sort of settings recovering
Speaker 1: heroin addict, so twelve step programs and the belonging that
Speaker 1: I got from there, or certain therapy groups I've been
Speaker 1: part of where there was a deep sense of belonging,
Speaker 1: and yet you're sort of coming in at belonging at
Speaker 1: this slightly more energetic level. And as I was sort
Speaker 1: of reading about you and looking at your stuff and me,
Speaker 1: I was like, there's a little difference there. But I
Speaker 1: thought it would be helpful to start because I would
Speaker 1: probably and I think a lot of people listening to
Speaker 1: the show would identify the say, well, I'm an introvert, right.
Speaker 1: I don't know that I would identify that way. I
Speaker 1: would actually identify more the way you're about to say,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, what's a more freeing way to
Speaker 1: identify than introvert or extrovert totally. So just caution is
Speaker 1: to label ourselves right as, I'm introverted, I'm extroverted, I'm
Speaker 1: socially anxious, I am angry, I'm depressed, I'm shious, I'm
Speaker 1: you know, whatever, anything that we start labeling ourselves, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, we put ourselves pigeon ahole ourselves in
Speaker 1: this label. And the more we tell ourselves that we
Speaker 1: are this thing, I'm unlovable, i am unworthy, i am
Speaker 1: all of these things, we begin feeding it just like
Speaker 1: the wolves do. Right, So labels are no different. So
Speaker 1: when we label ourselves introverted, we're actually removing the possibility
Speaker 1: for the moments that we are feeling more social, we
Speaker 1: aren't feeling more extroverted. So in my book or as
Speaker 1: I write, and as I think about and sort of
Speaker 1: dream about, what would be the most freeing label, I
Speaker 1: call it metavert, which is, there's some days that I
Speaker 1: feel more introverted, there's some days that I feel more extroverted.
Speaker 1: And let me give my beautiful, multilayered human self the
Speaker 1: opportunity to be either introvert or extroverted and allow both
Speaker 1: of those energies to enter my space. And I think
Speaker 1: that we can find comfort in that because you know,
Speaker 1: as I've been interviewing lots of extroverts, interviewing lots of
Speaker 1: introverts for so much of the research I'm doing in
Speaker 1: our joy practice, you know, one of the meditations that
Speaker 1: I have them do and we've uncovered is close your
Speaker 1: eyes and really imagine a moment in your life when
Speaker 1: you felt mothered, or when you felt embarrassed, or when
Speaker 1: you felt rejected, or when you felt um like you
Speaker 1: didn't belong. And those moments in your life steer you
Speaker 1: in a direction of Oh, being in social environments are scary,
Speaker 1: or being one on one in this very kind of
Speaker 1: angry environment is scary. So I feel more safe in
Speaker 1: a group environment. Therefore I'm extroverted. I feel more safe
Speaker 1: in a one on one environment because I was bullied
Speaker 1: in an extrovert environment. So all of our histories actually
Speaker 1: move us in the direction of these labels, and um,
Speaker 1: I found so much peace and safety and solace when
Speaker 1: I was in group moments, in soccer, in the playground,
Speaker 1: in all these spaces, because I was athletic, and I
Speaker 1: found myself very afraid often in my one on one moments,
Speaker 1: because you know, my Indian father was sometimes ang read,
Speaker 1: sometimes happy, sometimes excited, sometimes violent. It was just like
Speaker 1: there's all these different sort of one on one moment
Speaker 1: that as I'm actually even unpacking this with you, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm realizing that's probably where I found so much safety
Speaker 1: and being extroverted. So I think so much of our
Speaker 1: labeling comes from the first formative moments in our lives
Speaker 1: that moves in the direction I'm actually curious to hear.
Speaker 1: Is there a moment in your life that you can
Speaker 1: recall um as a child that you might have felt
Speaker 1: maybe mothered or pushed out or rejected, or something in
Speaker 1: a group environment that made you feel unsafe. I'm sure
Speaker 1: there was. I have a terrible memory, like I just
Speaker 1: remember almost nothing, but I do know from very early on.
Speaker 1: I mean I can remember as early as first or
Speaker 1: second grade trying to see could I stay in a
Speaker 1: recess and hang out with a teacher? Got it? Because
Speaker 1: I think for whatever reason, the social aspect of the
Speaker 1: playground intimidated me. Let's unpack that. The more so, why
Speaker 1: did it intimidate you? Were there moments at the playground
Speaker 1: that you felt like you weren't allowed to plan this
Speaker 1: swing because where someone said go away, or or some
Speaker 1: of the moments scary. I think that's the part for
Speaker 1: me that's harder, as I can't really recall any experiences
Speaker 1: that I would go, oh, that's it. So this is
Speaker 1: why we get into our bodies. This is exactly why
Speaker 1: I would get you up. And that's what we do
Speaker 1: our joy practice, which is getting our mind to remember
Speaker 1: through our bodies. Because our bodies remember, then our bodies
Speaker 1: begin to tell us, oh, I feel better with my teacher,
Speaker 1: I feel better in one on one environments, I feel
Speaker 1: better and quiet spaces because we often will cut our
Speaker 1: experience off by the neck and not actually move that
Speaker 1: feeling into our body to get in touch with that.
Speaker 1: My whole thing is actually, how do you practice joy
Speaker 1: in our brain and our body and bring the two
Speaker 1: together to really create a practice that is gentle, but
Speaker 1: that moves you to unlock past traumas, to unlock past
Speaker 1: stories to be able to live your most joyful life.
Speaker 1: And so be very curious to do that with you
Speaker 1: and see what would come up there, because sometimes we
Speaker 1: block out the most painful memories. I would be very
Speaker 1: interested in doing something like that. There's so many things
Speaker 1: in what you just said there that I'm not even
Speaker 1: quite sure where to dive in. But where I'm going
Speaker 1: to start is this idea of labels. And it's very
Speaker 1: interesting because, like you said, the downside of labeling is
Speaker 1: I put myself in a pigeonhole and I and I'm
Speaker 1: going to think about this through the lens of alcoholic
Speaker 1: or addict for a second, because I think it's interesting
Speaker 1: because on one hand, that label can be very restricting,
Speaker 1: and on another hand, that label is very helpful in
Speaker 1: that it gives me a sense of what some of
Speaker 1: my and I like this word better than I am
Speaker 1: this and I would say what some of my tendencies
Speaker 1: are because I think we all have tendencies. And you
Speaker 1: made a very good point that our tendencies are shaped
Speaker 1: by our past experiences. It's not who we are, it's
Speaker 1: just what's happened and the way we've chosen to interpret it.
Speaker 1: And so I think these sort of labels introvert extrovert,
Speaker 1: like introvert is a useful construct to the extent I
Speaker 1: think it's useful to construct to the extent that I go, Okay,
Speaker 1: I do know that I need to honor my need
Speaker 1: to get refueled with quiet time. But if I then
Speaker 1: label myself as introverted and think that's the only way
Speaker 1: that I get refueled or the only way that I
Speaker 1: can react, then I'm really limiting my possibility. So I
Speaker 1: find this idea of labeling and knowing our tendencies as helpful.
Speaker 1: And somebody does a lot of coaching work with people,
Speaker 1: I always find there's this how do we balance that
Speaker 1: of Like, I don't want you to label yourself that
Speaker 1: way because that's limiting, and yet it's helpful to see
Speaker 1: patterns and the way we traditionally respond so that we
Speaker 1: can work skillfully with that. Yeah, And I think that's
Speaker 1: the art, right, that's the art of being being human.
Speaker 1: But I also think that if you feel filled up
Speaker 1: in that quiet time, that feels good for you, and
Speaker 1: you have to honor that. And humans are spectacularly social creatures,
Speaker 1: and if we stay inside of that quiet space, we
Speaker 1: will become sick like that lone wolf, right, And so
Speaker 1: to really honor the balance of the internal joy and
Speaker 1: the collective joy. And this is in my studies, my
Speaker 1: research and in my practice and how I teach as well, Um,
Speaker 1: how to be more joyful. We really look at sort
Speaker 1: of this concept of going in and practicing internal joy
Speaker 1: to excavate our past traumas or past experiences, our past histories,
Speaker 1: to look at our labeling, to look at the energy
Speaker 1: with which we show up to events, community spaces, our families,
Speaker 1: to do an energy audit all the things in our
Speaker 1: lives that are limiting us or supporting us, and to
Speaker 1: just highlight that in this sort of joy audit. Right,
Speaker 1: And you know the reason why we practice joy inside
Speaker 1: and practice personal development, why we read all these books,
Speaker 1: why we show up for coaching sessions, is to work
Speaker 1: on ourselves to better relate to others. Right, Like, It's
Speaker 1: not just for our own Oh I feel better and quiet,
Speaker 1: It's not just about that. It's to better relate to others.
Speaker 1: When you come out of that moment of re energizing refueling,
Speaker 1: you can better relate, better show up for your friends
Speaker 1: and family, better connect with your peers. And so it's
Speaker 1: to refuel to be able to connect more with others.
Speaker 1: And I just think that we forget that. I think
Speaker 1: in this sort of trap of oh I need to
Speaker 1: be alone to be refueled, we forget we want that
Speaker 1: so that we can come back with more joy, right,
Speaker 1: And I just think that that's where we get caught up,
Speaker 1: and that's where we continue to go further and further
Speaker 1: out of collective joy and into social isolation. This is
Speaker 1: where again, like the concept of collective joy has become
Speaker 1: such a foreign term. You don't hear the concept of
Speaker 1: collective joy as often as you would. You hear the
Speaker 1: concept of mindfulness and you know, and being okay being
Speaker 1: alone and being okay with deep presence and awareness and
Speaker 1: all of that. But collective joy is actually where we
Speaker 1: shift the consciousness of the planet. It's where we can
Speaker 1: collectively decide, wait a minute, we are making mother Earth sick.
Speaker 1: As a collective. If we can be joyful, we will
Speaker 1: want this planet to be more alive, more sacred, more thoughtful,
Speaker 1: more thought thought of. And we're going to do better
Speaker 1: in the way we live in our lives. And collective
Speaker 1: joy also inspires euphoria, inspires awe inspires play, It also
Speaker 1: inspires better. Actually, immunity by community inspires more intelligence. We're
Speaker 1: actually more intelligent when we're around other people. What are
Speaker 1: five senses are being activated, not just our two senses
Speaker 1: on zoom, just listening and watching right, Like when you
Speaker 1: actually activate all five senses in a community, you're smelling
Speaker 1: someone's perfume, you're talking to someone, you're touching someone on
Speaker 1: their arm as you talk to them. This actually makes smarter,
Speaker 1: It actually makes us more immune to disease. It actually
Speaker 1: makes us more collectively awe in awe enjoy. And I
Speaker 1: just think that we need to spread that message so
Speaker 1: far and wide, especially in a post COVID when the
Speaker 1: number of friends of mine who consider themselves quote unquote
Speaker 1: extroverted are calling me and saying, hey, I feel weird
Speaker 1: around people. Why is that? And I just think that
Speaker 1: we just have to practice and continue practicing joy, which
Speaker 1: is why I started Joy practice. And I did it
Speaker 1: for myself because I found myself wondering too. And I
Speaker 1: start doing the Joy practice every day, and it changed
Speaker 1: my entire courageous outlook, my entire reason for wanting to
Speaker 1: get up and connect with other people, to make eye
Speaker 1: contact with my mask on, to smile with my eyes,
Speaker 1: to connect with body language versus just my face in
Speaker 1: my in my mouth, to really understand that we cannot
Speaker 1: survive as a species or thrive as humans without practicing
Speaker 1: collective joy and that's what I'm here to share on
Speaker 1: as far and wide as possible, not just through our practice,
Speaker 1: but through thought leaders like yourself who can really spread
Speaker 1: that to other people too. It's funny because when I
Speaker 1: started this show, I thought the primary lesson was going
Speaker 1: to be go inside and work your business out, do
Speaker 1: your meditation, have your awakening right. And I thought that
Speaker 1: was primarily what was going to be the main thing
Speaker 1: that happened or that I learned or that we talked about.
Speaker 1: And certainly that's a big component of it, but equally
Speaker 1: important has been this sense of we have to connect
Speaker 1: with others, we have to have community. And it's funny
Speaker 1: that I didn't think of how important it was, considering
Speaker 1: it saved my life twice by the time I started
Speaker 1: this podcast through my recovery right being recovery was the
Speaker 1: people there who saved my life, you know, it was
Speaker 1: that community. But I've just become more and more convinced
Speaker 1: of that the more of these conversations I have and
Speaker 1: the more research I've done, and the more I've worked
Speaker 1: with people like we've got to build strong communities. How
Speaker 1: did you move past your trauma story? How did you
Speaker 1: move into a space of courageous hope, and I don't
Speaker 1: want to be heard in addict anymore. I want to
Speaker 1: live a different life. I think unpacking that also is
Speaker 1: so telling it how do you go beyond your I'm
Speaker 1: an addict or I was an addict, or I'm a
Speaker 1: recovering addict, into I am a citizen that does this
Speaker 1: or I'm a citizen that does that, instead of living
Speaker 1: in the comfort of the story of I was an addict,
Speaker 1: how do we go in between these two worlds with grace, hope, encourage.
Speaker 1: I'm curious. That's a great question that would take longer
Speaker 1: than we have to fully unpack. But the very short
Speaker 1: answer is being a heroin attic just burnt my life
Speaker 1: to the ground, and I had some things that happened
Speaker 1: that were fortunate that allowed me to get into recovery
Speaker 1: and be in recovery, go through treatment twelve step programs.
Speaker 1: It was the people, it was the support, it was
Speaker 1: the hope that I found. But the last part you
Speaker 1: said there, I think is the really interesting part to me,
Speaker 1: and it's what eventually sort of made me, at a
Speaker 1: certain point in twelve step programs feel limited. And it
Speaker 1: was this constant thinking of ourselves as people who were sick,
Speaker 1: and I just hit a point where I felt like,
Speaker 1: that doesn't describe me anymore. Right, Like, I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that I'm suddenly now I can go have a drink.
Speaker 1: That's not it, right. I actually think, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: something about the way I'm wired up me and substances,
Speaker 1: it doesn't work. And I've tried it several different times
Speaker 1: since I first gotten recovery. That doesn't work. But beyond that,
Speaker 1: in twelve step programs, people used to say a lot,
Speaker 1: there's us and then there's them, or it's the alkys
Speaker 1: and the normies. And at a certain point I went,
Speaker 1: that does not resonate with me anymore. I don't feel
Speaker 1: different than the average person. I feel connected kind of
Speaker 1: with everybody. I think we all share very common challenges.
Speaker 1: And yes, maybe if you want to measure on the
Speaker 1: spectrum of addiction to substance, I'm out on one extreme
Speaker 1: a little bit, but on thousands of other measures, I'm
Speaker 1: just a normal, average person. And so that's where twelve
Speaker 1: step programs saved my life. And I hit a limitation
Speaker 1: point where I felt like, you know, that doesn't describe
Speaker 1: me anymore. I don't still feel sick beautiful. And I
Speaker 1: think the best coaches and the best coaching wants you
Speaker 1: to have a sunset right with the coaching program. They
Speaker 1: want you to come in, have your recovery, and then leave.
Speaker 1: And when you leave, you can create healthier relationships. You
Speaker 1: create healthier friendships that aren't limited to my friendships are
Speaker 1: just inside of my program. And I have so many
Speaker 1: friends who we had this discussion around, you know, one
Speaker 1: was a recovering overeaters anonymous person and she said that
Speaker 1: the only way she found her friends initially was through
Speaker 1: Overeaters Anonymous, and she felt like when she became kind
Speaker 1: of healthier and she got her way under control, that
Speaker 1: she started over eating again just so that she can
Speaker 1: be part of this club because she found her friends
Speaker 1: there and she didn't want to be mothered. And we
Speaker 1: just begin to pathologize or make our trauma part of
Speaker 1: our social life and our sense of belonging, and that's
Speaker 1: where it becomes extremely dangerous. And I think this is
Speaker 1: what's happening in America right now, is we're saying and
Speaker 1: we're pathologizing, and I mean, I'm having a bad day
Speaker 1: into a mental health crisis. I'm having a difficult conversation
Speaker 1: with my partner, and all of a sudden, I'm in
Speaker 1: a traumatic moment where I need meds to help me.
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden, we're allowing the little list
Speaker 1: things in life to take us out of courage, take
Speaker 1: us out of possibility and abundance, and into these trauma
Speaker 1: stories because it's so normalized and it allows us to
Speaker 1: join this club of I'm struggling, you know. And I
Speaker 1: know that that was my story in my twenties, and
Speaker 1: I was just, you know, always living in My father
Speaker 1: was a strict Indian, which is all kinds of different
Speaker 1: things I would say, and I would just live in
Speaker 1: that and I was angry and I was just angry.
Speaker 1: And when I just stopped living in that story, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm a joyful person, i am as a
Speaker 1: be around. I'm going to live in the future possibility,
Speaker 1: not live in my trauma story. My entire life change.
Speaker 1: I found love, I have a daughter. I found financial abundance,
Speaker 1: I found community, I found everything that I ever dreamed
Speaker 1: of having. From moving from a place of living in
Speaker 1: the comfort of my trauma story, living because it's comfortable
Speaker 1: and it's safe to live in the trauma story sometimes
Speaker 1: then the fear and the not knowing. In many ways,
Speaker 1: death is that like I don't know what's gonna happen
Speaker 1: after death, but the not knowing of what can be
Speaker 1: if I live out of that story, what can be
Speaker 1: when I'm not in my I'm this type of person.
Speaker 1: And when I did that from my own life, when
Speaker 1: I began to say, I'm not an angry person, I'm
Speaker 1: not an unworthy person, and I'm worthy of love. I'm
Speaker 1: worthy of this, and of course that's still listening that
Speaker 1: we work on every single day. And this is why
Speaker 1: we practice joy. This is why we practice courage, you know,
Speaker 1: which is put one of the eight virtues of joy
Speaker 1: that we identified. But it is a daily practice to
Speaker 1: again feed that wolf, feed that new possibility. And I
Speaker 1: think that's why we're so on the same team, because
Speaker 1: it's who do you feed? Is it that trauma story
Speaker 1: or the future potential? Is it the future friends that
Speaker 1: you can have, not the friends that are shooting on
Speaker 1: you or the friends that aren't kind to you, or
Speaker 1: the friends that you've brand fathered in. What are the
Speaker 1: friends that you can actually invite into your life, that
Speaker 1: you can call in based on the quality that you're
Speaker 1: looking for, you know, that could be a completely different
Speaker 1: type of community. And so all of these things are
Speaker 1: things that we think about through the lens of community
Speaker 1: and the lens of joy, and they're so deeply connected. Again,
Speaker 1: there's a ton in what you said there. And I
Speaker 1: think it's fine in this line because there are people
Speaker 1: where mental health is a real thing and we need
Speaker 1: real treatment, and I think it's an end right, that's true,
Speaker 1: and we can really get stuck there, And I agree
Speaker 1: with you. I see a lot of times we argue
Speaker 1: for our own limitations. That's exactly what I'm saying. We
Speaker 1: don't realize how superhuman we are. We don't realize our
Speaker 1: own superpowers. We don't realize how our brain is just
Speaker 1: begging for us to tickle or having nero chemicals open,
Speaker 1: How our brain is just waiting for us to learn
Speaker 1: how to tickle them open. Our brain is just waiting
Speaker 1: for us to access these liminal spaces that we don't
Speaker 1: know we can. And that's all I'm saying. Of course,
Speaker 1: there's deeper traumas that require deeper support, But I also
Speaker 1: really believe that if you came to me and you're
Speaker 1: having a deep moment of I don't know if I
Speaker 1: can ever do this without without men's, without anything that
Speaker 1: I would love the challenge of getting you to realize
Speaker 1: just how superpowered you are, just how brilliant you are,
Speaker 1: just how deeply supernatural, superpowered, super everything that you are
Speaker 1: to be able to unlock that side of yourself and
Speaker 1: and to your point, addiction is real. And I read
Speaker 1: about that in my book, is that we are addicted
Speaker 1: to everything. We overeat, we over drink, we over binge
Speaker 1: on on Netflix, we over binge on our phone social
Speaker 1: media way then we over bange on alcohol and drugs.
Speaker 1: I mean, we are a binged out world and community
Speaker 1: because of commerce, and the world of commerce has pushed
Speaker 1: us into wanting more and more and more, buy more
Speaker 1: and more and more, throw more ads in your face,
Speaker 1: let me throw more things for you to need that
Speaker 1: you don't actually need. And so we're trained to binge.
Speaker 1: And again it's on us to begin to develop boundaries
Speaker 1: and moments like you're doing for yourself, to say, look,
Speaker 1: if I binge on alcohol, this is what happens to me,
Speaker 1: then let me actually have the courage to control that,
Speaker 1: Let me have the boundaries to control that. And I
Speaker 1: just think that once we recognize that we are all
Speaker 1: binging in one way or another, we will never get
Speaker 1: out of the cycle. And so I just think that, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: this conversation is so special because we are doing so
Speaker 1: much of the sad alone pathologized wolf, and we want
Speaker 1: to get out of that and feed the other one
Speaker 1: before we run out of time. I want to turn
Speaker 1: our attention to what you were sort of saying about
Speaker 1: tickling this joy or bringing forth this joy, because I
Speaker 1: think in my own life I've done a really good
Speaker 1: job of relieving a lot of suffering, a lot of
Speaker 1: the suffering that I had in my life. I have
Speaker 1: really banished, if to a large extent, you know, at
Speaker 1: least the unnecessary mental suffering that I caused myself with
Speaker 1: unhealthy thought patterns. Again, I'm not saying I'm perfect, but
Speaker 1: I've done a really good job at that the place
Speaker 1: I've not done as good a job, and I'm I'm
Speaker 1: working on and I'm sort of realizing really in the
Speaker 1: last year, I'm like, Okay, I want to turn the
Speaker 1: dial up on. This is more joy. Yes, let's go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we don't have a ton of time here before
Speaker 1: we run out of time, But I'd like you to
Speaker 1: hit a couple key points to sort of really increasing
Speaker 1: our joy. So the first thing is, we can't just
Speaker 1: live in our heads. And I think so much of
Speaker 1: again the wellness space, the person amptment space with just
Speaker 1: sort of like either in your head or all in
Speaker 1: your body. Let's get six pack ads, let's sculpture body.
Speaker 1: Let's you know, compete and shred and all of that, right,
Speaker 1: or let's work on mental health. But what if we
Speaker 1: brought the two together, and what if we actually practiced joy?
Speaker 1: What are all the most potent joy practice that exists
Speaker 1: on the planet. And that's what I set out to
Speaker 1: do in my own life and what I wanted to
Speaker 1: bring to our community of day Break, our community members
Speaker 1: around the world. And it's just like, in this time
Speaker 1: of COVID and post COVID, how can we actually find
Speaker 1: the most potent joy practice that exist? And you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things that we've done for seven years
Speaker 1: is actually teach people how to dance without alcohol, without substances,
Speaker 1: to break the codependence in order to have fun and
Speaker 1: party and dance I need to be drunk or high,
Speaker 1: And so our entire Rezon Detrick for the last seven
Speaker 1: years has been how do we actually break that codependence
Speaker 1: and let people recognize their self expression, come home to
Speaker 1: their movement, come home to their self expression. I mean,
Speaker 1: I have hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom
Speaker 1: have never called themselves dancers, who have always said I
Speaker 1: need to drink to dance, or say I'm so embarrassed
Speaker 1: of how I look, which is why our joy practice
Speaker 1: is very much often blindfolded. Half of our class. Our
Speaker 1: joy practice that we have is blindfolded because you remove
Speaker 1: seventy of your inputs, which is from your eyes. And
Speaker 1: your eyes are a gateway to judgment, gateway to self loathing,
Speaker 1: gateway to perfectionism, gateway to so many things. When you
Speaker 1: remove your sense of sight and you throw a blindfold
Speaker 1: on it, so our blindfold is in our equipment for
Speaker 1: dose and our joy practice, you begin to connect to
Speaker 1: the other beautiful senses that you have. You begin to
Speaker 1: again recognize that the movement in your body that wants
Speaker 1: to happen. When you remove judgment, when you remove the
Speaker 1: sense of comparison of how do I look compared to
Speaker 1: other people, you allow yourself to move to the music
Speaker 1: are true natural state. Every baby, my daughter I was
Speaker 1: just with her two hours ago with her two friends
Speaker 1: are all two years old, and we just put on
Speaker 1: a song and I just watched them move and it
Speaker 1: was their own movements, their own sense of expression, and
Speaker 1: it was just magical. And if we can get back
Speaker 1: to the dancer inside of us, the tribal dance, the
Speaker 1: collective joy, which is what I'm studying now whether you
Speaker 1: see Berkeley in the Greater Good Science Center, which is
Speaker 1: what is collective dance doing to our brains? That we're
Speaker 1: doing a whole, first of its kind study on not
Speaker 1: just individual dance, but what happens to your brain and
Speaker 1: your body when and your court is all your stress hormones,
Speaker 1: you're tickling your joy chemicals open when you're dancing in
Speaker 1: a community. So dance is one of them. Breathwork is
Speaker 1: another movement. Meditation, which is what dose our method is.
Speaker 1: It's not dancing necessarily, just like fist pumping to rave music.
Speaker 1: It's like dancing as a meditation. So with blindfolds on low,
Speaker 1: slow and then flow, you know, so we're like really
Speaker 1: allowing you to find movement again, get your elbows move
Speaker 1: and get your risks moving, just finding the beat with
Speaker 1: your nose, like what happens when you invite your nose
Speaker 1: to dance, What happens when you invite your hips to
Speaker 1: move the way they want to um. It just tickles
Speaker 1: your oxytocin, your sense of trust, It tickles your endorphins open,
Speaker 1: It tickles your dopamine when you listen to music. Dopamine
Speaker 1: is a beautiful release when you listen to music. Serotonin,
Speaker 1: you know, sense of gratitude, a sense of ease happens
Speaker 1: when you're actually moving to dance. Right, So there's every
Speaker 1: one of our neurochemicals are actually triggered when we allow music, dance, movement, gratitude,
Speaker 1: all of these elements into our practice. And that's why
Speaker 1: we've combined these eight virtues of joy into this method
Speaker 1: that is mostly blindfolded to go inward into this joy practice,
Speaker 1: and then you take the blindfold off to then reintroduce
Speaker 1: this sort of new version of yourself that's going to
Speaker 1: come out to be ready to dance with others figuratively
Speaker 1: and literally. Our joy practice online is very much as
Speaker 1: individual blindfolds on. Let's come home to our self expression,
Speaker 1: to our bodies. Let's move our trauma from our bodies
Speaker 1: into our minds and release it. Let's get into flow state.
Speaker 1: Let's find inspiration, Let's find kindness for ourselves and for others.
Speaker 1: Let's find connection, let's find all, let's find play all
Speaker 1: these virtues of joy that we uncover, and then we
Speaker 1: have Daybreaker I r L are live events that we're
Speaker 1: coming back finally made twelfth in New York and then
Speaker 1: relaunching our other cities so that you can then go
Speaker 1: and practice collective joy in real life with other people, intergenerationally,
Speaker 1: across all ages. And that's one big core value of
Speaker 1: our two is how to practice joy with other age groups.
Speaker 1: Like as a forty two year old, I had a
Speaker 1: lot of judgment for a long time to hang out
Speaker 1: with people younger than me because I felt kind of
Speaker 1: insecure about my gray hair and feeling too old and
Speaker 1: you know, all of these things. And and then I
Speaker 1: met my husband, who's like in his twenties, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, here I am learning and realizing my
Speaker 1: own hubrist, my own judgment, my own self loathing, my
Speaker 1: own limitations of being a woman, an aging woman. When
Speaker 1: in tabloids and in the world of press and media
Speaker 1: were taught to look younger, we're taught to put botox
Speaker 1: in and inject ourselves and all these things. So it's
Speaker 1: just practicing how to be in collective joy across all generations,
Speaker 1: people older than you, people younger than you, with children,
Speaker 1: with our master citizens, what I call our community above
Speaker 1: the age of sixty five, those who have mastered what
Speaker 1: it means to be human and really practice courageous collective
Speaker 1: joy across the spectrum of all ages and genders and
Speaker 1: sot ecomic backgrounds and all of that, which is just
Speaker 1: so important. It's not just about the individual, but about
Speaker 1: coming out and tickling collective joy together. So I invite
Speaker 1: you Eric to come to one of ours in New
Speaker 1: York or l A, or Chicago or San Francisco all
Speaker 1: over the world. Yes, I definitely want to attend one.
Speaker 1: I think you have one happening virtually this weekend sock
Speaker 1: r exactly. We have Chubby Checkers the number one song
Speaker 1: of all time with The Twist. He's coming on and
Speaker 1: perform live The Twist. And we have ten thousand people
Speaker 1: who have r s VP for this one. It's one
Speaker 1: of our lowest R s v P events. We've had
Speaker 1: up to twenty tho R s v ps for our
Speaker 1: events with boys two men. We've had Um Gloria Estefan,
Speaker 1: Gloria Gainer, We've had the Gypsy Kings and village people.
Speaker 1: All these amazing artists come on to lend their joy,
Speaker 1: practice their dance, their music, their gift of getting people
Speaker 1: to get up and move. Dion Waro came in saying
Speaker 1: what the world needs now is love and it's free
Speaker 1: this weekend as well. It's a free party, so I
Speaker 1: hope everyone who's listening can join us yep and just
Speaker 1: listeners out of making your life easier for you. By
Speaker 1: the time we release this, that event will have happened,
Speaker 1: but there will be plenty of other great events I'm
Speaker 1: sure that they're having. And were I not going to
Speaker 1: be in a car driving to Atlanta that morning, I
Speaker 1: might want to really check out Mr Chubby Checker because
Speaker 1: that sounds like a lot of fun. A so cop
Speaker 1: you can come on from them from the car if
Speaker 1: you're not driving, obviously, if someone else is driving. But yeah,
Speaker 1: we often have tons of people tuning in from their
Speaker 1: car and just dancing in their car seat, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for everywhere it's for seated. It's for if you can't
Speaker 1: get up and dance, you can stay seated and dance.
Speaker 1: Joy is for all levels of physical ability to you know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean you can't practice joy if your legs
Speaker 1: don't work right, like you can practice joy if your
Speaker 1: arms are working or if your breath is working. The
Speaker 1: joy of singing is one of our Joy series and
Speaker 1: so it's like singing together. Singing is such a beautiful
Speaker 1: joy practice. So lots of different ways to practice joy,
Speaker 1: and we have you know, fifty different styles of practice
Speaker 1: on our platform. As I was sort of preparing for
Speaker 1: this and reading your work and and thinking more about it,
Speaker 1: and I just got the idea of dance in my
Speaker 1: head and made me realize that a real source of
Speaker 1: joy for me for a lot of years, and this
Speaker 1: talks about this individual versus collective was playing music and bands.
Speaker 1: As a musician. I haven't done it at all in
Speaker 1: years now. I play my acoustic guitar and I really
Speaker 1: love the finger picking and it's beautiful, but it's not
Speaker 1: the same thing. It's not the same thing as that
Speaker 1: connection with other people and making music and moving together.
Speaker 1: And it really made me think about like how much
Speaker 1: I missed that, how much joy that gave me. That's
Speaker 1: exactly right and so I think that's the first audit
Speaker 1: that I would do is just like, what are you
Speaker 1: interested in? What gives you joy? Let's look at your
Speaker 1: history and see what moments in your life gave you
Speaker 1: the most joyless. Write them down and when you see it,
Speaker 1: you're like, wow, Okay, dancing was so much fun for me.
Speaker 1: I was so joyful making music, not just in a band,
Speaker 1: but performing in front of a small audience with fifty
Speaker 1: people on the crowd, creating that collective joyful moment for others,
Speaker 1: even if it's twenty people fifty people who cares, it's
Speaker 1: just about the collective experience and then wrapping a non
Speaker 1: alcoholic cocktail afterwards and and connect over music. And I
Speaker 1: think those are the things that we want to audit
Speaker 1: in our lives of just like, not just things that
Speaker 1: calm us down or things that give us ease or
Speaker 1: bring us like you said, like take us out of trauma,
Speaker 1: but what are all the things in our lives and
Speaker 1: our past that made us the most joyful? And for me,
Speaker 1: that's travel, it's like going on adventures, it's music festivals,
Speaker 1: it's dance, it's listening to bands and singing. Even if
Speaker 1: I have like kind of a husky, you know, not
Speaker 1: the best voice in the world. I just love to sing.
Speaker 1: So when my friends get together, um, when we sing together,
Speaker 1: it just brings me the most amount of joy. And
Speaker 1: I'm just so excited to begin making practicing joy as
Speaker 1: ubiquitous is brushing your teeth, or practicing yoga or practicing meditation.
Speaker 1: It's just so important to raise the vibration of the planet. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much Roda for coming on the show.
Speaker 1: I have really enjoyed this conversation and I feel like
Speaker 1: we could do another hour of it, but we don't
Speaker 1: have time for another hour. So this has been lovely. Eric,
Speaker 1: It's so good to meet you, to connect with you,
Speaker 1: to just experience the joy and your energy as well
Speaker 1: in your eyes and your expression. I can just sense
Speaker 1: that is just so in you, and I'm excited to
Speaker 1: play and explore more of that together. So wonderful. Thank you.
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