The Art of Vibrant Living Show with Daniel Aaron - Jenn Cohen Harper: Video automatically transcribed by Sonix

The Art of Vibrant Living Show with Daniel Aaron - Jenn Cohen Harper: this mp4 video file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Daniel Aaron:
All right. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Art of Vibrant Living Show. And I am your host, Daniel Aaron. We are super blessed today to have Jen Cohen Harper on the show with us. And I'll tell you more about her in a moment. Thank you. To Longevity Drops, our sponsor for the show. I'll tell you more about them and herbal medicine a little later. Sorry, we're in the US herbal medicine. Um, Jen Cohen. Harper. Oh, actually, before I tell you about Jen, let me tell you about the show, too. Sorry. Another tease. And the show is our chance to get together and talk about and discover and learn about what it takes to create our lives, to be extraordinary, our lives to be artwork of vibrancy. And so I am ever curious to know what will serve y'all best with that. And if you have questions for me or Jen on this show, feel free to jump into the comments, jump into the comments and say hello. Say where you're in from. If you've got questions, put them in there. I will go through all the comments after, and I'm really glad that you all are here and interested in making your lives into masterpieces. Now. Jen Cohen Harper is a prolific and profound woman. I met her first because of her work through the Yogis Yoga Service Council, and she was one of the one of the founding members that put that together. And she's the board director of it. And we'll we'll talk specifically about the Yoga Service Council, which is an extraordinary organization. She's also the founder of Little Flower Children's Yoga Program. I'll leave it to her to say a little bit more about that later on. And something else that's exciting that she created that we're going to get into is a yoga program in schools. Jen is, in addition to that, a mother of two young children and surprisingly enough, also into yoga. And maybe that's what keeps it all together for her. So, Jen, thank you so much for coming on to the show. I'm really excited for you to be here. And also thank you for the work you're doing in the world because you're doing some really big, profound work that help a lot of people. And and I appreciate that. I know in the world of service, people don't often get a lot of recognition. There's so much work to be done. So thanks for that.

Jenn Cohen Harper:
Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to see how the conversation unfolds.

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah, well, you know, and the first thing that I want to ask you about is. And I'll start this way. For me, growing up in the US, what I learned was that the main thing to do in life is get ahead and get mine. And, you know, it was it was I really learned that the thing to do is strive and make money and get stuff and it's a competition. And when I got into the yoga world and started learning about concepts like ahimsa, which we might call love or doing as little harm as possible, and really it part of life being about other. And then as I became a yoga teacher and learned that it was not it was not very glorious, it was a lot of hard work and it really was service and. At first I didn't. I wasn't aware of that, though. Little by little, I started realizing that actually my well-being and my happiness and my equanimity and even my health started to increase. The more I embraced service and my life being largely about doing for others. And of course, parenting is a lot about that. So I'm curious what the role of service has played for you personally and what's motivated you to get into so much service?

Jenn Cohen Harper:
Yeah. Thank you. That's a great question. Um, you know, my life has largely been about children since I was a child, so I always worked with kids. I always did a lot of volunteer work. Even as a high school student, I always did a lot of work with younger students. Um, and I've, I've had just a lifelong interest in how children, um, cope and what children's capacity for resilience is and how they evolve into the people that they become, you know, how they get from the people who they are as kids to the people who sort of create the world. And as I worked with children in the early part of my career, I came into yoga, um, really for completely personal reasons. And the first people that I shared yoga with were kids were kids who were in a residential domestic violence shelter at the time. That yoga became really an important part of my life. I was running as a volunteer the children's program at a residential domestic violence shelter, and there were so many things that I was exploring in myself as a young adult that felt, um, that felt like they would have been transformed live if they could have been incorporated throughout my life as a child. And, you know, I think like a lot of people who come to yoga or meditation or psychotherapy or, you know, various things kind of had hit a wall of like, there has to be something more than this. And like this, these feelings can't be the feelings that I'm always going to have in my life. Like this is not a sustainable way to live in the world. And so I was, you know, at a place in my life where I was really diving into these embodiment practices and doing a lot of healing work for myself. At the same time, I was recognizing how many of the things I was learning and integrating and practicing really were absolutely appropriate for even young children to start to learn about themselves and how much healing could happen over the course of life, rather than hitting a wall and having to do it all at once. Right. You know, and so for me, it was just a completely natural thing to start to incorporate, um, yoga and mindfulness.

Jenn Cohen Harper:
When I was studying and practicing and learning into my work with kids. And because of circumstances being as they were, I was working with kids who had experienced a tremendous amount of trauma, right? So the orientation of my work from its very inception really was the context of working with very vulnerable people. Children are vulnerable by definition. And then you take children who have been pulled out of a domestic violence situation. They're very vulnerable and at the same time, they're kids. So they're playful and joyful and fully alive and vibrant. And so for me, you know, I was really at a very sort of pivotal time in my life thinking about how to be of service without taking myself so seriously and killing the joy, you know, how to how to find a balance of doing serious work without sucking all the vibrance from my my work, you know, How do you take yourself seriously? Take the people you're serving seriously, but not lose the joyfulness and the playfulness, which we know are a huge part of building resilience, right? So for me, those ideas were extremely interesting and compelling and turns out they were interesting to other people too, because when I started down that path and I started talking to people about the work I was doing and thinking about how to put these pieces together, I found that there were a lot of people who were very interested in that conversation and that the orientation towards service that I was trying to take, where I was really looking at how to be in in compassionate relationship. Was certainly something that was out there in the world, but maybe not as prominent, especially in some ways in work with children as it is now or could have been, because, you know, we have that whole like I'm a grown up and I know best thing. So the orientation that I was taking to the kids was quite different. And then as I expanded and started working with the Yoga Service Council, it was really like, how do we bring those types of joyful, embodied, compassionate relationships that were serving me so well, working with kids? How do we bring that spirit into the work with adults as well? Because really, you know, what we need as adults is exactly the same as what we needed as kids.

Jenn Cohen Harper:
So it's so it's so symbiotic and it doesn't it doesn't really change that much. But the dynamic of our relationships change and we're less willing to bring the joy and the playfulness, sometimes less willing to bring the compassion peace into our engagement with adults. So yeah, that's kind of a long winded answer to your question, but I think it was the the quality of relationship that was so interesting to me. And then as I went down that path, I became more and more interested in service and all of its forms and how to make it most meaningful and transformative for everybody involved.

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah. Cool. That's great. So many awesome things that you said in the midst of that. Great to hear your experience and how that came to be. It must have been so such a intense time to be in the in the, you know, domestic abuse residential center and be discovering yoga and having your own process and bringing it in there. And and what a cool, amazing thing that it was embraced by other people. And and I think we're seeing a lot of that in the world now where yoga and mindfulness and meditation is becoming part of standard education. No doubt that the world having gone off its rails as much as it has, we're getting to be a little bit more curious, like, well, what else can we do and what will work? So will you tell us a bit more about what what's happening with yoga in schools?

Jenn Cohen Harper:
Sure. Yeah, we are in an amazing period of time for yoga in schools. So I started Little Flower Yoga 12 years ago. Um, and I'm in New York, so I started in New York City. And 12 years ago I was like knocking on doors and putting fliers. I was literally walking around on the street in the city like putting fliers under the doors of schools, right? And people were like, What? And we got we had programs running, but they were mostly after school programs. They were seen as extracurricular, very, very much about health and wellness in some ways. But also, you know, people were really desperately looking for something to help kids focus. So we're really kind of pulling on that thread. It was a great start. I can tell you now, 12 years later, we absolutely here in New York, we cannot keep up with the demand for programing. We have about 30 teachers we work with like upwards of 100 schools a year, um, schools all over New York City and Westchester County, New Jersey, Connecticut, you know, the greater New York area and the schools that we work with have embraced the programing in an entirely different way. So now we are there's much less extracurricular after school sort of vibe to things. We're largely working with schools either in a capacity where we're collaborating around social and emotional learning or mental health care. So a lot, especially in our New York City schools, we do a lot of work through the Community School Initiative, which is an initiative in New York where schools partner with community based organizations to provide comprehensive mental health services in school. So much of our work with schools now here in New York is through a mental health funding stream. So the work is being looked at in a lot of different ways, and people in schools are seeing the value of really recognizing the wholeness of the learner. You know, that the learner is a whole person and their well-being is going to have a tremendous impact on their capacity to learn and also on the climate of the school. Um, you know, and unfortunately, we see just, you know, recently with the school shooting in Florida, you know, and everything that's been leading up to that in our culture, you know, what's happening in schools is the sum total of the trauma of the world, you know, And we are working with a tremendous number of kids who are experiencing.

Jenn Cohen Harper:
A lot of trauma in their lives and the ability for yoga and mindfulness to support them and help them learn tools to navigate those really big challenges is becoming more and more recognized. At the same time, we do a lot of work with teachers, with classroom teachers, with school based social workers, school counselors to cultivate a more compassionate, respectful, supportive school environment. So we're doing a lot of work directly with students, but we're also working with the larger school community and parents as well, too, to look at how do we create a culture that is intentionally supporting our goals and what do kids need? You know, what's like the soup that they're learning in. Right. So we're learning more and more about how the practices of yoga and mindfulness can support educators so that even if they never teach the kids a single practice, they can be much more present and they can be much more skillful and they can manage their own anxiety and manage the the overwhelm and the overstimulation and the demands of the job and really meet the kids with kindness and compassion and be able to have full access to their kind of toolbox and their skillful capacity to educate rather than being in a constant state of reactivity. Schools promote provoke people's big feelings for a lot of reasons. So the state of yoga in schools is good, is good, but there is huge need and it's unfortunate that the need is so great. But it's wonderful that we're seeing schools embrace, you know, be realistic about the need and embrace practices that even a decade ago they were really a little a little standoffish about.

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I got to. As you were describing all that. And again, just thank you. What an amazing trajectory of experience you had from from going from putting fliers under doors and the growth that's so inspiring that all of that's happened. And, you know, there's the the the way generations tend to work. Like it said in one generation, will be really wealthy. And then it's said in one generation that, you know, like there'll be a lot of wealth, but then the next generation down will tend to lose the wealth and be poor. And, you know, like we create these different values through generations. And as you were talking about it, I got this hope and vision that that maybe, you know, the the generation that's been in power now and has gone so sort of crazy and created so much trauma is going to be corrected by the new generation coming up. And obviously, that's a lot of what y'all are doing. And there's the the tendency for children to be educating parents. And we think of it often like educating them about technology, Say, you know, and I remember as a kid trying to show my mother how to work the VHS tape thing. And my my daughter is in a school here in LA and one of the classes that she takes is called peacemaking. And and I just think that's so you know, Yeah, it's a it's a big social emotional curriculum there also. And and when I was researching schools here, I found that actually there are a lot of schools that are embracing that as part of the curriculum. And it and it really does give a lot of hope, both for their well being and for creating some correct course correction for the the bigger the bigger world. That's awesome. Um, yeah.

Jenn Cohen Harper:
You were you were talking about it even in the intro, saying how you were educated in this sort of competitive mindset and like get, you know, get for yourself. And I think we're seeing the backlash. You know, it doesn't make sense for our kids that they're in a school community where they're simultaneously being told, these are your colleagues, these are your friends, this is your community, you support each other, you take care of each other. And then in the very next breath, they're being told, these people are your competition. You know, your grades are compared. You're trying to get into the same colleges. You're you know, there's not enough to go around. There's not enough wealth for everybody, not enough good jobs for everybody. Like, it's crazy making that we tell our kids like this exact group of people is both like your friends and colleagues and and community and they're your competition. And I think schools are starting to come around to the fact that that creates such discord for our kids in so many ways that their brains are provoked by it. You know, they're they're like protected brains are going nuts because it's incongruous. It's like, is this a community of safety and support or do I need to be looking out for me and mine here? And it's you know, it's a little bit of both. But we have to help our kids figure out those pieces and how to bridge that. And, you know, I think the work that we do in schools, we're really trying to promote a mindset of abundance and trying to help kids see all of the many, many ways in which there actually is enough for everybody. So it's not so scary to collaborate. It's not scary to support. It's not scary to be generous because there's a firm foundation of faith that I can be okay and you can be okay. We're in a lot of ways our world doesn't really send that message, so it's a little bit of like repair and then trying to rebuild a culture where we can rise together. And that changes not just how our kids feel and their well-being, which is, of course, you know, one of my primary concerns. But it also changes their capacity to learn because the brain has to feel safe in order to learn, in order to form new memories, in order to integrate, in order to in order to learn, and then to put learning into context. We need to feel safe enough to access our prefrontal cortex and school hasn't done a great job of helping kids feel safe. So there's, you know, the well-being piece and then there's the education piece. And these tools have proven to be really powerful for both.

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah. Nicely and keep believing and hoping. Part of the reason that we are creating a different viewpoint on on on what community is and how the world works. And I'm going to pause for a moment because it's time for me to tell our viewers about longevity drops. And, you know, in a way it's quite related because what. Longevity drops and what herbal medicine is all about in general is the. Physical environment, our internal to a greater level of vibrancy. We have an abundance of energy inside ourselves. Then disease has no chance because our immune system is so strong. And, you know, part of what I love about Longevity Drops is it's just got such high quality ingredients like the king of herbs with chaga and Romanian cordyceps and hoshu WU And it's super easy, just, you know, it's like a drop dropper full under the tongue at night and great with kids too, because it's in a coconut glycerin which makes it. Sweet. So my daughter says, Can I have more of that? And I said, Yes, yes, yes, you can have that. It's awesome. And us and our viewers and, you know, part of how we got connected, you and I, is because we're both offering programs at Omega Institute and I'm super excited for the trainees that are coming to my yoga teacher training are going to get to participate in a full weekend of the Yoga Yoga Service Councils conference. And so I think what that leads me to is, one, again, my great excitement that we're getting to collaborate and and part of what I always say with my people that come to my yoga training is, All right, now you've come for this thing because you want to be a yoga teacher or you want to deepen your yoga practice. And and that was really like my trick to get you here, because really what I want for you is to just become a leader and a light in the world who's making a difference in the world, which is happening automatically as we heal ourselves anyway. And when we take it to a more overt level and say, you know, the real purpose is to to to be helping other people, to be uplifting them, it changes our it changes our lives as well, which is the great irony of it. The more we help, the better we feel. Um, so all that said, would you say a little bit about the Yoga Service Council, what you all are up to and the conference specifically?

Jenn Cohen Harper:
Absolutely. And I'm so I'm so glad that you're participants are going to join us for the conference. I think it's going to be really exciting. The Yoga Service Council is an organization whose mission is to support other people, other people and organizations. So we're a membership based organization in education and leadership organization. We came together. It was the organization was founded at Omega in 2009. And we really came together because a lot of people who were doing service oriented work in the yoga world were doing it in isolation. So there's a lot of people and there have been for many years, a lot of people working in various settings with people with various degrees of need and vulnerability. For example, when we first came together, it was a group of people who were teaching yoga in prisons, in health care facilities, in juvenile detention, working with people with addiction and recovery. You know, people people who are recovering from cancer, you know, working with a wide variety of people at various degrees of vulnerability. But a lot of us were doing that work fairly isolated. There's not there weren't a lot of colleagues and we didn't have a lot of support. So we came together basically to support each other. And then this organization grew from it. And now we primarily work to support individuals and organizations to be as effective and sustainable as possible. So we do that through various education initiatives. One of them is the conference. So we have an annual conference. This will be our seventh year of bringing together a wide variety of people, both yoga service providers, but also health care providers, researchers, people in various working in various clinical capacities to talk about how we can best be of service using the tools of embodiment and mindful embodiment. So the conference is a wonderful, wonderful forum where. People from all fields come together. It's certainly not just yoga instructors. It's people who are working in different communities where they're in contact with people who may be in need of these services. So we have people who come who don't have any yoga experience, but who think that the yoga practices and the mindfulness practices may have something to offer the people they work with.

Jenn Cohen Harper:
We also at the conference have not shied away from exploring how society treats people differently. And we look very we look very deeply at issues of systemic racism, at how trauma plays out in communities differently, and how different people receive different levels of support around their experiences of trauma. We are an organization that has been very dedicated to big, messy, complicated questions that sometimes seem like, Wow, you're tackling this at a weekend conference, But we have a lot of faith that by coming together in community and speaking about the things that are really hard within a framework of community agreement and dedication to seeing each other fully and assuming good intentions that we can move a little bit closer towards connection on some of these really challenging issues. So that's, you know, that's the conference. And then we also have various other programs and projects that are meant to provide educational resources to whoever wants them. So we have a series of best practices guides. We're now working on the fourth one. These are collaboratively created books, looking at using yoga with various populations. So the first one was best practices for yoga in schools. We have one on best practices for working with veterans, one on working in the criminal justice system, and then the one that is in process right now is best practices for yoga with survivors of sexual trauma. And each one of these books represents about an 18 month process of bringing 20 to 30 people in person together at Omega for a working week of exploration and digging into best practices. And then what comes out of that week is edited and peer reviewed over the process of about a year, a little more than a year to eventually become one of these books. So that's a way that we have really found this extraordinary, where you really get a wide variety of voices and create a guide that is absolutely, you know, heads and tails more comprehensive than any one person could ever put together. So we have those resources and then a variety of other things, webinars and community resource papers and various ways that we support members and organizations who are out there being of service in the world.

Daniel Aaron:
Wow. So cool. It's, you know, I've been I love I love what you said. And I'm going to respond to a couple of the pieces. For years, I've been in the conversation myself with with yoga and spiritual practices as they have the capacity to be self centered. And and there's certainly a value in, in working on ourselves and developing ourselves. By the way. I understand. Let's put in the comments that my audience. I'm sorry about that, I. Okay. I'm going in and out. I'm in and out. So sorry. If I'm. If I'm losing it, maybe I'd better put it over to another question to you, Jen, and, well, I'll attempt to finish what I was saying, which is the spiritual practice can make someone self-centered. You know, it's about me and my practice. And. And I've heard yoga teachers say, you know, this is your practice. And there's certainly a value of in taking care of our. And I'm so grateful for what you all are doing with with the. In these these best practice guides and not just thought it's so easy for people to say, well, I'd like everybody to be happy and I want everyone to be peaceful in the world, but to actually, you know, put your energy and time where your mouth is with that is a whole nother level. And, you know, spirituality, I don't know. I have a a little bit of an allergy or a bias to some aspects of the new age world, which is a lot about speaking or dressing, you know. Malas Or a certain way of posturing oneself so as to be spiritual. There's nothing wrong with that. And there's just this other level of acting on behalf of others and putting one's effort into stuff that's not easy to do. You know, to come together with a group and collaborate over how to do something. There are a lot of different opinions and it takes effort and there's, you know, challenge in that. And, and, and what you said about tackling some of these tough topics in the course of a weekend, it's such a beautiful thing because what we don't talk about gains power and so even if we don't have all the answers to talk about, you know, the challenges of having safety in school or, you know, sexual discrimination or gender discrimination or, you know, what's happening for prisoners and how we can help them just to enter in those conversations is so powerful.

Daniel Aaron:
And then for each of us as individuals and for our viewers, you know, just to speak into what's challenging for you or look at the difficult things in your life, give yourself power and reduces the power of those obstacles. Um, and I'll pause for a moment to to. People know because realizing our technology know that I have a new venture, new offer, which I'm really excited about, and that is a mentorship membership. And that's for me, it's I feel like such a blessing. Know I love what I'm doing at Omega, and I recognize that not everybody is going to be able to invest a few thousand dollars in a month of their life to come and get a teacher training. So I have created something that is for a very small amount in a virtual sangha or community where I can bring all of my teachings about yoga, especially yoga off the mat and how to live yoga and also have live coaching calls where we get to really work on what's happening in people's lives. And so if anyone is interested in that, two things. One is two days are left to get the introductory special on it. Bonus save We love to save. And the other is for any of our viewers on the show, if you want to jump into the membership, I will also give you a one on one coaching session to jump start your experience in it. And I'm just I feel so excited that technology has evolved the way it has that that I can share and that we can meet and that people can really be dynamically improving their lives from their home and that we can create a community of vibrancy with people all.

Jenn Cohen Harper:
Old.

Daniel Aaron:
And that said, you were mentioning a little bit.

Jenn Cohen Harper:
Um.

Daniel Aaron:
What's up with the yoga service conference and the council? Either the school program or the Service Council or the conference? What would you recommend? What's the best way for them to step forward?

Jenn Cohen Harper:
Oh my gosh, There are so many amazing entry points. If you if you're interested in this conversation and looking at how contemplative practices and embodied practices can serve a community, not just, you know, speaking to what Daniel, you were saying earlier, you know how you can shift the dynamic from, you know, a lot of like, you know, this navel gazing is sort of like the term right, of like, you know, it can seem like contemplative practices can really contribute to a lot of navel gazing. There is an entire community of people who is interested in and actively exploring how we can simultaneously transform ourselves and our communities and how that process is a cyclical, interconnected, interconnected process. You know, how we can use our community as a resource, how we can be a resource for our community, how we can do it ethically and sustainably and respectfully, you know, and how these these forces pieces come together. Um, the conference is an amazing entry point. It's May 11th through 13th at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York. We have tiered pricing. We do everything we can to make it as accessible as possible. If you can't get there in person, check out the Yoga Service council.org website. We have much, you know, easier entry points, webinars you can join as a member. There's a variety of resources there. If you're interested in working with children, specifically either children in education or health care settings or children who've experienced trauma. Um, we run, I run with my team, I trauma informed children's yoga and mindfulness training. Every year we do a week long intensive at Omega. And then there are several other online components to that training that is this July at the Omega Institute. We're also doing a week long training this year at 1440 in California. So if you're a West Coast viewer, you can find us there in June. And I would say, you know, there are entry points regardless of your area of interest. So if you you know, if you find yourself particularly drawn to working with, say, people at large or you're particularly drawn to working with people in recovery, the Yoga Service Council website is a great place to just take a glance through our member organizations.

Jenn Cohen Harper:
And I can almost guarantee you that whatever population you're interested in, there is somebody out there trying to do that work in the most intentional, thoughtful way possible. And one of the hallmarks of the yoga service work is our the way that we define yoga service. We spent years as an organization thinking and talking about like, what is yoga service actually mean? What are we talking about here? What does it mean to be of service? And we honed this view of service and wrote a white paper about it. And you can find it on the website if you really want to dig in. But the basic gist is that the message is not is that service is not about who is being served, right? So it's easy to think, okay, if you're teaching a prison program like you're being of service because you are serving a particular population, you know, in a lot of ways, service is looked at through the lens of who is being served. And our argument is that service is not about who is being served, that that all people, all humans at various points in their life are in different positions of vulnerability, where they might be in need of service of others, even if they're in positions of privilege and power. Right? We all get taken down a peg. And that service is not about who's being served. It's about the quality of relationship and the way in which the practices or resources or whatever it is that that is like the exchange, the way in which that exchange is delivered. And we look at yoga service as combining essentially three intersecting spheres and one is the realm of the skillful delivery of the practices, right? So it's not enough to just teach the yoga practices. You have to think about the way in which you're teaching them and. Skillful, whether that means being trauma informed or adaptive or teaching chair yoga or whatever it is, it's really teaching in the most skillful way possible, combined with a dedication to what we have called conscious relationship in the Yoga Service Council and self reflection and self inquiry. And when we look at these three intersecting spheres of skillful teaching, skillful transmission of the practices combined with conscious relationship, combined with self reflection and self inquiry, we have a little Venn diagram and say in the middle that's yoga service.

Jenn Cohen Harper:
And that if you take any one of those pieces out, what you're doing is something different than yoga service. You may be teaching yoga, you may be studying for your own well-being, you may be doing something else. But that the heart of this service work is the intersection of all three. And I would say that the conscious relationship piece really rises to the top of the barrel. You know, the all three are essential. But if you can truly commit to the work necessary to be in conscious relationship and that means taking into account anything that might be impeding the capacity for two people to be fully authentically in relationship. Right? Really, whether those things are structural based in society, based in any one person's perspective or past experience or judgments, right? If we can do that work of learning and discovering what keeps us from authentically connecting with each other, then we're doing the work of being in conscious relationship, right? Which is impossible without self reflection and self inquiry. But if we can bring those things together and then we can use that information to skillfully develop the practices and the programing and figure out the ways in which we can most meaningfully offer resources and share resources. And we can we can be of service. And you can think about that outside the world, right? How can you be working in the medical field and truly be of service, right? What is the most skillful application of these clinical tools or these pharmaceutical tools? Right? What's the most skillful application? Can you meet that with conscious relationship and what might be impeding, say, your patient's capacity to actually receive what you're offering? And maybe what do you not know about that patient's experience that if you did, might change what you offered? Right? And how can we take that model of conscious relationship, self-reflection, self inquiry and skillful means we found as we engage with other fields, it's a model that really overlays many, many, many fields, not just the yoga field. And it's interesting to explore it from the perspective of people who want to be in service in a variety of ways.

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah. Beautiful. Well, I think it's going to work in. In different fields. Just like yoga is not a applies to any religion or any aspect of life. The principles that you're talking about in that triangle are just principles for awakening and happiness and being in connection. And and you know, again, to me, it's it's so inspiring that that you all have done so much and thought through it so much and you can speak about it so articulately because it really shows to me that in some way you and all the work you're doing is, I'd say, a symptom of a movement that's happening in the world, too. You know, you're connected to something bigger in this emphasis on community and service and and bringing it all together, you know, so many different people, as you were saying before, that are that are have a desire to serve or help but have been working in isolating isolation, that you're bringing it together to me gives a lot of hope for. Clearly in the world today where there's so much division and conflict that there is also this movement of collaboration and community and emphasis on relationship and. That's really inspiring and exciting and gives me a lot of hope. And I want to encourage to all of our to our viewers that service is or contribution is just something that's so important to me. It's one of the essential pieces of curriculum that I teach in terms of how to be vibrantly alive or how to thrive. And and it's it's beautiful because it's mostly not necessary. And it really gives us the jump between survival or human animal and what it's like to thrive in the world or to live a spiritual life because because we can go on in this sort of animalistic way of saying, this is about me and this is what I want and I'm going to get the others out of the way or I'm going to kill. And we have the possibility to say, actually, I can sublimate that tendency, that drive that survival instinct and go for something more, which is to be of service, to be of contribution. We have that capacity. And like you were saying earlier about, you know, different ways of looking at what service is and whether it's for the other or for the ones serving in the action of it.

Daniel Aaron:
There's an elation. You know, in a way, it doesn't matter what form we're serving in or who we're serving, but as we do it, we are serving ourselves and other and it creates a different energetic in in the world just by stepping into it. So my encouragement to the viewers is if any of the ways that Jen is offering, there's so many beautiful ways to speak to you, then take a step today now and get connected and see what you know, see what you can offer and see what it leads to and notice in. This. How you feel. There's such great research and scientists and the difference it makes in their own life and their own feeling and noticing the feeling of upliftment through that service and action will propagate even more of it, which spirals us all upward too. So there's my little rant and plug for service in general. And, you know, and maybe it's not in the yoga world that you want to serve. And that's cool, too. There's so many different ways to serve. We just happen to you know, at least I think I could speak for you, Jen, and say that we have been served ourselves so much by yoga and have felt the benefits of it that it's a natural way to want to help other people with it, too. All right. Well, I will pause my my service rant there. And as we're winding up, Jen, is there anything I haven't asked you or anything that you want to say or share with our viewers before we finish up?

Jenn Cohen Harper:
Um, you know, I think just keeping on the trajectory you're talking about encouraging people to think about their service work in the world. I would just encourage everyone to consider the fact that, oh, sorry, Cat, to consider the fact that, you know, you don't have to be doing like the hardest thing you can imagine with the most difficult population you can imagine working with to be of service. And I think sometimes, especially in the kids yoga world, people come and they come to training and they're like, okay, now I need to, to, to like, fulfill, you know, my my mission or my, my to be of service in the world. I need to find the kids that have been the most traumatized. I need to go work in juvenile detention. I need to go work in a shelter I need. And they think they have to work with, um, you know, basically the most challenging scenario they can think of in order to be of service. And I would say it's worth considering that every interaction you have and every student you work with, really every person you come into contact with, you have the opportunity to be of service to them. And that, you know, even if you're teaching, you know, in like the richest school in like the most privileged environment you can imagine, those kids have needs and those parents have needs. And even if you think that there are a lot of resources in the community that you're working with, you know, that may be true. But the connection, the human connection and the ability to to deeply connect with our own internal experience and to use it to generate compassion for others and collaborative healing, that's something that everybody needs, regardless of socioeconomics or past history of trauma. I mean, we just live in a world that has been stripping that from us. So you can be of service. S No matter where you're working, no matter who you're working with. And I think that's one of the things that we really want to emphasize and explore is, of course, you know, how do we work with and how do we support and how do we listen to those individuals and communities who have been most negatively affected by our very messed up social structure?

Jenn Cohen Harper:
Right. But also how do we look at the world as a whole, including people who have had a lot of privilege and a lot of ways and say this only works if there's a collective healing, right? And you don't have to go to like the hardest thing that you can imagine doing, right? Wherever you feel like you have access to other other people, to students, wherever you feel safe enough yourself to like stay connected to your skillful capacity, right? Like that's the place where you should start. And you can take a service orientation wherever you are, whoever you're working with. You don't have to say, this isn't for me because the people I work with have everything. You know that that is not necessarily true or helpful and it's a lot to put on yourself. Just plug in somewhere and get started. Yeah, there's my service said yes.

Daniel Aaron:
Awesome. Yeah. Thank you. Jen, it's been a really awesome pleasure to connect with you. Super excited that we're going to get to play and collaborate in all the work you're doing and for sharing so eloquently about it.

Jenn Cohen Harper:
Yeah. Thank you so much. Sorry about the cat. I'm really looking forward to seeing you in May. Yeah. Cool.

Daniel Aaron:
And for our viewers, thank you for tuning in for being part of this, for being interested and and maybe even more than interested that you're actually taking steps to increase your vibrancy. If you want some help with that, come join my community, your vibrant life. Now, this membership is just kicking. The family is building. And I'm so excited to support you in myriad ways, including being able to bring all of my own teachings there. And I'll be back for the show in two days from now. And we've got Will Tuttle, who's a best selling the bestselling author of the World Peace Diet, a really inspiring dude with some great information. It's going to be an awesome show in 49 hours from now. Thanks so much, y'all, for tuning in. It's been the art of vibrant living show your host, Daniel Aaron. Jen, thanks again. Thanks to Longevity Drops. And we'll see you soon.

Jenn Cohen Harper:
Thanks, everybody.

Sonix is the world’s most advanced automated transcription, translation, and subtitling platform. Fast, accurate, and affordable.

Automatically convert your mp4 files to text (txt file), Microsoft Word (docx file), and SubRip Subtitle (srt file) in minutes.

Sonix has many features that you'd love including enterprise-grade admin tools, collaboration tools, advanced search, automated subtitles, and easily transcribe your Zoom meetings. Try Sonix for free today.