The Art of Vibrant Living Show with Daniel Aaron 3: Video automatically transcribed by Sonix

The Art of Vibrant Living Show with Daniel Aaron 3: this mp4 video file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Daniel Aaron:
Me. Well, hey, everybody. I am Daniel Aaron, and this is the art of vibrant living. Thanks for tuning in. Super psyched to have my good friend and phenomenal yoga teacher Paul Delicious here with us. I'll tell you more about him in a minute. Also, thanks to Longevity Drops, our sponsor for the show. I'll tell you more about why I love it. And they rock later on and. Happy. Super crazy. Blue blood. Full moon. You see it. Amazing, right? And. I'm psyched for Paul to be here on the show for a lot of reasons. He's a dear friend. We haven't seen each other in a long time. He's happened. Happens to be visiting in the City of Angels. He's a phenomenal yoga teacher and in fact instrumental in me becoming a yoga teacher. We met at Omega Institute back in 1996, and Paul lives in Miami Beach, owns a yoga studio there. He's trained thousands and thousands of yoga teachers. And beyond being a great yoga teacher, he's also got a very in-depth spiritual philosophy and understanding that goes beyond what most yoga teachers have. And hopefully we'll get a chance to draw some of that out of it here. So, Paul, it's not a competition. Thanks for being with us.

Paul Toliuszis:
Paul You're welcome. Great to be here. Thanks for asking me. Daniel. Yeah.

Daniel Aaron:
So all right, let's I'm curious for this, Paul, start with how did you get into yoga?

Paul Toliuszis:
Well, I was in the business world back in the late 80 seconds, just living a normal life, so to speak. And kind of getting out of shape, trying to go to the gym, trying to be healthy. But nothing was really working out. And I ended up my mom was imploring me to go to yoga. She lived in California and knew about yoga because California is the birthplace of yoga, of course. And I was in Miami at the time and there wasn't much going on. But I did manage to find a Bikram yoga class with a very inspirational teacher at the time, and I started taking it in about two years later. I just had so many incredible, basically healing benefits and advantages and it completely changed my life. So during that time, then I got very caught up and inspired by the whole human potential movement and the spiritual movement. And that's when I decided to go to the Omega Institute. Actually, a little bit before that I got into Kundalini yoga. So I was with the Sikhs and the Yogi Bhajan community who are beautiful people, lots of amazing technology and tools and the traditions of yoga there. So I was deeply in that for about two years. But then I went bald and I didn't have enough hair to become a Sikh, so I had to find my own way there. And and that was really the very beginning of of the Vinyasa yoga movement. But people think that yoga is so old and ancient, and it is, of course, but it has also evolved. And this Vinyasa, which is the largest kind of asana movement in the in the physical asana world.

Daniel Aaron:
To explain what that.

Paul Toliuszis:
Is Yeah Vinyasa means breath movement system in one context. So this is the kind of flowing sequences which is prevalent in a lot of different yoga studios that you would find. So that was just getting started in the 90 seconds. It wasn't it wasn't from like 2000 years ago that they had these yoga sequences and knew about how to teach alignment and make up creative sequencing. That made sense. Biomechanically, We developed all that really in the past 30 years. So I was kind of at the beginning of that, and that came from the Ashtanga Yoga, of course, of Pattabhi Joyce. He was the one who who showed us the breath movement system in the beginning. And then it morphed into more of a creative, you know, the teachers make up their own sequences. And during that time, I started to teach Vinyasa yoga in Miami Beach. And then we also I was in a yoga studio called Synergy, and we started a teacher training right in 1998. And that was kind of the very beginning of yoga teacher trainings everywhere. And that has obviously exploded in. And I think everybody's now trained as a yoga instructor, but there might be a few more out there to take Daniel's course in May. So the the Vinyasa, the Vinyasa movement also simultaneously came up in the playlist and the kind of the iPod movement because music and spiritual music and kind of mantra beats kind of being played alongside yoga classes has led to a lot of enjoyment and fulfillment of of the yoga world. And then, you know, the hot yoga just you can see all the different brands and the different offshoots, all of these contained in the in the Hatha Raja Asana movement. That's what I'm talking about. And there's other kinds of yoga too, which Daniel was referring, which are more spiritual based yoga, the Jnana, yoga of knowledge, the bhakti yoga of devotion. There's other yogas that you can bring into play educationally within the asana context. And not all yoga teachers do that, not some yoga teachers. Many very skillfully keep it in the physical and are very, very talented at explaining how to move the body and align the body to feel certain energies and feel sensations. But there's a big, big possibility for us yoga teachers to influence people and inspire people in their spiritual lives.

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah, yeah, I'm excited about that because I feel like part of why I came back to the US is I want to make a big impact, a paradigm shift in in the yoga world and how yoga teachers are showing up. A friend of mine, a great yoga teacher, Edward Clark, pointed out a few years ago that if in popular culture, in the mainstream, you want to have a character on a TV show who is a little airheaded a bit ditzy yoga teacher, perfect archetype for it, And it hit me like, wow, that's that is how we appear a lot of the time in the world. And yoga still getting more popular and it has the potential for yoga teachers, you know, for for us, for even the few that have not been trained as yoga teachers to to really become to make an impact on people's lives on a on a bigger level than just as fitness guides. I think that's the whole reason for it. All right. Well, let me ask you, because we were talking about this earlier. What's your perspective on why yoga is getting more popular now? What's you know, what does it bring for you and what's the potential for people?

Paul Toliuszis:
Yeah, well, well, it works if you if you want to feel good, you can go through these these techniques, these tools, these gifts of yoga, I call them of doing asana breathing. And and it has definite physiological changes in the body that make us feel better. And and scientifically, we're starting to understand what these are, which is very exciting. So for instance. When we slow the respiratory rate, that's how many breaths we take per minute. There's definite effects of slowing the heart rate down and slowing the brainwave frequencies down so that we don't. We can immerse ourselves and dwell between the thoughts for longer and longer. We can become more aware. The thoughts aren't bombarding us so quickly. Also with the, for instance, the final relaxation pose. People who are new to yoga think it's funny that we all take a group nap for five minutes at the end of the class, but that is proven to have an effect on the parasympathetic nervous system. The relaxation response, which is researched by Dr. Herbert Benson. And what they found was if you stimulate the autonomic nervous system through these exercises for however long and then you rest, you relax and slow down, the effect on the nervous system is the relaxation response, the parasympathetic response. And so you feel that calmness and people who do yoga obviously know what I'm talking about. You walk out of that room and you actually feel peaceful. It's not a theory up here. Like, you know, I should feel more peaceful. You actually feel it. And that's a direct result of calming the nervous system using these techniques and tools which are ancient, which do come from India. But we've also refined it therapeutically in a beautiful way in our culture. And I think a lot of people are are using it. It's, it's it's a good doorway into slowing down the you know, the other effects are when we move our bodies we circulate blood all around the the body and the blood, of course carries oxygen to the cells. So we go upside down, right side up, forward bends, backbends twists, seated poses, standing poses, balancing on one leg poses, strengthening poses, stretching poses. And the overall effect of that is a holistic benefit to the body, the the whole body. All of the systems receive an upgrade from that. And I'm just talking on the physical level here. So when we kind of bolster our physical health, we feel better. It's a it's a vibration to and that starts to get into the energetic benefits, which I'm not talking about. But certainly we could branch into the, the aura, the chakras and the individual vibration and how we work with that to feel better.

Daniel Aaron:
All right. Yeah, cool. I'm with you. And you know, we've got a great audience here and a mixed crowd, some of whom are already way into yoga, Been doing it for years and some that are brand new to it. So what are you talking about? Chakra and aura. What's this stuff?

Paul Toliuszis:
Well, you know it. Things that we can't see still exist. I know. That's like a, you know, a big theory for some people, but a newsflash. But the we have an energetic body. Yoga has taught this that we have layer upon layer of energetic body that we can't necessarily see, although when we become more refined and sensitive to high vibrational awareness, we do open ourselves up to being aware of more and more aspects of our self, so to speak. But definitely we have the chakras. I think, you know, chakras have been now widely taught. There are energetic vortexes up and down the spine that basically govern how we metabolize and deal with life in different aspects, different aspects of life. And again, there's, there's lots of healing techniques to, to work with the energy body. There's teachers who teach to use the the elements. So fire sitting around an open fire or think of going into a sauna or a steam room. You can use the elements to really transform your energy. And then using water, of course, to even just something as simple as taking a shower cleans the energy body in a way that you can feel it. You do feel cleaner, but swimming in water, especially immersing yourself completely underwater. So all the energy body is underwater using fire element, using water element to to work with the energy body. I think there's research on that too. I'm a little bit more up on the yoga research than than on the energetic research, but there's just thousands of brilliant teachers out there proving that these things do give us a physical upgrade, you know, And what's the connection there then to the mental aspect of life? Because the brain is part of the physical and the better the brain's functioning, the sharper we are mentally, the more clear, the more clarity we have. There's a big benefit to that physically. And then what's the the overlap into a spiritual world. And what we're talking about, there is kind of an inner satisfaction with life, a certain level of peace amidst the craziness of the world. And and yoga delivers on that count, too. You know there's other ways to get there, too.

Paul Toliuszis:
I'm a yoga instructor, so this is what I'm talking about. But like you say, the audience out there, some of whom, you know, do probably more yoga than I do and others of whom maybe that's not their cup of tea, even just deep breathing exercises. It's just proven you can breed. The yogis have taken the breath science further than anybody in breathing in and out through our nose. Slowing the respiratory rate, as I was saying earlier, will have definite physiological effects on your body. Your heart rate slows, but inhaling through the nose, exhaling through the mouth is a way to dissipate emotion. If you see people kind of getting upset, they might go, Oh, you know, that's like take a few deep breaths type of thing. You want to exhale through your mouth. Um, these are just simple little tools that human beings can use. And also just drinking a glass of water. Often, if we're upset, we're dehydrated. So the body's reading is responding to a lack of water, and that's sending signals to the body. And we might just feel that as a little bit of stress or a little bit anxiety. And obviously, this crowd is very schooled in nutrition and hydration, so I don't have to go too far into that. But I think it's worth pointing out because the physical practices that we do do have an overlap into our mental and spiritual experience.

Daniel Aaron:
Absolutely. Yeah. And I like what you said earlier on about how the practice of yoga and the breathing can slow us down, slow down the brainwaves, slow down the breathing. And my sense of part of why it's gotten so popular now is that the speed of life is just continuing to increase. Know we are so constantly bombarded with information and it tends to put us in this reactivity mode. And, you know, ultimately yoga is about freedom. It's about creating liberation on a on a on the deepest level, on a spiritual level. And as long as we are in this reactive mode where it's, you know, ping pong, pang, we're getting inbox, you know, we all everybody has 12 different inboxes. We're not ourselves. We're not free. So to be able to just take a breath and be less reactive is super powerful. Absolutely.

Paul Toliuszis:
Absolutely. And and I like what you're saying that you're bringing up that that the purpose of yoga originally was a spiritual intention. I think we're criticized in India, Westerners and Americans, perhaps, that we don't really understand the true yoga. We've taken a beautiful word yoga, which means philosophy of all oneness in life and turned it into an exercise routine. And it is much more than that. We misuse that word yoga. We mean asana. That's what we should be talking about, the physical practice. But the purpose of yoga was for us to realize what we are that transcends duality and separateness. And there's yogas that don't have anything to do with the asana practice, the Jnana yoga and the direct looking method of Non-dualism Advaita Vedanta, which are old, old schools of yoga, which are being taught extremely skillfully now on the internet a lot, um, which can help a person see through the illusion of separation because it is an illusion. There really is no separation from life in any moment from the perspective that we're consciousness or that we're awareness, not necessarily from the perspective that I'm. Paul a human being, a body, a personality, you know, that's sort of an ego construct. But really looking at my direct experience of this moment, what is aware, what is perceiving here? And if I look at that, I see that what's perceiving here is awareness is perceiving my knee as awareness is aware of this moment. And from that perspective, if you slow it down and look at our direct experience, we've never experienced anything outside of ourselves. In a way, there is no outer world because even my perception of seeing something is being known inside of me. I'm not seeing anything necessarily outside of me or if I touch something. My experience of the sensation of that isn't that this is another person I'm directly aware of, a sensation called a sensation, whatever this is called. So those kind of yogas are being taught brilliantly, I think, and really have nothing to do with the physical practice or the asana movement, which is exploding and and delivering some great benefits for people health wise. But that's why I'm so excited about yoga. I think it's a time when people are ready for an intelligent, straightforward approach that's based on our direct experience.

Paul Toliuszis:
Perhaps we've come out of a time when people spiritually would look towards religion to be kind of an intermediary between the individual and God and to explain how how we should view these things from a religious context. And I think we're moving out of that now very strongly into a direct like, I want to know what is going on. I want to realize what what is life and my relationship to life, what am I truly? And yoga has the answers in some of these other branches that have existed for a long time. And I guess it's like the paradigm of the tree that grows its roots down for a really long time and manifests on the top. You can't see much except for the thickening of the trunk. And then at a certain point all the branches come forward in the spring. And that's what we're seeing now because it's a very exciting time to to look at what's happening in the world and what we are and apply some of the ancient teachings, of course, and the practices and the tools, but also to look with new eyes and be aware of what's really going on in our world.

Daniel Aaron:
What is really going on in there? Well, who.

Paul Toliuszis:
Knows what's really going on in our world?

Daniel Aaron:
Well, you know, and I think I mean, part of what you alluded to it earlier, like part of what yoga shows us. And we're talking about auras and energy and chakras, that there is an unseen world. And if we only believe our perception as to what's going on in the world, then, well, there's a lot of bad stuff happening, right? And it's going down hill. We could certainly look at it that way. And part of what yoga teaches and it's not just yoga. I mean, we know that gravity is a force that works on the earth. We can't see it. We can see the results of it now. Right. And I'm also you know, you were talking about the people in India perhaps criticizing American yogis. I am, too. I'm thinking, you know, and, you know, to be fair, though, it's great that there is so much physical yoga happening, so much in whether it's in gyms or yoga studios or corporations, people going through these exercise routines. Awesome. It's a.

Paul Toliuszis:
Doorway. It's a big door.

Daniel Aaron:
Well and even even on its own, you know, it's like just doing that stuff. And one of my first teachers said to me, you know, look, it's going to work. All you have to do is tell people to do this, this and this. Even if you're an idiot, even if you do it badly, it's going to work because it works. So I love that there's all this physical yoga happening right now and people are getting great benefits from it, whether it's just the the health benefits, but also it gets in deeper on the hormonal level and perhaps is a gateway. And it's a crying shame because there's so much more possible, you know, and and I think you were pointing out like this great time we're in where all the information are. So much information is available that we can have this direct experience of whatever we want to call it, the divine God life, our truest self. In some ways, I think it's just that's a perfect mirror for the Internet, right? We're in this age now where everything is available and connection, or at least some kind of connection is available all the time.

Paul Toliuszis:
Yeah, for sure. I love that you mentioned time. First of all, I totally agree with you about the the other aspect of the physical practice of, of Asana physiologically speaking about the hormones is amazing because when we circulate the blood in certain ways and we move in certain ways, we stimulate production of hormones that wouldn't ordinarily get produced by people who are not doing those practices of breathing and moving in those ways. So the brain has three primary hormone glands, the pituitary, the pineal and the hypothalamus. Science has proven that the body can produce 200 different hormones. Now, not every body produces all 200. It depends on the resources at hand, and certainly some hormones are positive, mood inducing melatonin, serotonin, dopamine, neurotransmitters. Endorphins, epinephrine, norepinephrine, oxytocin. These are a few of my favorite things, but also there's negative the cortisol. And I don't try and remember the names of the negative hormones, but there's negative hormones which make us feel awful and sad and depressed. So the movement and the breathing is the number one way that we detoxify the body, the carbon dioxide that we put out, and also other gases. So this deep breathing and this movement and this circulation help maximize the production of the positive hormones and also dissipate and detox from the effects of the negative hormones. So that's back to the physical. But then you mentioned time and said what is going on? And I love to make this point, which is that time doesn't exist the way that we're all kind of agreeing that it does. If I ask somebody about the past or the future, they say, Yeah, absolutely, there's a past and a future. For sure it exists. And yet our experience is that we've never experienced anything called a past and a future. All we can do is think about, think about images or mental imagery of things that might have happened or things that may happen. And that's always occurring in the now. And so I joke about this, but I'm surprised that there isn't like, you know, the LA Times, The New York Times, the front page isn't like time doesn't exist, easily proven. You know, you can clearly see that everything is only the now and again to the idea that that that we're individuals living in separation and we're human beings that are processing the now in a subject object relationship.

Paul Toliuszis:
If we really really look at that what is what it is that's aware as pure awareness isn't a human being. If I were to ask you to stop thinking for an instance, just blank out and look without thought for a human being, if you tried that exercise, stop. Certainly there's awareness there. Can you say that that awareness is a human being? I can't find a human being there. I just find certainly what I know of as me. But I can't find a name. Paul. A personality, an age, a socioeconomic class, a gender, a preference, a nationality. I don't find all of those things when I stop thinking yet I'm aware. And it's from that point of awareness that I've experienced everything in the world. Um, so getting back to the time thing, we're not human beings experiencing the present moment. We actually are the present moment. The person who said we're spiritual awareness, having a human experience really nailed it. I think. I love that.

Daniel Aaron:
You know what? You're okay. I got a couple of questions for you and for me. For me, how I got into yoga in a way, is I was I was in college. I was studying philosophy. I was on the edge of going for a PhD in philosophy. And I realized that I loved that broad perspective. And a lot of what you're talking about here we could call philosophy. Yes, right. Non-dualism different ways of looking at how the world works. Um, and what I realized is philosophy, at least the way I was getting it in college was really about breaking things down. And it was all operating in my mind, right? And then when I got into yoga, which came after I had something, what you might call a spiritual awakening, where I had an experience of like, Whoa, there's more than I have been seeing. There's more than my physical perception has been allowing. Then I got into yoga and I realized yoga has got a really cool philosophy, but it's also practical. It's taking it into action. Yeah, right onto the mat or into your life. And so when you're talking about the illusion of time or the illusion of separation, what what would you say are the effects for people, the, the detriments of having the illusion or the benefits of realizing that it is an illusion?

Paul Toliuszis:
I mean, great question. There's no practical benefit whatsoever to spiritual realization. Now, there is in a certain sense that there's peace under more varied circumstances. So certainly what we perceive in life we can't necessarily control. Life is coming at us sometimes good things, sometimes not good things. So the the variance under which we can still be okay on the inside and feel peaceful I think goes way up when we realize that what we are is awareness, so to speak. Now, some people might say that's very obtuse, but you can know it, You can you can look at it. People who meditate certainly know exactly what I'm talking about. Um. The other thing is that that there's a lot of unconscious fear in the human condition about death. And I know this is supposed to be a high vibrational show. So he's like, why is he talking about death? The message about death, which is the message that yoga teachers and the message that so many spiritual is that there is no death. It's a very high vibrational thing to talk about when you come from this perspective, because in yoga, certainly reincarnation is true. In Buddhism, reincarnation is true. Three fourths of the world believe that reincarnation is true. And so what we are is consciousness transcends time and space and the human condition and even this lifetime and what we really are will live forever. That's the word eternal. And it's hard to get our head around that intellectually because we think I'm a body. But from the perspective of I'm consciousness, couldn't you see that the part of you that's aware could leave this body and go on perhaps in between lifetimes? Other dimensions are ancient homes, so to speak, and there's a lot of near death experiences, a lot of meditators. There's a lot of research, lucid dreaming. There's a lot of people who are now experiencing other dimensional worlds which they say are more real than this world. So that's an exciting thing, too, to take on board here because it relieves this big kind of overhanging tension that we're going to die. So I think that that's a big benefit.

Daniel Aaron:
I love when I was when I when I first went to Omega, I think it was the same year that we met back in 96, there was something called the Adventure Game Theater, and our friend Howard Moody and his friends were running it and it's like it was teenagers who were playing. It was kind of like a live action Dungeons and Dragons or something like that. And they had three days of preparing and scripts and costumes and styrofoam swords, and there were, you know, wizards and there were princesses. And and I got to, as part of the staff, be like a like a stand in or something, you know, an extra on it.

Paul Toliuszis:
And a Merlin.

Daniel Aaron:
Type of. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And they had they had one of the important rules there was they had a reality check rule. And what that meant was if, if two kids are standing on top of a building and they're having a sword fight and the reality is they could slip and fall 20ft and break their neck, then anybody could then say reality check, right? Like, okay, just stop for a second. Good. That you're playing the game and you could die. But the equally they had fantasy check as one of the rules that could be called out. So if people were walking along and they were saying, you know, this game and they started they went out of the game and they went into what we consider normal reality, they would say fantasy check because we are here for being in this game. And I love that. And I think that's in a way what you're pointing to is if we realize that that all this stuff and all the problems that we think we have that are so important to us right now is all illusory and that in fact, there is no problem. In fact, the person that we're having a difficulty with or the traffic or whatever, that's actually. Fine. It's just part of who we are. That's I mean, I think that's incredibly practical for us.

Paul Toliuszis:
That is. It's. It's not necessarily illusory necessarily. Um. It's transitory, right? People who meditate and the Buddha taught things are always changing. So what we're perceiving is always changing. So if you're perceiving something negative, don't worry, it'll change. And taking a deep breath and using some of these tools that we have can help that as well as the consciousness, the recognition. This moment I'm having a thought which I don't like, but it's not going to stay. It's not going to be forever. And anything you feel, touch, see, taste or smell is also always changing. What we perceive is always changing on the inside, but where we're perceiving that, where we're registering it, where we're aware of it, where we're conscious of, it never changes. It's always us on the inside. So getting back to death just to make a few more points. So I like to I like to talk about when the body dies in that moment. And I don't know what happens. Some people who have had near death experiences claim to, but we really don't know. But I want to surmise that only two things are possible. One is that there's no consciousness that if it's true and some some hardcore kind of scientists insist that the brain governs consciousness. So when the brain dies, you're snuffed out. There's nobody home, there's no consciousness left. It's completely over. So if that's true, that's one possibility. If that's true, I would liken it. And what would that experience be like? Maybe in that moment in sleep where there's nobody there that you're not dreaming because you can be aware in dreams, but when there's that moment of sleep and the night where there's nobody there whatsoever, I guess that would be likened to that experience. There's no one there. Game over total blackness. And I like to point out if that's the way that that it is, is there any problem? No, no. Who would be there to have to register? This is a problem because if something's there to register, hey, this is a problem, then that means that consciousness does exist. And that's that carries over after this body dies.

Paul Toliuszis:
And that's the only other possibility. Either the consciousness is snuffed out and there's nothing or consciousness does continue on, you know, beyond this physical lifetime. And I think then if we just apply logic now, what's the reality that we experience now? Is there no consciousness? Is it is there nothing or is there something happening? Consciousness? There's something happening. Consciousness. So it's logical to assume that there's a continuation of that. It's not logical to assume that there's an end in terms of our experience that that's forever and final, because then how would consciousness have come into existence in the first place? You know, something couldn't have just come out of nothing. There must have been something to generate something. So I doubt that. I doubt very strongly that that death is real and and the recognition that we're awareness, you can kind of sense the part of you that that would live forever. And yeah, it does feel good to live in the world that way. It does. There's peace in that, definitely.

Daniel Aaron:
Well, love Jesus's statement that we are here to be in the world, but not of it. Yeah, for sure. And what is our belief about the world? Is it is it a lesson? Is it an adventure? Is it a challenge or being tested? We get to make all of that up. Yeah, we really do. Now, I'm going to ask you a couple questions in a minute about about people that are new to yoga wanting to get into it. Because in the few shows that I've done so far here on David's network, part of what I've seen is there are a lot of people that that know about it but don't have so much experience about it, and there's some concerns about it. First, though, I will say thank you. I am saying thank you to Longevity Drops. They are our sponsor for the show. And part of what's amazing about Longevity Drops is, well, we can debate whether our philosophies are practical or useful for us or not. But when you get to something that is proven scientifically to benefit our physical system, it's a herbal tincture. And what that means is you take a lot of very powerful elements from nature, like in this case Romania, chaga mushrooms, cordyceps mushrooms and distill them and get the very concentrated aspect of it and take that sub sub sublingually, which means, you know, you just take a dropper full of it and put it under the tongue and first thing in the morning, last thing in the evening. And part of what's great about this one is it's done with a really high quality coconut glycerin. So it doesn't have that alcohol alcohol flavor or for those who are wanting to stay away from alcohol makes it not only really palatable and easy, it's really yummy. My daughter loves it. It's like she's like, Can I have more of that? I'm like, Yes, that's so good for you, you know? And when we get tapped into it and I think this ties us back into yoga in a way when we get tapped into our true nature. And in a world that's becoming increasingly sped up and active yoga or herbal medicine or deep breathing is saying, come back to our nature.

Daniel Aaron:
And before I come to the question for you, I'll also let you all know I said before that I am also criticizing yoga in the way it's showing up in the world. And that's true. But and to be fair, I'm not just criticizing it from a distance because that would be totally lame and irresponsible. I'm also doing my best to do something about it. And really, it's that it's that criticism that got me almost 20 years ago to start offering yoga teacher trainings. So. You know, again, if we debate the the benefits of the philosophy, one thing that I know for sure is when we go into a yoga class or if we want to speed that up a lot, go into a yoga training for a period of time and do the practice repeatedly in an intensive way and get the philosophy of it and get the anatomy of it and study with people that are of extremely high vibration. And I'm talking right now without any humility at all about my training at Omega in May. And, you know, it's I love that there are so many yoga teacher trainings out there. And when I was a when I was a kid, when I was new into yoga, I was a junkie. In fact, I love this story. I don't know if you remember it, but when I when I was first getting into yoga, Paul had a yoga teacher training going at the time. And you said to me, Hey, do you want to come do the training? You know, I'll get you a good discount or something or and I was like, No, no, no, I don't want to teach yoga. But I was hooked on yoga for myself. And then it was soon after that I was like, the next step for me. I didn't want to teach but was to actually do a training. And I became a junkie because it was so not just fun. It was so powerfully uplifting to me and I got so much transformation every training I did. And because I'm ruthless about improvement, I got to really see how to make trainings really amazing and make them life transformative. And so what we do in that four weeks, almost four weeks at Omega Institute, is a ton of daily yoga, but it's also the really amazing technology we have for transformation these days.

Daniel Aaron:
You know, from the OM meditation to Breathwork to the community that we create to the high vibrational food that we have. And I'm still doing it. And I was thinking about this. I love about you. We're talking about yoga, you know, two decades after we got into it. And in a way, we're like little kids with it. We're like, you know, it's still so cool and it's getting better. And, you know, it's easy for people to burn out in their careers or what they're teaching or teach the same old thing all the time. And I love that we get to be in this thing and actually helping people. Measurably improve their lives. And one last thing I'll say about it for now is if you're brand new to yoga, even better. I love it when people come to the teacher training who don't have a lot of experience because they also don't have the the concepts that we have to get out of the way. They have more of the ability to come with an open mind. Yeah. All right. Now, what would you say for people that are watching here now and they've heard about yoga or they know I should do yoga, it's good for me, but maybe this is a challenge that local, local studio doesn't have a class that I know about or there isn't a great teacher near me or has got some challenges in my body. You know, what's what's helpful for people?

Paul Toliuszis:
Well, first of all, that was great how you told your story. I really appreciate it how we were. And it made me remember about the way that you were back then when we first met. Daniel would get up immediately in the morning and do like a 90 minute Ashtanga Vinyasa. That was the first thing. That was just like the first thing. Then there would be other classes during the day that he would take. Most people would have just stopped at this morning time practice. I'd be like, Whew, I did it this morning, you know, major workout. But that was just to kind of get loosened up for the classes the rest of the day. And then one time I remember it was so sweet. I was talking to you and you said, Yeah, if I start thinking about yoga, I just get teary eyed because I love it so much. You know? It was really, really you felt it. And yeah, and I hope to I hope that I can maintain that. And I think I still I still do. And when I talk to people about yoga, when I practice it, I do so much appreciate how it's helped me. The love is still there and the gratitude is still there. Can I.

Daniel Aaron:
Interject? It's fun to remember back when I was that obsessed with yoga and the physical practice of it. And I still practice every day and I love it. But you know, not doing 4 or 5 practices a day. The reason, though, that I was so obsessed with it then isn't wasn't necessarily altruistic because I wanted to become a better teacher, although that did happen. And it wasn't it wasn't even moral that I thought I'd be a better person. It was just that I wanted to be in less pain, you know. And I when I got into yoga the very beginning, I was awful. You know, if you measure it from the outside, I was overweight. I was stiff. Every class I took, I just poured so much sweat out of me. There was a pool around me. It was horribly embarrassing, you know, And there were all these cute girls there. And I'm like, you know, like. Like looking like sweaty gorilla boy. And it was so hard, you know, like. And I thought in the beginning I thought, well, yoga must be easy. I'd come from martial arts. And I got into it and it was really hard for me. And somehow I realized from the very beginning, like, there's something in this for me. It's benefiting me. And even though I was struggling, every time, I would feel a little lighter, a little more clear, a little bit more confident in myself. And that just kept going. And it still keeps going like that. Yeah. So, you know, I was obsessed largely in the beginning just because I didn't want to feel so bad. Yeah, it wasn't even that I wanted to feel good. It was just that I knew that I could feel not as bad.

Paul Toliuszis:
Great motivator, isn't it? Yeah. To get out of pain. It's a big, big motivator. Well, getting back to your question of how to get into it, there's a sacred, sacred fountain of all spiritual information, including yoga, that we can tap into. It's called YouTube. So no matter where you live, we live in this open information age, which is marvelous. If people want to take yoga in terms of Asana, we're talking they want to take asana classes. They want to take yoga classes near their home at a convenient time. If that's available to you, terrific. Just go for that. It's a slam dunk three times a week. One hour a day. Has the proven benefits of moving, of getting people out of mild level depression. And I'm not saying anybody out there is depressed, but three times a week, one hour a day is enough after about six weeks to have a measurable increase in your mood and hormone production. So so the one way that I approach it, if you if you don't have access to a class or don't have money because the yoga world, like, like all capitalism has turned into quite a business world too. And I own a yoga studio and we need to pay our rent. And, you know, we're a spiritually based organization, but my landlord doesn't care about that. So there is money involved and you can see and that turns a lot of people off the the apparel and the mats and the retreats and the whole spiritualization the materialist spiritual manifestation. I think it's terrific. I think it's great. But if you don't have the money, you can go on YouTube and just search up sequences of Vinyasa yoga or anything, any level of therapeutic yoga. Yoga for all ages, yoga for all conditions. You can just Google search on YouTube and you can get some, you know, all incredible information is out there. One way to approach it, which has been very good for me, sometimes when I travel and go on vacation, it's easy to get out of my routine. So I have I force myself for 30 minutes a day to practice right when I wake up, I have a cup of coffee first, which is allowed, and then I go right to my mat.

Paul Toliuszis:
And sometimes I don't feel like it. I have to literally force myself to get started. And I put a timer on and I put it for 30 minutes and I say, okay, Paul, you got 30 minutes and that's it. And then you're going to walk away. And when I string those 30 minute days together for one week, two weeks, three weeks, you can't believe how good you feel after two weeks or three weeks of just 30 minutes a day. And the other thing I like to tell any student, but beginners in particular, you don't have to do this well in order to receive the benefits. You just have to do it. And I think sometimes in our industry, yoga teachers who are very skillful about the therapeutic alignment aspects give us the impression that I don't understand how to tuck the tailbone in, at the same time, draw the front ribs in and still breathe. And there's a maybe a assumption that you have to do this right in order to get the benefits. And my experience of practicing, first of all, teaching 12,000 classes and practicing probably 5000 hours myself, I've never done it right. I don't have perfect alignment. I'm sure I've done things wrong in every set and I always feel terrific when I leave that mat. So for me, that kind of proves that there is a margin for error here. It doesn't have to be absolutely perfect in order to get the benefits, but you have to do it. Nobody can do it for us. I joke with some of my friends when we get massage or Thai massage, when you get Thai massage, you want somebody to just move your limbs around and do it for you and it feels great. But the yoga, you have to you have to stand up there and do the make your body move. And like Daniel's saying in the beginning, especially for us guys, it's painful. It doesn't feel wonderful to do. But by the end you do feel a lot better. There's an immediate benefit in the present moment because you're satisfied that you're doing something good for yourself. There's a short term benefit, the benefits of the exercise of asana and all exercise, but particularly the exercises of yoga continue for 24 hours or more after you quit practicing, which I think is a really cool thing.

Paul Toliuszis:
You'll sleep better at night. Your body will continue to produce the hormones. Your body will circulate blood better, your vascular system, your cardiovascular system, your respiratory system. There's an upgrade to the breath capacity. You know, we take 21,000 breaths per day. I know none of us thought we did anything. 21,000 except for think about eating. But if I can just get in a yoga class, even a half hour session for myself to take extra deep breaths, maybe a couple of hundred, really lung expanding ribcage, expanding, stretching the intercostal muscles that get so tight in between the rib cage and bring an incremental larger amount of volume of oxygen in for that time period. Every subsequent breath I take of those 21,000 the rest of the day, even if I'm not thinking about deep breathing, has more energy, more oxygen and more health and life value in it. So yeah, 30 minutes a day, it's hard not to be able to justify that amount of time. And if you can, if you can undertake it for long enough that you start to feel the self rewarding benefits, it becomes part of our life. And you know, it's it's just and it's free. It really can be free if you find a good little routine on YouTube, you can work it for years, years.

Daniel Aaron:
Awesome. That's great. Really helpful. And I'll add on to that, just to say that whatever works, you know, that's the best kind of yoga is whatever yoga works for you. So if it's YouTube, if it's going to a class, if it's just making it up on your own and I'm with you, you can't do it wrong. And I hear from people so often like, you know, I'd like to get into yoga, but I'm too stiff, which is just like saying, I'd like to get into shape. I'd like to go to the gym, but I'm not in good shape. Yeah, you know, I'd like to drink some.

Paul Toliuszis:
Water, but I'm just too thirsty.

Daniel Aaron:
Exactly. Yeah. Cool. Awesome. Well, I think we will bring it to a close for now. Okay. And you mentioned your yoga studio. Miami Beach, Tropical Vinyasa. Yes. And Vinyasa. Tom will put that in the comments there. I've been to the studio in Miami. I haven't met the landlord, but so far they seem to be a good man.

Paul Toliuszis:
A good man. Yes.

Daniel Aaron:
And it's yeah, it's beautiful. Studio. And it is such a gift to be able to practice with someone who's got experience and whose heart is in it. And, you know, Paul is an amazing teacher, so I hope you get the chance down in Miami.

Paul Toliuszis:
Can I make a couple plugs for a couple websites? I mean, we got people first of all, thanks to everybody who watches this. Thank you very much. I hope we hope we're informative and educational and somewhat entertaining. Um, but also, I know you're on the Internet and sometimes I used to be on the Internet looking for like what's good out there? Like, what are the good sites like trying to find something really cool? And one of my favorite sites is that site back Gap.com, which we've talked about. It's an acronym for Buddha at the Gas pump, VAT Gap, GAP.COM. And this guy who runs it, Rick Archer, has interviewed like 480 incredible people. And it's totally free. It's a donation based thing, and I've learned so much off that website. Amazing. There's a woman named Byron Katie who Daniel and I also got a lot out of, and this is more the yoga of belief system is probably it's the best way that I've ever seen to uncover unconscious belief systems which could be causing us to suffer, to bring them to the light of the moment, to look at them and to ask whether they're really true or serving us. And so this woman, Byron Katie, has a website called the work.com or the work or both. And it's just an amazing, free, transformative process for being happier in life. And one other website I'd throw out there is two other one guy, my favorite teacher right now of Non-dualism is a man named Rupert Spirit. Rupert First name, second name Spira, Rupert Spira. And he just has a very straightforward approach to teaching yoga Nondualism Advaita Vedanta Some of these consciousness based yoga's really, really brilliant man. And then finally, I just found out about a website which I've really gotten into, which is called New message.org, new message.org. Some very eye opening information on there and also very spiritually inspiring because what it's saying is that there are going to be changes in the world going forward that that we can't continue to use the resources at the same rate that we're using them. And with these changes comes a huge opportunity for us to go within and connect with the knowledge that's in us and actually lead lives that are more satisfying than the kind of hectic, high paced lifestyle that all of us seem to be pursuing and maybe getting satisfaction from, maybe not. So that new message.org is really brilliant.

Daniel Aaron:
That's great. And those are all fantastic resources. And again, I'm I'm a big fan of optimism you know whatever works and I'm you know, I'm grateful to you for being on the show Paul and I'm most grateful to y'all for tuning in. The fact that you are interested in creating your lives into a masterpiece, into the art of vibrant living, that's a big step already and that you're getting information and you're trying things out. It's so powerful. If you want to connect more with me, you can write me an email. Daniel@daniel.com. Awesome. I'd love to know more of how I can serve you better on the show, what you're interested in. I also have events, as you know, the teacher training and the four day vibrant life activation. I do one on one coaching work. I've got a couple of spots left anyway, and and I'm here to serve and I'm really grateful for for our sponsor Longevity Drops and for my friend David for inviting me to have a show through his network. So, y'all, that's it for now. I'm Daniel Aaron. Thanks, Paul. Thanks, viewers. The Art of Vibrant Living. And we'll see you soon. All right.

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