[00:00:00] Sondra: So a joyful state of mind is not just this, I'm joyful about everything because I practice gratitude. It's really more about deeply connecting yourself to some internal source through or breathing that your mind that you can cultivate joy in every situation.
[00:00:19] It is an innate state of humans.
[00:00:22] Aneta: We often hear people wishing us a long, happy and healthy life, but what if the length isn't what matters most? What if instead, it's the breath depth and purpose of each day that matters most? Welcome to the Live the Width of Your Life podcast. My name is Aneta Ardelian Kuzma and join me weekly as I interview guests who made changes in their own lives to live more fully with intention, gratitude, and joy. Be prepared to be inspired by their stories of how they shifted their mindset, took courageous action, and designed the life that they always wanted to live.
[00:00:56] Welcome back to Live The With of Your Life podcast, I'm so excited for my guests this week. Her name is Sondra Harper and she's an author, artist, and Yogi. She's the author of "The Four Attitudes: The alchemy of an open heart and a calm mind". She's also created an innovative deck of contemplation cards, beautifully designed to help individuals connect with the four attitudes and her passion for empowering women shines through in her teachings of Vishoka a method fostering a state of sorrowless joy, and her skillful use of meditation, metaphors and attitude helps to unveil hidden depths of potential that are truly transformative.
[00:01:36] Sondra and I had such a great conversation talking a little bit about the concept of expanding our life's canvas and what inspired her to explore this idea. She also shares the four attitudes that we need for a fuller, more joyful existence and how they can contribute to personal growth and happiness. We talked a lot about her book and she also mentions befriending your mind as a key concept as part of the books. It was really great conversation and her energy is just beautiful. I really loved our conversation and I hope you do as well. Take a listen.
[00:02:11] Hi, Sondra. Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm so excited to have you with me.
[00:02:16] Sondra: Hello. Thank you so much for having me on your podcast.
[00:02:19] Aneta: Of course. So excited. As I was reading your bio, you're an author and an artist and a Yogi. So I love that we have a couple of those things in common and you wrote a book called the Four Attitudes, the alchemy of an open heart and a calm mind. And so is that a new book for you? Did you just release it recently?
[00:02:41] Sondra: Yes, I did. I just released it.
[00:02:44] Aneta: When did you start writing it and when did you publish it?
[00:02:48] Sondra: I started writing it last year. Let's see, in March of last year. And then it came out, I believe February.
[00:02:56] Aneta: Okay. Did you always want to write books?
[00:02:59] Sondra: Yes, I did. I wanted to write books.
[00:03:02] Aneta: Okay. So tell me a little bit more about your background maybe and like how you found yourself where you are today.
[00:03:09] Sondra: So, I just always been fascinated with how our mind and body work together and how we can heal ourselves through very traumatic situations or health problems or relationship issues. And so that's one of the reasons why I started studying yoga about 24 years ago. And it's just kind of unfolded into this book that I have to share.
[00:03:34] Aneta: Well, tell me more about the book. Tell me more about like what you cover in the book.
[00:03:39] Sondra: Yeah. So the book is based on the Yoga Sutra verse one 33. And that is where Patanjali codifies what the four attitudes. The four noble yogic attitudes are, which are friendliness, compassion, nonjudgment, and joy. And so it's this look at how we become friends with ourselves.
[00:03:59] How do we do that? Just every single day in our day to day. How do we give ourselves more compassion and work through harsh judgment into non judgment. So it's like a hero's journey of how I've worked with these attitudes and how they've like profoundly affected my life for the good.
[00:04:16] Aneta: And those are not easy. I mean, that's the thing. You read it off and you're like, there are these four attitudes, but it's like, those are hard. So is this something that you've been working on for yourself for a long time and before you wrote the book for others to learn from it?
[00:04:31] Sondra: Yes. We have contaminants in our mind and some of those are animosity and jealousy and greed and fear, and one of the ways that we overcome those mental contaminants is by practicing the attitudes. And so that is how for myself moving from a sense of inner animosity to friendliness and it is a work in progress. It's not a one time event. So, yes...
[00:04:57] Aneta: Can you walk us through maybe each of those and just share a little bit of what you include in the book about them?
[00:05:04] Sondra: So we start with friendliness and it's Maitri. So we begin on the path of what is Maitri? What does it mean to be a friend? And we dive deep into becoming friends with our own mind and our own life force. Oftentimes we consider that it's being a friend to others. And yes, that is one form of friendship. Really focusing on who is the one of me that really needs the most friendship, the most friendliness. So that's the first one.
[00:05:34] Aneta: That alone is hard because I think sometimes we are so much harsher with ourselves. We hold a lot of judgment, a lot of shame, a lot of guilt, all these contaminants, as you said, in these emotions that are dense and heavy. So what are some of the ways that we can be a friend to ourselves or what does it even look like? What are some of the basic things that maybe we should be asking ourselves or ways that we change the way we perceive our own relationship with self?
[00:06:06] Sondra: Yeah, that's a good question. So the mind wanders all over the place and pinning it down into this moment can be challenging and you can think thoughts and you can overthink and think and how we actually innervate some of that unhelpful tendency with the mind is through our breathing.
[00:06:23] So we teach the practice of breath, it goes deeply into using your breath as the first guide to friendliness. There's only three things that are with you from cradle to grave, and that is your body, breath, and mind. And getting those three things into the same location and time and space can be done with your breathing.
[00:06:42] So that's how we start to gently, just kind of start to walk into curiosity with our breathing. And curiosity around, maybe there is parts of me that are still needing more friendliness.
[00:06:56] Aneta: Yeah. I love the word curious and curiosity because it's neutral. It's like a neutral emotion. And if you're in a really bad place or you're noticing the energy or the emotions are so heavy, just get to curious and allow yourself to be curious about it without the judgment.
[00:07:14] Because it's so much easier to get to curious than it is to get to gratitude and love and compassion if you're feeling angry or guilty. So I love that first tip. So starting with the breath and allowing yourself to get to curious. Yeah. So tell me a little bit more about the other ones.
[00:07:30] Sondra: Compassion. So that one is a little more challenging I find. Sometimes compassion like for me, it came from learning hard lessons and going through very challenging times and learning that challenge actually is a source for where we can begin compassion.
[00:07:49] And where we can meet with what might seem such a dire situation with our compassion and go, okay, I just surrender to this. I surrender to how this is and whatever the external world is doing, or even if we're going through, for me, I went through breast cancer and going through that thought me self compassion. Like just calm down, get compassionate around this what you have to go through. It's yours to go through. You cannot stop it or prevent it. So what's the, I don't like the word lesson. What's the most beneficial thing that I can learn through time as I go through this challenging situation?
[00:08:31] And compassion was one of the ways I learned how to turn compassion towards myself and realize like I deserve that. I deserve that compassion regardless of what's happening.
[00:08:42] Aneta: Yeah. Maybe what you've read or your own experience, do you feel like self compassion is harder or external compassion towards others?
[00:08:51] Sondra: I think self compassion is more difficult. I feel like it is. I think that we often are like, wow, I feel so compassionate for the person who's in suffering. Mother Teresa, she really went out and did such incredible things for humans and yet people who are really close to her, her flowing that compassion towards herself may not have arrived in the same way. And so really learning the lesson of I'm part of the tapestry of life, and I deserve the compassion that I give freely to others.
[00:09:21] Aneta: I agree with you. I think self compassion is so hard and we attach so much in judgment. I remember hearing Brené Brown talking about her study on compassion. And I'm going to paraphrase, she was talking to her husband and she said, do you think that everyone's doing the best that they can?
[00:09:37] And their husband said, let me think about it. Let me come back. And he came back and he said, I don't know if people are doing the best that they can, but I know that my life is better when I assume that they are.
[00:09:49] And I remember hitting such a striking chord with me and where I said, If I just assumed that everybody was just doing the best that they could, and I wasn't disappointed that they weren't doing things the way I expected them to, or I wasn't judging like why they were making the choices they were making. It really did open up my heart to a sense of compassion.
[00:10:13] And then taking that same view back on myself and just saying, I am just doing the best that I can, and that is going to be okay without wishing it to be different. Not that this is easy, but I feel like being able to turn it on to others first gave me maybe the permission to then do it for myself as well.
[00:10:35] Sondra: Like you learn the pattern of what compassion means by going, other people, what they're going through, they deserve this compassion.
[00:10:42] Aneta: Yeah, exactly. It's like the deserving. I don't know why we feel like sometimes we don't deserve the same level of love or compassion for ourselves.
[00:10:51] Sondra: Yeah. It's like, we leave ourself out of the equation. We're busy. Everybody else gets this. And yet we're like, what about I'm here too?
[00:11:01] Aneta: Yeah. I love that. You said we're part of the tapestry of life. So tell me about the third attitude then.
[00:11:09] Sondra: So Maitri Karuna Mudita that is the joyful state of mind. That's such a deep one and I didn't really go deep into that in the book. So a joyful state of mind is not just this, I'm joyful about everything because I practice gratitude. It's really more about deeply connecting yourself to some internal source through or breathing that your mind that you can cultivate joy in every situation.
[00:11:37] It is an innate state of humans. It's like that's what practicing these yogic attitudes do is like humans innately have joy, they innately are that joy and their light just gets covered with that joyful experience, gets covered with all these contaminants that we talked about.
[00:11:55] And so sometimes it takes something just as powerful to uncover that light and the breath is just such a beautiful way to practice stepping into linking yourself to that joyful state and knowing that that joyful state is always present for you.
[00:12:13] Aneta: Yeah. This is a big one because I ask my clients a lot of times we'll do an assessment just looks at different areas of life. And when I come to joy, I ask them about joy in their own life and qualifying how much joy they experience. I get a couple of different responses. I either get, well, what's the difference between joy and happiness?
[00:12:33] Or I don't know, some people, they don't even know what joy means, which is interesting. And then some people think that, when all these other areas of my life are in a really good place, then I will experience the joy.
[00:12:49] So it's almost like the joy becomes dependent on whether or not they feel successful in their health or their finances or their career, and it's not. Like you said, the joy is in the innate state. So can you just go a little bit deeper in case anyone's listening and they're like, wait, what is joy or how is it different? What does it mean to just be in a state of joy?
[00:13:11] Sondra: You know, to be born human and the human birthright is incredible privilege. And there's a scripture called the Sanda Lahari. And it is says that to be born human is a wave of beauty and a wave of bliss. And so knowing that joy. Again, it's like, it's not an idea. It is as it is, and the way to find it is through the breathing, and it's like such a profoundly personal process, I would say. And it's the joy of knowing I can let go of the things that don't serve me, and I can focus on, I am worthy and I am loved as I am.
[00:13:56] Aneta: Hmm. That's beautiful. And so when you talk about breath and tell us a little bit more about the type of breath that you're talking about and is there a practice? Like, what do you do personally?
[00:14:09] Sondra: Yeah, so one of the first practices that I teach my clients is the five qualities of breathing because that can be done anywhere. It's not dependent on an app. You don't have to have this big complicated thing. I always say Complicated process, complicated mind. And yet we can miss it because we think things have to be complicated in order for us to get something. That sometimes can actually not be true. Sometimes the simplicity is a harder thing to really focus ourselves on.
[00:14:40] And so the five qualities of breathing is that it's slow, deep, even, continuous, and quiet. And then I go into and I break down what each of those actually means and how to practice it. How do you actually figure out if your breath is slow or fast?
[00:14:59] How do you know if there's a pause between inhalation and exhalation? How do you know what deep means? So we go further and further into that practice of identifying for your own self what each of those qualities means and then learning to use them on a day to day basis.
[00:15:17] Aneta: Okay. Interesting. And so do you do that in conjunction with yoga when you teach it or is that a separate practice?
[00:15:26] Sondra: Yeah, I'm not primarily an asana teacher. I'm more like a mindset and that kind of a teacher. And relaxation. We, do focus on relaxation some in our program. So,
[00:15:38] Aneta: Okay. Well, tell me a little bit more about the program then. What does that look like?
[00:15:42] Sondra: So, well, there's two, I have two offerings. One is called Vishoka and Vishoka is the state of sorrowless joy.
[00:15:49] Aneta: me about Sorrowless Joy because when I read that, I was thinking I've never heard of that before.
[00:15:56] Sondra: So sorrowless joy. So our mind, our life, we have all of these loss and gain insult and injury. And those just occur from day to day. And we get attached to like, I should always be winning or I should always feel this way, or the world should always arrive this way. And the reality is the pairs of opposites is what they're called.
[00:16:20] The pairs of opposites exist constantly. And so the state of sorrowless joy is, something beyond just the pairs of opposite, it's beyond just getting always what we want or always not what we want.
[00:16:35] So Vishoka is a state of sorrowless joy. So it's an actual practice taught systematically from beginning to end to people how to link their mind with their breathing, how the five qualities of breath, and then it goes deeper and deeper into yogic philosophy, yogic lifestyle, what that means. That's one of the offerings that we have in my program. And then the other one is we have this one where we take people from the state of like burnout into brilliance.
[00:17:07] And that is teaching them more about what is the state of burnout? How do I move into this joyful state? How do I uncover more of what's really me as opposed to all of these unhelpful tendencies in my mind.
[00:17:20] Aneta: Yeah. So many people are experiencing burnout and I think we'll continue to experience it. How long have you found it? Does it take people usually to kind of come out of it once they start working with you?
[00:17:33] Sondra: Usually, we get good benefit at about eight weeks, but 12 weeks, we really see that they've done this kind of self study into how is my communication with others functioning? Do I have more time and energy to really have that juicy life that I want? How that 12 weeks is just kind of the juicy spot where they've told me, I've gotten more out of it.
[00:17:56] Because. We went deeper into this aspect of myself that helped me uncover
[00:18:02] these things.
[00:18:04] Aneta: It takes a while. I agree with you because people typically will be in a dysregulated nervous system for a really long period of time. And it just becomes. The norm where they forget what it feels like to feel good, or maybe they've never experienced it. They've just been in a constant state of stress, fight or flight and then just surviving. And so when they finally get to a place, sometimes during breath work or other services, where people will go, I feel so sleepy. I'm like, no, you probably just have not experienced rest when you're awake. And it's such a foreign feeling for you that you feel like it must be time to go to sleep.
[00:18:46] So what is the fourth attitude? I know we covered three and I think we didn't get to the last one yet.
[00:18:51] Sondra: Oh, that is Upeksaha. That is non judgment.
[00:18:55] Aneta: Yes. This is another juicy one.
[00:18:59] Sondra: No, I just want to debunk what non judgment is. So it's not saying that you don't have judgment because without the ability to judge and have the ego judge, how could you balance a checkbook?
[00:19:13] Aneta: Right.
[00:19:14] Sondra: How do you get in a car and drive it? So judgment is a powerful thing. It's when it's used harshly towards ourself and others, that it starts to just create so many problems.
[00:19:24] And we might find like, one of these attitudes is super difficult for me to practice. And that's the one you need the most practice with.
[00:19:33] Aneta: Yeah. That's so good. I like that. So you said when we use judgment harshly. Yeah. That's a really good distinction. So what is some healthy judgment? Like what would it look like to have healthy judgment in our life?
[00:19:49] Sondra: Well, healthy judgment, Has no attachment. It's assessing the situation. And I write about this in my book, like it's discerning.
[00:20:00] Aneta: Oh, discernment. Okay.
[00:20:02] Sondra: Yeah, difference between judging and discerning, like you discern, this is good for me, this is not.
[00:20:08] And it's so much less about the activities and actions of other people.
[00:20:12] It's so much more activities and actions that we take internally that then we serve others or we react or act externally.
[00:20:22] Aneta: Yeah. No, that makes sense. So I know that one of the things you said that the four attitudes helps with is really fosters resilience, which is something that we use this word a lot. And I feel like over the last few years we've talked about just being more resilient. So, what did you mean that the attitudes actually can help foster more emotional resilience?
[00:20:43] Sondra: What I mean by that is, I don't know if this is true for you, but have you ever gotten just knocked down and. You get like, yeah, I'm like you personally, you probably
[00:20:53] Aneta: Yeah. Oh yeah.
[00:20:55] Sondra: Had something happen and just like, whew, knocks you down. So resilience is the ability to bounce back easily and so the attitudes, because when you get knocked down, it's really easy to go into why me and knocked down to me might mean you didn't expect it coming.
[00:21:14] Something totally unexpected. Let's say somebody you love goes through something really difficult, any one of these things, or you lose your job or you get a divorce or one of your children has something really terrible happen,
[00:21:28] Aneta: Yeah.
[00:21:29] Sondra: Those things they are painful. I understand and have had those things. Resiliency is the ability while you're going through that difficult period, that transitional time to practice the attitudes anyway, in the face of them, I'm going to practice compassion today, even though today I don't know how I'm going to do it.
[00:21:53] I'm just going to choose compassion or I'm, you know what, at work, they're not being friendly with me. They're being very critical of me. I choose to practice friendliness with myself and others. That creates resiliency because it's like you're training your mind and your body and your future to say, no, I engage with this.
[00:22:14] I am this, I'm choosing this. So when you're down, you get this sense of being knocked down by life situations that can be very difficult. It's like having that transitional time to say, I choose to do these. I choose to practice this. I choose to focus on this regardless of what's happening out here.
[00:22:37] Aneta: That makes sense. What are some of the other benefits that you see if people read the book and they start practicing these four attitudes. What are some of the other benefits that they will experience just in life and maybe their relationships or even there with their relationship with self?
[00:22:54] Sondra: Well, I think that it does open a state of curiosity, that word you like. And then we move into trustful surrender that we're doing our best. As you said, one of the ways to find trustful surrender is just surrendering to, I'm doing my best and you start to have more of a flow state on a continued basis.
[00:23:15] And you work less to try to get yourself there and you're more in the experience of it as it is. Sometimes we or some of my clients, we can get caught up in like, well, what do I need to do to get there? What do I have to do? That's a very Western mind.
[00:23:30] Aneta: Right.
[00:23:31] Sondra: And that's so beautiful. And sometimes it's more about doing less and unprogramming some of the old things that no longer serve.
[00:23:40] Aneta: Yeah. So I'm curious, you said you've been studying yoga philosophy for over 20 years. How did you come to find yoga and how has it made an impact in your personal life?
[00:23:53] Sondra: Oh, well, when my son was born, I decided I was going to start practicing yoga. And I don't know if this is so long ago when the date myself here if you've heard of the show called breathe, it was on the oxygen channel. And I just started doing Asana. That's where I began. So that's where I began.
[00:24:09] And then later I was initiated by Pandit Rajamani Tegenayat of the Himalayan Institute. And he's my teacher and Himalayan Institute. They have a beautiful grounds here in the United States where people can practice yoga. They can go on retreat. So that's my community there and my teacher and they just continue to help me unfold and, become more joyful and, more loving and, really know who I am.
[00:24:36] Aneta: Yeah. It's so interesting. I love when I hear other people's stories too, when they start with Asana and then over time they go deeper into the philosophy and the history of yoga, which is so beautiful and has so many profound teachings. So what's been the biggest impact to your own personal life being a Yogi?
[00:24:55] Sondra: I had a mentor for 15 years that was part of the yogic tradition. And he would do like sangha, which is meeting once a week. And then he just helped me upgrade my philosophy of life. It's like upgrade your philosophy a little. And so it was a gradual process. But truly there came a point where it was less about what other people told me and more about using my own mind and body, like a scientific experiment this worked. This did something. How do I practice that again in a more profound way? So the practices themselves are now for me the teacher.
[00:25:32] Aneta: Yeah. It's beautiful. So if folks want to buy the book, where can they find it?
[00:25:37] Sondra: They can go to thefourattitudes.com and it's all spelled out.
[00:25:42] Aneta: Perfect. And then is that where they can learn about your other programs as well?
[00:25:46] Sondra: Yes, they can learn about them there and then I have a free newsletter they can sign up for called Divine Times.
[00:25:53] Aneta: Beautiful. And how often does that come out?
[00:25:55] Sondra: That comes out twice a week and it's bite sized chunks into mindfulness, meditation, healthy living, working with your mind and body.
[00:26:05] Aneta: So good. And the final question I ask everyone Sondra, is what does it mean to live the width of your life?
[00:26:12] Sondra: I love that. I love your language around that. It's just, I love your program. So beautiful.
[00:26:18] Aneta: you.
[00:26:19] Sondra: I think living the with your life is about going into allowing your life to be as it is and loving it for what it is.
[00:26:32] Aneta: Beautiful.
[00:26:33] Sondra: Fall in love with your life. Yeah.
[00:26:36] Aneta: in love with your life. That's awesome. No one's ever said it that way. So Sandra, thank you so much. I'm so excited. I definitely want to get a copy of the book and to read it. And is there a workbook with it? Did I see that there's actually a workbook as well?
[00:26:51] Sondra: Yeah, I have a workbook journal. It's not out yet. But what are out, they're coming out next month are my contemplation cards and they're like an Oracle deck. So you pull a beautiful card.
[00:27:02] Aneta: Oh, tell us about that. Yeah, you didn't mention it. I love beautiful cards. Like I love being able to pull something. So tell us a little about the contemplation cards. So
[00:27:12] Sondra: it's called the four attitudes contemplations deck and has a little book and it, you has all these cards. There are 48 of them. They have beautiful artwork on them and then they have sayings like compassion. I choose compassion today and then it goes into working with compassion for yourself they're beautiful and they're so fun. So those will be out next month on my site.
[00:27:34] Aneta: Oh, wonderful. I will look for those as well. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for the beautiful work that you are doing in this world and much continued success and joy to you.
[00:27:45] Sondra: You too. Thank you so much.
[00:27:47] Aneta: Thank you.
[00:27:48] Thank you for listening to today's episode. If today's conversation inspired you to dream again, break out of your comfort zones or reflect on what it means to you to live more fully, then please follow this podcast because every week you'll hear more stories from people just like you who took imperfect action towards their goals, created more joy and are living the life that they always dreamt of living.