Episode 20 transcript: Cultivate love, integrity, harmony in your life with Prem Sadasivananda

Podcast Introduction

[00:00:00] Prem: I think if people were just to do the three basic steps in every practice to do the postures and do the little breathing, whichever way they want, and then to do some relaxation, they will start to feel a little deeper dimensions. So relaxation is also important when we do yoga because, in relaxation, whatever energy was released through the practice is being assimilated deeply into our psychic centers, which we call chakras, as well as the organs of the body. So this way we provide a deeper foundation for healing. Naturally, that goes with the lifestyle. So it's obviously yoga cannot be the only medicine we need to apply many other things.

[00:00:40] 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.

[00:01:11] Aneta: Hey, welcome back. It's Aneta. Today's guest is a really special person to me. His name is Prem Sadasivananda and he's a scholar of Vedantic philosophy, Hindu Scripture, and Sanskrit. He's a spiritual teacher and he just has this knack for bringing yogic scriptures and text to life in the modern world. He's a trained musician and the spiritual talks and his chanting are just amazing. He also happens to be one of my spiritual teachers and is instrumental in my transformation journey, especially when I went through my own yoga teacher training a couple of years back and we could have talked for hours and hours. We covered so many topics today about how he found yoga and how his curiosity about life and the question of death led him to yoga. How the mind has the capacity to both destroy and create, why love is a foundation for any kind of growth, and how we can cultivate more of it in our life, in our relationships. We also talked about how yoga is a fully integrated system and something that many of you hopefully if you're curious, decide to learn a little bit more about, and also changes that we should consider making in our education system to allow our kids in the next generation to grow with more creativity and more mindfulness and so much more. I hope you check out today's episode and let me know what you think. Take a listen.

Podcast Interview

[00:02:28] Aneta: I am so excited to welcome today's guest Prem Sadasivananda. Dear friend, my yoga-swami. Hello, thanks for joining.

[00:02:37] Prem: Hello. 

[00:02:38] Aneta: It is so nice to have you on the show. Since I launched a podcast, I thought I need to reach out to Prem, and when he is ready, he will hopefully join and here you are.

[00:02:51] Prem: Thank you so much. Aneta has known also by another name Annapurna for inviting me to this, beautiful, sharing.

[00:02:59] Aneta: Yeah, of course. Well, so. I wanted to share first how you and I met, which was, I think it was back in 2017. I'm trying to remember when I went through my yoga teacher training. And, I knew that at the end of the yoga teacher training, we were going to have a special guest Prem, who was going to come in and do some teachings for us, lead us through some practices, lead us through sat song, and also do our name initiation. And, so that was a while ago and that's when we first met. But as soon as I met you, I felt like it was some sort of soul recognition.

[00:03:37] Prem: Absolutely. In fact, that year I was very excited to come to Cleveland. I think I had not been there before, but, anyway, it was a wonderful weekend for me, it was an opportunity to share some of the teachings that I find exciting with the whole group. And they're also based on my book, which is Empower Your Life. That was the reason actually I was invited there to just share these teachings, but somehow, of course, it happens like this.

[00:04:04] Aneta: Yes. Tell me about how you selected the names for people, and then why you selected Anapurna for me.

[00:04:10] Prem: Wow, that's a good question. The way that these names are selected, it's kind of an intuitive process. You need to know the basics about the personalities of the person, and to know the spiritual qualities or spiritual potential, and believe it or not, is very quickly intuitive. And, then the name somehow comes, I don't know where from, but it just kind of all of a sudden you hear it and it's there. And so the meaning of Anna is food, and Purna is filled with, or one who generously gives food in all forms. I think there are many different types of foods, this kind of podcast is a form of food too, right? It's spiritual food. So I think that the idea of the food aspect is such that, It means somebody who is incredibly giving and, it's such an inherent part of nature that whatever they do, they try to share it with others. So that is another part of one who finds fulfillment within? You can say it that way.

[00:05:12] Aneta: Well you honor me? That's so beautiful. And your name Prem means love. In my experience, you are so full of love and you give your love so generously to everybody. Can you share a little bit about your background, because you alluded to the fact that you and I share historical roots? We are both from the former Yugoslavia now Serbia, so that was an interesting connection for both of us.

[00:05:35] Aneta: Tell us a little bit about how you came to really enter this life of love and Yoga and Vedic tradition, and maybe a little bit more of the history of how that unfolded in your own life.

[00:05:46] Prem: I'll be very happy to share this with you. My interest in yoga really goes very far back in my life. I was very, inquisitive about the nature of life and I was very, I think bothered by the question of death. For me, it was a mystical question that there was not really a clear answer to. What happens? Why do we die? And so that thought of death also was one of the most pressing in my quest. And the other thing I did was grow up in a little bit dysfunctional family, and there were lots of problems. And I was observing this as a kid. And once my parents kind of got divorced, I was thinking, what is the purpose of life? What is the purpose of relationships? How can one keep relationships in a healthier way? So they all led me to the inquiry that I was making as a child. Like, what is the mind? What is the mind? And I realized that one thing if the mind has the capacity to destroy something, it certainly has the capacity to create something. And so I made the commitment, even at that age, I was only eight years old. I made a commitment that I will study my mind for the rest of my life and of course with all the challenges that each one of us goes through in life, I pursued and persisted with this, and I'm still in that process. I still want to know all the dimensions of the mind and everything. And I realized an important thing is that love is the foundation of any kind of growth. And this is true for relationships is true for one's song, self-growth. And, finding the ways how to cultivate that love, how to cultivate awareness. That was my beginning. And so at the age of 11, I got my first book on yoga. And, it was amazing. I was trying to do these postures and it wasn't just the yoga, with postures in it there was also a philosophy that was part of it. So I was so intrigued to know, there was, everything was explained in yoga. There was nothing, there was an answer for my own. For my appetite or what I wanted to know. I think yoga provided all the answers that I needed, and I just needed to get to that stage where I could have those experiences. And then I had some little gap. I wasn't really exactly doing all the yoga intensely until about maybe 17, or 18 when I was 18 years old or something. Then I went to my first yoga class and there was a very interesting woman there called Yasmin Napullo, who was, known to be, the first great teacher of yoga in Belgrade. And I went to her and she was, at that time she was over 70 years old. So I was, Part of the classes and I was never really very flexible, but I did enjoy the postures and I could always think, first class, when you go to a yoga class, this is like an experience a lot of people share, right? I wish I did this before. This is amazing. We are all familiar with, the physical aspects of our exercises and sports and everything, but there is something in yoga that kind of opened up a completely new channel. It was almost like a spiritual experience. I remember postures and then the breathing and then the relaxation, and then I said, I'm doing this for the rest of my life, as I was.

[00:09:01] Aneta: I had the same reaction the first time I did yoga because I felt like for the first time, this integration with my mind, my body, my breath, my spirit, it was just this wholeness. And too often we compartmentalize ourselves into our thoughts or our body or, maybe we focus a little bit on breathing and it's just finished. But this was like the complete integration and I felt so alive. And I, like you said I need to do this all the time, but, It's more than that. And so I know for me, when I signed up for yoga teacher training, I wanted to go deeper. So it was beyond the physical practice, which is sometimes what is most common in the West. So I learned so much about philosophy and history and the eight limbs. So for those that are just taking a physical yoga class, what would you want to share with them about what else yoga is, what it really embodies more fully?

[00:10:01] Prem: Mm. Wow. I think yoga is, as you say is it's holistic, it's an integral system. You can't really separate the body from the mind and from our true nature, which we identify as consciousness in our teachings. I would say that people would naturally be drawn to explore some other aspects of yoga if they began with physical because that sense of wellness that we have and that kind of flow energy that we feel for the first time definitely has a connection with the mind and there is a reason for it. We speak about the energy channels in our body, which are called nadis, and believe it or not, 70 thousand of them. Some of them are the major ones and they're all connected with major nervous plexuses and different functioning of the body on the physical level, but they also have their own relation to the mind. So these energy channels are the carrier, or both energy as well as the mental, processes or thoughts. So yoga kind of works in very mysterious ways. The reason it's mysterious is that it's not perceivable to our eyes, or we cannot use the senses to explore these dimensions, right? But they're felt very clearly by us. We're just not able to define them. So what happens is that the yoga postures specifically stretch the body. And by stretching the body, we, in common language nowadays, say we stretch the fascia and in fascia the embedded energy channels, which are known to the Eastern countries and cultures. So when you stretch these energy channels, those impurities that are potential there are being released. So as a result of it, there's a kind of fact on the mind that is done indirectly through stretching and movement. And I don't know the name of the scientist, but there was a person who said that the brain is mostly lighted up when there's a spinal moment where there's a moment to the body. So that kind of tells a little bit about the idea that when we do the postures there's something happens also to our brains. Like a lot we could say unused aspects of our brains probably set the light a little bit and, the neurological pathways are also fired up and built through the practices of breeding, which we call Pranayama. And I think if people were just to do the three basic steps in every practice to do the postures and do the little breathing, whichever way they want, and then to do some relaxation, they will start to feel a little deeper dimension. So relaxation is also important when we do yoga because, in relaxation, whatever energy was released through the practice is assimilated deeply into our psychic centers, which we call chakras, as well as the organs of the body. So this way we provide a deeper foundation for healing. Naturally, that goes with the lifestyle. So it's obviously yoga cannot be the only medicine we need to apply many other things. But for me, that was the exploration that I kind of took on and I did many sports and things like that, and I still think they're very precious, but when you actually practice yoga systematically, steadily, you really find that it will change your life. There's no doubt about it. And people find you more peaceful regardless of whether you really try to be peaceful or not.

[00:13:34] Prem: That's the power of yoga classes especially when you have a skillful teacher who is able to, guide the students into that state of relaxation and a good stretch. Sometimes you can have a teacher who is more concerned about his or her own presence and they want to like, sound great and everything, but, if the interest in a teacher's eyes is the student, They can have a really, very intimate, very beautiful experience of a yoga awakening.

[00:14:01] Prem: I think this is what happens. So, I think that's kind of one thing and I would say also to the students of yoga, that it would not be enough to just do yoga. Okay. We need to do other, other things. We need to take care of the diet, which, you master off so we share our ideas with other people about that. And also what we expertise is going instead life coaching. And this is where we have some missing links in our society. The things that are missing in our educational system are really the things that actually kind of create immense problems in modern existence. So perhaps I will like to introduce, two things that I feel are important. We're living in a very precarious time, so I think everybody's aware of it. And there's a tipping point to everything. And this is also an opportunity for people to, affect a major transformation in their lives. And I think this is simultaneously what all the problems that they are in the world. There's a great area awakening that is taking place in many people's hearts and minds. And, I think the educational system is kind of defective because it doesn't study life. It only studies whatever he studies to make you become a citizen, a good citizen, make money, and work, but there's a price that everybody pays for it. In that system, your own body may suffer, your mind, and your relationships, and you're not given the tools within that educational system how to even deal with them. And so when a person has for the first time a heartbreak, or they have some kind of a very challenging situation in their life, they don't know what to do. Now you can say yes, there are people like yourselves that provide help, they guide people back to health. But again, we're talking about individuals taking those steps. And we need to do this on a massive scale. And maybe one day there will be such a system that all of those things that we are teaching to students and people and that we have been taught is, will be a part of the educational system. So I think, for myself, I have to say, the most important thing is that self-awareness is a keyword. It's the keyword to growth. And so the main principle is after I have studied so many of these things in the philosophical systems and practiced and everything, I found that self-empowerment is the keyword. You can wait for other people to help you. You can find other people to help you, but you need to do the work. Nobody can do for you. Nobody can dream your dreams. Nobody can stand on their head in a headstand in yoga class. So all these things we need to do ourselves. We can get inspiration from every corner of this world. We can get it from every book, but the work that we have to do is ours. Once we realize that we start to lessen the dependence that we have on people around us, on the circumstances in the world, at work, wherever we are, and we start to really kind of strengthen and foster our mind from within out rather than what people think, we always think, let first the world be improved, and then I will do my things. I'm not saying that people necessarily think that way out loud, but there's an expectation that the government or the world or somebody will fix your problems. And I came to the conclusion that really nobody can do this for you but yourself, but you need to, of course, know the steps you need to be given the tools. So that's, that's the part that we have to do as educators. I find actually when you're a yoga teacher or life coach I find that those things are part of the education, their own, they were part of the traditional education. For example, in the circumstances of India or China, Tibet, or any of these countries that had a very rich spiritual culture, you realize that you could never separate spiritual practices from the way of life. And for example, the pharmacy of that time and the cooking, there was all one unit. Somehow in the west, we separated everything. I think self-empowerment is the key to creating a better life. My guru used to say something like this, if you want to change society, you have to think in this way. Imagine if you have a piece of cloth that is made of cotton. If you want to change it into silk and cotton, how would you do it? So he answered, he says one thread at a time. So whether you're talking about yourself as an individual, you're talking about society. You can only change one thread at a time, one action at a time. So everything like this, and you're building the momentum. That's important because even though you can do one action here and there, you need to actually sustain the momentum in order to activate something and create a change for the better. And I think, this is what's, we are forced to move in this direction. it doesn't allow for any free time. You can't really nurture yourself. You can't nurture your family. You're scrambling running around here and there. Needless to say that that's not, technologists added more pressures and it will be continuously adding pressures because the dependence on technology arises in, contrast to the separation from nature. The further we go away from nature, the more we have a dependence on technology. In fact, technology is a mirror in a way. It shows what can the mind do when it's in a heightened state, right? But I think that a lot of temptations, within the technological systems, are making people more addicted and it's becoming harder to actually implement the spiritual principles or the love principles or growth principles in life. So all of that has, there steps to everything. But I think once we are kind of awakened by the fact we must change our lives, we must make some efforts to move in a direction, more harmony, more integrity. That's really what yoga is about. If I will translate the word yoga in a modern way, I will call it integrity. I wouldn't call it the union only, which is what it normally means because to unite something, even in a relative sense, you need to integrate them in a sense that the parts become compatible with one another.

[00:20:13] Aneta: Absolutely. Yeah. And when people say to me that they feel out of balance, I always say it's because you're not in integrity with yourself. You're making daily choices that don't align with the values that you said are most important to you, and you've shared so much. But I wanted to talk about just the kids right now, and you talk about the education system, we don't necessarily cover the things that are important life lessons. Then there's so much focus, of course, on academics and subjects. But the other thing I noticed with this young generation which actually breaks my heart, and I think we're going to see that ramifications are we are seeing anxiety and panic attacks and stress in children younger and younger.

[00:20:54] Aneta: And we're also seeing these schedules where these kids from the youngest of age, from the morning they wake up super early to go to school, and then throughout the whole day they're at school. And then they've got all of these sporting events until evening and then all the homework, and then on the weekends traveling all over the place. So it's the kids and their parents who are never resting, there's never any stillness, and there's never any quiet. And when there is the feeling is so unfamiliar, so something like rest, which is so natural, and we need it to restore and to renew our energy and to return back to ourselves. Is so foreign in today's society. Yeah. For so many people. So what can you tell me about the need for rest or the stillness and why so many people struggle with it being very uncomfortable for them?

[00:21:47] Prem: This is a very profound question. In fact, you've already kind of answered it a little bit. I feel this is probably one of the most crucial, questions to be discussed. As many people as possible because you have individual choices, but you also have the pressures that are kind of piled up on you by the paradigm of this world as it is, which is what makes life so challenging is the materialistic view of it. The materialistic view of life is based on desire systems. So everything is like, you fulfill this desire, fulfill that desire. In order to do that, you need to make enough money, so everything becomes like this. And the paradigm is like when you're a young person, you get to a certain age, you should get your job, you should marry, and this is all fine. But then what happens often happens is that the two people who got together, all of a sudden end up being high-stress of life, living life high-stress in the sense that they have to work for many, many hours. And, all of a sudden the child is born and now it's scrambled. How do we take care of the kid and how do we still make the money to pay the mortgage to get this and that going? So the paradigm itself I never really agree with that and that's probably why I was kind of a little bit out of the box. I was born out of the box because I had to challenge some paradigm that is part of life and I don't really agree with it, for example, I believe that people should have enough time to be with their children and they should have enough time to self nurture themselves. I know that there are pressures that they're just there. You can't really necessarily nullify them. But the one thing that I always think, is if you want to move in a direction of more quality versus quantity then you need to make some sacrifices in life. And that will mean at this point in our time, will mean that we need to perhaps reduce something in order to gain somewhere. Because every reduction in one place creates an opening and some other places. So this is a yin-yang philosophy. So that's what that sacrifice needs to happen. And now this is the problem because technology is bringing an extraordinary number of hours into your busy life. And the problem is that it creates this illusion that you can do that from home, right? So, I think people's boundaries with life have changed because of the materialistic view, it's that the boundaries, meaning if I work from home, right, but I'm also cooking here and eating, I feel like I'm benefited by the fact that I can just go to the kitchen, have something quickly done. Which is good and I should be grateful for it. But ultimately, you lose some boundaries between living in the home and actually working in the home. So your home, which used to be primarily your own space for doing your own things has become your working space. So the boundaries have been lost in modern lives between, what are my working hours, what are my free hours? There are no free hours really for the majority of people. Maybe Sunday, a little bit, at least here in Manhattan. And then you have the boundaries lost between the night and the day. So people try to extend their day into the night to either do, do something they really enjoy doing, or they're trying to accomplish things that could not accomplish during the day. And that stretches then the boundary of a time gets stretched into the weekend. And then this country, we don't have holidays that are lengthy. We only have two weeks at best, right? So we could borrow a European kind of a little bit idea and have at least four weeks. All of that is going to actually gradually, hopefully, evolve. I feel very sorry for kids today that they, first of all, are kind of immediately pushed to go and study and learn at a very young age. I think the child should have the first 5, 6, and 7 years of just pure playing. This is my philosophy that's kind of in alignment with Eastern philosophy. They should be learning, but the play should be a major part of their life. And, we grew up climbing trees and spending time in the forest and everything, at least to some degree. And I remember that was my day. I would just go and play and then it would be obviously very challenging for a Mediterranean mother to bring you back home. But this was done like that, and I really felt that there was a big part of who I am even today. Just having that freedom. Children should first examine and learn from life itself, not from machines. They should go and should study. Look at the cow and look at this animal, look at the tree. That should be their kind of thing.

[00:26:38] Prem: So they should understand that the sun and the moon and the plants, so living beings, they're not just some kind of things there. And if they have that exposure, they're going to have a greater balance in relation to everything else in life.

[00:26:53] Prem: See, one thing that I teach about today, is that we have a word which is called dharma, which really means, integration, and sustainability, but also it discusses the connections. So when you look at your own body, in your body, there are trillions of cells that do not act independently, right? So they act for the benefit of the whole system, and none of the cells think, I wish I was like a brain cell. I could do much more sophisticated work. So the most important principle of the dharma is that there's a divisional work. So what happens is that the blood cells do one job, but they cannot do the job of nervous cells, right? And so what you're finding today would you have a greater degree of disintegration in the society, which is so divided in so many ways of families are divided. So you have the cells like a child living one thing, then you have parents living something else. In fact, it's very rare to find a family that has all of these members still around, right? Usually, grandparents are somewhere else and all that. So I think the child should be brought up by a few people like that. And in company with other kids, like, which is typically what's, obviously people try to do their best. But what happens today is that the pressures are so high, the pressures on a child very high. Every child has to perform. So the whole idea of success in life needs to be redefined if you're going to have success. In life, which means failure in other things, that's not success. So you need to look at it as some more spiritual definition of what success means. So I think for a child to be successful it means to really be just brought up with some love and some care.

[00:28:43] Aneta: It's interesting because a couple of things came to mind. One, definitely the things you talked about are some of the lessons from the Blue Zones, the places in the world where people live the longest over the age of 100 and they are integrated families and they are extended families and there's the benefit to the children. There's the benefit with the division of labor and work, which is something that's very challenging in modern society, but there are the benefits to the elders and the family who are not on their own, who actually delight in the grandchildren because they keep them young and keep them active and, and everyone has a strong sense of purpose with their roles within the family. But Prem, we know that in modern society, not just in the United States, but in so many places in the world. It's a privilege and it's a luxury to be able to live with your family, to have them nearby, to have them alive. And there are so many, families that are single parent families who are just trying to get by, who are just trying to do what they can, working multiple jobs to survive, and so these things don't necessarily work for them. What would you say to people who say, yes, it would be great if we could all live this way, but it's not my reality? It's something that's very challenging. How could they still create that sense of community or redefine success within their own terms that maybe can't look like what you talked about earlier?

[00:30:11] Prem: Well, I'm inspired by your questions. I feel like in life, you have two things, your ideals, and then you have what was called real life. And I think we need to set up the ideas even though they're not completely achievable in many ways because it is the ideals that set the transformative process within us. So if we have something that we look forward to, and we want to attain it or we want to be that, then we are initiating some transformation that takes deeply within us, with our values and we start to cultivate the virtues and all of that. So I think this is important to set up some ideas personally for each one of us and to set up some ideas for the family.

[00:30:56] Prem: I know the reality of what we are experiencing in the world now is in great contradiction to what we are saying in the spiritual world, right? And so I think you have to start small. The one thing that to cultivate relationships is to really concentrate on increasing your own sensitivity to the presence of another person in your life. And simply try to bring more awareness and kindness into simply working with other members of the family. And if we can for those 10 minutes that we have, if we can put all our heart into somebody's presence and what they need and who they are and their joys and their sadnesses and whatever it is, then we'll all that expand our experience of love.

[00:31:44] Aneta: I agree. I think it definitely starts with ourselves. And as I was hearing you talk about, just being loving and kind and present with other people. It just made me think about this notion of how in the world I see people feeling so separate and they're such polarizing points of view. And instead of focusing on maybe commonality, similarities, or points of agreement, however small they are, if we did that first we can build from there. But if you start here where the division is so big on something that's the most polarizing, people stop there and they cut off relationships with family, with friends, with people who think differently with neighbors. And instead of starting on what makes us all human and how we're all connected, cuz we're not separate, I think that this notion of separateness is what starts with a problem. If we acknowledge that we're not separate the way we treat ourselves, the way we treat our family, the way we treat our community and expands bigger and bigger is kind of a reflection of what we're seeing in the world today. So, how do you think that we can start to cultivate some of those? Simple conversations. Ones that are more loving, that are kinder, they're more compassionate, so that we can create this sense of understanding and community and build something stronger. I mean, it has to start with us, right? There's no way that we're fixing something so massive unless we start with ourselves first.

[00:33:13] Prem: Your questions are absolutely brilliant. I really, I'm inspired by them. Well, for one, I want to say that massive fixing of anything is not going to take place. On any level for anything. So we need to learn to live our lives in smaller, chunks of time and space and also action. I think that's the first thing. So one thing you have to remember one of the faults of the educational system is that it doesn't encourage the development of the heart. Meaning that the heart quality such as kindness and everything. So that cannot be done by the regular educational system. It can be done, but it's usually supplied by what we call a spiritual education, which needs to obviously coexist and has its own importance, under the sky. So I think Amma or somebody said, beautifully says, if a person is purely intellectual or scientific in their outlook, they will barely be compassionate. So this is what you find in modern times. There's too much emphasis on intellect and too much emphasis on reasoning. When you look at, for example, a tree, or you look at the cloud, you can analyze it scientifically nicely. But you will never know the tree, right? So the thing is that you can do the same with food, and you can also do it with people. You can analyze people, this is what people do. This guy's smart. This one is not smart. So what does it mean? You just label the person and then you basically shut down any possibility of knowing the person deeply. The only solution to this, all we use of the intellect is the true training of heart and qualities. And that will definitely mean kindness and love, and having mercy also. I love this word. It was used only at the time of Jesus or something. I think people don't have mercy. When we see that somebody suffers, we should be able to identify with that suffering to some degree, at least. And today you have a world that is so strange filled with hungry people, sad people, lonely people, homeless people, any kind of people. And we see that barely anyone with their heart will stop, look at them or help them. So I think this is the first thing the principle that I like to encourage is here, the first thing to do when you want to connect with somebody, even if that person is not easy. You kind of can handle it like your family. Hopefully, members are there that you can, you have relatively, I say relatively, nobody has absolutely good or perfect relationships with others, but just try to recognize their presence. Everybody wants to be noticed for their presence. For example, when you come home from work, the first thing should be the recognition the presence of the other person. We don't throw out problems at the person. We don't immediately complain about our day. We don't immediately get to our phone and computer and we check our messages and everything. First, we say, how was your day? I'm so excited to see you. You were in my heart today, even like that.

[00:36:14] Aneta: Yeah. I agree with you Prem. I started actually, every time we go to a restaurant, sometimes the waiters and waitresses, they don't even introduce themselves cuz they're busy, they're coming, they feel rushed, so they want to take your order. And I always say, tell me again what is your name and whether they did or didn't. And then I choose to repeat their name every time they come back. Thank you so much for that water Prem, thank you so much for this. And it's amazing what happens when you said you make that small connection using someone's name, making the connection with the eyes. It's such a huge difference. Or just asking someone, Hey, how was your day? How are you? It sort of jolts them out of whatever they were doing. Cuz sometimes people are in their minds, they might have worries, and they feel their body is physically in one place, but their mind is somewhere else. And so, it brings you back to the present. No time traveling, as I like to say. So that's something that I've noticed is very helpful. So I love this idea of the connection and just returning to that. And so one of the things you talk about in your book, so lovingly and you started off, but with this in our, podcast, was the notion of our thoughts and the world that we create with our thoughts. And I know that in yoga we studied something, a concept called Maya and which was very fascinating. So can you explain the concept of Maya and how you see that in our modern-day society?

[00:37:38] Prem: I will. Yeah. May I just take you back for like a couple of minutes, you were just saying about calling somebody by their name. That's so beautiful.

[00:37:48] Prem: I just want to say this before I continue with this. There's a book called bearing Witness by Bernie Glassman, I think, and in that book, there's an example, he was a Buddhist man, but he will organize retreats for those people who wanted to experience a homeless life for a week. And that person will pay some money to be on the street for seven days. They would be in a safe environment. It would not be, not like modern homelessness is a little bit too much, but a little bit like that just to see what it feels like. And so there was, a lawyer who kind of wanted to see what it is like, and of course, for seven days you don't shave, you don't take a bath, you basically eat whatever you can find. And he said it was the toughest time in his life. And the hardest thing, cuz he used to say always, I look quite smart when I'm going for my work. I'm well dressed and everything. And sometimes people look at me for that reason only. And then it says here, what I found the most challenging is that having become homeless for one week, nobody even looked at me and needless to say, never looked at my eyes. Nobody cared who the person was, where they came from, and all of that. So that's part of the story. The second part of the story, even more interesting, is about the gentleman who wrote the book here, the wife, and so they would visit different homeless people and especially women, and they would, give them a dollar each and ask them how they were. But at some point, his wife asked one of the ladies, and he says, what is your name? And she said she was silent. And then after being asked a couple of more times what her name was, she was so, emotional about this, that she burst into tears. And she said I have been on the streets for over 10 years. Nobody asked me for my name. It's amazing, right? So, asking somebody for their name makes them extraordinarily special. And you want people to feel special. We're talking about just cultivating these little sparks of love between the relationships that we can handle, the people that are very close to us, even if they may not always respond in the beginning, they may not appreciate our efforts or whatever it is. We have to keep on trying. Now we come to the domain of something very interesting. So you said we have thoughts and we Maya, right? So what is the Maya? That's a big story. But I will try to say it in a few words. We talk about the supreme reality in yoga as being within all of us, which is, we call it a divine self or supreme self. You can call it God if you wish, or you can call it consciousness. Depending on your preference, you can call any name you want. That is the thing that is, we are all part of. In fact, there's only one reality and that is that reality in parts, that sense of commonality in each one of us. So when you feel for somebody, you feel some common element in both people, right? So going back to the idea of cultivation, of kindness and everything which you're really looking for is you're looking for a common element between yourself in, in yourself, in that other person. And you will find that there is the same thing. There is life in that person. There's life in me. There's a desire to be happy in that person. There's a desire to be happy in me, and there is simply that consciousness we speak about. Now, within that consciousness, this consciousness is of course a large subject, but there's creative power. And that creative power is called Maya. So that Maya is the reason why there's this creation. And so we can say also that Maya is the reason why each one of us has our own creation. Like the creation of our thoughts, it's like, each one of us lives, in our own world, in the world of our own thoughts, so to say this is an amazing thing. Basically, Maya is the reason, why we were born and the reason why we feel also caught in this existence. And often we feel that we are not in control of our lives, and Maya also manifests in a form of different desires and temptations. So that's another kind of view of Maya. So the purpose of spiritual life is to overcome that cosmic delusion or cosmic power, and that is the way we do it. We work with the smaller kind of manifestation of that illusion, which is rather large, but it's smaller in comparison, it's our own mind. So you have to learn how your mind, how you talk, how your imagination works, and how it creates. Issues should not be there because we are in the world of creation, so we can create whatever we want. And that is part of Maya. You can say in a positive way, even spirituality and everything like this could be considered to be Maya. But within the Maya, there's something that is binding and there is something that is kind of non-binding. So the spiritual approach to life is part of the Maya, that you need to work with, meaning you have to reawaken to your potential. You can create anything you want if you just apply yourself. Make an effort, know what you're doing, and get familiar with the techniques of how you can change your life. And it will be a work in progress. So we don't need to wait for perfection of any kind. We don't need to be perfect at any moment, but we do our best. So to overcome the Maya, you can only do it in this way if you have a, or traditional explanation like this. If you have a thorn in your finger, you want to get rid of it, you have no other means. You take another thorn and you take it out and then you throw both of them out. So the thorn is ignorance. The spiritual practices are another thorn and then when you dig that out, there will be nothing left. You'll be enlightened. An enlightened person doesn't need to do spiritual practices and doesn't need to think positively. He or she's already attained that.

[00:43:40] Aneta: I love that. That's so beautiful. I'd never heard the one about the two thorns. So, what are your spiritual practices and what would you advise maybe someone who's curious, things that they could do right now to start working on their own Maya in overcoming it, or things they could do to start to build more discipline or spiritual practice in their own life?

[00:44:03] Prem: First of all, I think people should definitely talk to you a little bit because what I really appreciate about you. You have a very wonderful way of, kind of summarizing. I begin my day by having to say following some medical medium procedure. I make my little lemon water and celery juice, and then I'm ready. Usually, I start by doing the first pranayama because I find that that is the easiest thing, to begin with. So I do about 10 minutes or so, pranayama some breathing exercises. You can easily do it. It's alternate nostril breathing. It may appear that doesn't really cause great change, but you can immediately feel it. After about 10 minutes, you can feel it.

[00:44:49] Prem: Maybe that could be one way to kind of harmony. See, for me, as a piece of advice for everybody, you want to have, first of all, sometime, taken for your own practices every day. If you just walk into this life of intensity and activity without any preparation or spiritual preparation, you'll find yourself going right into the ocean with the huge waves. They're going to take you in, you're going to get lost. This is what happens to a lot of people. So morning hours of practice, let's say you take at least half an hour of your time. The first thing should be self-nurturing, and self-growth. That's an important thing. You get your own grounding. You have a little heightened awareness at the time. So the secret is how to sustain that awareness throughout the day, at least to some degree, so that you're not quite bumped by everything that comes your way in your day. That needs, of course, some training and it needs some guidance. I know that the day will bring things that I don't like to hear, I don't want to deal with. Humanly, right? It's like there will be issues, there will be an issue of coordination of different activities. But the first practice that you really want to master, regardless of everything, is to have a certain degree of equanimity. This is like your primary goal. Like whatever happens in a day, you try not to get thrown out of balance. And that in itself is a spiritual practice. But then the things in the morning that we do, they, they kind of foster that. So my practice in the morning consists of several things. One, I do pranayama, and I meditate. And I find that if for some reason I have to travel, I don't even have time to meditate. I find that that day is kind of out of guilt a little bit. It's so strange feeling I'm not quite aligned and it's very subtle. And so I always say, no, no, you should meditate, even if it's just a few minutes. Right. And then, throughout the day, this is another suggestion. Throughout the day you must stop at least every two, or three hours. I know this is going to be very challenging cuz people say, well I'm just busy now. I want to do this. Just close your eyes and realign yourself with your breath, the techniques that you teach, right? It's so essential, And even sometimes to ask yourself, just break the flow. I say, what am I thinking about right now? And then you say, I was worried about this. Do you want to just break that? So this way you intercept your kind of mechanical thinking, which I call it, and you, you in a mechanical feeling or going back into some kind of hurts and stuff like this. And then with these practices, you need to be extremely consistent. And the goal could be equanimity. Or you can use another word if you like, which kind of does the same job. It's harmony. So stay in harmony and harmonize with my feelings or whatever I'm doing and all that. So then you get that strengthening the first thing in the morning I also do a lot of mantra work. And then I do some Asanas and I do some Qigong. I do also one practice like that. And this is like my primary thing. There is the timing varies depending on what I'm doing in the morning. But if you're healthy, if you are strong, if you can get up early than anyone in the house, even before your dog and a cat, that is the key. That is the key to your progress.

[00:48:07] Aneta: Yes. Because you taught me that 4:00 AM to 6:00 AM is the most auspicious time for your top bus, for your, morning routine. Yeah. I wake up at 4:30 because that feels so good to me. I go to bed at 8:30, so I'm definitely still getting my sleep. But for me, I just feel like in the morning when it's quiet, it just feels. Like, there's a reverence at that time of day. It's like walking into church, walking into an of worship, right? And you can create the rituals for yourself. I love that you shared everything that you do. And I think for everyone that I work with, I always say find the things that most let you up. Find the things like you said, that bring you harmony, the peace. And I love the words you use today. Mercy, equanimity, harmony. All of these things are so important and we rarely talk about those virtues anymore, right? Like even hearing the words, I was like, yes, I want to be in harmony. I don't normally say that.

[00:49:05] Prem: I would love to see somebody doing a Ph.D. in kindness or mercy or something like that. That's what we need. Honestly, we have to start of course from ourselves and I think the moment we make some progress even in our habits of how we speak and how we address other people, we're going to see some transformation taking place in the perception of the world that we live in, at least.

[00:49:29] Aneta: I agree, and I'm encouraged when I see schools that are bringing, meditation and yoga with the young kids because I would love to follow them and see those that continued on what happened. Wouldn't that be interesting just to see if there are any studies that show if there's less anxiety or stress or if you can measure kindness and compassion or what they do in life that would be kind of fascinating to follow those kids around?

[00:49:55] Prem: Totally. I mean, when I was in Louisville just a few weeks ago,  we had like a private retreat and there were some people that were really amazing. They were teaching mindfulness and they introduced them in the schools and in the environment and they already have found that the kids are like responding incredibly. In fact, it is so much easier for kids to even concentrate than we think. A certain age, of course. And that they like all want to learn more. So we do see that there are people who are really involved with that work more and more. And I think at one point there will be just, I would say a necessity really to take it, widen across the world to introduce these meditations and yoga nidra, relaxations, whatever it is that people need.

[00:50:42] Aneta: Absolutely because it's free. I mean, once you learn these concepts, these are not things you have to pay for. There are apps for everything. There are service teachers, which of course I appreciate and I'm one, but once you learn these concepts, you can bring them back into your home. You can teach your family, you can teach others and, and be sort of, of a student of it and a teacher at the same.

[00:51:05] Prem: I totally agree. But I have one more piece of advice on that. And that is, people should learn. If Aneta could teach them some form of spiritual journaling. I think, when you journal, when you make a journal, which is not just a description of what you think about certain things, which is also useful, but it's actually something that. Places where you put in the information about how much of something you really did today, would be a great eye-opener. It would be a great help in your spiritual practice if you actually are able to monitor and measure whatever degree you can, the practices that things you are applying in daily life. I think if you just leave it to inspiration. We're not inspired 24 hours a day. That's very difficult to find. But if you practice you will find that your periods of staying inspired and motivated will last longer. And the best way to do it is to really share with your spiritual mentor or life coach to share this information, about your growth. And in the same way, as you do with your doctors, you share your information. I think that's a key thing to some self, development because we do not always have a teacher next to us. We don't have it available certainly every day. So it would be useful to sit down and do a little vision board. Put your practices, which exactly do you want to see those changes. Talk to Aneta, she will tell you exactly which way to start, depending on your time, availability, and inspiration, truly.

[00:52:36] Aneta: I love that. Prem, I have a final question for you so my question is tied to the title of this podcast, which is to live the width of your life. And my question to you is, what does it mean to you to live the width of your life?

[00:52:49] Prem: Very beautiful question. To live the width of your life means to think of your life in terms of the potential that you carry. If we could remember how much of potential we have, how much we carry it. We would not waste our moments and smaller, issues and maybe smaller failures and everything. So to live the width of one's life doesn't mean that you have to be always on high. Right. It just means that you are like a good captain of a ship that how to navigate yourself when the waters are calm and the waters are rough, like in the ocean. And for that, I can only think I do live every possible moment dedicated in your life as possible, dedicated to your practices of love and kindness and mercy or you can call it living in mindfulness. Knowing the presence like that, I feel like we need to think of ourselves not to think only about ourselves, but to think of our life, as you say happiness is. The result of happiness given to others. So if you live that connected life with others, then you will find your own fulfillment. But the truth is that the spiritual life is about connections. And in that, those connections you will find at the end of the road, you will find oneness. So there are three relationships you have to cultivate in your life for that. With the yoga scriptures. Tell us about the relationship with yourself that you cultivate to the practices of setting up ideals, doing certain practices, learning to discipline yourself, and then you have a relationship with others. That's obviously, What many people concentrate on and we want to make those relationships nobler, more appreciative, and all that. And then we also have a relationship with the whole creation. That relationship is not exactly taught anywhere but in some maybe more spiritual sense in traditions. So we need to cultivate all these three relationships to live a full life. So the width is there. It's for everybody to walk all of it. But how much of it would take is really limited just simply by the quality of our thoughts, I think.

[00:55:05] Aneta: And that is the beginning of the book that you wrote. I remember the very first line of your book, I think paraphrasing you, is something. The quality of your life is a direct reflection of the limit of your thoughts. Something like that. And I love it. And I love that you ended with that because it's so, so good. Prem,

[00:55:25] Prem: Thank you.

[00:55:25] Aneta: I'm so grateful for you.

[00:55:27] Prem: Thank you so much

[00:55:28] Aneta: that, you came on today and shared your wisdom. Shared your experience, shared your love with others and I hope that people enjoy it. How can we best support you? How can people find you if they need more of Prem in their life?

[00:55:41] Prem: That's a good one. The easiest way to come in contact with me is I have a website, prem-sadasivananda.com and I also can be reached by email. I can leave it with you

[00:55:59] Aneta: Yes, I'll put it in show notes. Absolutely.

[00:56:02] Prem: I do teach some kind of webinars every week, which are either based on psychology or some philosophy of yoga or meditation or something like that. There are plenty of interesting talks that I think that sometimes thought-provoking for our time that is necessary. And I tend to share them weekly. So if anybody wants to study anything, you're welcome to contact me.

[00:56:24] Aneta: And I've attended your classes. They're amazing.

[00:56:27] Prem: Thank you so much.

[00:56:28] Prem: Aneta, I want to tell you, thank you so much for bringing me into your podcast. I feel very honored by your invitation and a little bit shy to say, my God, I've got so much recognition today, but I really, I'm amazed by the work you do and by bringing all these different people and different thoughts and it's important that we all stay, I would say inspired, it's very difficult to stay inspired, I have to say that. So this is the best way to do it. It's a form of a sad song, right? The company of spiritually minded people and we inspired each other with our ideas and our practices.

[00:57:04] Aneta: Absolutely. Thank you so much. Namaste, namaste,

[00:57:09] Prem: Namaste, see you again very soon.

[00:57:11] Aneta: Thank you.

Podcast Outro

[00:57:12] Aneta: Thank you for listening to today's episode. If you have lost your zest for life and wondering if there's more to life than this, I want you to know that there is. If you are tired of being burned out and overworked, I was there, and now I want to help you. Download my free, easy-to-implement Daily Routines checklist to empower you to take control of your personal health and well-being and start to feel good again. Head out to my website for your copy, and I will see you next.