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[Music] the advice in this episode is going to transform your life if you really listen to it and you actually apply it so what I want to talk about here is real yoga what is real yoga many Westerners don't really understand what real yoga is because we hear the word yoga and what do we think of immediately we think of of course hatha yoga the yoga that you see at the gym the yoga that all the women and girls are into that is not real yoga that's a Western bastardization of yoga which has very little to do with actual yoga so the sad fact is that 99% of people in America and in Europe who practice these Western style of hatha yoga that you see at the gym that they don't know what real yoga is or what the purpose of it is what I'm talking about real yoga here is I am talking about the schools of yoga and there are many of them which are not intended for physical exercise but for meditation and ultimately for union and that's what the word yoga actually means it's a Sanskrit word goes back thousands of years the origins of yoga probably go back earlier than 5,000 years ago into ancient India and that word yoga it means the union what does union mean of course it means non duality it means the union of subject and object the realization of the collapse of all distinctions in all dualities such that everything is unified into one so the real purpose of yoga is enlightenment its Awakening its liberation or moksha as this otherwise known and here's a really simple rule of thumb to see if the yoga that you're doing is real yoga or not if your yoga is not collapsing the boundaries of reality for you if your yoga is not erasing your sense of existence and your sense of reality then it's not real yoga because that's the true purpose of yoga now why am I talking about this you might wonder well Leo but what about self inquiry what about all the meditation stuff you talked about what about all this all this other stuff you talk about why do we need yoga for enlightenment coz you've you've never talked about it before well that's because yoga is a pretty technical subject and I wasn't really quite sure how to approach this subject and also I was researching it I was researching various schools of yoga trying out various techniques and you know one thing you should know about me is I consider myself a researcher like to test stuff out so I don't discriminate I don't play favorites when it comes to spiritual techniques or personal development techniques I am very open mind I try out all sorts of techniques crazy ones ridiculous ones new-age sounding ones just to see what's actually gonna work cuz you don't know until you try this stuff and I've tried self inquiry for many years I've tried meditation for many years various forms of meditation from mantra meditation to to labeling and mindfulness meditation and do nothing Zen style meditation so what I'm seeing with yoga is something that I really want to bring to your attention if you've been following actualized I don't work because I think it's a really powerful tool which is why I said at the very beginning that this this episode will transform your life if you've been practicing some various forms of meditation or self inquiry to attain enlightenment and you've been struggling with those and you haven't been getting good progress I know how that feels I've been there for many years that's where yoga can really help you I think what's unique about yoga is that Yoga is more powerful than traditional meditation it's more powerful than Zen it's more powerful than just sitting it's a specific series of techniques that you practice which are similar to meditation but more effective because what yoga does is it brings your physical body into the equation of awakening whereas traditional meditation self-inquiry is you sitting in your head either trying to let go of thoughts or just being aware or just focusing on nothing or focusing on something or whatever you know you're doing if you're focusing on your breath or you're saying a mantra those can definitely work but the problem is is that for most people they need to sit there and do that for 10 or 20 years before they start to get some profound experiences and what's amazing is that even if they sit and do that for 10 or 20 years they still might not have a complete awakening and there's lots of degrees to awakening and there's also awakening sort of intellectually in the head but then there's also awakening your entire body so yoga I see as a more holistic method which tries to awaken you not from your head but actually from your body so it's like you're awakening from your body into your head and there are a lot of benefits to that which I'll discuss as we keep going so what is the purpose of yoga the purpose of real yoga is to still your mind to profound levels to really still your mind not just to relax but to still your mind so much that you are able to be conscious of the absolute and ultimately you merge into union with the absolute and you experience various states of Samadhi these are mystical states and they're their various depths of Samadhi and as you enter into these states and you go through these various yogic techniques what they do is they gradually purify your body and your mind so that your mind is able to really deeply relaxed and calm down and ultimately experience these profound mystical States and I think that it's way more effective than just traditional meditation which is why I'm bringing it to your attention another purpose of yoga is to clear your chakras there are seven chakras in the body traditionally that's what it said although they're actually different yogic schools which disagree about that some say there are twelve chakras or some other number of chakras so the number is not important but the the general idea behind it is important what's important to understand is that a lot of the stuff that holds you back from actually awakening and the reason that maybe your meditation practice or your self inquiry hasn't been working for you is because you have blockages in your body physical blockages emotional blockages all the trauma that you've experienced throughout your whole life since you were kid all the bad habits that you have all their emotional triggers and reactions you have all that stuff which constitutes your ego constitutes yourself it that's the thing you're trying to get rid of well just doing self inquiry doesn't necessarily get rid of those things see so with yoga one of its purposes is to is to purify energy channels in your body in your spine the chakras are located along the spine there are seven of them from from the very base of your spine moving up to your knee to your to your navel and then to your heart and through your throat and various chakras in the head and so you're gonna be clearing all of these and what she'll be noticing as you're doing these exercises is that these things clear up and open up and you're gonna see releases of tension of energy of emotions and you're gonna be channeling Kundalini energy up your spine from the very bottom to the very top ultimately with the goal of opening your crown chakra which then leads to permanent awakening you see and it's not just awakening but also like opening your heart chakra for example makes you more compassion makes you more loving opening your throat chakra and navel chakras and all this releases energy it it helps improves the flow of energy throughout your body and a lot of the diseases that people have especially the subtle ones that aren't very obvious that Western science doesn't know how to how to diagnose and treat very well for example thyroid problems chronic fatigue problems depression a DD all sorts of stuff like this which isn't well treated by Western science a lot of these can clear up simply by working through purifying these various chakras one thing you notice as you get deeper into a personal development work is that all of your emotions they don't reside in your head they reside in your body and so becoming more conscious of your body is a very powerful thing and I'll be talking more about that in the future but one of the huge benefits of yoga is that it can help you to do that and also one of the things yo can do is it can it can unlock spiritual powers called cities and these are various paranormal abilities from clairvoyance to telepathic abilities to all sorts of other interesting and weird and incredible things and those usually get unlocked when you get to the very advanced levels of practicing yoga so I don't recommend you go chasing cities I recommend you focus on awakening yourself and purifying yourself and opening up all your chakras and then if cities do come to you well that will be a bonus but that's not something you want to get distracted with so that's the purpose of real yoga now here's what's not the purpose of real yoga and this is where we get the fake western style yoga and by the way what I call it fake that's just to contrast it with the old-school Eastern yoga you know if Western Yoga is helping you to to get more energy to feel better and to be healthier by all means keep doing it that's fine I think it's just it's really important to contrast it with the meditate meditative style yoga that that I'm really focused on talking about here but you know Western Yoga usually why do people do Western Yoga for stretching and improving their flexibility for exercise for stress reduction for relaxation for maybe weight loss as a substitute for a cardio or weight lifting or to have a sense of community because you're doing it in a group you have friends whatever stuff like that right um none of these are the purposes of true yoga true yoga is focused on something very profound it's focused on metaphysical understanding its primary focus is not health although it can give you health its primary focus is not energy although it can give you lots of energy and it can clear up energy blockages its primary purpose is metaphysical understanding consciousness awakening there are dozens of schools of yoga of real yoga and of course there are dozens of schools of hatha yoga as well so hatha yoga that's the western style physical yoga that's really just like one branch of all these different various yogic schools that has become particularly popular in the West because it's very easy to market you see in the West we're very materialistic so in the West when you start talking to people about metaphysics and about collapsing their reality and about dissolving the south and about awakening Westerners don't care about that [ __ ] what Westerners care about is they care about oh how do I relax how do I become more flexible how do I exercise how do I join a fitness class at the gym or how do i how do i stretch and that sort of stuff you see so the reason I call Western yoga bastardization is because it's stripped out very specifically it's stripped out the metaphysical aspect the most important aspect of yoga it's stripped that out threw it away so what I'm advocating is that you pick up a school of yoga which actually has that there and this kind of yoga is a lot less about having weird twisted pretzel poses it's not nearly physically as demanding as western-style yoga because it's not done for exercise it's primarily mental exercises various meditative techniques and visualization techniques that are used to channel energy in your body and send it up into your crown chakra to get you awakening and to quiet down your mind so there are dozens of schools of yoga I'll just mention a couple of the biggest branches and the most popular kinds there's ashtanga yoga or raja yoga those are both two names that point to the same kind of yoga there is Gyana yoga which is actually the path of knowledge and this is very similar to self-inquiry there's bhakti yoga which is the path of devotion which is a form of yoga where you devote yourself to a deity that you worship and it's like a real serious form of worship like you really worship the hell out of that deity with the ultimate idea being that you surrender yourself so completely so completely to this day 'ti with such devotion you pray to it you visualize it you basically treat this deity as a personal god of yours until ultimately you actually fuse with the deity and so you attain union through devotion so try to imagine what level of devotion is required for you to actually physically surrender yourself and your body in this process of devotion so that you merge with the physical world that's a pretty heavy level of devotion which very few people especially in the West are inclined to doing in India that works pretty well for many people but in the West I don't think that's a very effective method most of us just just are not capable of doing that here it doesn't really fit our personality type it doesn't fit our mind type it doesn't fit our culture so I'm not a big fan of bhakti-yoga then there's karma yoga Karma Yoga is yoga through action so this would be a path where someone commits themselves so fully to their life purpose speaking of life life purpose as being a spiritual practice you commit yourself so fully to your life purpose that you actually surrender yourself to the life purpose to serving other people and so it's basically the path of selfless service and you serve so selflessly that through this process of action and service that you are in theory is supposed to surrender yourself and again attain a certain union again I think in practice that's quite difficult to do you know I'm all for life purpose I think that's very important I think there are spiritual dimensions to life purpose but I think to actually attain enlightenment through through a Karma Yoga path I mean I'm sure some people in history have done it but I think it's pretty rare and it's it's quite indirect there's also Kundalini Yoga you might have heard that one there's Kriya yoga which is Yogananda's school of yoga if you've heard about Swami Yogananda he was a very famous some Indian yogi about a century ago then there's Tantra and there's a Shive ism now don't confuse Tantra with sex Tantra has nothing to do with sex really again it's a Western bastardization of what Tantra really is Tantra is a series of elaborate visualization exercises which is just another school of yoga basically whose purpose is again union with with the absolute so those are sort of the major branches you can experiment with those and find one that you like and of course each one of these has many sub schools so if you take Kriya yoga there's many sub schools of that and of course all you different sub schools different lineages and sub lineages they all disagree with each other and fight back and forth over techniques so there's quite a lot of kind of like bickering back and forth as you expect with all spiritual traditions they all fracture they all splinter and then they all fight against each other that's how it tends to go down so my point here is not to advocate any one particular school of yoga above others it's just to introduce you to this idea of yoga and the possibilities that are out there and the benefits that this can have for you and to really study and understand all the nuances of all these four schools you know it's complex stuff you have to be a scholar to basically to read all the scriptures and to make sense of them all so I'm not asking you to do that I'm just giving you sort of a broad overview if you're a westerner this is this is just a broad overview sort of like yoga 101 an introduction now let me talk about why I think yoga is superior to meditation self inquiry I've already touched upon this point but let me be very explicit about it first I think it's because it clears the chakras in a way that meditation and self inquiry cannot it can purge trauma and emotions which can be otherwise very difficult to deal with and that often times meditation self inquiry do not address I think it produces a more holistic awakening it awakens not only your mind but also your body and it can heal your body at the same time and a lot of us you know we we live very unhealthy lives we've eaten very unhealthy food for most of our lives and we are addicted to media and to all this stuff so we need a more holistic approach to awakening than just working with the mind through something like self inquiry so these ancillary benefits I think for many people they can be a lifesaver maybe you have some kind of disease that's holding you back like some sort of chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia or some sort of digestion problems or insomnia or or you know bad terrible PMS symptoms or whatever you have that could get cured while you're doing these practices in a way that for example self inquiry probably would do and then that will free you up to then have more energy and more capacity to go deeper into your practices because I found that you know you can do self inquiry for years but then you're stuck in your quiet isn't this working well it's probably because you're a complex human being and this self inquiry was designed for a very narrow purpose and sometimes we were trying to solve a larger problem you just can't solve it with one kind of tool you need an assortment of tools which is why people get stuck when they just subscribe to one spiritual technique oftentimes it doesn't work for them I think also that yoga is superior because it's more potent it requires much less time whereas regular meditation might require you to to take retreats where you spend hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours thousands of hours meditating your ass off and just seeing little puny results with yoga practices you don't need that much you could invest just 60 minutes a day and you can see some pretty huge improvements within a year or two also I think it's superior because it teaches you proper breathing and don't dismiss how important that can be because again as Westerners will not really taught how to breathe properly we have very shallow breathing we're breathing deep in our chest rather than deep in our belly our breathing is slow is quick and shallow rather than slow and deep and so yoga will completely transform how you breathe and the reason that's important is because your physical vitality and energy comes from your breath comes from the oxygen that you're taking in so that's one important component and also the way your mind acts is very much related to how you breathe when you're breathing is screwed up and shallow and quick your mind is gonna be shallow and it's gonna be scatterbrained when your breathing becomes deep diaphragmatic into the belly and very slow such that you're taking maybe just one or two breaths per minute then your mind becomes very still and very powerful and very concentrated which is exactly what you need to attain some of these mystical states and to get your awakening a lot of people in the West well we have a DD even if you're not officially diagnosed with a DD you basically still have a version of a TD because you're using your phone you're using the Internet you're completely media addicted so I think that the reason that self-inquiry and traditional meditation doesn't work for many people is simply because our concentrations are so poor and that's something that yoga can help you to develop I think yoga is superior because it can help you to develop cities or these paranormal abilities I think it's also superior because it can help to eliminate intellectualization which tends to be a problem with self inquiry that's something I've run into that I've noticed and I bet you that if I succumb to that problem then you because you listen to me also succumb to this problem of intellectualization as you do self inquiry and that just gets you chasing your tail in circles without really having progress so you might wonder Leo how do I start real yoga sounds complicated where do I turn to well I'm gonna give you a very simple and clear solution but here are some questions that are probably on your mind when your thing about starting yoga you might wonder like do I need a guru and if so where do I find this guru what kind of techniques do I need to be learning how do I select the best school which school is best for me and what kind of results can I expect and how quickly can I expect them from this practice well the problem is is that most yogic techniques are secret most of them are not written down in books because traditionally a yoga school requires that you find a guru that you resonate with this guru that you sort of surrender yourself to this guru and you go through an initiation process you take vows of secrecy and then the Guru hands you some techniques and then you spend years working these techniques and once you've mastered them a little bit he hands you a few more and a few more and a few more in this process takes texts decades and he gradually hands out techniques to you that's traditionally how it works a couple of problems with this one is that it's not very easily accessible to most people because you probably don't know a guru and you certainly probably don't know one who is physically close to you and and so where do you go to find one and also the problem with gurus is that you have to trust the Guru you need a good guru it's very possible that you find the wrong guru a corrupt guru a guru who teaches you the wrong techniques or who abuses his power and abuses his position or a guru who asks you to accept a bunch of dogma that he believes in and so because of the Guru the disciple relationship then you're gonna end up believing in all that dogma and again as Westerners we oftentimes don't like believing in all sorts of dogma and religious hocus-pocus type stuff that often comes with these techniques and you can't come to most gurus and just say it and just say to them okay tell me the techniques and strip out all the dog muster about all the religious stuff just tell me the strict techniques and I'll just do them you got to play by the Guru's rules so that's something I don't really like so what I'm gonna offer you here is sort of a westernized version of how to do real yoga it's very powerful it's very direct it's very straightforward all you got to do is just follow the steps and this will work for you and you don't need to subscribe to any gurus including myself so of course you can explore the different yoga schools and I am NOT gonna say that one of them is better than the others but what I will offer you just for sake of simplicity and clarity here is a particular school which is very effective and that's Kriya yoga this is the yoga of Yogananda except I don't like the way that Yogananda teaches it well he's been dead for over a hundred years so the problem is that his Institute the self-realization fellowship which still exists a hundred years later and it's based in Los Angeles you can go to them and you can subscribe to them you can visit them and they will teach you these techniques you can go through their initiation but what I found and I've heard from various sources that I've that I've talked to about this who are in the know is that it's quite corrupt and a watered down and so what I have for you is I have for you a way to learn Kriya yoga without having to go and subscribe to their watered-down corrupt techniques and to not be part of any organization because actually see Kriya yoga is not designed to be a communal effort it's designed to be practiced solo that's how it was originally intended be practiced and actually Yogananda learned it from his teacher Sri Yukteswar from his guru and his guru learned it from the prior guru which is a man by the name of Lahiri that was his last name Lahiri I don't remember his first name and it was Lahiri who really was the master and formalized all these techniques and he had the most non watered-down versions of these techniques and then gradually over the time they walk got watered down even when Yogananda was teaching it supposedly it was already watered down so wouldn't it be nice to be able to go back all the way to beginning to the teachings of Lahiri and learn it strictly from him well of course he's been dead for over 100 and like 30 years now so how do you do that well luckily I found a book which reveals every single technique that Lahiri has ever taught and it explains every single technique perfectly in complete detail such that you can follow this book and you can practice all these techniques not only that you don't just get the techniques in this book but you actually get worksheets and an exercise plan which takes you step-by-step for building a Kriya yoga practice from the very beginning to the very advanced stages there's dozens and dozens may be nearly a hundred different techniques that you can slowly use to build up your practice this book is available on my book list if you already purchase my book let's just log in and you can find it there search for the word Kriya and you'll find it if you haven't purchased my book list well this would be a good reason to this one book could transform your entire life why am i recommending this book because to me it's the most straightforward way to practice yoga real yoga authentic yoga it's direct it's powerful it's safe and its gradual and it's very easy to follow it's very doable it's all laid out for you you don't need any gurus you can just sit down and start doing it starting tomorrow and that's it well I make this stuff more complicated than it needs to be I've been using this book myself and I've been practicing this this yoga myself and I'm already starting to see benefits and so right now I'm gonna put in a year worth of my time to experiment with this yoga to see what comes out of it and so if you want to do that along with me well here's how you do it it's very easy to start first of all I'll go purchase that book I didn't write the book it's written by some other author I'm just recommending it because I found it so useful then make a 100% commitment to mastering this yoga and then commit to practicing it every single day you're only gonna need about 30 to 60 minutes per day for this practice initially it's gonna be about 30 minutes and then as you build and gradually add more techniques to your stack of techniques it's gonna grow to about 60 minutes and maybe a little bit longer than that if you go beyond one or two years of practice so for now it's a pretty easy commit 30 to 60 minutes not a big deal and what I recommend is that you commit for a minimum of one year to actually try this out and to see what benefits this could have for you what can you expect from this practice well you can expect a significant quieting of your mind a transformation of your breathing much more consciousness and awareness of your spine that's what I've been noticing and believe it or not that's an important thing because right now your spine is just like so dead inside that you're walking around like a zombie you're not conscious of your spine and your spine contains a lot of important nerve endings and some might even say that your spine is like your second brain it controls your body and it integrates your body with your mind and that's a very important part of of personal development because what are you developing you're not just developing your mind and your personality you're developing your body all of it has to come along together in a holistic way you could expect an improvement in your health especially if you have energy problems if you get fatigued easily like I do and after twelve months of practice I think you can start to expect Samadhi states profound mystical experiences and your chakras starting to open progressively and then how long will it take you to actually get your awakening well who really knows can't be said it all depends on where you're coming from in life what your life experiences were what your you know how long have you been practicing meditation how long have you been practicing self inquiry have you done psychedelics what kind of things do you understand about the metaphysical nature of reality you know so it all depends on kind of where you are but nevertheless even though this will probably take a couple of years for you to start to experience some of these deep things I still think it's much faster than traditional meditation now you might wonder if your scientifically minded and rationally minded then you might say well leo is this really scientific I mean where's the proof you're talking about chakras and Kundalini and awakenings and you're talking about mystical States and all these yogic schools but isn't just this religious mumbo-jumbo just a bunch of New Age stuff how do you know these aren't just hallucinations in your mind how do you know it's just not a placebo effect this yellow guy that you're doing look what do you really mean by the word science you have to be very rigorous here traditionally when we say science in Western culture what we're talking about is we're talking about the kind of science that is done collectively by organizations in universities and academia research labs and in medical institutions and stuff like this but that that modality that external materialistic modality while it works great for the rest of the world it cannot work on your inner self even psychology the study of psychology you might say oh well Lea with psychology is the size of the psyche by definition so it does study the inner self no you have no idea yet because you haven't spent as many years and read as many hundreds of books that I've read about this subject of personal development and spirituality non-duality and psychology both west and east you don't understand how pitiful Western psychology is understanding of the human psyche and consciousness really is and that's precisely because they've adopted this brute force external materialistic approach yeah when you take that approach then you're gonna have a very weak understanding of how the human mind really works what I am interested in is I'm not interested in academia I'm not interested in studies what I'm interested in is actually mastering myself from the inside mastering my own emotions feeling good mastering my own happiness my own depression my own my own emotional triggers and becoming more conscious and all of those things you can really only do effectively when you go from the inside out not from the outside in so yoga is a science it is one of the earliest signs is we have it's a 5,000 year old science it's the science of consciousness it's a science of the metaphysical nature of reality which of course is very different sort of science than physics or chemistry or biology or even psychology this is a science that stems from direct experience from deep mystical states if you haven't experienced these mystical states these are some of the most extraordinary things you can possibly experience in your life they will have you questioning all of Western science and all of Western medicine and everything you've been taught in school and everything that you assumed about yourself in the world and your family and your culture and society and everything else that's how deep these mystical States are but you can't appreciate that until you start to experience them for yourself so in the name of science if you're skeptical I understand but also understand how skepticism is supposed to work a scientist can be skeptical about all sorts of stuff but ultimately he has to be practical and he has to say okay I have to run some experiments to see whether this thing or that thing or this other thing whether any of this is true so I have to be open-minded enough to be able to run the experiment which costs time and energy so when I'm asking you to invest six or twelve months into running these experiments on yourself by doing this yoga practice what I'm asking you to do is science on yourself you will be doing these visualization techniques and these breathing techniques and these meditative techniques and then you will be assessing at the end of each session what's happening with your consciousness with your body with your energy with your chakras and all this stuff you might not believe in chakras I didn't believe in them either that's where radical ob- comes in you're not being asked to just believe it as a dogma you're being asked to just take this system and use it and see if it will produce the results what she'll discover if you practice this stuff earnestly is you will discover that there is enormous wisdom contained within these various yogic schools and yogic techniques if you're using the right ones the ones that haven't been corrupted they're very powerful it will shock you that human beings have known about these techniques for thousands of years and only now are they becoming widely known it'll shock you it'll shock you that this stuff wasn't taught to you from first grade because this is this is the stuff that will improve your life the most not money not relationships not business not any of that this yoga these techniques but you have to be open-minded enough to try them and when you're thinking about chakras or Kundalini energy or any of the sort of stuff I recommend that you don't think of it as the way that a materialist might you know a materialist might challenge me here might say olio but these chakras can you prove the chakras exist like if I cut open the spine well I see a chakra in there what does it look like how much does it weigh how many centimeters across is it what happens if I hit it with a hammer don't think of chakras in that way you can think of them as a model you could think of as a tool you could think of it as a pragmatic thing you could think of it as aspects of your subtle body and of course you would say well Lea what is the subtle body can you prove that there is such a thing as a subtle body what is this thing if there is a subtle body how comes Western science hasn't proven it with its experiments because Western science only studies gross materialistic aspects of reality in a nutshell and it doesn't admit to anything else because it's closed-minded because it's a circular paradigm the paradigm says there's nothing but gross material things and so therefore the paradigm doesn't look for anything but gross material things and anytime there's an anomaly that says that all look this might be a immaterial subtle thing the paradigm says to itself but there can't be subtle things because everything is gross in materialistic as we've assumed from the very beginning and so it ignores that anomaly you see and so it just goes around in a circle you Andy be more open-minded I'm not asking you to believe anything in these yoga teachings but just to do the practices and notice the results the results are all that you want if it gets you the results what are you complaining about and the results that it will get you are not just gonna be subtle placebo effects the results are gonna be way beyond that way beyond that you're gonna experience a breakdown of your reality so much that you're gonna probably want to stop doing these techniques at some point you're gonna experience powerful emotions coming up in spiritual purging and all the sorts of stuff stuff that could freak you out stuff that I've talked about in my episode called the dark side of meditation because when you do advanced techniques which are very powerful one of the ways you know they're working is when all those dark side of meditation facets and aspects start to come up all those symptoms start to come up that's how you know it's working that's spiritual purification in the same way that when you go into a psychiatrist's office and you start doing psychotherapy and you start talking about some very painful experience from your childhood where you got abused or bullied or or humiliate or something like that that's painful you don't want to talk about that and that's precisely what tells you that that's what you need to be talking about because that's how you're gonna heal you're not gonna heal by just talking about how your day went and what you did at work today that's not gonna heal you you got to talk about the stuff that's really deep that's buried deep inside you you're the skeletons in your closet that's what you got to talk about so the same thing is happening here except it's not happening through talk therapy it's happening physically and physically is much more powerful than talk therapy because you know you can go to talk therapy for four five years and really not be much much more developed and more mature than you began but if you do yoga for five years man you're gonna be a totally transformed human being now some people might wonder here at this point but Leo don't I need a guru aren't you just teaching me some bastardized version of yoga shouldn't I go and just find the Guru and it that way the old-school way well you could you could but my guess is you're gonna have difficulty finding that guru and also there are limitations with gurus as I talked about gurus can be corrupt gurus can be dogmatic yogic schools entire schools can be corrupt and a guru could be just a a tool of that school and then you're gonna become his tool and then you become a tool of that school see and so it's just dogma perpetuating dogma so there is that problem for example if you go to the self-realization fellowship that you'll get on to started then you're gonna get watered-down techniques is that what you want just so that you have a guru I'm not really into gurus personally what I'm into is a do-it-yourself approach I want to be my own guru and actually Kriya Yoga is perfect for this because originally the way it was taught it was taught as a solo practice it was taught that you and the universe itself is the Guru and all you need to do is just do the right techniques and that will take you to everything that you need to become conscious of if you're if you're serious if you're committed to the path and you're doing it and you're following the techniques that's all you really need you don't need some father figure to a door or to love you or for you to love him to play into all these social dynamics nor do you need a school or an ashram to go to or community to hang out with that's all mostly just distraction anyways it's just gossip and social stuff you don't need that just do the techniques and you don't need Dogma and you don't need religious rituals here just do the techniques what's great about Kriya yoga is that it's open source all the techniques are available you could read them in a book you can do it all yourself and it's free what more could you ask for it's really the best of all worlds now what I recommend is that you don't let Kriya yoga be your only tool it's a powerful tool use it but also I recommend you combine it with self inquiry and contemplation I recommend you combine it with meditation with labeling that's a very powerful tool nevertheless I recommend you combine it with psychedelics those are incredibly powerful tools which will man which will totally blow your mind and totally open you up and I recommend that you continue studying theory reading non-dual theory studying personal development applying various personal development techniques as you've been doing reading books doing journaling keeping your commonplace book and all that sort of stuff that still all applies so don't get to one minded here with Kriya yoga it's just one tool in your tool belt I think if you really want to go far if you really want to develop yourself and take a multi path approach a multi tool approach synthesize all this stuff together and as you're practicing this different stuff you will start to resonate more with one technique another technique or one approach versus another approach and you will kind of your mind will know which thing you need more of and which thing you need less of and you'll sort of calibrate and adjust and you'll see how things go but by combining all those together I think you're gonna get the best of all possible worlds so that's basically it that's old-school yoga in a nutshell you now understand kind of what it is what its goal is and you even now have a concrete way to get started on doing it if you're into a Western yoga hatha yoga the gym style yoga I mean by all means keep doing it if it's helping you if you're getting benefit from it but also understand that that's not gonna awaken you not even close not even close you're missing out on like 99% of all the beauty of yoga you're missing out on it because you're subscribed to this western style yoga so maybe keep doing it but also incorporate this yoga this Kriya yoga technique or practice as well or maybe ditch it all together and just go for the Kriya yoga remember that the ultimate goal of yoga is I would say the following three things three three ultimate components to yoga one is ultimately you want to reach a state of sahaja Samadhi which is permanent Samadhi you're walking around with Samadhi all the time you're in a permanent state of union with your environment two is a realization of the absolute or infinity understanding that reality is infinity that you are infinity you become identified with infinity that infinity is God it is your true nature it is the only thing that exists and you are perfectly conscious of everything as being infinity including all they're human beings that and the third thing is a purification of all your karma and your ego what I mean by a purification of all your karma is all the bad habits that you have that you've accumulated over your life and certain yogic traditions say even from your past lives I don't know about that I don't know about past lives I haven't experienced it personally myself but just from this life I know that I've accumulated a lot of karma stuff you've done and habits you've built modes of thinking and modes of acting and emotive and all this sort of stuff trauma all that stuff that I talked about that needs to be purified from you because that is all the stuff all the junk and garbage that's holding you back so Yoga is sort of like defragmenting your hard drive except here you're defragmenting your body and your mind that's what we mean by purification of karma so that you can let all that go so that you become a more perfect vehicle for the embodiment of the absolute and then for living a selfless life and that's the happiest you can be as a human being as if you're able to do that that's sort of the ultimate goal that's where all personal development is ultimately pushing you towards but of course so few people get there and and so few people even know that that's what they're doing when they're picking up a self-help book or when you're watching a self-help video or something like that they don't they don't connect all the dots so don't really know where they're going to so I want to make sure that you understand these ultimate goals so that you you have the full picture the full map of what we're after here with all these techniques because when you know the destination then you can figure out different ways of getting to the destination you see so it's not so much about the techniques about understanding the destination and why you're going there and then your mind will figure out how to get there when you really understand how powerful and amazing the destination is which of course most people don't all right so that's it on yoga I hope that's inspired you to get started again I just want to reiterate this one episode can transform your entire life think of the difference think of the radical divergence that could happen right now in your life think of scenario a where a person listens to this episode and just says okay yeah that sounds cool that sounds interesting and then just goes back to watching more YouTube videos as though nothing happened and then person B who actually registers the importance of this is ah ha all these techniques are really powerful they're especially powerful let me test it out if it's true this can change my whole life isn't that worth me taking it seriously buying a book reading it studying it and maybe committing myself to some of these techniques oh yeah maybe it is and then that person gets serious about it and starts doing it starting tomorrow and then five years from now person a and person B are are so far apart and then 10 years up from now you can't even tell these two people began in the same place anymore it's gonna be a complete difference a complete difference and all at the cost of just 60 minutes per day of practice think about that think about the significance of this stuff connect the rubber with the road so you start to get traction with this information so it's not just information it's not just theory but you're putting it into action all right so I'm signing off please click the like button for me come check out actualized org right there check out my blog check out the forum check out the life purpose course check out my book list for this crea book and many other life-changing books those books that I have on my book list are some of the best most powerful most potent books in fact if you read my entire book list you probably won't need to read another book in your entire life everything you need to master life is there I mean people don't realize just the power of the information contained in this book list it's it's ridiculous it's absolutely ridiculous and that's not to brag it's just I mean it blows me away and I just I stumbled upon many of these books just purely by accident over the last 10 years of searching around and researching all this stuff and man I keep returning to these books again and some of these books I've read three or four times because they're just so jam-packed with wisdom and I'm just gonna keep reading throughout the rest of my life because everything I need is there all the fundamentals all the principles are there so make sure you don't discount the importance of theory of course theory is not everything it's just the beginning of things but it's the foundation and the foundation is the most important part of a building so check that out and stick with me for more episodes in the future I'm especially interested in researching and sharing with you the most effective techniques that I find for mastering your emotions or for building your confidence or for improving your health or for attaining awakenings and enlightenment Sande spiritual powers and all these sorts of stuff that's what I'm most interested is finding the most effective techniques because sure they're there are hundreds of techniques but the question is what are the most effective ones what are the ones that really give you the bang for your buck and for your time and so I've already shared many of those and I'll be sharing more of those in the future so make sure you keep watching too to get more of that you