Hello, and welcome back to Chittheads. My name is Khalid and I'm one
of the learning navigators at Embodied Philosophy, and we have a luminous episode today
with Tracy Stanley, who is the author of the best selling book Radiant Rest
Yoga Nidra for Deep Relaxation and Awaken Clarity. She's the founder of Empowered Life
Circle, a sacred community and portal of practices, ritual and tontric teachings inspired
by more than twenty five years of studentship in the Strevidia Tntra and the teachings
of the Himalayan Masters. As a post lineage teacher, Tracy is devoted to
sharing the wisdom of yoga, nidra, rest, meditation, self inquiry nature.
As a teacher and ancestor, Tracy is gifted in illuminating the magic and
power found in liminal space and we even devotion and practice into daily life.
In this episode, Tracy and Jacob discuss our true nature and what gets in
the way of that, the extractive nature of the spiritual marketplace, and Sodena
as a source of creativity, clarity, and wisdom, which is perfectly in
alignment with Tracy's most recently published book, The Luminous Self Sacred. You'll get
practices and rituals to remember who you are. We hope you enjoy. So
I want to talk a little bit about kind of what you know led you
to the decision to write this book, which you know I've I mean I've
read it. I've gone from cover to cover, done my my typical like
reading reading the meat e bits and then and then skimming through some of the
rest. But I can tell just from what i've I've read of it it
is an absolutely beautiful book. And you know, the message is is so
perennial, right, It's obviously the teachings about our true self, our true
nature and what gets in the way of that. But I found that as
I was reading it, what was so fresh about that otherwise perennial message is
just how much authenticity you bring to it and your own story. And I
just found it really beautiful. Also, the book is just like a compendium
of practices. I mean, it really is so chock full of useful practices.
So I'm just curious, kind of in the zeitgeist of now right in
terms of where we are in the world and what you have been perceiving that
your students or people have needed. What has inspired you to write this book
at this time. Yeah, that's a really great question. And what I
would tell you is that I visioned this book and had created the book proposal
for this book and was out with it as a book proposal in early And
what I know now is that you know, I had gotten an offer from
Shambala to write a book about Yoga Nidra, and I was very resistant to
wanting to write that book because I felt like, Oh, there's this book
already on Yoganidra, and this person is writing a book, and there's this
book. And at some point I kind of realized, because people started to
ask me do you have a book? Have you written a book and specifically
about Yoganidra, that Yoga Nidra was the one that kind of wanted to come
forward first. And then I think also what happened with the pandemic is that
we realized right how exhausted we all were and how much we really needed rest,
and how much some of our practices that we might have been doing and
some of the surface level yoga practices that we had been doing for years might
not have been really supporting us in a time of deep crisis, and so
I started to think about this book again and thinking about it in a different
way, including how the pandemic had changed me, and you know, went
back into the book proposal and really was able to kind of access another layer
of vulnerability in this telling of some of the stories that help hopefully to underpin
the philosophy and how the philosophy works, the philosophies of the yoga sutras that
I'm sharing and the clasias. And so I think for me, this book
was a seed for a little bit of time, and I think that I
just started watering it, you know, in twenty twenty two and thinking about
what really needed, what were the what are the practices because you said it's
like a compendian of practices, And what I really want wanted to offer that
I think was not in the first book proposal or in my first seed of
thought, was is there a book that is really like a practice manual for
life when you were feeling stuck that can help you at any moment. And
what are the practices that I have been given over the years that I've been
practicing that have been the most transformational. And so you know, these are
the practices that I'm offering. And I think that you know that it needed
to cook a little bit. Yeah, well that's what I really appreciated,
something that you write on early in the book about and I think is such
a good just in general, a good message to those who are taking up
the book as potentially a research for teaching, which of course it could be.
And you know, you present in some sense, as you know,
understanding that some of your audience are going to be teachers that might want to
extract some of the practices, and you make a point of saying, like,
you know, take these practices and steep in them for a period of
time before you then impart that. So I felt like you must have been
responding to what you sensed was sort of a habit in the spiritual marketplace to
just sort of grab bag spiritual practices and then you know, like read a
book once, just read through the practice and then take it into their yoga
class. Is that a little bit what you were observing? Yes, that's
exactly what I was observing. And what I would say is overall, I
think this the entire culture is extractive. Is that I would notice specifically in
classes that people would dip in, they would do the practice once and then
I would or they would hear a lecture and then I would see it as
a real on Instagram. Oh my gosh, and it's like, wait a
second, we need to practice these. And you know, if there's anything
that I'm really grateful for for the teachings that I received, was really this
idea around SODNA, around consistent practice, around devoted practice, and so yes,
I want us to be in relationship with the practices, because that's what
I'm offering is that I've done these practices. They were given to me,
some of them kind of came through me, but I lived with them for
a really long time, and from my unique experience now I'm able to share
them. And my hope is is that if someone reads this book and they
are a teacher, that they live with the practices and that they share them
in their unique voice, which is not going to be a parroting of what's
in the book, but something from their lived experience that actually is a transmission
and not a repetition of something that they memorized. Yeah. Yeah, I
really appreciate the spirit of that insight because it also I think we've probably had
similar formations with teachers where you know, like I I with from my who
I would say is my central meditation teacher. Like I wasn't even in a
position, and it was very clear that I wouldn't be permitted to to introduce
these meditation practices until several years of Sodona and a kind of educational process.
And you know, obviously it's not quite that intense with what you're offering,
but I think the sentiment is so important and something that's quite radical in the
in kind of in the face of what's happening, you know, in the
kind of spiritual marketplace these days. I was really happy that you that you
talked about that. So I want to talk a little bit about you know,
this happens very early on the book, the Egg Incident, And the
reason why this touched me so much is that I was really severely bullied in
school. I went to a Christian Lutheran school, and and I was criticized
for or bullied for having like a high voice, called a girl all the
time, that sort of thing before I was called, you know, the
the F word, And so you know, having this like reading about your
experience of this kind of trauma of bullying and how it's how you related to
it and responded to it, and then how it kind of fed into the
substance of the book. I just thought was really moving, and so I
was hoping you could sort of talk a little bit about the relationship between that
kind of really early bullying incident and sort of this expansive openness towards yogic wisdom.
Yeah. So I had a bullying incident which you'll have to read in
the book, that happened when I was very young and great in middle school.
And you know, it was something that on the outside, I think
if people look from the outside, they would say, oh, you just
of brushed it off. It's something that happened to you, but you just
kind of brushed it off. But if anyone was really looking, what they
would have noticed, and what I noticed later is that it changed the trajectory
of who I was, right, somebody who was really interested in learning and
excelling and you know, playing multiple instruments and wearing my glasses and you know,
just being whoever I was. And all of a sudden, I started
to peel back the things that were making me unique, right because I didn't
want to be seen, because being seen is different was going to mean that
I possibly would be in jeopardy, right, So I let go of all
of these things in order to stay safe. Right. And then some years
later after I'm kind of steeped in yogic understanding to the degree that I am
able to understand yoga. But I think it's like this much. But what
I understood from this idea of some scara and how imprints start to create a
coloring that was something that was like, okay, intellectually I get it.
It's like I understand how this can shape a life. Right. And then
at some point, this is back when I was producing films. I had
a really big movie that was coming out and it was one of the first
ones that I had brought into the company, and it was it was really
good, and we were having the premiere and I felt myself receding into the
background and hiding in the corner literally because I didn't want to be seen.
And I remember someone saying, oh, like, this is your big not
you know, your big night, like this this movie is going to be
a huge hit, and I had to really sit with and thank god I
had yoga at that time, and I had to sit with, oh,
there's a part of me that's afraid of being seen as successful, and then
I can go underneath that, there's a part of me that's afraid of being
seen. I need to do a VTR practice right now and figure out what
is the root of this. And as I did that VTR practice and VTR,
I think comes in many different forms. It's this idea of deliberation so
that you can arrive at the source of something or the cause of something,
and a lot of times we think about that as self inquiry. And so
I did this as a timeline practice where it took me kind of several days
to just with my journal to go back, well, when was the last
time I felt afraid of being seen as successful? And then I saw how
it was repeating itself through my entire life, including my career as a model,
like which is so hilarious that you would you know, I wanted to
travel the world, which is why I accepted modeling contract, but I didn't
want to be seen. So eventually I landed on this experience as the root
and I was like, Oh, this is how some scar shapes the life.
This is how Vostona shapes the life yeah, I want to read a
passage from your book which I thought was really beautiful. And actually there's an
additional portion of it that I won't read, but we'll just leave it as
a teaser for those who are listening so you can read the rest. But
I thought this idea of bug spotting on the windshields, I never heard it
kind of put in this way some scars, and I just want to read
a portion of it. You may remember, no, actually, okay,
it's going to start sort of mid sentence, but that's okay. You may
remember some of the memories that showed up on your screen of awareness during the
timeline rewind practice in the previous chapter. Read the book to find out what
that is. Each of those memories is formed from a some scara, the
bug colliding with your windshield. Some of the bugs make little splats and others
make the kind of huge, yellow, gooey splatters that make you think of
your think to yourself, I definitely have to wash my windshield at the next
gas station. But then at the gas station there is a distraction, some
chocolates you really want, and email dinging, your child needing your attention,
and you forget to wash the windshield off you go, then continuing your journey
with a dirty windshield. You try the next gas station and there are no
resources or tools to wash your windshield. No water, no squeegee, no
attendant to give you a hand. So you keep driving and it just keeps
accumulating more and more bugs. You try the windshield wipers and it creates a
giant smear. Now you can't really see what is in front of you.
All you see is a coloring. What you see through the windshield does not
accurately represent what is out in front of you. You have lost clarity,
perception, and vision. You can barely see the road ahead. After a
long while, you forget that the windshield was ever clear. That dirty windshield
seems perfectly normal. You've forgotten that you have an internal GPS because it is
obscured by the coloring and your attention is focused externally. I thought this is
one of the most beautiful parts of the book. And I really love when
narratives, you know, and a way of kind of depicting something through sort
of a picture or sequence, can capture the depth of a teaching And I
feel like this is just a really beautiful way of encapsulating some scar which,
as you've said, is this sort of groove or impression that takes on the
form of a kind of habituated way of seeing yourself. And you talk a
lot about this in the book, in the form of you know, different
yogic philosophical concepts, and one of the central ones, of course, is
is the clacias. And so I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit
about the claysias. We don't have to go into all all of them,
but maybe if you want to talk about what you think are kind of the
most are what are those obstacles, those claysias that are that are the most
common and that perhaps we need as a culture individually just generally need to sort
of think about or reflect on the most Yeah. So I think a lot
of us might be familiar with the term a VideA as this idea of misperception.
Right. We can think about the bugs on the on the windscreen as
a video, right like that we can't see clearly. And then there's this
idea that a VideA is actually four footed, and that it has four legs
or four feet, and so the feet would be raga, which is this
idea of attachment, like what's what am I attached to? The vasia is
like the aversion, and we can even think about that as a form of
hatred or you know, something that you really despise. Abinivatia is this fear
of death, and this is the one that I think causes us the most
suffering really, And Ashmita is this sense of I am nous that sometimes is
referred to as ego or putting yourself in the center, and I think about
that as like this human centric way that we are in the world. Right
It's like this idea of human supremacy is that we're supreme over everything. And
then there's different gradations of that as we think about different forms of oppression.
But for the most part, the fact that we are, in my opinion,
that we are disconnected from the fact that we are nature and that nature
is us is a source of a lot of pain and a lot of destruction
in the world. And that goes back to that word extraction that you used
earlier in our conversation, is that we're continually extracting until the earth becomes ill,
and we're not realizing that when we extract from the earth, we're extracting
from ourselves, and if the earth is ill, it means we are ill.
But we're unable to see that because there's too many things in our in
our vision, there's too many distractions. We're too out here looking for our
wholeness in the outside world as opposed to being in a place where we remember
that we're whole. This seems like such a kind of in a way fruitful
time for that, just because it does feel. And I've talked a lot
about this a little bit with some of my friends about how, you know,
in the wake of COVID, we didn't we haven't really grieved the grief
of that, right, we haven't really processed it. It was like it's
over, take off your masks, move on, moving forward, keep moving.
That didn't really happen, guys, And yet it shows up in all
these crazy ways. And of course people lost so much. And and I
know that you losing your yoga studio or closing your yoga studio. I don't
know what the circumstances were, but it what it's what I set out to
me, and why I'm wanted to bring it up is because I know that
you know, many of the listeners are yogis and yoga teachers probably probably many
of them had yoga teaching careers that were completely decimated by the pandemic. And
so when I when I was reading about you closing your yoga studio, it
kind of reminded me of of how many people have lost their businesses over COVID
and and I'm just I just wanted to know, you know, just personally,
like how you recovered from that and what you know, just for the
sake of you having that, you having that very specific experience that it turns
out many people probably have as well at this point, What spiritual and professional
recommendations do you have for teachers sort of in the wake of that kind of
a loss. Well, two things I would say. So, I closed
my yoga studio in twenty eleven, and it was a I would say it
was a very slow death. That what happened was I had a breakup with
my partner who was also my partner in the yoga studio, and I essentially,
without realizing it, put the yoga studio in hospice care. Without acknowledging
it, I was just like, Oh, we're just going to keep it
going. And I wasn't even living in the town anymore, you know.
It was just as like. And then at some point, and as you
read in the book, I realized that the glaciers were at play. I
realized that, oh, my identity is attached to being a yoga studio owner,
and this is like raga, I'm holding on with like a death grip
as opposed to like, what does this all mean? And so as I
started to kind of piece this together, I was like, Okay, this
is really about a ben evasia at the end of the end of the day,
this is really about the fear of death. Like, if I die
as a you know, my identity dies as a yoga studio owner, does
that mean that I'm no longer here? You know? And so it just
brings you right back to this question of who am I? And so I
think you're absolutely right. We haven't grieved the I think this unfortunate thing for
us is that we've lost so many rituals and rights of passage and we don't
acknowledge our grief in a way that is meaningful, especially in community, and
I think we're suffering for that. I do see a bit of a shift
of change in people talking about grief and people being in community with grief.
You know, teachers like Michelle Cassandra Johnson and Reggie Hubbard are doing this work.
There are many others, but those are the two that come to mind
right now. Yeah. And so what I would say is for teachers who
have lost something is and this is really what this book is about, is
that I feel like in two ways, this book is the squeegee for the
windshield and it is also the permission for you to create your own ritual because
the rituals have been lost. Yeah. And I think that any time that
we go through a transition, which if we think about a transition, a
transition is a form of death because there is something ending, there is going
to be a pause. There's going to be a long space of void,
which is what we all experience. During the pandemic. Some of us were
able to say, sit in that void and be with the unknown and partner
with the unknown, and notice what came up. And some of us,
and this is not any judgment in any way, became distracted and wanted to
fill that space. And I think that we don't need a crisis to create
a transition for us. We can actually say I'm going to create the transition.
I'm going to create a space where I can honor what was and celebrate
what's coming. Even if I don't know what's coming, there's always going to
be a rebirth. That's just the cycle of nature, and when we're disconnected
from nature, we forget that that is just the way the world works,
is that it's cycles, it's seasons. So what I would offer to people
whose businesses might have been decimated, and I'm seeing this already in my community,
is that in that space, I think that there were a lot of
people, like you said, whose businesses shifted and they could no longer make
a living teaching yoga, but they reconnected back to something that was important to
them. Right, I'm seeing so many people going back to school and studying,
becoming therapists, taking the tools that they've been honing through yoga for the
last decade or however long, and adding a new modality to that to make
their life richer. And so what I would say is, sit with this,
create a ritual to really honor what you left behind, and also just
think about all of the things that maybe came from a long time ago,
that were your inspirations, the things that lit you up that brought you joy
that you've always wanted to do, and see how you can create something new.
Because I do think that this world old of you called it the spiritual
marketplace. I think this world of yoga as we have known it for the
last I'm going to say thirty years, because that's how long I've been practicing,
but going to a studio doing yoga in a specific way, I think
that's changing. And I think that yoga teachers are adding more wisdom from other
modalities, including yoga, into whatever it is that they're offering, and that
is going to make this world hopefully a richer place. What a beautiful answer,
Tracy. A couple of things really resonated with me. One just the
going back to things that used to give you joy. I know that this
is particularly palpable for me because I actually just last night went to see Old
Friends, which is the stephensonheime kind of review that's starring Brenette Peters and Leaslonga.
I grew up loving musical theater and I wanted to be on Broadway,
and Stephen Sondheim was sotive formative for me, and like I was, he
was my favorite composer and I realized. I realized. I didn't realize until
I went to see the show last night just how much I hadn't grieved his
loss and and and and really acknowledged what he meant to me. And I
was just like I was weeping, you know, But it was also this
kind of like remembering, Oh wow, Like I love musical theater, I
love going to see shows. I love the theater in general, and and
and that hasn't been as central to kind of my life and and yet it
does bring me so much, so much joy. So I really feel that
that recommendation and then in terms so that to me is a ritual just going
to the theater. But about the ritual thing, I'm curious what you think
about, because something that was really central to your book is this idea of
community care and and and I know that it can sometimes seem like and and
occasionally the quote unquote spiritual marketplace has been criticized for being very individualistic. Right,
so it's just about your own self care, rituals, and your own
enlightenment. And there's a lack of attention to the socioeconomic circumstances, you know,
political circumstances, what have you systems of oppression and their effects on the
you know, current moment, and so, you know, I feel like
the community care element of your book is drawing attention to the need for communally
situated rituals, and so I'm curious what you would say is sort of the
relationship between those rituals that you do need to do on your own and just
do make sense to have individually for yourself and the one and how those are
situated within a kula or a larger kind of communal dynamic. Yeah. I
think that through ritual we learn and we remember, and I think it is
our duty to be honest that we share what we learn and what we remember,
because is what heals our heart has the potential to heal others' hearts.
And I think that if we hold on and I've seen this in spiritual community
before, where people want to hold on, they receive teachings, And this
I think is problematic in a hierarchical system, right, is that you receive
a teaching, you do the practice for you know, however many years or
months, whatever it is, and then it's almost like the instruction is almost
to hold you hold the practice and you don't share it right, And so
it creates this form of scarcity, which I think makes people feel as though
they're not spiritually abundant because they don't have access. And this is another form
in a way of just a hierarchy that some people have access to teachings and
some people don't. And so I think when we're in community, there are
ways in which we can share the boons of the practices that we have done.
And I think that that, to me is a yoga of devotion because
we're not in this alone. Yeah, and again going back to the Earth
as a kind of inspiration, is that Earth thrives in biodiversity. Earth thrives
in the community of all the species and beings that are on its land.
One thing is not going to be able to thrive alone. So we need
to be able to be in community. And I think that when we practice
ritual, it's as simple as one to two to three people coming together to
sit in silence, to meditate together, to chant together, to cry together.
That's all that's needed. You don't need like a huge list of things.
Yes, it's nice to have the hoven and the samagris and the few
month through a book, but we don't need that, and I think that
that's part of the issue, is that we think that if we're going to
create a ritual, that it has to look like it does on Instagram,
with all the flowers and all the incense and all the things the crystals send
the essential oils. Yes, I mean I have the crystals beyond and I
have the incense burning. But I can also be in a room by myself
and invite two people in and we can have nothing, and we can be
a deeper ritual without anything. Yeah, it's really interesting what you said,
because initially I was thinking of asking you about the difficulty that some people who
are listening might imagine it is to actually build this type of community, because
there's actually been I hadn't. I did some interviews with some yoga teachers when
we were doing this kind of Future of the Yoga Teacher project, and a
couple people were like, I have no one here. You know, there's
like there's there's no one around to teach, you know, there's no yoga
studios, blah blah blah. But she had created a very small group of
women who met relatively regular and it was a very casual thing. And when
you when you kind of boiled it down to two or three people. I
think many people listening can imagine, you know, finding that kindred one or
two kindred spirits and that it sounds like is enough if it if it has
that sort of that that openness to the spiritual you know, dimension or whatever
you want to call it. So so it isn't so much that you need
to find your koola of one hundred devotees too, Swami something something, Ananda.
It's that it's just finding, Is it to you more like finding a
group of kindred spirits who are equally committed to going deep in this way?
Yeah? I think that first of all, all you need is to other
people. And I think that it doesn't even need to be necessarily a kindred
spirit, but someone who is open to learning, to receiving, someone who
wants to be out of pain, and you happen to have the tool somebody
who needs someone to hold space for them because a loved one is ill or
a loved one has transitioned, and you have the ability to hold space because
maybe you've been there before. So we have opportunities all the time to be
inmmunity. We can be in community literally when we're standing at the line in
the checkout at the grocery store. I wish I'm going to have to take
some more time at that line. People are not very openly friendly here here
in London, I have to say, so I used to live in London.
I remember that. Yeah. There. Actually it's much there's a much
more of a communal sort of spirit, I would say in New York than
there is in London, even though people would never expect that from New Yorkers,
but there really is. Anyway, I wanted to take this moment to
read another passage from your book. This is actually one of your I guess
you'd call it one of your poems that begins one of the chapters. And
so all of these are very beautiful and they're threaded throughout the book for those
that are listening. And again, in addition to these beautiful poems that obviously
are upsurges of creativity that have kind of been born of Tracy's. So there's
then, of course the sodenas that could also help to cultivate that in you
as well. And this is actually one of the beautiful things I think about
sodena and that I see really evident in your book. In addition to just
the authenticity that kind of that just kind of feels that permeates. It is
the way in which this your Soden has clearly given birth to creativity, because
in my experience, that's so much of what Sodena gives is because clarity and
wisdom is some sort of uprising of creativity in some keep way, but anyway
to read this poem of yours, am I asleep or am I awake?
Let me lean into the practices that fortify my discernment. Remind me to turn
my face toward the light of divine intelligence. The door to the prison cell
is open. A tune me to the vibration of truth and amp fy my
core frequency so I can taste my true nature. I trust that I can
hold both fierce compassion and the power to wield the sword to cut through any
demon. I lay down fear as I walk through the sacred portal toward freedom.
I honor the transition. I reclaim my magic within the void. I
only need to remember. Now let me sleep. Now, let me ask
again, am I asleep or am I awake? So beautiful, I'm going
to ask you later if I can post that to our Instagram feed. Yeah,
of course, So I wanted to ask a question about that. I
think I've asked it a few times. I think in the history of this
podcast, when we start to talk about the true self, and you know,
our essential nature as being kind of beyond names and forms and having a
sort of formless eternal quality, and there is a sort of there is an
I don't know what I want to call it, a controversy or a dialogue,
let's say for it to make it sound less dramatic around you know that
these tears of our identity, and you describe it in your book as the
personality and another you know, and the other being our eternal self. And
we have these sort of in dialogue and in some kind of relationship, and
sometimes, as you are well aware, there is this this kind of thread
of spiritual wisdom that suggests one should kind of mute one's individuality repress it.
In some sense. It kind of reminds me of what you said earlier about
hiding from yourself in a way, and confusing the hiding from yourself and muting
your individuality and confusing that with realizing your true nature in a way, like
maybe that's something. So there's this there's this there's this kind of well,
our truth is beyond all forms, and therefore, like, just get over
your individuals out, get over these things about your own identity, get over
all these needs to affirm your own kind of idiosyncrasies in comparison to other people.
Forget about all this oppression stuff. It's just in your imagination, right,
Like, that's a very easy misunderstanding, I would say, right of
the team. Yeah, I feel like that is also a form of spiritual
bypassing, to be honest. Yes, right, So can you talk a
little bit about that, Like, what is the relationship between the needs of
let's say, let's I think some teachers have called it like integration psychological integration
on the one hand, and the needs of also kind of sociocultural affirmations,
liberations, emancipations, rectifying of cultural imbalances and oppressions, and the relationship with
one's true self. Love this question. So the first thing that I would
say is the people in my community and myself. I can only speak to
my experience. We're not living in a cave. I'm not living in a
cave. You know. I do live on a mountain, but I'm not
living in a cave I don't have. I'm not practicing, you know,
all day and all night and have people bring me chai and lunch and dinner
and have no worries in the world. We need to eat that, you
know. And I feel like we're in the world, and we have to
be able to live in the world and yet remain above the world in a
certain way, right, And when I say above the world, it's not
a hierarchical way. It's not getting caught permanently in the enmeshment of all the
distractions of the overculture. And when we're able to be above, we have
a different perspective, right, because we're able to see the injustices. We're
able to see and celebrate the uniqueness of individuals and their unique expression, which
is why I believe we're here, right. And so if we can celebrate
others unique expressions, and we can also recognize that our true self is connected
to everything and everyone that is, that the actual universe and the cosmos has
all of these patterns that are also inside of our bodies, then what does
that mean for who and what we are? So I'm sorry, but I'm
not buying into the this idea that we need to eradicate, you know,
the ego. I think we need to be aware of how the ego keeps
us in pain. Right, That's that's what I like to do, is
look and see how is how is my ego? And this is a you
know, going back to the loss of the yoga studio, right, how
is the loss of this yoga studio creating suffering in me? And how can
I bring in more freedom and more space? How can I remember that I
am not this thing, this you know, this form, right, Yes,
I'm also not the name, but I am this creativity. I am
this uniqueness that's expressing itself in the world. And it's a both. And
I'm not interested in this lifetime of releasing the both. And I think that's
the beauty of being alive, is that I get to know that I'm connected.
I also get to know that I'm unique, and part of my uniqueness
allows me to be in my creativity and to share so that others can express
themselves, hopefully in their own creativity and they can find more freedom in their
own life and then pass that on. That's what I think we're here for.
Hmm. I mean I would agree that I love that I sort of
I love the sort of nondual, tontric resonance of so much of what you've
just said. It's really beautiful. And as someone who feels very enlivened by
that philosophy myself, it seems like a perfect note to end on. So
of all the things we've discussed, which I feel like we've covered a lot
of ground in such a short time, But is there anything else that maybe
we haven't touched on that you think is a really central feed of the book,
or a teaching or just a point of view or perspective that you feel
like is important to share, You know, I would say one of the
titles of one of the chapters is that which makes you fall is that which
makes you rise? And I would just want everyone to remember that anything that
has ever caused them pain or stuckness or discomfort is a portal to freedom and
awakening. Beautiful. So I've been speaking with Tracy Stanley, and we've been
speaking about the content of her latest book, The Luminous Self, which will
be released in Can you give us a date to Tracy when it'll be Yeah,
October tenth, October tenth, So we are in the sixth of October
right now where we're doing this interview, twenty twenty three. So if you're
listening to this before then, which you probably aren't, because I think it's
going to take us about a week to publish, so the book is probably
available as you are listening. And of course, if you're listening to this
far into the future, then I'm sure you can find her book by heading
to Amazon and all the other online bookstores I imagine would have the book,
but definitely Amazon, I'm sure. Yeah. And on my website, which
is Tracystanley dot com, there's a link to all the independent bookstores and all
the places where you can find the book. Beautiful and Tracy, is there
anything else that you want to share with our listeners about what's coming up for
you? Are you offering any workshops, are you doing any courses? What's
happening? Yes, So I have a workshop that's happening at Cropoulu coming up
in October. I also have something that I'm doing with wonder Lust in Mexico
in December, and something with Modern Elder Academy on the Power of deep Rest
happening in February. And then of course I have my writing and resting retreat
that happens at Ghost Ranch next year, and a retreat in Costa Rica.
But you can find all those things on my website. Writing and Resting.
When is that? That's going to be in September of next year. It's
such a great workshop and experience to be in silence and spaciousness and have the
time to be able to really dive into work. And I love that.
I love that. I kind of want to go to that myself. Where
is it happening Ghost Ranch in New Mexico in Abocu, New Mexico. Oh,
maybe this is my chance? Yeah, here we go. Well,
Tracy, it's been such a pleasure chatting with you. Thank you so much
for sharing your wisdom with us and writing such a beautiful and authentic book.
It really it means a lot to the community. Thank you so much for
having me, Jacob, It's been an honor.