How to Heal, Grow & Stay Present in a Chaotic World

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Welcome to CJ Moneyway Media. A storytelling platform built brick by brick. Where conversations become lessons and experiences become perspective. This is the mindset of a Panther. Moving with patience, discipline, and purpose. From podcasts to books to media storytelling, CJ Moneyway brings voices, journeys, and real conversations to the forefront. You're now listening to the CJ Moneyway Show.

And how you doing today, Joanna?

Well, hi CJ, how are you doing?

Ah, it's all good, it's all good. You know, uh, Everybody, before we get started, we was talking backstage, me and Joanna's husband. We have a lot in common except for the Raiders. I don't— it's not that I don't like the Raiders, you know, the Raiders are good. Matter of fact, with the coach they just got from Seattle, Pete Carroll, you know, they might do something with a little bit of interference from the NFL because, you know, it's conflict of interest with Tom Brady actually having owning part of the team, being who he is and a commentator. But we gonna leave that at that. But you know, he's a Laker fan, so that's kudos to him. We're both Yankees fans, kudos to him. But in football, we differ. I was Cowboys, he Raiders. I don't know who she is. She said her brother was Jets, so we already know how that goes.

But you know who I am and you just don't want to say it because I am a Giants fan. And Giants fan and Cowboys fans historically have—

uh, uh, how could you still be a Giants fan after y'all let go of my man Saquon and what he did over there in Philly? Y'all let that happen, Joanna?

How?

That was hard to watch. They did make a series of bad decisions in the last few seasons. But in my lifetime, I've seen 3 out of 4 Super Bowl wins. One of them I got to go to in person, and I got to have that bucket list experience of watching my team beat what was supposed to be the undefeated Patriots and ruin their perfect season. I went to that one. So it was a really cool experience.

You know what, and I was loving Randy Moss. Like you said, I don't like nothing Boston, but I was a big Randy Moss fan. But I'ma tell you before we get into this, they played the Giants at the end of the season that year and they beat them like by 3 points or something. It was a hard-fought game and the Giants had made up in their mind if they met them again, they was gonna beat them boys. And man, it was just meant to catch and everything. Ah, I didn't like it because like you say, I was cowboy. So anyway, so Joanna, let me ask you, meeting the guru yourself, tell us about your encounter at the age of 17 with Tayo and what was that experience like?

It was really life-changing. And sometimes when you have those moments in your life that you expect, wow, this is going to be significant Sometimes you don't know until you're looking back on the event. This wasn't one of those times. You felt it in the moment. And I just walked into a yoga class. I was really new to yoga. And I see this adorable-looking older woman take off high heels, sit in the front of a class, fold up her legs like a pretzel. And I just thought, she seems pretty cool. Then when she looked at me and our eyes met for the first time, I just had this feeling, this feeling of light, of love. It just felt like such a pure form of energy. And I thought, whatever this is, whatever this feeling of peace that I feel when our eyes just connected for the first time, I want to learn how to feel this more. And then eventually, that led into, I want to know how to create this feeling for other people and show them how to do it.

Mm, I like that. You say, whatever that connection she has that filtered inside of me, I want that. I want that. Just like many of us. And then, you know, we were storytellers here because, you know, we're authors, so we let our minds explore sometimes. And I'm gonna tell you, Joanna has a lot of things that people can be jealous about. She went from the Big Apple to the state of oranges. That's for one. Where it's now 90, 100 degrees outside and they can ride their bikes and swim all day. But she also got married at the New Yankee Stadium, y'all. So that is something else that we can put on our list to be a little tad bit jealous of Joanna about. I'm just kidding. So Joanna, let me ask you, how did that mentorship evolve for over 26 years?

It started as a typical teacher-student relationship where once I went to that first class and we met, I just thought, I want to take her classes more. I want to learn. I'm picking up what she's dropping. So she was teaching yoga. I was soaking it up. When she would lead breathwork and meditation, I was just there for it. And my feeling was just being in her space, because the law of association, you become energetically the average of the 5 people with whom you spend the most time. So here was somebody that right away I loved her energy and I was drawn to it. So I wanted to just be in the room more. And after I was taking her classes for a few years, she was going on a trip to India and I wanted to go on that trip with her. And it was sometime on that trip where she looked at me and said, I want you to continue what I'm doing. I want you to teach and I want to certify you personally. You just have this sparkle and you see it in other people. And that sparkle is love. That's what we need to remind people that they all have. And how to turn it on. So on that trip, I realized, wow, it was like Yoda telling you what to do. I hadn't planned on changing my path and becoming a yoga teacher and leading the work that she did. But I just thought, if she sees even a glimmer of possibility that I can have the sort of impact that she's had on me on others, then that is a life worth dedicating your time, your passion, and your magic to.

Mm, that's fascinating. So with that being said, her giving you encouragement as you went on your trip to India, what was the most surprising lesson she ever taught you?

I'm so glad you asked that because the most surprising lesson— she taught me so many lessons. My first book is about our friendship and all the magic I learned from her and how those messages were really timeless because they affected both of us and we were generations apart. But out of all of the ones she showed, and some of them were crazy, only one really surprised me. And we were driving to a workshop at an ashram. And she looked at me and she said, "I want you to make a lot of money." And she was like this really lit up spiritual guru. And I looked at her and I said, "Wow, I'm surprised." And she said, I was never really great at the money part. And if I was, I could have spread these messages of peace, of breath, of possibility a lot farther earlier. And she said, you just, you have to consider that money isn't anything. It's just energy. It's a resource. So you need the good people to have it because then they can use it to facilitate the good they want to do in this world. And sometimes as creatives, as artists, as healers or spiritual seekers, there are certain roles that people play where you kind of feel like that and being financially wealthy might be mutually exclusive. But to that I say, it's bullshit. Money is just— it could be— swap it out for another word: energy, love. You're a facilitator of magic. It's just like coupons you exchange for experiences.

Mm-hmm.

And when you start to think of it like that and you think, yes, I receive money because that's somebody's way of showing their gratitude for some way that what I've done has blessed them. So by you cutting that off, you're saying no thank you to the way people are showing their gratitude to you. Mm-hmm. So in that moment, I just had an aha and I thought, Thank you, Tao. And also, game on. I welcome all of the abundance in all of the forms.

I like that. I like that. Because I know for sure I need some more energy. I need a boatload of it. It would be like, you know, that was a good lesson that she said, because you can use the resources to spread things farther. You know, as you know, being in this creative space and the things that you just have to do. You know, it's a multitude of things that a lot of people, you know, when they're not in these type of spaces, they don't know the things that you have to do in the background, the grind that it takes in the background to build, you know, uh, whether it's yoga instruction courses and things of that nature. It's a grind, man. It's a grind. And you got to stay on your grind, everybody. You got to stay on your grind and get that energy. So let me ask you, Joanna, life, loss, and legacy. You finished your book the day Tayo died— I mean, passed away. Can you walk us through that moment?

It was actually beautiful. It was interesting because I was writing the book while she was still alive. And there was a moment where my intuition must have kicked in. It must have— my spidey senses were on. And at one point, my husband said, I haven't seen you write this week. Are you not writing right now? And I said, that's funny you noticed. I think part of me is a little bit superstitious that I feel like when the book ends, like, what if that's when Tao passes? What if they're connected? And I felt that way, said it out loud to him. And then I thought, well, this is silly. This is my love letter to her and my way of paying the messages forward by sharing it with other people. So I went back to writing it and I was on a family vacation with my whole crazy family in Colorado. And I finished my own personal last touch on it that day, was on a chairlift with my sister and I played the voicemail and I had a feeling what the voicemail was going to say. And as I listened to a close friend sharing exactly how she passed, the message was recorded at 11:11. I'm on this chairlift with my sister, literally flying over snow-capped trees in nature. And it just felt connected with nature, peaceful, and beautiful. And those were all things that you would say about Tao and about our friendship. So it just felt really appropriate. I had the typical response you would of the sadness of losing her in the physical form. But knowing that I had her and the world had her until she was 101, my overall feeling was an overwhelming sense of gratitude that she existed and that she existed so significantly in my life personally. I thought whatever I did in a previous life to get this kind of relationship in a current one, thank you. Thank you to my previous life for setting that up.

I like that, the way everything just tied in together, you know. Caught what you said. You know, you say you spoke it out loud to your husband on how you were feeling. That was a sense, like you said, your spidey senses. That's a sense that you had. And sometimes, you know, say that if you have one witness, that's one or two witnesses, that's what you need. Because a lot of times, if you was to tell somebody just off the cuff, like, yeah, they wouldn't believe what you said. But you, you know, it's like, I'm confirmed because I know what I said and I have a witness. Witness to what I said about how I felt and what the spirit inside of me had connected me to and was preparing me for something, you know what I'm saying, at that time. You won't understand it, but I do. And so that's just how life is sometimes, you know, your dreams, your visions. You try to tell people about, you know, saying certain things, they can't see it, they just don't know. So no knock on them. So let me ask you, Joanne, How did you process grief while staying aligned with the mission of your late mentor?

Well, that actually was easy. That was easy because I felt like that was my gift to her. So when I wrote the first book, the intention was what I shared before. The only reason I even included myself as a character in the book was I thought if I wrote a book about her, you'd walk away and say, wow, she was magical. And that's true. But if I wrote a book about her and our friendship and each chapter went back and forth between our timelines, if somebody thought that her character was magical, they would look at mine and see it's like flaw and relatable. So my intention was, if somebody can identify with somebody who's flawed and relatable and see my path to peace, then they could see how it's possible for them as well. So that was the whole intention of that book. The book that I just wrote that just came out called Best Life Ever, this is where I wanted it to be. This is based on a course that I teach with habits of happiness, joy, love, success. And they're all connected to the question you just asked because it's not like, here's a book to thrive in life when everything's going perfectly. It's like, here's the book to give you the tools to create the life that you will find most personally enjoying and rewarding to live. So instead of just being in reaction mode, responding to whatever life throws at you, you're a conscious creator in the process. And when I was writing that book, I lost somebody really close to me who was like a second mom my whole life. My Aunt Judy, and she would live with us most of the time. She never had kids of her own, so she raised and spoiled the three of us along with my parents. And then when we went on to become parents, she raised and spoiled even extra our children. So navigating that grief was actually different because there was always this feeling with Tao that I just hit the lotto in this friendship and I had a backstage pass to this magical being And I wanted to soak up all of the knowledge, wisdom, and magic as much as possible while she was here. With my aunt, it was an example of how those people that have been in the everyday part of our lives since we were born, those— it can be more difficult to actually envision your life without their physical presence. So— and a friend of mine, we do a podcast together, and she and I did an episode maybe 2 days after she passed. And I said, I don't want any show notes. I don't even want to prepare. I'm not putting on any makeup. Let's get on right now because I want to have a real and raw conversation about how to go through grief, and especially for those light seekers and spiritual beings out there. Because you might think like, oh, I've done the work. I understand. I'm not a drop in the universe. I'm the universe in the drop. Like, they might think all of the things. But when push comes to shove, the only way through grief is through it. You don't get a get-out-of-jail-free card. There is no path to avoid it. You feel it. It's part of the experience of our lifetime that gives us the contrast to have those crippling lows and those hard breathing moments. That's the flip side of those amazingly, magically connected ones. And the contrast makes you appreciate the other that much more.

I like that. And you mentioned this earlier, you talking about your course and your book. I mean, I'm listening to the grief because you're the third person I talked to in the last couple of weeks. You know, I just— matter of fact, just did a call with a guy today, Doug Lawrence, just did it. He's a grief mentor because he lost his wife and certain things that he had to deal with and go through. So now he helps others and Had a young lady last week that I talked to, the same thing. So yeah, so you touched on some of the same things that they said. You just gotta— you have to go through, you know. And we all know that it's difficult and that it's hard, and we've all lost someone whom we loved. And, you know, things of that nature, it's different levels. It's different from somebody losing their mother, you know, saying father, you know, saying things to that level. But loss is losses. So because he was telling me something like this, Joe, and he said that Some people, they come here and they say, well, you know, I'm just gonna go through, I'm not gonna grieve. And I say, to me, that seems impossible. Even if you do try to do that and, you know, try to suppress it, man, one day it's just gonna all come falling down and you get them uncontrollable tears. Well, I can't stop crying because, you know, somebody that you lost that you're never gonna be able to speak to again in this natural body. So, you know, we all cry. I'm grown, I cried. I cried when Kobe, uh, I cried when Kobe died. I cried when Magic Johnson had HIV. That's how far I go back, Joanna, to tell your husband that.

So I remember both of those moments where I was and what happened. And with Kobe, you can imagine how many people called me to check on my husband.

Man, yeah, that was a hurting feeling. That was a hurting feeling. Let me ask you, you talked about your course. What does it mean to live your best life? Ever?

It means something different to each person. So it's really getting to the core of what that answer is for you individually and immediately. Because too often people put off until, oh, I'll, you know, I'm going to work until this age. I'm going to live in this house until this stage of life. I'll travel after. When I retire, I'll do this. When my kids are in school, I'll do that. There are so many plans of greatness that are in the future. If instead you realize— one of my best things is something people will say either as a joke or they might say as like a little insult where they say, "Do you even work?" or "Must be nice to live like you're retired." I always say, "Thank you. If my life looks like I'm retired on the outside, it means that my work is so pleasurable that it doesn't look like work to the outsider. That doesn't mean that there aren't aspects that are work. Of course there are. But when it's something you love, when it's who you wanna be in this world is also what you get to do, it's supremely satisfying. And that doesn't mean that it has to be about your job. There are people who don't work who live really fulfilling, connected, present lives. So what happened was most of my mindset work was in the context of yoga studios and workshops. And when COVID happened, I didn't love teaching yoga on Zoom. I missed the physical, I missed the community and the connection. But the mindset stuff I loved doing on Zoom because it enabled me to get people wherever they were. I would do this course for corporations. Athletic teams, communities, small groups of friends. And what I realized was it was boundaryless because it was virtual. We meet an hour a week. And instead of going to a retreat or a workshop where you often feel amazing in the moment and come home, have like a spiritual hangover because you wonder, how do I feel like that in my real life? Here it was amazing because we would gather weekly. Go over the topic of that session, and then we have the next 7 days to play with those action steps within our real lives. So what happens is week 1, for example, we work on just noticing the things that bring us closer towards or farther away from the version of our life that we deem to be the best. And the way we start noticing it is we start paying attention to our physiological cues. So you all have had the experience, we all have, where you walk into a space and you're like, ooh, something just doesn't feel right. Either this physical environment or the way I feel something. You're like the spidey senses that I said before. Something prickles and it feels like, ooh. And then you've also had the feeling where love at first sight, or you met somebody who instantly felt like a best friend, never just an acquaintance. And that feels like, ah, when everything's going amazingly well and the lights turn green and you find $20 in your jeans and you're like, this is that feeling like, ah, like a full body sigh. So the first thing we do when we gather in one of these groups is recognize where each of those feelings show up physically for us so we can start listening to the guides that we carry around all the time, but too often learn to ignore. And once we start noticing, then we do different exercises and make small actionable shifts each week that compiled on top of each other make huge transformations in people's lives in real time. Throughout the 12-week course, they are experiencing the transformations each week. You don't have to wait till you graduate and hope something happens. So that is so satisfying. To lead and facilitate for other people. Because when you watch their lights turn on, it's the biggest gift to be even a small part of it.

This episode is brought to you by CJ Moneyway Media, where podcast ideas become platforms. Through the Moneyway Lab Masterclass, CJ shares real lessons from the lab for Creators building their voices brick by brick, from powerful guest conversations, storytelling that inspires growth. CJ Moneyway Media is about one thing: building legacy through stories. Learn more at CJMoneyway.com.

Music style, music store. I like that. And I like that you, you know, you're doing things like that to bring excitement and joy to people's lives. As lead me to my next question that I have to ask. I believe this guy probably brought some excitement to your life. From yoga mat to main stage, you've worked with Tony Robbins teams and many more. How do you translate spiritual wisdom into practical coaching?

Well, I like— and this is why I appreciate now that it's not reserved just for the yoga spaces, because when you speak to somebody in the language that they receive, you connect with them differently. You and I connected immediately today over a shared love of sports. I work with a lot of athletes. When I used to start working with athletes, you would have to convince them of the value of of breathwork, of mindfulness. Now you don't. People have a better understanding than they did even 10 or 20 years ago. So working with people and getting them young and being able to speak in a way that they can receive it is a really fantastic opportunity because my main goal, it's just a small one, just world peace. And that one, whenever I say it, people laugh. They're like, "Oh, world peace. That's just your goal?" But if you break that down, world peace is just a world that we're living in peacefully. So if you can connect with someone, one person at a time, one small group at a time, and help them realize that they have the power to connect with their own peace, to feel more present in their life, to walk around more connected and tuned in and present to their blessings, then their ripple that they're spreading of kindness in their community is going to start to have an immediate effect. The more people we can do that with, the larger the ripple spreads. And it doesn't have to take much. One of my favorite exercises that we do one of the weeks when we really hone in on our words and the value and the power of the words we're saying, and you get rid of the four-letter words in your life, Yeah, I don't mean the regular four-letter words. I love those. I need the words that are doing nothing to enhance my life.

Get rid of those too, Joanna. Get rid of those too.

That would be hard for me, admittedly. Whether I'm excited or whether the Cowboys are on, the words are probably the same.

Or the Giants or the Eagles or the Raiders.

Exactly. Or Washington. So for me, those words are typically emphasizers. They're emphasizers of joy. Or of passion. So they have an emotional response. H-A-T-E is an absolute curse word in my house. My daughter, who will be 13 tomorrow, she knows if she drops an F-bomb, she's likely to get away with it if it's like well-timed and not in mean spirits. But if she says H-A-T-E, everyone would look at her, "Ooh." Even her friends know because it's a word you can't say without feeling. And I would tell my kids, your hearts are too beautiful. When you say that word, you're talking about something you don't like. So when you go to the power of adding H to it and putting that kind of passion and energy behind your most negative feelings, you're amplifying it. So instead, if you really can't stand something, you say, "Mm, that's not for me." You're diminishing its power. So the words that I consider to be the 4-letter words that we want to get rid of are words like okay, good, and fine. Because if somebody goes out in the street and asks, how you doing today? And you're like, fine, thanks. How are you? And they're like, good, thanks. You just had an exchange of absolutely nothing. Nothing. It was politeness. It's what we've been taught. We could say it on autopilot. There's zero connection happening there. So when you take those words out, and this is one of the action steps we do in the course, You spend the next 7 days having to answer differently. So if somebody says, "How are you doing today?" you might say, "I'm freaking amazing. This day is magic. I am so happy. Everything is so great. Thank you for asking. How are you doing today?" And they'll be so surprised that you gave them a different answer that often they'll pause, think about it, and give you an answer that's also real. Now, whenever I do this, people always ask the same question in a different version. What if your day isn't magical? Like, what if your day actually sucks? You never have to pretend to find real connection. It doesn't have to be fake. In fact, it kind of ruins it if it is. So if you're having a crap day and you say, this day has actually been totally crap, I got a flat tire right after stubbing my toe, then I walked out and it was raining all over me. But you know what? You are the first person to ask me. And maybe you were just the one to turn my day around. So thank you. And starting now, I'm expecting some awesome. How are you today? It doesn't really matter what your answer is. It matters that it's real, that you think about it in the moment, and that you have an exchange that's authentic. So it turns these everyday interactions into moments of micro connection.

I like that because I have had some crappy days. And I also like to say too, you know, I like to say— matter of fact, I just said yesterday, I said, man, you know, there's not too many people that I don't like, but I don't like him. So, and I mean that. I, I can't say who it is, but you know, like you say, replacing that word hate, because when you say you hate somebody, you taking on that emotion. So I try not to get to the point of saying hate As you said with your daughter, how you try to tell them, I just say, you know what, I really don't like that person. So let me ask you, Joanna, your book, My Guru Wears Heels, has a deep spiritual message. How do you reach people who don't normally consider themselves spiritual?

That's a great question because I feel like what spirituality means to different people can vary as much as the people themselves do. So there's no real prerequisite. There's no baseline experience or thought process you have to have to be able to receive something that has spiritually empowering universal messages. And what I really appreciated from my time with Tao was how universal her messages were. They were things that we could all benefit from being reminded, things that, like, there's nothing that's impossible. If it's a vision you have, there's a reason you have it. And if you're meant to do it, do it. But do it today. She would often say that procrastination was the only sin because so many people would wait for tomorrow and tomorrow never comes. She used to say there's no such thing as tomorrow because one minute after midnight, it's already today again. So it's always today. And she also taught me that when you wake up every day, you could decide it's going to be the best day of your life. You don't need to wait for proof. Your decision can precede how the day unfolds. So there really— even though I met her through the yoga world, which already in and of itself can seem like a spiritually exclusive place if you don't have an interest to practice yoga or you never have done it, You might think, well, that's not for me, so I guess I don't get the messages. My intention was really to take her messages out of that environment, to write this book and to write it in a novel form so that people could just get lost in the story, read it like a really quick beach read, and walk away with the same beautiful lessons and takeaways as if they heard her in a yoga studio or an ashram. And you don't have to come already formed. The book starts with me when I'm 17. I had just been assaulted. I was in a really dark, like, lonely place. It wasn't all peaches and roses. So to know that you can start wherever you are with whatever you have and still have this arc that makes it possible for you to change your life in ways that make all the magic more magical, and all the hard less so, that we have that power. So it was like book number one kind of told the story and set the tone for what's possible for anyone, whether you had a spiritual interest specifically or not. And then book number two was more like a workbook so that if somebody didn't have the time or access to me personally to take the course, then here, even though you can't replicate that interactive experience, you can give someone at least a workbook to have the tools to start. So that was the intention of this one, to give you the story, the inspiration, the why in book one, and then book two, give you the how and give you a pocketful of tools so that you could create life on purpose instead of reacting to what's thrown your way.

I like that. And man, Kyle couldn't had planted better seed on better soil than she did with you, because you sucked up everything that she was teaching you. And so although she's not here with us in the physical, but her word still moves on. And so strategically, he always knows, you know what I'm saying? No matter where you are spiritually, like you say, wherever you are spiritually or whatever in your journey He always know what to do and when to put the right people in your life to take you to what you need to do or be. And so, Taya, on that trip to India, she passed you the mantle, and you've taken it. And even— and like she say, go make money off of this, go do what you got to do, man. I like that, I like that. So I only got one more question for you, Joanna. And then I got a quickfire round that I been a fan favorite and a guest tie-up. And so I just— why don't tell the guests until the end of the show? Because they try to think ahead of time to try to think of the question that I'mma ask them. I'mma ask you 5 questions, give me the first thing that comes to your mind. And I will be lying to you to say that everyone that takes this quiz pass it. Everybody stumbles at some point except for one lady that I told at the beginning. And she passed it with flying colors. But before I get there, let me ask you, what's next in your journey? Another book, another program, a new path? What can we expect from Joanna moving forward?

All of it. Definitely more books. Last year, I had a desire to write 2 books that year, and they were going to be novels. And then one day I thought, what am I doing? The thing I talk about most often The thing I spend all my days sharing, that's the next book. And that's how Best Life Ever happened. So yes, there will definitely be more books on the horizon. I've already been asked to do this book, Best Life Ever, in a version for kids. So that will likely be the next one. In the fall, I lead a retreat for women to Italy in Tuscany with my partner, Jen. She and I do our podcast together, The Manifest Station. So that's fun. It's all the things that feel like a full body yes. That's my bar now. It's whatever feels like a full body yes, let's do more of that. If it's anything less, it can kind of just fall by the wayside. So when you have the bar that high, it really keeps you honest as to which are the parts of your profession that are your passion and to focus there. I want the impact. This is the year I intend to do my first TEDx talk. I want to go all around the world and spread this kind of magic and the light turner-onner moments for as many people as possible.

Mm. And I wish that for you. You know, go eat some other fruit other than some oranges and other than some apples. You know, I'm over here eating plums, and I find 10 cent in my blue jean pockets, not $20 like y'all do out there in the Sunshine State. But that's another story. Um, I thought I didn't catch that. So, uh, so let me ask you, uh, Joanne, you ready? You ready for this quick fire round?

I love it.

One mantra that changed your life.

Be the change you wish to see in the world. Whatever it is you want more of, start by being some of that yourself.

Mm, I like that. Brothers, if you want peace in your household, bring peace to it. Hey, so, uh, favorite Tao quote?

My favorite one of hers is that with the breath there is nothing that we cannot do. That was the thing she said the most. There is nothing we cannot do. So it really sparked the seed of if you could see it, you could feel it. If you could feel it, you could do it.

If you can see it, you can be it. What I just— I just wrote something. If you can dream it, you can achieve it. Best advice you've received as a coach?

To never stop learning. The best teachers are forever students. The best coaches are still being coached. That you need to be able to practice what you're preaching and also receive it. So if you want to mentor other people, seek mentorship in your life. That cycle is really important.

I like that. And I did a podcast once before entitled You Can Learn from the Mouths of Babes. Don't take kids or whatever for granted because there's certain things they can teach you that you didn't know. So we're always learning. And anyway, most underrated practice for daily peace?

Breathing. Breathing. If we don't check in with our breath, we take these tiny little survival breaths. You will breathe because it keeps you alive. There is a huge difference between those tiny little sips of air and drinking in your inhales and really releasing on your exhales. You can take one huge inhale, fill your belly, your ribs, your chest and lungs, exhale with a noisy sigh, and change your emotional and physiological state like this. And too many people take it for granted and do not realize how much power they have to heal, to calm, to reset, to invigorate. We can use our breath for all these different purposes, but we forget about it and we just think of it as this background survival instinct.

I like that. And like you say, you train athletes and things of that nature, but people have learned over the last 20-something years about this technique and it ain't as much questioning. And so I say that because I've had a couple of guests, yoga instructors and mentors and things of that nature, you know, they talk about the breathing. One lady, uh, Zizi Clark, she said, CJ, you got to go Do you gotta count like to 8 or something and then breathe it back out or whatever? I tried it, I kind of failed it, but I'ma listen to you though, Joanne. So one more, and you might be the second one on the CJ Moneyway Show that didn't stumble up. Question, you ready?

I'm ready.

One book besides your own that everyone should read?

To Kill a Mockingbird. Ding ding ding!

And yeah, we got a winner!

We got a winner!

We got a winner! We got a winner! Hey, so Joanna, thank you for lighting up, and I mean literally lighting up, the CJ Moneyway Show today with your truth, your energy, and your being authentic. You're very, very, very authentic, and I appreciate that. To our listeners, if you ever felt stuck, uncertain, or disconnected, Joanna's story is your reminder to live boldly, breathe deeply, and trust that the universe always shows up when you do. Be sure to grab a copy of My Guru Wears Heels, check out her digital courses, and follow her journey on Instagram at J-O-A-N-N-A-R-A-J-E-N-D-R-A-N. I will not repeat that again. Rewind it back and follow my girl Joanna. Until the next time, keep building, keep breathing, and always keep planting seeds of legacy here at the state's capital. This your boy CJ Moneyway and Joanna, my New York Yankees buddies. Can't say that I'm a Knicks fan, but I'm rooting for them tonight against the Celtics. You best to believe that. Hey, we out of here. Peace.

You've been listening to the CJ Moneyway Show with real stories, real lessons, yeah, and real perspective come together.

Remember, move with patience, move with purpose.

That is the mindset of a Panther. Until next time, keep building your Legacy, brick by brick by brick by brick. Music style.

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