Ep. 24-Day Schildkret: Morning Altars, How To Nourish Your Spirit through Nature, Art and Ritual

This is the You Winning Life Podcast, your number one source for mastering a positive existence. Each episode we'll be interviewing exceptional people, giving you empowering insights, and guiding you to extraordinary outcomes. Learn from specialists in the worlds of integrative and natural wellness, spirituality, psychology, and entrepreneurship so you too can be winning life. Now here's your host, licensed LMFT 🎗️, marriage and family therapist, certified neuro-emotional technique practitioner, and certified entrepreneur coach, Jason Wasser.

So today's guest is not only an old friend of mine, but is known internationally for inspiring tens of thousands of people of all ages from all over the world to forage, build, and be awed with earth art. As an artist, teacher, and workshop leader, Morning Altars has been seen live and on stage, including with the band Dispatch. Workshops and installations that have appeared at Google, the 9/11 Memorial Plaza, the Andy Warhol Foundation and Nature Conservancy, Menla, the Dalai Lama's Tibet House, and more. Day Shulcrit is the author of Morning Rituals: A 7-Step Practice to Nourish Your Spirit Through Nature, Art, and Ritual, and is igniting an international movement based on this creative and spiritual space. So let's start out with the beginning of your journey. We both grew up in South Florida. We were involved in the same youth group, which I know had lots of influence on our young lives. Welcome to the show and walk us through your life from that time to who you've become today.

It's good to see you.

Pleasure to be seen.

It's been some time. I want to just correct, my book's called Morning Altars, not Morning Rituals. Excuse me. It's okay. It's important. You know, you got to just say the name. Yeah, so walk you through the last 20 years of my life, not a small question.

Definitely not.

That you're asking. You know, as many people do, things change in life, you know, the circumstances change. Life's a very interesting thing, you know, sometimes I feel like as humans we're more akin to stones in a river. And after a while you just feel kind of a life pouring over you consistently until you start to smooth over you know, and it's funny, you and I grew up in South Florida, and I'm heading out there next week to visit my grandmother who's turning 93 next week. And, you know, she and I talk on the phone every day, and since my dad died, and talk about a woman who is very smoothed over by life, you know, and she's a model for me as to how really not to take certain things too personally, too seriously, and and also to bring a lot of humor to life. And so, you know, so the transformations, the changes since you and I last saw each other is, you know, I guess I could do it in a bullet point list. But, you know, I had a whole career working on Broadway. I was a director off-Broadway and on-Broadway. And throughout that time was also had my, you know, just had a love of being outside and being in nature. And I got to a point where I just, as my career in theater was skyrocketing, I mean quite literally, the year I left New York, my collaborator won 2 Tony Awards that following year. So, but the year before, I just had enough of being indoors all the time. And when you work in the theater, you're just, you're in the theater all the time. You don't get to feel the beautiful wind on your face or the the sun on your skin. And so I just left the theater and I moved out to California, and for about 10 years I ran a high school, supplementary high school for Jewish teenagers. And I was doing that work, and also I won this international award for bringing teens around a fire once a week. And I had this love of bringing teenagers into this sacred space and really just giving them an opportunity to be in a place that they don't get in they don't get at home, which is the sacred place to witness and be witnessed, to be around a fire and to really just go into some of the depths of what they're struggling with and considering in their lives, and being around each other, wandering together. And so, I did that for about 10 years, and throughout this whole journey, I have just found myself wanting to be outside more and more. And then one year I was going— I was dating someone, and it was about a year or two after my dad died. And we were dating, and then we broke up, and I went through another round of deep grieving that I hadn't— that, you know, I was really grieving my dad, and then this breakup was another way of experiencing that well of grief. And I was pretty wrecked actually. It was a pretty deep love and it's pretty wrecked from it. And I had my dad's dog who I was taking care of at the time. And you know, if I didn't have that dog, I would have stayed indoors and just really kind of isolated. And so Rudy was taking me outside and we would go on these long early morning walks. And, um, and so this practice that I have been claimed by, Began— I mean, I was making art outside throughout my life, but this practice in particular that I've come to call mourning altars began as a way for me to try and move through the grief that I was experiencing from my part— from my breakup, and to try and metabolize that grief. Because, you know, I think in our culture these days we are relatively grief illiterate. We don't— we think of grief more as an affliction because, you know, the way it hits us, it's just— it's so— it just fucks with our lives, as it should. And it was messing with mine pretty properly. And yet this thing of being in nature and being creative was this kind of double whammy of moving my grief, moving through my grief. And so every morning my dog and I would go on these long walks and we would— I would take a basket and I would just start to collect things on the walk, a crow feather or a little berries or some leaves or, you know, eucalyptus buttons or some really cool bark. Just things that were like really appealing to my childlike eyes and just, you know, and just as a way of getting me out of this redundant, um, regret that my mind was bringing me through. And so one morning we would go to the top of this hill and under this eucalyptus tree and the fog was rolling in and I would just sit there and I found these beautiful amber-colored mushrooms and I would just arrange— one morning I would arrange, I arranged these mushrooms and and the bark and these leaves into this beautiful symmetrical piece of art. And I had this almost this blessing or this prayer that came through me, which was to move through my grief, to get out, you know, in some way to lighten the load. And I spent an hour doing it, which felt like it was a second. And it was the first time in probably 6 months that I did not feel completely overwhelmed by my sadness, my heartbreak. And I thought to myself, okay, something happened here. Just arranging leaves and berries and mushrooms on the ground into something pretty and letting it go, you know, not trying to take, like, freeze it. I just made it and then walked away. And so I made a challenge to myself, can I return to that spot for 30 days and make a new piece of art based off of whatever I found on my dog walk? And so every morning we would go out at dawn and I would just start to collect things that people would walk on or walk over, um, that I thought was beautiful. And I would go to the same spot and I'd make something beautiful every morning. And 30 days came and passed and I did not want to stop. And so, that became almost really the highlight of my day, every day. I wanted to do that more than I wanted to do anything. And I started to photograph it, and I would start just to send it out to friends and family. You know, a friend of mine has a baby, so I'd make one, and I would just send it to her. And people's responses were very profound. I was having these responses that were like, you know, wow, that image really connected me back to myself, or really just brought me— you know, I've been sitting with my kids indoors all day, and it just reminded me to get outside with my kids, or these very profound responses. And then I started to put it on Instagram, and the most unexpected thing happened, which was people all over the world, from Poland and Russia and Iran and Brazil, they were sending me pieces that they made out of the places that they lived for the reasons, for the life transitions that they were going through. And they were sending it to me, and suddenly I had this international movement of people all over the world that were just making really beautiful and very simple pieces of art out of the places that they lived for the reasons that they were going through in their lives. And for whatever reasons, it was meaningful to them. And so, um, I realized that a book was coming through. And so upon writing the book, I looked back at what I was doing and realized that there were 7 steps to my practice. And so the book is broken down into 7 chapters and each one is a step of this practice, but more so each one, each step is very much contending with a different problem that we as modern human beings are struggling with. And so each step is its standalone practice, from step 1, which is the wandering and the wondering and the foraging, and it really contends with our, our, uh, our cultural problem of being weak with wonder. And teaching people how to wonder again. You know, we've become so certain about things. And so, you know, as we become adults, we've become so hardened with what we know, and we need to practice. Just like, you know, if you practice piano or you practice lifting weights, you know, you get strong. And the same thing happens with wonder. If you don't practice it, you atrophy in wonder. If you practice it, you get stronger in wonder and curiosity and surprise and awe. I'm actually in New York right now, and I was hired by this amazing synagogue here called Lab Shul, and I just built an earth altar, a 30-foot piece, for their Rosh Hashanah service of 2,000 people in a Broadway theater in Midtown Manhattan. And their theme this year is awe, and it's about reconnecting ourselves to a much larger experience in our mundane lives. And so, this is— so, step 1 is doing that, and subsequently, all the 7 steps are really helping people step out of the speed and busyness and distractedness and technology of our modern lives, and helping people reconnect with slowing down and connecting with our Earth, and also, most importantly, making meaning with the life transitions that we're going through. And, uh, and so this little tiny practice that was helping me through my heartbreak of a breakup a long time ago is now helping many people around the world. And, uh, and one last point, which is, um, I— this work, I, I'm not inventing anything. If I actually, you know, as a, as a Jewish person, you know, we, made altars 3,000 years ago, 4,000 years ago. And many indigenous people around the world employ earth art as a way to keep their culture healthy, to pray for rain, or to welcome newborns, or to grieve the dead. Or so this is a practice that I'm standing on the shoulders of giants all over the world, and I'm just bringing this practice to the Western world and saying Hey, it's right outside your front door. All you have to do is walk around your neighborhood, find really pretty things, or at the beach or in the park. And, uh, if you have kids, you know, they'll be your teachers. They know how to do this way better than you do. And you'd be shocked how many people are having profound life experiences by doing this very simple practice.

There's so many different aspects that we can jump into about what you just shared. And the beauty and profoundness of the grief process. I think the component that's lacking from the clinical perspective, right, as a therapist, is the movement involved, right? Because life does have to continue at some level. But do we keep up with the current of life and bring ourselves fully to it? So the way that you found this new ritual to honor the experience is really, really, really profound because we're taught to kind of, at some level, like shut down, stay safer so you don't get hurt more in an experience that you're going through, especially right after loss of your dad and loss of this relationship. And it reminds me of that scene in, I think it was Hitch with Will Smith and Kevin James, where he was trying to show off like his dance moves, right? He did that whole crazy thing. And Will Smith as Hitch goes, no, no, no, don't ever do that again. Your space is between here and here and don't move out of that. And I think what you're sharing and the beauty and power of what you're sharing is that Don't ever listen to that advice, right? The wonderment of play, the wonderment of self-expression, the wonderment of movement, the wonderment of finding the beauty in the things that we stopped knowing where to look is one of the magical things about what you're sharing.

Yeah, I think that we, as you know, I keep on saying modern people, you know, because there's plenty of people around the world, this is not their story. You know, honestly, I've met quite a few of them. This is, this is a very specific, very problematic, um, um, I would say even traumatic coping mechanism for modern people, um, which is that we have become addicted to certainties, um, and familiarity, you know, so we, we get familiar with things and we stop seeing the miracle of them. And we stop, and especially the smallest things. I mean, it's very easy to go maybe to the Grand Canyon and to be in awe, right? Because it's just so monumental. It's much harder to see a leaf, to hold a leaf, and to actually look at the leaf and to see it in a way that your mind's not saying, well, I know what that is, so it doesn't matter, you know? And loss and grief is actually— my teacher actually calls it a skill, grief, rather than an affliction. And he says the skill of grief— he says grief is our— grief is the skill of loving what we've lost, and love is the skill of grieving what has yet to be lost. And it's a very interesting thing, you know, to actually see grief and love as two wings of the same bird. Because grief is just, it's just an expression of love, you know. And, and love is, is really, real love is being in the presence of something knowing that one day you won't be, you know. And it's the remembrance of the transitory nature of life, is the ephemerality of life, that, you know, life is ephemeral. You have no idea how long you'll be here for. And by remembering that ephemerality It helps to bring us back into a deep appreciation and wonderment of what we have right now. So, for instance, you know, if this was the last glass of water I was going to drink, and it might be, how differently would I drink that and appreciate that and relate to that water? You know, and so that is often what I teach about, which is, um, because my, my art is, is ephemeral. I've made over 1,000 earth altars and not one of them lives anymore. They're all destroyed. And so the heart and soul of my practice is impermanence. And it's a reminder that, you know, you too are impermanent. So if you can walk around every day remembering that, you know, who knows, this might be the last one, and not to be, I would say, collapsed in that realization. But to practice wonder and to practice awe, to practice gratitude and appreciation and, and surprise and interest and, and love, it's a very— it's a deeply transformative way to be a human being. And this is a very small and simple way of doing it because the stakes are so low. I'm making something out of nature I'm bringing it together in a temporary symmetry and I'm letting it go. And yet the bigger teaching is that me too. I'm also together. My body is together in a temporary symmetry. My thoughts are together and one day they won't be. And when that day comes, am I showing up as an amateur? Am I in resistance? To change? Really, what we're talking about is change. Or can I let go? And can I let— can I be in relationship to change? And, you know, that's what my next book, by the way, will be about: life transitions. And so, you know, each chapter will be devoted to a different life transition: a birth, a death, a divorce, a marriage, a child leaving a house for college, you know, um, getting a job, losing a job. And what happens is we have these changes in our lives, but we don't mark them. And so we go through these life transitions. A kid leaves for college, and what happens? We take, you know, we go out for dinner. You know, someone dies, and, and, and 5 years later the death anniversary comes up, and what happens? We say something on Facebook. And is that enough? You know, so I, so these are very low, I would say the stakes are low, but the ritual is high. And we have to learn once again how to mark these moments of transition so that we're not amateurs to change, but that we can honor change, we can relate to change, we can bring meaning to change. And so that's what these do.

Yeah. So sitting here, right, and hearing everything you're saying as a therapist is completely spot on with my philosophy of where I work with my clients.

I dig it.

So the idea of dropping resistance to something allows us to hold space with it, right, to even move to a place of embracing it, and which, right, the end result of someone really The inability to let that go creates anxiety, right, about the future. So the profoundness of what I think you're offering in this approach and in this practice is that if you start from a different vantage point, which is the ephemeral end of it, right, that everything will come to an end and you start with the embracing of that, that we are ourselves this altar, That is the right, that is walking around. How much anxiety and mental health and mental wellness could be changed in the world if we change this vantage point to starting from what, right, these philosophies, these traditions, these practices that are inherent in most of our indigenous religions and spirituality. And we started our wellness and healing process from there.

Yep. I mean, I think, I don't know, about how you do your practice, but I would say for me what's been enormously successful with people that have attended my workshops, that read my books, that are practicing this on their own, are number one, they're outside. There's a— they're in the sun, they're in the wind, they're under a tree, they're at the beach, they're in a park. Who doesn't love that? There's automatically a feeling of you're a little bit more connected, you're a little bit more free, you're outside, there's a lot going on, number one. Number two, they're using their hands. And I think, you know, I'm not— I don't know, again, know about your practice, but to me, therapy— I had been in my 20s in therapy for 10 years, and it was a lot of talking. And as soon as I started to use my hands, something else happens. And I have people in my workshops, you know, I'm thinking of this one woman, I gave a lecture for an hour and then we were going to have a workshop where they actually did this practice. She comes up to me and she says, you know, thank you very much. That was really profound, but I'm a, I'm from New York. I'm a surgeon and I'm just not creative. So I'm going to bail out, but it was really great. And I'm very, very good at pleading with people and negotiating, so I negotiated. I said, you know, I want to actually ask that you reconsider, and here's why. Number one, you can't fuck it up. You cannot mess this up. We're not making paintings, we're not drawing, we're just arranging, and 5-year-olds can do it, so maybe you could do it too. And I said, second of all, just start in the center. Just put something down. And ripple out from there and just play, play with shapes, play with numbers, just play. We're just playing. So it's very attractive, right? Because it's not serious at first. And so she said, fine, I'll try. So after about an hour, the group in my workshops, we all meet up and we go and visit each person's earth altar together, and it becomes a ritual. Each person gets an opportunity to talk about what they made And then the group has an opportunity to kind of reflect what they see. And it's very profound. And she was missing. And so I thought, okay, you know, I guess she just tried and bailed. And so we're almost done with the workshop, going to each person's, and I see her out of the corner of my eye, like 100 yards away. And she's underneath these two— she's between two boulders, kind of hidden. And she's hunched over and she's like still hard at work. And so I asked the group, I say, "Let's go to her." And so we went over to her and I saw, she saw us out of the corner of her eye and she starts to bawl. She starts to cry, but like a certain kind of like keening cry, like a deep cry. And I put her hand on her shoulder and we waited until she kind of, the sobbing calmed down. And she had a whole intricate piece in front of her, and she said, you know, I didn't think I could do this, as you know, she said, but I had to. She said, my— both of my parents died this year, and I have been struggling with how to grieve them because as a surgeon, she said, I just have to work all the time. And And she said, so this altar tells the story of my parents' lives. And then she just started to tell their story. And every little thing meant something. There was the number 72, because that was the age of her dad. There was the number 68, because that was the age of her mom. It told the story of her childhood. I mean, in rocks and leaves and berries. And it was profound. And she just used her hands, and she was outside. There was no one watching her, you know what I mean, except the stones, the boulders. She— so she felt this certain kind of freedom. She probably felt a little bit like a kid again, so it gave her that freedom. And it wasn't serious. It wasn't like she was making a piece of art, you know. She could arrange something and then rearrange it. It was a lot of freedom for her. And it gave her the opportunity to make meaning for two important life events that she was really struggling to do because the culture that we live in doesn't give us any kind of ways to make meaning with our lives. I mean, maybe a birthday cake, right? Maybe, you know, I mean, unfortunately Facebook has become a way for people to acknowledge things. You know, but not real ways that mean something. And so she did. And so I have this experience quite a bit, you know, where people are— that are not creative are finding this as a way to creatively express their grief, their joy, their uncertainties, their doubts, their healing, their, you know, and to move through these emotions.

So as I sit here listening to you, and one of the books that pops out to me on my shelf is a book called Symbol, Story, and Ceremony, and very much in alignment with what you're saying. And as a marriage and family therapist, my training was all about the narrative, the person's narrative, and how sometimes we even get stuck in that narrative, the story that we're constantly telling ourselves over and over again, whether it's the narrative of our culture, of our religion, of our family, of our our trauma, that we get stuck in that groove of that record that we have to keep telling us and keep telling the world. And that's where this restriction, this contrast sometimes comes from. And I know that creating new symbols, creating new stories, and creating new ceremonies allows us to break free of that when we give ourselves permission. So when that doctor who lives in a world where this creative expression of freedom is only in the way of a regimented surgery, perhaps, to have this new space, to have this outlet, to go use their hands, to do anything that's not neocortex rational brain, radically can transform any healing. So one of the modalities that I use that is my bread and butter baby is called neuro-emotional technique. And it's a muscle testing-based modality. It's clinically researched. And journal published. And we go into the non-conscious limbic system responses to experiences, stories, and traumas that you don't even realize is in there that's holding us back from living fully and proactively in our power, in our story, in our authenticity, in our integrity. Because either there's something that has been a trauma that hasn't allowed us to do it, or there's some limiting belief or some limiting experience And it allows the person to get out of that rational part of their brain. And what's that expression, right? You can talk your way out of— you can't talk your way out of a paper bag. Allows us to shift. And I think that's also the power of what you're doing and what you're bringing to the table.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the collaboration with nature.

Right.

That's a very important thing. And, you know, as I said, This is a practice, I mean, this is a practice that still happens in India, in Pakistan, in Thailand, in Bali, in Peru, in certain indigenous cultures in America. I mean, this is, and we're talking thousands of years, you know? And the thing is, is that you can't point to much of it because it's earth art, it's impermanent. And so the— but that's the technology actually, is because it's impermanent, you got to do it again, right? So here, that's a very interesting techno— impermanence is a very, um, uh, achieved technology. Why? Because like with anything, if you do something once, you don't have to do it again. If it's permanent. So it— but if you do something once and it's impermanent and it goes away, you got to do it again. And the more you do it, the better you get at it. And that's the technology of impermanence. So, um, you know, that's what I especially love about this art is that it's not like you do it once and you're done. You know, you get to do it again. And the good thing about life is that it keeps on throwing you curveballs. You know, and there's a lot of things to emote and express, and there's a lot of things, of changes that consistently happen in our lives, and there's a lot of reasons to make meaning. You know, um, you and I are right now sitting between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur in the Jewish calendar. And, you know, this is a very holy time of the year, and a lot to let go of from last year and a lot to kind of envision for the new year. And You know, we're sitting in a technology and a calendar in a way of telling time that says, you know, now's the time to make some meaning. And, um, you know, the more you do that, it doesn't have to be a once a year thing. The more you do that, the better you get at living a meaningful life.

Yeah. So how can people who are not used to having some type of ritual in their life choose, especially maybe they don't live in an environment where these things are readily available, like if they're in a city, they're on a college campus.

It's just a— it's all of it is just a mindset that— I mean, the scariest piece— I write about this in my book— the scariest thing is contending with a mindset, with a story that says, I can't, I don't, I haven't, right? It already is convinced that I'm not creative, so this is not for me, or I don't live in nature, so I can't do this, or I don't have time, so blah, blah, blah, you know, or I'm too old or I'm too young or I'm too this or I'm too that. And you already decided that it doesn't work for you. So, you know, and so that's the way to stay in a very stuck cycle. But look, I have given many workshops in the center of Manhattan. In Times Square, where I used to live. I'm here right now, actually, in Manhattan. And I have led 40 people, we met at a community garden, and I said to them, "Okay, I'm going to let you go out into the city for an hour to forage and to wander." And they all raised their hand and said, "Why? We're not going to find anything." And I said, "Oh, so you all are convinced." So you're all signed up for a workshop where you're going to forage but you're absolutely convinced you're not going to find anything. I said, okay, well, I hear that there's a part of you that is totally convinced. So that person's clearly at here in attendance at the workshop. Can we push that part of you aside for a second? And can we encourage a part of you, maybe a little bit more childlike, that might be willing to consider that there might be certain things in the city that you can't see,, but that might be there. And can we access this part of your brain that might be filled with wonder or curiosity? They said, fine. I said, okay, so go out in an hour and just get lost. There's no right way. There's no right direction. Let's see what happens. So an hour comes back later, and of course they're all wide-eyed and giggly. And one woman walks in with like 50 pigeon feathers. Another guy walks in with a literally like 10-pound reishi mushroom that he found growing on the side of a street tree. And they're all walking in like little kids because they are— because the way that they've been in the city is going from point A to point B as fast as possible, getting on the subway and being on their phones. And now they get to be in the city in a completely different way, which is with wonder and curiosity and awe and slowing down and listening and observing, and they were— they shocked themselves. Um, and so I'm contending with that, you know. It's, it's not that the place doesn't have the material to build these earth altars with. It's that the way that you are showing up to the place prevents you from seeing what's here. And that is a good life lesson. I mean, how are you showing up to your own relationship, for instance? Like, you're a a family therapist and a marriage therapist, like, are you so sure that you know who your partner is? Is that preventing you from really seeing them? Is that hurting your marriage? You know, or could you practice being curious about your partner? Maybe after 10 or 20, 30 years of being together, maybe there are things you don't know, right? You know, can you approach with curiosity and wonder and interest and question? And so that's what I'm asking my participants to practice with the places that they live.

And in today's society, with this idea of like a scarcity mindset, one of my favorite teachings from when I was in graduate school was the linguistic statement of "yes, but," right? "This sounds really great, Day, like your program sounds amazing, your work," right? A participant can say to you, "But I I'm a doctor, and I'm not thinking right, or I'm not creative, or I'm not an artist, or I don't have it in me. That but is a neuro-linguistic limiter that anything you say you can do before that no longer exists, right? And neurologically, we cut that off. And I know that one of the things that they shared with us when we first started was the idea of how do you go from the yes and, right? Even though I believe this about myself, how can I still go ahead and do it? And if we have to switch that script, on ourselves, just like you were saying, because that scarcity mindset that there isn't enough, I'm not good enough, I won't be accepted enough, it's not going to be pretty enough. It's going to—

It's interesting too that the scarcity mindset, I've had this many times because, you know, I come from, I come from Jewish people who had to flee. You know, I mean, my, my family is only in America for 3.5, 4 generations, not very long. We had to flee where we were coming from in Europe. So what was passed down ancestrally was a lot of scarcity mindset, you know, and we had to start all over in America. And my, my grandma, who I'm going to visit next week, you know, she grew up in a, in a project, you know, in the '20s and in the '30s. And so in the Depression, you know, so there's a scarcity mindset in the culture and my family. And so, but how that looks in my practice is very interesting, you know, because there's, there's— I'm guilty of this, but I watch this a lot in my workshops. People, they go off and forage, and they take so much, and they come back to the spot to make their earth altar, and they have a basket overflowing with things that they're not going to use. And it's just like, it's just like they've overtaken. And it's a very interesting window to look at our culture, um, because we, we participate in this, you know, individually for sure. We have— our fridge has way too much food in it, our closet has way too much clothing in it. But this practice is a very— it's not so personal. To go into someone's closet is very personal, but to look into someone's basket for a workshop, it's very not personal. It's very easy to say like, oh, do you really need all that? You know? And the answer is always no. And actually, for me personally, my best art, my favorite season to make my art in is winter. Why? Because there's way less material. So it forces me to be super creative and to make magic out of much less. And that is both— I love about my art, and I also love about us as humans, is like, we need much less things, we need much less on our schedule, we need to slow down much more, we need to take much less and appreciate much more. And we struggle again as modern human beings. We have too many things. We have too— we are overscheduled. We have too much clutter. We have, you know, too many— we take too much. And this practice is a way of redeeming our relationship with the natural world so that we can see, like, do I really need to take all of these things? Or can I actually show up to give more? Can I work with less and can I give more? And by giving more, we actually receive more. And that's this beautiful practice that I see time and time again from people. It's very healthy. It's like, oh, because step 5 of my practice is called gifting, because the art that we're making, the earth altar, is not— it's not just a piece of art, it's devotional. So you're giving it for a friend who had a baby, or you're giving it to someone struggling, or giving it to yourself because fill in the blank. And so because of the devotional practice, the gift giving, it's, it's this very healthy sense-making. You give a gift and you suddenly receive, as opposed to people that are struggling with not feeling like they have enough, which are often taking.

So you use the word magic, which is a word that's entirely lost in today's modern society outside of magicians, right? And when we're kids, right?

And Harry Potter.

And Harry Potter, right? So, right, but when we're a kid, right, it was all about like, oh, the magician for our birthday party or going to a magic show. And I had a really amazing conversation with a really good friend of mine, Ben, last weekend when we were at a business conference, and we were talking about having magic happen in each of our lives. But the first step is allowing and then identifying those things and then being able to play with it and dance with it and knowing that it could be impermanent, right? It could come, it could go, and either way, there's a lesson and a value to it.

But I mean, if you want to talk about magic, You know, you really don't have to look that far. You know, you really don't. I mean, the living world that we live in is quite magical. You know, I mean, you just have to look at a tree or a, or, you know, a ladybug or a hawk or your own hands, really. You know, it's, it's quite remarkable to be alive on this planet. The thing that magic— that, that diminishes magic is the sense that we know what's going on. That is what diminishes magic, is that you think you got the reins of the whole thing. And so everything suddenly has this glaze of being, uh, I'm kind of over it because I know what's happening. You know, I travel quite a bit these days, fortunately and unfortunately, on a plane, um, with my book, and You know, I'm guilty of this as well. I'm not trying to say I'm above the fray here, but, um, you know, we are 30,000 feet in the air and people are really over it, and it's quite magical. Um, and so, you know, it's like, how do we renew and redeem our relationship to being profoundly impacted by not just the big things? Being 30,000 feet in the air, I think, is is easy in some way to— as I said with the Grand Canyon, I think we start with the mundane. Can you be— can you wonder about your dishes in your cabinet? Can you wonder about the water that's coming through your shower? Can you wonder— and then it's— and then immediately it's like, can you wonder about your kids? Or you know, at your partner or the food on your table, or, you know, the fact that you woke up this morning because a lot of people didn't, you know, and suddenly everything gets a little bit more of a glow to it because you stop taking life for granted.

And I think that's the beauty in a lot of different religious and spiritual traditions about blessings and about the gratitude approach. So I know in Jewish tradition, there's a concept of saying 100 individual blessings a day, and it's really 100 different wonderments a day, right? It's whether it's the prayer after going to the bathroom or over different foods or after we go to food or ones that are random occasions like seeing a large crowd or when thunder strikes, all of our different traditions.

They have the same issue too, which is, you know, especially by rote traditions that have already kind of standardized prayers, the problem remains the same, which is you can fall into autopilot with that.

Yeah.

And you can just say the prayer as a way of kind of like checking it off of a, of a list. And the question still remains, which is how do you authentically relate to life, especially the, the, the small and the mundane life? And You know, that's the challenge for everyone these days, is, you know, to step out of autopilot, you know. And so, and that to me is the beauty, just to circle back to grief, that's the beauty of grief is that it quite literally removes you from the, from the kind of the everyday, because the thing you're grieving is no longer around. So you can't kind of just be in the autopilot because you're responding to something being profoundly missing. And so it, it, uh, interrupts properly, interrupts your life. The question then becomes, what do you do with the grief? Because its job is to interrupt. So then what? And my whole mission and practice is make meaning with it. Don't just be collapsed with it. Make meaning, make meaning, make meaning.

And that comes from also the perspective of not taking things for granted. As well.

Exactly. But finish the sentence, which is not taking things for granted, but giving. Look, the word taking things for granted, you can break that sentence up really properly. I mean, it's got the whole thing in it, right? Taking and this word granted, right? Which is really another— I mean, we've— you and I have been granted our lives. We have been granted food. On our table. We've been granted certain relationships. What does to be granted mean? It means to be given. Um, it's not because you're entitled to it. It's not because you privileged to it. To be granted means because you've been, you're worthy, you're worth it. So you're carrying something because you're worth it. So the question is, oh, I'm worth it. How do I carry the thing that I'm, that I'm carrying because I'm worth it, which means how are you carrying yourself every day? You know, if you've been granted a life, how are you carrying that life? Are you getting up in the morning and are you just going on Facebook and taking it for granted? Are you just kind of like plowing through the day and just happy to get to bed at night so you can watch Netflix? Or are you— and this is the word I use in my book quite a lot— or can you practice praising? Which is the, I think, the elevated version of those prayers that you were mentioning before, which is, can you praise life? Can you praise the smallest things? Can you praise the biggest things? And just in terms of mental health, you know, which I'm not so sure that therapists are encouraging this, but we do need to encourage this. Can you encourage, can you practice praise? And therefore it asks people to practice a little bit of eloquence. Which means, you know, like actually using this beautiful language you've been given to raise up life, which is, you know, my, my practice is called, and my book is called Morning Altars. And the etymology of the word altar quite literally means to raise up. So what, that's what I was doing with my grief is I was putting it on an altar. I was raising it up. I wasn't just collapsed by it. I wasn't just burdened by my grief. I was raising it up. And so that's what praise does, is it raises things up with your language. Like, I could praise you right now, you know, it would raise you up. You could praise me, it would raise us up. So we need to do that, especially in these troubled times, especially with all this putting down and this negativity and all the ways we speak down to each other and all the ways that people behave on social media and in our politics, and you know, it's just horrible. We need to practice praising more. We need to practice praising the smallest things and the biggest things. We need to practice praising our neighbors and our family and our partners. It's a way back towards being sane humans.

Yeah, and it also brings us much closer with connectivity. And going back to the raising up our stressors, or in my situation years ago, I was having major panic attacks after a certain life scenario, and it wasn't going away, right? And I tried acupuncture and massage and meditation.

I tried— You tried cloning alters.

Well, right, had I known, right? Had you been doing that then, I would have been able to. So I remember in the midst of a massive panic attack, I just sat down on the floor and I started having a conversation with it as if it's was its own entity and being here to teach me something. And the dialogue went something along the lines of, so I know you're back, and I know you're going to keep coming back, and I know that you're not hanging out with somebody else right now because you're right here with me. So there must be something that you are here to teach me, and until I'm ready to sit with that and unpackage that you're not going anywhere. And once I was able to do that and have that engagement with whatever it was that was going on, it would always be no matter what, as we do in the world, we try to push it away and cover up the symptom with some experience or medication or something instead of dealing with what the gift and teaching could be.

I don't like the word dealing, I would use the word relating. Right. You were relating with your anxiety. You weren't just suppressing it, denying it, ignoring it. You were in relationship with it. And that is the way back towards mental health and more, I would say, more aptly towards our humanity, is we need to practice being in relationship, right? It's all— and how— what is the way What is the way out of our current circumstances? Number one, recognizing that the clusterfuck that we're in called modern society is because the way that we relate is through— as by objectifying things. Everything is an object to a modern mind, you know, even sometimes people. And we have to subjectify our experiences. And we have to do that both emotionally, we have to do that with other people, and very importantly, especially in these troubled times with our climate, we have to learn how to be in relationship with the earth, which means you can't subjectify the earth. And it's a very hard thing to consider. I did not grow up this way. You know, I'm sure you didn't either. I did not grow up this way, but I have somehow along the way have learned from enough people who did, who are indigenous to different places around the world, that being in relationship with nature is the way back to being a human being. Because you realize it ain't all about you. Thank God. Right. So, okay. So it's being in a relationship, meaning that these are not just objects. These are subjects. How does that, how does that translate to the way that I approach certain things, that I behave? So it suddenly shifts my conduct.

Right. And our languaging about how we speak it. Right. So in the everyday vernacular, yeah, it would be how I dealt with it, but in my, in my narrative and especially with how I share it, with clients or when I'm speaking is building the relationship with it, is embracing it, is allowing it, right? The very softening of allowance, right?

Yeah, and that couple— and the thing coupled with relationships that we've been talking about is don't approach a relationship from a place of certainty. It's a dead end. Approach relationships with curiosity because you're in the presence of another, right? And so fine, I don't want to fill in the blank what that means. Another could be your partner, could be, you know, tree, could be God, I don't care. But as soon as you think you know what the other is, you're in a dead-end situation. As if you can practice curiosity you are on the road to experiencing real healthy humanity.

Yeah, and one of my favorite teachings from Esther Hicks from the Laws of Attraction world is that, you know, if you're trying to convince somebody to see you differently, she has this phrase that says, you can't stand on your head in enough different ways to get anybody or anything to see you any differently than how they choose to. So the second you stop trying to get them to do different about you, you drop that resistance and a lot of powerful things can open up for you because you're still working in, right, against the idea of what you think they're carrying and you have a belief of importance that what you want them to believe is more important than what's actually happening. And then you can start being in the place of allowing without it becoming a place of judgment. 'Cause there's, you're judging them for judging you.

Yeah. Yep. Yeah. So, you know, I think that we, it's, it's very important these days to find our way back to very simple, um, ways of being human. And, you know, my grandmother actually still remembers some of those ways. Um, and I think as things speed up in our lives and as we become so busy and so disconnected, which is how things are these days. I mean, I teach teenagers. I, I know how it is for the youth. It's not easy. There— it's a, it's, it's a real struggle, and there's a lot of fear. You know, we have to remember, um, certain simple ways of being human beings, and one of the most important ways of doing that is relational. And it's a— it's, you know, 3-year-olds get it, 60-year-olds not so much. And, you know, it's, it's a very easy, um, way of, of redeeming our life, which is to, to really— I mean, if I had to boil the whole thing down into, you know, one thing, it would just be, uh, to, to really practice seeing with childlike eyes again, and to see if you can, you know, really engage with your life from a relational perspective. And that's a practice, you know, so stop being so hard on yourself for fucking it up all the time. But, you know, you gotta practice, and the way— and the very nature of practicing is You gotta fail. That is the only— that is the one requirement of practicing. If you don't fail when you're practicing, you're not practicing. So you gotta fail so that you can see all the ways that you are objectifying life, all the ways that you're, you're experiencing a know-it-all attitude, all the ways that you're taking things for granted. You got to start seeing those things, and when you see them, you can choose differently. And so my— this practice of making earth altars is a very low-stakes way of doing it. It's— you're just— look, how I approach people is you're just making something pretty. That's it. You're just making something pretty. 3-year-olds do it, 93-year-olds do it, you know. And, and yeah, all of these little things start to remind you of what's really important in a time where we're forgetting.

And I love sharing with my couples specifically as they go through the process of, of of engaging each other on different levels and deeper levels and dropping the assumptions and expectations is when I throw the curveball of, but I'm still looking forward to you guys coming back and said we had a fight. And I'm more concerned about how you handled that fight, how you pivoted, how you resolved it, how you owned up to your accountability of what you brought to the table about that more than I am about the fact that you fought, right? So, you will fight, you're always gonna, you could have a disagreement with someone, you could, but if you're just getting stuck on that versus, How do we heal it? How did we drop the assumption about our partner or our child or our friend or our colleague to be able to see them differently? That's the magic, that's the growth, and that's what we do need to go into these little scenarios as we move forward, to not run away from it but to embrace that. And I think that's a really powerful takeaway and enhancement to everything we've been we've been sharing.

Amen.

Yeah. So those of us who are out there listening to you and hearing about you for the first time, where can they go to check out your books? Where can they find you? Where, you know, you're speaking and you're doing workshops. So where can they connect with you both on the web and social media?

For sure. So for those of you that want to see my website, which is a beautiful way to engage me and to see my art, morningaltars.com, M-O-R-N-I-N-G-A-L-T-A-R-S dot com. And I have quite a well-curated Instagram for those of you that play on Instagram or Facebook. So Instagram is the @morningaltars, M-O-R-N-I-N-G-A-L-T-A-R-S, and Facebook, same thing. And You know, I really encourage you— I not only teach these workshops as a practice, but sometimes those of you that are lucky enough to actually see my own art, I often build large-scale installations. And so, as I said, I'm in Manhattan right now doing one for Yom Kippur this coming week, and then next week I'll be at the SANS conference, the Science and Non-Duality Conference, in California. California, making an earth altar, a 30-foot earth altar for them. And then I drive up to San Francisco, which is— I will be both creating a large-scale installation and a workshop for the Reimagine End of Life Festival. And so this is a festival that's reimagining the conversations on death and dying. And I'll be doing a workshop in Oakland, California at the Mountain View Cemetery for people who have lost family recently, or that they want to remember their ancestry, and they'll be building earth altars for, for their dead. And so website, Instagram, Facebook. I have this book out that I would encourage you really to— it's not— it's a beautiful book. It's got 150 gorgeous photographs in it, and the best feedback I get all the time about the book is the writing is as good as the art, and it is really chock-full of wisdom and stories and this practice. And so check out the book, and also we just released the 2020 calendar yesterday, so if you have a— if you'd like a calendar, we have a limited print of those. But I'd love to be in touch. Oh, and one more thing, If you actually are inspired by this conversation, and so much so that you want to just go out right now and make a piece of art, and you're doing it for a reason, and you photograph it because you're just— you're so in love with what you made, feel free to either tag me on social media or send me an email, day@morningaltars.com. We call— I collect them from all over the world on my website, and I'd love to see what you did and I really just love being on the receiving end of so many people being so profoundly moved by this practice.

Awesome. And it's so incredible to be able to hear everything that you've been doing and sharing with the world. And as an old friend, to see just the beauty and power that you've stepped into and the integrity and just being able to bring so much love and dedication, that really Really makes me very happy to see what's going on for you.

So it's not an easy road, my friend. You know, being an impermanent earth artist is not an easy road to walk, but it is, uh, you know, as much as I claim this, this has claimed me. And so I'm just doing, I'm doing my best to be in service to something much bigger than myself here.

Well, that's, I think, the key for all of us is when we can find something that we can step into, and that also really just steps into us and find that magical space, right? That apex between those two, then you know that you're living a life of purpose. And I think that's one of the reasons why this platform of my podcast exists, so that people out there, whether they're coming from the psychology, the alternative medicine, from entrepreneurship, or the spiritual side of the four domains of this podcast, that they can find things to connect to that can inspire them and lead them towards a more successful, profound, and powerful experience. So thank you for—

You're welcome.

—for bringing that to us today.

Thank you for inviting me.

My pleasure, and we'll talk soon. Sounds good.

Take care. Thanks.

So, all right, so that's— thank you, first of all. You're holding some good space, my friend. Thank you. I want to just do the— because I— the intro part that I said morning rituals instead of morning altars, I guess, right? So let me, let me just do that intro over and then welcome you and then we'll pause there. Is that cool? Sure. Okay. Because I want it to be good and I wanted to— because I want you to be able to use this for your social and on your everything like that. Okay. So today's guest is not only an old friend of mine, but is now known internationally for inspiring tens of thousands of people of all ages from all over the world to forage, build, and be awed with earth art as an artist, teacher, and workshop leader. Morning Altars has been seen live and on stage, including with the band Dispatch. Workshops and installations have appeared at Google, the 9/11 Memorial Plaza, the Andy Warhol Foundation and Nature Conservancy, Menla, the Dalai Lama's Tibet House, and more. Day Shilcrit is the author of Morning Altars: A 7-step practice to nourish your spirit through nature, art, and ritual, and is igniting an international movement based on this creative and spiritual practice. Dey, great to see you and welcome back to the show.

Thanks for listening to the You Winning Life Podcast. If you are ready to minimize your personal and professional struggles and maximize your potential, we would love it if you subscribed so you don't miss an episode. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook @JasonWasserLMFT 🎗️