443: All Your Meditation Questions Answered- And Living Your Dharma As a Teacher with Manoj Dias

Namaste. It's Sahara Rose. And welcome back to the Highest Self podcast, a place where we discuss what makes you your soul's highest evolvement. I just came back from a month of traveling through Morocco and I truly feel like a different person on the other side. I am so excited to share with you the downloads and revelations and contemplations that I had on this sacred and mystical and wondrous journey. And I will be doing a recap episode with everything from how I traveled there, where I stayed, to the downlands that I got deep in the Sahara Desert. Yes, Sahara, which is my name was in the Sahara. So it was beyond magical to be there. And life has its dualities. While I was in this beautiful experience, I was very saddened to hear the oorTurn of Roe vs. Wade the last week that I was there. And for someone whose work is around empowering the feminine, for someone whose grandmother was in a forced child marriage and all of her grandmothers before then, for someone who believes in women's rights more than anything, that is why I'm here in this lifetime, to help heal us from the patriarchal wounds and uplift the feminine in all ways and beings, and especially in our political system. I was and still am shocked that this is happening in our country at this time. And I know that every step backward can bring us into a leap forward if we take this opportunity and do not remain silent and do not remain apathetic. And I think that sometimes that happens, especially in spirituality. Sometimes we use spirituality as a way to become numb of the pain and suffering of this world. And that is not what spirituality is about. Spirituality is to open your heart so you can actually not just feel it more, but also see things from a higher and fuller and more nuanced perspective to be able to bring about the healing. So meditation is such a powerful practice to help you come back into your power, into your center, when it feels like the world is falling apart, whether it is politically, socially, or interpersonally, familially. 2022 and you know, life and these things can definitely knock us off our camel saddles per se. And we need to have our practices to help us find our footing again, to help us come back into center. Because this is not a sprint, this is a marathon. I've been saying this since the beginning of 2020, that this is not going to be an overnight process of restructuring our government and social climate and beyond. There is so much work to be done on so many levels and not just women's rights and environmental issues that are going on right now and the way that the earth is being wounded and beyond. So it's so important for us to have our practices to come into our center, to see things from our highest selves perspective. Because when we're in our highest self, and the way that I see the highest self is the part of you that knows, the part of you that is connected to your soul self, your highest vision, your full picture that isn't caught up sometimes. And in the dramas of this earthly plane, I don't think the point is to only be in our highest selves. We have our ego selves, our human selves for a reason. And I really believe spirituality is about the integration of the two and to be in the body and in the earth and to also hold that higher level perspective. Otherwise we can spiral downwards. So in this episode, we really dive deep into all of your meditation questions. I have shared before that my meditation journey has not looked traditional at all. My meditation has been breath work, dance and practices of just contemplation. And everyone has their own practices. So I was really excited to sit with Sri Lankan meditation teacher Manoj Diaz, who's also the founder of the Open app, which is an incredible meditation app. I'm obsessed with it. Like, I actually downloaded it way before meeting him. And it's just really beautiful. It's very modern. They have really cool music and they not only have meditation, but breath work and movement practices. So we really he. I mean, I ask all the questions that I've ever had on my meditation journey of, you know, what is the difference between mindfulness and meditation? If we have thoughts, should we give in to them or ignore them? How much time do we need to meditate, to feel the benefit and so much more? And then he also shares into his dharma, his soul's purpose journey as a young boy in Sri Lanka, being infatuated by monks to forgetting it all and focusing on business and marketing and making money and then coming back to it, following those breadcrumbs and creating his meditation studio and now the open app. So this is also a very inspiring conversation for anyone that is an aspiring entrepreneur who is wanting to create a mission that is in alignment with their spiritual selves. So without further ado, let's welcome Manoj Diaz to the Highest Self podcast.

Welcome Manoj to the Highest Self podcast. It's so great to have you here.

It's so great to be here. Thank you for inviting me on.

And the first question I'd love to ask you is, what makes you your highest self?

Oh, What a question. To start with, I think what makes me embody my higher self is when I'm actually in my body. I notice when I'm really not myself is often when I'm spending a lot of time in my mind. When I'm in my head, I'm overanalyzing things, I'm worrying about things, I'm getting anxious about things. I'm usually in the past or the future, ruminating or anticipating. And when I feel the most embodied and when I'm at my highest is. Is when I exist from the chin down and when I'm tapped into a sense of intuition and feeling and this sense of being grounded to the earth.

Actually, I completely agree with that. And I feel like sometimes people even think meditation is only the disconnection from the body. It's only the ascension and the non dualism. Can you speak a bit about how we can actually practice meditation to be more embodied and in this earth and present moment?

Yeah, I think, like, it's a. It's a byproduct of the evolution of meditation where we've thought that the practice is just centered around the mind. And as meditation has evolved from, you know, the Vedic text to the Buddhist text, it's become so much more around stress relief. It's become so much more around being able to navigate the demands of modern life, you know, to be able to sleep, be less anxious. But traditionally, and my training and my teachings have been rooted in Buddhism for the last 12, 13 years. The Buddha spoke in his Satipatthana Sutta, which is essentially the foundational text for mindfulness practice. He started with the body. He said, this is where we essentially begin. And so as we've evolved as a species, as we've become more cognitive, as we have really harnessed the power of our mind, we've tended to actually be disconnected from the felt sense of the body. And we know now, because of psychology and research and science, that we tend to experience things first, not in the mind. We tend to experience things first physically, somatically, in the body. But then the mind actually interprets that and it adds the narrative and it adds the story and adds our psychology and our history, and it dictates how we experience the moment after that. But to exist in the body and to really feel and to be connected to the body is to be present to what's going on, even if it's not pleasant. Right? So even if it is trauma, for example, even if it's fear, even if it's anxiety, it's to actually first be present to that and not run away from that experience, which is essentially Mindfulness 101. Right. Can we be present to the reality as reality, not as we want it to be? So a lot of my teachings and my practices first are around being able to access that part of our emotions and that part of our body which for a lot of us, we're cut off from due to our experiences, you know, emotional wounding or trauma or a general disconnect. It's the first exist and be able to feel what's arising and then to be able to befriend what is arising and then to use the wisdom that is there within our body to navigate that experience. So to not, you know, we've thrown this term around in our circle, spiritual bypass the experience by, you know, turning towards esoteric practices as a way to avoid what is unpleasant, but to actually turn towards what's unpleasant, to make space for that, to befriend it and to actually embody everything that we're feeling and not just, you know, what we want to feel.

Yeah, I think that so often we.

Think if I give it more attention, then I'll manifest it. Right. So let me not think about how I'm anxious or angry or whatever is showing up. So I don't cultivate more of that. But what I love about just mindfulness is you're never going to be able to trick your body into, you know, not. We try to use the mind and just say, I am happy. And it's like the body is like, no, you're not right now. So I love how mindfulness is to be first honest and accept what. Where you're at. And then that naturally creates the way for the desired emotion.

Right. Right. Yeah. I think to just double click on something you said around, not think our way out of the experience, but to first acknowledge where we're at, then gives the foundation, like you said, to move in the direction we want to move. But we first need to acknowledge and admit, like, hey, like, this moment sucks. And I don't need to say it doesn't suck in order for it to not suck. I can acknowledge where I am and then take steps towards a direction. And I feel like this is a much more embodied and honest way to exist.

Totally. And it's like once you've named it and claimed it, it no longer has a hold over you and you're just like, okay, moving along. So, so much I want to dive into with this, but I'd love to start with your, your story. I know you were Born in Sri Lanka and, and grew up Buddhist, but you kind of went away from it and came back to it. Can you share a little bit more about your relationship with meditation in this lifetime?

Yeah, sure. It's a beautiful way to phrase that. Yeah. I was, I was raised in Sri Lanka. I was raised around Buddhism and you know, some of my earliest mem monks coming to our house and giving Dane and dine means like an offering. So we would have monks come in and do offerings and chant prayers. And I was really captivated by them from a very young age. And specifically the, like the child monks because you'd have kids that were like, you know, my age that were there that were meditating. And it was just really fascinating for me. And I developed a sense of spirituality without really understanding what it meant or if there was any context to it. From a young age, I was fascinated by something that existed beyond what I could comprehend. Hand my family migrated to Australia when I was very young and as a natural byproduct of that, like I didn't have access to monasteries and temples among, so I wasn't as touched with Buddhism as much. But then, you know, through a very serendipitous set of circumstances, much later on when I was a marketing director, I came back into contact with a Buddhist meditation teacher at a point in my life where, you know, I was going through a lot of health issues, I was burnt out, I had a lot of anxiety and all the resistance and the barriers were kind of down at that point. And then again, like serendipitously, I walked into the Buddhist meditation studio and I came back into contact with a practice that really reminded me that the suffering that I was experiencing at that moment wasn't necessarily personal and that the thoughts that I was, that were going through my mind weren't necessarily who I was fundamentally to my core. And there was a way to train my mind and my heart to be happier and to be healthier and to feel more connected to the people around us. And so I studied with this teacher, Chana Desanaika, for eight years, roughly every single day. I was practically living there at one point in my journey. And you know, he was, he was fundamental in me really developing a compassionate meditation practice. Because prior to that I think that meditation was just about concentration. I'm like, focus. It's all about focus. And if I can't focus, then I'm not good at meditating. And I had all the hang ups that everyone else does when they think of meditation. My mind is too busy. I don't have enough time. It's woo. Like I was such a sports playing alpha male living in this hyper complex marketing advertising world. And so I had all the same resistance. But he really taught me how to develop this quality of heart which was really orientated towards compassion. And then he also taught me practices to really understand my mind. After about seven or eight years with him, I started traveling and studying with other teachers. Sharon Salzberg being one, Joseph Goldstein. And then later I studied with who's my primary teacher right now, Miles Neal. Really marrying the intersection of psychotherapy and Tibetan Buddhism. And that's really kind of brought me to today where I'm actually exploring that as well as the somatic experience of mindfulness and how we relate the body to what we're going through and how practices like breath work, how practices like sound, really influence our ability to be with our day to day experience.

I love that story. So my first question for you is, how did you come to realize, coming from a corporate high pressure environment, how did you realize I am not my thoughts, I am not my anxiety. Especially when these things are so real. It's like, well, I might lose my job or this person might break up with me or this really real thing might happen. So I need to worry about it enough to come to the solution. How are you able to create that distance from it?

Well, I think it's sometimes the right person says the right thing at the right time. And so in this very first class, I went in there with all of my anxiety, all of my neuroses, all of my drama and suffering and thoughts. And we did some gentle stretches and I noticed my thoughts. And again at that point I thought, as soon as a thought popped into my head, I am that. Like, oh, you're a terrible boyfriend. Yeah, you're never going to get well again. You're going to be sick. This is how your mind is. And yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. But then, you know, going through these gentle postures and sitting for a few moments and then having a teacher say to you at this precise moment you're not your thoughts, and then actually hearing a thought the very second after he said that and then noticing, oh, wow, like I noticed my thought and I notice if I'm noticing something, then I can't actually be that thing. Like there is a distance between the witness and what is witnessed. And we refer to it in Buddhism as the subject and the object. And so at that moment it was like, oh, wow, okay, so there is this space between, you know, the subject and the object. And the stimuli and like the person observing that. And I don't have to believe that. And so that was like a, like an aha moment, as Oprah says, right? I'm like, oh wow, like, don't have to believe this. And so not to say that my life changed at that moment because I still have to this day all these thoughts that I believe, but actually it showed me like there is a door to something else that I didn't know was possible.

So if you are not your thoughts, where are they coming from?

I think our thoughts are just a byproduct of our experiences as humans, right? We think thoughts involuntarily, just like our heart beats involuntarily. They're a byproduct of our psychology, of our neuroses, of our conditioning, of our karma. Depending on what lineage and practice you study in, our thoughts are there and what they are and their purpose. It's a myriad of reasons, again, depending on what tradition you kind of focus on. We're not saying thoughts are bad, we're not saying the mind is bad. Where we're saying, just choose which thoughts you decide to take on and embody. And over time, with practice, with wisdom, with maturity, with compassion, your thoughts begin to change. Because the lens in which you see the world begin to change. And so they'll be less self deprecating after a little while and they'll be more compassionate and they'll be more loving and there'll be more understanding. But if we're constantly looking at the world first through this lens of like, the world is against me, I'm suffering, I'm a victim, et cetera, et cetera, a whole host of other afflictions, then naturally our thoughts are going to reflect that. We're going to have that same experience. So I think it's the way out of that is through the cultivation of a practice that really brings you into the body and allows you to see clearly.

Totally. And I think it's that labeling that we attach to the thoughts of now I am. And we identified with that thing. What do you say? The. I'm putting this in parentheses. Goal of meditation is to have a thoughtless practice.

Do I think the goal is to have a thoughtless practice? No, not really. I think the goal is so personal. Like I used to be really rigid in why I would tell people to meditate. You know, it's for liberation, it's for freedom, it's for this that. But the older I've gotten and the more mature I've gotten and the more I've practiced with other teachers, I think we, we all will come to practice with a certain mission or a goal. And that could be simply, I just want to be free from suffering, which is like one of the highest aspirations. Right. Like if you're anxious and if you're insomniac, like you just want to suffer less. And that's really the heart of Buddhist meditation, is to free yourself from suffering. But some people are like, hey, I just want to be less stress, which I don't think we understand is also the same thing. Like, I want to free myself from suffering. I want to feel more connected to my partner. Even that aspiration comes from the same intention. I want to free myself from suffering. Because if we're not feeling connected to our partner, there is something within us that is suffering. So what the goal is, it really depends on what your intention is. For me, it's to, it's to find a sense of liberation is to free myself from suffering. It's to clear the karma that I've accumulated over many lifetimes. It's to be the best dad that I can be. It's to cause less harm in the world. It probably changes every day, but it's rooted in. I just want to be. I just want to come back to that place where I know I'm a good person.

Yeah, I love that. And I agree that there are so many goals and outcomes and every day is a different experience too, that you just have to surrender to and see what needs to come through. So I'm wondering, for someone who feels like, you know what, I'm sitting down at my desk all day, I'm so sedentary. So to sit down for meditation for 20 minutes and it's twice a day, sometimes they say it's, it's too much. Do you think that we can cultivate the same benefits from a moving or breath work meditation?

Yeah, I think we think big and we start small. Like that's, that's how we, we start. Like, it's for someone that's never been a meditator to go for 20 minutes twice a day. It's like a big leap. It was for me as well. Right. So I think like practices that introduce us to that experience and we call it glimpses that give us a little glimpse of presence or a glimpse of spaciousness or are great. So breath work just brings us into the body. A movement practice brings us into the body. But then to be able to add like a five minute meditation to that is great. And you know, if you can only do it once a day for five minutes. Amazing. Do it every day for a week, and then maybe the week after you add two extra minutes to that. The week after that you add three minutes. And in three weeks you're meditating for 10 minutes. You know, once or twice a day. That's how we would begin. Like, I wouldn't try to be a neurosurgeon overnight. Like, I go and I study and, you know, the, the neurosurgeon surgery, they have like little tests and then you have mentors and you gradually work up to a place where you can do this by yourself. And the same thing applies to meditation. Like, you think big and you start small.

Yes, I love that. And there are also so many types of meditation, right? So you see meditations that are very guided, you see visualizations, you see meditations with music, without music. How do we find the right practice for us?

I think we have to ask ourselves, what do we want first of all, like, what is it that we're trying to achieve? Some of us will come into contact with it serendipitously. Like, I was like, you know, I found a meditation teacher straight away. Sometimes your girlfriend or boyfriend will drag you to a class and you're like, oh, there's something in this. Sometimes you hear something on YouTube or you listen to a podcast and it's like, oh, wow, I'm curious about that. So how we enter in really determines, like our first kind of touch point with the practice. But in terms of choosing, we have to get really clear on what is it that I want. Do I just want to feel good or do I just want to sleep? For example? In which case you might choose, like relaxing yoga, nidra practices, down regulated practices. If it's, I'm so confused and I'm lost in my life, then you want to find a teacher and a practice and a lineage that really helps you understand your mind. So Buddhism or Vedas might be like a way of practicing. It's getting really clear and then doing the research to find, okay, what is the path that I want to follow. And I really advocate for path or a lineage because I feel like there's so much you can learn and grow from that way, as opposed to kind of showing up to do five, 10 minute practice, which aren't bad, which are a great place to begin. But eventually you want to study something or follow up in the footsteps of people that have done this for 3000 years and have proved that there is a way to be supremely and infinitely happy.

Is there like after a certain number of minutes that you just drop in deeper? Like if you don't do it for at least 10 minutes or 20 minutes, you're not going to get the full benefit?

No. Like, I think I've had practices where I've sat for three hours and I've just been like, when is it going to get easier? Like, am I just wasting my time? And I've realized I've been thinking about shoes for like the last 45 minutes or something like that. It really depends on the day. Like what's been happening, what's going on in your life, what's going on in your mind, the circumstances. In my experience over teaching the last decade, you know, people tend to have that drop in feeling after like, you know, eight, nine minutes. But again, it's, that's not really the point. Right. The point isn't, especially in the Buddhist tradition, it's not to feel good or to have deep experiences. It's to understand the mind. And so if we can understand our mind and the resistance we're having at that moment, then you could argue that is a pretty profound experience.

So in the Buddhist lineage you would not do a manifestation meditation per se. It would be more of just witnessing. Oh wow, my thoughts are really thinking about shoes today. Just having more of an inquiry. Correct?

Yes, yes and no. Like, it depends on what, what traditions. In the Tantric lineages and the Vajrayana practices, there is like envisioning, like your future self practices that you can do. In the Theravada, which is the more traditional practices around Thai, Burma and Sri Lanka, it's more practices that really cultivate the mind, like concentration and Vipassana. And there are, you know, in the Mahayana, which is Tibetan practices, a little bit of a blend of both, but really focusing on compassion based practices. So it's not necessarily just concentration based. It's. We often refer to it as awareness and compassion. Like those are the two things that we tend to cultivate.

Beautiful. So I want to segue into because you've created this incredible app called Open that I actually came across before I even knew you. I came across it in the app store and I bought it and I was like, this is amazing because it's like Berlin house music. I loved the design. It was just so new paradigm. How did you go from like, okay, I love meditation, but I have this marketing background. Like I'm not technically a monk per se. Who am I to start a meditation app? Like, what was that download that you received to actually go for this. And then what was your mind telling you after you decided, yeah, it's a great question.

Yeah, I never actually wanted to be a meditation teacher, first of all. Like, I was just practicing because it made me feel good. And I remember my teacher, who was pretty psychic once told me, like, I think you're going to teach one day. And this is 13 years ago. And in Australia, it was not cool to be a meditation teacher. So I definitely was focused on being cool back there. So I'm like, I'm going to go back into marketing. I'm going to do this. But I just fell into it because he asked me to teach at his studio. And then after a while, it became the only thing that I did. And there was a point where as I was teaching, I was noticing people really were gravitating more towards this element of coming together as a community. Like, they wanted to meet people that were like them, that had the same questions and not go to a club or a bar and all that. So me and a friend, we just decided to test this thing. We're like, hey, let's just run a couple of pop ups. And we called. Our company was called A Space at that stage, and we started to run these little pop ups around Melbourne and they got bigger and bigger and bigger. And then we were invited to New York and we had some really good experiences there. And when I came back to Australia, I said to him, let's just open a studio and let's just see what happens. And we both didn't come from money. We had very little money. We took two credit cards out, we maxed out these credit cards and we started a studio. And the studio became really popular and it became known kind of worldwide. And it kind of was a surprise to us that this little studio at the back of a psychology practice, people would travel from interstate to come and hang out with us. But that was really the catalyst for it. And then my business partner eventually left and it was me running it. And in 2020, I was fundraising for a space to launch an app and I was in New York. My girlfriend at the time was in New York. And I found investors and I found partners and I was ready to take it to the next level, which I thought was a blend of online and offline experiences. But then Covid happened and then the rest is kind of history. Everything kind of fell. Fell to pieces. And it was at that point that I started consulting with a friend of mine who had this tiny breath work pop up in San Francisco called Open. And I was Advising him and the company around recruiting and content and all these different kind of things. And then he was like, hey, why don't we just do this together? Like, why don't you just move to the west coast? We'll do this thing that we both love. And the premise was, is that how can we bring people each and every time to a place of presence and connection? So essentially moved to the west coast in la, we opened a studio, we launched an app, and the vision was still the same. Like, how can we bring people each and every time to presence and connection? But then broadening that lens and kind of thinking about the east and what the east and the wisdom traditions have so powerfully taught us. And then looking at the west, like, what is the science telling us around my mindfulness and the mind and the heart? And so then we broaden that scope to include things like sound meditations. Like, some of our advisors are research and ethnomusicologists that tell us about the power of sound and the nervous system. Then looking at the body and like, okay, what practices actually regulate the nervous system? Bring us into the body. And then looking at meditation. Okay, what practices, now that we're in our body, now that we've felt connected to ourselves and each other, like, what practices help us actually see the world differently and navigate the world differently? And so the app is one manifestation of that. But then our first physical space is also another manifestation of that, which is in Venice.

So amazing. So it sounds so fluid, but what were some obstacles that you overcome in this process? Because I know creating something like an app is a huge endeavor.

Yeah, well, thank you for acknowledging that. There's so many obstacles. One was just moving countries in the middle of a pandemic. The second was this intersection of being an entrepreneur and a teacher. My first company, Aspace, was such a community based, heart centered offering that everything was very serendipitous. You know, like we needed an architect and we're like, oh, that first student was this amazing architect that gave us a discount on the studio. We were looking for teachers and then all of a sudden the teacher would walk in and then moving to like a much bigger scale company that's venture backed and having the pressure of investors, having the pressure of a marketplace that's very volatile, an industry that's very packed, and then having navigate 35, 36 staff members, it's like such a, it's a, I don't want to say juxtaposition, but also a paradox of like how we, like how I live my life which is often very slow, methodical, intentional. And then I'm also the co founder of a tech startup, which is like the opposite of that. So the challenge for me on a personal level is balancing my practice with the reality of my profession, but also remembering the core intention of our mission, which is we're bringing people together to experience presence and connection. And we know how powerful that is given the rates of suicide in the world, the rates of loneliness, the mental health epidemic and all of that. So that mission really drives me and the team to keep doing what we're doing. But on a personal level, it's like a daily, it's a daily dance between becoming this spiritual teacher and becoming a boss.

I so feel you with that. And so many people don't talk about it, they don't even think about it because it's like you. I, we went into it because we love the work. I started writing Ayurveda books and we just love the subject matter. We want to teach it. We become alive when we're in community.

But then you have this big vision.

And this vision is beyond you. But then you need to step into different archetypes of management. And sometimes moving in fast paced environments, sometimes having that hyper aroused nervous system because there are so many things, things, it's very up, up in the air, up in the vata. Like there's a lot of things moving in technology. Was there ever a time that you were just like, you know what, I can't do this, I just want to teach meditation. Like this vision is, has gotten too.

Big for me I think on a daily basis, just like I'm done, like I just want to go and retreat. Like I haven't sat in retreat for two years. And that's not because there's been restrictions and things like that, but it's largely been because I just haven't been able to get away. It's a reality. And I think some part of karma is going with the flow of what life throws at you as well. I look at how open came into my life. It was fluid. It wasn't like I chased after it. There was no tension. It was just like a life is presenting this to me and I'll see it through as much as it flows within my life. And then if there comes a time when like the monkhood is calling me, then I'll follow that path as well. But it's, I think the older I'm getting, I'm learning to, to observe the flow and not resist the flow. In Buddhism we call it the Stream. Stream. You know, against the stream or up the stream? Um, yeah, just following the stream, wherever it takes me.

Totally. And I think all of your years in marketing was preparing you for this. You know, there was a reason why you were guided off of the monk path and into this marketing path.

So you could just come together now.

With both of those experiences.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's important we express ourselves creatively. You know, whether that's in the profession that we choose to do or whether there's other creative pursuits like we're. We're gifted with these, these unique talents. We don't need to suppress them. Because of our spiritual practice, we can express ourselves fully and still be deeply spiritual and connected to what matters most to us.

So how do you bring meditation, slowness, these principles that you're teaching to others? How do you bring them into your business and the day to day and the team? How do you not let go of that? Because sometimes it feels like businesses are preaching one thing on the outside. On the inside, it's totally something else. And I feel like it's our jobs as leaders to bring in that cohesiveness. So what does that look like for you guys?

Yeah, on a very. On a first, a much more broader level, it's uniting around a mission, is that at the end of the day, we are a mindfulness company. Right. We have yes targets, we have KPIs, all of that. But it shouldn't come at the detriment of our own mental health. Like, we should be trying to embody what we do. Otherwise it feels like a job. And, you know, no one really wants to work. People want to join a movement, they want to join a mission. They want to feel fulfilled. So if there is a dissonance between those two things, then people will generally be unhappy. But on a much more practical level, we really prioritize connection. So we get together a lot. We open almost every meeting with what's called a moment of presence. So someone in the team, it could be a head of marketing one day, it could be our CEO. It could be a community manager leads a little meditation or a breathing practice. We prioritize fun. That's really important for us play. So it's kind of reminding ourselves within the grind because we work really, really hard, you know, and most companies at our stage do work really, really hard. But it's reminding us that we don't. We can hold both. We can. We can hold these polarities together. We can hold the hard work and the joy and the fun at the same Time. And it's part of our practice. It's not avoiding one for the other. It's. It's actually part of mindfulness to be able to meet our reality and engage in all these multiple things totally.

And it enhances that creativity. It gives you more energy, it allows you to see more potential. I think sometimes we have been so used to working in a certain way that that work is hard. It's sacrifice. We burn ourselves out. We have to hustle through it. That I see a lot of people, they dive into a spiritual journey. Maybe they quit their jobs, they step away, and they're afraid of creating their desires, of creating their dharmas, because they're afraid of going back to the old version of them. So what advice do you have for someone that has an idea that they really want to bring out into the world, but they're just afraid of burning themselves out?

It's a really great contemplation. I think it's a really great contemplation. And I don't want to give absolutes in my answer, but what I will say is really work on trusting your intuition. I think if you're especially diving into some sort of spiritual pursuit, there's first, like, does this feel good in my body? Like, do I feel excitement? Do I feel energy? Or is there like this, you know, crumpled up feeling of tightness and restriction? And then work to understand, is that my intuition or is that fear? Right. Because for me, for example, there's a lot of fear. And like, I don't. Often what I'm working on is being able to trust my intuition instead of saying, oh, no, like, it's just fear talking, you know. So a meditation practice, yoga practice, ayurvedic practice, helps us really get in touch with our body. Then we use another side of our brain, which is our cognitive abilities, and we make it educated decision, like, is this a good pursuit? I used to have a lot of teachers say, hey, I want to be a meditation teacher. I'm going to quit my job. And I'm like, well, like, slow down, first of all. Like, think through how you're going to cover your basic needs, how you're going to look after yourself, your family. And then think big, start small. So maybe you teach one class a week and then two. And then if you feel like there's momentum there, then dive in. But I also feel at some point you're going to have to make a big leap of faith.

Faith.

With any of these decisions, it can be scary to leave what's known. And for A lot of us, we stay in what's known our entire life because that gives us a sense of safety. But if we take a step back and we recognize that life is inherently uncertain, from the moment we were born, we're not guaranteed anything. So you have a choice to make at that point. Do you stay in this comfort zone which feels safe and that's great and beautiful and people live beautiful lives that way. Or if you have this deep calling that really tugs in your heart and your stomach and it's asking, it's begging you to step in this direction, are you willing to do that?

Yes. It's so funny because I have these three paths to your dharma, your soul's purpose. The first one is the leap. The second is the slow transition. The last is the accidental. And in your stories, you had elements of all three, like it sort of accidentally fell into your lap. And I also want to note that you didn't start with creating an app. You started with creating an in person studio. And then you started to get more expertise from that too. And which made you a better meditation teacher, which allowed you to know, okay, now that I'm not even interacting with the people on the other side, I know that these words will create some sort of insight within them, but you could have never done that just from the mind or from a hypothesis. So I think that so often we do. It's like, like you said, we jump to that big vision. It's like, how do we start small? How do we start one on one and getting that feedback. And then the transition of not quitting the job overnight, but like, maybe you start to teach after work or on the weekends and cultivating more of that trust and security. But then there will always be that element of the leap.

Yeah. And get good at what you're trying to do before you kind of dive into it. Like I, if I was to, if I quit my job as soon as I started teaching, I would have been a terrible teacher because I was teaching one class a week and I just didn't know what I know now. And having that repetitions of being able to do what you're doing and really fine tune your craft before you share it with the world is. Is really strong and powerful.

Totally. And I also want to share that. I love that it's an app because just for an example, I was picking my friend up from the hospital and I was just going through all my apps, waiting, waiting, waiting. And then I was like, oh, I have open. And I probably did like seven meditations back to back, but it allowed me to have something on my phone to just do instantly. And because I feel like none of them are super long, some of the breathworks are like 20 minutes, which I also love, love. But it was like, okay, I could do another five minutes. I could do another seven minutes. So I love how it almost trains us to take our phones and use it in a new way.

Yes. I think our relationship with technology is a whole podcast episode on its own. But I think our company was never built to be solely just an app. It was meant to be this blend of online and offline, and the app is just a way to meet people where they're at. So, like you said, I'm waiting for a friend. I've got seven minutes. Oh, it was a seven minute practice. I can do that. Or, you know, you're about to go into a meeting and you feel anxious, you're like, whoa, it was a five minute breathing exercise I can do before I head in. Or I can't. I can't sleep. And, you know, we're really trying to help people navigate whatever life throws at them in any moment. So an app is just useful because these days, we're always carrying that damn thing around with us.

Yeah. And I also love how they're just so versatile. There's just so many different ones. And you have a daily meditation, which is basically always different. I feel like I've never seen this same one twice. So sometimes you get a meditation app and there's thousands of meditations in there. You don't really know. You spend more time looking for the right one. You start listening, you're like, no, I don't like this person. Do another one. Whereas this one, it's like the daily practice. You know you're going to get something good and it just makes it easy.

Thank you. Yeah. And the daily practice is one of our most practiced meditations, and it's rooted in wisdom. So we're trying to help people not just get this feeling of like, I've just meditated, but, like, what am I learning and how can I take this practice and use the wisdom that's transferred in that practice in my day?

So good. And my last question for you is, you shared that you were like an alpha male, not really interested in this stuff per se. How do we communicate meditation to husbands, brothers, dads, people who might not be open to it? How do we get them to want to do this?

You trick them and you take them into a class and then you tell them it was like a hiit workout. Or something. No, it's a terrible way to do it. Don't ever lie. I think, think I look at the people that I've taught In the last 12 years, like athletes, CEOs, people in the army. It's actually just speaking to what they know and what excites them. So for a lot of men at this moment in time, they're hyper focused on performance and biohacking the brain. And so being able to communicate in the way by saying, hey, did you know there's a Harvard research piece that says 47% of your day, your mind is here and here. And if you do these practices, you can do this. It just piques their attention a little bit, you know, or like, hey, Kobe Bryant's meditation teacher taught him this. You're like, that's really interesting. It's just finding a common language and again, meeting them where they're at.

I love that. And I definitely have noticed a lot of men especially, but a lot of people are interested in biohacking and how can you get more productive or earn more from your hour? And sometimes just putting it in the language that resonates to them. And luckily now there is so much research and studies and books to back this, but I feel like then eventually it no longer becomes about that tangible goal and it becomes about connecting to your higher self.

Yeah, you essentially hoodwink them because you get them in through this door of biohacking and then you actually teach them. It's completely like bullshit. And then they're like, they don't care. And at that point they're hooked. You know, it's.

It becomes actually don't even exist.

It becomes then, then they actually have a tangible experience of the, the power of meditation.

So good. So for people who are going to download the app, where is a really good place you suggest for people to start? And can you share? Because you guys also have like Pilates class and movement classes. Can you share what's on the app?

Sure. All of our practices are built on this hybrid methodology of the breath, the body and mindfulness. So every practice on the app, whether it's a Pilates class, a HIIT class, yoga class, meditation, or breath work, will have these elements to it. And the majority of them are scored by producers produced musical compositions. So we worked with experts in the field of sound meditation, but also we work with independent record labels and producers and artists. The intention is we arrive in the body, we settle into the body, and then we can experience the world differently. So a good place to begin is obviously the Daily practice, it's the first thing you see. It's a really easy, accessible. It's usually around seven to 10 minutes. But then you could also try a breathwork practice. So for those people that are really challenged by just sitting in meditation practice, breath work is fantastic because you're active, you're actively working with the breath to elicit a state shift. And then if you're more movement oriented, there's a bunch of yoga classes, HIIT classes and Pilates classes. It's hard for me to pick favorites, but I think the easiest one to recommend is our daily meditation.

So good. And I love how it's really this one stop shop that you can get all forms of your daily movement, mind, body, spirit in one place. Place.

Yeah.

Amazing. Well, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us today, for making it accessible to so many new people and really for creating a beautiful product. I feel like the beauty path is so needed and sometimes in spirituality it's like very like 1980s websites. Not the cutest. And I love how it's just, it's sleek, it's modern, it's fun, it's engaging and that makes you want to even be more engaged with.

But yeah, thank you for noticing that. Yeah, we're very vain at Open, so beauty is important.

Thank you so much for being here today.

Thanks, Sahara.

So if you want to try the Open app. Absolutely for free, you can head over to withopen.com Sahara and you will receive 30 days free. They have breath work, meditation, movement, pilates, yoga and so much more. I am obsessed with the app app and I honestly use it on a daily basis. So I highly recommend it whether you are a novice meditator or meditating all the time and just wanting to change up your routine. So again, that's with open W-I T-H-O-P-E-N.com Sahara for 30 days free. And you can find that link in the show notes. I hope that you enjoyed this episode. I'm so excited to hear your guys's feedback. Please share it with me on social media tag me and Minot. We're so excited to read it and I'll be back next week. Really diving deep into different topics related to the sacred feminine and of course my Morocco trip recap. So if you're not subscribed yet, be sure to subscribe on Spotify. We have the video there, YouTube, iTunes, wherever you listen to podcasts and always we're open to different requests, so be sure to send us over an email if you have anyone you would love to see on the podcast. My email is saharaiamsahara Richard rose.com I hope you love this conversation. Share it with people that you think it may resonate with and I'll see you in the next one. Namaste.

Ram.