This past Friday we had a wellness afternoon at the school I work at. 

One of the offerings was a 45 minute yoga class. Minutes prior to the start of the class, I was apologizing to the facilitator (a coworker and friend) as I had left the room messy. They had already transformed the room into a yoga space. It smelled and looked so inviting I couldn’t wait to start the class. I needed to use the restroom. While away, I had a sense of urgency to return. There were only eight spots. I was thinking I had reserved a space a few weeks prior when the class offerings were announced. I was imagining how I would use that information if necessary to make sure I had a mat. I ran back up the stairs expecting some loitering around the room. It was just the facilitator. Two others joined several minutes later. 

This occurs often in my day to day life: The thing that I am so enamored with not having the same response from others.

I notice that some of my favorite podcast interviews are generally least liked by comparison to other interviews. 

For example, the two shares I have for today have wide margins in views based on what I can see onYouTube.

Specific to Rich Roll’s podcast (who has 1.7 million subscribers), the videos popping up that were based on my algorithm had less that 40K views; the popular videos had up to 17 million.

One of the reasons I am posting so infrequently is not because of my low engagement (I’ve always had low engagement overall, I post because I enjoy it), is that my interests in my free time have turned to yoga practice.

Allow me to fill in the blanks.

One year ago, I finally got curious about menopause. As far as I think I know, my interest in learning about menopause (and how nutrition and other lifestyle choices affect symptoms) is separate from this seemingly spontaneous choice to take Jordan Smiley’s 200hr RYT (registered yoga teacher) training in the fall of 2024. The choice was made late fall of 2023.

In May/June 2024, in preparation for the teacher training I somehow stumbled onto the Commune App. At this time, I had never heard of Schulyer Grant or Jeff Krasno. I think I stumbled onto the app out of my interest and curiosity in menopause. Actually, I followed a Gabor Mate Instagram post to the app and initially felt manipulated as I often do in the digital marketing world. Yep, that was it. I took a free section of the Gabor class and that was my introduction to Commune which led me to Dr Sarah Gottfried and eventually to Schulyer Grant.

Whew.

In effort to not write this post all day (it is Sunday), I’m going to wind things up.

I have most recently been spending time in a Form and Flow 5 week class to build off of what I learned in Jordan’s 200hr RYT.

The 5 week class included 5 Saturday live calls. The first live call I was so surprised to be with so few attendees. It was as if we all had personal access to Schulyer. This was another experience much like the story I began this post with.

The Schulyer experience was great because she is so connected to the many I find so inspiring including Zach Bush and Wim Hof.

In general, it validates what I believe about creating an authentic algorithm.

I’m noticing that the masculine (in this case, male podcast hosts I listen to) are paired with feminine (in this case, female) partners whom I am quite like-minded. I learn about their partners over time as I listen.

There is a masculine focus as to whom I tend to share as podcast hosts as well as those interviewed, a ‘hollywood’ ish focus as well. This seemed peculiar until an interview between Andre Duqum and Azrya Bequer opened my thinking to ‘hollywood’ being the storytellers. It makes sense to scale the story of healing and possibility beginning in the epicenter of where stories tend to be shared globally.

Phil Stutz is a psychiatrist to many powerful elite in Hollywood. Early on, he believed in disrupting what seemed typical to psychiatric methodology to give practical tools to get improved outcomes. I was introduced to him initially from a long ago Brian Johnson platform I followed.

More recently, Jonah Hill created a Netflix documentary that gives insight to Phil’s ideas of healing and living.

Phil says there are three unavoidables: pain, uncertainty, and constant work. He also believes in faith being something you can’t measure, it’s something one ‘takes’. For one to be able to hold both allows for a creative life to live, rather than a constant fight against an external enemy that doesn’t exist (outside of one’s psyche).

Congratulations if you read to here. I wove several themes throughout. Hopefully it landed. As mentioned, it’s Sunday. I now must engage with the beautiful day.