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Show Transcription >>

Nitesh Batra  

Hello and Welcome to another episode of The Mindful Initiative Podcast. It’s really an honor for us to have Eddie stern to be a guest on our show. Eddie is an Ashtanga Yoga teacher, author and a lecturer from New York City. He has a passion for engaging in a multi disciplinary approach to furthering understanding, education and access to yoga through technology, scientific research, collaboration, and encouraging diversity in all aspects of his work. He studies philosophy, Sanskrit, rituals, science and religion. Eddie learned yoga under Shri Pattabhi Jois as from 1991 to 2009, and remains a student of Shara Jois, in Mysore in India. He’s the board member of Black Yoga Teachers Alliance, and a Board Chair of Life Camp that trains youth and young adults in yoga and meditation, for the purpose of supporting the reduction of gun violence in Queens, New York. He is also the founder of the Breathing App, and the upcoming app and website Yoga 365, which will be launched in January 2021. Well, welcome, Eddie. I feel really privileged to speak to you. We tried doing this last year. But unfortunately, things didn’t work out. But I’m happy that we’re able to do this online. So to most of our guests, we start with asking them about their religious upbringing, and, and if religion had any part to play in, in their life after their childhood. So we would love to hear more about your religious upbringing, our spirituality that was associated with it.

 

Eddie Stern

Sure, well, first of all, Thanks very much for having me on your show, Nitesh. It’s a pleasure to be here. I had really no religious upbringing, when I was younger, I was raised in what we would call an assimilated Jewish family in New York City. And the assimilated Jews were kind of like a group of people who lived in urban areas were practicing Judaism maybe didn’t seem to suit their best interests, especially after World War II. And preceding World War II in New York and in other cities. Just being Jewish wasn’t a very popular thing. So even though I was born Jewish, I wasn’t raised Jewish, and I wasn’t going to synagogue or anything like that. But interestingly enough, my great grandfather and my uncles and preceding, my great grandfather, going back many generations, we were extremely religious, on my mother’s side. And they were Rabbis in our family, my great grandfather gave land for a synagogue in in Pittsburgh where he lived, and he in that hole, you know, he and my uncle, and my great grandmother were Zionist, and they were very much in support of and, and they were actively participating in building the State of Israel. My grandfather, who was my mother’s father, was interested in philosophy. And he was able to go to Harvard, which was lucky because there was a quota on Jewish students that were allowed in Harvard, at that time. I think maybe 20 or 30, Jews were allowed per year or something like that. And none were allowed to teach there and he did his PhD in philosophy and his dream was to be a professor at Harvard, but he couldn’t, because he was Jewish. So I think that that was, from what I understand from my mother was a little bit of a turning point for him. And he turned his back pretty much on Judaism. He moved to New York, he got married four times. This is not something very common at that time at all. My mother was the product of his third marriage. And he sent her to he sent her to a Catholic school. So instead of being brought up as Jewish, she ended up learning all of the Christian hymns. And I grew up celebrating Easter and Christmas, even though we were we were Jewish. So my spiritual journey started when I was around 15 or 16. And it led me in a direction that I didn’t identify at that time as being religious, but it was a quest to understanding what purpose and meaning was in my life. It wasn’t until much later that I started to learn about the religious background of my family. And that was one of the things that led me to get Bar Mitzvah when I turned 50 instead of when I was 13.

 

Nitesh Batra

Wow. I think it’s an it’s an interesting journey to look back at who you were, when you were growing up, because you have different realizations you look at the world differently. And your spiritual quest, which probably started when you said 15, it led you to India pretty quickly after that, is that correct?

 

Eddie Stern

It did, yeah, I left for India, when I was 20. I started doing yoga when I was 18, or 19. And by the time I was 20, I knew that’s what I wanted to do with my life. But remember, this was 1987 or so 1987, there was no job description of a yoga teacher like there is now. Now you know, yoga teaching the San Francisco Chronicle said yoga teaching is the new waiting tables, like anyone can do it, you know, if you’re in between job, you take a training for 200 hours, you get a certificate, you’re ready. And the 1980s there was no profession of teaching yoga, that wasn’t something you did to make money at something you did. Because that’s what you did. You did it as service. So I knew when I was 20, that yoga was what I wanted to do with my life, but it had nothing to do with income. Like there was no thought of how I was going to make money.

 

Nitesh Batra

You know, I’m curious back in the 80s. And I’ve read at a few places how things were to go to Mysore, where you had to write a letter you had to get accepted, then you went, and I’m sure you did that. But as a as a teenager? What was your understanding of yoga is, is something I’m really curious about, because now there’s there is a lot of awareness of yoga, but it’s people associate yoga with asanas and go in that direction. But I’m curious in in the West, and in the US in the 80s. What was your understanding of yoga?

 

Eddie Stern

My first understanding was from reading the book Siddhartha, by Hermann Hessey, and this was in ninth grade. And our English teacher, Mrs. Jane Bendibson, I really consider it to be her to be like my first guru, without even knowing what she was. But she said to us, the three most important questions you can ask yourself in your life are Who am I? What am I doing here? And what do I do next. And she was very emphatic that to understand your purpose, and to understand your meaning in life was the most important thing for you to do. That all the education, all of the dreams and ambitions and desires, but first, know who you are, and know what you’re here for. And she drilled that into us. And I don’t know how it affected the other students in the class. But for me, that was a turning point in my life, because up until then, I was a really lost teenager. And for a few years after that, I continued to be a very lost teenager. But I was one who was thinking about these three questions a lot, like all the time, and I, you know, and because it was from siddartha, and that was framed around meditation, and about yoga. Because Siddharth, of course, did yoga before, and went to meditation and had his own realization. That’s what I identified it with. And when I met the first person who actually taught me yoga, his name was Ted Biorck and we were working in a record store together. He had studied with Yogi Amrit Desai, in the 1970s, in Pennsylvania, received Shakti Path from him had transcendent experiences where he was one with the universe and he told me that the purpose of yoga was to raise your Kundalini was to attain Samadhi and then move towards liberation. And that was the purpose of yoga. And so for me, that’s what yoga was. We meditated, he gave me books to read. I did some chanting. And it wasn’t until I went to a yoga class, that I saw people doing asanas and when I saw that for the first time, I thought to myself, what does this have to do with yoga? Like this must this has nothing to do with yoga, standing on your head or doing the sun salutation; Yoga is about enlightenment. What are they doing all these things with their bodies? So it took me a little bit and then I started getting more interested in the Asana portion of it. But my understanding Even as I began to an Asanas was somehow this needs to be related to enlightenment. And honestly, I thought that you needed to be enlightened, to teach yoga, I thought you had to have raised your Kundalini to be a yoga teacher, because that’s my understanding from the books I was reading. So when I went to this first class, I thought, My expectation was, these teachers must have raised their Kundalini. And that’s how I walked into the game.

 

Nitesh Batra

And I think those are the little breadcrumbs that are thrown at people that your Kundalini might rise and some of the other things, the Enlightenment might happen in different ways. And but asna seems to be an entry point for a lot of people. And it’s, it’s only much later that you tend to realize the different strengths that that yoga brings in and it becomes a it becomes a way of way of life. And in the last 20-30 years of your teaching, I think you’ve been teaching for 30 odd years, probably now.

 

Eddie Stern  11:05 

Yes.

 

Nitesh Batra

And you’ve done so much for the awareness of, of yoga than anyone that that I know. But you’ve done it in a way that you’ve not just constricted yourself to the asana practice, or, or the meditation associated with it, you’ve tried to bring in different elements of it, whether that’s literature, through through the Namarupa magazine, which is, which has been in publication for a long, long time. But also science, that has been a huge element of, of your involvement with yoga. And I’m curious, why did science become so important? isn’t just the experience that that you get when you when you do the practice of Asana, pranayama meditation, and that’s what our ancestors and the rishis and the sages did, and they came up with the philosophies. Why was science so important to you to bring both of them together?

 

Eddie Stern

I think that science became interesting to me. Because it’s, you know, science is a language. It’s a way of, of examining and understanding how things work and then communicating how those things work to the people you’re talking to. Yoga is a language as well. Yoga is a as my friend, Shraddhalu Ranade, said, who is a devotee of Aurobindo, he lives in Pondicherry, he has basically explained to me that Yoga is not a thing, but Yoga is a dialogue. And it’s a dialogue that began in the Vedas and move through the apana shots and then into the, you know, Patanjali area into the Hatha yoga tradition. And when we look from what yoga became, in the, you know, 10th 11th 12th, up to 18th centuries with the, with the heavily oriented Hatha yoga traditions. Um, you know, that was a continued dialogue from the tantric traditions, which was a continued dialogue from the Upanashidic era, which came from the Vedas. And so all of the what we have now, and what we consider to be yoga, is this in this communication network, which stretches back thousands of years. And as you learn more, and as times change, the modality that you’re using, might change a little bit, but the reason behind the thing that you’re using stays consistent, but the way you do it is a little bit different. So, you know, these days, there’s a lot of talk about modern yoga, pre modern yoga, you know, did yoga, you know, was India influenced by outside forces, this is the whole, you know, SOAS school in London, and many of the students coming out from there are presenting this narrative to the world, and which I think is absolutely incorrect, for many, many reasons. One thing that they don’t look at is they don’t look at the fundamental dialogue of yoga, which is a process of self knowing,  self knowledge, like, Who am I? What’s my purpose? What’s meaning? How do I participate in this flow of life? These are some of the timeless questions of India. So therefore, yoga is not a thing which can be locked into an age or a part of the history that you think you’re narrating but it’s a thing which you enter into, it’s a living tradition that you enter into. And so and that’s what we call a dialogue. You know, this living tradition that you enter into that you participate in, that you propagate. This is a dialogue. So um, The science is a similar kind of a dialogue. And science has been around for a long time science existed in India thousands and thousands of years ago. You know, it existed in Greece and in Egypt and in Europe. And over time, the dialogue of science has changed. So for example, if you read in my bio that I like to study religion and science, you know, nowadays people think that maybe those two are opposed. One is a belief system, and one is logical and rational and can be proven. But before Descartes, religion and science were very much on the same page, Aristotle, and Plato, and, you know, go, you go back as far as you want to, they were looking at both religion and science and the mystery of creation, the mystery of life, and also trying to measure things. So what we have now of science in the West, is largely a language of measurement. And in that language of measurement, you can communicate a whole lot of interesting things. And I became interested in interested in how do I talk about yoga in such a way that I can discuss the benefits, discuss the changes that can occur, discuss what it can do for people, what it can do for children, what it can do for, you know, gun violence reduction, what it can do for communities that have low access to these types of things, or lack of services. Now, what can yoga do to help people? And what can yoga do to help sick people? What can yoga help to do? people who aren’t sick, but maybe have mental mental anxiety or stress or things like that. And so for that, to be efficacious in the West, you need to speak in the science of language.

 

Eddie Stern

And luckily, we have such a language. Now, I and I was influenced by a colleague named Marshall Hagens, who is a researcher who came into my school one day and asked me if I would help him on a research project. And I had no idea about science at that point. I mean, I was probably the worst person for him to ask. But I said that I would like to do it, because I’m always up for a challenge. But if you look to the 1920s, Swami  Kuwalyananda, from Kaivalyadham, and, you know, outside of Pune, he was doing scientific experiments on yoga, but he was doing Western scientific experiments. And he said, for those who have faith and belief in yoga, it will work for them, they don’t need any other proof. But for those who, you know, don’t believe in it, they need measurements, and after they see measurements, and they’ll believe that it works. And then they can take these practices, and they can use them to make society better, healthier, more balanced, etc, etc. So that’s a paraphrase of, of something that he said. So I think that I’m following in that tradition, even though I’m not a student of Kaivalyadham, that I’m that I’d like to use this science, this language of science, to help introduce these practices, to people who need them. So people can be healthier and happier. And, and for some, learn how to teach it, and enter into this huge economic stream that yoga now has created in the West. So there’s a lot of things that that can be done. And but we, you know, I have to make sure that the way I talk about is not loosey goosey, is not new age is not with a lot of superlatives, or unprovable things, but very basic things where we can say, you know what, if you breathe in this way, it is going to down regulate your stress response and upregulate your relaxation response, your homeostatic functions will start to come back into balance, inflammation will reduce in your body. And you might even see a reduction in some of the diseases that are caused by inflammation. And I can say that because there’s research behind it, not because I made it up. And if I can say something like that with research behind it, then maybe a school system that has a very high incidence of students acting out disciplinary problems, might say, you know, what, if you’re if these practices and honestly in the public schools in America, we don’t call it yoga or meditation, we call it health and wellness practices. They might say, you know what, let’s try these things and see if it calms our students down and helps them to stop acting out so much because they’re acting out because they have a lot of stress, environmental stress as well. Primarily, actually, and so we do that, and then many of the places find Wow, this actually really works and it’s not difficult to implement. Sooo. this is and has been a large part of what I’ve been doing over the past 20 years. Science came into the picture about 10 years ago. And I fell in love with it, frankly, I really am. I’m working on research projects. Still, right now I’m working with a doctor named William Bushell and we’re working on a lot of interesting things in regard to some of the neural pathways that COVID is affecting, and thinking about preparedness models and things like that so whether or not we’re successful, I don’t know, but I enjoy the work. You know, as much as I enjoy memorizing mantras from the Vedas, I enjoy examining the scientific things as well.

 

Nitesh Batra

Well, thank you, I, I agree with you that science is the way to communicate, science is a way which is widely accepted, and people are able to understand it better people are able to relate to it better. And, and the research that that you’re doing right now, which is extremely important for the COVID virus with what’s going on, and, and what’s been happening around the world, and how yoga can help I would like you to give our listeners a little bit of background and and how it can help some of the people who are not just suffering from the virus, but how can they increase maybe their immunity or do some things which are proactive rather than reactive, to help them in their health and wellness space?

 

Eddie Stern

Yeah. so I’m Dr. Bushell, along with Deepak Chopra, and Dr. Rudi Tanzi, and Dr. Paul Millis and a bunch of other doctors put out a paper in July, about the available research that showed that certain yoga asana and meditation practices had strong anti inflammatory and anti stress effects on our physiology, and could perhaps be considered as adjunctive treatments, to COVID. So meaning not primary treatments, not to replace drugs or hospital treatments, or vaccines or anything like that. But an adjunctive treatment is something which will support the healing process and COVID is something which is attacking the inflammatory system or the inflammatory mechanism of our body, as well as a host of other things, too. But one of the reactions which is occurring is that there’s this runaway response of our inflammatory system. And the if you’ve heard the word cytokine storm, which occurs from this, this breakdown, this is caused by inflammation as well, there are in you know, we see now that they’re, I shouldn’t say we but they have shown now there’s inflammation in the brain and inflammation and very many other organs as well, from covid infections. So they were very interested in looking at inflammation. And looking also at the way that Melatonin is the flow of melatonin is disrupted because there’s the the functioning of the pineal gland is disrupted through COVID. Melatonin is a very important substance for cellular repair. It also does a host of things that it prevents the aging of the cell, it deals with our sleeping and wake cycles, and it deals with inflammation. It’s produced primarily from the pineal gland, but it’s also produced in other tissues of the body. So Melatonin is disrupted, and that’s an important healing mechanism. A bunch of other things are happening to like too many to name. So they put out a paper that was very well received. And then Bill contacted me, because he had read that there was a hospital in New York, it was using something called proning to help patients who were losing oxygen or oxygen levels in their blood to help them regain those oxygen levels and prevent them from being intubated. So one of the things that happens from COVID is something called silent hypoxia, where the oxygen levels of your blood begins to drop. Normally, we should be at around 95% or so. But what was happening is people were coming into the hospital, and their oxygen levels were at 70 or 60%. They weren’t even aware of it, because the signaling mechanism was cut off through COVID. And they immediately needed to be put on oxygen, otherwise, they would begin to fade very quickly. And one of the things that they noticed was that by keeping patients on their backs, oxygen levels had a hard time coming up. But if they would turn them over to rest on their front, then their oxygen levels would start to come back up. And one of the reasons for this is, is that we have more lung tissue in the back of our body than we do in the front. So our back lungs are about 60% of the surface area of our lungs. And the front part is only about 40% up here, as well, we have gravity pushing down on the front of the lungs when we’re on our backs. So we have a smaller surface area, combined with gravity, which is changing the way that the tiny parts of the lung sacs are able to to expand, that becomes compromised. And eventually the patients end up being intubated. So to prevent that, they’d flip them over on their bellies, put them over some, like a special type of a chair, and help them to regain their oxygen absorption levels up.

 

Eddie Stern

So Bill contacted me about this. And he wondered if there was anything any links within yoga. And I said that this proning position looked like things that we naturally do yoga, such as Child’s Pose, or an active proning position would be downward facing dog, or there’s Makarasana. So there’s a lot of different asanas that we are doing in yoga, that mimic proning. As well, with deep breathing, one of the things that we want to do is we want to breathe into the backs of our lungs near our kidneys, and expand that area through pranayama. So if we’re not breathing high in the chest, and pranayama, we want the breath to come down to the lower lungs and expand out through the entire capacity of the diaphragm to expand outwards and back. So that’s how we access the back part of our lungs where we have this surface area. So I said to him that Yeah, there’s a bunch of asanas that will mimic proning. And as well, their particular breathing practices, which specifically move breath towards this back surface area. So we started developing a something we call Yogic Enhanced Proning. And the idea is to create this as a preparedness model for people to start learning how to breathe and learning how to access this part of their bodies. And it may be it could be helpful for people before they get sick, or if they do get sick, or to, to, you know, to keep them breathing. So it prevents them from going to the next stages, such as intubation. And one of the reasons that we are working on this is that there are many reports from the hospitals that people who practice the deep breathing, even while in the hospital, are able to ward off the next stages of covid, which is intubation for people who can’t breathe anymore. One other important thing as well is that we know that yoga, in its anti inflammatory capacity helps to deal with diseases that are caused by high inflammatory levels in the body, such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, digestive problems, anxiety and stress. And these are five of the main killers that we have definitely in the West and also in India. And they’re all caused by or associated with high inflammation levels in the body, as well as you know, lifestyle choices like poor food habits, or working too much or not getting enough sleep. A high amount of the COVID deaths are associated with comorbidities such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, digestive disorders, and things like that. So if we can introduce theoretically, or hypothetically, these practices to a larger part of the population, not only would we deal with the hypoxic issues and the inflammation issues, but maybe we could have some impact on comorbidities, as well. So there’s a few things happening within the model that we’re looking at. And we are working with universities and some hospitals as well. So it’s not just some yoga guy from New York spouting his mouth off. And it’s really a group of people who are very well trained in these things and are really concerned about trying to see how they can help in different ways, because there’s so many things that COVID is causing that you need, like 80 different drugs just to deal with all of the things that are being affected, the gut brain access is being affected, the lungs are being affected. There’s the cytokine storm, there’s brain inflammation, there’s so many different things. So what Dr. Bushell is proposing is like, okay, let’s look at something which is addressing inflammation, addressing the Vagul complex, that is, you know, modulating inflammation, and see how these things could be of help.

 

Nitesh Batra

Thank you for that as well. Because this is something that that we need. And, and, and simple things like deep breathing when, when you’re in prone position, and they are part of our most of the yogic routines, whether you do the Hata tradition, or the NGO tradition, or the Ashtanga tradition, irrespective. But these simple things can make such a huge difference. And I think more importantly, save lives. And that’s what we need right now. So let me just switch gears and go in a different direction and an ask you about, about urban Yogi, the life camp for the kids that you work with. And today, the day we are recording, it’s October 2, it’s Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary. And one of the foundations one of the pillars that he worked was non-violence Ahimsa. And that’s one of the pillars for the yoga community as well as it comes from the baton to the yoga sutras. Now, the children, the young adults that you work with, you help them reduce gun violence. And another sutra in the yogic tradition talks about Karuna right, Maitri Karuna Mudito Upekshanaam. Now with what’s going on around the world right now, we’ll talk about the US because that’s where you are, with what’s going on in terms of racism in in different parts of the country. What are you trying to do from a yogic perspective with these kids, that they that they respond in a way which is in accordance to a yogic lifestyle? And, and in a way that, you know, after they’re done making the changes around them, they’re not regretting their actions. They are steadfast in their belief that their way of life is correct.

 

Eddie Stern

So the Urban Yogi’s started in 2012. And it started because a woman named Erica Ford, who runs an organization called Life camp in Queens, issued a challenge to Deepak Chopra. And what she said to him was all that meditation and yoga is good for white folks. But I don’t see how it’s going to help my black community out here, we got a lot of problems. And you know, that stuff is expensive. And, and I don’t think it would work. And so she said, Why don’t you come out here, if you think anyone can do it, and meditate with my group. And Erica has been working for the past 25 years to reduce gun violence in New York. And where she lives, there used to be very high levels of gun violence. They’ve come down tremendously because of her community activism. So Deepak came out there, he meditated with 75 youth and 25 adults, all who had been impacted by gun violence. And they responded well, and that evening, after he got back from Queens, he was coming to our temple because we had a festival occurring that night. I don’t remember which it was. And he said to me, I spent today out in the hood meditating with these kids. And I said, Well, if you ever want to do yoga with them, let me know I’d be happy to come out with you. Because I’ve been doing up to that point and a lot of work with kids in schools. So I went with him the next time. And Erica was really skeptical about some white guy coming out to Queens to do yoga with with these young black kids, and they liked it. And so, Deepak and I committed ourselves to coming out every month for a year to work with her group. And then the next summer came around and Erica asked if she could send some of the youth from her youth summer program to do yoga with me over the summer, and I said, Sure. So four young adults came, and they were really skeptical coming in. We read out loud from different texts, we read, things that Mahatma Gandhi had written and Martin Luther King, and some of Deepak Chopra’s works. And they were feeling good, they liked it, the yoga made them feel better. At the end of the summer, one of the students, Shaquille Johnson said, can I bring some of my friends to do some yoga too, and I said, Sure. So he brought three of his friends. And they came four of his friends. In fact, they came every week for another year, to practice with me. And during that time, we read seven Spiritual Laws of Success together. And they started realizing that their thoughts and their actions had real world consequences. And that if they wanted to begin to mold their lives, in the direction, they wanted it to go, they had to watch their thoughts and actions and emotions. And they intuited this stuff, they could feel it coming to them from the yoga. And one of the things that happened over that year was that I also committed myself to them, they didn’t just commit themselves to coming to the school, but I committed myself to being present for them every week. And whether they were practicing well or not, or showing up or not like I was going to be there, they were late, or if they’re on time, I was going to be there. And that helped them to trust me to know that I wasn’t just some guy who was like, you know, floating in and out of their lives pretending to have an impact when I wasn’t really fully present. So my commitment was to be present, to actually be there for these young people who were interested in learning yoga and learning about themselves.

 

Eddie Stern  

And then, at the end of the year, when this trust naturally developed, I asked them if they’d like to learn how to become teachers, and they didn’t know they could do that. I said, of course, you can set it. You know, it’s not that hard to teach yoga. You’ve already been practicing for a year. And so the first teacher training I ever did, was with these young people from Queens. And then the next step was to try to get them work teaching yoga. And we did that through the public school system. So today, the only teacher trainings I’ve ever done, and I’ve done several of them have only been the Urban Yogi’s. I’ve never trained anyone to be a teacher. Outside of that. I’ve had assistants in my yoga school who have said, you definitely can assist me here, but I didn’t, I couldn’t make them teachers that only happens out of Mysore. But the Urban Yogi’s are the only only time I’ve gone against the contract, which I have with Mysore, which is not to do teacher trainings. I’ve done it with these young kids, and you know what they need, they need that training, and they like it. And in that training, we do a lot of different stuff. They learn how to teach Ashtanga Yoga, up until Janu Sirsasana A. And then finishing poses, they learn a few simple pranayama they learned some yoga therapy, we read seven spiritual laws of success, they learn a little bit about philosophy. And then they’re ready to teach young people in schools and guide them and help them learn how to relax. And so my role within Life Camp in the in the Urban Yogi’s, falls under the therapeutic services category. What I deal with is I deal with stress and environmental stress and to deal with environmental stress. If you can’t change the environment outside, you change the environment inside. That means to deal with fight or flight sympathetic nervous system and and learn what the relaxation response is inside you through Shavasana and things like that. So that’s what I do. That’s my contribution to trying to help reduce the gun violence. And then we also have programs for people who have lost children or had children injured or crippled through gun violence as well. I sit on the board is the acting Board Chair of Life Camp itself and as the Urban Yogi’s. Now that first group that was coming to me in 2012, they now lead all the teacher trainings. And I’m there as their assistant to help them out with whatever stuff they need help with. And I’m immensely immensely proud of them.

 

Nitesh Batra

So empowering, so powerful, and such a confidence builder. And I think that’s what a lot of these people are looking for once they have the confidence they can go out in the real world that they are valued, their contributions are value, but more power to you to do such things. So we’re getting towards the end of our time I have this this question is along the lines of the book that you’ve written. One simple thing. And the app that you have done The Breathing App, and Yoga 365. And I was thinking about it when, when I was going through all three of them separately, and you know, there was this one continuous stream of thought that kept coming to me that everything is simplified. And I personally believe that Ashtanga Yoga is, is, is a very simple practice. But it has been made complicated or whatever the reason is, and and, and I think what you have done is, is said that, to make changes in your life are very simple. If you follow these simple rules, make a routine. And, and, and you keep building, building, building up. And I heard in one of your interviews, and this was long time ago, I’m not so sure if it’s exactly the way you said it or not. But you said if you keep adding five rupees, or $5, or something like that, maybe it was rupees or 50 cents I can’t remember. But if you keep adding that money every day, after some time, you will have a lot of money. Right? And if you keep doing the same routine again, and again, maybe five minutes of yoga, or breathing, you will have this capacity built up, which will change your life. And to make things that simple, people think that everything is so complicated, you know, I can’t do yoga, and you know, they have the big hindrance of starting and other things. But my question is, what is this, this this thing that, that you that you feel will keep you moving in a direction that it changes your life that things become permanent, because people start things, because they’re simple. But they can’t continue on want something new, I want something different, right. But in Ashtanga, we do the same asana every day, but it’s different. Right? You may listen to the same breathing every day through the app. But it’s different. So I want to ask you, how do you continue with that same faith, the shraddha that that you talked about.

 

Eddie Stern

Well, I think you have a few questions in there. And I’ll answer the last question first. How do I continue? So I’ve been practicing Ashtanga Yoga now for 29 years since 1991. I was doing Shiva Ananda yoga before I did the Ashtanga Yoga. I continue with it because I like it. I have this impression from when I first did it in 1991 that I was doing yoga. So this was the first asana practice that I did, where when I did the asana practice, I felt like I was doing yoga on all levels. And before that, the practices have been very beneficial. But I felt that the Asana itself was just working on my body. And that’s why and then pranayama was for my breath. Meditation was for my spirit. With Ashtanga Yoga, I felt different I felt everything’s connecting now. All the pieces are coming together. And I still feel that, with this practice. And so that’s why I continue to do it. It is part of my pattern. You know, it’s part of my rhythm. And I go through periods where I can practice more where I can practice less. But that rhythm is always in there. Somewhere, you know, these days, I don’t practice complicated asanas from Ashtanga Yoga anymore because Over the years, I’ve worked a lot and traveled a lot. And that hasn’t been great for my body, I don’t have the same strength or stamina that I used to. But I still feel the practice in me. So I do those things that I can still do, and enjoy them. Now, I also agree with you that yoga should be simple. And in fact, from the Hindu tradition way, in the yogic traditions, the way that these things are presented, is often simple. There are little details, it can get complicated philosophy, philosophical things get very, very complicated. But the practical things are pretty straightforward. And those practical things get over complicated in the burgeoning marketplace of yoga. And this is largely driven, I think, by Westerners who have over complicated things, or, because we haven’t really understood things well. And we don’t understand the philosophy, we don’t understand the history, then we make up for that by coming up with over complicated ideas that we’ve imagined. And, and I see that in the Ashtanga Yoga world as well. For example, there’s this thing that so many people seem to teach now called the gateway postures, that this pose is a gateway Asana for other awesomeness to occur. And so there’s entire workshops about gateway asanas. This has been made up by Western people, this is not something ever that I experienced in India, you know, what’s the gateway walking into the classroom, that’s your gateway, awesome. Everything else is going to build one after the other, you know, one by one, as they say, um, you know, adjustment workshops, the adjustment clinics, teaching people how to give adjustments. This has led to a very strange understanding of the purpose of giving adjustments and the overdependence on them as well. So there are developments that I see in the West that I don’t think had been positive, that relate to Asana practice. So this is just an examples. And it’s okay to give a critique within the systems that you exist in, you have to, if you’re not able to critique the systems that you exist within, then you people don’t grow, and you don’t grow as well. So, and over the years, I’ve had to examine my own approach to teaching to to see how have I done things in a way that have not been helpful. And there have been plenty of those instances, and I need to be able to speak about those freely, and acknowledge them, and own up to them, if I’m going to make critiques about the way that other things are existing in the system I work with into. So that’s okay. That’s how things improve. So in this, you know, in this in this field, or in this setting, of yoga, where Yoga has been branded in a very particular way, in the West. For example, when I was working with Urban Yogi’s, at first, they were like, black people don’t do yoga. That’s something for white people, that’s a rich white person thing.

 

Eddie Stern

Why would they think that? Well, with these kids in this area of New York City think that, because that’s how Yoga has been branded, that’s how it’s been sold. That’s how it’s been privileged. And so it’s up to us to change that. And to say, Hey, you know what, it’s it. It’s not that hard. It’s not that complicated, and it is accessible. So one of the things that inspires me is the way there are many people throughout the world, who have helped make yoga simplified, and explicit and accessible for people who don’t have access to these practices, and Breathing App and Yoga 365 are kind of my very small contributions to how can you make a breathing practice accessible to people who need to do some breathing to calm themselves down, but they don’t have time to go to a teacher, and they’re not going to do the art of living, you know, Sudarshan Kriya course and they’re going to learn the Wim Hof Method, and they’re not going to go to a yoga class, but they need to do something. So we made this Breathing App. It’s free, it’s been downloaded over 100,000 times. It guides you in a very simple pace breathing, which down regulates your stress response. That’s all it does. Super simple, basic. And if you want to learn more, there’s plenty of places go to the internet. The internet is built with stuff you can learn. The Yoga 365 is the same thing or the Yoga 365 is not free, because I’ve had a team helping to build it and they also all need to get paid and on occasion, I need to make some money too. But it’s not very expensive. And the basic ideas, okay, you want to do some yoga, you want to do some meditation. You Don’t have time. Do you have one minute a day? Do you have two minutes a day? Can you raise your arm over your head, if you can raise your arm over your head, and even one of them and you have one or two minutes to spare, then you can do yoga. And now let’s get started. And we’re going to do it little by little by little by little by little, by the end of the year from giving a minute a day to yourself, you’re going to learn a whole ton of stuff. And you will see these micro practices into your day. And micro practices have a very powerful effect on neuroplasticity, on habit building, on self perception that will begin to create shifts in you. Some people are really good jumping in doing an hour every day. Most people are not like that. So this is for something who are most people. You don’t have time, but you need to do something. And so that’s what you know, that’s what this is.

 

Nitesh Batra

I think it’s a great service. And it’s gonna help so many people when Yoga 365 comes about the way I understand it, that it’s going to be a different routine everyday that’s going to be accessible to people all 365 days or something new that they can do every day. Is that correct?

 

Eddie Stern  51:17 

Each day for four days of the week, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, you’ll get one simple Asana, and they build up throughout the course of the year. But they start off really simply like for example, the first one is standing up straight, and just inhaling your right arm up and exhaling it down to learn how to link breath and movement. And that’s the first day. The second day you do two arms. And so Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, our postures Wednesday, is a breathing practice. Sunday is a meditation. And oh sorry, Saturday is a meditation. And on Sunday, you get one video that links all of the week’s practices together. So it’s a six minute video. One day, the week is a little bit longer. But all of the other days are within one to two minutes. So yes, and you will get this sent to your phone. And then you just do the video a couple times during the day or one time during the day. And you can only do the next day after you’ve completed the first day. And if you miss a day, you can make it up by doing the day that came before. That’s our cheat day.

 

Nitesh Batra

We’re looking forward to that early next year. So before we end, we usually ask a few questions about about your life. You can answer them in one word, one sentence, one paragraph, whatever you feel that’s accessible to you. So are you ready?

 

Eddie Stern

I’m ready. This is a hard one for me, you know that I have a hard time answering questions and short sentences. Even this one.

 

Nitesh Batra

That’s what I say just one word. All right. So our first question is one place that you would like to visit that I haven’t visited before. Maybe you visited it.

 

Eddie Stern  

The only place that I really missed right now during COVID is India.

 

Nitesh Batra  

Any specific place in India?

 

Eddie Stern

I’d like to go back to ah, I’d like to Gomukh.

 

Nitesh Batra

Have you trecked? To Gomukh?

 

Eddie Stern

No.

 

Nitesh Batra

I just have a story that I want to tell here that I visited Gangotri a few years ago and I didn’t know that the the the Ganga originated from Gomukh. And we were in the first week of when the Gangotri had opened up in Uttarkashi. And the treck was closed and I was like I feel cheated, coming here all the way that I’m not able to go to Gomukh so that just reminded me of it.

 

Eddie Stern  

We’ll have to go there together. Gangotri is one of my favorite places in all of India. I love it.

 

Nitesh Batra

Mine too!

 

Eddie Stern

So beautiful. It’s such a special place. It is.

 

Nitesh Batra

Yeah. All right. Next one, a childhood memory that brings joy to your mind.

 

Eddie Stern

Um, my first guitar

 

Nitesh Batra

Okay, so we will get a few questions ahead and ask a favorite song that that comes to your mind that you really like

 

Eddie Stern 

if I had to be stranded on a desert island for the rest of my life, and I could only bring one song with me. It would be Sweet Thing by David Bowie.

 

Nitesh Batra

Can you say that for us?

 

Eddie Stern

No, I definitely cannot.

 

Nitesh Batra

But if we request you to sing that for us with you.

 

Eddie Stern

Well, it’s it’s an eight minute long song and half of it is instrumental. Um, so And no, you don’t want to hear my singing voice.

 

Nitesh Batra

Alright, we’ll ask you to chant towards the end for us, that’s fine. A person you would like to meet in in history going back in time.

 

Eddie Stern  

Ved Vyasa

 

Nitesh Batra

All right. The next one is a book or a film that’s really close to your heart.

 

Eddie Stern

Well, those are going to be two different things. Um, so film. I really did love the Fifth Element by Luc Besson and a book. Any book you want fiction? You want a book?

 

Nitesh Batra

That that comes to your mind that that may have changed your life?

 

Eddie Stern

Oh, well, definitely. You know, it’s it’s not my favorite book. But it was a life changing book was Autobiography of a Yogi that was you know what actually was even more life changing was Be Here Now by Raam Daas that was one of my first spiritual books. So that really changed my life. That really opened up a whole new door for me.

 

Nitesh Batra 

What a fantastic book and what an amazing guy and you know him in passing away. Yeah, what a loss for all of us. Last one, a mantra if you can chant anything for us.

 

Eddie Stern

What would you like me to chant

 

Nitesh Batra

Anything out of your memory? Anything that’s very close to your heart?

 

Eddie Stern  

All of them they’re all close to my heart. I love all of the month as equally that I’ve learned I do want some closing prayer of some sort or do you want some?

 

Nitesh Batra

What would you like? A closing prayer would be great.

 

Eddie Stern

Okay,

 

Eddie Stern

ॐ सर्वे भवन्तु सुखिनः सर्वे सन्तु निरामयाः । सर्वे भद्राणि पश्यन्तु मा कश्चिद्दुःखभाग्भवेत् । ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः ॥ श्री कृष्णा अर्पणम अस्तु | (Om Sarve Bhavantu Sukhinah Sarve Santu Niraamayaah | Sarve Bhadraanni Pashyantu Maa Kashcid-Duhkha-Bhaag-Bhavet | Om Shaantih Shaantih Shaantih || Om | Shri Gurubhyo Namah: | Shri Krishna Arpanam Astu |)

 

Nitesh Batra  

Thank you so much. That was such a beautiful way to close our time together. Eddie, Thank You so much for being a guest on our show. It has been joyful it has been informative. And I’ve really enjoyed every minute listening to you. Thank You so much.

 

Eddie Stern

Thank you for having me. And you have a wonderful podcasting voice. relaxed and calm, smooth, chill, interested.

 

Nitesh Batra

Thank you so much. Thank you so much for tuning in and listening to our show. If you like listening to us, if you like our work, please share this podcast with your friends and family. Thank you so much.

 

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