Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Do you think there are other ways to evolve the human consciousness or do you think that yoga really is the best, you know, most available tool for human beings?
[00:00:10] Speaker B: Well, there's, there's different paths to the spiritual summit, right? And different donkeys you could hop on and get there. And so even though yoga, I think, has been the donkey that I've had the most, you know, pleasant experience riding up to the summit, that doesn't necessarily mean it's the same for other people.
And I think that it can be that for a lot of people to rewind back to the beginning, I did not like my first yoga class, my first yoga experience, my first meditation experience.
I didn't take another yoga class for two years.
That's probably because like the donkey, the first time I hopped on the donkey, I wasn't being kind to it, you know, I wasn't really being aware of it. I was just in my mind essentially, oh my God, is this donkey going to kick me off? This donkey kind of stinks, you know, like it needs to brush its, need to brush its teeth. You know, why am I even on a donkey in any way? You know, why don't I just take an easier form, you know, an easier mode of transportation to where I'm trying to go? And we've learned, you know, as you know, whether it's psychedelics, you know, just transcendental meditation, you know, all these other things that have been very in a focused manner trying to get people into a certain state of being or mind. There's all this relationship happening here, like the studies about, you know, when someone is on a psychedelic and the studies of someone who is in a deep meditative state, along with the studies of, you know, brain maps of the human brain. For long term practitioners, this changes you at an energetic level. And I think for me personally, you know, yoga just seems like the more holistic way to do that.
And if there are other ways to the spiritual summit that get people there in a very authentic way that helps them be a better human being, I'm all for it.
[00:02:14] Speaker A: Yeah. All right, great answer.
[00:02:16] Speaker B: All right, well, now I'm going to take my interviewee hat off and put my interviewer hat on. Gina, much like you were asking earlier, I think me and other listeners would like to hear about how you discovered yoga or how you came to yoga. Can you share that with us?
[00:02:35] Speaker A: Yeah. I started out doing videos because this was in the 90s and there really weren't yoga, there weren't yoga studios in Wyoming, really.
So I started doing videos that I Got at the library and people were loaning me. And then I had. In the early 2000s, mid 2000s, I took a class at a college for my.
You know, for my degree in yoga. And so it was like a six. It was like a semester of yoga.
And that was good. I didn't. Super.
It was kind of like neither here nor there. It was like, yeah, I like yoga. You know, like, yoga. I like this. And then when I went to a different university in Laramie and I went to a studio there and I took classes.
Whoa. Yoga kind of broke me open.
Really good. Teacher Emily Brown just, yeah, kind of broke.
[00:03:32] Speaker B: Yeah, Emily was great.
[00:03:33] Speaker A: Emily. Man, that.
[00:03:35] Speaker B: It is great. Emily, if you hear this.
Thank you.
[00:03:39] Speaker A: Yeah, thank you so much. Changed our lives.
Yeah, really changed my life. After I got out of college, I was going through some tough depression, and my friend dragged me to yoga again. I kind of had a. You know, we did in college. We did yoga together often at Blossom Yoga. And then we graduated and went into the professional world. And then, yeah, deep, dark depression didn't so much surface as come crashing down on my life. And, yeah, I was really struggling to stay alive.
And so my friend took me back to yoga, and it was like, okay, for this one hour in class, I am okay. And so I started going every day. And then that led to teacher training.
Um, never intended to be a yoga teacher, but my favorite class.
[00:04:29] Speaker B: It's funny how that works, right?
[00:04:32] Speaker A: My favorite class was gonna be canceled, and at the local yoga studio where I practiced, and the owner was like, well, you could just teach it, or it's going away. So I started teaching it, and I, you know, shout out to Sylvia Carle, like she saw something in me that I didn't know was there or believe. Believed could be there as a teacher. And, yeah, I love teaching yoga.
[00:04:59] Speaker B: Well, that's just the. As a, you know, my view of that now, it wouldn't have been back then, but that's just the universe doing what it does, Gina. You know what I mean?
[00:05:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:07] Speaker B: You know, energy. Energy. Touching energy and, you know, so, yeah, thanks for sharing that.
