Come Back When You're Empty

Kevin's First Client on the Show

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (00:00.142)
You're not gonna ask me for three book recommendations.

Kevin Mooney (00:03.550)
No. Excellent. I don't think I'm gonna do that. And I don't think I'm going to ask to leave the next person another question. Okay. You know. So then the person that comes after you, give them one thoughtful question. Right. I don't think that's the thing I wanna do. Sounds good. but you are my very first client on the show. So I'm super, super happy that you're here. Thank you. the one thing that I remember

That stuck with me since we worked together was you just got it. You got it from the moment you probably had it before you walked in the door, but you've got it and you had it right when we started talking. And what I mean by that is you understood the value of what you were getting into. You wanted to go deep into that process.

You cared about your brand and you wanted somebody that could help bring it to life. And then the last thing that I really appreciated about you was the fact that you wanted to protect everything that you already knew and what you were bringing to the brand. That was so refreshing for me to see and hear and witness going through that process.

The fact that we would write something, we would write it for your website or the brand messaging or the book. And you would look at it and you would say, That's not right. Or that's not how I want to say it. And most people that come in, they just go, I think it looks good. Great. Thank you. Right. Or where's my mountain logo? Or something to that effect. But you really brought that whole thing to life.

So Continuum still in existence today. I'm so proud of it. I love seeing it. I love seeing the socials still popping off. You're still sticking to the same brand. You haven't deviated from it. That is something that I appreciate so much. And I'm very happy that you're here.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (02:14.402)
Well, thank you. I I appreciate being here. It's an honor to be your first client slash guest. And I think that was something we had in common from the beginning. I remember you guys saying people come in here and they just want a new logo and we're kinda like, that's not really what we're doing. And it's kinda like that with me. People come in, they just want a nice yoga class. And I kind of feel like you're probably not gonna get that. You know, you wanna you you're in Bend for the weekend and you wanna like

Kevin Mooney (02:19.735)
Yes.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (02:42.924)
Have a fun class with your bachelorette party and I'll send you to a different place because this is for people who really want to learn and really want to work. and I feel like we had that ethos in common. It's probably why we work so well together.

What Shadow Yoga Is

Kevin Mooney (02:57.932)
Yeah. That it was a super fun project. I love what you were doing. I also thought what you were doing was gonna be an uphill climb. And I think it has been. That is true. it does seem like you're really starting to gain some traction, you're getting your foundation going, there's more people showing up, and you've stayed true to those values the entire time. So what I would like to do, and this is a rare occasion.

is I'd like you to share what Shadow Yoga is, maybe just your beliefs about it, some of the the basis and foundation of of that practice because it's so different.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (03:41.154)
Yeah, sure. I think one of the best ways to think about Shadow Yoga is that it's more of a system of growth, development, self-cultivation akin to martial arts, then it is a style where there's a predictable kind of routine that shows up in a classroom. So when a student comes to Shadow Yoga, I have an idea of where we're going, but

I reverse engineer it and start with foundational work. And the founders of Shadow Yoga, Sundernath and Emma, are very aware that in other traditions there are years of preparatory work. You know, you you learn how to kick and squat and lunge before you ever hold a sword, for example. and I think that Sundernath found that that was missing from the yoga. And so he brought that in.

years of work, of tempering the body, of tempering the mind, of changing the way that we think about this system that we carry around with us, understanding some of the subtle nuances that live beneath the surface of the anatomy and the physiology. And that sorry, that creates a real vibrant and more textured experience. So

The fact that Shadow Yoga is founded upon principles that are shared with martial arts, I think, is one of the things that is unique about it and also one of the things that gives it durability and staying power. It's not a casual thing. And it's okay. It's just very different than a lot of what I see because most of shadow most of yoga today is really made for the consumer. It's a very consumer-driven industry. And

That's understandable because that's a better way to it's a better business model in a way.

What Angela Won't Sell

Kevin Mooney (05:45.622)
Sure.

think that kind of leads us into that first topic.

What is it? How do the business models differ? And maybe the most leading question I can think of right now is like, what do you refuse to sell that is sold in those other areas?

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (06:12.354)
I think one thing about the way that at least the way that I think about guiding is that I'm committing to work with a person for as long as they're willing to work. and I'm interested in their development as a practitioner. I'm not interested in them as a customer. And so that gives me the freedom to teach what I really believe in and not try to create a situation or an experience that appeals to many, many people.

So right from the beginning, there's a there's a crossroads. teaching to a lot of people and relying on the income from many people being in your classes, which is absolutely an understandable thing, that that's reality for a lot of people. that subtly creeps into your mind and and you want to open the gates as wide as you can because more people means

viable business and viability as a teacher. I mean there there are places that teachers get paid per head. I don't know around here, but in the past. So if you've got a hundred people in your classroom, you're gonna be much happier financially than if you have two or eight. Sure. So I don't do teacher training because that's just not how lineage traditions operate. You know, I have these apprentices that are with me now

The minimum commitment is three years. And that's no guarantee that they're gonna teach after that. There's not money being exchanged. I mean, they do pay a little bit to help keep the school running. but the homework I give them, the meetings we have, the boot camps, the assisting in the classroom, all that stuff is is just a exchange energetically. Excuse me.

And I don't sell any products. I don't endorse any products. I just I feel like it's an unnecessary complication for a person who's in a position of influence. I'm not not not like an influencer, but you know, if you come to trust a teacher, then you will come to trust what they advise or guide you towards.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (08:36.837)
And unless I have direct experience maybe with a massage therapist or a chiropractor or something, I I generally will not put my name on anything. And I've had people ask, you know, I remember when I was at a big corporate yoga company, a prop company wanted to bring in a lot of props and set them up in the classroom. And I'm I said, I don't use them. And they said, No, no, it's just for photos. And I No.

This is a misrepresentation. It's not honest. And so if you I believe if you start compromising your integrity in any realm, then you're just that much more likely. We're we're human and we're just not that great at like holding boundaries super tight when there's pressure from the outside. So I don't I don't do teacher trainings because partially that's just not how Shadow Yoga operates. It's really a

What they call guru-shishya parampara. This is the the transmission of knowledge from the teacher to the student, and then the student becomes a teacher and it and it goes like that, and it's been going like that for thousands of years.

It used to be harder to be a teacher. I remember when I started, I went through an 18-month program and I was in the classroom with the teacher a lot. I was doing lots of homework. It wasn't, you know, go to Costa Rica for a month and become a yoga teacher. And I really am glad that I had that rigor because I think that teacher training is one of the ways that

most yoga studios make money. you know, and again it's an understandable situation, but I think in many ways it has diminished the kind of value of of teaching. It's just become another sort of side gig to add to your, you know, repertoire.

How a Tradition Survives Without Money

Kevin Mooney (10:42.520)
Sure, yeah. I have some odd questions and maybe I'll just say the first one.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (10:50.195)
Okay, I like odd questions.

Kevin Mooney (10:53.122)
How in the hell does something like this survive thousands of years when there's no money involved? Yeah. And I I know the obvious answer to that. I want you to to just talk about that because it's it's kind of a crazy thing. You can apply this to you can apply this to religions, you can apply this to martial arts, you can apply this probably even to some modern day industries like marketing or something. How does that information get passed down?

And then people pick it up and retain it and it stays as close to the original teachings or methods as possible without getting conflated with whatever modern modern things. so yeah, I don't know. Can you talk about that just a little bit? It's interesting.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (11:43.150)
I can try. I I I mean, first just to address the last part of that question, it's not that we're trying to keep the original form of yoga, but we're trying to maintain a certain integrity, which is to say we're teaching what we know. And as teachers, we are on our own path of self development. So I'm teaching maybe things to people now that I learned five or ten years ago because I've worked with them.

And I think the reason it surviv survives is because people find that it works and they believe in it. And if you don't believe in it, you're just not gonna have the fortitude to keep the other things out. And I mean, right now it's not making money.

It's it's making money, but it's I should say it's not profitable. Sure. so many shadow yoga teachers do other things for income and they teach on the side, or they may have a combined income situation with another person. it's possible to make money teaching shadow yoga. For me personally, it's a matter of

investing. My husband and I and I have invested a lot of our own money in the hope of generating a manageable, sustainable, you know, business situation. The rent is obviously the challenge here. if it weren't for rent, I think we'd be doing just fine. I rent out the space to people for sound baths or, you know,

music events, things like that. So that helps offset the cost a lot. I also go to Portland and Seattle and I'm developing kind of satellite communities of shadow yoga there. And so ultimately that's part of the model is there aren't very many shadow yoga teachers. And so the ones that there are often will go to regional places and develop communities in the hope that eventually those people will

"The Whole Point of a Business Is to Make Money"

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (14:06.700)
travel to, you know, for a weekend or for a long weekend or for a course or something like that. That's kind of been the model. It's harder in this environment because people don't expect that they're gonna have to make much of a sacrifice to learn, it seems like, now. So the long answer is I had I had a I had a mentor from the

Kevin Mooney (14:13.646)
Mm-hmm.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (14:34.702)
You know, the small business association does the mentorship program. And someone said to me, Well, the whole point of having a business is to make money. And I thought, no, it isn't. The whole point of this business for me is to have a forum a forum for teaching something that I believe in.

Kevin Mooney (14:55.458)
That blows the mind of business people. It doesn't compute.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (14:58.016)
It doesn't yeah, it didn't even register. I was like, I don't think we're gonna be a good fit. And they're probably looking at me with the same, you know, perspective. Like, wh why would you even be doing this? Yeah. and you know, there there is a limit. It can't go on forever operating at a loss. But we did expect that that would be part of the process. because it takes a while to cultivate enough people.

Kevin Mooney (15:22.925)
Yeah.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (15:27.992)
to sustain, you know, the income necessary to keep it going.

Kevin Mooney (15:33.846)
And like we talked about when we were working together, you know, Bend's still a small town. Yeah. And you're constantly looking for a needle in the haystack in terms of the people that you want to work with. Yeah. With the growth of the area, we're hoping that a few more of those people come in. Because the reality is you do have a ceiling of how many people you can bring in. Yeah.

The weird thing from a business perspective is that that ceiling and that floor, the the delta between the two doesn't really allow much wiggle room for profitability, cash flow, all of those those fun things. And I find it even in my own freelance business right now, my ceiling, you also know the level of detail that that

I go into in these engagements, I can't do that for 70 people a month to make a hundred something thousand dollars a month and be like, yeah, I have a great business. Right. So I I face that same problem and we recognized that when we were working together. so it is a very interesting collision of two worlds. But I do like how you said this is this is my forum to do the thing that I I

not only love doing, but have devoted most of my life to doing. Yeah. And the other part in there that you you touched on briefly is how many shadow yoga teachers are out there. What is there, maybe sixty out there in the world?

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (17:17.740)
Yeah, something like that. I mean, there are a few more in Europe and Asia than we have in the States. It's definitely though under 20 in the States. And the the thing about the apprenticeship program is it takes a while for new teachers to be grown and develop. and I think that's one of the signs in a way that

It's not I mean, like you said, we're swimming upstream. We're we're going in a way, it's it's not just a difficult thing to do. It's a difficult thing to do in the context of the popular yoga that is being done because there are many when I when I see somebody who comes to class and they tell me all the yoga experience they have, I think to myself, This is gonna be really hard for you. And I'm just amazed when people kind of stick because there's a lot of unlearning has to happen.

Who Sticks With Shadow Yoga

Kevin Mooney (18:14.722)
Sure. This is not a question for this time, but I have to ask it. Do what is the ratio of people that stick

That's I'm a I'm asking this the wrong way, but it's like the people that stick, did their origins come from commercial yoga and they had to unlearn it and they're like, Wow, I found something new and better, or is it somebody who had no experience in yoga and they were like, Whoa, this is just I didn't know yoga was like this. What is the ratio between those like two parties there?

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (18:52.758)
I'd say it's probably

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (19:00.238)
Two thirds people do have experience and a third don't. And the third that don't are gonna have a much better time of it, frankly. They just have a lot less to unlearn. there's also more men, usually. I had I taught in Seattle last month I had eight men and one woman in the class, just because I think it has that it has that rigor and and that kind of power aspect to it. And

it doesn't require that you're flexible. And I feel like a lot of men shy away from the idea of yoga because they assume that to be quote successful or to feel good about what they're doing, they will r it will require amount of flexibility that they just don't have. And it's not that that's not important. It's just at the beginning especially we're we're just doing a lot of what I call grunt work.

There's some heavy lifting and learning how to move your body on the point of balance. And so if you have a little bit of strength, that will be much easier. The flexibility can come. You know, I'd rather have a person who's brand new, empty vessel, stiff as a board, than somebody who's got twenty years of yoga experience and can put their leg behind their head. I guarantee you it's gonna be easier working with the person A.

Just because they don't have all the attitude about yoga yet. There's no ego. Or just they come to it clean. and it doesn't mean that other students don't. They can get there. But just like anything, when you've been swimming in the water of a certain vocabulary and certain value system, it's difficult to switch. It's like you've been learning Italian for 10, 20 years and somebody drops you in the middle of France. Right. And

Kevin Mooney (20:31.925)
Sure. There's no ego involved.

Why the Right People Have to Find You

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (20:58.710)
Suddenly you've got to look around and everything's just a little bit different.

Kevin Mooney (21:02.004)
Uh-huh. Yeah. My wife last night was just talking. She she's in this. Let me back up. We've been remodeling the downstairs. Started with the kitchen and then we worked out and did our floors and now we need to protect those floors with rugs. Mm-hmm. So she's been on like a month long rug journey. And everywhere she goes, she can't find what she wants or somebody's selling.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (21:25.400)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (21:32.844)
What everybody else buys. Yeah. And she's not one of those people. Yeah. She she loves what she loves. Yeah. She's trying to find it. When she finds it, she buys it. Price isn't a thing. She just she buys the damn thing. And she was talking something about Bend is just such a small but growing place. And the vibe or

Or the way people think about making these purchases is is more about well, what is everybody getting right now? And they and sh so they all buy the same shit over and over and over again, right? So sh long story short, she found all the rooks that she wanted, but she was talking about it and I was like, I have to talk about this with Angie because Angie's in the same situation that I'm in. You know, you're in this very niche industry.

in general. Then you have a n niche teaching and a niche style and you're very particular about it and you're not willing to sacrifice it. And I'm I'm kind of the same exact way. But what her story told me about the things that w we are in, what we're doing, is that people will search for us. They will search and they'll find you. I mean there's the place that she bought the rugs has been in business for twenty five years here. It's not like it was

A new place and she was like, Finally the new thing is here. No, they she just had to find it. Yeah. And I sense that that is the same thing for you. I think people just have to find it and they have to arrive at that decision on their own. yeah. They have to say, There's gotta be more than this. Yeah. I want more. I need more. Something else is out there. And when they hit that point is when they will find you. Right.

And it's kind of a matter of time and it's a matter of as long as you exist, they're gonna find you at some point in time. And I think everyone's looking for something deeper, whether they admit it or not. It's just a hard thing.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (23:42.390)
And I think some people are not at a stage in their lives. I mean, you know, I have quite a few friends who teach yoga and sometimes I feel like there's a

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (23:57.078)
a mood or a almost like an apologetic stance that people take because they recognize that they're doing a little bit more of the mainstream. And I am grateful that all of the yoga that's out there is out there because everybody needs to come at it from the angle that they come at it from. You know, it's like the the funnel, the bottom of the funnel should be wide and should

Bring in a lot of people and it's a lot better to be going to a yoga class than you know going to the bar, probably. So I but I can relate to the situation with the rug. and that I think is what I've come to because now it's been five years that I've been doors open and I now have students where I didn't before. Let's say I have six or eight classes on the schedule.

Kevin Mooney (24:29.367)
Yes.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (24:52.748)
All of those classes now have people in them. Maybe it's only a few. Sure. But that was a thing that didn't exist before. So little by little, it's starting to take hold. It's never gonna be full to the coffers, you know, fifty people in a class with you know everybody doing the same thing. That's just not the model. and

It's heartening to me to know that little by little, one student at a time, you know, people will find it if they're at a point where they're looking for it. But you can't the the thing is too, you can't really market your way into the d into it. And I think I spent a lot of time in the early years really stressing about the marketing message and the marketing dollars and and I've come to realize that.

I mean, maybe somebody will come across it on one of the social channels. That might be a an exposure, but ultimately that's not gonna be the thing that gets them in the door. There it's gonna there's gonna be some kind of feeling that is touched in them, or they've talked to somebody, or they've seen something. And this is I I mean it sounds a little woo-woo, but I I do still believe that there are unnamed, maybe even unknowable factors at work.

There's like an alchemical process. And when the right person finds it, it can be life changing. It's just a matter of how long I can stay steady in this space. I mean, it'll I'll always be teaching. I think I'll be teaching till I'm dead. I mean, I have no illusion of I don't I don't have a plan to retire. Like you get better as a teacher as as you get older. Yeah. Not worse. Yeah. You might be not be able to

jump around quite as much. But the wisdom that comes from decades of learning and study i is in this tradition is is very valuable.

Wisdom, Elders and a Wedding in India

Kevin Mooney (26:56.270)
We just talked about it with AI systems, right? Yeah. That thing is incredibly smart, but it is the dumbest machine I've ever experienced. It doesn't have all of the years and all of the moments of my life to understand what I'm going to think or say or do next. Yeah. And to be fair, I don't know what I'm gonna think.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (27:18.542)
Say that. But maybe it knows you better than you think.

Kevin Mooney (27:21.747)
Yeah, yeah. but that that's a a real

The wisdom is just something that I when I was a kid, you know, your your parents or adults would say, just wait till you're my age and you're gonna understand. You're like, nah, I'm not gonna do it that way. I understand just fine now. That's just not true. The journey that you're on in this life, in this vessel that we have, is just to learn everything, absorb everything. Learn what you can, understand everything, and that wisdom just grows and grows. That's why the elders were

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (27:41.986)
Right.

Kevin Mooney (27:56.908)
Sitting in teepee's, you know, smoking peyote and pontificating life. That's that was the whole purpose of it.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (28:03.968)
Yeah, I mean, my husband and I had a wedding ceremony in India in a little village there. A friend of ours arranged it and we had a few friends, students that came all the way to India for this event. And there was a lot of chanting and a lot of smoke and a lot of burning of ghee and lotus seeds and rice and lots of walking around the fire and honoring the different deities. And at some point in the ceremony the elders from the village came in.

And they said you you need to get down and kiss their feet. And I was like, I don't even know these people, but that's just what you do. It's a way of acknowledging that you're stepping into a system and now as a couple rather than an individual. And that you are together in a way making a vow to honor the wisdom of the elders. I mean, we just don't have that in this culture.

Kevin Mooney (29:02.146)
Yeah. It doesn't it doesn't exist.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (29:04.846)
It's in the Native American culture for sure. It's in the a lot of the Asian cultures. It's in the Japanese culture. definitely. But it's it's hard in the States now, the way the culture is. It just doesn't there's not a lot to reward that.

The Apprentices Who Moved to Bend

Kevin Mooney (29:22.062)
So you're still trying to preserve that in some way, shape, or form in what you're doing. And you had mentioned the apprentice apprentices that you've that you've got or the program that you have. it's a three year commitment for them to get into that. Tell me tell me a little bit about maybe what their expectations are in that. Do they do they think that they're gonna become a teacher afterward?

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (29:49.504)
I mean, I think that's what we're moving toward, you know, that's the kind of loose frame of the whole program. But it it wasn't like I advertised become an apprentice in Shadow Yoga and then they signed up. This was the founder, the founders, you know, seeing potential in these couple of students and recognizing that they needed hands-on guidance, like in the classroom guidance.

To be with a teacher who is teaching day in, day out. How do you handle this kind of student, that kind of student? so they basically pulled me aside and said, Would you be be willing to take them on? because it's a big responsibility. Cause this in this tradition, you know, yes, you're teaching them, quote, how to how to guide others with yoga, but it's it's shadow yoga is not something that you can silo off.

And then do the rest of your life. I mean, the way you think about the yoga affects everything else you do, your routine, how you eat, when you eat, what you eat, your sleep routine, how you commit to things, your boundaries. I mean, the way you interact with other people. Like we were talking about the the keeping your keeping your powder clean, keeping your own world very intentional so that you don't leak energy.

So so you can carry the mantle of this of this tradition. So they pulled me aside and asked me if I would be open to working with what it was one at a time. First it was just one and I said, Absolutely. And so they talked to her and they said, You've got to move from Vermont to Bend for three years and you've got to work with her. Just basically do what she says. Wow.

They have their own relationship with the founders, but you know, the day-to-day is is with me. And then a month or so later, another young person who had definitely shown interest in Shadow Yoga, had gone to various courses in different parts of the world for a couple of years. They also said, you know, this person needs structure, needs stability, needs guidance.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (32:11.182)
Would you be willing to take him on? And I said, Sure. And so they talked to him and they said, You gotta move from LA to Bend for three years, figure it out, you know.

Kevin Mooney (32:21.344)
So really quick, the the apprenticeship is not necessarily from you. It is coming from the founders who have the relationship with the person and they make the suggestion. That yes. Do you have the ability to pick somebody that is in one of your classes and say, Hey Okay.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (32:41.816)
Could absolutely do that. Yeah, if I felt that there was somebody who was keen and you know believed in it and was committed, there's nothing that would keep me from bringing them in. I would also, though, do that in the con in consultation with the founders because, in a way, when you make the commitment to guide someone else toward the possibility of

guiding others or teaching, you know, you're putting the integrity and the principles of Shadow Yoga, you're you're taking responsibility for that. And so you wouldn't do that with a person that you didn't have confidence could themselves uphold and do a little bit of that heavy lifting, that grunt work, you know, at the beginning. And I think this is in some ways where

Kevin Mooney (33:28.266)
Yeah.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (33:41.750)
It's it's difficult to swallow the idea of a hierarchy in our culture. People don't like it. They don't want to be told what to do. They don't want to be told how to do it, when to do it, why to do it. You know, I mean, and I understand it. There's a part of me that doesn't like to either. And I think something is lost when we don't trust that somebody else might know something that we don't.

It just keeps us constantly sort of vigilant and on the lookout for potential

you know, violation of of like my personal boundary or space or comfort or something like that.

Jiu-Jitsu Belts and Being Told What to Do

Kevin Mooney (34:32.866)
Yeah. I think for me, I don't like to be told what to do in my day to day life. But to be fair, there's a big part of me that wants and needs that type of structure. I haven't found the right mentor in my industry that could could do that with me and for me. Yeah. But I have sought it out in other areas. When I started jujitsu, that was the entire thing. Totally. I mean

In that system, you start out, you have a belt, right? So everyone knows that you're the new guy. Everybody knows that you don't know anything, so we're gonna pick on you. But the whole idea of the belt system is for you to just kind of wrap your head around the fact that you're gonna have to move up through the ranks and it's gonna be challenging. But if you stay the course, you listen to what the professor says, you practice the the teachings in

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (35:11.406)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Mooney (35:31.086)
Training and out of training, you're you're going to get somewhere. Right. And are you going to be as good as the the professor at the end of the day? No. But that's not the goal. Right. The entire thing that I'm explaining is just that. I s I'm looking for that in a lot of places in my life. Yeah. But day to day, if I'm just going from the office to home, I don't want somebody stopping me and telling me I can't drive something, listen to something. Right. So there's a there's a balance there. And I really think that more people

than less actually want that. We do probably just have a culture that, I don't know, poo poos it or

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (36:11.628)
people feel threatened. I've had students write to me and they they don't like, you know, they they feel it's too rigid. They don't they don't like the way that, you know, it seems like it's this way or the highway. And I kind of say to that, then then this isn't for you. Right. That's okay. You know, there's a lot of places where you're not gonna be asked to

Prioritize the things that you're going to be asked to prioritize in this classroom. And I think that's another benefit, though, of that unspoken, we called the the guru-shishya parampara, the transmission that can happen. I mean, when I first stepped foot in Mark Horner's classroom, I was like, what the hell just happened? And I mean, it wasn't there was no music. I mean, nobody played music back then. And it wasn't

like I felt, you know, fit or beautiful or any of that. I just felt like I got my ass kicked. And I was like, anybody who can do that and still make me feel like I really respect them and there's value in it, I want to know more. And I I agree with you. I mean jujitsu's a perfect example. It's a martial art. We don't go to a dentist and and expect that they're gonna

Ask us what we should do. What do you want what you want me to do today? It's like, no, you've got a cavity. We're gonna fix a cavity. It's like this is I don't know why yoga has become so I guess it's just a dilution of it. You know, you don't go to an accountant and say, Well, here's how I'd like you to do my taxes. I mean, yes, okay, you have input, but you go to experts, you go to people that you trust because they have more experience than you. But when it comes to yoga, I feel like it's just been so flattened out.

And and I think it's partially because people that don't have much experience and don't have much authority are becoming quote teachers and so they're just one of the guys.

When Clients Want an Order Taker

Kevin Mooney (38:10.988)
What what is that though? Because

It might have just dawned on me that it's not just my industry that does that. Meaning I have people all the time that come to me. This is the reason this is why we started the podcast this way. I want this done, I want that done, I want this done, as if as if I'm an order taker or you know, do you want the sausage or do you want to see how it's made? Like w what is it that you want? and I just kind of realized like this is pretty widespread.

It's not just my industry and it's not just yoga. I'm sure we could sit here and come up with some other industries or just areas in life that have the same thing. But the point is, where does that come from? Mm-hmm. How did we get here as a culture where it's I I no longer want to understand the entire thing or hire the expert for the expertise?

It has now become I already know what I want, and I just need the person to make it or make me look this way. Yeah. I heard something on Instagram the other day, it was around CrossFit, and she was saying, man, when I first heard about CrossFit, I was like, you gotta go to this garage place and you have to take an hour out of your

Day, I don't have time for an hour. And then on the flip side, she was like, Well, once I started going there, then I wrapped my entire life around CrossFit. Friends were like, Would you like to go to the bar with me on Friday? And they were like, I have to go to CrossFit. What are you talking about? And there's just something there in that that that headspace of of going to where the experts are at and learning and diving way deep in that. And

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (39:53.624)
Yeah.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (40:00.066)
Right, right, totally.

Kevin Mooney (40:13.026)
I I don't know if the question got lost or answered in it, but it's it's just like what happened to that? Where did it go? What

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (40:18.124)
Well, I I mean, I feel like there's in a way there's a there's a s pendulum swing away from the authoritarian structure. And the truth is there's a lot of bad behavior in the yoga world. I mean, I can speak to that. There's other things too. There's church organizations, there are, you know, I think many systems have failed in many ways to earn the trust of the p the person. And maybe the backlash to that is

I'm gonna do it myself. Interesting. I don't need, you know, I don't wanna put myself under the control or the auspices of another person. and you know, I as a teacher, I do have to earn somebody's trust. I don't expect that the pr the first time somebody comes to class, they're gonna see me as a teacher, as their teacher. But over time, if it's a good fit, if there's, you know, if it's copacetic, then

I will earn their trust and they will earn mine. And that's how the relationship is built. And that's really where the growth happens. It's not gonna come because I ask you to do things you're already good at. It's gonna be it's gonna come because I'm gonna ask you to do something that's hard. And that's how it's been for me. And I don't know if it's a disposition. It was happening a lot more when I was earlier in my yoga life.

I mean, teachers were harsh. I mean, people l left the room crying, you know, because of things that were said or and it wasn't easy to hear as a observer. And you also understood that sometimes the thing that's hard to hear is the thing you really do need to hear. And if it stings, there's probably a reason for it. Otherwise you'd brush it off and you'd get, well, that's I hear I hear that criticism or I hear that.

observation, but it doesn't feel like it applies to me.

Kevin Mooney (42:22.184)
Yeah. And I don't have to own that. I don't have to pick that up anymore. Yeah. You put it down, I don't have to pick it up. But the ones that are bothered by it, they ha probably have something

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (42:33.388)
I think they might. Yeah. Yeah. And and it's just there are so many options. Maybe it's true with marketing, it's certainly true with yoga, that if you have an an unhappy experience with a teacher in a class, then just go to the next thing. You know, you don't have to integrate that or face it or deal with it. But like the article that you read, I got some tough love from one of my teachers. And

Kevin Mooney (42:50.199)
Yeah.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (43:01.408)
It was uncomfortable at the time. It sort of showed me something about myself that I didn't want to see, that I didn't like, that I didn't actually think was happening. And I was almost sure that the degree to which I was bothered by it was an indication that there was something there to look at. Yeah.

17 Years to Teaching Shadow Yoga

Kevin Mooney (43:21.166)
I want to come back to that.

Because that's a whole topic that we want to get into. and we're kind of on it right now, but I wanna circle back to the hard stuff. You said that you

Two thousand one with Mark, all the way fast forward to two thousand eighteen, where you get permission to start practicing or teaching Shadow Yoga. That's that's a 17 year gap. Mm-hmm. And that had to have been hard. There had to be a lot of hard moments in that. Maybe some not necessarily indecision, but some unknowing of where I'm going or what what I'm doing.

What was that like and h maybe how did you even arrive on on landing in Shadow Yoga? Yeah.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (44:15.938)
Well, when I first met Mark, he wasn't teaching Shadow Yoga exclusively. He had begun to introduce it, but he had a background of other systems, Iyengar, Ashtanga. And so in the year and a half teacher training that I did with him, which ended in like two thousand and three, we got a full range of things of

Lots of prop usage and alignment and how to work with students and classroom management and anatomy and theory and philosophy. And it was just a very full program. And then he gradually over the next few years veered spec exclusively to Shadow Yoga and he started teaching the preludes and he lost quite a few people because again, it was hard. And I stuck with it. I loved it. I

Would study with the founders when they would come to his studio or when they would come to Berkeley or to San Francisco, I would drive and and see them. But I wasn't traveling around the world to take courses with them because I was parenting little kids. And then when I went through my divorce, I had already been teaching for quite a while, but I realized that I needed to kind of up my game. And so

I studied with a guy in New York who was a yoga therapist. He worked with people individually. So now I started having both the ability to lead group classes and the ability to work with people individually in a therapeutic way. and

Kevin Mooney (45:57.120)
Also learning ch the basis of Shadow Yoga.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (46:00.022)
Yeah, so it was kind of a split screen. On one hand, for my personal practice, I was still working with Mark and working with the founders, but they only came around like once a year. But then professionally I was expanding beyond you know, doing therapeutic yoga, doing teacher trainings, doing mentorship.

You know, the five hundred hour supervision, all of these things that the corporate yoga environment gave me access to, which was really useful because it professionalized the career of yoga teaching and it also paid the bills. and at some point that became untenable. Let's say around, I don't know, two thousand

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (46:50.008)
Well, I I can't remember exactly when it was, but at some point I remember asking if I could do a course with Sundernath and Emma. And I had like the corporate yoga tag after my signature in the email. That was a bad move. It was a dead giveaway. And they're like, Yeah, no, that's not that's not gonna fly. Because

They didn't want people who are shopping around. If you're already connected to a very, very clearly commercialized profit driven, I mean, this is before they even sold the private equity, profit-driven system, then it's just gonna be like oil and water. And it's not that there's any harm done. I mean, the stuff isn't copyrighted, but if if you if you go to a Shadow Yoga course and then you pick and choose

and drop in the new stuff into a more mainstream yoga environment, it's ultimately the students that suffer because you've taken it's just like the logo. You've taken one thing out for novelty or for intrigue or whatever. It usually comes from insecurity as a teacher, to try to like bump up your standing and it's

it doesn't have any context for the student. So they can do the move, but they're not gonna have any idea what it means. Why are you doing it? Which marmas does it touch? What happens to the inner fire? You know, what's going on with the internal system? So they'll have no idea of any of that. And this is how things get lost over time. So anyway, that was an aside. But at some point it just became untenable for me to be

Doing Shadow Yoga as my personal practice, which is what you do every day on your own, and then teaching in this more mainstream way. And fortunately, that was right around the time that my husband and I got together. And so I no longer had to support myself completely independently. And I could I had a little bit more flexibility as far as what I would what I could do.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (49:12.312)
teaching instead of teaching eight classes a week and teacher training on the weekend and seeing private clients and doing workshops. I mean, it was a grind. I could be a little bit more selective. So the timing of that was was good. And that's then when I got back on the Shadow Yoga path. I remember asking Mark at some point, you know, I've been thinking about maybe trying to teach Shadow Yoga. I had left the corporate environment, wasn't doing teacher training anymore.

And he said, I was wondering when you would ask. Touche, right? Yeah. And he said, You've got to go ask the big man yourself. So I had to fly to Europe. I had to go to a two-week course in Budapest. And it was nerve-wracking because I knew them a little bit, but I didn't have a close relationship with the founders at that point. And I waited until at that point there were 70 people in this big room. And I waited until people were.

Kevin Mooney (49:44.671)
Mm-hmm.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (50:11.234)
You know, we'd finished the class and things had died down a little bit. And I remember kind of sheepishly walking up to the stage and asking him, I just wanted to talk about teaching. And Mark had written to them, so it wasn't completely out of the blue. And he said, Well, aren't you gonna be here for the next few days for the next course? And I said, Yeah. And he said, Let's chat later. And I was like,

Kevin Mooney (50:26.958)
Yeah.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (50:39.784)
because it was like an initiation, you know. I was anxious. I want to get it over with, obviously. And he was like, No, that's not the way we're gonna do this. You're gonna wait and you're gonna suffer a little bit. And you I mean, and there's that's the thing about the authority and and all this, and we don't want to be uncomfortable. I mean, if you go through the discomfort, the squirm, you're gonna come out the other side more committed and more sure.

about what you're doing. So I waited and he put me front and center in the classroom and they need to see how you behave. How do you behave when you're in the front of the classroom? You know, does it go to your head? Do you become a peacock? Do you become afraid? Do you like just people act different?

Peacocking in the Front Row

Kevin Mooney (51:31.074)
That is that is kind of interesting. I just had a flashback of of my yoga experience for you know it was maybe three or four years. And when I the first day I walked, I as far back in the back as humanly possible. Pretty quickly, it was like working my way to the front. And I absolutely

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (51:45.486)
Right, right.

Kevin Mooney (51:54.694)
think I was peacocking up there. Yeah. Because I I now knew what we were doing. I knew I could get to the the positions relatively quickly. I'm not saying it was good at this. But there was that absolutely happened. Something I did not even know that that was a real thing. It's a thing. Yeah. That is so cool.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (52:08.056)
Changes in your mind.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (52:14.488)
Crazy. Isn't that wild? And that and you know, to be fair to you and other students, it's encouraged. Teachers will sometimes say, look at the people in the front of the room. It it I understand why the system is the way it is, but it's really more like you're gonna acclimate to the people in the room and you're gonna figure out what these words mean by following probably the other people in the room.

So you're kind of learning from other students more than you're quote learning from the teacher. Unless you do a workshop or teacher training or something like that. But most of the classes that I've observed, and there I'm there are exceptions, definitely. But I mean, I remember being in a class in Union Square in New York City, it was Jivamukti. This used to be a huge thing. It was way up on the sixth floor, the whole sixth floor of this building.

Kevin Mooney (52:50.168)
Yeah.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (53:09.848)
was Jivamukti Yoga. They had like a huge desk with a fountain and plants and music pumping. It was like a club in there and they were selling all sorts of shit, like body elotion and, you know, reads that are infusing reeds and all this stuff. And they had multiple rooms and multiple teachers. And the room I went into, it was like a football field. I mean, it was huge. And you had people facing two s two sides, everybody facing inward.

So you basically had everybody facing the middle of the room, rows and rows and rows of people. Jivamukti, a big part of Jivamukti's chanting. They did a big chant. And then, you know, you're basically flowing, bunch of poses, surya namaskar, high plank, up high plank, low plank, up dog, down dog, do the other side. And at some point, the teacher stops the class and brings somebody up to show. Backbend, let's call it. I don't I think that's what it was. And people clapped after.

Complete after she did it. And I just thought to myself, I mean, even then, I wasn't I wasn't where I'm at now, you know, philosophically, but even then I thought, what are we doing? What are we actually doing? We're we're driving our attachments deeper into the system, deeper into the mental landscape than freeing ourselves from them.

Kevin Mooney (54:18.446)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (54:35.734)
It's a wild recognition because I didn't see that. It happened. Yeah. It it a hundred percent happened. Yeah. And it happened to me. Sure. I I wasn't like showcased or anything like that, but I that that whole experience happened and I didn't even realize it. It's very strange to think of.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (54:41.549)
I mean how much

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (54:55.514)
So so isn't it wild? Yeah, these subtle things are happening. And the thing is, is that's what a he was at that time, let's say sixty-eight or sixty-nine year old teacher knows and they know to watch for in a student and they know to see how the person behaves. Not because they're an asshole, or be because they're trying to set you up to fail, but because they want to put you in environments that squeeze you a little bit so you can become stronger.

Metal gets strong because it's it's melted, you know. It's forged. It gets hard, it gets smooth. Yeah, we totally did anyway from that point forward it was like I was given the green light and that's when I then went back and had to start working with Mark all over again, apprenticing again after fifteen years of teaching. Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (55:29.870)
I think we talked about Forged as a name.

Kevin Mooney (55:48.844)
Wow. Did you experience that when you were put in the front row? Do you remember how you reacted?

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (55:56.920)
Well, I was I mean, luckily I had been in that environment enough times to recognize that it was best to just head down do the work, kind of keep my cool. and it's it's stressful because you're not i i you're not shown everything. They'll just t they'll just say stuff and then you have to remember it. Or sometimes what happens is

Let's say a course is a week long. Every morning you're going in there. On day three, they say, We're not going to do it today. You do it. Show us what you remember. Let's talk about stressful. So that's the hard stuff. And so then you're confronted with the reality that, my God, I didn't know I was supposed to practice this on my own. Or the stages anger, frustration with yourself, disappointment with yourself. But the next time

Kevin Mooney (56:36.782)
That's that's the hard stuff.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (56:54.360)
Guarantee you you're gonna do it and you're gonna show up because then you're not squandering what what's being given. You're actually making use of it, integrating it, and then you show up. And when you do it the next time, whether it's with the teacher doing it or not, you will recognize little things that you got wrong, or let's say you did the left side first instead of the right side, whatever, the learning will be in you.

Instead of you just following. And that's a huge difference too, you know. I I'm teaching students or I'm guiding students as to how to become practitioners, like with martial arts, you know, not just class attenders.

Shown as the Wrong Way

Kevin Mooney (57:43.794)
Yeah. There's a big difference there. Yeah. Did you ever have a moment in that seventeen, fifteen year span that somebody told you something that you didn't like, but it was that thing inside of you that you knew was right?

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (58:00.058)
lots of moments. I mean, I probably can't even remember them. All I remember one time Sundernath did bring up three people to show something. And he brought up me and he brought up two other people and he had us all do the thing, whatever it was. And I thought, that's nice. I'm being brought up because I'm doing it right. But the truth is he was showing

Kevin Mooney (58:28.100)
What not to do?

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (58:29.090)
Different ways to do it. And my the what I was doing was the less the least right way. The middle person was like a little less wrong and then the other person was like the right way. And you know, those kinds of things you can see as

Unnecessary, somebody's being an asshole, or you can see them as initiation, which is how I saw it. At not necessarily at that time, but with a little bit of, you know, road between that n that experience and the the perspective that I have now was absolutely, you know, again, it's how does a person handle themselves under a little bit of pressure. Yeah.

Drop Your Gaze

Kevin Mooney (59:18.186)
Such a it's so insightful. It's so interesting to see that.

Just like in your life, your industry, that whole path, what that can teach you.

Yeah, there was something else that I was gonna ask you, but the real thing, because all of this leads into the drop your gaze moment. yeah. so tell me about that moment. And that happened recently, right?

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (59:48.846)
It was a about a year and a half ago. So recent ish.

Kevin Mooney (59:52.172)
Recent ish, you had one of those moments that you were just referring to where somebody said something to you and it maybe didn't sit quite well and you had to reflect on it. What was that, what was said, and and what was that experience?

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:00:09.912)
Like. Yeah. Well, I had gone, you know, halfway around the world to a course, and I remember having a conversation with my teacher. this was Emma, and before we were in the classroom or anything, and I think we had met at a meal, and I think this was when I was still really struggling with how do I market.

Continuum more? How do I, you know, what stone have I not turned over to see how to reach more people? And one of the things that I was aware of kind of tracking was how other yoga studios were doing, which is a really bad idea when you're a shadow yoga teacher. It's not only a bad idea, it's just a it's a it's an immature

perspective. and I think I had mentioned something about, you know, wanting to know what other people were doing. And she said something like, you don't need to worry about what other people are doing. You just do what you do. And it wasn't horrible, but I thought

Yeah, okay, that that makes sense. But I think that my stress about the lack of students in the classroom was was in a way creating this resistance to really allowing that message, which totally makes sense. It's logical, it's it's compassionate, frankly, was blocking that message from really going in. So then it

Day or two later, when I was in the classroom, there's a position that we do in Shadow Yoga, and I I had my head adjusted gently, like multiple times, from a a kind of a lifted position to a more chin-down position. And it was only probably months after that experience that I started to realize that those two.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:02:30.676)
experiences were connected. And then at one point in the class I'd asked a question and again, you know, got called out a bit for

worrying too much about what other people were doing. So that's the kind of thing that is uncomfortable in the moment. It's not always obvious that there's a lesson in it. And I think I was a little bit indignant and yet aware enough to recognize that that's why I trust these teachers. And I hear them say things to other people.

And I think to myself, yeah, that's really true. And so I couldn't apply it to other people, but not also sure apply that to myself. So it was really after a few months that I think I I got it. Like, that's what she was talking about. And it just changed a little bit the way I thought about everything. It changed the way I think about marketing. It changed the way I thought about students. And I mean, the truth is, I don't mean it to sound harsh, but

If somebody comes to Shadow Yoga, great. And if they don't come, great. Like it's not really my concern. It i of course I'd like them to like it, but I'm not gonna change what I do because I want more people in the room. And that was a really big that was an epiphany for me, and it was also a turning point in just the way that I think. So I don't follow really many of the other

Kevin Mooney (01:03:58.572)
Yeah.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:04:12.194)
Yoga Studios. I like the people. I love these people. They're great people who run them, the teachers. I have friends. And it it's just that I was looking outside of myself for some kind of validation. Whether that was me trying to be more like what other people are doing or me trying to be less like what other people are doing. It's both, it's the same problem, whichever way you look at it.

Kevin Mooney (01:04:40.941)
Yeah.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:04:41.664)
And that and it was it's just it's just been so much better. And I have to add that, you know, I'm I'm given a personal practical sadhana, we call it, which is like things to do on my own day to day. It's a series of prayers, it's a series of movements, it's a series of, you know, breathing techniques, all these things. And the sadhana is what pulls everything home.

is what I would say. So you have all these messages and you have learning opportunities. And in this case, you have this uncomfortable experience and it's indirect. The process of integration is indirect, but I really believe that these things come into us through our ongoing stepping into the to the the realm, let's call it, where things are possible.

Not that it's magic. It's just there that there has to be for me, there has to be enough of an opening so that that barrier that I was talking about, that resistance is broken down enough for something to actually go in, take root.

When to Lift Your Head and When to Lower It

Kevin Mooney (01:05:54.272)
Yeah, that

What you just talked about and how you described it was beautiful, first of all. Thank you. Second of all, that is so incredibly challenging to do, put into practice. I could apply that to my life in so many ways. I can apply it to work in so many ways. I am guilty of not being able to put that into practice very well. I would I would say

If I were to sum this up, I am in the process of lowering my head right now. I would say for the last year, year and a half, it's been up, held up high. And and not from a peacocking standpoint, it just defaulted to it's it's up. You're looking out there in the world. And there's there's kind of two parts to it, maybe multiple parts, but

At some level, if your head is always down, you may not be looking at something that you should be that is out there, whether it's for awareness or knowledge or growth or something to that effect. So I think there is a pairing of being able to lift your head up and look and observe and bring in information. And then once you get to some place of clarity, then it's time to lower that head down. And I

curious if any part of that is in the teachings there or if this was more of an isolated incident where because of the questions that you were asked, they corrected you and and tilted your head down a little bit.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:07:40.832)
Yeah. So I think it might be different in different industries. I mean, in marketing or in content creation or in real estate, for example. I mean, maybe you do need to know what your competitor is doing. That that may be a thing.

Kevin Mooney (01:07:58.734)
But even in life though, even outside of a work setting and and an industry, isn't it appropriate to kind of see what's happening all over the place and then come back down?

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:08:13.814)
I don't know. Yeah. That's a good question. I just did a digital detox for a few days. My husband and I went camping and I was in a great mood and I didn't know what was going on in the world. And I'm not saying you should do head in the sand. I mean, I think we have some civic responsibility to at least be aware. and that being said, it's very easy for that to go too far very quickly. So I think in the case for for me.

Kevin Mooney (01:08:38.130)
very.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:08:43.381)
Which I can really only speak to. There's a thing in yoga that we call discernment. It's called Viveka, which means light. And discernment is the the mechanism by which the eyes are lifted or lowered. And so when I'm in front of my teachers, or I'm reading a text, or I'm listening to a student, it's eyes wide open. It's taken what you can through the body, through the mind, through the heart, through the sound.

As much as you can. It's just in the context of what I'm doing as a teacher, what other people are doing is is about as irrelevant as it could be. And that's that's the difference. That's why, in a way, yoga's yoga in business. I mean, if the if it works, that's great. I I don't think though that they should. I mean, there are teachers who say you should never never rely on

Kevin Mooney (01:09:25.112)
Yeah.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:09:42.199)
Your income from a yoga teacher to support you. You shouldn't have a mortgage. You shouldn't have all these financial responsibilities because it's going to change the way you do things. And I see the wisdom in that. You know, so it it could be that it's different per industry. I think it's also just knowing when to and who to pay attention to. Because there may people that you admire that you

Kevin Mooney (01:09:54.978)
Yeah.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:10:10.934)
respect that you can learn from. It's just that once the drawbridge is down and any b the villagers can all come, anybody can come. So we've got to be just selective about the drawbridge.

Kevin Mooney (01:10:26.582)
Yeah, I I mean even back at Hound and into the freelance practice, back to the industry thing, we we try to put up a moat, we try to have our drawbridge at this level, right, at this angle, forty-five at least. Because we don't want everybody to come in. Right, right. And we're looking for the people who are seeking a little more depth and and that's what you're you're talking about. And to your point.

Kevin Mooney (01:10:58.156)
It's really easy to get caught up in what everybody else is doing. And that's where the head down comes from. Yeah. And tune that stuff out because none of it matters. I've been caught in watching what everybody does. And not direct competitors. It's more like anybody out there on the web. What are they doing? And then all the gurus come in and they all tell you what you should be doing. And here's how you make a million dollars a second. And follow this thing and download that thing and get into this funnel.

And there is so much information and there's so many things that are true and that do work. And I'm trying to absorb all of those. But at the same time, if my head is not just down, then you're just focusing on all of this and you're paying and it's just all the noise and there's no signal. Yeah. So I've been trying to figure that out for the last year and a half. Yeah. Where's the signal in all of this? Yeah. And I find myself when I put my head down.

I find the actual signal. Yeah. I do think though, at some level, I needed some of the noise. Sure. I needed a little bit of the distraction, whether that was to realize that it's all bullshit and it's all noise, or maybe there was some information gathering in that process of listening to the noise. Right. And then you just have to come back and say, okay, mm mm, not anymore. Right.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:12:22.466)
Done. Right. And I think that's where the discernment comes in. That's that's one of the things that, you know, you talk we talk a lot about in yoga is is first you have discernment in your physical body, then you have discernment maybe in your breath, then maybe you can discern your thoughts, maybe then you can discern reactions and emotions and how's the energy moving in the system and all these things. And ultimately we want to be able to distinguish between what is the true self.

And what's everything else? Like you said, the noise. However, as long as we're in the body, we still need to be functional. and you still need the parts of your brain that remember to send your mother a birthday text or where did you park your car? Or you know, it's it's not that we walk through the world as enlightened zombies. Yeah. You know. we don't know what happens after the body. That's a different conversation. Sure.

But I think that discernment is what we're cultivating through the practice or through something like martial arts. You're cultivating discernment. You're cultivating internal trust rather than external trust. And in a way that strengthens if you watch the world around you and you see somebody that you connect to and you feel like they're representative of your values and your principles. And it's something that you could maybe wrap your head around, then you try that one thing out.

And then you'll know if it's right for you or not. But but that's the challenge is like you said, if you look over the landscape, there's just so many different things to choose from. It's hard to know where to even start.

What Angela Stopped Doing

Kevin Mooney (01:14:00.714)
What what was something that you after that thing happened, right? After you were given the answer, then you were politely adjusted. Mm-hmm. And then a couple months later you realize what all of it meant. What did you carry through into your life over that period of time? Let's just round it to a year. Was there something particular that you stopped doing? Yeah. Tell me about that. Yeah.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:14:29.902)
I mean, I stopped paying very much attention to socials for one thing. I don't even have the Instagram app on my phone. I don't want it on there. Yeah. It doesn't do me any good. I mean, I have to do a little bit obviously for the business. but thank God one of my apprentices is very savvy and so she can kind of be the the more day to day eyes on the account and so I don't have to be on it all the time.

That was one thing. I also just stopped stressing out about what's gonna happen with the space and trust that this space will either be the same that it is or it will be a different space. That's the bottom line, you know. And I I think for a while I equated teaching or guiding with space, and those are two completely different things, but I had wrapped those together in my head.

I think another thing is not feeling pressured, which was self-imposed, to get out and do stuff, you know, like go to marketing meetings, go to networking meetings. Those are not the places that I'm gonna get students. And it turns out to be a real time suck. I'm a super early morning person and I can't be out till nine o'clock at night, you know. I'm if I'm up at five, like I need to be in bed at nine, not like just, you know, hanging out and shooting the breeze.

So I learned that I mean that's also just part of life experience, you know, and learning kind of where to put your time and attention and energy. And I also I think having the apprentices being really what I should say is being asked to mentor other people.

piggybacked on that gaze down because it gave me a sense of responsibility. And I thought I realized like at that point, somebody else that I really trust has confidence in me. And I need to honor that and own that. And me worrying about what everybody else is doing is not honoring that confidence that somebody else has.

Kevin Mooney (01:16:45.598)
So good. Yeah. That is so good. I have to say that everything that you just talked about is so relevant to me and you're helping me right now work for

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:16:58.990)
Excellent.

Yeah, I mean when you start something new too, there's a lot more it's a lot easier to be a little bit grasping and and seeking and reaching because y you don't have your I mean like how do you even choose which microphone to buy? Right. Like that is a huge thing. Probably took you hours of research to do that. So like you've got that piece down. And I think little by little

Kevin Mooney (01:17:23.086)
And we didn't even have five

Letting Go of the Space

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:17:32.268)
you're building the structure, just like I was building the structure. and now if I have a class and nobody shows up, I'm like, Okay, that doesn't happen very often. Whatever, I'll mop the floor, I'll clean the toilet, I'll call it a day. It's just not a existential crisis.

Kevin Mooney (01:17:43.522)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:17:47.906)
Yeah. Well

There's something a little bit more fundamental that touches home for me. You were just talking about your space. I love your space. We helped design it. Yeah. Beautiful. It is such a great space. It is so beautiful. It is so clean. And I I don't just mean like the surface level clean. It's done really, really well. You made the right decisions and it stands out above all the places in town from a studio standpoint.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:18:20.248)
Thank you.

Kevin Mooney (01:18:22.284)
I feel the same way about this office. I've been in this suite for probably now seven or eight years. And I'm in a weird spot in my freelance career. I lost all my clients this year due to economic things and money people and market stuff. Yeah. And, you know, I'm trying to rebuild.

But I don't know if I'm gonna be able to stay in this place. Yeah. And that what you were just talking about was so comforting. Somehow I've attached my identity to this place. And though I love it, and though I love everything that's inside of it, if it goes, I can still do this. Right. I can do this from anywhere. I can do it from my living room. I could build a little thing in my garage. Is it as

Cool as coming to downtown with 15 foot windows and an old light above it. Yeah. Probably not. Yeah. But none of that matters. Right. It's that's all just stuff. It's just bullshit. It's just things. Right. And so the way that you just laid all of that out and the way that you said it just it I just felt this whole wave of comfort come over me like, it's all good.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:19:46.720)
Excellent. It's all good. Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:19:48.310)
So I appreciate you saying that and sharing that story. Good.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:19:52.972)
I I think sometimes too we need we need a bridge, you know, we need the comfort or the beauty or the warmth or our own touch on a space to help us step into ourselves. But, you know, like my teacher used to say, if you've got a raft to get you across the river, you don't drag it along once you get to the other side. So maybe you don't need the space as much as you think you do when you're crossing the river, which is, you know, what you're doing now.

have been doing. Yeah. I think another thing that changed for me after the lowering the gaze was starting to actually see myself as a regional teacher and see that if I go to Seattle and I go to Portland and eventually I go to LA, it it's gonna take time, just like it did in Bend, but you have such larger populations of people there.

And a lot of people in Portland actually there is a history of Shadow Yoga there. So it's it's in a way it's freed me up to be more to be less stressed out about what happens in Bend, because I'll always be here. I mean, we're we're here, we're we're in, we're committed. And in a way, having satellite communities reinforces my commitment.

What I'm doing here because it's it's an expanded role as a teacher. and you know, maybe at some point those people will come to bend for weekends or whatever. But that helped too, because again, that's like warrior work. That is like I'm loading up the car with my husband, with my apprentices, with the dog, with all our shit for overnight. It's one night, teach classes Saturday morning.

Drive like a bat out of hell to Portland or Seattle, stay the night, teach two doubleheader in the Sunday, and then either drive home or stay the night and drive home Monday and then teach again Monday night. So it is like not for the week of heart. Yeah. totally don't have a weekend. I mean in this case, which is

Kevin Mooney (01:22:06.616)
That goes back to the the cost of not doing teacher training. Yeah. Right? Well, what is the cost of not doing that? Yeah. It's it's having to do all of this over here. And it's not necessarily just a cost because there's so much that you can gain from that. And let's just say your one class every quarter that you do over there inspires somebody to want to go down that path.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:22:16.555)
Yeah, it's a different thing.

The Student Who Followed Her for 20 Years

Kevin Mooney (01:22:35.980)
And then they want to move here or they are instructed to move here for the apprenticeship. Like I just see that as reach and awareness and the opportunity to to expand what you've got. Yeah. It's not necessarily just a cost, but it is interesting to kind of pair that together with one of the things we talked about in the first part of the episode.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:22:58.542)
Yeah, and I don't want to sound naive, but I also think that trying to position myself strategically is first of all, I'm not a strategic person. I just I don't think that way at all. And doing what I'm doing, it it's just it's not a good, a good plan. And I'll I'll give you an example. So I taught in Walnut Walnut Creek, California for a lot of years.

And then came to Bend. We're in our sixth year in Bend. I've done an online class, which started during COVID, like a lot of teachers did, and then everybody kind of scattered and moved around. So I've kept that one online class. And there's a woman who's been taking it pretty consistently. It turns out now she's moving from Walnut Creek to Portland. And so now there's another student who's gonna be in the Portland.

contingency and I just feel like there's a there's a way that again, I hate to go back to the same refrain, but if you just do what you really believe in, the people who want that will find you and they will follow you. I mean, she's been now a student for close to twenty years. Wow. And she's not going anywhere. In fact now we're reconnecting.

And so she'll be part of the Portland contingent. She could possibly come to Bend. So it's one student, but that doesn't happen because of strategy or a marketing plan. It happens because I just kept doing what I believed in. And that's there's a there's a little bit of mystery in the way that I think these some these things sometimes come together.

Marketing Without a Funnel

Kevin Mooney (01:24:51.660)
Yeah, in in I don't know if I'm trying to defend my industry or my career, but because I I wholeheartedly agree with you. And the way that we've always done brand work was like that. Why would you choose us versus another agency in this town? Well, A, you valued that or we said something crazy that you thought was funny and you liked us. But why not go with the other person? They're promising you

All kinds of business and followers and virality and and all different types of things. And we never really wanted to go down that path because we never believed in it. And if we ever did go down that path where we did any sort of advertising or marketing or socials, we tried to do it in a way that supports what you were just talking about. Where

Not everything has a call to action and a funnel that you have to get into and and optimize your life and optimize and data driven and all this stuff. I do believe there's a way that you can put yourself out there so more people like that person in Walnut Grove can find you. Even if it does take five more years for them to move from Missouri to here. I think there's still a way to do that.

not sell your soul and stay true to your values and reach those people. But it is still very, very hard. Yeah. And it's very challenging.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:26:29.290)
And I mean, and there is not I mean, a a newsletter, a monthly newsletter is not unstrategic. I mean, it started as a way for me to I mean, I used to print up newsletters and bring them to students in the class. That was part of what we did back in the day. and our marketing was a flyer at Whole Foods with little tear tabs with the phone number or the website on it. So like things have changed a lot. But I do have some tear tab

Kevin Mooney (01:26:55.522)
Tried that recently.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:26:59.118)
Yeah, I do have some tear sheets. I haven't put up in a while.

Kevin Mooney (01:27:01.976)
I think you should do it. That stuff to me, that if you're gonna do marketing, at least have fun with it and be old school about it or something. I don't know. Slap your stickers all over town. Put on every street light and stop sign you can think of. Yeah. At least it doesn't feel quite as gross.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:27:16.398)
Something to that.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:27:20.674)
Yeah. But well the yeah, so the newsletter is started as a way to just give people more background about what they were doing and why. And then it became a way for me to stay connected to people. And I am the brand, I am the school, I am the sort of right now I'm the only teacher. And so if people don't hear from me for months on end, you know, it's kind of out of sight, out of mind.

And I don't think there's anything wrong with trying to stay connected to people and if it helps them remember that you're there and you're still offering something, that's fine, you know.

Kevin Mooney (01:27:59.852)
So in this is a total side thought, but like in your newsletter are are there people in the list that don't come to the class regularly? Okay. So that's so you're still you're trying to keep them warm ish. Okay. To see not trying to, but that is what that technique is. Yeah.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:28:16.523)
Yeah, I I guess I feel like

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:28:21.610)
If they've if they've stayed on the newsletter, they haven't opted out, which, you know, every now and then people opt out. I assume that they're still getting something from it. And I'll get a few emails back usually saying, Appreciate your writing, appreciate your thoughts, you know, is this thing happening online or in person? Whatever. so I know that some people are reading it, but you know, MailChimp tells me that like sixty percent of the people actually open it. So fifty to sixty percent. It's not bad.

Kevin Mooney (01:28:49.048)
It's not a bad open rate. And if they're getting it and they're opening it and and if they are even responding, that's a super good sign. Yeah. you know, if they're getting it and they're reading it, whether you know about it or not, it doesn't matter. Right. What matters is that they are absorbing it and they're thinking about it. And that might creep into their

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:28:51.682)
Yeah, it's not bad.

Kevin Mooney (01:29:14.498)
their psyche and they might be going to bed thinking about something that you had said or something that is drawing them to this thing. They're not quite ready yet. I'm not there. I'm not there. If you look at the buying decisions of people, it's it's wild. It's all over the place. But especially in high ticket items, you know, it can take two years for someone to pull the trigger on on something. Which is weird when you go to the

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:29:38.734)
I can imagine

Kevin Mooney (01:29:41.506)
the dealership and they're trying to like push you through. You're like, Cars are sixty thousand dollars now. Like I understand that you're using that like car salesman technique. And if I can get you to just look at this one piece of paper, you're will you buy today? And you're like

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:29:59.744)
No, I'm not.

Kevin Mooney (01:30:01.644)
It's sixty thousand dollars. I have to pay four or six hundred dollars a month, whatever the number

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:30:06.732)
Right, right. Well, I think it's a it's a little bit like real estate. I mean, you know, they always say the houses sell themselves. You can't make somebody like a house that they don't like. And yet it's a super competitive market. And so you do kind of have to have your shit out there. And you have to like have the flyers and have the swag and have the stuff, you know, and and and it's the drip drip keeping yourself relevant, putting yourself in people's minds.

I do less of that now. but I also am more efficient and I and I'm not resentful of all the marketing that I'm doing. 'Cause for a while I was spending a lot of money on, you know, SEO support research, that kind of stuff, watching Google Analytics, and I don't care about those things and I don't want to spend my time doing it. So it is not a good thing for me to be doing.

It's better to just I'm not that business, you know, I'm not that business who's gonna be getting people through the algorithm, probably.

Kevin Mooney (01:31:15.276)
No, I I I mean, that was something that that is something that I've always talked about. The people that I want to work with aren't the people that need Google to make their business work. It doesn't mean that they're gonna have a successful business. It's gonna be an uphill battle, but you're gonna have to acquire your customers a completely different way. And I just like that whole philosophy better.

Right. And I'd also don't want to be the guy on the dashboards and staring and watching the numbers and Yeah. It's weird and

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:31:48.206)
I mean some people love it and good for them, but

What Angela Won't Teach

Kevin Mooney (01:31:50.430)
Well that's why we that's why we have Ryan do s our ads for us, 'cause I don't wanna do it.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:31:54.872)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally.

Kevin Mooney (01:31:57.102)
I do want to

We're we're hovering right around it. But it's the stuff that you don't want to teach. And there's that whole thread. We we touched on it sort of at the beginning, middle, and and now where we're at. This is a really good opportunity to talk about what you don't teach, what you're not willing to teach. Do you have any initial thoughts on that or do you need me to ask?

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:32:27.278)
Well I mean I think one thing I have seen is people are mixing yoga with a lot of other things. So this gets back into the, you know, devaluation of teaching, the dilution of the tradition itself, and when it becomes that you know, you're layering on yoga with

I don't know, whatever else. I mean, insert goats, insert wine, insert, you know, I need live music. I mean, and the thing is, is I don't want to be critical of those things because apparently they have their place and people enjoy them. And there's nothing wrong with having something that you enjoy. Sure. It's just that in my mind, for me, in my experience, this tradition is so replete with

wisdom and and texture and interest and beauty and friction, I don't need to add anything to it. I don't need to add more to make it valuable. In fact, it becomes a distraction from the heart of the matter. And so I think that's one thing, it's just become

you know, really clear to me. I I mean I never really was that person. I think I did have a short period where I played music in the Vinyasa Flow class. It was like a, you know, power class, power yoga, way back in the day. And that was fine. But then I was spending time making playlists. And we didn't have Spotify. And so I was I was like the Google Analytics. Like, I don't want to be doing this. This is such a waste of my time. So I think now

I'm just sticking to what I do. I don't need to do trauma informed yoga because a good teacher will respond to the people that they see in front of them. I don't need to do yoga for the nervous system. All of yoga is for the nervous system. If you've got high blood pressure, you got cholesterol issues, then you come and we work together privately. Right. Maybe you shouldn't be squatting up and down for a while. but again, it's it it's just

The Student-Teacher Relationship

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:34:53.420)
I think it's a response to people desperate to create a niche for themselves and in sort of using these gimmicks and these terms that have become popular in the wellness world to attempt to elevate what they're doing. And for me it's just not necessary.

Kevin Mooney (01:35:14.636)
I think the thing that you said that sums it up the best is the dissolution of the student-teacher relationship. That I'm not saying everything else you said was stupid. Yeah, yeah. I'm saying that is the core of the entire thing. And that's a little bit profound.

Even even in the martial arts, I think this this absolutely happens. And it's been my experience here as well, in that zone where I felt like there was no teaching. There was no relationship with that person. And maybe this is very specific to jujitsu, where the teacher doesn't give you any time.

Because you're a white belt and it's your first month and they don't care because they see a hundred and fifty of you come through every single month and three people stick. Right, right. And so they don't give you any attention until you're past a certain point. I had to stop because I was having some physical issues and I was well, I was getting my ass kicked. But right around the time that I was stopping, about a year and a half, two years in, was when

when I was starting to get some of that attention. And I was like, man, that that was what I was looking for. but all of that said, there is something to be said about a student and teacher relationship and having that very close. And and then I also understand that giving all of the information up front is probably not always the best thing.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:36:43.736)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:37:04.642)
But I'm wondering if you could speak to that student teacher relationship as it pertains to what you're doing now and and how that

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:37:11.034)
I mean, first I just have to res say I respect that teacher that you were working with. And it's again, it's not because they're holier than thou, it's not because they're so full of themselves that they can't bother with, you know, beginner students. But you you've got to give people a chance to kind of get their C legs under them. And if you're constantly trying to put your finger on the scale and make them like it more or make them like you more or whatever it is, it's it's just disingenuous.

Because that's not what we're doing. I I I don't I don't really care if you like me. If you want me to be your teacher, then we'll have a rapport. But it's not about it's not really about what you like or don't like. That's the bottom line. So I think that's a really good example. and I tend not to pay a lot of attention to a brand new student, first couple classes. Let's see how this pans out. You know, give them time.

To have their experience, to have their reaction, to see if it's something that they think there's value in, you know, it's better for both of us than me hovering around or investing a lot in them. Let's just see. It's like a it's like any relationship, you know, you don't go on your first date and talk about marriage. I mean, probably. I don't know. I haven't dated in a long time, but I'm imagining that that doesn't happen. And it's the same with with the teacher student relationship.

Yeah, and I and I do believe that without a teacher to kind of call you to the carpet, like my teachers have done, how do you know when you're going astray? How do you know when the choices that you're making are not, you know, within the the realm of your integrity or the realm of the integrity of the tradition? And I think the free we're pretty fast and loose with.

Teachers teaching. So I don't know how people would even know what they should and shouldn't do. Cause it's kind of like everything is fair game at this point. and about giving too much, same concept, you know. I see it like a graph, like a gradual uphill graph. You have the teacher on the y-axis and you have the student on the x-axis, and both of them are putting in

Come Back When You're Empty

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:39:33.250)
Little bits of effort, little bits of effort, little bits of effort, until they kind of come together. And then there's a there's a give and take. So the student needs to demonstrate an ability to hold the information that they've been given and work with it before they're given more. I'm sure you've heard the story of the student who climbs up to the Himala Himalayas and

goes on a goat and goes on a yak and goes on the ice and tries to find this teacher that he's been searching after for, you know, decades and he finally finds the teacher and the teacher's there in the cave and he says, teacher, I'm so glad to finally find you. I've been, you know, wanting to learn from you for all these years. And the teacher says, Why don't you have sit sit down and I'll pour us some tea?

And so he gets out two teacups and he gives one empty teacup to the student and he puts one empty teacup in front of himself and he pours himself half of a cup of tea and he pours himself the tea he pours the tea for the student and it starts to overflow and it pretty soon it's like spilling over the edge and the student backs away like 'cause it's hot and he's like, What are you doing? And he goes, There's no room for any learning to happen in you, just like there's no room in this teacup. Come back when you're empty.

And I mean it's an extreme example, but there's some truth to it. And the only way I know that is because of my own experience and my own teachers. If they hadn't asked me to step back from everything I thought I know.

Kevin Mooney (01:40:57.846)
Wow.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:41:19.662)
Everything I think I know. I'm good at this, I'm good at that, I'm a backbender, I'm a this, I'm a that. I mean, I loved the physical aspect of yoga just as much as the next person. And number one, little by little that changes as your body changes and as you age. But number two, you start to realize that that's really not what we're doing here. Yeah, the body's h important. It's good to keep your vessel healthy and and you know, functioning, but that's not really why we're we're doing it.

So back to the idea about the teacup, I mean, you give a little bit at a time so that it's digestible for someone. If you give everything at once, not only are you kind of overwhelming the student, but you are devaluing what you've been given because there's no foundation. You know, the when you build a house, you you s smooth everything out, you compress the earth, you make it

level. You make it really clean. Then you start putting the foundation down. You pour the footings, all that stuff. But there has to be a a bit of cleanup first.

How She Knows a Student Is Ready

Kevin Mooney (01:42:32.398)
How do you know when someone's cup is empty and they're ready? What signs or signals are you specifically looking for in that? Because it's an interesting concept. I think about it as you were talking in the jujitsu zone. I thought I was empty. I was probably full, and there was zero room to be.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:42:55.486)
taught there. It's a really good question. I think it depends a little bit on the student. Not everybody is going to present things in the same way. Some of it has to do though with are they, can they be vulnerable and ask a question? Because I have, as you know, you've been in my class, I have a little get together, the little chit-chat at the beginning of every class where I talk about what I'm going to do, what we're going to do. And then at the end I have a little

circle time and ask people if they have any questions or things to share. And the people that never risk

vulnerability by potentially asking something that may be scary to ask. It tells me that they're that there's a limit to how much, how deep they're willing to go. I mean, some people are shy and that's understandable. And it's a way of showing that you're invested. If you allow yourself to be vulnerable and you risk not looking

perfect in front of your peers or in front of the teacher. and and so the the dialogue that that I have with students can be very useful in terms of me recognizing when the readiness is there. how do they respond to instruction, you know? How do they respond to me saying you're not gonna need your mat, you're not gonna need your two gallon water bottle.

You're not gonna need all your stuff. Like just keep it out there. Just want you. Mm-hmm. It's very hard for people. A lot of people are used to having all their props and their sticky hand paws and their water bottle and, you know, their mala at the top of the mat and all that. And I'm and so like that's a very good first test, really. If person freaks out, then it's that's not gonna be the right place for them.

Kevin Mooney (01:44:54.552)
So willingness and vo willingness and vulnerability.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:44:58.134)
Willingness and vulnerability and can they absorb instruction. Many people I find are very fearful and insecure about not being good at yoga. And of course, not being good at yoga is exactly the student that you want. I mean, I tell people all the time, if you could do everything that I'm asking, then you'd be wasting your time and your money. Sure. And mine too. So let's just start.

from the common understanding that you're gonna bump up against some stuff that you can't do.

Repetition and Power From the Ground

Kevin Mooney (01:45:31.118)
How much of this is repetition as well? Because there's, you know, teaching is one thing, understanding is the next thing, and then physically doing is the next thing. And the physical part of it has to come from some level of repetition. Totally. That's how it is in jujitsu. I I understand how to do all of the moves that I was taught. I still remember them. I still think about them. Yeah. My body cannot do it or it can't remember the actual flow.

of how that thing goes. Because certainly in in jujitsu there's resistance. Somebody's resisting you. Right. In this, you're resisting probably yourself. Your self. Gravity and yeah, you know, other things. But the repetition part is that that has to be there. So you have to be willing to go through the reps.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:46:18.530)
part of it. And I would actually reverse what you said. I would say that we start I don't really want to spend a whole lot of time in the intellectual realm because it just takes people up into their head. And then they start either stressing about stressing out about what they don't understand or what they don't know or they're afraid they're going to have to be asked to remember something. And so that just creates a whole nother thing. So we start with the physical and we start with really simple things, squats.

Kevin Mooney (01:46:48.002)
Mm-hmm.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:46:48.596)
Squats with your feet together, squats with your feet apart, squats with your feet wide, toes turned in, toes turned out, one foot behind. I mean, all these different squats. And all we're really doing there is we're opening up the power structure. I don't know if it's true in martial arts, but you know, we talk about the power pathway in yoga, from the feet through the legs to the hips to the pelvis to the pelvis to the spine out through the arms and the hands. And people are not very

clear in their legs. They're not they don't have a lot of power in their legs. And I'm not just talking about like sh you know, muscle strength. So repetition is huge. And for the first few years, you're gonna be doing a lot of the same stuff. It's not the same class, but many of the components of it will be consistent from, you know, class to class. Every single class I teach almost has squats.

has lunges. I was, I was said, I did orange theory sometimes. And they had us do like an open, like do as many jump squats as you can. And I just I did so many. I was like still doing them when everybody else had petered out. I was like, you guys are 20 years younger than me. But you know, there's there's real power in that. And it's not just muscular strength. It there's there's you're you're accessing something else.

that maybe is again not really easy to put into words when you can I think of it as sourcing, sourcing your power from what's on the ground.

I te I teach people a lot about how to be in their bones rather than just contracting the muscles and enduring. Because that's only gonna get you so

Kevin Mooney (01:48:38.926)
Yeah, that's interesting. Contracting and enduring. That is I've experienced that in jujitsu. Partly because someone's trying to strangle you. Yeah. So you are contrasting and sustaining, surviving. But I know that feeling from yoga. I I used to think I was in a pose when I got to contraction. Yeah. And

That probably was not it at all. But I never really had a teacher or a mentor in that department that could let me experience that for the first couple of years and then come back and just whether it's a touch or a line two years in that you go, yeah. my gosh, the whole time I was doing it wrong. And you know, the teacher would say, You didn't do it wrong. You just didn't know yet. Yeah.

But you weren't ready for that information, so now you have it. Now take it wherever you need to go.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:49:43.192)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And that's the thing too, like I feel like back to this idea that, you know, we don't want to be told what to do. We also don't have a lot of patience. We kind of want the thing now. We want the good feeling now. Or we want the sense of accomplishment now. And yoga really comes in and and just messes up that whole signal. Just throws a big wrench into the situation. Because that's the other piece of the back to your

question about doling out information, you know, certain things have to happen in an order. We s we call it a progression. Like there's a progression. Like you, the white belt. You start with the white belt. You don't do the black belt stuff when you're a white belt. You you build your foundation and it's the same, it's the same and part of that is the patience in recognizing that you're gonna be

It's going to be a physical practice for a while. We're not getting all spiritual woo-woo. Like you're gonna be working for the first, you know, months or maybe years, depending on how much you're doing. and that's okay. We're not, you know, we we're not looking for the kundalini to thundering up the spine when you're sitting in horse pose. You're just gr you're just enduring. But then once you have that foundation, now you can hold the pose long enough.

For to to hear the teachers say, Can you drop into your heels? Can you release the jaw, let's say? And it's only after you've done a little bit of the work, put a little bit of mileage down, that then something like that lands. So, you know, to your point, it's not that you didn't hear it or that maybe it wasn't said. It's just that the system was busy doing something else. Now it's now it has a little bit of space to hear this other thing.

Kevin Mooney (01:51:36.044)
So insightful. It's I I can't tell you how much this conversation has helped me. god. It's every time we talk, I'm always like, Angie's so good.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:51:38.072)
Good stuff.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:51:43.096)
Good. I'm so glad.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:51:52.521)
Well I feel the same way.

Kevin Mooney (01:51:54.338)
Yeah, you just have all the answers. It's so comforting, it's so clean and it's so thought out. so thank you. Yeah, it's been very helpful. I I can't help but sit here and my mind is kind of wandering to all these areas of my life. It does remind me of when I was in the most mindfulness state of my life. Meaning I was

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:51:56.909)
I don't know.

Kevin Mooney (01:52:23.650)
Going to yoga every single day. Not saying that that is the part that helped, but what paired well with that was a lot of meditation. And in that time, I was the most present and and the most thoughtful. And I could recognize these things. And so I haven't felt that way until this moment where when you were sharing your stories and you were telling me those things, it just

flash back in my mind. It was like, yeah, none of this means anything at all. Like it's okay. Nothing's gonna be Yeah. So I just wanna say thank you for that.

Why She's Embarrassed to Say "Yoga Teacher"

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:53:01.897)
So interesting.

Well, you're so welcome. I mean, you know, it's a two-way street. I feel the same. I love our conversation. Yeah. I I I guess I want to say I appreciate the opportunity to speak in some depth and some thoroughness about something that is important to me. I'm almost embarrassed to tell people I'm a yoga teacher these days because it's become so meaningless.

Kevin Mooney (01:53:11.832)
It's very cool.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:53:35.870)
and I did go through a period where I would tell people that I was a yoga teacher, but then I would launch into this, you know monologue about yeah, yeah, exactly. Like how fucking annoying is that? Yeah. You know, super annoying. So that luckily is is not happening anymore. and it's just a kind of a I so so I guess the reason I bring that up.

Kevin Mooney (01:53:46.926)
But it's different.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:54:04.940)
is because it's a pretty rare opportunity other than in the classroom right with students or apprentices. It's rare to be able to speak from so many different angles about, you know, this thing that I really have committed my life to. I mean, I was up till midnight last night because we had an international phone call with the teachers. So you get up and you do that. You know, I mean that's just part of the thing.

I'll be traveling to India in December. And it's not a vacation. It's a trip. and I'm really happy that I have the opportunity to do it, but it is a big commitment. It's a big it's it's a lot of resources, you know, that go toward that. It's just rare to meet somebody who really can appreciate the complexity.

the depth. And I mean, we've had that since the beginning. I think that we wouldn't have been working together for the time w that we did unless I felt like you guys understood that.

Kevin Mooney (01:55:12.552)
Yeah, that's the whole reason that I do this show in general is the opportunity, the ability to just see where it goes, see where it takes us, uncover, say whatever you want. Unlimited. We could go for two more hours if you want. Yeah. And I don't think you get that very much anymore unless it is a personal private conversation.

with somebody very close to you that you get to to ex explore those concepts. Right. And in this situation, this will go out on the internet and live forever. Well, I don't know about forever. Yeah. But it's gonna live out there. Yeah. And the idea behind it is that hopefully anybody can find it at any time and they can inquire within and and explore on their own. That's

That's the whole idea behind it and to me that is so exciting. I do want to ask really fast, this event in December, how long are you gonna be there?

Ten Days in India

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:56:20.366)
I think it's only about ten days total. You know, the travel there and back. Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:56:23.160)
Ten days is a long time.

Yeah. What, fifteen hour flight? Eighteen hour flight? Yeah. I mean that's it that so Chris and I actually leave next Thursday for Montana. nice. So we do ten days up there. Sweet. And it's a twelve hour drive. Wow. And then so I'm comparing this to your trip. Montana's not India, but you take twelve hours on the front and the back end and then you squeeze everything in the middle. Yeah. It's

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:56:30.380)
Eighteen.

Kevin Mooney (01:56:56.526)
heck of a trip. That's a trip. And then especially for you going to another country, it's a whole thing. How do you handle the food?

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:57:04.684)
Well, luckily where I'm going is a place that they it's it's almost like a

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:57:14.488)
an Ayurvedic treatment center. So people go there if they have illness or they have things, but that's also it's also a really nice place for the teachers. So the teachers of Shadow Yoga will be there. There'll be a group of us that go from all over the world to be with them for those ten days. So we'll learn from them. But the food is very medicinal. So it's a lot of things that are cooked, sometimes beyond recognition. Sure.

You get a little stack, it's called the tali, and it's it's delivered to your room because of your constitution. So you go through this whole interview process at the beginning. Yeah. And they ask about, you know, how is this working? How's that working? They look at your tongue, they look at your skin, they they kind of get an assessment of where you might have imbalance, and then they adjust the diet accordingly for you. And so the food is very

Easy in that setting. It's all n there's not going to be any problem with the water or there's not gonna be any bacteria or anything like that. I have gotten sick in India before and it's no fun. So really it's just the travel to and from. And if I use a airline that has decent food, I usually just eat what they serve or part of what they serve. And then I have a few, you know, tricks up my sleeves, a few dried fruits or some nuts or something like that to get me through.

Kevin Mooney (01:58:37.238)
I've just heard some some stories from people that I know that have gone to India and and they say specifically India is is the the area that is very challenging for

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:58:41.645)
Real.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:58:49.238)
Very challenging. Yeah. It can be very, very challenging. You've got to be super I mean, I've been I've been quite a few times now to India and I carried a water filter with me on one trip. Because even if you buy a bottled water, sometimes they'll just take the bottle and refill it with tap water and sell it to you again. Wow. Yeah. There's a lot of there's a lot of poverty in India and so there are a lot of desperate people that will do anything to, you know.

Kevin Mooney (01:59:08.642)
Very interesting.

Kevin Mooney (01:59:17.858)
Make a buck, yeah.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:59:19.146)
Get their needs met, yeah. But I I have had a couple times I've had bad food or bad water and I I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. It's really horrible. You are down for several days and it is not pleasant.

Kevin Mooney (01:59:29.431)
yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:59:35.938)
My my business partner at the time when we went to China, he had that happen. And you know, we ate at the same place. We didn't have like the same food out of the same dish. Uh-huh. But you know, we had every meal together while we were there because we were there on business, and he got very sick. And I didn't get sick. Wow. And here's my here's my thought. When I was in China, I ate everything.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (01:59:54.526)
You didn't get sick.

Kevin Mooney (02:00:03.786)
Everything that was around me or presented to me, pigs hooves and chicken feet, and I they called it a century egg. It's essentially a like a fermented, hard-boiled egg. Yeah. hundred years. Yeah, it's what the hundred hundred year egg. And you know, it was funky. It was the the egg whites were purple, so it was very interesting.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (02:00:20.364)
Hundred years.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (02:00:26.350)
Yeah I'm sure.

Kevin Mooney (02:00:33.384)
and I I don't know, for whatever reason I didn't get sick and I ate all of those things. You're intrepid. He he he didn't he was more conservative in his eating patterns and then he got really, really sick.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (02:00:46.510)
Yeah, it could have been a never know there could be a psychological benefit to just going I'm going in my system can handle it and we're gonna just do this thing. Yeah. Maybe. But hard to say. Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (02:00:51.468)
Going in hard.

Kevin Mooney (02:00:55.566)
Or I just got lucky.

Kevin Mooney (02:01:00.002)
Well, anyways, Angie, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for doing this and you're welcome back anytime. Well appreciate that. Let's have these conversations more often. Thank you. All right.

Angela Lakshmi Norwood (02:01:10.988)
that. All right. Thank you.

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