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In today’s 24/7 always connected society, it’s so easy to get caught up in the noise and distractions of everyday life. The constant barrage of emails, Facebook notifications, and Twitter posts may keep you occupied in the moment (and more importantly make you look “busy”), but they’re also keeping you from doing the important work you should be doing to advance yourselves.
Learning how to manage your focus and avoid distractions is an absolutely vital skill to master if you want to be successful, and once you do so you will easily move ahead of 99% of the people you are competing against for jobs in the post-production industry.
In this episode I have an in-depth conversation with Yogis Anonymous co-founder Ally Hamilton, author of the new book “Yoga’s Healing Power.” We talk about how spending as little as five to ten minutes a day on your yoga mat (even if it’s in front of your desk) can rewire your brain to be less distracted and more focused on the important work you should be doing instead of reacting moment to moment to your various devices.
Ally Hamilton has been teaching yoga for twenty years and holds a passion for breaking down the gifts of the ancient practice and making them accessible to all. “They are so relevant, helpful and, in my opinion, necessary if we want to find peace, happiness and fulfillment in our modern, busy, SmartPhone-carrying, kids screaming in the backseat, mortgage is due, lives!”
Zack Arnold: I’m here today with Allie Hamilton, who is the author of Yoga’s Healing Power: Looking Inward for Change, Growth, and Peace. You are also the author of Open Randomly: Fortune Cookies for the Soul, and you are actually on this podcast, I believe it was the end of last year, to talk about that. This is actually your third time on my show, which means that you haven’t completely sucked the first two times. So, on that note, I want to welcome you back, Allie.
Ally Hamilton: Thank you very much, Zack.
Zack Arnold: So, a little bit more background about the two of us. For those that have not listened to the previous two episodes, I can put links in the show notes, so you can get a further background about Ali, how her journey got started with yoga, because I really want to jump into this with a full head of steam, but one quick thing that I want to make sure that everybody knows is that you are the co-founder of Yogi’s Anonymous, which is an online yoga studio, and it’s actually you guys have provided some content from my Optimize Yourself program as well. So I want to make sure, full disclaimer, everybody knows that we are also working together in that capacity. Yes, the other thing that I wanted people to know that haven’t listened to the first two episodes, so they understand where I’m coming from with my questions, and they understand kind of the basis of how we know each other, and this is kind of pulling something from your book, just to prove that I did read some of it before I do our interview. You talk about being on lists, and one of the things you’d said was that you know you’re listed as one of the top 100 people in the world of wellness on some internet list at some point, and I just wanted to let you know that my audience know publicly that you are on the list of the top five most influential people in helping me be the person that I am today. So I wanted to thank you for that.
Ally Hamilton: Do you know that’s a list that’s very meaningful to me.
Zack Arnold: Well, thank you.
Ally Hamilton: Yeah, other lists are like, you know, I was writing about it in the book. It’s like there’s always kind of a new.. there’s always a new list, and you make the list or you don’t make the list, and when you don’t make the list, you feel bad, and when you make the list, you know. And so, I like, a long time ago, it’s just like, I don’t.. I don’t care about lists, because if they just end up making people feel bad, and if you’re on the list, it’s like a false sense of, oh, yay, for me, you know, it’s just not, it doesn’t feed anything good. So, but a list of your five people, that’s that’s an excellent list, and I appreciate that a lot.
Zack Arnold: Absolutely, so one of the things that you and I didn’t even really realize until I read the brief bio that you had sent me for this evening’s conversation is that the whole idea behind your book is taking something that’s actually very complex, which is the practice of yoga, and breaking it down into smaller, easy to digest parts for people that don’t really understand it, which is kind of what I do for a living, whether it’s film editing or what I’ve now done with fitness and post is I love to take larger concepts that are harder to understand and break them into small little pieces, so people can say, “Oh, well, that’s not as overwhelming as I thought. So, on that note, I want you to kind of go into the brief journey of creating this book, and then why it’s structured the way that it is, because it’s a very accessible book for anybody interested in trying to understand how yoga can help them, so for example, I had originally read The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, that would be one of those that’s not an easy read when you start
Ally Hamilton: It, right? Right.
Zack Arnold: However, your book does all the same things, but in a more modern way. So, let’s just go through a little bit where the book came from and why you structured it the way that you did, and how it worked.
Ally Hamilton: Okay, so basically, I mean, you just kind of did it for me. I’ll tell you, like when I started practicing yoga, this was, I was 20, this was feels like another, it was in my senior year at Columbia University, and I started practicing, and I would say within the first year I started to experience some real shifts in my life, and I had a sense that it had to do with this new yoga practice of mine, but I couldn’t have told you exactly why it was helping me, and so I ended up doing a teacher training because I wanted to dive more deeply into the philosophy and just understand it, you know, better. And when you do a teacher training, now I’ve led many, of course, you cover the eight limbs of yoga and you cover yoga philosophy, and there are so many people who are never going to do a teacher training, but maybe even practicing for years, or people who are thinking, you know, you’re curious about it. I think what started to really concern me is that, you know, it’s all the social media and Instagram, you see all these yogis, and they’re like on yachts in Bali, and they’ve got their ankle behind their head, or they’re standing, you think, years. Well, what does this have to do with my life, you know, and my kids screaming in the backseat, or my deadlines at work, or the stress of trying to pay the mortgage, like, you know, how’s that going to help me? I’m not going to be on a yacht in Bali anytime soon. I think always my path. Question from the beginning has been to share the tools that have really helped me so much in my own life, go from somebody who is, I mean, you know, depressed a lot of the time and anxious and suffering from debilitating migraines and feeling totally lost when it came to relationships and just crashing into brick walls, you know, left and right to somebody who feels extremely excited about my life and grateful. I wake up every day and I just feel so thankful, you know, and it’s not like everything’s perfect, but I love my life now, and for me, I look at my yoga practice, it’s very obvious to me how I went from point a to point b, and it’s not like it was, you know, overnight or anything. It was a process, but that is what I really always want to be sharing, whether I’m teaching a class or I’m writing, you know, I’m trying to share these tools, because I don’t think that they’re obvious to people. I think a lot of people think yoga is just like, oh, you go in, you unroll a mat, you do this, you know, stretching thing for 90 minutes, and that’s how you, quote unquote, do yoga, and I wanted to say, like, wait, you know what, actually, there’s an entire art form science system here that you might not know about that is so applicable to your daily, modern, crazy, busy, stressful life, and it will help you in every single area, you know, personally, professionally, with your partner, with your children, with your parents, with your best friend, you know, like with your local barista, like this will help you get through the day in every way, and here’s how,
Zack Arnold: And just as a caveat, so everybody understands, you do, however, have to eat granola all day and chant to Hindu gods, correct? That is part of the package.
Ally Hamilton: Yeah, of course, you’ve got to change your name to something spiritual, and you know, go live in a cave.
Zack Arnold: So, yeah, your spirit name is what, Sunlight Beams or something, I can’t remember
Ally Hamilton: What. I, I am gonna stick with Allie Hamilton, because it’s easy to pronounce, and I’m used to it, and it is fine by me. Yeah, I think even I didn’t understand, you know, before I started doing yoga, I thought it’s stretching on the floor, I thought it was going to be too easy for me, because I had done ballet for 12 years, so it was very flexible, and I thought, you know, like something that, like, hippies do or something, and I had no idea when I, when I went to my first class, I mean, I really did have my ass handed to me, I was like, in every way, you know, so humbling, it was so hard, physically, mentally, you know, the flexibility wasn’t an issue, but, like, the upper body strength, and you know, I didn’t have that, and the breathing, and the whole state of mind, you know, I, I was really amazed by what I thought it was versus what it actually was, two very different things, and so I understand, you know, I think there’s a lot of that out there as well, where people still think, oh, you know, yoga is not for me, it’s like really new agey or something, you know. So I’m always trying to say to you know, listen, just I’m from New York, I am really a down-to-earth person, let me just share this stuff with you in a practical, accessible way, and you know many, many people are surprised, like I know when people even come to do teacher trainings, most of those people I don’t like anybody to come and do a teacher training unless they’ve been practicing, like you know, six days a week for three years, that’s that’s usually my because I want them to have a real practice, and I want the so in love with this thing. I want that to wear off, and I want you to know, I want them to understand this is a requires your discipline, and it’s like any long-term relationship. There are times when you’re in love, and there are times where you’re just maintaining, and there are times where you’re deepening. So, I like for people to have had a bit of a long-term practice before they do a teacher training, but nine times out of 10, most people, even if they’ve been practicing for three years, six days a week, don’t even realize there are seven other limbs, and there’s a whole philosophy there, along with the physical part of it. So I know that there’s confusion about that.
Zack Arnold: So the limbs, then, are the left arm, the right arm, the left leg, the right leg. That’s four. I’m lost on the other four. So, you’re going to have to explain to me. Then, how does your book break down the basic ideas of yoga in a practical lifestyle? Because I’m living in LA, and I just assume that yoga is where you go to see hot chicks stretching.
Ally Hamilton: Yeah. So, okay, so there are eight limbs, and I will tell you what they are. The first and second are the yamas and niyamas, and that’s basically, and really it would be yama and niyama, but you know, for our purposes, we can throw an s on the end there, and so the first and second of the eight limbs are the moral and ethical for. Foundation, which is basically like whatever you know, yogas shalls and shall nots, or yogas 10 commandments, you know, however you want to think of it, but every spiritual tradition has a more moral and ethical foundation, and so the yamas and niyamas, I can tell you, the five yamas are ahimsa, which means non violence or non harming Satya, which means truthfulness, E, which means non stealing, Brahmacharya, which you know traditionally meant abstinence, but we now take it to mean you know if you’re in a committed relationship, you’re not going to be like allowing a flirtation to develop over social media or online at Whole Foods, right? Apari Graha, non-possessiveness. So those are the yamas, the five yamas, the niyamas, sausha, which means cleanliness or purity. I’m just running through these for you now. Contentment, which you know, Santosha, contentment, which is basically like retraining your mind to focus on all the things you do have right now that are going well culturally. We’re so constantly encouraged to look at, like, what we don’t have and what other people have, and what we need in order to be happy, and it’s this diet, or it’s this car, it’s this partner, it’s this job, you know, it’s outside of us. So Santosha flips that around, says, “Wait a minute, stop. You know, look at what you have right now. You have your health, you have place to call home, you have food to eat, you have people in your life who love you. That’s Santosha Tapas, which is, you know, hard work, dedication, discipline, showing up for yourself, sometimes doing the hard thing. You know, the couch is calling, Netflix is calling, but you tell yourself, you know what, I’m going to unroll my mat for 20 minutes, because I know I’m going to feel better if I give that to myself. Spady, yeah, which means self-study, just knowing yourself, knowing what’s motivating you. And then Ishvar Pranidhana, Pranidana, which means devotion to something greater than yourself, you know, being aware of the fact that you’re part of something much bigger than just you. The third limb, so that’s the first two. The third limb is asana, that’s the physical part of the practice, which you know most people are familiar with. The fourth limb is pranayama, which means, you know, breath work. Prana is life force. Yama means control, so we’re taking control of the breath. The fifth limb is pratyahara, which means withdrawal of the senses, but prati means away from and ahara means food. And so it’s not that, like, oh, when you’re on your mat, you know, away from food, it’s like they’re not talking about dinner, they’re talking about thoughts that you might feed yourself, ideas, self-limiting beliefs. You know you’re going to drop away from your strong likes and dislikes, your opinions, and just breathe and allow you to feel the energy underneath all of these ideas you have about how you feel, or what you know, what you would never do, what you always do, just to let that storyline go. The sixth limb is dharana, which is uninterrupted concentration. The seventh limb is dhyana, which is like a state of being meditation, you know. I can dive into that a little bit further. And then samadhi is the eighth limb, and that’s often defined as ecstasy, but it’s non-dual absorption, or being in the flow, where you sort of, like, you forget yourself, you know, you are not most people have something that they do that is so joyous and incredible that you know an hour could go by and you like didn’t even think about yourself once, because you were whatever it is, white water rafting, or you were skydiving, or you were on your yoga mat, or you were on a hike, wherever it is that you completely join that flow, you know, you kind of like lose yourself to find yourself, that kind of thing, that samadhi. So, those are the eight limbs, super fast. I dive into any one of those topics at length, but you know that’s just a quick overview.
Zack Arnold: Well, the reason I wanted you to bring up the eight limbs very briefly is that even that super brief organization of them, for anybody that just thinks that yoga is stretching, is thinking, whoa, I didn’t understand any of that, those words are crazy, like what in the world is this thing? That’s why I like your book so much, as opposed to some other books that you can find about yoga, which are great, but the reason I wanted you on this show is that your ability to break those down into everyday situations where you can say, oh, I get it now, yeah, that’s me too. So, what I want you to do is explain to people how you actually structured each of your chapters, so they can take these much larger, harder to understand concepts, and within five to 10 pages, say, “Oh, yeah, that’s just like me, I get it now,
Ally Hamilton: Right? So, chapter one, for example, is called Breaking the Pain Cycle. There’s something that in yoga we call samskaras, which just means patterns or glutes. Grooves, and you know, most of us can look back and recognize patterns that are not serving us. Sometimes, you know, romantically, you basically keep picking the same person to date again and again, even though they have different names and they look different. You know, you find, as you get into, oh, wow, I’m in this thing again, where I’m like chasing someone who’s rejecting me. Wow, I’ve done this 20 times. Like, when am I going to stop doing that? You know, those kinds of patterns. There are some scars that are great. You might have a pattern, a groove of wanting to help people. That’s wonderful. You know, we don’t want to change that. The first, the very first chapter I wrote about was about breaking the pain cycle, because I think for so many people, and this is not just in yoga, I mean, of course, depending on who you talk to, you know, it’s a 5000 year old practice, so you know, you could say that Patanjali might have been one of the first people to, and not just Patanjali, but the whole yoga practice, the whole yoga philosophy was set forth, you know, there it really is varying, but some people say 400 CE, these ideas of like karmic inheritance, and that’s by the way the yogic philosophy is like reincarnation, and you’re gonna, you know, you’re gonna come into this life with certain lessons you didn’t learn in your past lifetime, and that’s what you’re gonna work out this lifetime, and eventually you’re going to, you know, get yourself so worked out that you won’t need a human body anymore. You’ll be enlightened, and you’ll be, you know, out there on the ethers. You don’t have to believe any of that. You don’t have to believe in reincarnation. You don’t have to believe in karmic inheritance. All you need to do is look back on your life and figure out, am I repeating patterns in this lifetime? That’s the one that you have to deal with right now, right, regardless of whether that’s true or it isn’t true, doesn’t matter. It’s like, right now, can I look back and see there are patterns in my life that are bringing me down. And so, what I’ve done in each chapter is like, I’ll introduce the topic in just a quick paragraph, some scars. What are they? What are these patterns? What are these grooves? And then I’ll share a story from my own life. And so, like, in chapter one, I talked about this horrendous relationship I had with this man who personified the two traits in each of my parents that had caused me so much confusion and grief growing up, you know. And I’m trying to really give you the abridged version here, but he was very elusive. I could never get his attention, I could never get his approval, I could never get his love, I could never even get his time, and he also had a tremendous fidelity problem, very much like my dad, and I jumped into that situation thinking, oh boy, do I know this is like home, I know what this is, you know, for different reasons. I always felt like I never could quite get my mom’s, you know, attention and approval, and that was something that was painful during my childhood. And my dad was constantly, when I was little, he was really struggling with commitment, and I was exposed to all kinds of stuff around that, and so I picked somebody who had both of these things, and I thought, and I, you know, of course, didn’t realize that that’s what I was doing, and that’s why I felt so pulled to go out with somebody who was 21 years older than me. I was trying to rewrite history and, like, get my happy ending, you know, and I think so many people do that, and I’m not the first person to make that observation. Freud talks about it with the repetition compulsion, and Carl Jung talks about, you know, until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate. That’s a quote of his, you know. And I remember when I read that for the first time I was like, whoa boy. So, what I, what I did in chapter one, and every other chapter is short paragraph about this is what we’re talking about, samskaras, you know, repetitive patterns that bring us pain, and how to stop doing that. Then I shared a story from my life, horrendous relationship, another heartbreak. And then I dove into the philosophy more deeply. At the end of each chapter, there are journaling questions, so people can think about, well, how does this release me? Do I have patterns in my life that are causing me pain? Can I look back? Because you can’t change something if it’s outside of your awareness. So the first thing is to figure it out and to make sure you’re aware, you know, if you do, and then I have very simple yoga practices and meditation practices that relate to the topic of each chapter, and each chapter follows the same format, concept, story, and the reason I feel like we’re wired for stories, I wanted to explain in modern terms, you know, and like direct examples that people can relatable stories, you know, why this is so relevant, you know, and why it’s so helpful today, you know, yes, it’s an old practice, but I mean. Using it today, I’m divorced. I have two small kids. I’m in business with my ex-husband. Here’s how I use this practice in tangible, practical, daily ways, you know, to make peace with that, and to still show up with the best of myself, and to practice. Like, how do you come back with love when the picture in your head of how things should be, you know, is not resembling how your life is looking. How do you, how do you handle that in a healthy way? That’s what I, that’s what I wanted to do with this book,
Zack Arnold: And I think that it does that very, very successfully, because you really just feel like you’re reading somebody’s journal entry to you. It’s not overwhelming. It’s not a sense of being very academic or having all these words in Sanskrit that you can’t read nor pronounce. So you really feel like somebody’s explaining to you, hey, here’s this crazy thing called yoga, here’s how you can apply it to your own life, here’s how it applied to my life. But not only that, here are action steps that you can take that anybody can do, so it’s not like you get to the end of a chapter and it says, all right, you’re going to do these 37 poses in this order, and if you don’t do it in this order, well, then you haven’t done it good enough, so try it again, and once you do it, then move on to the next chapter. It’s, it’s as simple as saying just stand in mountain pose, and you know, think about the things that I just wrote in the previous chapter, which somebody could think, oh, well, what am I going to get from that, but you’d be amazed how just stopping and being present for just five minutes, doing one or two poses, can reshape your entire day or your entire week, so I think that’s that’s really the big reason I wanted to introduce people to this book specifically. Is this it’s just incredible level of accessibility, and I’m really glad that you brought up the idea of the samskaras, or these grooves of the unconscious mind, because that was where I dove to immediately, and it may seem odd for people that have found this podcast through the website, because I’m actually classifying it under the category of career advancement, not movement or activity, and you’d be thinking, well, wait, I don’t understand yoga as a physical practice, but what I want people to understand is how they can reshape their mindset about how they allow other people to treat themselves, and more importantly, how you treat yourself and how you speak to yourself by using your yoga mat, so that’s actually one of the biggest reasons that I wanted to bring you on us to talk about that idea about how we allow people to treat us a certain way, and then how we treat ourselves a certain way, because it’s my belief that’s part of the reason that we’ve gotten into this groove as a society of really becoming an extension of our workstations and our computers and our phone and our technology, and no longer even really understanding who we are or being comfortable in silence.
Ally Hamilton: Yeah, I have so much to say about all of that. I mean, the first thing I think I would, I would say is, you know, when I started practicing yoga, the foundation of everything in your life, like every single thing in your life is the relationship you’re having with yourself, that’s it, right? And so that’s not right, nothing else is going to be right, and nothing else is going to flow the way that it could, and that’s the truth, you know. So when I began to practice, and I would get on my mat, and you know, I would pay attention to my breath and pay attention to sensation in my body. I began to realize, recognize how incredibly harsh my inner dialog was, and you know, part of it was that I had taken ballet for 12 years, and I came out of that mindset of, like, you know, it’s not okay to fall, and you know it’s all there’s my type A personality, there was so it was so fed, and I already had that tendency to think I had to try harder or be better in order to be worthy of love, you know, I had to like grab those brass rings and get those straight A’s and look perfect, and you know, say the right thing, and you know, it’s like that’s what I thought love was conditional, and it would be withdrawn unless you were perfect, and so I brought all of that and 12 years of ballet onto my yoga mat, and I began to observe that the quality of my inner dialog was just so harsh and unforgiving and unkind and shaming and relentless, and you know, I was always been kind, you know, I was never like mean as a kid, I just wasn’t that person, as far as like how I related to other people, always caring, and you know, but the way I treated myself was awful. I mean, it really was. It was.. I look back and I have a lot of compassion for myself. It was terrible, and I didn’t even realize that, you know, I just thought, well, this is the way things are. Arr, you don’t even question the quality of your inner voice, you know, but if you heard someone else, you know, saying the things that you say to yourself, and you would characterize that as abusive, well, then you got to like really pay attention to what’s happening, and for me it was like, if I took a right when I should have taken a left. It was like, you know, you idiot, God, you know, what are you going to get it to get like bad? And it was all day long, little things, big things. I mean, if I made a big mistake, maybe said something I didn’t, I wish I hadn’t said, I would berate myself, you know, for days. And I, and I lived like that. And then I got on my yoga mat, and I’d fall out of a pose, and you know, seemed I would feel my whole body turn red from shame, you know. My God, that people behind me must think I’m like such an idiot, I can’t, that you know, whatever these stories that we tell ourselves, and no one cares behind you, like no one, because they’re in their own, they’re in their own process, you know, and so, but just having that awareness is what enabled me to start to shift it. I just decided I don’t want to live like that anymore. I don’t want to judge myself so harshly anymore. I don’t want to set the bar so high that the only result that there could possibly be is disappointment. I don’t want to do that, and so when I was on my yoga mat, I just decided, and it was a conscious decision, I’m going to try to start to feed a loving, compassionate, kind voice, I’m going to see if I can shift that inner dialog, so that instead of having someone in there who’s like constantly tearing me down, I’ve got a voice that’s rooting me on, and I was not overnight. It was not a matter of weeks, but just the process of bringing that into my consciousness and making a decision to try to shift it was so motivating and so kind of exciting and inspiring that even though it took time, because it’s rewiring your very system, right? I was excited to stick with that. I was excited to get on my mat and try it again, and try it again, you know, and do it again the next day, and like keep working on it until that voice started to follow me out the door and into my life, and that’s a huge life-changing situation there, and so, yeah, putting this podcast in career advancement makes a lot of sense, because it’s all what is happening within you, you know, whatever is happening around you is really a reflection of what’s happening within you, and if you are really hard on yourself, if you’re at war within yourself, if you’re in a constant state of disappointment. There’s it’s going to affect the way you move through the world, and if you have doubts about your own worthiness, you know, if you have doubts about whether you’re lovable, if you have doubts about whether you have something really special to contribute, of course that is going to affect the way you present yourself, the kind of treatment you accept, the kind of salary you accept, the kind of position you accept, whether somebody at work is rude or abusive or dismissive or disrespectful, you know, whether you’re going to accept that. I mean, it affects everything, and that is why, you know, step one is to work on the relationship you’re having with yourself. Let me grow in self-respect, and you know, recognizing, wow, 7 billion people on the planet, there’s just one of me that’s pretty incredible. Never been another me before, never going to be another me after, you know. Let me honor that and recognize that and figure out what are my particular gifts to share, because nobody else has your exact memories, experiences, ways of thinking about things. You’re unique, so you have something to offer that only you can. You know, and if you don’t uncover that, then you rob the world of gifts that only you can bring, and if you don’t even recognize that, you know, like recognizing that and owning that is step one, you know, to like shifting things and deciding, you know, what, that’s not a job I’m going to take, or this is not a job I’m going to say, I’m going to start actively looking for some other job, because this environment is so unhealthy, I can’t thrive here. You know, it’s that’s the difference. Like feeling good about yourself and feeling that you have something really special to offer is the difference between accepting poor treatment or not, standing up for yourself or not being able to say calmly, hey, this isn’t okay for me. Can we fix this together, or is this just like how things are done around here? Because I know myself, and I know I can’t, I can’t give you my best if this is how it has to be. You know, I mean, it’s being able to have those conversations, you know, without the fear. Now, of course, look, if you got a family to support. Support, and you’re, you know, you need health insurance. I get that. I have kids, I understand. But then my feeling is you start to actively seek something better for yourself. You know, you put out the feelers, you talk to your friends, you, you figure out, you go back and you talk to somebody that you went to school with, or whatever it is, somebody you worked on a show with. Hey, do you know of anything that’s out there right now? Because I am not okay where I am, it’s not going to work for me for the long haul. You know, it’s like you’re proactive because you care about yourself enough to not accept poor treatment, and that applies not just to work, but also your relationships, right? Like every part, like your familial relationships. If you’ve got an abusive history with your parents, well, you know what, you can’t change other people, but if you change the way you deal with them, the situation changes. People then understand, oh, the rules are not what they once were, and if I want to play with this person, I have to shift what I’m doing, or I’m not going to get any access,
Zack Arnold: And that’s really the key to all of this, to kind of backtrack just a tiny bit, is talking about this idea of how you talk to yourself, and then you already kind of led into it for me, so it’s almost like you read my list of invisible questions, is the idea that once you allow yourself to speak to yourself in a way that’s disrespectful, you then allow other people to do that, and that’s why I wanted to bring this into the arena of careers and career advancement, because, and I talked about this in our previous podcast, where yoga is kind of like my secret weapon, and I think is a big reason for where I’ve gotten in my career thus far is that I got on the mat and I realized the way that I was treating myself was unacceptable, because I am, or I was, a perfectionist. I now call myself a recovering perfectionist, and my belief is that perfectionism is just an excuse to never finish anything. And once I realized that, I’m like, oh, I need to be not so hard on myself, but once I started to respect myself, treat myself better, which is really the heart of this entire program, and why I started it. It’s not just about, oh, you should be moving more in your office, and you should be eating better, and you should be doing these things to save time in your day by being more productive. It’s, how do I take my life back by respecting myself and thus commanding respect from others, and a really good example of where I think I can say that yoga helped me get where I am in one way or another would be the TV show Empire. Part of the reason that I got to that show is because of my ability to develop relationships with other creative professionals, not be too hard on myself, because I know I used to be so hard on myself if I got a note or I didn’t agree with it, or that was a big issue that I had to deal with, and then the higher and higher I got, the more vitriolic the notes can get when you’re dealing with certain people on certain shows in Hollywood, but then I started to realize, well, these people just kind of have their own behavior patterns as well, so I really need to stop taking all this so seriously, and realize that they’re dealing with their own issues. I’m dealing with my own issues, and we just kind of need to work with what’s there, and it’s not the kind of thing you have to do for 90 minutes a day. There was a period when I was much younger where I did, but now it can be as little as five minutes to center myself, loosen up a few stuck areas, and move forward with my day, so that’s where I think that they’re going to be so much benefit from adopting just a very, very simple yoga practice, as opposed to saying, well, I’ve got to go three times a week for 90 minutes, or I’m just not doing it right.
Ally Hamilton: Yeah, no, a big part of, you know, it’s funny because we, so you know, we’ve got the, you mentioned this earlier, but we’ve got the brick and Mortar studio in Santa Monica. We have this beautiful community, people that come, and you know, regulars, and so gratifying, and you know, people I’ve known for years, like you, you know, who are still showing up, because they still live on the West Side, and you know, and then we have the streaming, you know, we have the website, the video website, where we, we have classes, live classes that we film that we then transmit across the globe, you know, and then we also have like these short one on ones where like I’ll go in and I’ll stream a 30 minute just short flow 15 minute, 10 minute, and other teachers as well, you know, amazing, which is a great, great crew of teachers, and that was one of the main surprises for me, is because you know we started getting feedback and saying, well, what are people watching? There are significant number of people that watch like the full classes and want to join in, and I think that one of the things that sets us apart from some of the other sites is we don’t edit, so I’m sure that makes you cringe as an editor, but you know it’s just raw, you know what I mean. It’s like, whatever I say, or whatever happens, or if I screw up the sequence, it’s just that’s how you know whatever happened in the class is what’s going out there on the site, and there’s something people love it, you know, because they feel like they’re in an actual live class throwing their map down, and then there are the people. That want, like, you know, what? I don’t have an hour, I don’t have 7590 like, I have 10 minutes today. Do you? And there’s, I have a whole bunch of classes up there for people like that, because I would rather 10 minutes a day is better than zero minutes, you know, five minutes is better than zero, any number of minutes that you can devote to tuning in and seeing how you are and getting right with yourself is better than no minutes, so I don’t care what somebody decides, like start where you are, pick something really manageable, but just stay with it, and see in like a couple of weeks if you don’t start to feel a shift, you know, whether it’s like you saved yourself five minutes, I’m going to take five minutes in the morning, and I’m just going to sit up nice and tall and feel myself breathing, and if my mind wanders, that’s okay, I’m going to just come back to my breath, you know, and it’s not that I’m trying to get rid of my thoughts, I’m just trying to stay with this awareness of my breath, if my mind wanders away, I’m going to pick it up and bring it back, and I’m going to do that for five minutes. I’m just going to see what happens in the rest of my day. You were talking about taking notes from people, and you know what? Immediately, what popped into my head is years ago I dated this guy who had incredible road rage, like I had never been up close and personal to that to this degree before. I had seen, you know, people flare up here and there occasionally if something really outrageous happened, but this was like every single time we got in the car, it was crazy time, and you know, I remember talking to him and saying, like, you know, this person who just cut you off, you know, they cut off 40 people behind you, and they’re going to cut off 40 people in front of you. It’s not personal, it’s just what they do, you know, like that’s just how they drive. It has absolutely nothing to do with you, except that you let it raise your blood pressure just now, you know. So it’s the same thing if somebody is rude or disrespectful, and that’s their communication style. It really has nothing to do with you, but it feels personal, you know. When you get it, like a note from somebody that’s really rude, or you know, sometimes I answer the studio phone, and people, it’s incredible, you know. Or I see, I get emails, and like some people are so kind and wonderful and considerate and know how to communicate, and other people are so rude or entitled or disrespectful, and it’s shocking, you know. You’re like, as somebody who’s a sensitive person, it, of course, it feels like a personal attack. Whoa, why is this person sending me an email like this so outrageous? But has nothing to do with me. It’s that’s where they’re at, you know. That’s a reflection of what’s happening within them. I don’t have to allow that to upset me. I don’t have to get involved in that, you know. And so I think that’s a huge thing that you can really work on on your mat too, is just being accountable for the energy that you are contributing, being aware of, like, okay, what do I have within me here, and then whatever you have within you is what you’re going to spread right as you walk around through the day. So, if you can spend some time kind of filling your tank with patience and compassion, and you know, whatever it is that you need to work, less reactivity, you know, you’re going to have all those qualities to offer as you’re walking around the world, and that’s the part of it that is also really exciting to me, is that these are, you know, gifts that you give to yourself, but they end up affecting everyone and everything around you, and I feel like I think most of us can look around at the world right now and agree that it could be a lot more peaceful and tolerant, and kind, and compassionate. How do you affect that change? I think individually we have to go inside and, like, look at the inner world, you know. Are we at war within ourselves? Are we at peace? You know, are we kind to ourselves? Like, what? What is what is happening? Because if you’re practicing aggression on your yoga mat. Well, then that’s what you’re strengthening, and you know you’re going to walk out the door with that if you can practice the reverse of that. If you can practice, practice acceptance or understanding, you know that’s what you’re going to strengthen, and that’s what you’re going to have to offer. So I really do think that it’s such a key ingredient to not just your own individual inner peace, but also, you know, peace in general, more peaceful, like way of being. I’m kind of like one of those one yogi at a time people, you know, let’s just try to increase the happiness quotient in the world here, one person at a time,
Zack Arnold: Yeah, and the one thing that I would add to the list of all the things that is going to lead us to the next part of our discussion is, are you distracted? Because this is a huge thing for me, and what I have realized and discovered of the lot over the last few years in kind of trying to dissect. People that are successful, how they’ve gotten where they are, or how I’ve just kind of lived my own journey in my own life, is that over the last, I will say, five years or so, the level and the amount of distraction that we have in our daily lives has completely gotten out of control to an exponential degree, and as frustrating as it is for me, what’s really cool about it, and another reason I wanted to put this idea of using yoga to advance your career is that I’ve learned that if you just learn how to manage and take responsibility for the energy you bring into a room, which is something you talk about, but you learn how to manage your focus, and that you’re giving your full presence and attention to a person in the room. You are going to be light years ahead of your colleagues and your so-called competition if you’re trying to advance in your career, because one of the things that I’m told most often by other producers and directors is they’re like, it’s just, it’s such a calming, pleasant experience to work with you in the room, because it’s just the two of us. I just feel like it’s it’s the one moment of calm in my day, and there aren’t distraction, there’s there’s not outside noise. None of that is a coincidence. That’s very intentional, where I eliminate everything that would be a distraction if I have somebody in the room, and it’s just the two of us. And the flip side of that is, if you’re working with somebody that never looks you in the eye, because they’re always looking down at their phone, because they’re texting somebody, they’re in the middle of a sentence, and they answer their phone, or they just walk out of the room, and you’re trying to tell them something important, that’s not a relationship that you’re going to want to cultivate. So, if you can just learn how to manage your focus and the presence you’re bringing into a room, you are going to skyrocket in your career in today’s day and age of constant lack of focus, and this is something you talk about being able to hone very clearly, and you can develop it like a muscle, no different than trying to make your quad stronger by doing warrior two. So, I want to talk a little bit about the use of meditation and the use of breath to really start to develop your focus and your presence.
Ally Hamilton: Yeah, it’s all part of pratyahara, which I was talking about earlier, like withdrawal of the senses away from fruit, food, right? Pratyahara and focal points, they’re called drishtis, but focal points, when you’re in each pose, each pose has a focal point, so in warrior two, for example, the focal point is over the front fingertips toward the horizon, that’s where you’re directing your gaze, and each pose has different, you know, different focal point, but if you work those, if you work those points of focus, so many different things are happening, first of all, you’re training your mind to do one thing at a time, you know, secondly, you’re taking in less information from the world around you, so that you can focus more deeply on the one within you. That’s what you’re doing on your mat, but it’s the same skill that you’re practicing that you will use when you go to a busy restaurant, and you want to pay attention to what your friend is saying, and not all the chaos around you. It’s the same muscle, you know, every time you work those focal points on your mat, and it’s not just the visual, the focal points, but also you’re focusing on the breath, that’s something that’s happening right here, right now. You’re focusing on sensation in your body, happening right here, right now. The more you practice being present, being focused, directing your attention, because there’s a saying where your attention goes, your energy flows, you know, and if your attention is scattered, well, your energy is as well. So, learning how to direct your focus, it follows you everywhere, you know. So, yeah, there is no doubt. If you can practice that stuff on your mat, it becomes a lot easier to decide. Right now, I am choosing to be in this room with this person, and to focus on what they’re saying. Do you know how unusual that is? I mean, I’m not surprised that it has served you well in your career, because most people just want to be seen and heard and understood. And I talk to people all day long, you know, after class is over, people want to connect. I tell you, I think sometimes that’s what they’re coming for. They just want the two minutes after class to have a conversation where somebody’s actually looking them in the eye and listening and maybe putting a hand on their shoulder. It is so unusual in this day and age to be seen that way and to be heard, that if you can offer that to people, believe me, you’re going to stand out, and not just professionally, but personally in relationships. I mean, it’s such a bummer, you know, when you have a partner, for example, and you come home at the end of the day, and you want to connect, and you want to share, and everybody’s exhausted, you know, everybody’s just, you know, whatever it is, we all have our pressures and stuff. It’s so I think common for people to like kind of numb out, you know, like let’s just binge watch Netflix. I can’t, I just can’t talk right now, or I can’t really connect, or I’m scrolling. On my phone, you know, some guy wrote an article about how he lost his wife to her iPhone six, and you know, it’s like it feels, I think, for people like the easier choice to zone out, but it’s really the harder choice, because you lose that deep connection, and you lose that genuine, you know, the stuff that bonds people together, and that bonds families together, and that is the stuff that makes a friendship last for decades. You know, is what it is – is connection. That’s what people really want. You’re not going to find it on the device, you know. Getting a lot of likes is no replacement for having actual human connection. And I do think people are online so much because they want to feel like they’re not missing out and they’re connected and they know what’s going on, but going and seeing your friend and having a conversation in person, I mean that’s like the real stuff, you know, that’s the genuine stuff, your attention, your energy, your presence, those are really the greatest gifts, your time that you have to give anybody.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, and if somebody is listening right now and they’ve been trying to figure out how is it that I can move a little bit more forwards in my career, whether it’s editing or graphic design or whatnot, and you have 30 minutes a day that you can set aside to learn Final Cut Pro 10 or learn Adobe Premiere or learn Maya to do 3D modeling. If your choice were to take those 30 minutes and learn that or learn how to manage your focus and your presence and your energy in a room, I’ll bet a million dollars that if you focus on the latter, you’re going to get further along in your career than figuring out how to press the buttons on a piece of software, because truth be told, I’m not very good with editing software. I’m okay, and I can do what I need to do, but I meet so many people that are like, “You don’t know how to do that, and you can do this and that, and I’m like, “Yeah, the version I’m on is like seven years old, but I can kind of do what I need to do to tell my story. But it’s because I’ve decided not to focus my personal development on the technical side is to develop the skills as a human being to connect with people that so few people have, and the last thing that I want to kind of touch on, I want to be conscious of your time, and I know that we’re running a little bit over, but I really wanted to hit on this idea of stealing other people’s time, that was something that you mentioned briefly, and how that’s actually valuable to them, and this is rampant in our industry, and this kind of piggybacks with the idea of focus, where if you are so unfocused and so busy with your phone or with your text or returning people’s emails or whatever it is that you can’t follow through and say to somebody, hey, I’m going to spend the next hour with you doing this or whatever it is, and then you don’t follow through, and somebody’s just sitting there drumming their fingers, you’re stealing that time away from their life that they can’t have back, and if you can learn how to manage that as well, and give that to somebody, and have that consistency, and that loyalty, that’s going to serve you light years more than studying a piece of software, and that’s something you talk about as well,
Ally Hamilton: Yeah, E is means non-stealing, and you know it’s funny because all of the Yamas and Niyamas, it’s like there’s the surface level, like you know, your gut, like okay, non stealing, right? I’m not going to go into a store and like steal an apple, you know, I would never do that, right, but but then there’s like the deeper, more kind of nuanced exploration of that non-ceiling, and like, you know, if you’re chronically late, you know, it’s everybody, look, this is where you and I are, we’re in Los Angeles, you know, there legitimately things happen sometimes, there’s an accident on the tent, or whatever it is, you know, so, so we’re all going to be late sometimes, and that’s just that’s just part of reality. But if you are always late, if you’re always like 1520 minutes late to meet your friends, you are constantly stealing time from people. And could your friends sit at a restaurant and email, or you know, call someone, or two, yeah, they can, but that’s time they set aside for you, and you’re not there, you know, so you have, you have stolen that time away from them, maybe they could have, like, taken their dog for a walk, or, you know, whatever it is, I decided to go get a foot massage, I mean, there’s a lot of things people can do with 20 minutes, and you know, you can’t, you can’t give somebody’s time back to them, and it’s something to look at, or you know, sometimes people, you hear the term energy vampires, you know, where you go hang out with somebody, and every time you hang out, and you feel drained, because they want, they either want you to manage their feelings for them, or they’re trying to get you to help them make choices that only they can figure out, or people who don’t read social cues, you know, and you’re trying to leave, and they’re going to keep talking to you, or introduce the next topic, and sometimes it happens on the phone, even you’re trying, I, you know, what I’ve really got to go, I’ve got somebody walking in the tour right now, okay, yeah, and then they keep talking like. There are all kinds of versions of ways that you know you can steal somebody’s time or energy, and being aware of that and accountable is really huge. If you know that you’re chronically late, like if you listening to this conversation that you and I are having, if somebody’s hearing this and they, oh God, I’m late all the time, it’s not that you want to beat yourself up for that. Okay, it’s like to look at that. What is what is going on there? Why am I always late? You know, is it am I addicted to stress? Do I intentionally set things up so that I can berate myself as I’m driving somewhere late panicking about trying to find parking? You know, do I do that on purpose because I’m so used to being in a state of stress, or because I’m so looking for an excuse to beat myself up, I’ve now created circumstances so that I’m going to do it on a regular basis, on a daily basis. You know, there are so many different things that motivate behavior sometimes that are not obvious. It’s not just usually if somebody’s chronically late, it’s not just that they’re poor, you know, they don’t have good time management skills. There’s something usually deeper and psychological underneath that, and you know, if that’s something that you struggle with, you want to try to solve that. You know, what is that thing? What is motivating that behavior? Because until you figure out what that is, it’s going to be really hard to shift it. So, yeah, and then you know what you were talking about, like the texting and the distraction, and it feels terrible, you know, if you’re in a conversation with somebody and you see their eyes glaze over and you know they’re not really there anymore, they’re not really available to you anymore, they’re not really listening, it’s not a good feeling, you know, it’s the same thing if you’re having a conversation with somebody on the phone and you can tell that they’re doing something else because the pauses don’t make sense, or you know, you finish what you were saying, and there’s just a really long, you know, and you know, wow, this person’s like, they’re they’re not with me, they’re somewhere that doesn’t feel good.
Zack Arnold: Wait, I’m gonna just start that over. Sorry, I totally missed, like, the last five minutes that this guy just texted me. I so apologize, it’s so inappropriate.
Ally Hamilton: It’s really
Zack Arnold: Funny. So, yeah, no, I know exactly how you feel, and like I said, if people really want to make an impression and they want to move forwards, don’t worry so much about the software. I’m not saying learning the software isn’t important, but if you learn how to hone these skills, you are going to skyrocket forwards, and you are going to stand out so far and above anyone else. And speaking of energy vampires, I know that I said this was going to be an hour, but I only have 18 more questions that I want to get through, so hopefully you’ve booked the next three hours. Clearly, that’s a joke. So, what I always want my audience to walk away with is concrete actions that they can take. I don’t want them to just listen to something and say, “Oh, that’s inspiring, and then they’re done with the podcast and they go about their daily life, so outside of the first action step, which in my opinion is to go out and get your book to avoid you having to do your own self promotion, I’ll help you there and say that’s the first action step, but assuming they’ve done that or assuming they don’t do it, what’s the first action step that somebody should take if they just want to take that first small baby step towards making some of these improvements.
Ally Hamilton: I mean, honestly, if you were going to do nothing else, you know, I would say begin a gratitude practice. So, first thing in the morning, before you get out of bed, you know, think about one thing that you’re really grateful for, can be anything, doesn’t matter, you know, just the fact that you opened your eyes and you have another day to like work it out, or you know the person next to you, or if there is one, you know, your dog or your cat or your fish, or you know, whatever it is, like just one thing that you’re grateful for, and to do the same thing at the end of the day, just one thing, I think if you weren’t going to do anything else, but that, that would start to shift things for you, because culturally we’re constantly, you know, trained to look at, as I was saying earlier, what we don’t have, what isn’t, you know, what we isn’t happening yet, or what other people have that we don’t have, that comparing and contrasting disease to start to shift that for yourself and come from a place of abundance and gratitude instead of fear and lack is a huge, it’s a huge shift.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, and I, it’s funny, I never would have thought to even bring that up, and I’m glad that you’d get so.. I am going to energy vampire another two minutes from you, if you don’t mind. But this is a huge one that people need to understand, is not some frou-frou like out in the clouds yogic thing. There’s plenty of science that actually backs up that having a daily gratitude practice will rewire your brain to see the world more positively, and one example that I can give, especially in crazy, just high-stress world of working in Hollywood years ago, if there would be chaos, and there’s pretty much always chaos, and everything is a thing, and everything always comes up, and there’s always things that are late, and you just get so stressed out, and worried. Oh my god, we’re going to be a day later, we can’t deliver this. And I actually had this conversation with somebody recently, and it’s just.. I must have sounded crazy, but they’re like, oh my god, this is happening, like, why aren’t you so stressed out? And I’m like, because my legs work, like it’s a TV. Like my legs work fine, my lungs work, I can breathe in and out. Like, why do I care about a deadline? And having that kind of rewiring in my brain comes from having a gratitude practice. So I’m so glad that you brought that up. I never would have thought to bring that up. So that’s awesome.
Ally Hamilton: I mean, I feel really passionately about that. It’s that’s another life-changing thing when you rewire your brain, so that you are constantly aware of the gifts in your life, it shifts everything. You know, there’s not a day that goes by, there’s not an hour that goes by, there’s not.. gosh, I don’t even know if there’s like a minute that goes by that I don’t feel so much gratitude for my children, you know, it’s shocking to me that I get to be their mom, you know, and I get to have this experience. It’s just, it’s the shock does not wear off, and my son is nine and a half, and my daughter’s seven. It doesn’t have to be kids, it’s just there has to be something that you are aware of, you know, that you’re grateful for, and to keep it is a rewiring process, because culturally, or so the messages were inundated with messages, you know, that we’re not good enough, and we don’t measure up, and you know we need this product, or whatever it is, you know, in order to get right, that it, you truly do need to like work it, it’s a muscle, you know, you need to, you need to exercise it, and you can, you can shift your whole way of thinking, so that the whole day you’re spending thinking about, wow, I have, like, my good health, and you know, I have this house that I really love, and I have two arms and two legs, and I can breathe deeply, and I have food in my refrigerator, and I can turn on the faucet and have running water, and you know, just to keep reminding yourself, and that’s why, you know, like I talk about the sun salutes, just to bring it back to yoga for a second, but you know, you’re on your mat and you’re doing sun salutations, and you know that’s what they’re called, and they’re heat building, they’re, you’re that’s how you warm up, you know, you, you heat up every major muscle group that way, but also you’re saluting the sun, you know, you’re remembering, like, wait a minute, you know what, if the sun were not up in the sky, we wouldn’t be down here, and you know, we’re on this pale blue dot, right, and to remember that, like that’s amazing, we use the word amazing all the time. Oh, this burrito is amazing. No, it’s not, you know, but the sun in the sky is amazing, like that actually is amazing, you know. Oh, those pants are incredible. Well, no, they’re not really incredible, but you know, like having this embodied human experience is pretty incredible, having people in your life that you love more than you know how to express in words, that’s incredible, you know, and just to keep reminding yourself of those things, because if you turn on the radio, you turn on the TV, the opposite messages are going to be flying at you constantly, you gotta like remind yourself, I think that’s a real huge, huge life changer, and then you, you really are, you’re, you feel you know, you’re coming from a place of abundance, and therefore you have things to offer and things to share, and you’re not, you can celebrate for other people and not feel like somebody else is going to steal your place in the sun, you know, there are people that can’t celebrate for their friends because they feel threatened, that’s really sad, you know, you had somebody in your life that you care about, and something good happens through them, you want to be able to celebrate that.
Zack Arnold: Well, all of that having been said, I want to make sure that everybody listening to this, when they’re done, take a couple of minutes, go visit Fitness and Post com slash Yogi, and I’m now going to give you a little bit of time for your own self-promotion to explain what it is that you have to offer there, as far as your book, your practice, or further online learning.
Ally Hamilton: Yeah, so we did different things there. You can just get the book if you want to, and then there are also other options where you can get the book, and you can get a year subscription to the site. So, if you’re thinking to yourself, like, you know what, I want to give this a shot, I want to try this. You know, it’s maybe outside my comfort zone, but I’m curious, and I know it’d be good for me to move every day. You know, you get the book, you understand what this whole eight limb thing is about. You have some tools for a living and for shifting things that are not working for you, and you also have access to a website, and so, like I said, there are all these short practices I think anybody could commit to, like I’m going to take 10 minutes a day and just see if I can take care of myself, you know, that’s not that’s not asking too much, so there’s that option, and then I also have I do coaching sessions with people, and so there’s a five week coaching program, where it’s a call in once a week, you know, live call in people that can’t tune in at that time can always watch the talk later, but I talk for 30 minutes about the topic of the week, like starving a loud inner critic, for example, and then there’s 30 minutes Q and A. Okay, and then there’s homework for the week, and three yoga classes around the theme of the week, and it goes on for five weeks, and that’s called the Pathway to Peace Coaching Program. So, you can get that, plus the book, you can get everything, you can get the book coaching program, and the online subscription. So, there are different options for different people, depending on what they’re looking for, and you know how much they want to commit, but honestly, I am really, really happy with the way the book turned out. It’s been a labor of love. It took, you know, about the better part of two years, and I feel like after 25 years of practicing, I feel like I was able to get across, and you know it’s so funny, Zack, because you know from being in class, but the book, the chapters really follow the way I teach things in class too, because I’ll usually talk about, you know, this is the topic, and then I’ll share a story from my life, and then you know, dive into the philosophy more, and boom, so I feel like people are wired for stories. I feel like I was able to accomplish what I set out to do with the book, so
Zack Arnold: Yeah, there’s no question about that. And I think I probably had, I don’t know, I don’t know, for sure, but maybe 25 to 30 different yoga instructors. You’re the only one that, while I’ve been in a difficult pose, has talked about stealing cheese. So, yes, you love to tell your stories, and that’s the reason why everybody comes back, is to hear all about the stolen cheese.
Ally Hamilton: Thanks, Dad.
Zack Arnold: So, that having been said, I have stolen enough of your time and your energy past our allotted time, but I really hope that people have been inspired to just take a small first step towards better health through yoga. So, Allie, as always, it is a tremendous pleasure to have you on the show, and I wish you all the best in the world with the release of your book in your program.
Ally Hamilton: Thank you so much, Zack. Thank you. Really, it’s always, always great to talk to you.
This episode was edited by Curtis Fritsch, the show notes were prepared by Jakin Rintelman, and this show is executive produced by Kanen Flowers. We are a member of the THAT STUDIO podcast network.
The music in the opening and closing of the show is courtesy of Dorian Cheah from his brilliant album ARA.
In this episode Zack chats with Ally Hamilton, the owner and founder of Yogis Anonymous, a yoga studio in Santa Monica, California that also offers classes online for every ability level. They discuss the basic idea behind yoga, how practicing yoga can improve your overall well being beyond just exercise, how to navigate the site, and some useful ways to tailor your practice to a sedentary lifestyle.
