#1 Meditation Expert： How To Awaken Your Soul & Stop Feeling Lost In Life ｜ Ishan Shivavand

Ishan, we live in a world where there is so much comfort, and yet the modern world keeps people suffering. Why do you think that is? We are not allowing our brain to work any body part if you don't make it work, atrophies. And our brain, our consciousness, it's born to do so much more than just sit on a cell phone. And there's comfort, and then there's too much comfort. I believe we should allow our mind to sometimes flex its muscles as well. And how can people get better at using their brain and disconnecting from the technological world that we live in so that they can continue to fine-tune muscle memory and work their brain? So one of the ways that I talk about, it's an ancient way, it's meditation and breathwork. So when we sit, when we take a deep dive into our own self, we witness our thoughts, we witness our consciousness. That is when a lot of changes start to happen, a lot of evolutions start to happen, but it needs courage because it's hard. Working on your own self is hard. So I think meditation is a good first step that can help you. And I think meditation can be tough because we're so distracted in the world, and we have our attention on the wrong things, and it's just easy to get sucked into things that aren't important. How can people get better at prioritizing being still when their environment, in a way, encourages people to be just so distracted? By starting, we plan so much that we will do, and then we get a paralysis of analysis. And I know so many people, they are saying that, you know, we will do this meditation, and when we will be doing this meditation, we'll start a diet as well. And then they plan all these dominoes. And in their mind, it's a whole switch, a whole personality type that they are living right now versus what they will be, a very idealistic way they want to live. And it's so far out of reach that they end up never going to that point. And I believe in incremental growth. So rather than making this idealistic version of yourself, that's drinking kale smoothie every day, and running 20 miles and then meditating, doing that hustle and then sleeping for one hour, rather than that, let's just start with simple increments, you know, let's not be afraid of failing, even five minutes, closing your eyes, putting a timer, looking at your thoughts. That's a start. It's a beginning. And trust me, you will get better at it. And I think that people have a hard time accepting that they need to meditate or spend time being quiet and still because they see it maybe is just solely a spiritual practice, or they see it as something that they need to do in order to maybe bring some peace in their life. But I know there's many other benefits that you talk about when it comes to meditation. What is your elevator pitch to someone to convince them to take that little bit of time each day to begin meditating? So a few things that you said, very, very important. Let's start with the elevator pitch. My elevator pitch would be, you deserve it. You deserve to be happy. You deserve to be grateful. You deserve to live a better life. So why not take this step for yourself? And when it comes to spirituality, even in the scripture, it's written, love thy neighbor as you love thyself. So self-love and compassion is the most important thing. And it begins with self-care and meditation is part of that routine. Second thing you said, some people get turned off by meditation because they think it's a spiritual practice. Now I'm a mental health researcher as well. And when I came to the US and I started researching, then the first protocols that we researched upon and we were researching on how meditation can impact a person who is suffering from anxiety, insomnia, which is very important in today's world because insomnia is a precursor to so many other mental health predicaments. Anxiety long-term can cause burnout. We were also researching depression and we wanted to see how meditation can help such people. So a lot of these protocols, meditation, the whole word meditation, it's a very Eastern theological word because if you look at all the Eastern cultures and all the isms, Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism, they put a lot of focus on meditation. So we used the first protocols that we used, they carried themselves, sort of spiritual connotation to it, whereas there was this play of energy, there was this play of consciousness and we had some excellent results and results that go in the high 90s, like 90% of people suffering from insomnia felt better and they just did these meditations that were inspired from those theologies and the yogic practices and almost 85% of people suffering from anxiety, their anxiety vanished. So on and so forth. But the question that we were having from the physician's world, can meditation be non-theological? So we did a research, we had a group that we gave spiritual meditation practices that focused on spiritual principles, spiritual aspects, where we understood that spirituality is a very important part of human consciousness, whereas the other group, we gave them non-theological meditation principles, as we just said, close your eyes and look at your back, you know, very mechanical, just mindfulness, awareness, etc, etc. And each time we did that study, we found that people that used spiritual principles fared so much more better compared to the counterparts that were just doing it mechanically. And the biggest place where we saw the impact was when it comes to a recurring practice. People who were doing it mechanically were not able to sustain the practice that they were doing, whereas people who had a spiritual practice, they were much more happier. They had a sustained practice, they could show up for themselves, they were just in a much better place in life. So I feel we should not shy away from spirituality. And here I'm not saying we become religious, but I'm saying that we must spend time to discover our spirituality because it can have a great impact on our mental health. Ishan, a lot of people are feeling lost and just disconnected from themselves. And they've been chasing, you know, happiness in all the wrong places, or maybe they've had some shortcomings and failures. Are you suggesting that meditation can be the gateway to reconnecting with themselves so they could finally feel better about their life and make life exciting again? Definitely. I believe happiness is a construct of the mind. And happiness comes from within. And I have been working in the field of mental health and the field of theology for the last 20 years, and I find I work with people, Doug, who are extremely successful, extremely rich and extremely sad. And every time I wonder that you have everything, why are you sad? And I've come to that conclusion that you can have everything under the blue sky, but that does not guarantee happiness and peace. And the beauty is I work with mystics, monks who have nothing, but their mental health is at ointment, which makes me realize that happiness comes from within. And if we are procrastinating happiness by putting milestones in our life and thinking that after I reach that milestone, then I will be happy. Then I'm just setting myself up for failure. That is what I teach my students. Happiness is today. Happiness is right now. And I do believe through my experience that we can achieve that happiness and excitement through the processes of meditation and yoga. You hear a lot about what you just said, that people need to focus on the present moment. We need to not fall into the when I get there trap of happiness. And yet I think people struggle with the how. How do you help people learn to better embrace the journey and be present? What are the steps you help somebody take to make that shift from focusing on the future and when I get there, I'll be happy to staying in the moment and embracing where they're at right now. So there are three things that I like to teach to people as a beginning. And I am going to use Sanskrit words. So the first is sadhana. Sadhana means a deep meditation practice, and it is following discipline about your self-care. It is working on the self and being disciplined about it. So you have that time period in which you work on your body. That is sadhana. You have a period where you work on your mind. That is sadhana. So you are very focused that I'll do everything in my life. But also I have this time that I'm working on myself through meditation, through breath work. That is sadhana. Not letting go of the self. Understanding the self is important. In fact, the self is the most important thing. My family, I love them. But if I'm broken, I won't be able to love them. I'll be spending time with them, but I'll be in a state of such anxiety, I'll be on my phone. So I love my family, but I'm giving them a broken toy. So I must first fix myself. And that is the principle of sadhana, that charity begins at home. The second principle is seva, which means service. Service means unconditional love, compassion for the fellow man. That I must spend some time during the day to do service to make the world a better place. And I'm sure people are at a place where maybe they are just trying to survive. But the great philosophers of the East say, it doesn't matter how big your service is, as long as you are able to do something. Even if it means feeding the birds. Even if it means helping someone across the street. Even if it means giving out a smile. Just your happiness and joy. Greeting. So many times, and it's so weird. I go to certain countries and each time in mental health, we are doing research on the happiness index of a country. And some of the countries that are most happy, I have seen they greet each other. They respond to each other. You go to some country to say hello, and the person says hello. And I remember the first time I came to the US, I looked at someone and it was at a cafeteria. And I went, and I paid, and they gave me the coffee. And I said, thank you. They said, mm-hmm. And there was no greeting. There was no interaction. And we close ourselves. Sometimes service can be as simple as acknowledging the people that are around you, that you interact with. So service. And the third principle is Sankirtan. So Sankirtan simply means dancing, singing in ecstasy, joy. So in spiritual context, Sankirtan means expressing yourself, expressing your love towards a higher power. But it can also mean finding time to express and celebrate life. If these three principles can be bought, an expression of joy, celebration of life, a service to the fellow man, and sadhana, work on the self, I believe much can be done. And if we start living our life with these principles, and it's very important. Everything that we see in nature has its laws. Principles are applied on it. A lion doesn't go and eat grass. A goat doesn't go and eat chicken. It is just human beings that have the power to choose the principles through which they govern their own life. And that is why human beings are so varied. When you compare them with each other, some are happy, some are sad, because of what principles, knowingly, unknowingly, they have chosen for their own self, for their own self-government. And we have seen that if we apply these principles on our life, then we set ourselves for success. There's a lot of commonalities between what you said and the recovery community from addiction about being of service, taking care of yourself, celebrating what you have, etc. And I think it's so easy, given the world that we're in, for people to fall into temptation, to fall into cravings, and not do the things that you're discussing. And people continue to numb the pain in their suffering instead of working on themselves. Why do you think people do that? Why do they fall into bad behaviors, even though deep down they know it's causing more suffering? So what you said, you're absolutely right. There are commonalities between the recovery community and what I just said, because even the recovery community understands that if there is a pattern of addiction, a pattern of relapse, it is not a moral failure. It is just that somewhere there is a spiritual deficiency, a spiritual failure inside my life. I need to rebuild my spirituality. And the recovery community says this, that I must accept that I am powerless on whatever substance that they are consuming. And then I must accept that the old pattern behavior is not good for me. And I must accept a higher power in my life. And these are very powerful principles. And some of the principles that I do believe are very, very important in our spiritual health. A lot of the times, one of the big things that is coming in between me and my happiness is my own ego, because my ego tells me that I know what is the right thing. My ego is very controlling. My ego likes to hold on to resentment and anger and sorrow and suffering. And my ego is built from trauma. And my ego makes me look at life as a very dark place. And from that darkness, then that ego finds ways of self-medication, which could be substance. And spirituality is a very humbling process. When you are spiritual, you do not allow ego to exist. Because you have to surrender to that process. May it be the steps program, or may it be the meditation practice that I'm talking about. May it be the higher self. You are surrendering. When you surrender, it is the ego that will try to stop you. But once you surrender, you are letting go of that ego and allowing yourself to understand and know your real self. So it is something that I believe every single person should experience in their life. Because humanity has this great opportunity to evolve. Evolve if we are living as our genuine selves. But if we are living with ego as our identity, then we don't grow. We don't evolve. We don't adapt. And we become this shell of a person compared to what we truly can be. I think that's a really hard thing for people to accept. And I think that a lot of times when people are struggling with bad behaviors, for instance, one of the main things they struggle with is regaining self-control. And when they start to meditate, for instance, it becomes really challenging. Because now you have all these thoughts. You have all these things that are popping up. How can people regain control of their mind when they start meditating? When they're used to not having any kind of control in their life. So there is this ancient metaphor that teaches us that if you are sleeping and you are dreaming and you are dreaming for a long time and then you wake up and you realize that you're woken up, then it is almost impossible to go back to that same dream. Once you have that clarity, once you have that vision, it is impossible because you're woken up. In the mental health community right now, there is a lot of research that is going on when it comes to psychedelics. Or even if you'll find in the alternative healing communities, there are substances like ayahuasca or these trips that people go on. And a lot of the times people have said that they give us a vision, a vision of reality. And once we wake up, it can have a profound impact on their mental health because then the behaviors change. I personally do not work with psychedelics, but the same principle is what we apply with through the meditation modalities that I teach. So in my book, The Practice of Immortality, I talk about this process of Pratiprasad and Pratiprasad means rebirth. And this is a very powerful process, a very mystical process. And in that we do not use any psychedelic, but we use our breath and some yogic modalities to go in a trance-like state. We induce a trance and we go to that highest state of consciousness. And that is when all our traumas are revealed to us. And we have to work our way through our traumas to reach our inner self. And we have seen that through these Pratiprasad processes, a person wakes up, a person can see that they are living their life in a dazed state, in a hypnotic state where even they don't know what they are doing. They just go on on these binges. They just go on in these self-harming cycles. They are carrying these generational traumas. And when they do that Pratiprasad, suddenly it's a jolt and it's hard. When people are going through that process, they cry, they sometimes scream, they get angry. And then they are witnessing all those things that they are carrying in themselves. And when they let go, they feel very light. And suddenly they have woken up. And once they have woken up, once they have reached to a higher plane, then that same behavior doesn't make sense to them. So this is needed. This awakening is needed. Because if we are in that lower state and we are still living our life in those patterns, and I just say that, okay, now stop that self-harming behavior. Stop. Fine, you stop, but you've not stopped that feeling. You've not stopped that. You've not changed that self that was dependent on that substance in the same place. You've not fixed those inner feelings that made you go towards those self-harming behaviors. So that is why people end up relapsing into those chronic states. So something needs to change. Something needs to evolve. And you will have to have some powerful tool that can help you. It can either be what many people are trying to go towards, some altering substance. It can either be religion or it can be meditation modalities, such as the ones I teach, the one that I talk in my book. Yes. What do you think is the biggest and most common negative thought that people need to kind of switch and get over when they're trying to transform their life and improve their mental health? I think the biggest common thought is fear. That fear could be, I'm doing something wrong. Or maybe I'm not good enough. Or maybe I'm broken and I can't meditate. Fear is that negativity that just jumps in front of us when we close our eyes and holds us. And a lot of the times it is that fear. And even if that fear is masquerading as some other fear, a lot of the times when we peel the onion, we'll find that. Because nobody likes to accept that there is fear in them. When I tell somebody to meditate and there are these strong, six-foot-five, bulky, burly, tattooed men. Oh, meditation doesn't work for me. Behind all this bravado, when we start the work, when we start the pathikasam, and slowly they realize that it was this fear, the fear of failure, that they did not want to embrace. That's why they were not beginning in the first place. Then they actually go through the process and it feels much better. Speaking from my own experience and just interviewing a lot of people who have gone through hardship, I think the problem with the fear of failure is that people are, they've experienced so much pain in their life, and so many failures that they've just convinced themselves that that's what it's going to be because of the pattern of failing. How do you get people to move through that? How do you get people to go from thinking they're a failure because of what's happened in their life to having some level of realistic optimism and convincing themselves that they can actually succeed in life despite what their past has taught them? So, when it comes to pain, there are a few things that I personally use. One is I like developing communities because I believe that a community support system can really help in the healing process when there is pain or trauma that a person has suffered from. When a person is in that community and that community together is working towards their healing, overcoming their traumas, going through these processes, then it becomes much easier for a person to let go of those old behavioral patterns because in the end, there is these things inside us. A monkey does what a monkey sees. And if we are seeing other people healing around us, then that inspires us, that allows us to tell our ego to keep quiet and do everything nicely. So, community support, I've seen, really helps. Second thing, breathwork. I've seen that a correct yogic practice where we give certain breathwork modalities. I call these modalities the yoga of immortals. A lot of the time when a person is thinking yoga, they are thinking the stretching aspect of yoga. In their mind, they go to somebody wearing tights on a yoga mat and doing this and that. But that is just 0.0001% of yoga. That is not what yoga was supposed to be. It's a very westernized concept of yoga. Yoga is a very cerebral activity. It's a very mental activity. And it relies more upon meditation than it relies upon physical expression. And a lot of the times people do not have the real yoga practices. So, the real yoga practices rely a lot on meditation and breathwork, whereas breathwork is the foundation. So, when we teach people those correct breathwork modalities, it's like their mind starts to heal. So, think of it in this manner, that if a pain or trauma came, it's like an arrow that comes into our life. And if the arrow is not pulled out, how can the healing begin? So, if you've not reached to a state of forgiveness and acceptance, letting go, then the healing process won't begin. And when we do those certain breathwork modalities, that is the time we can pull that arrow and through that breathwork, it's called pranayama, which means flow of energy. We are bringing back the flow of energy where it was stagnant in our life and the healing processes start to change us and rebuild us. And the third thing that I sometimes focus upon when people are suffering from traumas and pain is some of the sankirtan practices that we were discussing a few minutes earlier, whereas we teach them how to express joy. So, we create an environment of happiness, of singing, of expression and of joy, which can remind people of who they were and what they have let go of, so they can reconnect. So, I think if this is how in totality we approach them, we can work upon this pain as well. I think one of the biggest problems too is that people also struggle with anxiety alongside fear and it can be hard to quiet the mind and let go of some of these patterns. What tips do you have for people that struggle with anxiety and they can't get their mind to stop racing? Breathwork. Breathwork really helps because breathwork has an impact on our limbic system, on our central nervous system. It can have a direct impact on our cardiovascular system. So, if we try to measure anxiety, our heartbeat will increase, our breath will change. People start to hyperventilate, the breath is going away from them. Their heart is going away from them. Their mind starts to race and we are teaching ourselves through breathwork to be in control. So, a person who has a breathwork practice, a pranayama and again, when I say breathwork, I apologize, profusely I apologize that that is the English vernacular I have to use. The real term is pranayama. Pranayama is the flow of energy through ancient yogic breathing practices and that can help. But how do I say that in English? Because English is a very young language, breathwork. So, breathwork in something, sometimes somebody will say, oh I take deep breaths, is that enough? No, that's just taking deep breaths. So, a person can explore pranayama. There are a lot of literature that is written, even in my book, The Practice of Immortality, I give a lot of breathing techniques, they can explore through that. Even in the West, there is the Wim Hof method that focuses a lot on the correct breathwork practices. But through breathwork, we have seen even in our research, we have seen that we have the ability to overcome, control anxiety. Overcome is a very strong word, control. Control anxiety, yes. One of the problems that exists too with people that struggle with mental health and the things we've been talking about for the last few minutes is lack of self-confidence. And that kind of ties into the fear of failure discussion we were talking about a few minutes ago as well. But how can people use tools like breathwork and meditation and rebuilding their identity to improve their self-confidence? To bring self-confidence, I recommend a study of philosophy as well. A child in America has an identity crisis. He has to explore who he wants to be by going on the internet. And the internet is the wild, wild West. Imagine 30 years ago, your child would go out on the streets. You would teach the child, do not accept candy from strangers. And now we have all these metaphorical candies, these thoughts, these personality traits, these weird cultural behavior that gets created on the internet. And we expose our children to it. And through that exposure, a child makes a Frankenstein of a personality. And these personalities are not meant to last. You look at any internet fad, it doesn't last. Imagine a personality that is made up of those facts, that exposure. How can that personality be a personality that heals, that helps? Earlier, we would give a child scripture so that through those scriptures, certain qualities would be of great value. And a child will imbibe those qualities within him and strive to go to that goal that is presented in scripture. Today, we do not have that exposure. So when I come across children that are suffering from self-confidence issues, I teach them great philosophies. So one of the philosophies that I rely upon is from this author. He lived about a few thousand years ago in the subcontinent under the Himalayas. His name was Abhinav Gupta. And he writes this philosophy called Shiva Sutras. It's probably one of the greatest philosophical texts I have ever come across. And the first thing that is written in that text, it's amazing, I'll tell you. I'll just tell you three lines. So he says, and these are the first three, four lines. The text says, Chaitanya Atma. And what it means is, you are God. Then it says, Gyan Bandh. Yes, you are God. But you have forgotten that you are God. Because of your traumas and past experiences. The third thing he says is, Udham Bhairav. That yes, you are God. And it's okay if you have forgotten. But if you live a life of purpose, discipline, and focus. A life of yogic principles. Then the fourth line he writes is, Shiva Tulyo Jayate. You can once again live your life as God. And that's such a strong philosophy to teach to a child. Because so many times in America, I've seen they are teaching children, you are a victim. A victim of your circumstances. Then that child, that young five-year-old, okay, he starts to think, yes, I am a victim. All my life I have to suffer. Everybody around me has suffered. So that kind of a child, how can you expect him to have self-confidence? Whereas you teach them a philosophy that you are God. You have this power. You are this universal being, titan, born on this planet Earth to achieve. And such a child will be a king. And we have seen this. We've seen these thought experiments in various cultures. When we look at the Vikings, the philosophies that were taught to them, made them a much superior warrior on the battlefield. And we have seen cultures of subjugation where people were taught to be peasants. And we have seen those cultures be subjugated. So I believe that anybody who's suffering from a crisis of identity must start bringing philosophy in their life and choose the correct philosopher. Learn, educate, and then embrace. What about the idea that you have to go through adversity and hard times and suffering to build confidence? Do you buy into that? But even in that adversity, how will you govern yourself? How will you navigate through that adversity? If you go into that adversity blind without having a structure, without having a moral code, how do you navigate out? It's like, yes, I'm going to go into the ocean, but will I swim? Will I be on a paddleboard? Will I be on a canoe? Will I be on a yacht? Will I be on a private jet? What is my vehicle? In India, there is a saying, What basically this means is that when we are happy in life, we don't have any self-development practice. We don't have any meditation practice. We live a life being completely oblivious to the hardships when we are happy. And what this saying is trying to say is that if we have a self-governing practice, when we are happy, then when we will be sad, we will have the tools to get out of that sadness. Whereas how we live our life is that we are oblivious when we are happy. And then when sorrow comes, then suddenly we are trying to, it's like trying to learn to swim when we are drowned. It's impossible. You learn to swim in shallow waters when things are easy breezy. So I believe that just saying in hardship, we will learn a lesson. You will drown if you're not prepared for that hardship. If you don't have a moral code and a philosophy to govern you, you need the tools. Then you jump into adversity and you can navigate out of it becoming stronger. Then the scars are battle scars. Well, and I think that false confidence is what a lot of people chase and they depend on things like external validation. We talked about numbing earlier. How can people break free from this external validation trap and focus on some of the real confidence boosters that we just discussed? When I was a child, I grew up in a monastery and the head monk in that monastery would teach us about nutrition. And he would say that, you know, when you are eating certain foods, he would teach us about vitamin A, this iron, protein, this, that. And we were kids, we were learning. And one day he starts to tell us about psychological nutrition. So he believed that just like there is physiological nutrition, and if you do not get it, there will be deficiencies and disease that comes out of deficiency. For example, if we don't have enough vitamin C, we can have scurvy. So we need vitamin C. Otherwise, there'll be nutritional deficiency leading to disease. In the same way, he was trying to tell me there is psychological nutrition as well. So love is a psychological nutrition. Acceptance is a psychological nutrition. The children that do not get enough love will have a deficiency. And that deficiency can lead to disease. But this disease is going to be the mental health problems a person may face. A person who is going outside to look for validation is because they don't have that psychological nutrition. They don't have that love and acceptance in their lives. So we are chasing it from strangers. That if I will wear certain clothes, then strangers will love and accept. And the truth is strangers don't care. We are letting ourselves live off of crumbs of others. So number one, maybe we should focus upon genuine relationships, genuine friends, families through which we can have that genuine psychological nutrition in our life or what the monk taught me that the greatest state that a human being can strive for is not being dependent on anyone or anything for this psychological nutrition. And that is what the whole practice that we did as children in the monastery was for. To be self-reliant, self-dependent. It's like fuel. Rather than being dependent on the fuel that you dig up from the earth, you are dependent on the renewable sources of energy. And these monks, they have psychological nutrition from inside. They love themselves. They accept themselves. They express themselves unconditionally. Now, these people, they have so much love that then they can give to other people also. And they develop it through living a certain life and having certain practices. But being dependent on other people's validation, I understand because, yes, we are looking for that nutrition. But in the end, it is like trying to live by taking nutrition from junk food. It is tasty, but sooner or later, it will kill us. So I hope people can find ways to love and accept themselves. You talk about the soul being immortal. Like what does that actually mean in day-to-day life? In day-to-day life, let's see. So the philosophy comes from Sanatana, which is one of the most ancient cultures on the planet earth. And Sanatana itself means immortal. And Sanatana says that, yes, the soul is immortal. And we existed before we are this body. And we will exist even after we are this body. That being in this body is a very temporary experience. It's a speck, a blip in our journey. How that impacts our day-to-day life is when we hold grudges. We will stop holding grudges. A person holds grudge as if he's never going to die. As if he's going to carry this burden forever and ever. And if we realize and we accept that the body itself is temporary, then why would we want to hold that grudge? If we accept that one day, we will have to let go of this body and merge with our immortal self. And when we let go of this body, we will have to let go of any and all experience. Then why won't I start the process of letting go from today? And I think when people start to meditate on this truth that the body is finite, the soul is immortal, that gives them that ability to let go. Which is very important because we are carrying so much. How can people, once they get past that idea that their soul is immortal and their body goes when they pass, how can people begin to work on their soul? What are the biggest things you think people need to do in order to make sure they have a soul that's super healthy? These practices that we have discussed, that helps them. This is like saying, how can people make sure they have a brain? We can't feel our brain. We can't touch our brain. Brain is not like the other muscles that we can control. We can move our hands and feel. Brain is inside, we don't know. Many times, even if there is a swelling in the brain, we won't know till it starts to impact other aspects of our working. The only time we will be able to see our brain is if somebody cuts open our head and makes a photo. How do we know the brain exists? Through the brain's functions. Same goes for our kidney. Same goes for our pancreas. Same goes for our liver. It is there silently doing its job. How do we know the liver is there? By looking at its function. There are some behaviors in our life that bring a state of yoga. If we look at this word yoga, there is no such word as yoga. The word is yoga, which then is mispronounced as yoga. So yoga means union. That's it. That's what yoga means. Yoga simply means union. So there are various metaphors that try to explain that what is this union that we are trying to do through these yogic practices. What are we trying to be in a state of union with? And one of the things that most of the philosophers agree upon is we are trying to be in union with our soul consciousness. So if you look at my book, the cover. So in this, this is the body consciousness and this is the soul consciousness. So the metaphor here is that this bird is the part of the mind that is jumping from branch to branch. That is the unhappy that is in a state of vulnerability that is very volatile. Whereas this bird that is sitting on the top branch is calm, relaxed in a state of peace. It knows it has been through life many times. Whereas this bird is thinking that everything that is happening is doom and gloom. And this is me meditating under the tree. And my objective is to raise my consciousness from this bird to this bird, from body consciousness to soul consciousness. So this is what yoga tries to do. That is the whole purpose of yoga. So that's why I try to explain to people that it's very important that you, just like, you know, for a man, it's important to learn self-defense. And self-defense can help you protect yourself. Everybody has the same two hands and two feet. But when you learn self-defense, you can do so much more with your hands and feet. In the same manner, everybody has breath. Everybody has brain. When you learn yoga, you can do so much more with it. And that is a self-defense from pain, sorrow, anger, suffering. And in today's world, we need this self-defense of yoga to reach from this consciousness to that consciousness. Yes. So if somebody is listening to this, and right now they're feeling lost, broken, or stuck, what is the first step they should take to transform their life and build some forward momentum? The first step is try to accept that there is an after. Just like, you know, before and after. When we are in that state of suffering, we sometimes feel that this is it. This is where life has come and dropped us. This is where we will remain. It is not the end of your journey. It is a point in your journey. So if you can start to accept that yes, an after will come. An after where this pain will be nothing but a memory. And this suffering will be nothing but a lesson learned in the grand scheme of things. And in that after, there is going to be joy, happiness, and bliss. Then this acceptance can help you get up and move. So if you can accept there is an after, then we can start discussing how we get to that after. One of the ways getting to that after is start a yogic practice. Start to meditate. Then we can discuss how are you going to learn what meditation to do, what practice to start. So at that time, I may recommend you can read my book, The Practice of Immortality. I give many meditation techniques, many yogic techniques that you can bring in your life. Or it can be something as simple as looking at your phone and look what other groups are there around you that are practicing such modalities and try to join one of them. And when you join one of them, it may be good, it may be great, or it may be pathetic. Do not lose hope. Try to find some other group that aligns with your own sense of spirituality. But the most important thing is accept there is an after. An after to your pain, an after in which you are happy. Well, Ishan, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I deeply enjoyed our conversation. Is there anything else you'd like to add to this discussion that you haven't already that relates to the themes we've been covering? Well, Doug, I'm so very happy that you called me and it was a pleasure conversing with you. And I hope all your listeners can benefit from our conversation. And I would just like to thank all your listeners for being here and giving me the gift of your time. Well, thank you once again for coming on. I think my audience, like I said, is getting a lot of value out of this. So thanks again for your time. Thank you, sir.