JourneyTalks Podcast
Your favorite podcast to reconnect with gratitude and inspiration.
JourneyTalks Podcast
JTP - Embracing the Essence of Yoga and the Transformative Power of Gratitude with Luis Jimenez
Embark on a soulful exploration with my friend, the insightful Luis Jimenez, yoga teacher and spiritual entrepreneur, on a captivating episode. With Luis's profound wisdom, we unravel the significance of gratitude, its intertwining with yoga, and how it profoundly influences our daily lives. Our conversation blossoms into a reflection on the tools that aid in self-connection—breath work, meditation, yoga—and the strength we can draw from gratitude during life's pivotal moments.
We venture beyond the yoga mat, challenging the reduced perception of yoga as just a physical exercise and bringing to light its philosophical core through the eightfold path and the ancient teachings that define yoga's true essence. Our discussion also bridges diverse spiritual traditions, finding common wisdom threaded within and encouraging listeners to dive into foundational texts that offer enlightenment off the mat.
Join us as we affirm the beauty in every step we take, the common thread of humanity that unites us, and the remarkable growth that unfolds when we are truly present and grateful for the path we tread. #gratitude #inspiration #yoga #cacao #cacacoceremony #transformation #humangrowth #emotionalhealing #yogainspiration #sacredspiritualegypt #luisinmotion #yogateacherjourney #jtpstories
Host: @journeytalkspodcast
Guest: @luisinmotion @cacao.sol
The Journey Talks Podcast, your favorite podcast to reconnect with gratitude and inspiration, hosted by Jorge Sallago-González. Hello and welcome to Journey Talks Podcast, your favorite podcast to reconnect with gratitude and inspiration. My name is Jorge Sallago-González and I am your host. I am convinced that behind every gratitude, there's a powerful story waiting to be told, and my hope is that, through this platform, we can create a safe space to share these stories and continue to help one another. As humans, we all share one thing in common, and that is the experience of being alive. We're all together on this journey we call life, and at some point we meet people, we go through situations that leave a footprint in us. The question is who are these people? What did these situations did to us, or what is the space that these situations create for us, for us to grow and to transform and become the person we are today? Through this podcast, I will be interviewing guests with stories of gratitude, and my hope is that, as we connect and reconnect with these stories, we connect once again with the beautiful gift that we call our shared humanity.
Speaker 1:I love to introduce our guest today, and this is someone I met through mutual friends. It turns out that we have a lot of friends in common and I have no doubt that the universe wanted for us to connect. It's very interesting. We share a lot of things in common, but this person he is a beloved yoga teacher in Miami. In the Miami area, he's a Thai body work practitioner and an acro yoga instructor. He's a facilitator of the sacred spiritual journey in Egypt and recently has ventured into the world of entrepreneurship as the owner of Kakao Soul, a Miami based ceremonial Kakao company that sells the best ceremonial Kakao from Nicaragua. Our guest today is a profound spiritual seeker and someone with whom I have been able to have very deep conversations about life and the human experience. Please help me in welcoming the one and only Luis Jimenez. Luis, welcome to Journey Talks podcast. How are you doing this afternoon?
Speaker 2:I'm doing great. I just actually recorded my healing talk podcast, so it's really cool to be on the other side right now.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Yes, I'm glad to be here. As I was getting ready, the notification on Instagram came up, but I had to prepare for this. I'm glad that we're now together and that the conversation can continue. So, as I mentioned earlier, luis, this is a podcast, all about connecting and retelling stories of gratitude, but it's the kind of gratitude that comes as a response of moments of transformation in our lives. Are you willing to have this conversation with me?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I'll be as vulnerable as possible.
Speaker 1:Well, same here. Thank you so much. Let's go for it, Luis. What is gratitude for you and what is your relationship with gratitude?
Speaker 2:Gratitude, for me, is a state of being. I have many, many things to be grateful for, and I will oftentimes slip out of gratitude and into what I would call complacency or nagging, and whenever I'm in those states, I have very little access to the full spectrum of emotions that we as humans have and the full spectrum of experiences that we are capable of experiencing. And so, for me, gratitude is a state of being. Whenever I'm feeling grateful, I'm able to really just feel everything and be whole, complete and fully in my body, fully in the present moment. So it's a state of being that brings me into the present moment and allows me to feel the whole spectrum of emotions and experiences that we as humans can have. That, to me, is what gratitude is.
Speaker 1:Thank you. So, as a yoga instructor someone that is so in connection with the body and helping other people to be in the body and having this healthy relationship with body, mind and soul, Is there any connection to that state of mind that you talked about when you're in your practices and when you're teaching the practice of yoga?
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Just this morning I was on the way to teach a group of moms that I teach here in the community and I just always give gratitude and give thanks for those people that I'm able that God puts me in front of.
Speaker 2:I also have a close connection with God Creator, source, universe, whatever you want to call it. I like to call it God, whatever that is for you, and I always give gratitude and I always give thanks for the people that God puts me in front of, because there's a lot of yoga teachers out there in the community. They could be going to a yoga studio, there's a lot of free classes but for some reason God put me in front of those individuals. So I do practice gratitude on my way to go teach, and also during class and then after, and then also when I'm in my own practice, when I'm on the mat. I'm also feeling gratitude for my limbs and for the ability to move my hands and to bear weight on my hands, and to the ability to get into so many different positions and to be able to move my body in a healthy way. So I am constantly practicing gratitude as a part of my discipline, as a part of my philosophy in life and as a part of my practice, both on and off the mat.
Speaker 1:Thank you. I've talked about what happens when you're not in that mindset. To you, you kind of touch into this disconnection or this misalignment of not being in the mindset of gratitude, what that looks like for you or what are the pointers that you realize this is. This is one of those signs that reminds me I need to. I need to tune myself again with myself and with gratitude. Can you name a few?
Speaker 2:When I'm feeling disconnected from my heart, when I'm not feeling that connection to my emotions, when I'm on the proverbial hamster wheel, when I'm not in the present moment, I'm thinking about the past or worried about the future, that's when I know I'm not, I'm no longer in a state of gratitude because I'm in a place of lack. If I'm ever thinking about the past, regretting the past, or if I'm thinking about the future, thinking about what I still need to accomplish, what I still need to do, then I'm not in the present moment. I'm not able to tap into that state of gratitude. Because, for me, being in a state of gratitude is taking a moment or a breath so that I can look around and give thanks for everything that is already present in my life. Whenever I do that, I realize there's nothing lacking, there's nothing that's ever missing from my life. I am so supported and I feel I'm able to tap into those emotions, which I like to call the emotions of the heart, which, for me, lately, what's been coming in is just feeling a lot of gratitude and shows up in the form of tears.
Speaker 2:I talked about this on my healing talks podcast recently how, the more I've been able to connect with that feeling of gratitude, the more I'm able to connect to those emotions that I may have suppressed in the past because of programming or conditioning. Like men don't cry, and I give thanks for the tears that come down my cheeks when I cry now and I'm able to access those states of such deep gratitude and reverence for life that it brings me to tears. So when I'm not in that state of gratitude, I am cranky, I am very short tempered, I am coming from a space of lack and I tend to do things from a space of lack. So I'm less empathetic, I'm less compassionate with myself and with others and I'm less patient and I'm just all up in my head, I'm not in my heart space. So I know when I'm out of that state of gratitude, when I'm here instead of being here in my heart.
Speaker 1:Wow, this whole idea of being in a mindset of lack really resonates with me, just because and this is nothing new, right? I mean we humans are prone to the monkey mind leaning us into negativity and lack and insecurities and all of that. But when you talked about reconnecting with gratitude, and this body response that you have of tears is very humbling and I appreciate you opening up about it, just because I have to join you in the sentiment of how hard it is for us to, at least for me. Growing up, I was very emotional, very sensitive, and I remember struggling because I felt like I was supposed to be a different way, you know, and I had to hide that and but those emotions, those feelings were stronger and I appreciate that. You know another guy. It's just recognizing the beauty, the release that comes from allowing those tears to flow right and there's a release there, there's a healing right that comes by reconnecting and honoring whatever that emotion is. Can you expand a little bit about it?
Speaker 2:Absolutely brother. I was. I was with a friend last night and her. She has a really cool background. Her father is Indian and her mother's Cuban and she grew up in a commune with, not in a bad way, but she grew up in a very different way than than how we grow up and she's she's always been into creative writing, she's a musician and she, since I met her, she's told me the story about her grandfather and his poetry and this whole time I just assumed oh, it's her, it's her Indian grandfather, because she plays kirtans and she plays the sitar and the harmonium. So I'm thinking she gets that whole artistic side from her grant, from her father's side, which is the Indian side of her.
Speaker 2:Well, I found out recently it actually it's her grandfather's poetry from Cuba that she has. She had access to this book that he left behind when he passed away and my father left my, my brother and sister in Cuba a book of his poetry, of his selection of his work, and so when I found out that we have that commonality, I said we should hang out one day, and we should. You know, I would love to read your grandfather's poetry because she's now publishing a book about her grandfather and his life and his poetry, and I've got my father's book here. And so we finally made it happen. We went out, we went walking in Coconut Grove, which is a local community here in Miami, and it was just the two of us. We went to this place by the water and I and I was reading through her grandfather's poetry and then I said are you open to me sharing my father's poetry? And what had? Truth be told, I've only ever opened up that book two times in my life. This was the third time yesterday that I opened it up and, man, I was reading the first few poems and, like my father was like your typical Cuban guy. He loved it, like in one of his songs, in one of his poems, yours Me gusta sazón, I like salsa music. I like errone, I like rum. You know he's the guy who enjoyed life fully and those poems that he wrote really make me laugh. And then I just started flipping the pages and I started and I stumbled across this one poem. It says quién soy yo, it's like who am I. And, man, I started crying because it was beautiful.
Speaker 2:I've never I didn't really have a connection with my father. I only have like three memories of him. We didn't grow up with him and the only information that I got about my father was from my grandmother growing up and she basically remembered him for all the negative things that he did. And so I didn't really have a good idea of my father, let's just say. And reading his poetry last night made me realize, like man, this guy was just like me and it's beautiful that, even though I didn't grow up in the same household as with my father, that I ended up being just like him.
Speaker 2:And in the introduction of the book my sister in Cuba she wrote this is to my brother, luis, who is going to be just like our father. And I'm getting emotional just thinking about it right now. Man, because it's beautiful man and it was, it was. It touched my heart because, you know, towards the end of his life he was not, he was so far away from the life that he created for himself in Cuba.
Speaker 2:And you know part of my friend's story of her grandfather is this Cuban, this exile from Cuba that you know my grandmother. She never wanted to leave Cuba, it was. It was almost like that generation was kicked out or forced out of their country, of their homeland. And lately I've been really connecting with my, with my Cuban roots, and that, for me, that's an example of when I'm really in my heart and I'm empathetic and I'm connecting with that part of myself that I've, I would say, suppressed for a long time. And so I was last night, you know, with this friend of mine. Tears are just streaming down my face as I'm reading this poetry and just giving gratitude for those tears, just giving gratitude for that moment that I'm able to connect with my father, even though he's, he's in the great beyond now. I know he's still present and, yeah, that's that to me is a moment of gratitude for sure.
Speaker 1:Thank you for sharing that's really impactful and deep. I recognize that you know the relationship with my father is always a work in progress and I think that it that that that comes as a result of that. You know that womb that we all have to to learn from. I think you know and, if you allow me, can you you know? The question that I have for you is this you know, is there a particular moment, situation in life that you went through and now that you have gone through it, you feel like you know yourself better because you have learned a few things from that?
Speaker 2:situation? Yeah, absolutely it was, I would say the first. There's a lot of them, but the one, the most recent one, comes from my previous, my past relationship. My last relationship that I was in is a romantic relationship that I was in and I I pretty much lost myself in that relationship. I I realized a lot about myself after that relationship ended and I remember on the night that I ended the relationship, coming back home and my home was my apartment that I'm in right now, that I'm doing this interview from was completely flipped upside down. I had completely abandoned my, my home. I was so fully invested in that relationship almost in a in a in a toxic way, I would say that I completely abandoned myself.
Speaker 2:And I remember starting from scratch all over again. I remember, you know, cleaning my countertops and and being in a very contemplative and meditative state, very, very much present and very much in my heart. And it was like life showing me like, look, look what, look what happens when you disconnect from yourself, look what happens when you put others in front of you. And ever since that moment, I've always put myself in first place. So every day I wake up, I do my breath work, I do my meditation. I make sure to do my. I step on my yoga mat. I practice yoga at least five times a week, three times. If I'm very busy that week, I also make an effort to go to the gym. I was in the sauna yesterday, I worked out and I practiced yoga yesterday. So these are, these are situations in my life that when I was going through them, they what we call in the spiritual community are what we call dark nights of the soul, where it's almost like this, this flash of insight. And then I'm now that I'm on the other side of that. That was about a year ago.
Speaker 2:I ended the relationship back in February of last year. I realized, wow, I'm so grateful for that moment, even though it was so hard for me to swallow that pill or to be here with my apartment flipped upside down and without my relationship and that connection to myself severed. And now that I've bridged that connection to myself, and that bridge is stronger than ever now, I'm so grateful for that moment, even though at the time it was a very difficult pill to swallow. So, yeah, definitely I can point back to that time in my life. I want to just bring it all full circle.
Speaker 2:So, a couple of days ago, when I had that moment of gratitude, when I looked around and I started to allow myself to cry. It was actually on International Woman's Day and one of the women that I messaged that day was my ex-partner and I said thank you so much for that relationship that we had. Thank you so much for everything not just the highlights, but also the difficult moments and the struggles and for not taking me back. I actually thanked her for that because there was still a little bit of me that wanted to try the relationship on again, and I remember her right before I left to Egypt the second time around last year. She said I think it's better that we stay this way as friends, and that was heartbreaking.
Speaker 2:That crushed me, because there was still a little bit of, there's a little piece of me that still had some hope that we would repair that relationship and that we would get back together in a romantic way. And she put a pause on that. She hit the brakes on that and at first I was very angry and very resentful and now I'm like thank you for just keeping that container and this friendship the way that it's been ever since then, because I feel like people are in your life for a season or reason or a lifetime, and I think that that reason that we were together has already served its purpose. And now that we're on the other side of that, we're much better for being single, for being not with each other anymore, but for having gone through that relationship. So I made sure to message her that night and I said thank you for everything, thank you for being in my life. I really appreciate you.
Speaker 1:How fortunate that you guys can share that space, right, because many times, many times, we have to call things, put a stop into certain relationships just because we have to care for ourselves and whatnot. But how beautiful it is that you guys can revisit with gratitude and with love. It's a different kind of love. It's not a romantic love, but it's still love. It is appreciation and gratitude for the things learned.
Speaker 1:I also want to point go back to what was the thing, what were the things or the pointers, the flags that let you know that you had separated yourself from yourself. Right, and you talked about the awareness of coming in into your apartment and noticing that, wow, I have neglected all these different aspects of my life. And honestly, as soon as you said that I, wow, I was like vibing with you because personally, I'm a pleaser, I come from a family of origin of pleasers, and boy is that hard to overcome. And the truth is, there's nothing wrong with being kind to people. But when you sacrifice who you are in order to get a false sense of acceptance, that is so dangerous because it's such a slippery slope, right, you go deeper, and you go deeper in a way that you separate more and more and more from that beautiful true self. That is what needed in order to have a beautiful relationship.
Speaker 2:I just have a richer experience of life, tapping into that state of gratitude and remaining in that state of gratitude, which is just being fully present with what is and not feeling shame or guilt about it, but just expressing that fully to whoever I'm with. And because it starts with me, every single morning I connect with myself. I connect to myself through my yoga practice, my meditation, my breath work, and so when I'm fully in alignment with myself and what I'm feeling and I'm connecting with that, then I can do that with other people and it's so much easier because, again, it all starts with ourselves.
Speaker 1:So can we spend some time there? Can we? Yeah, can we, can we? Let's piggyback here, let's just hone in into this, because the next question that I have for you is what do you do in order to connect with yourself, which you have already answered, right, your meditation, your practice, your yoga working out. But what happens in your mind, what happens in your soul when you have the dedication and the discipline to follow these practices?
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, it's because I know what happens when I don't Like. I come back to my apartment and it's all upside down. I'm feeling drained, I feel like I'm uninspired, I feel blocked off from all my emotions. I feel like I'm in the past or I'm in the future. So I know what happens. I know what's waiting for me on the other side of not being in my practice.
Speaker 2:So I have put systems in place. For example, every single morning I start with breath work. I start with 45 minutes of my breathing practice that helps me wake up and that helps me also connect to my nervous system, and then I go into meditation for 30 minutes and really it's not what's going on just in my mind, but it's also what's going on in my body and I don't really have a specific way of meditating. I use meditation, I use breath work, I use my yoga practice as a way to get to know myself better and that's what I share with my students. All of these are just tools.
Speaker 2:I don't subscribe to one specific school of philosophy. I don't think that yoga has all the answers, although it is a pretty all-encompassing practice and it's been around for thousands of years. There's eight branches to yoga. So it's not just the physical practice that you see online, it's also meditation. It's also 10 moral precepts that you call the yamas and the niyamas, which teach you how to live in the world and also how to connect with yourself and how to treat yourself. So it's external and internal. And then, just talking about the reality of life, that nothing lasts forever. So just knowing that in life it's like a wave, there's going to be ups and there's going to be downs, and when you're up, giving gratitude for those moments and then, when you're down, also giving gratitude for those moments, because I think everything has a lesson, everything has a gift. Sometimes that gift is wrapped up in a pretty bow, or sometimes it's wrapped up in something that's not so pretty, but everything has a gift to it, everything has a lesson to it. So that's really what's happening. That's my thought process.
Speaker 2:So at this point I know I've connected to myself for long enough that I know what serves me and what doesn't serve me. So getting enough sleep, for example, eating food that is mostly vegetarian I'm not 100% vegetarian, but I do keep a pretty steady diet of just vegetables and things that are of high vibration, like I drink a lot of water, coconut water, cacao. I'm like a cow business. I'm actually going to be going to Costa Rica in a couple of days, so I make sure that I take a vacation. I give myself a vacation every single quarter, so every 60 to 90 days.
Speaker 2:I'm on an airplane and I'm going somewhere with a lot of nature. I spend a lot of time in nature. I also play music. I love my guitar. I bring it with me everywhere, so I have systems in place, like my yoga practice, my breath work, my meditation, my music, traveling that allow me to stay in that state of gratitude and allow me to stay connected with myself and to and that self love practice as well, to continue to cultivate that. So that's pretty much it in a nutshell.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, there's a lot in there, there's a lot of information, but it's so good and so rich. Right, it's interesting because one of the many I feel so. When we first met, we met through this mutual friends, the Lambrou family. So shout out to them we love you, thank you so much for making this happen and allowing for this friendship. To you were the channels that the universe got whatever you want to call it use to connect us together, and so you know, I'm so grateful that you introduced me to it, just because it's this beautiful intentional approach to being present, and we underestimate what that looks like.
Speaker 1:The older I get, the more I notice how we are constantly. We have so much input of information constantly that we don't know what it looks like to be present, to be in the moment, to honor the wisdom that comes just out of being still, and the truth is that you know different. So, in this case, hinduism and Buddhism create this beautiful space for us to pay attention to it, and so the beautiful space just to be present. And if we pay attention to we talked about this in the past, right, how we see this similar foundational principles present in most spiritual traditions and at the core of them. You find this beautiful awareness of just literally being aware and to understand how the mind works, to understand how, what are those unconscious, consistent thinking patterns that bombard us and sometimes you know the truth is they're never going to stop.
Speaker 1:I think the beauty of the practice that it allows us to notice when it's happening and we can catch ourselves and we can use sort of like you know we become, we allow the witness right, the inner witness, to speak to us and to guide us. Can you unpack a little bit what is your relationship with your inner witness and how, perhaps this principle of what you learn over the years in your physical practices, but also the way you apply these tools in a spiritual way, how they help you show up in different ways, how they help you especially? You are a beloved yoga instructor in the Miami area and for those of you who are listening here in Miami, you know this is true. It's how many years have you been in this field?
Speaker 2:by the way. Well, I've been practicing yoga since 2012 and yoga found me, like the cacao, it found me. I, yeah, I found yoga through an accident in college. I fell off a scooter. I was in a pretty bad way and I used it in order to rehabilitate my body. I was a poor college student, didn't have access to physical therapy or even medical care at the time, didn't have any health insurance, and so a friend of mine from down here actually told me about yoga and I said, okay, yeah, whatever. And I went in there and I got very humbled. So that was my first introduction to yoga.
Speaker 2:And then, several years later, I moved back to Miami and I discovered a yoga studio and I wanted a new group of friends. I was very different when I was growing up here in Miami and I wanted to change that environment. I wanted a new group of friends. I started going to a yoga studio here and I started volunteering and one day, someone said hey, we're doing a yoga training. Do you want to? Do you want to be a part of it? And I, I did it in order to deepen my practice, because at that point, I had been practicing for several years and I wanted to deepen my knowledge and awareness of yoga, and then I ended up becoming a teacher. I never thought I'd be teaching yoga, and so I've been teaching full time since 2017, but I've been practicing yoga since 2012 and I've been a teacher since 2016.
Speaker 1:That's incredible, that's very powerful. So how, how have you seen the application of these principles to help you strengthen your ability to learn or to listen to that inner voice, to that inner witness? You know, in the Christian tradition you have this image of the still small voice of God and and in other spiritual traditions they call it the inner witness. How do you see the applications of these practices in your life and what is the benefit by using them?
Speaker 2:Well, when I first got, my introduction into yoga was very much physical, I feel like. I think that's the gateway. There's, like I mentioned earlier, there's eight branches of yoga and the third one is Asana, which is the physical practice of yoga, and it was actually. I realized later that it was actually the last branch of yoga that was created and somehow in the West it became the most popular branch of yoga, and I don't want to judge the West, the Western society. However, living in a place like Miami, I do see that there's a lot of vanity and there's a lot of even on Instagram, social media platforms, I think, what's promoted. And even even when I post videos about me talking about the yamas and the yamas, they always get less views, they get less likes than when I post a video of me doing like a cartwheel or like a handstand or something, and it's kind of like. It's a little disheartening at this point and I also have to make peace with that because it is what gets people into the door. So I have no qualms about yoga postures. I just want to let everybody who's listening know that it's not the only aspect of yoga and there's actually. It's one way to connect with yourself. It's one way to connect with that inner witness, and there's also a lot of other powerful tools and healing modalities that allow you to connect with that inner witness.
Speaker 2:I feel like I've had about three spiritual awakenings in my life. The first one came in 2012, when I had that accident and I discovered yoga, or yoga found me. And then in 2018, and then also in 2020,. 2020 was my last spiritual awakening and what I realized when all the studios closed down and all the gyms closed down and I was basically asked to go inside, literally and spiritually. I rediscovered yoga philosophy, because it was something that we went over during my yoga training, but just briefly, and I realized during the pandemic that I still had a lot of fear, I had a lot of anxiety, I had a lot of doubt and worry and I wasn't very. I was very. I was very sound physically in my knowledge and awareness of yoga postures, but I was I was not very well versed in the philosophy of yoga and the lifestyle of yoga and the ways of living through a yogic, through a yogic fashion or yoga through yoga philosophy, which is what the yamas and the yamas are about. So I dust it off this, this old book called the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. It was written thousands of years ago and it's it's a. It's a. It's a book that talks about how to live in a yogic way.
Speaker 2:Yoga is not a religion. Yoga is not just yoga postures. Yoga is a lifestyle, it's a way of being, it's a way of living, and so when I, when I started rereading this stuff and and reading it with a different lens now, not just like glancing over it or like brushing through it, but like really going deep and applying these principles to my life, I realized, wow, this can really change people's lives. It changed my life, and so I got to take a look inside and and I got to connect more with my, my spirit, and I got to connect more with God. No, no, no, that's it. That was really like my call to action. For whoever's listening to this, just through my own story, is because we we can see someone performing a yoga posture and someone who can touch their toes and that could be great and everything. And I, at that point in 2020, when I had my third spiritual awakening, I could do all those things with my eyes closed and my sleep pretty much, but it didn't make me any better of a person and actually, so I could, just so I can really encapsulate all this.
Speaker 2:Like I said at the beginning of this, the yoga postures were an afterthought.
Speaker 2:So these Rishis and these monks that were meditating for hours and hours on end, they realized that they needed something in order to help them meditate for longer, because at a certain point their leg would get numb or their low back would start to hurt and they had all these like physical ailments.
Speaker 2:And they realized without a healthy body, we can't have a healthy mind, and it's all connected to the, the. An unhealthy body is also a reflection of an unhealthy mind, and so they, they, they combined the yoga postures with everything else that they were doing and then that created the, the eightfold path, or the eight branches of yoga that we call ashtanga. Ashta means eight in Sanskrit and Anga Anga means limb. So the eight-limbed path of yoga and yoga postures are just one of those limbs or one of those branches. So I'm really glad that you brought up that question, because a lot of people think yoga is just about postures, and it's not. There's so much more to it. So I'm encouraging everyone listening to this to go out and like, get a copy of the yoga sutras, get a copy of the yamas and niyamas and read it and see if you can apply some of that stuff to your life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you. You know it's funny, um, well, it's not funny, but at the same time it's. It's beautiful to hear. It's beautiful to hear how this wisdom continues to ring true time after time, time and time and time and time again. Right, and like you, I was, I grew up in a Christian environment. I still consider myself a follower of the teachings of Jesus, but I had, the same time, I recognize the wisdom that is present in other traditions too. And, like you, um, when I stumble across Buddhism, and and and breathing, more importantly, and meditation, that's when, you know, a door opened up for me, right, and I will never forget when I was, I was a chaplain at a hospital and, um, I was doing a lot of thirst shifts and, you know, sometimes the evenings are quiet at the hospital.
Speaker 1:Other times are, you know, there's a lot of commotion and you're very active and working a lot, but there were many, many nights that I, you know, through the night I was just by myself and I threw my rounds. I needed to find something to do and I started learning from the story of the Buddha, right, and to learn and to see the similarities, um, of Buddhism and Christianity was very powerful and for me to learn about this attention to developing an understanding of the of the mind was very liberating, right? Because, um, I never had an opportunity to honor the ways in which my mind was distracting me from the present moment. You know, it's like I was going into my prayers and I was functioning as a chaplain and whatnot, but I was not honoring the ways in which one, my body, was speaking to me and and giving me cues of things that I needed to pay attention to, even in my interactions and as a chaplain, especially at the at the hospital. But then you know, to see the beauty that comes out of just learning what it looks like, and it was so hard at the beginning. I remember sitting down and trying to meditate. It was so hard, you know, and it was. It was and most people will, um, resonate with that right that when you sit down for the very first time, it's kind of weird. You don't know what you're doing and all of a sudden, the more you show up, the more you lean in and into the practice.
Speaker 1:For me it was very subtle. They were very small breakthroughs of wisdom, very small breakthroughs of self-awareness that ultimately gave me a path to access self-love, and I use the expression of self-love because, all right so, if we wanna use this image of God as love, that's beautiful, but do we allow ourselves to receive and to embrace that love? Do we allow ourselves to recognize the ways in which, sometimes, our ways of thinking continue to pull us away from that alignment? And I find it interesting because I was like, wow, I was in my early, my late 20s, right, and then I ended up working with youth and young adults.
Speaker 1:I now work with children and part of my job is actually to introduce them to these voices that helped us really develop that awareness. So, in the same way that I introduced them to the teachings of Jesus or the beauty of his example, I love to introduce them to the Buddha and to introduce them to this ability to reconnect with yourself, to pay attention to your breathing, to pay attention to the subtleties of your body, and I actually I look forward to seeing down the road what these practices may do in their character and their lives. So I appreciate that people have access to teachers like you, that when they go to yoga studio, you give them an opportunity to not just pay attention to the body postures, but how, in the practice they have access to really connect with those small breakthroughs of wisdom, of grace, of release that come as a result of being present with your body and honoring the wisdom that is present in the present moment. What would you like to say about that?
Speaker 2:And just remembering that they are just tools. I it's funny because I used to think that if I could just get all the poses down perfectly, that I would reach a state of nirvana or enlightenment. And that day never came and it still hasn't arrived yet. And I'm okay with that now. I'm okay with being fully human and realizing that in life, this human experience, it's gonna have as ebbs and as flows, and I don't claim to know all the answers and I don't claim that. I don't claim to think or to say that yoga is the best form of connection to self for everyone. I just encourage people to find something that helps them connect to themselves and helps them go and come into that state of gratitude and that heart connection that we were talking about earlier, whatever works for them. And so I'm a huge proponent of going into places that are unknown. Going into places that maybe I wasn't raised around, like, for example, yoga is completely out of my culture. I'm Cuban and yoga comes from India and yet, even though I'm considered the black sheep of the family, I still do these things. And now I just wanted to share something from my personal life. I host a monthly cacao ceremony and my sister and my brother-in-law and my three nieces were at the last one that I hosted. They've known that I've been doing these ceremonies for quite some time. I've been doing events in the community for years now and they've never been to any of my events. They've never been to any of my ceremonies. But lately I've been coming around more and they've been seeing a shift. They've been seeing a big change in me and in my life and that's the best way that we can help others is by healing ourselves and by doing this inner work. So whatever works for you, that's all I got to say about that.
Speaker 2:I'm not here to say that I'm a crusader for yoga or for anything. If prayer and reading the Bible is what works for you, great. If yoga is what works for you, great. If doing cacao ceremonies is what works for you, great. If traveling works for you, I just say go out and find something. And it's usually the things that scare us the most and it's usually the things that we're a little reluctant to try that are usually the ones that help bring about that breakthrough. So that would just say keep an open mind, because you never know what can help shift your reality and what can help heal you and in doing that and in going into that fully, that discomfort, and really healing yourself, you're gonna be able to help heal so many other people just by virtue of you healing yourself. So, yeah, if someone is and I always say, pay attention to the kind of people that you come around, pay attention to the kind of conversations that you're listening, because that's usually a sign from life or from God that that's something that is meant for you, that there's a message for you.
Speaker 2:So, if people are listening to this right now and if it's your first time hearing about the yamas and niyamas, or if this is something that, like yoga, keeps coming up, try out a yoga class. Go and sign up for a yoga class. Read the description of the class, because this is something I always tell my students. There's different styles of yoga. People associate yoga with something more passive, like meditation or just passive relaxing stretches, and there's very physically demanding yoga classes. So read the description of the yoga class that you take, because I've had people come into my, for example, my power vinyasa yoga classes, where we're doing handstands and pushups and lunges, and their doctor told them well, go take a yoga class for your low back injury, and that's not what they need. What they need is a more restorative yoga class. So educate yourself on the different styles of yoga and then give it a try, and if you don't like it, then you can always go back to what you were doing before. That's what I tell everyone. That's always the beauty of all this Try it and see what happens, and if you don't like it, then you can always go back to what you were doing before.
Speaker 2:But the thing that I'm happiest about is that we have access to so many different healing modalities and tools, and now more than ever, because at one point in time, for example, even in India, you would have to get initiated to go into a yoga school. You couldn't just check an application on your phone and see what yoga class was around you within a five mile radius. You would have to get asked by someone in your community if you wanted to join their yoga school, and then you would have to go through years and years of initiation in order to learn the postures and to learn the different breathing techniques and to learn all these moral precepts and values that we're talking about. It wasn't like you could just go on Amazon and buy yourself a copy of the yamas and the yamas. You would have to study under someone for years and years in order to be exposed to this kind of knowledge and wisdom.
Speaker 2:So we're very lucky and we're very blessed to be alive at this time where all of this information, all this knowledge, is so readily available to us. So it doesn't hurt to try it. You have nothing to lose in everything to gain. So that's really my message to everyone. I'm not a crusader for anything. I'm just a believer in trying new things, and these healing modalities do really work. It's just finding the one that works for you.
Speaker 1:Wow, thank you so much. That's very powerful. Why don't we? I think I want to honor people who spend of attention and I want to honor your time too. In closing, Luis, what is a special quote or figure that has inspired you lately or throughout your life?
Speaker 2:Oh, man so many people Growing up without a father I kind of had to like piece together a father figure and I really look up to Marcus Aurelius. Marcus Aurelius was a stoic in the Roman times and if you guys have seen the movie Gladiator, he's a character in that movie and I've always just been a fan of the underdog man. I consider myself an underdog in life. I was born in a very poor country and didn't have a silver spoon in my mouth. I had to really struggle for a lot of the things that I have right now and I'm just a fan of just hard work and dedication. I've never been naturally good at anything. I've always had to work my way and I love that. I love the journey.
Speaker 2:So I don't know if there's a quote about this, but the biggest message that I want to leave everybody with is fall in love with the journey. The destination is just one point in your life. Fall in love with the journey. Whatever you're doing right now, like really dive into it fully and give all of your heart and love to it, because the journey is really the destination. So I would just leave everybody with that message Whatever you're doing in your life right now, no matter how hard it is, if you feel very strongly about it, if God keeps opening doors for you, then you're meant to be there. So, falling in love with that journey. Don't look on social media, don't even look at me, and think, oh, I want to be like this guy one day and that's so cool what he does. Just know that whoever you look up to if you're a guitar player, if you're a yogi or whatever you are and there's someone that you look up to take them off that pedestal, because that person is just like you.
Speaker 2:Every time I see a performance, every time I see someone give a speech, I just I don't see the speech. I don't see the performance live. What I see is I see them in their bedroom practicing that speech over and over again. I see them like all the times that they failed at whatever it is that they're doing, all the countless hours that they invested into their craft. So fall in love with the journey and as long as you do that, I think that you're going to have a fulfilling life and really, at the end of the day, like my friend and my guide out there in Egypt said when I asked him in 2020, when I first went to Egypt and I was at a very lost and confused time in my life. I asked him what is the meaning of life and he said it's to live it. So just go out and live your life.
Speaker 1:Wow, thank you so much. That's very deep. I love how profound and honest you have been. I love how you, in a very graceful way, have exposed people to the opportunity to remind each other that guess what? We share one thing, and that is our humanity. None of us here are better than the other. We're all our human beings and there's no doubt that the best teacher is the journey itself. Thank you so, so, so much. Before we finish no man, we needed to have this session and I'm so glad We've been trying to make this happen for a little bit now. Before, I just want to give an opportunity for you to share with people what you do, to share about your business, the Kakao Sol, to share about the sacred tours to Egypt and what studios do you work at in Miami.
Speaker 2:Thank you, thank you for that. So Kakao Solcom you can go on there. So the company was actually started by my friend, jeff and his former partner, megan. They met in Omidepe, nicaragua, back in 2020. They were at a retreat there and luckily they got stuck there because of the pandemic and they were staying on a Kakao farm that also doubles as a yoga retreat center and as a space where people can just go and they can stay there like a hostel. So they fell in love with Kakao and they started seeing all the healing benefits to Kakao. They came back to Miami once they were able to leave Nicaragua and they started this company, kakao Sol, c-a-c-a-o-s-o-l. Sol like the sun in Spanish, it's also a play on words like the Sol and you guys can go on there if you guys want to try out our Kakao products. They come from, like Jorge said, the best farmers in Nicaragua. It really is some of the best, earthiest tasting Kakao I've ever consumed in my life. I've tried Kakao from Mexico, guatemala, ecuador, peru and I stopped when I discovered Kakao Sol. I was actually an ambassador for Kakao Sol a couple years back and now I'm the owner of it. So if you guys want to learn more about Kakao, the benefits of it, and if you want to actually purchase some Kakao, you can go on our website, kakaosolcom.
Speaker 2:The Sacred Spiritual Journey to Egypt was a channel, the Divinely Channeled and Inspired Journey, and it was based off of a journey that I took by myself in 2020, when I, like I said earlier, was at a very. I was at a crossroads in my life, let's just say that. And I showed up to Egypt I didn't know anybody. I booked my hotel in front of the Pyramids of Giza because I said I just want to wake up the day that I get there and I want to be able to see the pyramids from my window. And it turns out that the guy who owns that hotel is a Egyptologist with over 20 years of experience. His name is Dr Muhammad, and he asked me on the morning after I got to Egypt. He said what do you want to do here? And I said take me to all these places. I want to see these temples and I want to go visit these places in this exact order. And he thought I was crazy. He's like I've been doing this for over 20 years and I've never seen a Montenegro like this, are you sure? And he tried to dissuade me from going to certain sites and I said, no, I think I was. Well, you'll have to take a nine hour bus and I'm like done, let's do it. So, yeah, let's just say that that journey is life changing. We're going to do our fourth tour now in May May 28th through June the 8th, and I've taken over 30 people now to Egypt and everybody who's gone there has a radically changing life experience and there's been people who've come back from the journey, who've gotten divorced. There's been people who've come back from the journey who've gotten married. There's been people who've had family members, lose family members, gain family members, change their careers. It is a 12 day journey that goes through the temple now system in Egypt, but also through the chakra system in our bodies, which are just energetic points in our body. So we hope to go inside those energy points and we hope to uncover some blockages there so that when we come out of that journey, we're able to live our life fully.
Speaker 2:And I'm also teaching at Lifetime here in Coral Gables. It's right off of US 1. It's a great facility. If you guys want to come there and be my guests, I'd love to give you guys a guest pass a day, pass on me. And then, other than that, I'm also teaching at Aguacate Sanctuary of Love. That's where I host my monthly cacao ceremonies, called the cacao ceremony, it's called the ceremony of the heart, and it's the first Monday of every month. And then I'm also doing men circles. Now I'm going to do my first one on April 10th with my friend Diego, who we do a men's retreat in upstate New York every September. So if you guys want to learn more about all of this stuff, it's on my website, luisinmotioncom. L-u-i-s-i-n-m-o-t-i-o-n. Dot com, where you can go on my Instagram, luisinmotion, that's it.
Speaker 1:Well, you heard it guys. You heard it, luisinmotioncom. Okay, now we're going to finish. One last question for you. I always ask my guests who could be a future guest on the podcast. Who comes to mind for you?
Speaker 2:Absolutely my friend Mio, my two people, mio and Mio Santana, and my friend Diego Yaraoui. So Diego Yaraoui has a lot of knowledge of Native American ancestral wisdom. He's a facilitator of different ceremonies like a temascala, which is a Native American sweat lodge. He also does family constellations he's helped me a lot in my healing journey and my friend Mio Santana she does a lot of self-love and women's empowerment work. So if you want to get the masculine, you go with Diego. If you want to get more of the feminine energy, you go with my friend Mio. Both of them are amazing guests and I would love to introduce you to both of them.
Speaker 1:Wonderful. Well, let's make it happen. Friends, this has been another amazing episode of Journey Talk podcast. Luis, you have been incredible. Thank you so much for your time. I'm so humble for you giving me of your presence and your sharing your story and your vulnerability. I hope that people can get something out of this time together and for our audience there. We look forward to connecting with you in our next episode. Thank you so much and take care.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Thank you, Jorge, I appreciate you. Thank you guys.
Speaker 1:Hey guys, thank you for listening. Make sure you follow, like and subscribe to our podcast, Share your feedback, hit that notification bell and let's keep the conversation going.