The Heallist Podcast
Heallist is on a mission to empower holistic healers, one story at a time. Join founder and serial entrepreneur Yuli Ziv as she connects with inspiring voices in alternative healing who’ve achieved true abundance, while also providing practical insights into building a conscious business. Whether you're deep into business expansion or looking to take your healing practice online, tune in every other week for new episodes and insights and visit Heallist.com to explore our tools.
The Heallist Podcast
Healing the healer with Karuna
Step into a world of transformation with celebrated Kundalini Yoga teacher and healer, Karuna, as she enlightens us on the power of spiritual maintenance through Kundalini Yoga. Karuna opens up about her journey from the fast-paced life in New York City to the serene spiritual waters of India. Here, she found profound healing and growth, which she now shares with others. She emphasizes the importance of embracing both light and darkness, guiding us to navigate this transition with authenticity and compassion. Her insights on creating balance and a partnership with the divine feminine offer a roadmap for personal and spiritual growth during challenging times.
This episode highlights the critical theme of healing the healer through the lens of holistic practices.
• Exploring the challenges healers face in prioritizing their own well-being
• Understanding the significance of emotional awareness in healing
• The role of sadhana in personal and spiritual growth
• Transition from Kali Yuga to Aquarian Age and its implications for healing
• Importance of community support in healing journeys
• Personal stories and transformative experiences shared by Karuna
• The necessity of self-care for individuals guiding others in their journeysThis episode encourages us to trust our journeys and appreciate the unexpected ways the universe supports our healing, offering a deeper appreciation for the connections and energy centers that underpin personal growth.
Check out Heallist.com for digital tools created just for holistic healers.
Welcome to the Healist Podcast, where we inspire and guide healers through business expansion. We give voice to incredibly abundant healers to share their stories. We dive into the quantum field to unlock the energies of conscious creation. We also develop digital tools to help you grow, which you can find on HealLesscom. I'm your host, Yuli, and I'm grateful you chose to join this space. Now let's go deep.
Yuli:Hello, my dear friends, excited to welcome you back to another episode of the Healist Podcast, and I'm really thrilled today to introduce Karuna. She's a radiant force of compassion and transformation in a holistic healing world. She's a celebrated Kundalini Yoga teacher, healer and global retreat leader. She's also the author of an upcoming book and Kundalini yoga manual and the developer of the spiritual maintenance practice, which beautifully engages in human kindness and compassion. We're going to dive into her inspiring journey and the incredible work she's doing to uplift and empower others and I gotta tell you, just from our few minutes chatting before this recording, she's been already uplifting me in so many ways. So, karuna, please welcome to the podcast.
Karuna:Oh, I'm so happy to know you. I love listening to you and I love hearing what you say and how cozy you make us all feel. So thank you for engaging in this book of mine that's just been published number one on Amazon for yoga right now Light on Kundalini. You know it's your lifestyle guide to yoga and awakening. You know you are so welcome to ask me and engage your viewers, your listeners, to those aspects of what gets us through every block. You know, how do we, how do we like dive into? Wow, that really, you know, bothered me. How do I, I, what do I do right now? Just to like squeeze this feeling without pushing it away with, with sitting with it, with recognizing it and understanding that it's a part of me, it's a conversation within me already. What's come up for us? So let us, let us dive in. I'm super psyched to be here.
Yuli:Amazing.
Yuli:Well, I'm really grateful for you bringing this up and also just to mention to our listeners who might be listening later on or, who knows, maybe years from now, we're actually recording it on the inauguration week, like a day after and day after MLK day, right, I feel like we're in such a state of light and darkness right now for so many people, and it just came up in our conversation before and I think I couldn't imagine a better guest to kind of guide us and show us the lights maybe, and then be focused on the light while not ignoring the darkness.
Yuli:We don't want to be ignorant people, we welcome all worlds, but it seems to me that you have so much wisdom. Focus on the light while not ignoring the darkness. We don't want to be ignoring people, we welcome all worlds, but it seems to me that you have so much wisdom and I think it was meant to be scheduled today so we can share some of this wisdom in the world it is just so blessed to have these challenges come up for us, because how else are we going to siphon through to purity, to the sattvic guna, you know?
Karuna:are we going to this whole idea about sitting with? You know what is in yogic practice, in lifestyle? I take this yogic practice super seriously, I suppose, but I don't even notice when I'm doing yoga or not doing yoga anymore. You know, I'm basically right here with all of us in the same way. I just want to be supernatural in my approach and organic. And how can I become you know that more purely and satisfy my words to get to you, to get to the true you, and you know, I know we can sit and retreat, and we do every December in Costa Rica, and you know we go all the way to the blue zone and we trust that. But the sweet potatoes, they're in the oven right now and they're also a part of the blue zone. You know the purple sweet potato that you know gives us longevity.
Karuna:So what do we want to do? Do we want to sit in judgment and dwell in that darkness, or do we want to somehow find a relationship, a partnership if you like, with divine, fierce, divine, feminine? Comes through right now, like, okay, yes, she's bringing everything up for us to look at and clear. And so this is when I know that sadhana works. Sadhana in yogic practice. Everyone will tell you that there's a 4.45 am sadhana practice wherever Karuna is teaching. Wherever I am, you can come to my yogic sadhana practice, whether you're taking my retreat or not, or we're, just because I invite you to sit with your soul to line up those demons every morning before the sun rises, to use the technology and the grace of light.
Karuna:We're seeing the pinnacle of the Piscean Age, which is the dark age, the Kali Yuga, and we're moving to the Aquarian Age. We're in the Aquarian Age. It actually was activated right on the day of the pandemic, march 20th, 2020, right, 2020, was it? I can't remember anymore 12 years ago, wow, and that told us we had some cleaning up to do. And so, you know, in my book I mention my own experiences that have taken me to my knees. You know we're watching the fires burning in LA. I lived in LA. My soul now, after living in the Colorado Rockies for the last 30 years, literally has become super sensitive to the darkness, you know. And yet we're going to turn it around. So the phoenix is rising in LA, right, we're going to get rid of all that materialism, right? No, it's hard, it's hard. It's hard not to see your friends in their homes again and what everyone is facing like COVID changed us, this is going to change us, and yeah, so it's auspicious to be here with you today, divine timing, Amazing.
Yuli:And you know, when we talked about what are the overarching themes that we would like to make it about today, you just said right out, you said it's heal the healer and I said this is what we do. I couldn't. I couldn't say it more perfectly. So we're here to heal the healers and I think you absolutely said it more perfectly. So we're here to heal the healers and I think you absolutely describe it so beautifully, some of your emotions around it, and I totally agree with you with some of the yogic tools and I feel like the healers sometimes don't use their own tools. I don't know if you've seen that, because we have a lot of tools.
Karuna:Oh yeah, honestly, honestly, the tool here and is getting up, that's the tool you need is to, you know, the, the, what do you call it? The forklift. Become the forklift, so like, get yourself out from horizontal to vertical to the altar and release that. You know, that tendency to live in those subconscious patterns. So, yes, we have to heal the healer, because the healer sometimes is so busy healing others that she forgets about herself or himself. To take, you know, those incredible therapeutic moments to walk, to breathe, to bathe, to do the Ishanah you know, to do the, you know, to sit at the altar and pray. It's not, you know, it's no specific religion. All of them are welcome, and that's why I love kundalini yoga, because it takes us back to the 10 gurus that were back in the 15th century, up until the 17th century or whatever. However, but there's no living gurus anymore, and guru govind singh was a latin, was a tenth guru, and each one of these gurus represents the ten bodies. And so the ten bodies in kundalini yoga is the soul, body at the base, first guru, good, economic, negative mind, positive mind, neutral at the heart. Fifth body, physical body, and I know you've done this yoga practice. So, sixth body. Is that beautiful, those arc lines, ladies, we have an arc line across our chest Never, ever defeat, always rise, Always. Let it come up right from the base. And so when we're in these upper chakras, in this upper triangle, we activate that willingness to surrender. And yes, in kundalini yoga, as you know and experience, we hold our arms up for a while and you know, sometimes you get a broken arm in your life and sometimes you can't hold your arms up and there's, you know, this idea of okay, now what do I do with my practice? How do I heal the healer that's been wounded? And yet, if we reverse the vocabulary, turn the situation around, to know that we asked for it in the first place, to switch it up, to bring in some new ideas new not necessarily concepts, but just medicine, as meditation is medicine, if we can digest that in itself, by juicing or, again, mindful walking, using other masters. It's one I love, love, you know, that relationship with the Plum Village, his community, our community, what we're gathering here today, inviting new community in.
Karuna:Why would we ever ever turn and look at what the gossip? I've always been. I've never been asked about the gossipy part of Kundalini Yoga ever, because I guess the students just know that I'm sort of like ancient wisdom, not sort of like that's what's shy in me, but to really own that ancient wisdom, to polish those antiques inside of us, those wisdom keepers, and just to really believe that kundalini yoga is 5,000 years old. And those gurus, those 10 gurus, all sacrifice so much.
Karuna:As Buddha reminds us, suffering leads to compassion. And when I received my name, karuna, I literally had to take my own canoe across the Ganga because I missed the group, which is not surprising to travel with them in Varanasi on Mahasivaratri in March 2004 and receive my name, which I didn't know how it was spelled even, and really like what does it mean? And that then there told me I needed to learn and study and become compassion. And when I took that vow to become Karuna, believe me, it was easier, being all the other names I had before it.
Karuna:Because when you surrender to a yoga practice, you watch the gossip and you make sure you don't get involved with that. It isn't unknowing, it isn't good knowledge, wisdom Grace is very generous. She'll teach us how to deal with gossip and how to use the practice of angles and triangles, kundalini yoga, to release, but we do have to have a conversation about it because it does bother our sensitive souls, like the destruction, you know, of any burning fire. It's the agony, it's the fire, it's the second chakra, it's the negative mind, and we feed it, and we feed it so much and we compete as women to get the hierarchy of a yogic practice. Nothing, if we blend, let's blend.
Yuli:Really, you and I, we blend well it's because our egos have been in check over many, many years of practice. Right, and I think this is where I find personally, the more I operate and you know I cross between the I walk between world, the business world and the healing world a lot and it's it's constant, the reminder, right, and I find that the ego is the major source of darkness that we're seeing in all kinds of worlds business world, you know. Politics, the world you name it right, and I think what I made my personal practice and I also try not to attach too much to, you know, certain traditions, leaders, gurus, styles. You know, it's all about creating that balance, that coherence and working on, you know, putting your ego in check and not being led by it. Right, it's leading from the heart. That's been like the hardest practice for me and it doesn't matter if I do you know I go to a Reiki practitioner or I do my own yoga or meditation. It's all about, you know, know, connecting with my heart and also keeping that ego in check. So you said it very beautifully as well and I wanted I had so many like follow-ups as you were talking. There were so many things popping in my mind because you were literally talking about like events in my life, things that happened. I was like, oh, I know exactly what she's talking about and let's just kind of dial back. It's kind of. First of all, the fact that we both discovered Kundalini Yoga.
Yuli:I did in 2005 on a trip to India. It wasn't very nasty, it was Rishikesh, but I went to India as a frustrated New York City yogi who just went to every single studio and I just could feel with my own I don't know born intuition that it wasn't real. Like, what I was taught was a packaged, like a processed food versus like give me the wholesome version, right, give me the real thing, the wholesome version, right, give me the real thing. So I book like a 30 year old does I book a ticket to India, pack a little you know backpack Well, a large backpack actually and just go, go to find the real yoga in India. It took a couple of stops but eventually I ended up in. Well, I wanted to end up in Rishikesh because I had a feeling that's where I really find and I go to a couple of other ashrams to try different styles and don't really connect.
Yuli:And then I stumble upon a Kundalini Yoga school and it was like from the moment I had that class, like everything changed. It was the first time in my life that I could feel you know, my chakras and really understand, like all my energy centers, and really, really feel the energy moving in my body which I never had experienced before. I can't say I had the full Kundalini awakening. That would be amazing. Story right, my first class. Some people do, but that's really the story. The story goes, but it was amazing to be able to feel that energy and I was hooked.
Yuli:And you know, when I came back to to the city I found Kundalini Yoga School and then I started practicing, you know, every week and you know it's been. It's really built who I am. It builds a lot of my perceptions about what you know prosperity means, for example, and how spirituality and abundance work together, which was confusing me for a while, and it really cleared and created this beautiful ground. And then another thing that you mentioned is about the arms up, how inundalini yoga we practice a lot with our arms up and how difficult it is. It was so funny because the last like big kundalini yoga, like group event that I've done was actually right before the pandemic.
Yuli:It was the very last white tantric yoga workshop that was done in new york city right before the pandemic in 2019. Right, and it was a thousand. How you need it? Yeah, perfect, oh, my god. People and you're sitting and, of course, you know I booked the ticket way in advance. I'm so excited to finally do my first one and I get a frozen shoulder, like a couple of weeks before, and I'm thinking how am I gonna be doing? And, for those of you who are listening, this is about we're talking about like 10 hours a day basically sitting in this intense intense.
Karuna:You can't get any more intense.
Yuli:No, it's definitely the most intense thing I've ever done and I haven't run a marathon, but I feel like this is harder.
Yuli:So I get there with my frozen shoulder and you know just, I'm just gonna trust the divine that you know.
Yuli:I know I'm supposed to be there, I don't know how, and literally I sit down and I came without a partner and this is something you do in a partnership, of course and so they usually they just find somebody else who came alone, right, and they put in front of me and my teacher saw me alone, and he puts, he points to this woman and says come, sit there.
Yuli:And she turns to be the most amazing like body alignment, chinese medicine and whatever you want to name it healer. And she looks at me we started doing the first exercise and she feels my pain because at that point I was just after a first hour, I was ready to scream right with my shoulder, and she's like oh, what's up with your left shoulder, your right shoulder, let me take a look at it. And at that point I was like whoever wants to take a look, please, please, do something. And she literally takes it and she turns a couple of times, she does a little massaging a little movement and I got to tell you within the next hour I felt no pain.
Yuli:And we finished the 10 hour, you know, white tantric yoga workshop and it was the most amazing, like elevating thing I've ever done. I just felt so cleansed, so cleared and this was just divine there for me. You know, healing the healer, so it just came to me.
Yuli:When you said that, I was like, okay, I have to tell this story because that was actually got me into realizing the power of holistic healing because up until then, you know, I've seen it, I tried it, I believed in it. But this was the most miraculous thing that happened to me and I started working with, still friends with with that woman and I started, you know, being closer with her and trying to see how can I help you. Right, you just literally healed me with your two hands. How can I help you? And some of the early ideas of Healist really sprung from that I mean just digest that.
Karuna:Everyone, like I, have to digest this because this conversation is so important for us right here and now. To trust I'm going with my pain. I've been warned, I know it's going to be the hardest, longest day of my life, but I'm going with it and I'm not bringing anyone there with me. It's going empty. And I'm arriving and somebody points to somebody and they sit in front of me and I open my eyes and I look in their eyes and we're across from each other, knee to knee. That's how close we are and this compassionate healer sits across and heals me and I end up healing with 10 hours of Kundalini Yoga, white Tantric practice, which is designed for the next 40 days. After that tantric practice to heal all the rest of you in 40 days, continues to work on you and it changes your habitual patterns that bring us to that. You know, panic, place that, anxiety, the stressors, and then, for some reason, I show up as I am, with my pain and I receive this miracle. And that is what I talk about in my book. You know it is the light on Kundalini, it isn't the darkness, it isn't the idea that one will be awakened overnight with a yoga, you know, awakening that changes their life. Many women, young women, have come and sat with me, either in one-on-one, mostly class situation, retreat situations. My parents don't know what to do with me because I've had an awakening and I see these women now, 20, 15, 10 years later and they're in relationship, they're a mother, they're living a healthy, happy, holy life. It works, kundalini yoga, like that. It is a mastery and it does. I can give you so many facts about it that in six months you understand it, versus 22 years of practicing hatha yoga. It doesn't. It challenges your brain, your mind, your right left hemisphere challenges your brain and your mind, your right left hemisphere. You know, it balances you, your glandular system, on its own. When she adjusted you, she was guided by Guru Ram Dass, the miracle of the fourth Guru that brings in the compassion. He used to go out every night at midnight, escape from all his guards and everybody in Amritsar, india, and he would go out and feed the poor and scrub their feet. So humble, because why not help thy neighbor? Why not serve? You know, and, yes, because you came as pure pain. The pain paid off, you know, and it's just a miracle. Thank you for sharing that story Because if anyone can go do white tantric yoga and want to change their life, just go do white tantric yoga and find it.
Karuna:Life. Just go do white tantric yoga and find it. And there's a winter solstice in Florida and a summer solstice above Espanola, on Ramdak Pari, where we all sit and do white tantric for three days and it's phenomenal. It's not 10 hours, sometimes last year was eight to nine hours. It was intense and always it brings the weather you know.
Karuna:So the conditions, your intense and everything like that are challenged. We're wholly fully challenged and that's holistic, that's Ayurveda, veda. That's the purest way that we can get into the mud and become that lotus and bloom, you know, and grow out of that muddy situation and it's just such a, it's such a balancing factor. It gives you a strong navel, so you don't have back pain. You come with pain, but eventually you pump that navel in breath of fire or pranayama, you know, and we're in this nine year, 2020, for the nine year, and in this nine year it's the subtle body. So things aren't going to look like they're changing at all, but you are going to wake up different every morning from your dream state, from your awakened state, blending the two together and I think you know it's relevant to say that, kundalini overwork.
Karuna:It's very important to hear that because we are in situations now that subdivision, separation, don't bring you, you know, money, greed, the one percent, what the heck you know it's like. Share that stuff. You know, support each other. Send somebody on retreat if you can't go, think, be outside of the box. Somebody on retreat if you can't go, think, be outside of the box. And how do you expand in that? You know, how do you think outside of the box because the box is so tight and we're so, we're so rigidly in that.
Yuli:So let's talk about your box. How were you able to expand it over the years, you know, from finding this magic of Kundalini Yoga? How did you become this name, this, you know, practice leader, who does retreats classes, you know, holds spaces for so many people, has such a beautiful name, image, mean I'm allowed to say brand, because I think we are, you know, in the space as as a healer, although a lot of people deny that. But we all have a personal brand, that that you know, it's our outer shell that people perceive. So how did karuna come out as a brand and as a leader in this space?
Karuna:Luckily, thank you, thank you, luckily. Pamela says it in her letter to Caroline in my book you know something about being lucky, you know I gave her, she gave me a nickname called lucky and and now she thinks she's a lucky one, which is so sweet the letter to in the book is just so sweet from Pamela. But Pamela found me in Boulder, colorado, selling Paquette pants, polyester pantsuits to little old ladies at the time and said you know, can my boyfriend and I take your picture? There's an agent in Denver who wants to, you know, to meet new faces and and send people to Paris. And I was like, yeah, pamela, just to tell our listeners who Pamela is.
Yuli:Just to tell our listeners who Pamela is.
Karuna:Yes, pamela Hanson. She's an incredible photographer. I mean, her latest and greatest is Beyonce's whole campaign. But she's just, she's a shifter, she just you know, she just gives you this courage and when you get, you know, in front of her camera, you bring out the best in you. Same thing with yoga when you get in front of your own yoga practice, you bring out the best in you, and I think that was really important.
Karuna:To go on with a one-way ticket to Paris and know that I knew nothing about anything, anything seriously, and literally lost all my luggage, lost everything. Talk about hanging out in the same outfit for a very long time in Paris, of all places. And it's just an exception to the rule about we navigate through. I started when I was certified. I started bringing teachers to Boulder, colorado, and I started doing teacher training programs with other teachers, because I wasn't qualified at the time to lead my own, to lead my own, and so there's this 3HO and there's this KRI institutions that run the way you do things, and I was, so I was the facilitator, but I had always remembered that becoming a teacher is the highest caliber of our being any kind of teacher, and so I thought let's get these students that I was teaching to come to become teachers and take their life into their own hands and responsibility of their families as householders, to understand that we can get, make it through, you know, with as little as we might have at times and that it is never, it's not always pretty what you see in Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training Program. It's hard work, it's, you know, it's long days, starting with sadhana and it goes like your tantric practice, 10 hours a day. And I was in Rikikesh running some of these teacher training programs, assisting also, and the weather was horrendous and the wind and the rain in Española, where I did my, you know, did the teacher training program was her. I mean every, all the elements, all the tapas on the fingertips or twin fire, water ether come into.
Karuna:So how did I get to where I am today? As a happy, content woman, working on divine feminine projects, working with the Founding Mothers movements, working to empower women in their voice, chakra, to open up their truth and authentic self, and know that inside of every one of us there's that brilliance. You know, rarely do I use genius, but I love that you brought, you know, light on Kundalini up as a brand. We need to be profitable, we need to create and live into our own witness of creation. And yes, you know, we have mentors, but most of the time and this is the hard part mentors just moved on and I was like, oh my, my god, I'm here on my own. And then I would. You know, I had wonderful friends and have wonderful friends that we can sit on the phone, and one friend, you know, taught me how to speak on the phone for about three hours actually, because I was always in a rush.
Karuna:So everything started to slow down. Everything became so much more conscious of my doings. Even juicing in the morning takes 45 minutes To juice your own juice, to clean your own house. And, you know, in our 30s, and more so in our 30s, 20s, 30s, we're rushing everywhere. We're thinking this is it. I'm going to become a yogi. When I was a model in New York with Ford, I was a model in New York, I was like, but I realized that I was living right next to the Integral Yoga Center. For a reason, there was something about that. I was getting become, you know, vegetarian, vegan, organic and just allowing that, you know, grief to come through, which is that cough. Right then, and there I just want to acknowledge that, that wisdom and that grace of healers, the healer in us, and to really drop into how we walk around New York City, how we walk around Gold Hill with this awareness of how we have to rest and relax and bundle up, as you see me here, yes, easy, as you call it, cozy.
Yuli:You look very cozy. But I find the biggest challenge is and I still visit my beloved New York City every other week is to have that peace and slowness right. It's almost the second you get to those places. Everything you learn in the woods and the mountains where we are, goes out of the door and you get soaked in this beautiful, vibrant energy that is very fast-paced and very competitive and ambitious.
Karuna:And I'm really glad you brought that up, because I'm still not so good at handling that, if I can be really honest. I'm like, yeah, let's go. You know, and it's so much fun to be in New York City or to be in Ibiza dancing, you know, in the night, but yet yet there's a way, when we used to do that in the 80s, that you know we just go straight to work, you know, from Studio 54. But now it's like oh no. But now it's like oh no. Still, the fabulous idea of remembering that we had that in our youth and we struggled. I remember being 25, you know, in New York City, going what next? And by the time I was 27, I was married. The time I was 27, I was married and I didn't know that even that person at 25, when I was lying there on my birthday going asking.
Karuna:These questions are so relevant to who you are today and how you manage it. And the toughest situation is to move on from a relationship that isn't working. As women and men suffering today and these, you know, violence of of not being able to hearing the, the call whisper, the angelic whisper of the soul, and not being able to respond to it would be so tragic. And now everyone has to go inside and hear that voice and be honest with it. Be satnam, be. Truth is my identity. Be truthful to the response of that voice. It's hard to watch violent things on television or in movies. It's disruptive to the psyche and it, you know, prompts a question of how you are and what you're doing with your life. You start to question your meditation because you got suddenly hooked on an idea that it was someone else's meditation. No, this is you, this is pure you, and when you sit with you, you link, you get to feel that the blessing of you, which becomes we, which becomes universal, which becomes oh. I need some skill set, I need some strategy. I need to become the manager or the defender or the leader or the teacher or the artist or the actor right now, here and now, or the actor right now, here and now.
Karuna:And I can say that there is practices that I have called the 81 facets of the mind that take you through the nine aspects that lead you down to the 27 projections. Each aspect has three projections that go with it, and the science is why Light on Light magazine that I co-founded, and working with the UN on International Yoga Day and all these women coming forth and say this stuff works and it's not woo-woo, it's science. So there's a stability in the practice. I just taught a 90-year-old woman, who's an author of 11 books, kundalini yoga and it's the way I integrated what she already knew into what I lent her an idea around to meditate with.
Karuna:And this is important because as we get older we start to lose things, not only in devastating fires, but loved ones, mothers, fathers, you know, siblings, children no, God forbid. But you know, things in this world happen and we need to protect ourselves and we need to have a practice that when things are devastatingly impossible to move around, like your frozen shoulder going into that sitting with your soul, with yourself, we need to know we can shift and we need to know that, that we have support with each other in community, and that's what I talk about. It takes a village, you know, but we get into those rabbit holes, those warrants, and we just really get into them and then we isolate ourselves and today we need each other absolutely so beautifully said, and you know this is why building a community is a part of a big part of my mission, and I mean this podcast is a community.
Yuli:There's a community of listeners, a hundred percent Exactly, yep, and you know it's. It's a really beautiful experience and the more I work with healers, I realize how much that community is needed, because a lot of them work solo. A lot of them or they feel isolated. In addition to working solo, sometimes they feel isolated from their friends. Even their family might not be understanding or trusting. It's not the easiest path to choose and I feel like a lot of people that chose this path. They kind of had no choice and their soul chose it for them a long time ago.
Yuli:But there is that earth suffering that comes with that decision, with that path, and I think the more, the stronger we become right, and both in our spiritual practices but also in our earth skills. And this is where I see my contribution to this community. Right, because the importance of being strong in the earth skill skills, this is what gives you that, that confidence, that proactiveness, like right. Well, what you said, okay, what do you do with it? Like if you decide to become a teacher, a healer or a leader, whatever it is, but it's the next action step sometimes is really challenging, and this is why we're trying at Healist, at least to bridge that gap, and I think you're one of those.
Yuli:You know people that actually manage to blend the two really well into something that is, yes, it's your path, but it's also something that is providing for you and something that is which is, I think, extremely important, and it's part of the self-care right, but also build this community around you of supporters and students and teachers, and I find that to that and more, and it's also never too late to change whatever you were doing or thought you meant to do in your life, because you took a big 360 from being a top model to, you know, being this kundalini leader. And I always love sharing those stories because I think a lot of people in addition to what you said about people being stuck in a relationship they also often stuck in a relationship with a craft or a job that they have a really hard time breaking up with, even though they know that's not their truth itself and that's not their true path. So I always admire people that have that courage to make a shift and choose this path.
Karuna:Yeah, thank you for saying that. Thank you, that gives me courage to go out and teach more, to dive in deeper. You know it's very interesting. As human beings we are so afraid to dive into something new. It's crazy.
Karuna:And I always get, you know, new people in my Costa Rica retreat, people in my Costa Rica retreat and and you know they range from early, you know, late 20s to late 70s and they how dare you bring me here? You know you should have warned me these kind of aspects of conversation that are just so out of my league of understanding to even put that fire out. It's not necessary. That is exactly what you want to hear from a student is like oh my God, what have I gotten myself into? Because if you're saying that and you know you're in the right place and that brings such a smile to myself and my inner, you know love and compassion for that. You know you work by getting there. 70% of your practice is getting there. Did you know that 70% is doing it? Do it the best you can do it. But your psyche, your soul, knows you're doing it and therefore is so congratulatory that it's, you know, applauding your every move. It doesn't matter how you do it. It doesn't matter how you do it, it doesn't matter if you keep one arm up because the other arm doesn't matter, it's just. What matters is that you showed up for yourself and that your children see you. You know your community sees you and you know I don't know. You just share this willingness to say I'm learning, I'm a perpetual student in this practice of life and that's why I call it Lifestyle Guide, this book, because this is just a guide, because this is just a guide. This is just a guide for your authentic self to open up, to learn. And with the manual coming out, it's.
Karuna:You know you're seeing a woman in her 50s and you know doing yoga. You're not seeing like. You know when we used to do that other stuff, you know that they called yoga. You know when we used to do that other stuff, you know that they called yoga. You know you seem like do the best you can do and know that. You know everything is a life nerve stretch. Everything you do is is offering you an opportunity to bend back, bend in a way in which it's changing the conversation on how you see things. That linear practice of yoga is not necessary anymore.
Karuna:We're talking about indigenous teachings here. We're talking about, you know, woman that speaks from her heart, my Lakota name. We're talking about living with these names and walking these paths, and it doesn't matter if you're sleeping well and if you're getting up well early, and there's none of that stuff that they call like grumpy. I was always wondering where does grumpy come from? You know, I mean, that's just the craziest idea that someone would get up unhappy. I just think that when we regulate our patterns and see our wrinkles in the mirror, tell me go, I love you, I love you. You deserve those lines in your face. You worked hard for those lines. Never, ever, change who you are, because what you're becoming, every breath you take, is something spectacular that sounds like oh, I know that's like. That's so far-fetched to believe that, and I'm going to say I'm going to say that that is true.
Yuli:So beautifully said Karuna. Well, we love you. I love your energy. This has been like a healing session. I love those episodes, but I get to get healed too. And your energy. This has been like a healing session. I love those episodes, but I get to get healed too.
Karuna:And your energy is just so beautiful good, good I'm so grateful, yeah, I'm grateful for this connection and anything else, any parting words of wisdom for our beautiful audience just say here, let let me read, let me just put the mala of the heart to my third eye point and let me open it. Hold every thought, dear friend, and let's see, between living and dreaming there is a third thing, guess it. That's so funny, antonio Machado saying between living and dreaming there is a third thing, guess it. So I guess I'll leave you with that. Oh, wow, okay, that leaves. That's an open. That was not planned, right, that's yeah, all of the heart.
Karuna:That's a beautiful poetic book I do want to leave you with. May the blessings of this day, in this most sacred way, serve you. May we walk the path of light, knowing that there is a way through every block, just done, there is a way through every block, just done. May we give each other gratitude, longitude and latitude and flexibility to create practice, create business, create prosperity and be one together and holding each other in that space, really supporting each other, loving each other.
Yuli:Beautiful. Well, thank you for blessing us with your very uplifting energy today that we all needed, and me particularly, sending so much love to you, Julie.
Karuna:Thank you for serving the world with your podcast. I just love it. Thank you for having me.
Yuli:And I hope to have you again soon. Absolutely.
Karuna:Blessings to you, thank you.
