Jeremy Frindel on Vipassana, Filmmaking & The Doctor from India

Vipassana, meditation, and how silence shapes creativity, filmmaking, and purpose.
What happens after a 10-day silent retreat—and how it can change the way you see your mind, your work, and your life.

Jeremy Frindel on Vipassana, meditation, filmmaking & The Doctor from India

In this episode, we sit down with filmmaker Jeremy Frindel to explore how a 10-day Vipassana silent retreat, meditation, and yoga have shaped his creative path and storytelling.

Jeremy is best known for directing The Doctor from India and One Track Heart (featuring Krishna Das). His work blends documentary filmmaking with spirituality, Eastern philosophy, and human connection. He is also the creative director of AyurPrana Plus, a streaming platform dedicated to conscious and spiritual content.

We discuss meditation, mindfulness, creativity, and the impact of silence—and how a consistent spiritual practice can influence filmmaking, purpose, and personal growth.

Key Topics:

• Vipassana meditation and silent retreats
• Yoga, meditation, and mindfulness
• Documentary filmmaking and storytelling
• The Doctor from India and Krishna Das
• AyurPrana Plus and spiritual streaming
• Creativity, purpose, and personal growth

Visit Jeremy:
https://www.ayurpranaplus.com/

https://www.instagram.com/substratumfilms/

🎧 Practice with Native Yoga:
8IN8 Ashtanga Yoga Course (FREE coupon):
https://info.nativeyogacenter.com/8in8-ashtanga-yoga-for-beginners-8-limbs-in-8-days/

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https://nativeyogacenter.teachable.com/p/today-s-community-class

About the Podcast:
The Native Yoga Toddcast explores yoga, meditation, mindfulness, and personal growth through conversations with teachers, creators, and thought leaders.

https://info.nativeyogacenter.com/8in8-ashtanga-yoga-for-beginners-8-limbs-in-8-days/

Transcript

Todd McLaughlin: 0:33

Welcome to Native Yoga Toddcast, so happy you are here. My goal with this channel is to bring inspirational speakers to the mic in the field of yoga, massage, body work and beyond. Follow us at @Nativeyoga and check us out at Nativeyogacenter.com. All right, let's begin. Welcome to Native Yoga Toddcast. My name is Todd McLaughlin, and I love podcasting, and I'm so glad you're here. If you're a longtime listener, welcome back. If it's your first time joining, welcome to the show today. My special guest is Jeremy Frindel. Jeremy is the artistic director. I hope I got the that professional title, right, Jeremy, but you work with Ayurpranaplus.com Please. Everybody check him out and his whole team with Dr Lad, and he works with Sneha, who I had a chance to podcast quite a few episodes back go. If you enjoy this episode, you might want to go listen to her. She's absolutely amazing as well. You can follow him on Instagram at@substratumfilms. He is a filmmaker. He is a yoga teacher. He has featured. He's made a film with about Krishna Das, which we are going to air or show that film here at Native yoga center. If you're local, somewhere here in Palm Beach County or Miami, want to come up. We're looking forward to that event. I'll have those dates on our website, nativeyogacenter.com, at the time of the release of this podcast, I'll include that date as well in the description. That's probably enough information to kickstart this discussion. And thanks so much for joining, and I'm happy you're here, and I can't wait for you to listen to Jeremy. I really enjoyed this opportunity speaking with him. All right, let's begin. I'm delighted to have this opportunity to meet and speak with Jeremy Frindel. Jeremy, how are you doing today?

Jeremy Frindel: 2:47

I'm doing fantastic. It's becoming springtime here, which is exciting, coming out of the winter into the light and the warmth and yeah, that all feels particularly resonant for me

Todd McLaughlin: 3:00

this year. Oh, man, you're in the mountains of Asheville, North Carolina, Carolina. Am I correct?

Unknown: 3:07

Yeah, we're we're up in the mountains. I live about a half an hour outside of Asheville, but our studio here is in the city, amazing.

Todd McLaughlin: 3:15

And I guess the I have a lot of questions for you across different genres of yoga, but I'd love to start with the work that you do with I your prana. Plus I was introduced to you via Andrew Jones. I know that you had a chance to interview Sneha, who's someone that you work with, and so I learned I got a chance to go to your website and learn about the work that you guys do. But can you tell me what your main role is with Iyer prana plus,

Unknown: 3:48

yeah, so I think my title is creative director, but really it was with Mitesh. So Sneha, you interviewed and Mitesh just her husband. So I made a film after So, I made a film that came out in 2018 called the doctor from India, about Dr Vasant lad. And in that time, you know, just one completely fell in love with Dr Laude, and also got to know many of the people around him that were supporting him. And in 2019 my son was born. And up until that time, for the last, I don't know, 15 years before that, I'd been spending half the year traveling all over the world and making films and being broke and not caring about money particularly. But then my son was born, I said, Okay, I have to figure out another way to set up my life, and I started reaching out to different people about just kind of dreaming into ways that that could look and one of the groups people I reached out to were Banyan Botanicals, and also the people who run Dr Lodz. School and Dr LOD, because they all kind of are part of the same crew. And I just said, you know, I'm looking to kind of shift what I'm doing into a more grounded and stable situation. If there's any way that we might be able to intersect, or the timing of me wanting to do something like that could work. Let's talk. And so I talked to Mitesh, and we were kind of just like we hit it off. I knew him. I knew his parents much more than I knew him, ironically, because when I was making the film about Dr lad his parents were helping Dr Ladd, so I became pretty close with his parents. But then I started talking to Mitesh, and we just kind of dreaming a little bit about what we might be able to do together. And then covid happened the very beginning, when everything was shutting down. And very quickly, they realized they wanted to figure out a way to get Dr lodd to be filming Dr lodd. Since they had to shut the school down, there's, you know, that they didn't have a lot of options in the situation. So I moved out with my wife and son to New Mexico, where they were at the time, and I didn't really know what we were going to do, and he didn't really know what we were going to do, but we both kind of liked the idea of working together, and I wanted to get out of New York, and they needed to get Dr Lott on on camera, so we just sort of set sail. And we thought like, maybe we'll make another film, or maybe we'll, you know, it was all very open and unknown and very long story short, out of that collaboration and time, we started dreaming up creating our own streaming platform, so creating more kind of storytelling, creating a platform for storytelling, along the lines of what we've done with the doctor from India, what we've done with one track heart, but in a which is a film I made about Krishna Das, but in shorter form, where we were profiling more teachers and including practices and cooking. And, you know, we kind of just were dreaming up a vision of place to bring stories like I had been telling, but that are not a clean fit in any kind of more mainstream scenario. There's not a lot of financial incentive to create those kind of projects. And we just had a sense that there was a way that we could build something, that there would be an appetite for and a need for, that we had, you know, a unique opportunity to try. We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. We've spent the last few years we built our own platform, basically from scratch. So we have a development team in India that's doing all the back end, and we've been shooting and editing, I think, I don't even know the number, but hundreds of projects. There's a very small team of us that's gone as small as me by myself to as large as you know, maybe four or five of us that are creating a lot of the content. But, yeah, I'm really proud and excited. A lot of a lot of what we've been able to accomplish. We've made, I think, really beautiful short films that wouldn't really have a way to exist in other ways. We've profiled Mary a wide range of people, from Marianne Williamson, Victor Wooten, incredible bass player, this guy, Joe Hollis, who's sort of a local legend. He had this project he did called he called it a Paradise Garden of trying to basically create a garden of Eden, sort of scenario where everything you need to survive, medicine, food, is all in one small amount of place, and you're basically wild foraging on your land, nice, like

Todd McLaughlin: 8:49

a permaculture style farm, like permaculture style, or that's what it sounds like. Yeah. He's kind of

Unknown: 8:55

His own, His own, yeah? Slant on it, but yeah, it's similar. Yeah, very cool. He was bringing in all of these herbs from China and Japan that nobody had ever grown in North America before. Wow. It was very fascinating guy. So it's finding a bridge between art and storytelling and spirituality and trying to make to bring stories and people to life that will be inspiring and nutritious for people that they might never have heard about, but do it in an artful and beautiful way, and then you have a portal within that that is designed for people to be uplifted, inspired, and hopefully within the realm of you know, there's this sort of way of looking at things that we're all kind of being forced into this machine of our phones, and there's all these forces working upon us to grab our attention and to monetize our attention, and I like this concept of trying to be an angel in the machine. Like, how do you release angels in the machine we're all in the machine. We're not about. Most of us are not about to become Amish and go off the grid and step outside of those, those constructs that we live in. But how do we within that empower people to live more in touch with nature and to release beauty and a sense of guiding people towards spirit and nourishing the sense of spirit within people. So that's really kind of a lot of the inspiration behind it. And we're just continuing to figure out how to grow it, how to make it something that is helpful for people, and then also to let people know what we're doing. So that's really our next step. Is just putting more energy into getting the word out. We spent the last couple years really building and refining and growing the library and functionality, and now this year, I think we're really ready to start connecting it to people and letting people know more about what we're doing and and try to story tell ourselves a little bit about we have a pretty wide variety of projects on there, from music to cooking shows to yoga to storytelling to, you know, all these things. So just helping people understand why it all exists in one platform and what the kind of intention is behind it so that they might be able to experience it better.

Todd McLaughlin: 11:24

That's incredible. Jeremy, what a vision, and to put that into reality is, is quite the endeavor. I appreciate you laying all that out there. That's incredible. How did you first get inspired with film? What age were you when you feel like you had some inkling that this is what you wanted to do as a profession and art form.

Unknown: 11:49

I was, I had just graduated college. Actually, I went to college to study music, and it spent most of my life playing music when I felt like when I was in high school and younger, there wasn't a sense that people could make films. Yeah, it just never occurred to me, and it's a very was a very different era than what it changed very fast after I graduated college, where the technology of digital cameras and editing being more accessible when I was, you know, 1516, years old, there wasn't a sense that you could even do that like it never, I never even thought about that. There was like it just seems so inaccessible, the idea of telling stories and filmmaking that it I didn't know anybody that did it. But then when I graduated college, I was I studied film scoring. So I was studying orchestration and composition, and I planned on creating film scores that was, I was playing in bands and doing stuff like that, but I was really inspired to operate on a little bit of a more grand scale and contribute to story in that way. And I moved to New York City, and I started scoring some kind of bad independent films. And I quickly realized I can make my own bad independent I was sitting with these filmmakers that were just people that were, you know, with this new technology of, you know, these mini DV cameras and small digital cameras telling stories and making films and kind of just going for it. And I was really excited by that. So when I moved to the city, I had gotten a job in a jingle house, not a job. I got an internship in a jingle house, where jingle house is like making music for commercials. Got it so, like Twix commercials and stuff like that. What was being worked on there? And I once it kind of clicked that I felt like I saw the the underground of this independent film scene in New York City, and got a little bit of a whiff of it. I wanted in. So I quit my job in the jingle house, and that day, I had gotten a job as a boom operator on a film, and I quit. I told them I wasn't coming back to the internship, and then I went and worked all night on this film as a boom operator. I think at four in the morning, I fell asleep and hit somebody, one of the actors, with the microphone. But I really just kind of instantly shifted gears, and that's cool. Left the film scoring world, and really just knew that I wanted to make films. So I did anything I could to get on film sets. I was first a boom operator and then recording sound and moved into post production side of things of sound editing and film editing. And was really lucky that I was taken under. Were the wings of guys that became good friends, but were people that had been working for a while. One of them was a really incredible documentary filmmaker, and another were some TV producers and film producers that would just let me do things I had no business doing on their films, like at some point, they were editing this film called they were producing this film called Bernard and Doris, which was with Susan Sarandon and Ray fines. Was a really interesting film. Was directed by Bob Balaban. But anyways, a big HBO film, and they were having trouble with the Edit, so they just left me for three weeks editing the film to see if I could fix the story. I had no business being involved in that side of a film of that scale. It just threw you in. You know, they just kind of threw me in, and I was, felt like I was a little bit and, yeah, it felt sort of charmed to be able to just play around with these guys and people really gave me a chance to hone my craft a little bit and learn and make mistakes and be around people that were really, I mean, being on, I was on set for that film for a month watching Ray fines work was incredible. Very cool. So nice. Yeah, that was kind of how I found my way in. Do you

Todd McLaughlin: 16:19

feel like, as a filmmaker, you're able to work with a longer form content structure, as opposed to social media, one hit wonder, 32nd five second. You know production? Do you try to avoid the short stuff? Do you like to go short and long. Do you feel that because you work long form, content style, that that you're annoyed by the short stuff? What are your feelings? There, I story time, right? Like to lay out a story, and then I would imagine to try to hurry and tell a story in five seconds doesn't allow for that to kind of come to life. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on and I guess I want to ask this question, because a lot of us working in the yoga field, or maybe we're not working in it, but we're consumers of content in the yoga realm. I just would love to hear your insights on maybe, like, is it? Do you feel like, like you can't really convey a lot a short amount of time? One of the reasons I love podcasting is because I have a whole hour with you, and I feel like I can just really get a lot of details, and I I struggle with the 32nd stuff. It just doesn't excite me. So I just love to hear your thoughts.

Unknown: 17:41

That's a really interesting question. I initially rejected and resented doing shorter form stuff, especially going vertical, was something that I really resented, because I feel like so much of cinema is having this wide scale and scope that you can play within and I came of age in a time where feature films were more relevant in the world. You know, both of my feature films that have been released so far got theatrical distributions where they played in theaters all around the world, and something that couldn't really, that doesn't really happen with almost any documentaries these days. It was a different time where there was a community of people and a system of theaters that were had. There was an interest in that scale and scope of storytelling in a documentary realm now mostly in movie theaters. It's, it's pretty action, blow up comic book kind of stuff that gets any space in whatever's left in those spaces, which isn't very much. So I came up at a different time, yeah, and I would go to the movie all movie theaters all the time. I lived in New York City for 20 years, which has such a rich independent film scene, both new release and repertoire, where to go to the cinema and sit with a room full of strangers and have an experience together was something that happened all the time, and there was people that were were doing it, so that realm was really where my inspiration and imagination lived, and it's really changed so much in a way that you never would have imagined 15 years ago would be possible. So I definitely didn't have a whole lot of interest in the one minute storytelling version of thing. But then when we started kind of creating some of the projects for what's become, iraprana. Plus, we didn't really know what we were doing when we started. I just started making a couple of short films to play around and see. First one was about our Carlos Nakai, who's a Native American flute player, and he's an incredible he's a legend. Amazing, amazing. Yeah, he says he's amazing. So I went out to Arizona and spent a few days with him his home, and walked through the desert, and we made this, I think it's like eight or nine minute short film on on him and his work. And then in making that, I edited a like a one minute piece from it, that sort of was a trailer, but when I cut it vertically, and I was watching it on my phone, and I started to realize how you can there is something that can be transmitted in that short time frame, and even in that vertical format, that one, you're going to reach more people in this day and age, because most people don't have the attention span or time or desire to spend their time watching a 80 or 90 minute film, but they're going to be on their phones all the time and flip through a one minute thing. And I think you really can make something beautiful and moving in that. So it became almost this format to create these little vignettes, or, like a haiku or something, was how I was thinking of it cool, which is different than, like the hook, like put castor oil up your ass, or for this reason, which is like you try to get people's attention at the lowest common denominator. But there's another way of using that format to make, like a beautiful little porch, moving portrait, haiku kind of thing. So I've, I've tried to find ways to use the format for that, even that at this point, it feels like is beyond most people's attention span. And you go, and you look in your Instagram analytics, and you craft this beautiful, whatever, 82nd little piece, and you see that the average watch length is eight seconds. I don't know what to do anymore, but I do enjoy making them, and it's such an investment of time, energy, life, to create a feature length film. I mean, I think I spent about three years making both the doctor from India and one track heart. So that's traveling all over the world. And, you know, like every moment is really crafted. And, yeah, it's a lot of life to put into something. And I've enjoyed the shorter form, like 1020, minute projects that we're doing where, you know, maybe we'll spend a couple days with somebody, but out of that, you can really create an experience of one. It's like a I love meeting people and exploring their lives and having a moment of intimacy where you can it can really get a flavor of a different person who is living beautifully or doing something interesting. That's part of what draws me to this kind of work, is just a love of people. So to be able to experience and share a larger swath of people by the shorter length, has been fulfilling for me in this time. And yeah, it's a different world we're spending three years with, especially now I have a kid like my main focus in life is my family. So the idea of chasing somebody around the world for years making a film, isn't it doesn't have the same priority in my in my life. So being able to spend a couple days with somebody and still give a pretty rich picture of them has been fun for me, and fulfilling. And the way we've set it up here is right over there is a music venue called the iraprana listening room, where we're able to book all kinds of incredible musicians and people that come through. So oftentimes, somebody will come through town play a concert, and then we'll take time with them and interview them and film their concert and be able to do storytelling with people that are just coming, you know, to us, without us having to travel too much. And that's been a pretty amazing opportunity for us, just in terms of of encountering interesting people and and people that we believe in and

Todd McLaughlin: 24:17

want to share. That's really inspiring. Jeremy, I understand that too. From the perspective of being a parent, the priorities shift big time. It's cool how you've been able to transition and still use your skill and art and now be home and with your family, which I agree with you, is like so precious. What was your first experience or exposure to the world of yoga. What? What Avenue did you kind of get a glimpse into the yoga world first in

Unknown: 25:30

i So in those early days of getting into filmmaking, I somehow, so. Stumbled into creating this character that was a sort of like a fake musician character that I came up with where I started writing all these goofy and sort of politically incorrect and inappropriate songs, and came my roommate, at the time, was working at Columbia University, and he was doing one of the first podcasts through Columbia University that the whole technology was brand new. And he would come home, and I would try to make him laugh with these songs, and he said, you should make a podcast. I said, What the hell you know? And he started showing me what they what he was doing. So I created this character based called Vince diamond. That was this kind of guy in New York City that thought he was going to be the next prince. He was going to be this famous musician, but he was writing all these songs that were really messed up. And I started sending it to filmmaker friends, some of the people that I was apprenticing with, and I just was sending it to my friends, because I thought it was funny. And somehow it started getting some traction. There was very few podcasts at the time, and I ended up in the top 10 podcasts on Mt, on Apple, on iTunes. Somebody was listening to this weird thing that I was doing, and then I got, I got approached by MTV to they were writing some article about this new podcast thing, and they wanted to feature Vince diamond in it. Whoa. So anyway, this thing just kind of started snowballing into the point where we I started performing live, and this filmmaker that I was apprenticing with started making a mockumentary Borat kind of thing about Vince diamond. And then we got that show picked up by the independent film channel. We were supposed to do a big series on the so in that time, at some point, I read an article with rivers Cuomo, who is the guy from the band Weezer, about how he would do these 30 day silent meditation retreats, Vipassana,

Todd McLaughlin: 27:54

right? He's a big time Vipassana. Yeah, he would

Unknown: 27:56

go do these long Vipassana retreats, not just the 10 day, but he was doing, like, 30 days. He was serious. And I had never, I mean, I taken a yoga class in college. Yoga was not a thing. This was like early 2000s so it was much more fringe and not really mainstream. So I just didn't know anything about it. I had never, didn't know anything about meditation. I'd always had a little bit of an allure towards the mystic throughdra. Drugs and music and other things. But there was never any model or any just exposure to people in my life that were doing it in a more formal and serious and devoted way. It was a little bit, yeah, yeah. I just didn't have any exposure to it. But when something spoke to me, when I heard about these retreats that he was doing, and I signed up for one nice the Vipassana retreats, they're free. You don't have to pay for it. So I felt that sort of at the time, it was like, all this is a low commitment, and sounds amazing. And I so I signed up, and then I kind of forgot about it, and then this show that I was doing that was supposed to be on, IFC, it got canceled, like two weeks before we were supposed to go into production, and I was heartbroken, and I couldn't get out of bed. And some point in there, I remembered that I had signed up for this retreat, and I looked and I saw that it was a few days from now. So in like, one of the most broken states of my life, I got on a bus and went up to Massachusetts to do this vipassana retreat, to

Todd McLaughlin: 29:32

the original center out at Shelbourne mass in Shelburne falls. Wow. I hear it's beautiful. I hear that center is just really cool.

Unknown: 29:40

It was amazing. It was amazing. I mean, it looked pretty weird to me when I walked in the first walked in the first day, having never done anything like that. Yeah, my dad was calling me the night before, freaking out that I was joining a cult. They weren't going to let me talk, and they were taking they didn't want you to have a phone. What are you doing? You're going into some cult prison. And I showed up there the first day, and, you know, glenka has long passed away, so it's just this old man on the screen. It looked almost it looked very odd to me. I never experienced anything

Todd McLaughlin: 30:16

like so funny. Not to interrupt you, but like what you're talking about with the screen. Did you ever watch that show, lost. It was, you know, super popular. Lost, where they get

Unknown: 30:26

in there, I remember, yeah, I never watched it, but I

Todd McLaughlin: 30:28

remember there's a couple of things there where there's a guy on a screen talking about, like, the, I don't know it's like, but I had a similar when I first saw gwenka On the screen, I thought, oh, no, what have I stepped into? Like, I. Yeah, this is brainwashing 101, right here, you know, like, but, sorry, keep going. But I can,

Unknown: 30:46

I can. No, I that was, I had that experience. I walked in, I said, Oh, man, this is I probably should leave. And then the next day, I remember, I slept through the morning bell, where they wake you up at four o'clock. They go around digging the bell. And I woke up at, I don't know, seven o'clock the sun was up. Everyone was out of my room. I said, Oh, man, I'm screwing this whole thing up. But I ended up in that time. By the third I stayed and a few days in, I don't know, by by the seventh day, my life had completely changed. My heart had opened. I was experiencing things that I never dreamed I would experience, especially without any kind of drugs or anything like it was just my whole paradigm changed. I remember it was over Thanksgiving, and I felt my love and appreciation for my parents and my family in a deeper way than I had probably ever understood. It was so real and human and deep and elevated and ecstatic, and it was so many things all at once that I it was, it was really a turning point where everything changed for me after that. I didn't want to be Vince diamond anymore. I didn't want to do these, like sarcastic songs. I didn't care about being famous in the same way I was just like an instant, my priorities changed, my sense of what I wanted to do with my life changed, and I came out of there kind of on fire.

Todd McLaughlin: 32:25

What did your How did your dad respond when he first talked to you after you, after you left? Did he feel they

Unknown: 32:30

felt me, yeah. They felt me, yeah. They they knew I had they Yeah. They didn't question it. Awesome. And my roommate, I came back, and I don't know I was. I think everybody felt that something profound had, everybody who knew me well knew that I'd been through something profound. And I think there was an energy that people, they trusted, that it didn't feel like I'd just been brainwashed by something but it was, yes, there was like a like a heart element of it that I think people could feel. And then after that, I had a sense that I wanted to study yoga to try to embody what I had felt. I knew I was always I was a physical person. I would run marathons, and I would always exercise. So somehow I knew I needed to ground what I'd experienced into my body in a way, and I felt like the way to do that would be to study yoga. And there wasn't at the time, especially, I didn't just want to go take yoga classes. I wanted to learn about it, and I wanted to learn the tradition, and the only format for that was that I could understand or see was to do a teacher training, even though I had zero interest in teaching it. So I signed up for a teacher training at integral yoga, which was from Swami sachidananda. Is tradition. He had passed away by that point. And did you

Todd McLaughlin: 34:02

do that jersey with margobandou?

Unknown: 34:06

No, it was in the West Village in New York City. So it was, there's a guy named Swami Ramananda who was the head Swami of the integral he's in San Francisco now, but I loved him. He didn't do my teacher training, but he was the head of the thing, and I ended up becoming really close with him. Really close with him. We look strangely alike. So pictures of him when he was my age, people like they, we kind of looked similar. We both grew up in the same in Louisville, Kentucky. I don't know. There was some like cosmic connection that I felt between us. And he ended up inviting me in to teach with him. So we would teach poetry workshops together, and we had a very sweet connection. So I started doing the training there. And in that time, I saw that Krishna Das, so one of the guys that was leading the training, brought a harmonium in, and as soon as I heard the sound of the harmonium, it like called to something deep in me, and I remembered that I had a Krishna Das. I had this recording of this guy that sounded like, I don't know if you remember the band crash test dummies, yeah, somehow I'd been given a CD of a record that Rick Rubin had done was the only thing I knew. And I just remember the guy's voice sounded like the crash test dummies. But then when the guy pulled out the harmonium and the teacher training, I sort of made the connections. Oh, that's what this was, and I pulled it out and sort of discovered Krishna Das nah. And saw that he was doing a retreat at Ananda ashram, which is just upstate New York, an hour or so outside the city. So I went to experience that, and to just, you know, be part of it. And it was a co retreat between Krishna Das and dharma Mitra. So I had no idea who Dharma was. I just knew that he was teaching the classes, the yoga classes. And as soon as I met Dharma, it was like everything I'd imagined was possible in the yoga world was was there in this man. And from that point on, I I still went to my teacher trainings, but I was every day at dharmas studio, at the noon class, taking class with him. And yeah, it was at that point that my parents really thought I joined Nicole. It was,

Todd McLaughlin: 36:36

yeah, stepping stones from one one scary to the next, like, Oh no, he's going in. He's going all the way. He's going all the way.

Unknown: 36:46

I started selling all my stuff. Oh yeah, I kind of stopped working. I just all I wanted to do was, was to be in that flow and to be studying and learning and growing and experiencing and that. And I was at dharmas class all the time. And then for the next three years, I pretty much, I pretty soon started. I ended up taking a teacher training, and then I was teaching in the teacher trainings, and I traveled. I went to Japan with Dharma, cool, cool, just San Francisco. I was teaching. I probably taught in, I don't know, 10 or 15 teacher trainings with him. That was really my world for a few years.

Todd McLaughlin: 37:27

And being a musician, Jeremy, did you find that soon as you started working with the harmonium and tapping into the whole bhakti and kirtan world, that that was just a very natural like, almost like, Well, okay, I can see how all my background has paved the way for me to now enjoy this.

Unknown: 37:47

Yeah, yeah. I pretty quickly bought a harmonium and started chanting. And yeah, started I was leading chanting around town for for years. And yeah, it felt like a very natural progression. And unfolding in that way, nice, yeah. And then in that time, I met Krishna Das, so I went to that retreat. But I went to that retreat to meet Krishna Das, and ended up kind of leaving with Dharma and then a little while later, Krishna Das came into Dharma studio when I was teaching in the teacher trainings, and would offer a workshop in the training. And then I got to know Krishna Das, and I had really stepped away from from filmmaking in that time. I went from, you know, that was all I was doing, to I kind of just stopped, because all I wanted to do was explore this kind of world of the subtle realms through yoga and meditation, and then when I met Krishna Das, I felt like he was such an incredible person and character and had such an interesting life and story, that it was really then that the filmmaking and storytelling connected in with my spiritual searching and seeking, and that's actually when I met Andrew, our mutual friend who connected us here. Andrew was the only person I knew at the time that had a real job. I don't know if you know he was an advertising executive, and he kind of came out of that world into the yoga to dharma. But yeah, I had this sense of making a film about Krishna Das, and Andrew had a real job, so I thought maybe he could. He would want to financially contribute, and he understood the inspiration behind it, and and Andrew's answer was so incredibly beautiful. He said, Yeah, it's like, I'm buying a beautiful painting, but instead of it sitting on my wall, I get to share it with the whole world. Was how he looked at investing in the film, because we knew we were never going to make any money on this thing. It was not like, it was it never seemed likely that we were going to make money on the film. But for him, it was this way of I loved how he framed it. But then I asked, Krishna Todd, can I make a movie about you? And he said, I don't know. And he said, Why don't you just come travel with me this weekend and we'll just hang out a little bit and see how it goes. And at the end of the weekend, he pulled me aside and he said, All right, here's the deal. You can make a movie about me, but all of the times I'm talking shit about people, you have to cut out. And if you have anything left at the end, you can do whatever you want with it. You. So yeah, then I ended up spending the next kind of three years traveling, wow, all over the world with him. Oh, lived in his house for a little while. Oh, cool, man. Yeah, it was a whole immersion into his world, in the world of neem, Karoli Baba and Ram Das, got to spend time with Ram Dass. And, you know, part of the thing about that crew is they were all pretty fascinating, guys from Krishna Das to Ram Dass to Larry Brilliant, who has a whole incredible story. I don't know there was just all of them were so unique and kind of rascally and fun and funny and profound, that it wasn't just Christian us. It was kind of a whole world of people that unfolded to explore, Wow,

Todd McLaughlin: 41:30

very cool. Jeremy, what I love? The progression, you know, one talent, and then moving to something completely different, and then being able to blend those two talents together, after really going through honest Study and Learning, I just think is so amazing. I love hearing this I and I, and also being a parent, the fact that you are wanting to be so present and soak this time up too, so to now take on this whole new thing. So I'm so curious, like, how are you going to end up blending parenthood, film and yoga? There's going to be something incredible. There's going to be some catalyst somewhere. But I mean, just to highlight the fact that when we follow our passion and we follow our dreams that you know, there's a way to somehow do it, and I it can be really scary to not know how we're going to do it. I have no idea how this finance situation is going to work, but I'm more interested in following my passion in my heart than I am to just chase money and to get the courage and the gumption up to do that is a really interesting journey in life. So I, I really am enjoying hearing how you've been able to navigate that and and, you know, just still be excited and passionate and wanting to share all that. What is something? What is something that you did today, that if you you know, how did you conduct your day today, being all, being the artistic, artist that you are, and what? What's an example of how you wove or are weaving that into, like your your day to day, apart from here, we are now talking about it and podcasting, but

Unknown: 43:20

I'm curious. I mean, one thing that's really nice about my life is it's set up where my job that supports my family is to tell stories in these realms and capture practices and teachings in these realms. And we're trying to really craft this platform that is a thriving, sustainable home, for it. So in some ways, a version of what I was doing all these years, just kind of scrapping along with Krishna Das and with Dr Laude is now my job that supports my family. So I feel incredibly blessed in how that has unfolded, and that I really pitched this idea for a streaming platform to Mitesh and Sneha, and they were foolish enough to go along with it.

Todd McLaughlin: 44:18

How many years has that been now? Because you said, since covid, so has it been where we're 26 so six years, or like five years, that you've been kind of actively working and building this?

Unknown: 44:27

Yeah, well, no, because we didn't know what we were doing for a few years. We were just sort of bumbling around, I think, during covid, we spent most of our time just drinking tea with Dr Laude, which was amazing. Dr Laude would come over to mattesha's house. We would film for a few hours. We would sit and talk about the world and God and philosophy, and we didn't really know what we were doing. We would just kind of have some some like live stream webinar things with Dr Laude, and we're filming other stuff that we didn't know what we were going to do with. But it wasn't until a couple years in that the idea of the platform really started to coalesce. And it was really after I made that first film with Carlos Nakai. It there was a point where I knew I wanted to be telling stories again, and I wanted to kind of resume that work that I stopped while after I moved and during covid and but then, when I made the short film about Carlos Nikaya, it almost became a proof of concept or blueprint for part of what we could do. And then I went and after that this, the next film was about mirror by star, which, if you're familiar with her. I am made a really. I love the film. It's really I have not seen again. It's a film that would

Todd McLaughlin: 45:48

I'm sorry. Go ahead. I'm sorry I haven't seen your film yet, but I can't wait to now. I do know who she is, but I I look forward to doing some homework after our conversation and get caught up.

Unknown: 45:59

It's a film about when her she was translating dark night of the soul, the text by St John of the Cross like a 16th century Christian mystical text. And the day she got her first test cop test print of the book in the mail, the UPS guy delivered the book, and 20 minutes later, the police knocked on the door to tell her that her daughter's body had been found. So the film is about this kind of crossroads of those two things happening in her life. So it's a light hearted comedy. It's a rom com. You know, it's the kind of film that it's, there's, it's a very specific kind of storytelling and film that isn't for everybody. You know, it's a, it's not an easy watch necessarily, yeah, but deep,

Todd McLaughlin: 46:57

deep, and, and, but it's

Unknown: 46:58

deep, and it feels like, like it's important. It feels important to me, yeah. And I love going into those kind of muddier realms and going a little bit into the underworld, because I feel like that's, you know, where we compost the suffering in our lives and can grow from, yes, so having the opportunity to tell stories like that that wouldn't have much of a home, necessarily elsewhere, is part of the, I guess, like maybe the gamble of what we're doing, that we can create something that will work like that, and what is the balance of things, and another big kind of inspiration underneath it is moving in, showing a connection of spirit between different cultures and different backgrounds, so that it's not just like a yoga or Eastern spirituality thing, but showing how connection to nature and spirit and beauty moves through all walks of life, all around The world, and then you put them next to each other, these different stories and characters, and you create sort of like a mosaic, mosaic, almost where you can start to feel the similarities and see the differences of how people worship and how people express connection to God and beauty. Yes. So that part of what we're doing is really inspiring to me, to really try to bring that to life.

Todd McLaughlin: 48:29

Oh, wow, that's incredible. Jeremy, I'm so excited for you. I feel like, well, obviously the listener can have the link in the description, go to iyerprana plus.com and start to sample what you're talking about, which is the beauty of this realm, where we can be anywhere in the world and access this, which I really appreciate, too, that you made light on that to try to be an angel in the machine. I think that's really great way of looking at the challenge that I know sometimes a lot of us are feeling overwhelmed by technology slash looking at where AI is going, and all the big questions, like, Where is this headed? So to have the vision, like what you're purporting of, let's try to do the best we can in this realm, and it's possible to do amazing work. So I think that's huge. So I mean, I got to give, I want to give you a lot of credit for what a great I think your vision is amazing. It's cool that you're doing what you're doing. We're trying.

Unknown: 49:30

Yeah, there's a guy called Martin Shaw, who is, he's one of my favorite sort of teachers voices in the world right now. He's a storyteller, and he talks a lot about this concept of angels in the machine, and it's been really inspiring for me to just create a framework for because it's complicated to you know, there's a little bit of attention for me of spending so much time creating stuff for people to watch on their phone. It's a very different thing than when people would gather in a movie theater together and have a collective experience. Everything is so isolated, but that idea of trying to reach people where they are and inject beauty and meaning and inspiration and wisdom into it helps me kind of hold on to, to staying a part of it and into doing something

Todd McLaughlin: 50:30

good with it. Yeah, that's an interesting, interesting thought too. In relation to where people ask the question of, is it like I remember when after the covid, you. Experience. And then a lot of yoga classes and teacher trainings went online, and the big question was like, Can you really do a teacher training online? And then the more you talk to people that are doing it, they're saying, oh, yeah, you definitely can. But there was always that question about, you know, is it almost like wrong to offer yoga on YouTube, Like I remember practicing, you know, or, you know, when YouTube came out there was almost like you'd be selling your soul. You're selling out if you started to offer these things on online. And obviously that's completely shifted. But even from the angle of what you're talking about, where if everybody would congregate together in a theater, there's almost like an accountability that happens when you're in a group that, like, oh, everybody's staying, so I'm going to continue to stay. Versus, like, if some if I pull my phone out and then I watch for two minutes. No, I have no accountability of anyone else knowing that I'm doing it. So to be able to capture that sense of communal accountability within an isolated environment, I can see where that challenge lays. But if we thought it was impossible to convey spiritual information through the technology of audio and video, and that's been proven. I I mean, I want to say it's been proven, it's possible, but, I mean, maybe you would disagree with me, but I think you probably agree, because you're obviously in this medium and working with it. But that this ability to hold accountability, even in an isolated environment, I'm surely we can jump this, this gap,

Unknown: 52:18

I feel like, to an extent, it is, and there's, you know, only so much. One way we look at what we're doing is as a way of holding inspiration between experiences. So maybe you go on a retreat, or you go on like an intensive thing, and then you come home, and how do you stay plugged in and inspired and connected? So that's part of, part of where we imagine what we're doing fitting in is in that gap, not it's a replacement for going and having, you know, collective experiences and with other human beings and in beautiful places. But it's for those moments in between where maybe you would be watching, you know, the Bake Off chef or, you know, whatever people watch on other things, it's just providing an alternative that might plug you into something. And another way, I think of the yoga is, to me, the ultimate is developing a home practice on your own, where you become your own teacher. Like there's a there's a period of life where you're a student and you're learning techniques and figuring out what it is that connects you into your own energetic system and how you make use of the technology, and then there's a point where you've learned what plugs you in, and you're doing cleaning and connecting. And I feel like that is a real personal practice where you start to know your own way through your experience, and you become your own teacher. And I feel like any good teacher wants you to reach that point, and they're they're trying to help you get to that point, not to keep you dependent on a teacher, student relationship. And I look at the way our the yoga side of what we're doing is and how I want to really expand and develop it is a way to support people in their home practice, to present different techniques and things for people to try and incorporate into their own practice. Not to be sitting watching a phone or a computer all the time, but that it's a way of maybe learning new things and connecting to teachers that you might not have had exposure to or awareness of, not to be hooked into in a long term way, staring at your phone.

Todd McLaughlin: 54:39

Yeah, yes,

Unknown: 54:40

that it's just a way to learn some techniques and tools that you then go and bring into your own practice and into your own life. Good point because I, because I feel like there's to me the deepest practice. It's wonderful to practice in community and to come together with people, and you can have really profound collective experiences, but the things that change you or the daily for me, in my opinion, is a daily showing up alone in quiet hours of the morning, and it's or Aurobindo. Sri. Aurobindo talks about this, like combination of the ascent of energy rising up, and the descent of energy coming down. And the ascent happens through will, through effort, and the descent is through grace. But that ascent, that like willful aspect, it comes from discipline and from practice and showing up to make that. That a priority in your life. And I feel like, to me, that doesn't happen in front of a phone or a computer, it happens in your own space and way. But through those you know that technology, you can find new things to try and the same way you can from books. One thing this guy, Martin Shaw, talks about, he says, books are your grandparents. I feel like you can code wisdom and teachings in books or in video or in storytelling, and the juice of it is what happens in those seeds when they grow on you as you step away. Beautifully.

Todd McLaughlin: 56:21

Said, Jeremy, Wow, I'm so grateful that I got a chance to finally meet you. I've been hearing about you and I I really am inspired by your work. Thank you so much for sharing with us. I really appreciate it.

Unknown: 56:37

Thank you. Yeah, it's been fun chatting, and I was really touched when Andrew reached out and connected us, and

Todd McLaughlin: 56:43

I'm excited. I was I'm hoping my plan is that with this podcast, then after I release it, to have the opportunity to show your Krishna dos film as like a free donation class here at our studio. So I'm excited to be able to share some of your work and your art. You know, through getting our community, bringing our community together, and to watch it. So that's why I'm just really honored to have this opportunity. And my wife's family live in Tennessee, so we drive through Asheville annually. So next time I'm up there, I'm going to try to make it's like an hour drive, but not long to over to Asheville, and hopefully I can coordinate to come see your where you are in your space. Oh, yeah, definitely, actually meet you in person. That would be amazing. I think what you're doing with the Arapahoe listening room is so cool. I really hope it'll happen when there's a music scene. I love Asheville, such a neat town and so, so I hope, and really look forward to having the chance to meet you in person. And I just want to thank you so much for taking time out of your day and from your family and to make this to make this happen. So thank you so much. Jeremy, oh

Unknown: 57:56

yeah, thank you for reaching out, and thank you for, you know, the conversation, and being able to help us share a little bit about what we do and sharing the film. Where are you Where are you based? Where is the film going to be shown? So my, my wife

Todd McLaughlin: 58:08

and I have a studio in Juneau Beach, Florida. So we have a studio where we have, we have a yoga studio, and it's about an hour and 15 minutes north of Miami. So we're on the East Coast in Palm, North Palm Beach, county. So, um,

Unknown: 58:22

oh, so you're close to Andrew? Yeah,

Todd McLaughlin: 58:24

Andrew teaches a class here every Wednesday. Now, it was so cool, because him and Pam, they're so sweet, you know, as you know, and they just, you know, they started coming in practicing here, and never said anything about what they do or anything. They were just really nice. And didn't come in all like, guns a blazing, like, hey, guess what? I'm a yoga teacher, you know. Like they were just like, super Pam was

Unknown: 58:46

standing on one finger. You noticed something was strange with her.

Todd McLaughlin: 58:51

And my wife, Tam was like, these really nice people came in the other day and they said they, you know, they're gonna come back. And I was like, kind of like, hoping they would. And then when I got a chance to meet them. And then little by little, it's evolved to where now they teach a class every Wednesday here at 6pm doing a Dharma yoga class, and slowly building the community within that realm here. And it's just been a real treat. And, you know, they're just really sweet, sweet, amazing people. So we've we feel grateful, and it's work. It's like, I like it when things like this work out, you know, like where you don't try and it just happens, or maybe we are trying, and that's where the yes, the grace part, thank you. How's a good analogy, the the upward and then the and some things come from the downward, right, the descending, where

Unknown: 59:38

somehow I like this idea of courting grace, that you kind of cord it with your your wit, through the will by like doing the work. But there's a courting of it, and then through that, grace is attracted, and things move through Yes,

Todd McLaughlin: 59:54

oh man, well, thank you, Jeremy. I good times ahead, and I wish you the best year. You and your family. Native yoga. Todd. Cast is produced by myself. The theme music is dreamed up by Bryce Allen. If you like this show, let me know if there's room for improvement. I want to hear that too. We are curious to know what you think and what you want more of what I can improve. And if you have ideas for future guests or topics, please send us your thoughts to info at Native yoga center. You can find us at Native yoga center.com, and hey, if you did like this episode, share it with your friends or. Rate it and review and join us next time you.