Episode 41: Living A Conscious Life In An Unconscious World With Jai Sugrim
How does one live a conscious life walking in authenticity, gratitude, and being unflappable in their life purpose? Anand joins Yoga Master Jai Sugrim to have a conversation about their purpose and how each is navigating the turbulent waters of a world gone seemingly mad. Jai has been a health and wellness educator for 25 years, a teacher of the Jai Sugrim Yoga Method, and has been featured in numerous publications for his work. The two discuss how they’ve survived the massive uncertainty and doubt brought upon by recent world events. They talk about divine relationships, distancing from the pandemic, dealing with the division, and the meme warfare. Anand also expounds on the holistic modalities he offers through his business, from infrared saunas to zero-gravity floatation therapy, and how it benefits clients dealing with anxiety and depression. Lend an ear for this deep dive on spirituality and finding purpose and positivity in these trying times.
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Living A Conscious Life In An Unconscious World With Jai Sugrim
Being A Spiritual Jedi In The War On Consciousness
What's up? How are you?
Good.
It's good to see you. Tell people how little we know each other. Our connection is more through being in the health sphere, but we're developing a friendship, and it started more digitally following each other's work.
We did meet initially in person at Yoga Fest. It was in Jersey City a couple of years ago, and we had a nice conversation. I invited you to come and float. I know you have a good influence on society, and you’re a popular yoga teacher. I was like, “Let me invite this influencer over to my place so he can spread the word about Om.life,” and it turned into more. I started seeing your posts and the depth of how you think, and I appreciated that.
I invited you on my podcast a couple of years later. As we were looking at each other on the Gram and stuff like that and saw each other’s posts, it resonated on so many levels. We had that conversation, and you were one of my first guest. It went phenomenal. We became friends, and I came to visit you in your place in Upstate New York. It's been a pleasure getting to know you and bonding with you that day, and I kicked your ass in basketball.
It's not done. There's going to be another round of hoops. Once I got to know the questioning nature of your personality, that resonates with me. I don't think we have to have answers. In life, if you're looking for meaning, you can ask questions. This is a pep talk for me to have a conversation with you because we're on such a similar wavelength that I'll get good ideas. This father called me to help him with his son, who has been completely disinterested in school, almost flunked out of making it to a junior but summer school is helping. The world is getting stranger and stranger. Here’s a dad trying to carry his son through adolescence, and he's reaching out for a helping hand.
What came through to me is how much of our life is routine? Routine is good to an extent. It builds healthy habits. I know you wake up early, and you and Kate try to go to bed at a reasonable time. Those habits are good, but we also need a sense of adventure. We need to break the pattern. You go inside and broach the interior, which is a source of adventure too. When I was young, I would travel the world to have my adventures. I'm still young, but I'm attracted to staying in one place now and having adventures with my eyes closed.
Before this, I did another round of my mantra. I had a productive day. I'm coming for an adventure to the city to see you guys. I got this extra round on the drop button. Our devotion to the spirit because so much of our freedoms seem to be getting clamped down, and you're going for it. You're doing meaningful work. You know what it is to be in alignment.
Conscious Life: Find a partner who can help facilitate or hold space for you to grow into an even better version of yourself. You would grow exponentially with the right partner versus doing it on your own.
I look at the skeleton as a yoga teacher, and I see a lot of work to be done in terms of lining up with the Earth and the heavens. There's also body, mind, spirit and that sense of purpose. When you came to the house, we were around the fire and sharing simple food. I felt that passion so I wanted to talk to you again, and here we are.
You created such a beautiful sanctuary up there. I'm sad that it's gone and I only got one chance to go up there. The place that you created with the running stream, but having tents all around, having a fire, and cooking the most amazing, delicious food, the whole day was magical. It is different from living in a high-rise city walking on concrete all the time, you had that experience and taking a day to unplug.
I had so many things going on. Because I'm so inundated with my business, I need to go and take a step out, visit nature, then visit you. It was what I needed. It was right before I went on a crazy couple of weeks of moving from my condo to a new apartment. I went to Ohio to visit my girlfriend's parents for the first time. There were a lot of things and a whirlwind going on and so many things that I needed to take care of before and afterwards. It was nice to get out there and connect.
Did it go well with her family? That's always anxiety-filled sometimes.
They're wonderful people, and I am so blessed that I got to meet them. It's crazy because whenever I introduce somebody to my family, they're not normal, like no one's family is normal. She felt the need to tell all these things to put in my mind because this is her perception of her family, which they're wonderful people. I went there, and I thought I would have nothing to talk about with them based on the way that she described them. I had the greatest time with every single one.
I got to meet her wonderful sister and her husband and their kids. We played basketball together and we talked. They’re the sweetest people. They live out in Cincinnati. I got to meet the parents a couple of hours later and they are the nicest people. We played ping pong and talked about all the different things. Everybody that I imagined has a good heart. As long as people have good hearts, then they're my people. It doesn't matter what their philosophies are in life. As long as they love life, they want to see people do well, and they want to do well themselves, those are the types of people that I connect best with.
It's funny how the web expands once you meet the family. There's a sense of meaning for men who are at 40 and have that connection with a partner that's deeper because we've evolved through time to have something to protect, defend, share, create and you're creating together. It's a new level that, when I'm single, I find it distracting. There are times in my life where I thought, “This is fun. This is great.” The freedom that comes is exhilarating in your 30s that you can pick up, put a backpack on, and ride a motorcycle six months through India because you don't have a family. That phase of life is incredible like go to Peru and sit with a shaman because you are compelled to do that.
When you start making compromises and you start doing things lovingly for the sake of doing them and doing a nice thing without wanting something in return. I like how my energy is more directed and completely focused now. I can start to feel that in my coaching and in my business. There's a rooted, more mature headspace that when I'm single, it’s so hard to keep consistent. I’m off and on. Do you ever feel that way?
Yeah, 100%. I was engaged right before I opened my business and there was a breakup. It didn't work out. I wish the person well, but it wasn't a great breakup. After that, I'm like, “Why am I going to invest all my energy and my time into something? Why don't I just be by myself, enjoy life, and have the richest life with the best adventures and the experiences that I want?” I did that and I had a great experience for 3.5 years.
Conscious Life: There’s no comparison when you’re in the right partnership. It’s a divine romance.
When I met my girlfriend, Kate, who's my life partner, she added so much richness to my life. You mentioned having a purpose and then being more directed in your energy and what you want to create. When your life has a good comfort level and you're not always seeking something else because that's a distraction, too. If you're dating then you stop dating one person, and you go to the next, there's a lot of energy into every one of those channels.
When you have somebody that you connect with mentally, physically, and spiritually, and you feel that and it's in your heart, in this way, you don't have to worry about that stuff when you're out there in the world trying to create the magic that you want to create because that's already settled. I feel like I have so much more support in my life and I couldn't be more blessed. I walk around with more happiness and more bliss. It's an amazing feeling. I don't think I've ever experienced that before.
It took me a long time to figure out myself, understand who I am, and what my purpose is in this life until my mid-30s. Once I understood that and then got into the ideal relationship for me, now I know I'm set on this rocket ship. The only thing that's going to stop me is myself because everything that I need to be happy is already inside of me.
I remember having a client. I used to work as a personal trainer. I’m a massage therapist throughout my twenties. This woman I trained is successful, knowledgeable, and had these nuggets of wisdom she dropped on my 25-year-old brain. One day, she said, “Women get married when they fall in love and men get married when it's time.” We're not married but we're on that path most likely because we're in stable relationships.
What's helped me is I've never felt like more of myself. I've hidden parts of myself before on the veneer, charming stories, and being super nice. I'm overall well-rounded. I have many skills that are on the veneer but I've hidden that. I felt ashamed about certain sides of myself or things that have happened in my family stories like horrible tragedies. I've never been able to expose myself. I never did it with a bleeding heart, sobbing, crying, or saying sorry for myself. That is my experience and I had to get into my 40s to be comfortable. Those were vehicles for me to develop and grow into the man I am now. Why do I want to hide that stuff?
Exposing some of my shadows assuages the bite, so I don't get crippled or brought to my knees. I've never had this level of togetherness but also grounded as an individual. There's a lot of passion yet mutual respect for each other and that is enlightening to me. It gives me good faith in what is possible between a man and a woman, like the polarity. One other thing is we both strategize and plan about how we want to live, what standards are important for us, and what defines success.
For example, she's fully aware that I need to do this spiritual work. I'm not going to switch into something. I think, “What's the best way to optimize my passion because my life is about being aligned with what I love?” There are spaces that are opening up for me that I've never touched before with a partner. To have that adventure in human relationships still going on, not to get bored and write people off or say, “All women are this. All men are that.” It’s a brilliant time as a teacher to have the universe teaching you so much through your partner.
The meaning of the tantra, I explain it liberally like tan has to stretch. I blur the word tra to be traverse, to stretch the idea of oneness through the polarity or all things. The man and woman blanket their mind in balancing the opposite of each other's energy. I find my gentleness in the way I care. Massage is huge for us. If I'm crushed, she'll give me a killer head rub and neck rub. I've shown her and she has natural ability. I've been massaging for many years.
We trade bodywork and that is deeper sometimes than sex, which I completely gave in one night. She came here because she was working in Kingston. She’s managing the Kingston dispensary. I was like, “I've worked all day. I'm completely hooped.” Instead of making love, we massaged and my mind went completely blank. I can't tell you how intimate that is that we get to do that.
Sometimes, I'll cook her noodles. I'll put it on my table for two hours and she goes into outer space, like maybe where you go when you do those long floats. It's like a psychedelic experience. She has those. That connection, that type of selflessness, you got to get out of the way when you do a massage. Doorways into myself are opening through her. It's cool.
I've had a lot of experience with dating or whatnot. Selection is 95% of the game. You can be the perfect person but if they're not perfect for you and if you're not perfect for them, then it might not work out. We're these infinite beings. We have so much potential to do whatever the hell we want to do and create the magic that we want. You and I have both tried to do that on our own and we have successfully on many levels.
Conscious Life: Everybody does the best they can with the knowledge that they have. But at some point it’s a cop out because we all have the ability to do the inner work.
Also, finding a partner that can help facilitate or hold space for you to grow into an even better version of yourself, you would grow exponentially with the right partner versus doing it on your own. I'm not knocking single people who are able to be successful on their own. I've done that for a long time. There's no comparison when you're in the right partnership. It’s divine romance. It is indescribable on how you feel, move through the day, walk, posture, and so many things. Your health is better. You have more endorphins. You produce more great hormones. There's all of that.
The energy of love transforms your immune system. Think about it, fear in your body or love in your body. Your brain is sending signals and the endocrine system is responding to love. I don't know that I would have cared that well in the pandemic and the lockdowns if I didn't have the support of a partner. That's a weird thing to admit because I like to play the tough guy. I'm Mr. Independent. I can spend a couple of years being single. I like to travel alone.
My mental health was tested, particularly around February 2021, which was cold, dark, long, and didn't make any sense. I watched my mind get the most of me sometimes as I did a lot of deep digging and research. I joke, teamwork and theme work. There's the team and the theme is loving each other. That is nourishing, especially during a crazy time like 2020. You guys also deepen your connection, like Sang and me. We're twins. We moved in with our girlfriends at the same time and we both play hoops.
I met Kate prior to the pandemic. She was a client of mine and we were friends. There was nothing going on. During the pandemic, we exchanged a few messages over Instagram. We both were isolating and we're like, “Let's go for a walk.” It turned into one walk into walking every week and then every day and then developing such a strong affinity for each other. She was going through her stuff and I was going through my stuff.
To go through a pandemic and to be isolated would have been harder for me for sure because I'm such a proponent for human connection. I love people. I want to hug everyone and I still do, and I did throughout the pandemic. Fuck fear. I'm here to create more love in the world and to experience love. To do that, one of my biggest purposes in life is to connect with my soul brothers and sisters. That's oxygen for me. To be able to have that during this time, it allowed me to be more tender.
I didn't have my business to focus on and be 100% in because I was closed down for three months. During that time, I was present. I was having beautiful days working on stuff. I was doing a small little show for my business and getting to know Kate. Time didn't exist. At that time, we were floating on a cloud the whole year. Not to discount COVID and all this stuff that happened, whatever people want to make of it, it was one of the best years of my life in terms of fulfillment and happiness.
I want to back up with a sense of adventure. What I see in you is a classic nonconformist. You're in the culture but you're not sucked in by the culture. We have to admit that, to an extent, it's inescapable. If we look at some of the things we learn to desire, the things we desire from the culture if we’re born in another culture at a different time.
In India, people value chastity. They brag about their virginity. Sometimes, you're looked down upon in certain circles. In the West, of course, as a guy, I started having sex late for an athlete. Seventeen years old is late for an athlete. All my friends got the game started earlier. We learn so much from our culture.
I remember in college, I went to interviews and I was getting sick at the idea of being in this office. It all got spelled out for me as to how it would be if I went into the Corporate World. I read this book by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called Flow and then his subsequent book, Finding Flow. He was the first guy to begin studying flow states, which we know Michael Jordan, Steph Curry, and Navy SEALs when they're at war tap into it. It's the highest possible optimal state of performance.
Conscious Life: We have to stay true. We have to stay light as a feather in order to navigate this because it really is a spiritual war that we’re in.
The correlates he was finding in his observation of people were those who were connected. He had the data on those who were engaged with what they were doing. It could be rock climbing, starting their business, or whatever work they were doing, task their level of engagement. Those people had the longest, most fulfilling, happiest lives. He studied them over a broad period of time.
I read that book and I saw the depression I was getting into is the only time in my life to this day I've had a depression that long. I stayed in bed for a month. All my A's went to C’s and C-pluses. The teachers were generous to pass me. They understood what I was going through. It was then that I broke and realized how much I love working with the human body and there was a mystery there for me to uncover.
The things I have learned up until 22 with my body always adapting to the stress load I put on it, whether it was running, weightlifting, or martial arts always change. I was wanting to demystify that so I went right into personal training when it wasn't a career and I always kept asking questions. I would find masters throughout my life to submit and learn from. Whether it was a shaman or an Ashtanga Yoga teacher or a Sanskrit master, I sense their level of accumulated practice and I try to learn.
I look at my life as a game and as a giant adventure. At that time when I was a senior, I heard in a commencement speech this phrase by Helen Keller, “Life is a daring adventure or nothing at all.” It reverberated and kept running around my consciousness. I met this guy, Anil Gupta, and I said, “I have to put that on my body.” He put it in Sanskrit. It's my first tattoo.
First of all, Anil Gupta is on the East side of Manhattan, right?
Yeah.
That's where I got my tattoo as well.
That's weird. He's tattooed you.
One of his tattoo artist, John Paul Bonanno.
What a trip to find out right now.
That's crazy.
It's absolutely amazing because that was so long ago. That was 1997.
Anil is a famous guy. He's tattooed Seal and Heidi Klum.
I needed a guy that knew Sanskrit and the word he chose was romancha. He phrased it this way so it would work in Sanskrit. “Life without romance/adventure is meaningless.” I didn't know as a young kid that this was becoming my life metaphor. You could think, “Life is a bowl of cherries. Why am I always in the pits?” Whatever your metaphor is, you end up living out.
I brainwashed myself by burning that phrase in Sanskrit into my arm and so much has unfolded. Part of that is the questioning. Whenever I speak to you, I see a guy that is not afraid to ask questions. Bigger than the fear of death is the fear of going against the grain of the group. What we're seeing is a dangerous routine. I get a breath of fresh air when I talk to you. I'm like, “He doesn't pretend to know the answer but he's asking the same question and he smells something fishy.” In a way, it might be my need for tribalism and adventure. You're asking the questions, so you're not becoming a slave to the tendencies of your mind, and I appreciate that.
Being a nonconformist, that's a label. At the end of the day, it doesn't resonate with me when I was growing up and I saw all my friends and people that my parents knew. They were all becoming doctors, lawyers, and finance people. I tried doing internships during college in the finance world. I worked at CIBC for a little bit. The lifestyle, the people, and the energy were down. It was all about, “How can I grab as much of this pie as I can and fuck everybody else?” I was like, “How do people even think like this?”
I grew up with a family where I'm blessed because I've never seen my parents do anything outside of integrity. All they did was help other people. They got screwed a bunch of times but it never stopped them from opening their hearts, doing charitable work, and helping whoever needed help. They wanted to because they know that it's good karma to do it and it resonates with them. I was able to see this my entire life. I grew up innocent in the fact that I don’t think there were bad people out there but as you go through life and you start experiencing and realizing everybody does the best they can with the knowledge they have, I also knew that at some point, it's a cop-out.
We all have the ability to do the inner work and I was blessed with the opportunities to do a lot of self-development. I did Tony Robbins courses. I've done Landmark. I've worked with New Peaks, which is a company called Peak Potentials previously. I did almost fifteen years of self-development. I went to sleepaway camp for adults to go through the most amazing experiences to push yourself outside of your comfort zones, experience death, and be okay with it. Through my ayahuasca and all these things, I'm so passionately curious.
What drives me with my North Star is I know that there's something greater than what I see in this physical body on this Earth right here. I know that we're infinite souls and I've always known that. When I had the experience with ayahuasca, it showed me a little glimpse of what can be out there. I know that I'm on the right path as long as I walk towards the lights. Anything that is not the truth, I've been able to recognize. I have to talk about it because I can't let things around me deteriorate or people get inundated with whatever they hear on the news.
I'm here to experience this crazy time and I know that we both signed up for this, but how can we be light-bearers in this age of chaos and age of darkness where there's so much that's contradictory to our highest self, our highest potential as human beings? If everyone unlocks that or a little bit of our magic, then we wouldn't be having these problems. Why are we listening to people who are dark in nature? They don't have the right intentions for humanity. They don't want united people coming together in love, togetherness, and contribution. They want people separated and looking at each other as enemies. It's a sad time that we live in, but what's a better time to live in than right now.
If you're looking at a soul journey or live multiple lifetimes, this is the ultimate testing and battleground. If you want to reach Moksha, Nirvana or enlightenment, you have to walk through this darkness. That's what we're doing right now. Who knows what's going to happen every single day? Every hour, news changes and crazy things happen. It might be designed to fuck with our heads and to keep us spiritually closed-minded or to keep us attacking our soul in this perpetual thing like, “There’s science at this thing,” and then it contradicts itself.
You're doing mental gymnastics with everything that's going on and you're trying to reconcile in your mind, “What makes sense?” The reality is nothing that's being told to us makes sense and it's done that way on purpose to jumble and scramble our minds. If we don't allow that to infiltrate and to see inside of us, it's a weed that's growing in. We have to stay true, stay light, and not take this stuff seriously. We have to stay light as a feather in order to navigate this because it is a spiritual war that we're in.
Conscious Life: 100% commitment is the only way to success. You can't have 99% commitment and 1% doubt, because that doubt will germinate and take over.
I want to lay up what I wanted to talk about, the spiritual warrior and the war on consciousness. I want to dissect that and go granularly deep into that but I want to back up because you have done a lot of personal development work. I want to deconstruct one part of the path for people reading who sometimes get stuck in their development. There are infinite levels of consciousness. You and I have done all this work but we feel like we're still at the beginning. There's so much more that is possible.
I want to back up to that point where you described something about me, which is transforming your ability to speak freely to any woman you're attracted to in any setting and any place to get that confidence or to transform something like your health. You might be 30 pounds overweight, and you're looking in the mirror and going, “Pandemic did a number on me.” You're looking for a more enjoyable job but you feel tied into your current level of income and you don't want to take a pay cut.
There are difficulties and I want you to talk about that moment where you feel the weight of the darkness and inertia, and you feel like, “Will I make it?” What gets you over that hump you have to smash? Guys like Goggins make it look easy, “Stay hard,” but no, you're alone in your house. You're the one looking in the mirror, get on the treadmill, go for a walk, take a hike, going to have to make that first move and make new friends after being isolated for a year. People are socially bumbled sometimes. Talk about that space of feeling the pain and having to go through it anyway because that's what is a sticking point for many of us.
It all starts with belief systems. What software program have you downloaded into your mind? We have several. You brought up a couple of examples. What is your financial blueprint? Are you able to walk up to the girl that you want to ask out? All these are programs. At some point in our life, we adapted some of these programs, whether they're disempowering or empowering to us. For instance, you asked if you want to go up to a girl. Either you force yourself to do it but you don't truly believe that you can do it, it's going to show up in your world, resonate that way and you're not going to be able to get her number.
You have to know with all your heart that this is going to happen, whether it's a business that you want to create, whether it's creating or making a relationship work, that takes two, but there has to be an intention set. A hundred percent commitment is the only way to success. You can't have 99% commitment and 1% doubt because that doubt will germinate and it'll take over. You have to be mindful and dedicated to what it is that you want to create in this world.
Doing things only when they're comfortable is a real tragedy to train your brain to only, for example, workout on days you feel great. There's going to be a couple of days where you don't feel great that you got to saddle up. These kinds of things that we do with our bodies, like the yoga practice, it teach us how to be comfortable in uncomfortable situations.
The body and mind are not separate from me. They auto enact and inspire one another in the loop, in a circle. Working with the body in asana transcends time if you link your breath properly with the movement. What a treat to be off your phone and with yourself on your mat, flowing in sync, disengaged from your whole outer life, whatever's going on with the world, the news, the business. It brings me to a funny thing about the war on consciousness. I want to dissect this idea of how to act. It's hard to decide how to act. I'm coming to terms with the fact that we are deeply embedded in a battle and we're almost out of time.
It's so liberating for me to not feel like the guy who has to sound alarm bells. Who am I to wake people up? Zach Bush, one of my heroes, the work he is doing inspires me so much. He’s so hard-centered. Zach Bush started his career birthing babies and he went all the way in the full circle to hospice to help people die and to bring life into this world with your hands and usher it out with your presence. It’s the understanding and the compassion this guy has. To watch him and the questions he's asking get censored, I almost found my violence and my anger. That can come through in my work.
I'm in a tough line of wanting to express that because my social feeds have become one slice of glam but I'm enraged that a brilliant questioning scientifically sound master of the endocrine system, master of immunology, cannot have a voice that questions the one story we're all supposed to believe. That is such an egregious error in thinking you would want to vehemently disagree and agree and be in debate to come to the right conclusions, which is why I'm talking to you might autocorrect some of my ideas about spirituality and the path to enlightenment.
To be open is what the show has shown me that I need to be open to different opinions. It devastated me. I went to click on the link of some things that Zach posted and it said, “This is not available. It’s violating guidelines.” I know that this guy is super scientific in his heart and this can be interpreted as nothing more than a desire to fully control humans. The way to do that is not with bullets, tanks, and bombs from the sky. You are a master if you can control the minds. I'm starting to see it as so structured that it's a cult. It's black magic.
It's like spirituality, but from the dark force, and it's an epic meeting of darkness and light so I hope I can get some insight from you on how much the acceptance of this and the desire to not be the guy that wakes people up has freed me but how much should I put my attention on living my bliss and staying informed. I'm disappointed that I didn't get the Zach Bush lecture and the same things happening to someone I admire. A brilliant mind of our times, Bret Weinstein is getting an entire podcast dropped, so I'm looking at ways of communicating that can’t be traced. I'm looking at platforms that I can shift my media and my show over to what I know supports freedom of speech.
I heard Adam Curry on Joe Rogan. He’s the podcaster. He started a whole thing that's going to support freedom of speech, plug and play with the payment, and a Patreon angle. I'm going to start exploring ways of getting off mainstream platforms. They're going to get every single person but don't march in line and it's going to split into two types of people. Those that conform and those that go underground. I am not with all of the rules that are coming out. I'm not with it. I'm with humanity and freedom. This is a structured war on the space in between our ears, for sure. It feels that way.
People who have truth on their side don't need to censor anyone else. People who have truth on their side welcome all opinions to understand and to come in from a humble place of, “I don't have all the answers. You don't have all the answers. Let's try to figure out a good solution to any problem that the world faces.” When people are trying to ask those questions and they're getting censored, like Dr. Zach Bush. When I listened to him the first time, I was in tears. The guy speaks with so much heart and so much love in his voice. Listening to people that speak of love, it's easy to pick up that frequency and I understand them, so I'm open to listening and understanding them.
Conscious Life: Another great thing to do is to find that community, find the people that resonate that same love frequency as you, and get together with them and speak to them, and see what you guys can come up with together and create in this world.
I got so many great points and understanding and life lessons from people like that. There are the people that tell you, “This is the way that it needs to be done. Don't ask any questions. Shut the fuck up. Put a mask on.” Let's be clear here. When someone is trying to control you, they're taking away your divine spiritual freedom to be a free soul to be an individual who can think on their own. This happens in countries like North Korea or China when you get censored like that and told how to think, how to act, and what to do. Not here in the United States.
When it's happening here, you have to ask the question, what is the agenda? Where are they trying to leave this place? Why are they trying to teach kids this demonic stuff and pop music? Why are they promoting sexuality at such a young age? The porn industry is getting so dark. Why are politicians always getting caught doing corrupt things and not getting caught or not facing any consequences? If you look at the degradation of society, how they want to teach kids of all different colors. It’s like, “That person is racist. They were born racist. They are terrible human beings.” What is going on? This is a symptom of the mad world that we're living in.
You and I believe everybody has the potential to be a beautiful soul and that road is different for everyone. You take on yoga, I take on holistic health in a different way. People are musical geniuses. Everybody has a purpose on this Earth, but why is it that we're catering to or pushing people into such a low vibration by keeping everybody divided? It saddens my soul but I also know that if they had all the power, these dark forces, then they wouldn't need to do all this stuff. The game would be already over and we would be like, “We give up.”
The fact that there are so many people waking up, day-by-day, minute-by-minute is incredible. When I talk to people, there are so many people like us. For anyone reading who feels like they're censored not being heard or the people that they love to listen to are being censored. It's the optics. What it's trying to do is to keep you away from speaking to two groups of people that are of similar mindsets, want love, and build a better world.
It's the control freaks who are scared right now. They're trying to do whatever they can to create every kind of fear-monger and corruption possible in order to get their way. It's apparent. I truly believe that most people are amazing beings. They want to do better for their life and for their family. They want other people to succeed and they have few people in positions of power who are steering our society in a dangerous place. More and more people are waking up and people are realizing this is all nonsense.
It's so desperate looking, isn't it? It’s like, “We're going to censor you. We're going to burn the books.” It's so sickly desperate.
It’s pathetic. It’s what it is.
It’s pretty silly and I embrace any darkness that comes with us not being able to realize that. If we can't realize the sick desperation that they're in, it's possible that they could collapse under their own weight from the Hail Mary pass that they're throwing now.
It is happening. Look at what is happening to the Governor of New York. I still think that's a little bit of a smokescreen because everybody knew about this in 2020. I was posting about all the shit that he was being accused of but at the same time, he also took a bunch of people in nursing homes and he was involved in all other types of corruption like second-generation politician Cuomo.
As the most controlling person, he wanted to shut down everything in New York. He killed tens of thousands of people in nursing homes and not a word. He was hailed as some kind of fucking hero. These are the types of people who are going to be the lights going to shine on them. People are going to realize that they were following people who didn't have their best interests at heart. Not only that, they were serving a darker agenda.
I feel the occult nature of it in this way, the messages of fear. I teach people to look at their spine as a massive gift. We are an upright eight. Horizontal spines cannot face the heavens and the center of the Earth. We can take advantage of the movement of energy and the chakras in a way that an animal can't use for self-realization. They don't change their nature.
Conscious Life: It's interesting how much we can shift our awareness of the spirit, or awareness of awareness when we are whole and taken care of and put back together.
Look at what's happened. We've been isolated from one another, which you're kinesthetic. You already said you love to hug everyone you touch. It's a big part of your life. Everything that has been messaged to us has been about fear and that's keeping our energy in the root chakra. It's keeping it low. We're not able to feel a sense of self in relationship to non-self. We can't feel self-acceptance or self-love. We can't speak the truth because there's so much information. We don't know what the truth is. We don't know our nature because we're so imbalanced between our male and female energies.
It's all about backward. We have been hacked by our need to feel important and our need to be feeling like we matter in the hierarchy. I am embarrassed. Times where I've been someone spitting off the talking points on the environment or a political party and not knowing the depth of an issue and not being well versed.
Having to defend my position or wanting to look intelligent to be in that room and split off someone else's talking points where I don't know the nuances of something like that and I don't have the real facts or the data. I can't speak deeply about it but here I am acting like a cat. That has been exploited in a structured way. People perhaps are naturally waking up. Heat and pain are transformational things.
Maybe we've been such in a fog by the pornography, the drinking, the chasing money, and putting our awareness in the wrong things as a culture that as we strip away some of this materialism, we can begin the movement of energy up the charkas and take to the spiritual practices. There are so many paths. There are numerable paths to reclaim the space in your mind but we've done some collective mind damage. We have descended into a dark night and that's where acceptance is the only thing that gives me peace while there is still a chance to pursue freedom and to focus on creativity.
Creativity is channeling the energy of God, the field of all possibilities, and the Aham Brahman mantra. It's the doorway into the best art that can possibly be conceived of. It's all coming from the source. To create helps me get into the god-nature. I'm being drawn. I'm going to take ten days. I'm going to come to New York to work for five, go to the beach for five, and take ten days to orient myself again. I’m focused and I shine all the light for my practice.
My clients know not to call me and my students know a long break. It’s to channel into what are my priorities and to line up with the creative principle. I'm yearning for well-placed ink on paper to put my thoughts into about what it means to be a healthy man. To put that into a book and that someone can have even if it sells 500 copies. That's 500 copies and 500 people that benefited. When you change one person's life in a positive way, you change the whole universe going forward.
It’s because you are the universe.
The refractory effect that has on all other living beings is immeasurable. Creativity and adventure are the antidotes. Back to the Aham Brahman triad. Creativity, adventure, and romance. Look for romance even with yourself, even if you have to embrace yourself. Move through the darkness. Creativity is the force that is opposing the darkness. The fourth dimension is the technology that we're creating like VR or it's also the technology of consciousness, but it's a transition to where we are not going to recognize the world of 2050 and 2100. It's going to be the people in 1908 who can’t recognize New York now because they were running around in horse and buggy with piles of horse poop on the sidewalks everywhere.
There are so many disruptive technologies coming that it's going to be a transformational world in 10, 30, 50, or 100 years. I feel like this is the Sapiens’ last stand to say, “Am I in the future or is the future shaped by a few who want to create a whole other thing?” There has never been a reason this war is dangerous because it involves the whole planet and freedom, not in one region. This war shapes what we are for the future. That's why it's so structured and planned out.
What availability and potential life our future generations have when everything is controlled by few, then by succumbing to it by going along with it, they are affecting our futures as well. It is humanity's last stand. The point that you were making that creativity. When people ask me, “How do you get through it?” I say that you have to spend time doing the inner work, but I also have to give myself that same advice.
It's so important because you're automatically going to be affected by everything that's going on right now and it's heavy. It's a heavy fucking time. I have to pay attention and focus on not letting it get the best of me because I'm getting messages from all my friends, “This is going on. They're doing this.” How do you not care about what's happening in society and the freedoms that are being pulled away from us but then also not being inundated? That is the true question and I haven't figured out the right balance yet.
What I'm focusing on now is doing the things that bring me the most happiness and also doing things that go according to my purpose and my value. I won't ever stand down to tyranny. I will always speak in love. I will also speak in human connection and I will not be muzzled when it comes to those things. Also, going in nature by myself for a walk with my girlfriend and spending time with her. Put quality time, not time in front of the TV or anything like that. It’s doing things that bring me simple happiness. Going for a walk, seeing water, spending time in trees, going to the beach, or talking to my friends. Those are the things that are grounding me. It’s also seeing my clients, helping them in their journeys in recovery, stress relief, pain relief, athletic recovery, and seeing my clients come out of an experience completely refreshed.
I know that I'm doing good work in this world because it's helping people at such a great level, mentally, physically, and spiritually. Whether they’re conscious about it or not, I know that I'm living my purpose and that's what I can ask for. I'm limited in the things I can do for the world, the universe, or whatever it is. Every single day, if I can vibrate with love, contribution, human connection, then I'm doing what I need to do.
Conscious Life: During the hard times, if you can breathe, take a real deep breath and smile while running the hardships, that’s how we get through it. One moment at a time, one scenario at a time.
It's important for people like yourself and I and so many people listening who are of the same mindset not to get into the mode of you're carrying the world on your shoulders because it can feel like that to so many of us. It's one of those things. Know that you have a community and another great thing to do is to find that community. Find the people that resonate with that same love frequency as you. Get together with them, speak to them and see what you guys can come up with together and create in this world.
I want to talk about the modalities of your wellness spa in a minute, but I want to share something about being in a new town and connecting with people. Our lives have become so politicized that it's almost could be the first thing you lead with and it's so negative no matter what side you're on. It makes people's blood boil. Since I moved, I stopped and disengaged from that at all. I shine, light, love, and enquire about them. I take a sincere interest in the people around me and it's caused a lot of peace of mind. If it gets to the state of the world, I acknowledge the difficulty that we're all going through together.
To not make it a focus, I wonder how much I have to ignore it or how much I have to face it but I don't want it to engulf my life because we have to remember. This is where Sang helps me a lot with her ideas about how we should spend the weekend. You should still be having fun and doing those blocks with Kate. You should be going hiking. We can forget that with all of the stress that we're told to worry about that your nervous system gets jacked up on fear, anxiety and you miss out on experiences that draw you fully in alignment with the flow of time and the universe.
Keep up those things and the work at Om.life is a cutting-edge modality. I'm in the method of teaching, I believe in structured experiments. One woman came to me and she was like, “I've never tried veganism. I heard on your show that you talked about how when you did it, you felt universal compassion to the point that you were in tears and a forward back to life from a mantra. Before doing veganism, I want to experiment that. How do I do it?”
I gave her an instruction. I give her 40 days. I was like, “This is how you build up to it. These are the tricks for the tough days. This is the planning you're going to have to do.” Tell me about what was the genesis of that idea and how you picked each modality because those are things that I didn't get much of a choice for except the cold. Cold and heat have been in my game for a long time. Some of the light therapies and the myofascial massage, and the floats. Tell me about the spa and the work of what goes on there if someone's not feeling well and they want to plug back into themselves.
My origin story is pretty simple. My parents were doctors, my sister is a doctor, and then my other sister went the other route and she became an Ayurvedic doctor. I got to see the whole spectrum or two angles of health and I realized that being proactive about your health is the only way to ensure a quality of life that most people would deem ideal.
I was an athlete growing up. I was into ice baths for my feet and all this kind of stuff. Looking at different ways to enhance my athleticism, I started doing yoga in my twenties and then meditation. I’m much into the biohacking style. Through Tim Ferriss and Dave Asprey, I learned about supplementation and just kept going with it.
I always knew that at some point, I wanted to create a center that houses all these different healing modalities, which are all holistic and the top modalities that I can find. It’s something that's going to always constantly evolve to the times and bringing about a marriage between ancient knowledge and new technology. To also bring a community together of like-minded people who wanted to heal themselves so they can go out and make a positive ripple in the world.
Once you heal yourself, then you can affect the universe of people around you. These were all ideas that I had. Self-development obviously was a big thing for me. Plant medicine, having the ayahuasca experience back in 2014, shattered my ego into a billion pieces. As it was coming back together, it showed me that, “You had this idea for a long time, what the fuck are you waiting for? You're not living your purpose, then what are you going to do?”
It showed me a whole timeline. One scenario of my life is if I didn't live my purpose and just did things that I needed to do to make money and have all these external things, but not have inner fulfillment. It showed me growing up and becoming an old man dying alone on my deathbed with no fulfillment. I was like, “I don't want to go that route,” and then it showed me the other path. If I were to go and take a lot of risks, to give up what I knew at the time and go on this path of helping others through holistic modalities, it showed me living a very happy and fulfilled life. That was such an important part of my life, that ayahuasca experience.
There’s my life before that and then my life after that because I decided, “I'm going to go for broke.” I liquidated a lot of my assets. I borrowed a bunch of money and started this journey. It took me about two years to open up this center. That was from 2015 all the way to 2017. In about four years, we've seen over 6,000 people come through here. Helping them with all different types of things. We really focus on athletic recovery, stress management, pain relief. A lot of people come from the spiritual aspect too but one of the most popular therapies that we have is zero gravity floatation therapy, which is unlike anything that you'll ever experience other than floating in outer space.
I don't know if you saw Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson go out in space and do their little zero-gravity experience for 30 seconds. You can have an hour in zero gravity experience in a floatation tank. It's like the Dead Sea. There are 1,000 pounds of Epsom salts with ten inches of water. It's the same water temperature as your outside skin temperature, so you forget your body and you're floating in this pool of nothingness. Your body and the water just merge into one.
In that state, you're going to totally relax your body but if you're able to relax your mind, you enter what they call theta state, which is the most deeply meditative state that you can get into your brainwaves. Magical things happen. In one float experience, stress levels and cortisol levels will drop. Scientifically proven to decrease anxiety and depression after one float. It is something that is unreplicatable anywhere else in the world.
We do that. That's the most popular. We do whole body cryotherapy, which is a three-minute hyper cooling treatment designed to lower inflammation in the body recirculate your blood and lymphatic system. Afterward, you burn about 600 to 800 calories in three minutes and you feel like you're on top of the world. You have this endorphin rush and you feel great. We also do infrared saunas. We do Normatec, which is an air compression massage. We do hypnosis as well as Reiki and fascial stretch therapy and CBD oil massages.
We're constantly evolving. We're growing into different modalities and we're doing a lot more events like ceremonies and Reiki sessions and all these kinds of things. It's an exercise for me in experimentation. It's like a biohacking facility where I get to experience a lot of different things, see what works, bring into the center. Maybe some things work for a little bit of time, some things work for a little duration. I love the fact that every day is different and I get to have the most beautiful interactions with people that are coming through my center.
It's interesting how much we can shift our awareness of the spirit or awareness of awareness when we are whole, taken care of and put back together when in reality, most of life, we're running from one place to the next. Before 2019 and 2020, people were sped up and highly caffeinated, so the yoga that I teach heals digestion and fixes digestion, which heals most diseases. Ridding the body of disease frees you from the distraction from negative health.
Negative health affects your hormones and your endocrine system. You're literally in a fog in a cloud. Part of feeling happier is the care that you're giving, and that recovery you do is really cool. I only did cryo once. The flow is so fascinating because not everyone is a fit for psychedelics like ayahuasca. It can take them from 0 to 1 million in 3 seconds. That kind of opening and that openness, you're naturally open because you've been doing personal development work. For those reading, these things must be approached with great caution.
I do a lot of teaching safely in combination with a mild psychedelic, cannabis, now that medical is available. Getting people plugged into the system where they can dose themselves properly or use even ratios of THC to CBD. Those are cool spaces when you combine deep yoga practice with a little natural cannabinoid that increases your focus. These are doorways safely but a lot of spirituality is in the mundane. Jordan Peterson says, “Clean your room. Make your bed. Take care of your health. Question your ideas.”
Everything is sacred, so you want to treat every aspect of your life as sacred. Every interaction with yourself and with others.
Absolutely. What else are you doing? For me, am I disengaging too much? When you came up, we were joking at the big ten-acre place I live that was all grown in and no one's in a mask. In a way, I'm sheltered from some of it. This is what's bizarre like, “Where's the pandemic?” The pandemic is on my phone.
I had a tough time switching my business to a digital business. That was not easy. That was totally transformational. People grew to love working with me digitally but I had to adapt to it. I thought it was inferior. I still have doubts about online yoga teacher training because, in my mind, I'm like, “That stuff has to be transmitted in the energy of the master. It has to be transmitted in person. You have to touch them physically to teach them how to align themselves.”
That was really brutal hard work but at this point, it's moving along. I wonder, “When something really intense happens, will I hear about it? Do I not need to follow it?” How do you balance your spiritual practice with all of these channels? We used to follow some of the same people but I've unfollowed things that were making me feel too extreme or too jacked up. It's like the main warfare. It triggers me really fast. It's so perfect like when they nail something with humor. Memes are crazy.
Memes have changed the game. It's insane. It's so funny and so witty but at the same time, there is the thing where you become too inundated and you want to know every little thing. At the end of the day, if you're somewhat aware of what's going on, is there anything going to change that drastically that you need to check your phone every five minutes? What I would say to that is that you're right. The pandemic is in the phone and in the mind.
There're some people who live out in nature, you live on ten acres, and it doesn't have to exist. You can enjoy your experience. Disconnect from it all and focus on positivity and creativity, which you did. I'm sure life is a lot more meaningful doing it that way versus living in the city and having all these restrictions being put on businesses, restaurants, mass mandates, and all these things. It's a scary world out there.
The question is, how do you swim through it? How do you navigate it living in a major city trying to connect with spirit and be creative when you're being bombarded all the time with so many different things? To each their own, I would say that. If I was up there in the Hudson, New York, on ten acres, I would be relishing in that experience because you lived in the city before. You know how it is. Might as well enjoy it without bothering yourself because it doesn't exist out there.
It's the fact that I'm an empath, though. My friend Alyssa Gruber called me out on something. I sense into and feel into other people's pain and it comes from growing up around poverty. I went back to Ghana when I was thirteen. I went to play with a boy I used to play with when I lived there and I thought he was messed up because he looked so young. I didn't know in my thirteen-year-old brain what was going on. Now, that I'm an adult, he was malnourished. He wasn't getting any of the protein that I was getting in America. He was super skinny and I said to my mother, “What's wrong with him? Why can't he keep up?” She had no answer but I can see now.
Conscious Life: Remember your north star, remember what you're doing is for, and then you start getting that sense of gratitude.
I feel into the swells like when I go to India, everything is up to the suffering intensely and it affects me. On my first trip to India, I was super depressed for a few days and my friend who took me was celebrating becoming a doctor, him and his father. His father was laughing. He's like, “Grow up. This is a large part of the world. This is the way it is.” Alyssa said to me, “You can acknowledge people's pain but it doesn't have to be yours all the time.” She was very direct.
She did that on the show and it stayed with me and I've been controlling my emotions better. I'm like, “I see that's their experience and I see that this is the experience as a servant of God and the universe my whole life. I've never sold out. I've always stayed true to the path as painful as it was, as good as the uptimes, financially were, as bad as the downtimes were, I stayed on track.” This is where the universe wants to place me during the epic war between darkness and light. Why can’t I embrace it?
I've been building a life with my partner that is life, even though it seems like life is falling apart. Seems like that everything is coming on done and we're furniture shopping. We're like, “What dressers do we need? Where does this go?” “The forks that came in from Amazon, pick them up from the porch.” I'm like, “Why not? What else am I going to do? Freak out that there are mandates.” There’s so much beauty in this world.
Just because we're watching the news or listening to some controllers, people want to create the shade on this planet. At the end of the day, if we weren't tuning in to their system, would we even have this nuisance on our shoulders and our minds? It's a crazy world and focusing on what makes you happy, that's what we want to sign up for. As you said, what better time to show up than now? During the hard times, if you can breathe, take a real deep breath and smile through any of the hardships. That's what it's all about. That's how we get through it. One moment at a time. One scenario at a time. One challenge, one obstacle.
There were times in my business where I was working sixteen-hour days. There were tears in my eyes because I was so overwhelmed. I decided, “Just breathe through it. Remember your North star. Remember what you're doing this for.” You start getting that sense of gratitude. When I went to India, I've been there many times, but it's always a lesson in perspective. I tell myself, “How dare you complain about anything in your life when you see some people struggle?” The fact that they struggle and some people live on the streets, they got a smile on their face many times.
It hits me hard. You see the craziest shit in India. I call it a symphony of chaos. It's like a psychedelic experience. People who have not visited India, go fucking visit it because it will set you straight. I was in Bombay and my cousin was driving. We were on this highway and there's this guy, I shit you not, he's got no legs, and he's walking with his arms. He's walking across the highway with his arms. People are driving along 60 miles an hour. It’s like you stop when you need to. He's going and he's figuring like people are going to move out of the way. Honestly, that would be the scariest moment in life if I had to do that, and I swear to God, I think I saw one truck drive over him. The truck was elevated so it didn't hit him but he just kept going.
It’s unbelievable. To be born into a womb in a different place and a different time, it is incredible how fortunate we are that we live in this country. I am going to hang the American flag, even if it's a myth, the United States of America, I'm going to go to Walmart or Home Depot and find a flag for the house once the outside is done and they build my deck and, on the mailbox, because I'm grateful.
My family escaped dictatorship. Serious poverty where we barely got by sometimes when I was young. I'm grateful that even though I'm the latest iteration of my father, I got to travel the world freely, do my dream job, and be resonant with the people. I can pick up the phone, text, email or a DM. It’s like, “I like to have a conversation with you about your book or your work.” They would feel in vibration enough with me to say yes and I get to have these conversations. These doors just open.
The gratitude I have for the country, I don't feel we are the United States anymore. It's splitting apart in some ways but the symbol, even though we have been corrupt and used the military improperly to oppress people, even though we've been in the darkness, the fact that you can bust your hump and get somewhere if you're focused to have a country like that is amazing. The flag is still a symbol to me.
It's weird to be an immigrant with so much respect and reverence for the country but it's full of opportunities even to this day as much as people complain about it, as much as they see it as systemically fraught. They're not aware that if they were to go through a dictatorship or a communist country, you don't have the luxury of speaking up against your government. You don't have a voice. You are punished in generations. In North Korea, your generational pain comes. They punish your children and their children's children if you disagree. That's the level of draconian control. A flag is a symbol of the freedom to have a dream and pursue it. I feel like for the first half of my life, I have been pursuing and learning.
This half of my life now, I'm in a generative phase of how can I offer this and spin this back to the sixteen-year-old kid I'm about to coach? I've set it up with his father, “This is what you need to tell him, so I have the requisite leverage to influence him to do a daily practice to view his life as an adventure, a game, and a way to enhance possibilities. Not just to fall slave to routine or fall slave to negative tendencies.”
It's all a matter of looking at things properly and yoga helps me to see things as they are. With each year that I live, I get more humble. There's more that I don't know. There's more that I'm willing to revise and put under the microscope again. The beginner's mind is always coming back to me. People are asking for more leadership. This ten-day break that I'm going to be on to fill my well is the main goal. My teacher, Sharon Gannon, used to say something that resonates well with me right now, which is, “Be love itself.”
When I meet people in town, they're more than their politics. They’re moms. They have children that they want to take care of. They’re dads trying to put food on the table. They’re regular, good, working-class people who care about their politics. Let it be secondary and focus on being the loving yoga teacher that's in their village, a massage therapist, and a guy that can guide spiritually. Be there as a resource. Put your views aside because they may be the last thing people should get to know about you. Maybe there are other ways to lead with being love itself.
It's a beautiful way to put it. It's the answer for everything. Just be love. Be in a state, be everybody should love. Be love to yourself, especially because a lot of times, many of us don't give ourselves that love or that time that it's needed to feel into it. Be love for the people that you love the most around you. Be love to people you work with and to strangers. What better exercise in unconditional love than to love somebody that you don't even know.
That's a nice bow on this conversation. Is there anything else you want to mention before you share your site, your handles, how people can reach you and share a little bit about your podcast before we sign off?
I have so much gratitude for you and appreciation. I love talking to you. I love spending time with you.
You got to come up here when the house is done. This is my office but I'm going to put a bed in it. We're right by the Hudson. You and Kate would love this area. There’re so many cool things to do.
The only thing I want to plug in is Om.life, my wellness center. If you are in the Jersey City area, come on by. We'd love to host you and then also my podcast is called the Limitless One Podcast. I started in the fall of 2020 and it's an exploration of consciousness. Talking to people who are living a limitless life in whatever field and avenue that they've dedicated their lives to. There’re so many great thought leaders. I encourage you to check it out. It's Limitless One Podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and my website is Anand.life. You can check out more of me there. I'm into a lot of different interests. I am always looking to talk to people who are loving life, contributing, and kicking some butt.
Kicking some butt lovingly. Be love itself. Thank you.
Thank you.
Important Links:
The Path of Knowledge w/ Jai Sugrim - Past episode
Adam Curry - Previous episode on The Joe Rogan Experience
Limitless One Podcast - Apple Podcasts
Spotify - Limitless One
About Jai Sugrim
Jai Sugrim has been a health and wellness educator for 25 years. He is steeped in the Jivamukti and Ashtanga yoga lineages and has a 15-year history of studying shamanism with master curanderos of the Peruvian Amazon. Jai has worked professionally with everyone from the New York Yankees, with whom he won a World Series Championship Ring in 2000, to Martin Scorsese and a long list of celebrities, financiers, and professional athletes. He has also been featured in the New York Times, The Huffington Post, and Psychology Today as well as on The Today Show. Jai loves to share health & mindfulness practices that help his students create peace of mind.
