Eight Paths to Enlightenment - Transcript

Kristina: Hello, Anna. 

Anna: Yay. Hi Kristina. I'm so glad you're back in the USA.

Kristina: I am too. I am too, even though it definitely feels like I'm still landing, even though I've been here for about five days. 

Anna: So for anyone who missed our bonus episode, Christina caught COVID while she was in the UK. And then she was quarantined there and had to change her flight plans and it was just a mess.

So welcome 

Kristina: home. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. And I'm still trying to get over COVID a little bit, it's definitely still lingering in my system, but there was a lot of stress in there, so it kind of hindered the healing process a little bit. 

Anna: Yeah. Well, what do you think about our episode last week with Krishna DAS?

Kristina: I really loved talking to him. I really loved the experience. He had so much, so many amazing nuggets of wisdom. That was really amazing. I will admit it was also a little hard for me to listen to because I was in the height of my COVID that was recorded. So it was. And my connection was bad.

So for me, like, there's like an ego portion of me that was like, oh, I would have asked this question. I would have done this, you know, like kind of more in my right mind looking back at it. So it was a little hard for me to listen to, but I absolutely loved it. What about you? Why don't you start? 

Anna: Well, I love it.

I loved the episode. I've actually listened to about five times before we even published it. So we're recording this pre-publication of that episode. And I loved it because I feel like it really anchored me in the teachings of Maharaji and it's like that six steps of separation, you know, like being one step away from a Harajuku in the flat.

To be in the presence of someone who lived with him. And it really embodies his teachings that really helped anchor me so deeply. Like I've listened to it again and again, and I will continue to listen to it. Cause I just feel like each time I listen I'm hearing it more or it's kind of anchoring, like roots are growing and it's like the whole thing about remembering, go back.

Remember, keep remembering God, but you don't have to worry if you had questions to ask, because he did say that he loved talking to us and it's possible that we may speak to him again. And I'm already creating in my head, like the list of questions I'd like to ask him because one of the big questions I have for him actually is, you know, there's this quote and it says, love everyone.

Unconditionally doesn't have to mean accepting unconditionally bad behavior. And one of my questions for him is just as we walk on this path to becoming more loving and accepting and forgiving of everyone in our lives, where do boundaries fall into that? You know, that's one of the questions I have because, you know, he talked about how rom Doss treated him really badly when they were in India together at one point.

And, but yet they've remained friends for 50 years. Right. And we don't know the details of what rom dust did, but like where do we draw a line or do we draw lines when you're on this path? It's just a really interesting question to ask. And it's one that I constantly wrestle with just in, you know, in everyday life.

Like, do I, I keep forgiving such and such, or do I discharge that unruly abusive patient or, you know, whatever the situation might be. So 

Kristina: I completely. Resonate with that. And I've had a lot of that recently and the, I keep, I don't know it's interesting, like my mind wants to categorize what a boundary is because that's what I do is as I kind of question it, but at the same time, I really appreciated the kind of understanding of the humanness, of what Katie, of what Christian, DATIA kind of brought into the thing of like, recognizing that it doesn't necessarily matter how much progress we're making or doesn't necessarily matter how we're kind of doing this.

You know, the thing that really stuck with me throughout all of this was that when you love and you love big enough, everything can kind of come and go, but we're not at that stage yet. Right? Like I'm not at that stage yet. So until then I have a crutch, I have a boundary and I have something that makes it so that I can protect myself.

So that I can expand my heart so that things can come and go, whether they're good or bad, you know, that's. Yeah. But I definitely have felt that the need to not accept you know, behavior of a certain type or whatever, and the need to create those boundaries has just come up a lot in my process recently, for sure.

Anna: The thing that he said that really has resonated with me and I've thought a lot about, as he said, you know, having the Maharaji and rom Doss visit, you don't think that's just nothing, he said the effects of something like that carry into your world in a way you don't even know because the critical part of you starts to dissolve out and you don't notice it so much.

And when he, after he said that, you know, I've been thinking about it and I'm like, you know what, the moments of my day, where I'm thinking, I'm a piece of shit. They're much less frequent and they're less, much less intense. So there is something to that, and it doesn't necessarily mean being visited by these gurus because you know, the GRU is always within, as he said, they're there.

The idea that the guru is outside you is illusion. It's always inside you. So in my case, you know, they visit to me in images and in someone else's case, they might, you might just hear it, have an inner knowing when you're sitting on your meditation mat or when you're chanting or praying or whatever it is that you do, but to see the frequency and intensity of feeling like a piece of shit, decrease over time.

It's really nice to notice that. 

Kristina: Yeah, no, that's amazing. And also, you know, one of the things that I loved that he said was the instructions are so. They really are so simple, you know, you know, do your practice, remember God, like it's just, 

Anna: yeah. Eat some food and watch TV 

Kristina: each food question, be, remember, God, do your practice.

You know, it's like, it feels so much like you should really take that on. It takes off so much pressure. 

Anna: We're always trying to figure everything out. Just keep remembering God, it'll all unravel itself, you know? 

Kristina: Yeah. Yeah. And that's that? I mean, remembering God can be incredibly complex. I feel like we've literally done two seasons of a pod.

It's about remembering God, you know, we can talk about it forever. About what that, just that one thing is let alone the watching TV thing, which obviously we could do a whole other series on.

Anna: Speaking of remembering God, so we could, if you're in the Hindu aspect of things, you'll call it remembering God.

And if you're on the Buddhist side of things, you'll call it realizing your true self. So Buddhism and Hinduism have a lot in common in terms of the path and the philosophy, but Hinduism primarily is different in that it's like let's realize our true self, which is that we are God and Buddhism is more like let's realize our true self and realize we are nothing.

You know, it's just kind of, you know, I, you can interpret the end result the same, but the path is very similar. And so today we're going to talk about eight different paths to enlightenment. We could call it and enlightenment is the Buddhist terminology. And God realization could be the 

Kristina: Hinduism Moksha liberation is the Hindu one.

Right? 

Anna: Right. So that's what we're going to talk about today. So, you know, there's different philosophies. The word yoga, we think of the term yoga like, oh, I'm going to go take a yoga class and do questionnaires and prostrates, but yoga actually refers to the practice of waking up.

 In the Western world, we're very familiar with yoga posturing, but there's different branches of yoga 

Kristina: yoga specifically means union.

So union with God and. Are you sorry, yoking to God yet. And yes, specifically it means yoking, but the translation is union is to basically yoke yourself to the divine, right? To basically to form that union with the divine and the different paths. You'll also hear them called branches, which can also kind of get mixed up in the kind of, there's a lot of, there's a lot of terminology that people use interchangeably Westerners in particular.

So we're saying pats, you may see them as branches, but there are a number of different ones. A couple of them originated in the Upanishads right. In which you're kind of having the original subset of like, okay, this is where these branches came from.

And then since then they've either been directly derived from the eponymous. Or they've had a teacher who's basically named a different type of yoga, whether it was hundreds of years ago, a thousand years ago, or 10 years ago, they've named a new one. So you'll hear all sorts of different posturing yoga, like Anna's talking about, but then you'll also hear that there are a number of different other types of yoga that are mainly primarily around meditation, et cetera.

Right. 

Anna: Well, Archangel, Michael once told me something like,

I can't remember exactly what he said, but it was something like for every different palette, there are different tastes that are going to be the best for you. Right? Like my favorite food might be a green chili or Anna burrito and yours might be pizza and my sons might be spaghetti, whatever. We all have our different personalized tastes.

And then there's perfect food for that taste. And so there are different, perfect ways to get to God. Right? So he was saying that, you know, God is everywhere and God is everything. And so. Because there's so many different ways that we can get to God or get to liberation. I mean, every person's going to have a different way. Like I saw this funny meme and it says in the history of humanity, there's been 5,000 different gods.

What makes you think that yours is the right one? You know, religion and spirituality a lot has to do with a question of geography, chance, luck, and family, right? So maybe you need to go find the right path for you. So what we're trying to do today is talking about eight different paths of yoga. We've made it our own organization.

Like I was saying, if you go on Google and go and Google different branches of yoga, you're going to say, oh, well there's four. Oh, well there's six or where there's 10 or there's 12. Like you can dissect this as much as you want. This is our own interpretation. We've decided to say that there are eight and we are going to link them to each of the chakras.

Meaning the first chakra we say is going to have to do with tantra. And the second chakra is going to have to do with this, et cetera, et cetera. So that's our organization of it. And the whole reason why we're bringing this up is because this season we're going to be focusing our efforts on teaching you about the root chakra, the first chakra and tantra yoga to us is what corresponds to that.

Shakra. So that's why we're bringing this whole intro up because we're trying to introduce the theme of season three. 

Kristina: Yup. Yup. And it goes, and the root chakra is a good basis for kind of saying like, this is where we're branching out from, which is where everything branches out from the root chakra.

So whether that's the EDA and the Pingala, which are the energy sources that kind of crisscross up your spine, that's where Kundalini comes from. Things like that. But it's, you know, as we do here at this spiritual fix, it's a theme that in the past two seasons, we actually haven't necessarily had a theme, but we ended up having our lives, came up with a theme.

 Our lives came up with this idea of the theme of tantra and the root chakra. But I think it's going to be really interesting how it ends up evolving throughout time because y'all will see that you're like, well, how does this relate to the root shocker?

But in the way it will, because Archangel Michael tells us it 

Anna: will. And as this podcast has come to be a third member of our friendship it's gonna, it's gonna fuck us over. And it's kinda, it's gonna do what it's gonna do to us. So we don't even know it, or this is going to leave. This is the beginning of the season. 

Okay. So, okay. I'll give the organization of the yogas as told to me by Archangel. So the first chakra is the root chakra, which is located at the base of your sex. And Christina, tell us a little bit about the root chakra. 

Kristina: Okay. Yeah. So the root chakra is like I said earlier, it's basically the source of your Kundalini.

It's also the source of all of the energy channels that go up your spine, the main energy channels that go up your spine. So the one that goes straight up your spine is the Chashama. And then the ones that that intertwined back and forth are the EDA and the Pingala. And you will recognize this symbol from it's the caduceus, which is the medical symbol.

If you ever see a medical symbol, it's it's an ancient staph from Greece, but it basically has a staff which is straight and then it has snakes twining. The stick. If you guys have ever seen that and even allopathic, regular doctors, that is their symbol, and that symbol is representative of these energy channels that originate in the root chakra in particular is all about security.

It's all about survival. It's basically a lot of the ego sits there. And a lot of your base instincts come from this root chakra. It's also the source of where you get grounded in the earth, which is grounded in your body. Anything you want to add to the. 

Anna: I think if it's out of balance to walk for aggressiveness, sexual dysfunction, restlessness anger, eating disorder, belief in scarcity, feeling ungrounded jittery, those are kind of like when your root chakra is out of balance, that's the kind of thing you're looking for.

And then when it isn't balanced, you just feel you know, vital and grounded and secure to the, you know, that kind of thing. So the second chakra is the sacral chakra, and this one has a lot more to do with emotional balance flow, ease creativity. And I find this really interesting someone once told me that because the woman's sex organs, like the uterus is in the sacral chakra area, which is right above, like right around the navel.

And the root chakra is right at the sex. That's why men experience sex as very primal and aggressive and like root oriented and women. It's more emotional because the, our sex organs are in the second chakra area and their sex organs are in the first chakra area. That's just a side note. 

Kristina: That's makes a lot of sense.

Anna: Yeah. So could you talk a little bit about the state girl shakra Kris? 

Kristina: Yeah. So the sacral chakra, it helps inform us on how we relate to our emotions and the emotions of others. So effectively it talks it governs creativity and sexual energy. We say sexual energy, but again, like Anna just said, it may be that the root shocker is covering more of your sexual energy.

And then the second then the sacral chakra, which is sweaty. Donna is the name of it in a Sanskrit. And when you have a block in this area, it may feel like a lack of control in your life. And when it comes to relating all the way back to the primal wounds, the second chakra in particular relates to having a, I believe it's where the abandonment wound sits in terms of a shadow shocker.

Right? So that feeling of being out of control of not being able to to feel that kind of safety, it sits there. One of the other things that happens with this is that when you have issues with your second tracker or you're trying to get into addiction issues, the second chakra is really the place to start.

When you feel like you have an addiction issue, whether it's to sex or food or drugs or whatever, 

Anna: Right. And even relationships. Cause it's also kind of the shakra that when it's out of balance, you'll see emotional overreactions and co-dependency things like. 

Going into the third chakra is the solar plexus chakra. Yep. And Chris, you wanna talk a little bit about it? 

Kristina: So, the solar plexus solar obviously means sun.

It is our sun center of our body and it is the bright, blazing sun of our system and our energy system. It's called in a Sanskrit and it speaks to your ability to be confident and in control of your life control comes up a lot with a lot of these different shoppers, but they're all kind of different flavors of control.

It's more, I would say more about empowerment than it is about necessarily control in this instance. Like when you're nervous about something, or you're not really sure you kind of get that feeling of butterflies in your stomach, but it's not really in your stomach. It's actually in that solar plexus area because you're wanting to be empowered to do something

 If you're feeling blocked in this particular chakra, you might feel an overwhelming amount of shame and self doubt. I also think that humiliation and shame can sit in the first chakra as well. More so than necessarily in this one. I think that betrayal. Is the shadow shopper that is the shadow shocker of this of the solar plexus center because it is about control and it is about kind of being able to trust so that you can go into your heart, which is the one above this one.

 When you have an open solar plexus chakra, you're kind of free to express your true self. 

Anna: Yeah. And then the fourth chakra is the heart chakra located in the center of the chest. It's about love, acceptance, compassion.

You want to talk more about it? Yeah, no, 

Kristina: it's on a hot tab. So it's basically the heart serves as the bridge between the lower shock reds, which are those first three and the upper . And it really represents the bridge connecting us into higher, our higher selves in a higher form of living. So like when we're living in the vast majority of us are living in our first three Shakur's most of the time, right?

It's all about control, power, addiction, sex, primal instincts, things like that. And then as soon as we get up into that heart space our ability to give and receive love. 

Anna: Beautiful. I never thought of it like that. And you said that it was the shadow shakra would be rejection here. Rejection. Exactly.

Yeah. And loneliness. Yeah. Yeah. Cold hearted. Well, that champs. Yep. 

Kristina: And when it's blocked, it's it affects your ability to fully open to people in your life, right? Because you, when you open up to people into your life, you are being totally present and not the the disappearing one, the fugitive, right.

Which is the mask of the rejection wound. So yeah it, once we open up to this it's compassion and empathy and it's duty from love and not just from service, not just because we're supposed to 

Anna: yep. The chakra throat chakra number 

Kristina: faff, number five gives voice to the heart chakra. Right? We've talked about this in previous episodes where the throat chakra, if you owe a form of spiritual bypass is going straight from your power center, bypassing your heart and going straight into your throat and being able to be like that charismatic leader who like convinces everyone to kill themselves.

That's the extreme version.

That's the extreme version. When everything is aligned. And when you fully surrendered between your third and fourth chakra into the heart, and you've really fully surrendered into that heart space, the throat speaks for the heart and it's how you communicate your personal power. And when it's at its full capacity, you're expressing yourself truly in clearly.

Anna: Okay. No, you go ahead. I was 

Kristina: just going to say, and when it's blocked, it'll feel like you have trouble finding words. You have trouble expressing yourself are 

Anna: constant sore throats, things like 

Kristina: that. Since our throats, it's the first place you get sick. As you always know that you're getting sick, you have a sore throat that may be indications.

Oh 

Anna: yeah. Chakra. And then I'll just throw this in here. Now, you know, each chakra, we didn't talk about this, but each chakra has a corresponding color. So like the root chakra is red and then it goes orange, yellow up up, and the throat chakra is blue and I'm from New Mexico and everyone in New Mexico, not everyone, but for the new age talk in New Mexico is very common.

So my teacher in high school used to wear a lapis lazily necklace or blue scars. And she told us it was to keep her throat chakra in harmony. Because if you keep blue near the appropriate chakra, that will help. So whenever I've had a sore throat, which I don't get any. I really don't, but I used to suffer a lot from sore throats, I think before I stepped into my power, but I would I specifically bought a blue scarf or a blue hanky to tire on my neck if I ever had a sore throat to kind of harmonize it.

And then just so you know, the same is true for the root chakra. So the legs are extensions of the root chakra. So I often try to buy red socks, red or pink shoes and red or pink underwear, because that's supposed to harmonize that sex chakra. That's 

Kristina: super, you're so practical with your new age shit. Like, 

Anna: did you ever notice that I have a lot of red shoes or nude 

Kristina: shoes?

I have actually noticed that you're right. I like, now that you're saying it, I'm like, oh shit. You're right. 

Anna: Yeah, I do. I love it. Yeah. And I don't know. I feel like Dorothy and her little red shoes that was important. Well, it was 

Kristina: two cars. No, there's no place like home was like a mantra. Yeah. She's 

Anna: like click click.

Let me get back to my sex chakra.

Kristina: Alright. Yeah. Ooh. I love that. 

Anna: All right. Well, you're wearing a blue around your neck right now. I don't know if that was on purpose. 

Kristina: It was not on purpose, but it could definitely use it right now. My throat, having it support as it tries to talk, 

Anna: let's call it colors, do emit frequencies, you know, and there's, you know, as you get into this whole chakra stuff, you know, colors, emit, frequency, sound frequency.

There are certain sounds and colors that are great for these chakras. And I just want to put a side note in here that before I went to India, I lived in India about two or three years. I didn't believe in chakras. It was like, it was one of those things. I was like, oh, it's like numerology or French way.

Like one day I'll get to it one day. It'll be interesting, but chakras, whatever chocolates. So I went and had a session. Did I tell you this story about how I found out about chakras? Okay. So I was in India, well, preface, trigger, warning, sexual assault, trigger warning. First is I had a Reiki session with a man and in the Reiki session, he pulled his hard Dick out in the middle of the session and I freak the fuck out and I ran out of there.

And then I got offered a cranial sacral therapy by another man a few days later. And I said, well, do you have to touch me? He goes, no, I don't have to touch you. And I was like, can I wear all my clothes? And he says, yeah. And I go, okay. Cause I just had a guy whip his Dick out in the middle of a session.

So I don't want you to touch me. And I want to be fully clothed. He goes, okay, we'll do something different then. So come on over. So I was like, okay. So I lie on his table fully clothed. And he promised he would not touch me because after my little sexual pseudo sexual assault, a couple of days before I was like, totally on guard, And he starts to work his magic on me.

He asked me to do some breath work and then he starts to do, I don't know what, cause my eyes are closed and believe it or not, I started to experience a full blown orgasm without being touched in my first, second, and then third chakra. And I opened my eyes and I'm like, what the hell are you doing? And his hands were hovering above me and he's like spinning his hands and he's manipulating my chakras.

And then he starts guiding the energy up my whole body. So then I'm my whole body starts trembling and I'm just laughing hysterically. I'm like, what are you doing? He's like, do you feel this? And he would just like, tap the air, like four inches above my chakra. And I would feel it. I would fucking feel it.

And I was like, oh my God, I've heard about these. I always thought it was just myth, but I didn't think it was real like, oh my God, this is real. And he's like, yeah. And it was really cool. That was like my. Amazing experience. And that's when I was decided, okay, I'm not staying in India for three weeks. I'm staying in India for as long as possible.

Cause I really want to learn more about this stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I 

Kristina: remembered that. That is so crazy. I remember the story. I did not know it was your decision point to then stay in India for three 

Anna: years. Yeah, that was the defining feature. Cause I was like, this is amazing. There's so much I have to learn.

Like what the hell is this? I took his class as well bodywork, and that's how I got into physical therapy, which I absolutely do not apply these techniques in physical therapy. Cause I can't bill insurance for them. But but it's in a way I was thinking about it last night.

I was like, should I tell the story or not? And I just had to tell the story because in a way, if that man hadn't pulled his Dick out in freak me out, it was nonconsensual. Obviously. If that hadn't happened, I never would have insisted on wearing clothes. And and not being touched for that session.

So I never would have had that chocolate experience because had I not been adamant about wearing clothes and not being touched, he probably would have just given me a massage session or whatever. And I may never have actually had a full-blown energy experience. So not like I'm saying that guy's off the hook for what he did, that's his karma, whatever.

 Right. And I'm not sure, I'm sure that's a trigger for anyone who's been sexually assaulted that I'm looking at the silver lining and a guy doing that. But yeah, that is a silver lining in a weird way.

Yeah. Or you can say it's too triggering to put on air. I mean, 

Kristina: I think that's where you are right now. 

Anna: Right. Not everyone has to be there. Not everybody is going to be there and that's okay. I hated him for the last, you know, 15 years. So, and I 

Kristina: think also I wanted to correct you too. It's not like a pseudo sexual assault.

Like that's actually a sexual assault. Like you don't need to downgrade it because you know, 

Anna: all right. 

Kristina: Moving on to the sixth chakra, the third eye chakra, which is Amina.

And I know that I'm butchering this. I've even taken a class on Sanskrit and I am still butchering these links, these things. I'm not using my cerebral pronunciation So basically we're coming more into communion with the divine. If the divine is sitting up here in the chit Akash, which is like right above your head, then the higher you go up in your Shakur system, the closer you are to being in communion with the divine within you.

And the third eye controls our ability to see the big picture it connects to our intuition. They seat it's the, it's basically the eye of the soul. And it registers information beyond just the surface level. It can see things deeper and more holistically than anywhere else can. And it's not uncommon if you're having visions or if you're having intuitions, or if you have a very vibrant dream life that you have a very active third eye chakra, if you are experiencing what are the signs of.

In the third eye 

Anna: fluoride in your water 

Kristina: tap your third eye, everyone. What it does is it breaks up the floor. The floor is accumulated 

Anna: in your body. So according to a lot of people, and I don't know how much I believe it or not, but there is a saying that the fluoride in our water supply will crystallize around the pineal gland.

And there are ways to break it up. I don't know if it's true or not, but I worked actively to break mine up just in case it was true. There is a man on Steven muddy. Modic what's his name? I'm butchering his name something Michelle lick and he channels the Egyptian gods.

He's on YouTube and he gives some really good practical tips for how to break up this. And one of them is you roll your tongue to the back of your throat. You roll your eyes, the top back of your head and you start chanting certain sounds. And the river reverberations of those sounds will help break up the pineal glands and then ideally stop drinking fluorinated water. 

Kristina: deck. Yes. Okay. When you said Stephen, I was like, are you talking to him? His name is . I was like, I think this is him. 

Anna: So he's an esoteric researcher and he channels the edge rip-off yeah, he channels. Yeah. That that, that bird God with the beak that really large God from each hos also known as Hermes. Yep. That's yeah. So he channels that and that's so if you go on YouTube, you can Google this guy.

I will put it in the show notes because there's no way you're able to spell that. Is he Turkish? What is he? What kind of name is that? It's his 

Kristina: spiritual name. Oh, okay. Yeah, it's his Sonya's name? So it's like, he has a regular. He had a regular name, but that's the name that he basically channeled in?

Yeah, 

Anna: he was born in California. So apparently he's not, I thought he was Turkish or something. Nope. 

Kristina: Nope. His his lessons are really interesting because he talks a lot about sacred geometry and he talks a lot about kind of reawakening old technology that already exists in our bodies. So if you're interested in that kind of stuff, definitely check him out.

Anna: He's and the spirit science history of man is very interesting. But 

Kristina: anyway, both definitely. I spent like a year studying him. I left Larry said I couldn't come up with his name. 

Anna: But yet he also talks somewhere in one of his lectures about after you do the whole roll your tongue, roll your eye thing to break up the penial gland.

You, you visualize or imagine light going through certain points around your ear. And like, like latitude, plea and longitudinally. He has all these different systems that you can wake up your third eye now, whether or not it works or not. I don't know, but I have definitely experienced a lot of deeper intuition since doing that stuff and I never really associated it with him.

So maybe I need to revisit that and clean up my brain again. Yeah. And 

Kristina: he's the one who came up with the Medtronic. He didn't come up with the Medtronic cube, but he's all about mellotrons cube, which is another form of sacred geometry, like a pattern that you can put around your body, which kind of does all this other really cool stuff.

The last shocker is the crown chakra, which is and it is the highest chakra and it sits at the crown of your head and it represents your ability to be fully connected with your spiritual, divine self when it's fully open you're able to fully access your higher consciousness and it is 

Anna: inefficient Jesus glows like the Jesus paintings and the angel paintings.

They glow there. Yes, because that's open and babies have open font now. 

Kristina: Yep. Exactly. Some really quick other stuff that I just wanted to cover that whole, 

Anna: can I throw in one more chakra? So then there's also considered some chakras that rest above the head and float outsider bodies. And we're going to talk today about one of those, not all of them, but one of them that's above it is called the soul star chakra.

And it's about six inches above the crown chakra. So we'll talk about that. 

Kristina: Yeah. And that's chit Akash, which that's, I've referred to Chickasha a number of different times in, in that is that same shocker there. Just really quickly talking about the colors. One of the interesting things that you will notice as well is the correspondence with sound.

So each of the shocker is going up from the soul fetch, which is dough re MI Faso, Lottie dough. The root shocker response is corresponds with dough at sea. Oh, I didn't know this. That's what, been studying the sound and how they correspond to the different chakras.

So starting at C is the root shakra CC sharp going up all the way to T which is where the crown chakra sits at T, which is, you know, before you come back to the active again. So are you saying 

Anna: singing DOE a deer, a fee? Is it attacker healing? 

Kristina: That's it? That's it exactly. All you have to do is just sing the sound of music over and over again, and then you're all good.

And 

Anna: we're done with season three.

All right. So now we're going to go to corresponding yoga paths associated with those chocolates. So I'm going to start with tantra yoga. Now, first of all, when people hear the word tantra yoga, they're like, Ooh, sex. This is all about sex.

So what tantra is actually about is it's a yoga path for the householder. So what that means is that in ancient Hinduism and even current day, you know, depending on where you go. There are something called Brahman. And then there's something called, like, they're like the holy man. 

And basically these yoga paths are these paths to waking up have pretty much traditionally historically been put aside for the monk, right? For the holy man for the Brahman, for the monk and tantra, yoga was basically man's way of saying, well, Hey, those of us who are partaking in householding activities, like working a job and having sex and making children and all that stuff, we need a path to.

So TA tantra yoga is like the underdogs pass. If you want to say or the normal, the everyday man's path. Right. Tantra actually means to weave. And then there are different, depending on where you read, it came out in either 500 AED or the 16th century. And it goes into two kinds of branches.

You have red tantra, which focuses on sex, and you can see those tantric temples in India, specifically. Khadra ho where I had a crazy clinical and experience will tell you about that another day and white tantra, which is focusing on the self.

And it is a personal practice of liberation. The goddesses in this path are Durga, Kali and Shakti that are kind of emphasized. And sexuality is an ingredient to this path, but it is not like the main one. So when you say, Ooh, I want to practice tantra. It doesn't mean, oh, I want to go have eight hours sex.

It means. I'm going to accept all of me, you know, root chakra stuff. I'm going to accept all of me. I'm an accept that I am a sexual being. I'm an accept that I, you know, that I have aggressive tendencies, Callie, the goddess, Kali, for example, I, you know, I'm going to address all aspects of me, which includes sex, which we probably think, well, what's the big deal.

Like doesn't all of our yoga include all of you like encompass the wholeness of all of you, which would be sex as well. But actually in a lot of these other paths, they focused on Brahma Charia, which is celibacy. So tantra is like for the householder for the everyday man. And so sex is an ingredient in that, but it's not the main deal.

So I just want to put that out there because some people think that, oh, third season is about tantra. They're are going to be talking all about sex. We're not, we might, we are going to do some episodes on sex, magic and sexuality and masturbation, but we really want to focus on the fact that. If you're not a Brahman, if you're not a holy man, if you're just an everyday person listening to this, and that includes that you do masturbate and you do have sexual relations, then tantra might be the right path for you. And one thing to keep in mind is that tantra, yoga is all about everything.

Like let's accept all that life has to give us. And in accepting all that life has to give us that it means also the darkest ugliest death parts of us. 

There's a great movie called shortcut Tinder Vonda that goes into depth about this, but there are yogis that practice tantra, yoga that say in order to be completely. And self realized you have to accept death and all the ugliness in life. So they will actually seek out looking for dead bodies, which are easy to find in Varanasi and studying them and living among the dead and the foul.

Because they're saying that through that you will become liberated because you're accepting that all is holy all is divine. All is good, and they will actually drink drinks out of skulls. They will find human skulls and shave them down and drink out of the top of the skull because they're trying to.

Integrate death with their everyday life. As a way of saying, I am comfortable with the death and decay of the world, which I eventually will be a part of. And that is part of my liberation because we're so attached to beauty and we're so attached to life. So tantra yoga, isn't just, oh, I'm going to go have some great orgasms.

It's also about I'm going to accept all that life has to offer life. Life has death and birth and sex and worms and everything, you know, I'm going to just accept all of it. So it's really a path of total inclusion. And in this season, when we talk about tantra yoga, we're really gonna focus a lot on the duality of masculine and feminine, the divine male, the divine female, the mother wound, the father wound internalized misogyny, internalized misandry, which is hatred of men.

So we're really going to kind of focus on that aspect of Tanya is the male female. Yup. 

Kristina: Yup. And in particular, how those come together in that root shakra, like we were talking about, and you also just to add to that too, if you ever see a Sonos in a picture of them, in which they have Ash all over their body, that Ash is the Ash that is from the burning of the bodies.

So they're literally putting human Ash all over their body in that same practice of becoming one with death. So. 

Anna: All right, going onto the second chakra, Chris hotter, 

Kristina: hotter, hotter. You can you hear me say it I'm being such a yoga nerd right now, trying to do the 

Anna: aspirated T H the , 

Kristina: which basically you put your tongue up at the top, as opposed to putting the dental sound, which is putting your tongue by your teeth.

Hatha. Yoga is physical posturing. It is what we most know in the west as the practice of yoga. But interestingly, I remember I read a book 

called INSEARCH and secret India by Paul Brunton. And it's a man who basically went to India in the thirties. And it's very, he's very British and very kind of like highfalutin about stuff, but he has some amazing stories in there. And one of the most amazing things is that the vast majority of all the people he talked to are practicing other forms of yoga, whether it's Raja or Jianna or any of these other, or tantra or something like that, he meets one Yogi in the middle of this city who is practicing Hata.

And that one Yogi is he's a student of another, you know, another Yogi and that so like the funny story is that like, there's this one guy he's been a haka Yogi for his entire life. His guru has all 64 POS. That this lineage comes from, right?

 He had only learned eight in the 20 years. He had been underneath this guru. He had only learned a postures. So that was in the 1930s. So you can imagine that like, obviously that isn't like a a whole sweeping narrative of every single hot that Yogi in all of India.

But just to give you an indication of this one, what was a very small, like rare kind of small practice in terms of the whole span of yoga in India? You know, he had only learned eight of 64 postures. And back then the idea was that if you were to do one of these postures perfectly, you would reach enlightenment.

Right. So you spent your entire life doing a single posture, right? To find the mind body connection that happens to be able to actually really come to the full understanding of what it meant to have the divine flowing through your body, because your posture and your physical body is completely ready to receive it in a certain posture.

So that's where it was, where it is now is people use it to be able to, especially in the west they will get to get fit. That's I mean, that's kind of going, it's far this out. When you want to kind of do this hybrid, they use it to prepare the body for long periods of meditation and they use it to create a mind body connection, 

which a lot of people in the west have lost on a regular basis. We're kind of either operating totally in our minds or totally in our bodies. And therefore that's kind of an overview of hotdog. 

Anna: So moving onto the solar plexus, we have defined that as corresponding to the Bhakti path.

So last week's episode, we interviewed Krishna DAS and he is on the path of Bhakti as well as rom Doss and their guru neem Karoli Baba.

That's all Bhakti. They're all about devotion. It's about devotion to God. So those kinds of practices, instead of say posturing, those kinds of practices look more like chanting prayer, making an altar contemplation on God's name, maybe reciting God's name. For example, neem Karoli Baba taught Krishna DAS that just by simply reciting the name of God, you would be liberated.

So like, there are quotes of him saying, when you are really angry, just start chanting different names of God and God will come and take that anger away from you. So it's a lot about surrender. It's a lot about devotion. And as I said, with tantra, you have Durga, Kali and Shakti as the main goddesses in Bhakti yoga, it's more about Krishna Christ, Allah and Hanuman.

And then the idea is that all gods are actually equal. So ultimately we are all God and all gods are equal. And I remember that rom Doss said that, you know, on his altar, he had his different, you know, his different gurus or gods, which would be like Hanuman the monkey God. And neem Karoli Baba his guru from India, but he would also have a photo of Richard Nixon up there because he understood that, you know, Richard Nixon was his dark teacher who ultimately was also God. Right? So you're listening to this man. You are inspired to be on the Bhakti path then maybe on your altar, you'll have a picture of Joe Biden or Donald Trump, whichever of those two that really irk you, you know, put it up there with your gut.

So we all have our different paths. I've been doing Vipassana, which is Raja yoga. But now I feel like I'm shifting from the Raja path and I feel like Bhakti path is more for me. So anyway, so if you're listening to. I think it could change as your life unfolds, like what's the right path for you, I feel in my heart that the Bhakti path is for me anyways.

We'll keep going, Chris. Yep. Yep. 

Kristina: Absolutely. And just to kind of clarify too, like I think the devotion of the Bhakti path is, and the reason we set it in the third chakra is because that devotion sometimes doesn't include the love of God. Like you're always aiming for the surrender to the love of God, but like it's a lot of it can sometimes feel like a lot of practice in, or like your practice is devoted to getting to that place right.

To, to rising up into the heart chakra. So the next is karma yoga and karma yoga is often interpreted in Western minds as selfless. So, I'm going to go and do good things and I'm going to go feed people and things like that. I think that's kind of true in terms of its practical application, but I want to read a quote from sod gudu who for, he may be controversial or whatever, but I think what he says about karma yoga is brilliant and it's better than anything that I can say about it.

 The question that somebody asked him is "what is the role of karma yoga "in Sadhna is your daily practice. He says, "it's not really needed. Yoga does not need karma. So actually, before I say this karma in Hindu, like in Sanskrit is directly translated as action as the word action, which I think is.

Crappy translation mostly just because the English language lacks the nuance of understanding that, but karma is action, which means effort, full yoga, which we've talked about in the past. All right. So he says it's not needed. Really yoga does not need karma. Yoga is to go beyond karma. Why karma yoga has been brought in is to bring about a balance and a person, whatever we call as our awareness, our love, our experience or our glimpses of our reality.

It has to be sustained. The path of non-doing is a very wonderful path, but it's very slippery, extremely slippery. It is the simplest and the most difficult. It's not difficult, but it is not at all easy because it is simple right now here. And now that's what that practice is. But that here and now, how do you get to it?

Whatever you do, it is not in your hands. It's never going to be in your hands, but your hands need something right now. You need to hold on to something that is why you have the crutch of karma yoga. Without the crutch. Most people will not be able to walk. There are a few beings who can walk around without the crutch from the first moment.

And they are very rare beings. Everyone else needs the crutch to manage our awareness. Without this, most people are incapable of remaining aware. So karma yoga is brought in into your life to properly temper Sadhna with the right kind of action. 

Anna: I love that. And that really goes into what Krishna DAS said which was it's all grace, but you have to act like it. Isn't 

Kristina: exactly. If we all try to be effortless yoga. Yes. Yogis 

Anna: world will go to shit. 

Kristina: Yeah. Because we need the crutch of karma yoga. So we w we need the crutch of action.

We need the crutch of effortful yoga so that we can experience effortless yoga, which is being here and now. So whether it means that you're doing selfless service, because that is that guides right. Action in your life, or whether that's because, you're doing meditation so that, you're doing the effortful yoga so that you can experience effortless yoga so that you can experience that grace.

Anna: Right. Okay, moving on to the throat chakra, we have mantra yoga,. Yep. So 

Kristina: simply mantra. Yoga is the practice of using mantra, using words to repetitive states to get into trance states and also to raise your frequency using words and repetitive words. It's a very good way to I kind of think of mantra yoga less as a path, maybe in more as a very specific practice.

So TM, so transcendental meditation is a form of mantra yoga. And obviously it's a very powerful form of mantra, yoga of meditation and union with God. And it works very well for that. So, yeah. 

Anna: Nice. Yeah. In some ways it's a technique and not necessarily a path, but yet it is considered a path.

Kristina: Yeah. I mean, cause TM has. I feel like TM is big enough in our Western world at this point. Even if it doesn't necessarily have a basis in the Yukon shots and like all that kind of stuff a long time ago, that it is such a huge branch in so many people practice it. And there's so much research around it as well.

That that we're including it as one of our as one of our branches is one of our paths. So obviously the most famous Yogi in this case who practices this as the Maharishi Mahesh, Yogi the Beatles guru is he's, you know, and he's the one who has the place in Fairfield, Iowa. And he has a lot of different research and he's the one who started TM. So transcendental meditation. So yeah, so next we have 

Deanna. Yana means knowledge or wisdom, and it's the path of attaining self knowledge through self inquiry and contemplation, which means that it is about the awareness of absolute consciousness. And if I were to say that I was any kind of Yogi, I would say that I was this, because this is a very kind of intellectual path of yoga.

Right. But the Jianna the Johnny, which is what they're called, like a Gianna yoga. Yeah. The Johnny is about, is all about the experience of distinguishing. What is real from what is not. So the main practice of a Gianna of a Johnny is that they are saying neti, neti, which means not this. Right. And it's the practice of looking at the world or what they call the field.

Right? Which includes your body, your senses, your mind, and your ego watching it from the position of the knower of the field. Right? So that's the Ottman or the Brahman, like from the space of like the observer of the field and saying, that's not me. That's not me. That's not me. That's not me.

You're asking the question. Who am I? And then you're continually throughout the entire practice. Always saying, that's not me. That's not. And that's what they do. They distinguish the real from the unreal. And by the time that they get do with it through, with this practice of self inquiry, whether it's in a lifetime or multiple lifetimes, they come to the understanding of what is real.

And by taking it by separating out everything, that's not real, they're able to come to the understanding of what is. So 

Anna: when I was like five years old, I used to stand in front of my mirror and trip myself out. I would stand in front of the mirror. I would look at my, the mirror and I'd say, who is Anna? I am Anna. And I would just repeat that over and over again, who is Anna? I am Anna, and I would repeat it over and over again, staring at my own eyes until I came to the conclusion I was not Ana.

And that I wasn't. I was not what I thought I was and it would freak me out., it usually ended in tears and I would run until my dad I haven't done it in like five years because it's extremely jarring and it can really rock your world for a few days or a few weeks.

But that is an aspect of Johnny yoga, which is self inquiry. And it can really trick you the fuck out, which is great. So, yeah, and my father's response was, oh, that's what holy people do to discover who they truly are. At least that was his take on it versus, you know, making me feel like I was insane, but that's a great practice.

It's just staring in the mirror and saying, who am I? I am whatever your name is. And to do it until you don't believe it anymore. 

Kristina: I totally used to do the same thing when I was. I used to be like, I was like, what is me? I would start at the surface level and be like, are my eyes me? Like, where is me?

Like, where is the me that is sitting here? And you know, one of the most famous Johnny yogis is Ramana Maharishi. And he was my babysitter after I got Shakti pot. So I always thought that was like really interesting that he ended up being a Johnny yoga. Oh yeah. Johnny. And and yet he's yeah, he's pretty cool guy.

And that's Yani yoga, which is sits in the third eye. Well, 

Anna: moving right along to the crown chakra, we're going to talk about Raja yoga, which means king yoga. And it's funny because my babysitter is Rama Krishna. So when Chris and I got Shockpot, which is where an enlightened guru. Basically releases the Kundalini shakras energy at the base of your spine.

He assigns a babysitter. We called it babysitter. I don't know what he called it, but we called it our babysitter. So we had access to this person who had left their body to come and facilitate us in our journey if we needed it. I was assigned Rama Krishna.

Who's actually the MVP of Raja yoga, which is kind of funny. Then that Raja yoga has been my path for a long time. So I'll go into Raja yoga now. 

The eightfold noble path, which is what we discussed in a three episode series back in season two, there are eight different limbs to this Raja. Yoga number one is five social observances, which is he's my non-violence Satya truthfulness.

Ask Taya, non stealing Rama Charia celibacy or chastity. non possessive. Number two would be the five moral observances, which is parody contentment. Self-discipline self study devotion or surrender. Number three would be asanas, which are yoga postures number, forest pranayama, which are breathing techniques.

Number five is withdrawal of the senses. Number six is concentration. Number seven is meditation. And number eight is samadhi, which is enlightenment or bliss. Now the eightfold noble path of Buddha differs from this, but Raja yoga also goes into eightfold path and there's a lot of overlap here, because think about it.

Raja. Yoga is like the Hindu cousin of the eightfold noble path of Buddha. So, you know, we talked to in the beginning about how Buddhism and Hinduism have a lot of overlap. So this is like the Hindu version of the Buddha. Hateful noble path. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And then I wanted to talk about guru yoga, so going into the chit Akash chakra, which was the one outside your body, I thought it was appropriate to call this one guru yoga, which would, because it would be something that appears to be outside your body. Now I love when Krishna DAS said guru is not inside or outside guru was always within.

It just appears to be outside of you sometimes, but the guru is always within because that's where everything. So when you meet a true guru, they know that they're actually inside you, they're not outside you, but some of us need an outside guru. So basically guru yoga is for finding a guru or, you know, coming into contact with the guru and you start to emulate them in body speech or mind.

And often it includes them giving soft song, which is a teaching an oral, like basically a ancient podcast. Just kidding. But basically a sock song is where they talk to you. And then Darshawn is when they actually give energy transmission to you. And my husband's guru said that they can do it through different things.

It can be through it a look so you could get it from looking at a photo of a guru. It can be through a touch. It can be through a sound. What else can it be through Chris? Is it just those three things? 

Kristina: I feel like there's a transmission of like thought as well, but like, I feel like those were the three that you mentioned and obviously the fact that they can sit in a photo taken hundreds of years ago, not hundreds because photography didn't exist a 

Anna: hundred years ago.

Yeah, it could be through a look. There's a great movie with Harvey Keitel and. Kate Winslet about Kate Winslet, going to India and getting Darshawn from a guru. And I think that she got it through with a look and she has a whole experience. And then she goes back to her home in Australia and her family hires this guy to like, basically like, you know, pull her out of the teachings of this girl that she had.

But then he gets sucked in as well. And that movie ends with him running around naked in the fields of Australia. It was a great movie. I really recommend it. But anyways have you seen it, Chris? I have not. No, it's a great, really interesting though. Great movie about, about a guru, but anyways what I wanted to say, you can find a guru, the guru may show up and I want to just to discuss some kind of popular gurus that are alive today. One is guru Mai, and she is the person discussed in that movie and book eat. Pray, love.

Where the author goes to India, looking for guru. It was probably guru Mai. She doesn't mention it in the book, but that's likely who it is. There was this man named Chris who recently left his body was here in Atlanta, Georgia. And you know, he didn't advertise, you would never find him on the internet, he was very humble.

Sweet man. And he provided a lot of teachings, Darshan. In his own home, you have sod guru who Chris discussed and he has his own podcast. Someone named idea Shanti, then you have a man named Marshall summers and his wife, Patricia Summers. You have Ahmed G, which is the hugging Saint. You have Ecker totally who, I don't really know if he's necessarily agree that transmits.

He is more of an enlightened being. So what I wanted to preface all this with is that there are basically three types of teachers that we've discussed before. In our previous episodes, you have Supreme Buddha, which is a Buddha who is enlightened and self-realized and can also teach others how he got there.

And then there is a Buddha who is self realized and doesn't really know how it happened, but can talk about how it is. I think echo totally is that one, like I'm not sure that he is necessarily you know, teaching everyone how to get enlightened. He can just tell you what it's like to be there. Whereas Buddha Gautama, Buddha had a sister.

But you have, so you have these three different ones. You have the Buddha, the Supreme Buddha, and then you have something called an avatar. An avatar is someone who claims to be now again, you know, don't be scared when I say this, there someone who claims to be God in the flesh. So that would be someone like neem Karoli, Baba, who wasn't just self realized and giving Darshawn.

And satsong, he also claimed to be God, he claimed to be, he w he, he claimed to be God. And he did sorts of supernatural things. Like for example, he could be in two places at one time there's accounts of him being visited by a very old woman who said, what the hell is going on here? The last time I saw you, I was a little girl and you're the same age.

So he might not have ever a. And there's a lot of other kinds of supernatural things and other person who falls into that category as Sathya Sai Baba. Again, there might be some controversies about that. He also claimed to be an avatar and he also would do metaphysical things like create rings and necklaces out of nothing.

Be in more than one place at the same time, have magical dust come off of photos of him and things like that. So guru yoga is another branch of yoga we could say. And you just gotta be super careful because everyone's selling something and you got to make sure that the girl you found is the right Google for you.

But ultimately they are all the right ones for us because they're all within us anyways. And they're all just delivering whatever it is that we need to learn. So, yup. And guru 

Kristina: yoga, maybe that the yoga for you, if you need someone, you need to trust that what you're doing is the right thing. Right.

Like if you're someone like me who sometimes struggles with discipline or knowing that I'm doing the right thing, then being able to do that being able to depend on someone in someone's giving you your practice or your sadhana is a great thing to do. I mean, there's so many countless gurus in the world who can transmit even just Shakti you know, and they're all over the place.

And when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. So we've talked about all these different branches and we've talked about how tantra is where we are going this season. We've briefly mentioned kind of some of the things that were going to be. But right off the bat we are going to be diving headfirst into tantra by talking to Satya and Suzanne Raja, and they are going to be helping us understand the feminine and the masculine aspects of energy that exists within all of us.

They are going to be expressing it in terms of relationship with another person. And then also how we have it inside ourselves. So throughout this season, it's going to be a really fun play on really understanding that we, all of us have these two different types of energy in our body. And we can express one more than the other.

It's not dependent on gender or sex. And you're able to really express that in a different way. We're also going to be going into the mother wound because, and the father wound, because those are kind of the commensurate wounds. If you want to say, they're kind of a level, they're not primal wounds, but they're one level up from primal wounds in which we're able to understand that these different energies in our body.

May not express themselves in their fullest capacity and capability because we have these wounds that were just kind of trying to get through. Right? So the mother wound, just to give you a very brief preview, the mother wound is kind of a combination of abandonment and betrayal. Oftentimes it's derived from having a a very Rocky relationship with your own mother, but it can also be an, a bigger consciousness form of having issues with the mother, right?

Like the mother, whether it's mother nature or whether it's the mother of all external things like that. And the same thing on the father wound side. So those are kind of previews of what we're going to be going into is we're going to be going into duality as it exists on this earth and how we can really form a relationship with it and form a balance in our own lives to be able to really do that work in the tantra field. 

Anna: Thank you. 

Kristina: Thanks everyone. Enjoy the interviews.