Latest / The Jeff Crilley Show / Ayako DeRuby, Founder, the Alchemy Yoga | The Jeff Crilley Show
Transcript
- Coming up next on The Jeff Crilley Show, we live in a world where we're wired and tired and stressed out. We're gonna be talking to a leading expert on de stressing, next. Alright. I think you'll agree with me. We live in a stressed out society, probably more stressed out than in recent memory. We wake up. We load ourselves up with coffee and energy drinks, and towards the end of the day, some of us have an adult beverage to wind down, and then the next day, it starts all over again. Somebody who's gonna help us all de de stress is my next guest. Ayako DeRuby is in the studio. She's the founder and CEO of The Alchemy Yoga. Thanks for coming on the show. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Well, I'm honored to have you in the studio, I can honestly tell you just because we go back a long time, thirty minutes. She she she you do feel kind of a zen when you're around her. So you are the expert. Let's let's talk a little bit about, you know, yoga, medication meditation, not medication. It's an absolute That's a two for it. You do a lot of stuff with with sounds. Yeah. Alright. So tell us what what is your studio all about? So it is all about exploring just this human experience with non judgment really. The what you said earlier, we have such busy lives and we can get caught up into our roles and responsibilities, which is very important. Still wanna honor those. But we also wanna come back to integrating and what that means is we get so busy during our day that feelings come up, know, things we haven't been able to process because we're onto the next thing and so coming into the space of the alchemy yoga with movement with yoga, with meditation, with sound healing, it's time to process your day, to decompress and notice what came up for you and try our best to soften into that experience without judgment and when we can do that, it actually allows us to process and not harbor and hold on to because a lot of times things build, build, build, build and all of a sudden it's like Yes. Wow, we explode. Because we just don't have time to process. And so it's interesting because our lives does tell us or society tells us if you're not doing something, you're not being productive and that's wrong. Right. And so we're trying to kind of rewire, our way of being of taking the time every day just to be. So what yoga, meditation, sound healing all teaches us is how to be present in this moment where life truly is. It's in the now. And when you're living in the now, you can handle this moment. This is what's happening right now and we learn how to be with it, to feel it in the full expression and taking our time to feel it, you don't have to jump in the deep end and there's a lot of things we're trying to process but we give you step by step how to slowly start to be with the experience and soon, that's why I tell my students, your comfort zone starts to expand. Where this needs to be our comfort zone but now we're learning to be with these range of emotions which expands our comfort zone. Yes. So so our comfort zone expands so wide that all experiences are allowed to make its way through. All emotions are able to be instead of fragmented parts become whole again. Yes. And we learn to really hold space for ourselves and that way we can greet and be with the flow of life instead of sometimes going against it or resisting. Yes. Yes. I'm gonna pull up your website because you have a beautifully designed website. What is the name, Alchemy Yoga about? So it's about transmutation, meaning taking something ordinary and making it extraordinary, which is what we can do with all of life. I got a little lost being here coming to the studio, right? And even with that moment that seems so mundane, we can go, okay, we can feel the emotions in our body and we start to just feel the sensations, notice the mind patterns and becomes a moment of of learning about our psyche, learning about ourselves and having compassion for that so that when we meet other people along the way that may have gone through something, I'm using something so it seems mundane but you can do it with the bigger stuff too. We start to have our grow our capacity for compassion. So alchemy is that. It's taking these moments in life that seems like it's wrong or ordinary and we make it something that can serve you or serve ourselves and make it extraordinary. Well, I can tell you from a business perspective, we all meet people and we instantly like them because their vibration is mellow and calming, and I just like to be around this person. And then we all also know people who are just tense, and you meet them and you instantly feel like a bad wavelength. Mhmm. Does meditation yoga center you? Yes. Absolutely. So when you are engaging with somebody that can bring up those uncomfortable emotions, what meditation teaches us to do is to be in the space of observing. Because what happens typically, when in your life someone's coming out with negative emotions or or words towards you, we start to feel these uncomfortable sensations in our body. Our shoulders get tight, our breath gets short, our heartbeat goes higher and then we react to the sensations we feel. And so in meditation, we learn to feel the heart beating, notice the breath getting a little shorter. And so we go in this space of observation so that we can respond other than react. And that is stepping into your power. Because no longer are you waiting for the outer circumstances or people to be a certain way for you to be okay. Yes. Yes. Yeah. You have a beautiful studio. We're gonna show some video. This came off of one of your Facebook reels. Tell us about how you designed it, why you made it the way it is. So this is basically what I like to have in my house. Yes. I like to have a room where I can practice yoga and a separate room where is there is just for meditation, which I do have in my home. It's not big like the studio, but it's nice to have that separate space, because there's different energies. The yoga space is more active. There's natural lighting. You wanna bring in the elements of nature in to have it Yes. Energize you. And then the space of meditation is like a little cocoon where you get to draw inward and you get to be in a space of stillness and that's why there's no windows in there. Yes. And the lighting is different just because the color of the lights can influence how we feel. Wow. Which I've noticed in your, here it's blue lighting Oh, blues. Which is the throat chakra for communication. I don't know if you knew that or not. Didn't know that. But I noticed there's a lot of blues. I'm like, he's on it. Well, thank you. Yeah. Yeah. That that, that's high praise coming from you. We're gonna show some more video from one of your Facebook reels. You know, meditation yoga is nothing new. It's been going on for thousands and thousands of years, and it's tried and true. Would you agree that we are more stressed out than ever before? Like, we need this now more than ever. I love technology. Mhmm. I do. I it's it's very beneficial, but how we use technology, I think, makes life move faster. It's we become a little bit more impatient because we want now. Amazon, you order something, you get it within hours, Yes. You Yes. And so it's it's our life is moving faster which can create more, I would say, it can create impatience. We want things done now, instant gratification. And so right now I do believe that it is imperative to be able to find a way to be present and with the moment. And sometimes it's not meditation for everybody. Not everybody's nervous system can sit still. They feel like they have ants in their pants, you know? So I'll recommend walking outside barefoot in the grass with no music, just hearing and being with whatever's around you. So there's all sorts of different modalities to slow down and see what's around us and I think that's what we lose touch with with how technology is moving so fast. But I do love it though. It's a great, there's a great, benefit to it but using it wisely. I love it. You also do sound healing. We've got some video from your Facebook reel again and this I think is gongs. What is the psychology? What tell us. Yes. So we have, gongs, we have crystal balls, we have all sorts of sounds that affect the brain waves. And so you go into more of a a theta and alpha brain waves which is relaxation. And then the the sounds go into your eardrums, create a vibration which hits the cellular cellular level. Mhmm. And so you start to like it I call it dropping in. Your body just goes and it sound bad. Wow. And so if you have a hard time meditating, it's a great way to step into the space of stillness. And the bowls and the gongs and all these instruments, high vibrational tools, really do help help people. I would imagine it probably helps with people who have insomnia. Like Absolutely. Like if you started to practice some of this an hour before you went to sleep. Oh my gosh. So I have a, I I do a private session with, he's a high schooler that has high level of ADHD. And the parents are trying every which way, like all these different modalities, nothing seems to be working. I was like, we gotta at least give this one a shot. And so I would teach him breathing techniques with a sound bowl. And as soon as I started playing the sound bowl with, it's called box breathing which helps him focus his mind on something, with the sound bowl he was locked in. And so his parents now play sound bowls for him at night to help him out. So there is it can help tremendously with ADHD, insomnia, PTSD for those that have hard time Yes. Dying. Yeah. That's incredible. You also do these, remembrance retreats. We've got some video, and I want you to describe what we're what we're seeing here. Yes. So, Remembrance Retreat is, so this one's, we go to Costa Rica as a retreat. There is plant medicine called Ayahuasca and, what I like about this is I've been a long time meditator For, since 2014, the Vipassana meditation, very disciplined. I sit for two hours a day in stillness, no sound. No music or anything like that. But I found that there was still rigidness inside of me, there was still parts of my patterning that I just couldn't break through. And after seven years of strict practice, I was becoming open to sitting in more like earth medicines. Sure. And I was skeptical at first because I felt like it was cheating. You know, I wanted to do the work. Yeah. But I realized mother nature does make things, helps us to, in different ways to, I don't know, heal, I guess is the word I would use. Yes. But what it does is it helps create new neural pathways in our brain to see reality in a different way. And so created this retreat with, because after I've been going for many years, I had a lot of people ask me, where do you go? Where do you stay? What do you do? So I call myself a travel agent. I love it. Because I set everything up and I help with integration, which integration is absolute key to sitting in earth medicines. Earth medicine is a tool, but the work we do at home is everything, absolutely everything. So I created these retreats for us to go, whoever wants to join, and I sit with them in medicine and it's for me has been and for so many people, we sold out for three years Yeah, I just opened up registration for twenty twenty seven within two days. That's amazing. It sold out and I just, it's an honor Yes. To to share this space with other people and also the people that, it's just amazing community. Mhmm. All walks of life. Beautiful. All, you know, male, female, different age groups. It's been amazing. I love it. Yeah. You're also a very accomplished author. We've got your book cover we're gonna put on the screen, Mind Alchemy. Yes. Is the name of the book. Tell us about this book. So this is like a, a guide. A guide to help people establish a meditation practice. Mhmm. In my meditation class I teach at the studio, people have all sorts of questions of like, you know, how they get started and and oh, when I meditate, I just started but it feels like my mind is getting louder. I'm like, well, yeah, it's probably the first time you sat down and you're seeing what's been going on this whole time. You're not distracted. Yes. So I put these little pointers in there because people feel like they're doing it wrong. So it's a guide to help, to to about, common things that may happen when you first start and also I have a QR code for guided meditations in there so that you're you're walked through step by step of how to establish a guide, meditation practice. And you've got a second book coming up. I do. That one is called The Deepening. So the foundation is to get you on your way. Yes. The deepening is a little bit more esoteric. We go it's longer meditations and it's silent without music in the background. Yes. And so I with the deepening, it means that, okay, you've had the foundation, you you know how to meditate, now we're gonna go a little bit more into the esoteric stuff. Mhmm. So I so I I do wanna tread lightly with people. I don't wanna dive them in the deep end. Yes. But the deepening is we're gonna go Wow. I love it. Alright. So there was a question we were gonna save to the very end. Okay. Do you wanna go there? Sure. Sure. Okay. So, it's kinda like your why. Yes. So I am a cancer survivor. Oh, congratulations. Thank you, thank you. And I was doing yoga and meditation for me, see, I went through treatment, chemo twenty seventeen, so I started in 2008, became a teacher in 2012. So deep practice for about five years before I found out I had cancer. Very unexpected, I felt great but my face started swelling and so a couple of months of like trying to figure out what's going on. And so this is before the word alchemy even came to my mind, but I would be in my treatment. I would be take six to eight hours for the chemo to go through. My husband and I split for the second time. So it was really hard chapter. It's like, there's so many changes happening. My, like, there was no grounding. There was no footing. I didn't know what was gonna happen. And so that time, sitting in the chemo chair is when I actually started listening to sound healing music. So that got me to sound he sound healing. But I remember sitting there and using my techniques of pranayama, of meditation, of sound healing, and I felt the peace of God. Wow. That, what is that quote from the Bible? A peace that surpasses all understanding. Wow. And it didn't make sense why I felt this peace. And I it was like, wow. I don't have to be at the top of the Himalayas to feel this. You can be in any moment of your life and it could be in a moment where you feel like it's this absolute rock bottom but yet transformation, that transmutation of alchemy, it's like this moment, it has became those six months of going through treatment and I don't tell this to too many people because everybody's experience through cancer is so different. So I'm careful about who I share this with because it can be, I've seen the full range of treatment and how it can knock people down and it's just so rough and tough. But for me, the feeling of it was the I wanna say the best six months of my life, but I was so present with every moment. I would hear a wind chime in my backyard that heard for years and I feel like I heard it for the first time. Beautiful. Yeah. And it was so the word alchemy is it's it was kinda stuck in my brain because I was like, wow. I wanna live life like this. I wanna live life as the alchemist of every moment. And so when the opportunity came for the studio, the Alchemy Yoga. So beautiful. What a great way to end the show. We're gonna also leave you with the website which is the alchemyyoga.com. Thank you so much for sharing your heart and your wisdom with us. Thank you. That's it for now. We'll see you next time.