Latest / Lately with Lexi / Who Am I? The Yogic Path to Self-Realization

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Who Am I? The Yogic Path to Self-Realization · Lately with Lexi

0:00
SPEAKER_00: I was 12 years old when my entire worldview shattered.
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SPEAKER_00: One minute,
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SPEAKER_00: I was a healthy middle schooler going through the motions,
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SPEAKER_00: school,
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SPEAKER_00: family,
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SPEAKER_00: athletics,
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SPEAKER_00: church,
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SPEAKER_00: the whole prescribed path.
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SPEAKER_00: Then next,
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I was lying in a hospital bed facing a really serious health
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scare that ultimately
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SPEAKER_00: made me question everything I'd been told about my body,
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SPEAKER_00: my faith,
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SPEAKER_00: and who was actually in charge of my life.
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Almost overnight,
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I went from the compliant good girl to the family's black
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sheep.
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SPEAKER_00: I started questioning the school system,
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SPEAKER_00: the medical establishment,
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SPEAKER_00: politics,
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SPEAKER_00: organized religion,
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SPEAKER_00: basically every authority figure in my life.
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SPEAKER_00: It wasn't just teenage angst.
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It was the beginning of a spiritual awakening that would
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completely redefine my
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SPEAKER_00: understanding of who I am.
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SPEAKER_00: Buckle up because we have a lot to unravel today.
0:56
SPEAKER_00: And first,
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SPEAKER_00: if you are new here,
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SPEAKER_00: let me tell you a little bit about what this podcast is all about.
1:02
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Lately with Lexi,
1:05
SPEAKER_00: where spirituality,
1:06
SPEAKER_00: storytelling,
1:07
and strategy meet for people who are building meaningful lives
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and businesses
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SPEAKER_00: without selling their soul.
1:15
SPEAKER_00: I'm Lexi, and by day, I help health and wellness brands grow and
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SPEAKER_00: By night, I explore the inner work that makes that growth possible.
1:25
SPEAKER_00: This podcast is for you if you're navigating ambition and alignment,
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SPEAKER_00: structure and intuition,
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SPEAKER_00: growth and nervous system regulation.
1:35
SPEAKER_00: Now here's what I believe.
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SPEAKER_00: Every identity that you take on,
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SPEAKER_00: who you are at work,
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SPEAKER_00: how you show up in your relationships,
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all of these different roles that you play are all an
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opportunity to bring you
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SPEAKER_00: closer to your true identity as an expression of God.
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SPEAKER_00: The problem is we forget this.
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We get distracted,
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but our life experiences are designed to help us remember.
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SPEAKER_00: And as long as we ask for guidance,
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SPEAKER_00: expect it,
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SPEAKER_00: and trust that the divine is always working through us.
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SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly what I want to explore with you on the podcast today.
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SPEAKER_00: This is the first episode of the podcast 2.0 era,
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SPEAKER_00: formerly Through the Veil,
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SPEAKER_00: now available on video.
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SPEAKER_00: If you want to hang out with me in the middle of my home,
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SPEAKER_00: you can watch along on YouTube,
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SPEAKER_00: Spotify,
2:26
SPEAKER_00: or Substack.
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And today I'm going to get really honest with you about my kind
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of non-traditional life path.
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I'm going to share the spiritual awakening and entrepreneurial
2:37
journey that led me here a
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SPEAKER_00: I'll walk you through the yogic answer to the question, who am I?
2:44
And also explore what it actually means to devote your life to
2:48
the path of self-realization.
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I'm going to start by taking us back a little bit to when I was
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12 years old,
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when a doctor I had never met before told me that I needed to
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start taking birth
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SPEAKER_00: control pills,
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SPEAKER_00: not because I was sexually active,
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SPEAKER_00: but because I had an ovarian cyst that was causing me to bleed so much.
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SPEAKER_00: I know TMI, sorry.
3:09
SPEAKER_00: that I had developed severe anemia and chronic fatigue.
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SPEAKER_00: The solution was synthetic hormones.
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SPEAKER_00: Instead of looking into what caused this in the first place,
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I was given a Band-Aid that unfortunately came with a plethora
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of really nasty side
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SPEAKER_00: effects.
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SPEAKER_00: I only took the pills because honestly,
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SPEAKER_00: I didn't know at 12 years old that I had another choice.
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SPEAKER_00: Within weeks, not even months, my body revolted.
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SPEAKER_00: My hormones were wildly out of balance.
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And unfortunately,
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I didn't have that language or understanding at the time.
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SPEAKER_00: I was fighting nausea daily.
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SPEAKER_00: I had crippling mood swings.
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SPEAKER_00: I gained 30 pounds practically overnight.
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SPEAKER_00: I struggled with acne that made me really want to hide.
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And I had depression so bad that four days I could barely get
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out of bed.
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SPEAKER_00: Now, my parents, they did what they thought was best.
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SPEAKER_00: They encouraged me to be more active.
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SPEAKER_00: So I did.
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SPEAKER_00: I played regional tennis and volleyball,
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training most evenings and traveling most weekends for
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tournaments and matches.
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SPEAKER_00: I was running on fumes.
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SPEAKER_00: I ignored every signal that my body was trying to give me.
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SPEAKER_00: Then fast forward two years at 14, my spine practically gave out.
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SPEAKER_00: I had three bulging discs.
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One was herniated and there would be days where I could not get
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out of bed.
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SPEAKER_00: I missed so much school that I was almost held back for two years.
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SPEAKER_00: And that's really when this fear set in,
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SPEAKER_00: not just fear of pain,
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SPEAKER_00: but fear that this was my life now,
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SPEAKER_00: broken,
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SPEAKER_00: heavily medicated,
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SPEAKER_00: trapped in a system that treated symptoms but never asked why,
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SPEAKER_00: I became desperate,
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SPEAKER_00: desperate for answers.
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SPEAKER_00: And I started seeking them outside of the doctor's office.
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SPEAKER_00: I stumbled across a lot of documentaries about the food system,
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SPEAKER_00: conspiracy theories,
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SPEAKER_00: holistic health.
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SPEAKER_00: I learned about Ayurveda,
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SPEAKER_00: and if you're not familiar,
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SPEAKER_00: Ayurveda is India's 5,000-year-old system of medicine,
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and I discovered that yogis believed all disease in the
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physical body first begins
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SPEAKER_00: with dis-ease in the emotional and energetic bodies.
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I was living proof of this,
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and this was the only thing that started to make sense to me.
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SPEAKER_00: One day in high school,
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I gathered the courage to ask my mom if she would drive me to a
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yoga class.
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And I remember,
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I'll never forget,
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she had tears just welling up in her eyes.
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SPEAKER_00: You know, she...
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SPEAKER_00: She asked me, is this satanic?
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SPEAKER_00: Like, what is this yoga?
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SPEAKER_00: And I laughed not to dismiss her concern, but because I understood it.
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I had grown up in a world where anything outside of the church
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felt dangerous.
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SPEAKER_00: I remember telling her, I don't think it's satanic.
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SPEAKER_00: Will you go with me?
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SPEAKER_00: Will you drop me off?
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SPEAKER_00: And she did.
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SPEAKER_00: She dropped me off.
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SPEAKER_00: And the first class changed everything.
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SPEAKER_00: Not because I...
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was able to twist myself into a pretzel or found instant
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enlightenment but because
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for the first time in years i felt my body as something other
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than broken i was
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able to connect to my breath i felt stillness for maybe the
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first time ever and
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started to experience ease within my mind and within my body
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over the next few
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SPEAKER_00: years i worked with a chiropractor and a yoga therapist really closely
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SPEAKER_00: I practiced weekly,
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sometimes cutting class early to take a yoga class with my
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favorite teacher.
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SPEAKER_00: Yes, this was in high school.
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SPEAKER_00: Got a lot of unhappy phone calls from the principal, but I digress.
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SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, I developed a relationship with my body.
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SPEAKER_00: I learned to listen to my intuition instead of ignore it.
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SPEAKER_00: And slowly, naturally, my spine realigned.
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SPEAKER_00: I avoided back surgery that surgeons told me was the only way.
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I got off all psychiatric medications that doctors told me I
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would need to be on
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SPEAKER_00: for the rest of my life.
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SPEAKER_00: And I didn't just heal.
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SPEAKER_00: I was starting to wake up.
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SPEAKER_00: By 18,
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SPEAKER_00: I became a registered yoga teacher,
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SPEAKER_00: not because I wanted to perfect poses,
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SPEAKER_00: but because I wanted to help others find what I had found,
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a way out of a system that had failed me and into a practice
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that actually worked.
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SPEAKER_00: In my early 20s, I became a certified holistic health coach.
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SPEAKER_00: I started working with clients right away,
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and that's when I realized my spiritual awakening and my
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entrepreneurial journey,
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SPEAKER_00: they weren't two separate paths.
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SPEAKER_00: They were one of the same.
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SPEAKER_00: I wasn't building a business out of ambition or strategy.
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SPEAKER_00: I was building it out of necessity and out of passion,
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SPEAKER_00: out of knowing that the conventional route,
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SPEAKER_00: the pills,
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SPEAKER_00: the band-aids,
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SPEAKER_00: the push-through mentality,
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SPEAKER_00: that wasn't the only way.
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SPEAKER_00: And it certainly wasn't the best way, not for me.
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My way was through personal empowerment and I wanted to inspire
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others to find
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SPEAKER_00: their own way too,
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SPEAKER_00: just like I had because I knew that my awakening,
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SPEAKER_00: it wasn't just for me,
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SPEAKER_00: it was meant to be shared.
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SPEAKER_00: That's what happens when you devote yourself to the path
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SPEAKER_00: of a yogi and self-realization.
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SPEAKER_00: You don't just transform your own life,
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SPEAKER_00: but you become a guide for others who are walking the same road.
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SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing.
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I couldn't guide anyone until I understood what I was actually
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guiding them toward.
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And that meant answering the philosophical question that's,
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I believe,
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at the heart of all yoga.
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SPEAKER_00: And that question is, who is
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SPEAKER_00: Am I?
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Now,
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philosophers and mystics have been asking this question for
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thousands of years.
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Yogis understood that the answer isn't found through intellect,
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but rather our lived experience.
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SPEAKER_00: Through yoga,
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SPEAKER_00: you can calm the body,
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SPEAKER_00: regulate the breath,
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SPEAKER_00: consciously direct your energy,
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SPEAKER_00: instill the mind so that the answer to the question is both revealed and
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SPEAKER_00: experienced.
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SPEAKER_00: Yoga teaches us that you are not the body.
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SPEAKER_00: You are not the mind.
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SPEAKER_00: You are not even your personality.
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SPEAKER_00: You are the soul.
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SPEAKER_00: which is individualized consciousness, a spark of God.
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SPEAKER_00: This is your true identity.
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SPEAKER_00: And the yogi's answer to the question, who am I?
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SPEAKER_00: Paramahansa Yogananda taught that your true identity isn't one thing.
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SPEAKER_00: It's four interconnected aspects.
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SPEAKER_00: And once you start to understand and live by this,
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SPEAKER_00: you're going to experience such a dramatic shift in your life.
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SPEAKER_00: The first aspect is that you are the immortal soul,
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SPEAKER_00: not the physical form that changes and dies.
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SPEAKER_00: Most suffering comes from mistakenly identifying with the body or mind,
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SPEAKER_00: whereas the soul is indestructible.
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It is not born when the body is born and it is not lost when
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the body dies.
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SPEAKER_00: Yogis understand that the body, it's almost like a coat that you wear.
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The yogic perspective is that the body is a temporary
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instrument and a biological
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SPEAKER_00: vehicle that is governed by time,
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SPEAKER_00: decay,
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SPEAKER_00: and cause and effect.
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When this is experienced and not just believed,
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the fear of death starts to weaken.
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Pain is still felt,
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but it's no longer something that you will over identify with.
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SPEAKER_00: The second aspect of your true identity is pure consciousness,
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SPEAKER_00: essentially the witness behind thoughts,
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SPEAKER_00: emotions,
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SPEAKER_00: and your ego.
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Yogis understand that our thoughts,
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emotions,
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and personality are just like objects.
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SPEAKER_00: And the ego is just a function.
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SPEAKER_00: It's not an identity.
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SPEAKER_00: Our true identity is the witness to all of it.
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SPEAKER_00: We can experience this gap through meditation,
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SPEAKER_00: when our thoughts slow down,
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when the sense of I am thinking and that identification starts
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to dissolve.
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SPEAKER_00: And then only awareness remains.
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SPEAKER_00: This awareness is calm, yet alert, and it doesn't judge.
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SPEAKER_00: The yogi and teacher that I mentioned a lot,
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SPEAKER_00: Yogananda,
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SPEAKER_00: once said that when the mind is still,
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SPEAKER_00: the soul knows itself.
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SPEAKER_00: And I think that's so true.
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Our identity shifts from I am having an experience to I am the
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awareness in which
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SPEAKER_00: experience happens.
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SPEAKER_00: It's subtle, but it's a big shift.
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Now,
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the third aspect of your true identity is that you are a child
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of God.
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SPEAKER_00: God in the yogic system is infinite consciousness or infinite
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SPEAKER_00: the ever-existing consciousness or bliss.
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SPEAKER_00: To be made in God's image means that the soul has the same essence.
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SPEAKER_00: Think of a spark to a fire or a wave to the ocean.
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SPEAKER_00: You are not separate from God.
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SPEAKER_00: You are an aspect of it.
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And finally,
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you are the individually expressed spirit,
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yet one with the infinite.
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You remain a unique expression with specific dharma or life's
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purpose in this specific lifetime.
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SPEAKER_00: And you are a distinct flavor of consciousness, if you will.
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SPEAKER_00: And at the same time, you are not separate from the infinite.
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SPEAKER_00: You're not confined by the body and you're not bound by ego identity.
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The path of self-realization is how we directly experience
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these four aspects of
12:49
SPEAKER_00: our true identity.
12:51
SPEAKER_00: So knowing all of this,
12:52
SPEAKER_00: that you are the soul,
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SPEAKER_00: the witness,
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SPEAKER_00: a child of God,
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SPEAKER_00: you're one with the infinite,
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SPEAKER_00: what does it actually mean to live in that way with that knowing?
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What does it mean to devote your life to this path,
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to the path of a yogi?
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So to answer that,
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we first have to define what self-realization actually is.
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And this definition comes directly from Yogananda and the
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Self-Realization Fellowship.
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SPEAKER_00: And they say that self-realization is the knowing in mind,
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SPEAKER_00: in body,
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SPEAKER_00: and soul that you are one with the omnipresence of God.
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SPEAKER_00: You cannot reach the infinite with the intellect alone.
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SPEAKER_00: And that's why we have yoga.
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SPEAKER_00: Yoga is not just yoga asana or physical poses.
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SPEAKER_00: That's like one very small element of yoga, actually.
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SPEAKER_00: Yoga is so much more.
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SPEAKER_00: In its truest form,
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yoga is a psychophysical method for achieving conscious contact
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with divine
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SPEAKER_00: presence.
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SPEAKER_00: Yoga does not necessarily bring you to God.
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SPEAKER_00: It removes the noise that hides God from your perception.
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And there's a stark difference between believing in God and
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experiencing God.
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SPEAKER_00: So the experience of God is to have conscious contact with the divine.
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SPEAKER_00: It's when you feel presence and you perceive God.
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SPEAKER_00: more peace, more joy, more light.
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SPEAKER_00: This contact may begin subtly as a sense of inner stillness,
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SPEAKER_00: a feeling of being guided,
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SPEAKER_00: or a quiet joy without cause.
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What yoga does is yoga helps us cultivate this God
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consciousness regardless of belief.
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Yoga helps to stabilize spiritual awakening and also protects
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our nervous system.
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SPEAKER_00: Yogananda called yoga the scientific method of God realization.
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SPEAKER_00: And I think a lot of yoga that we see today has lost this intention.
14:52
SPEAKER_00: I believe we can change that.
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This is the goal that I have personally for any class,
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workshop,
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or retreat that I lead.
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SPEAKER_00: This is what it's all about.
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SPEAKER_00: And when you integrate the intention of self-realization through yoga,
15:06
you'll notice less urgency to prove or perform and also quicker
15:11
recovery from
15:13
SPEAKER_00: stress.
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SPEAKER_00: You'll develop a background sense of peace in your life.
15:17
Your identity loosens from outcomes and presence becomes a much
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more familiar state.
15:25
So essentially self-realization is the permanent experiential
15:30
knowledge of your
15:31
SPEAKER_00: true identity,
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SPEAKER_00: pure consciousness and union with the divine.
15:35
If you'd like me to dive deeper into specific yoga practices
15:38
and rituals aside from
15:41
SPEAKER_00: physical yoga poses,
15:42
SPEAKER_00: let me know.
15:43
I am happy to record an episode specifically on developing your
15:48
own spiritual
15:48
SPEAKER_00: practice so that you can embody the teachings of self-realization.
15:53
SPEAKER_00: I could nerd out on this topic
15:55
SPEAKER_00: all day long.
15:55
SPEAKER_00: Stevie loves it too, even though she's snoring right now.
15:58
SPEAKER_00: So I don't know if that's being picked up on the mic or not, but
16:01
SPEAKER_00: Here we go.
16:02
SPEAKER_00: With that being said,
16:03
I hope parts of my story resonate with you or help spark your
16:08
own remembering of
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SPEAKER_00: how your life experiences are guiding you closer to your true identity.
16:15
In summary,
16:16
the yogi's answer to the question,
16:19
who am I,
16:20
is that we are one with God.
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SPEAKER_00: We know this to be true through practicing yoga and the application of
16:27
SPEAKER_00: self-realization,
16:28
SPEAKER_00: which together can
16:29
SPEAKER_00: is the applied science of inner union with the divine.
16:33
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for being here and for listening to Lately with Lexi.
16:38
SPEAKER_00: If any of this resonated, I'd love to hear from you.
16:41
SPEAKER_00: You can leave a comment or send me a message or email directly.
16:45
SPEAKER_00: Next week, we are diving into how I'm reclaiming creativity.
16:50
After years of shrinking myself,
16:52
it is a vulnerable one and I think you will love it.
16:56
SPEAKER_00: Make sure you subscribe on Substack to stay up to date on the podcast,
17:01
SPEAKER_00: my writings,
17:01
SPEAKER_00: and be the first to know about upcoming workshops and retreats.
17:05
SPEAKER_00: That being said, my next workshop is going to be in Sarasota, Florida.
17:09
SPEAKER_00: Florida for the spring equinox, the weekend of March 20th.
17:14
You can also subscribe now on YouTube for the video version of
17:18
this podcast,
17:19
SPEAKER_00: listen and leave a review on Spotify or Apple music.
17:23
SPEAKER_00: That really helps me get this podcast out to more people.
17:27
SPEAKER_00: So I'd appreciate the support.
17:28
And if you want to explore working together,
17:30
all of the links are in the show notes below.
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SPEAKER_00: That's all I have for you guys.
17:35
SPEAKER_00: Have a great week.