Latest / Alive & Kicking: Stories of Waking Up with Kay Eck / Interview with Yolanda Lozano | Awakening with Sound and Light

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Interview with Yolanda Lozano | Awakening with Sound and Light · Alive & Kicking: Stories of Waking Up with Kay Eck

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, I'm Kay Ak, and welcome to my podcast, Alive and Kicking: Stories of Waking Up.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to the podcast, everybody, and I'm so happy to have with me today my friend Yolanda Lazzano.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, Yolanda.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, Kay.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's an honor to be here.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so glad you're here.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's been a while since we've been together, but you and I have known each other for many years.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: And when I was thinking about our time together this morning, I was really feeling like, you know, you are what I love about you is that you you bring into your elderhood such a sense of willingness to grow that feels so fresh and youthful and young to me.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm really excited about talking with you today.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_03: I'm excited to be learning.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_03: I consider myself a late bloomer.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_03: So I feel like I had to live a whole life before this life so that I could learn how to be accessible to people in all different ways.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_03: And so the exuberance and the joy that that I feel in my heart today are actually something new because I spent a lot of times in my early years trying to figure out how to be who I was and and who was I really supposed to be.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean that's amazing.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: I I guess I feel the same way, but I hadn't thought of it as like a separate life.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: I just thought, like, you know, like you said, it just took me a really long time to figure it out.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm still figuring it out.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: So that's you know, kind of an ongoing project.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: But so our our the purpose of the podcast is to talk about people's individual stories of waking up.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: So this idea of awakening or enlightenment or embodiment or any of the terms that you might want to use for it, I'm curious what your take is on that.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: How do you feel about that?
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, I feel that each person has had an opportunity to grow through this process of incarnating, and whatever their purpose is for being in this particular frame of time is directly linked to connection to our divine essence and to grow and become as awakened as we possibly can given our uh individual challenges, uh, our choices, but also the way that we access support system to reach our essence.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's really important.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: So, how would you define the term awakening?
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: What does that really mean?
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_03: Wow, that is a really great way to begin because I thought that awakening meant that I would be happy and blissful and joyful all the time.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_03: And when I joined um different awakening movements, one was through India, and the awakening process then was called Oneness, and it's a global community that has transcended that title and is now a completely organic and uh different type of movement.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_03: So a grassroots movement is a good way to describe what awakening is to me, because I see it in my relationships, I see it in my sense of well-being, I see it in the way I connect with others, but mostly I see it through my ability to stay connected to my divine essence, which is to me the most important aspect of awakening.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_03: And so it manifests in nature and yoga and conversations like this, and the ability to reach into the hearts of others and to find out how I can be in service to that particular person or that particular group.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_03: And as you know, awakening has brought me through all of these different mediums like yoga and sound healing and speaking in public and leading meditation circles and now doing individual and group coaching sessions.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_03: So there has been this huge transformation happening.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_03: So after saying all these words, I feel that the best way to describe awakening is that it's an ongoing, um, very fluid movement of energy that continues to bring what needs to change so that we can become the very best version of ourselves into this body in this time.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, that's amazing.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: I I could end it right here, but I have but I'm curious that um one of the things that you said that was really interesting to me is that you you now approach relationships or even encounters with people from the aspect of service.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how can I how can we connect and how can I be of service to that and to you?
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel that is so much of my approach to life as well, but it wasn't always that way.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think that we are that we're taught to go into a situation and an encounter wondering what is this gonna be like for me?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: What am I gonna gain from this encounter?
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: And it's almost like you could define the awakening process of as that, as just the that shift in perspective.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_03: So I think that way that you have described it right now is the way that it has finally evolved into becoming um a gentle and very focused way to walk this path.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: And and it's true that we had to we had to evolve past a point of being constantly concerned with our survival, right?
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like we had to collectively get beyond that.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: We're and we're right sort of on the on the edge of that, so that we we do have the capacity to come to a situation more vulnerable than perhaps we had in the past.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: But if I could wind this back and um talk a little bit about your child, how how you grew up and maybe some of the cultural influences that um contributed to your sense of yourself and to your sense of spirituality.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_03: The best way to begin is to tell you that I had that tumultuous life.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_03: Um, there was a lot of disharmony.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, there was verbal, cultural is called cultural verbal abuse, and um sometimes even spanking and things like that, and I was terrified.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_03: So um my mom and my dad were divorced when I was a little older than three, not quite three and a half.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_03: So I heard the story that she arrived to Mexico.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_03: My sister and I were born in the states, and so she packed a little suitcase and took us to Mexico in a train.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_03: And my mom at that time was probably 24 years old.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so she left my dad at a time when, in the Catholic tradition, which is what predominantly uh the entire country of Mexico is, till this day, is shunned.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_03: A one a woman leaving her husband is no longer welcome into the church.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_03: So my cultural, religious upbringing were left to my grandmother, my mom's sister, and their family.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_03: And that's how I learned to socialize with my sister in a different country where I wasn't really 100% sure that I belonged.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_03: So, fast forward about 16 years, and I was completely lost in a new culture, which is the culture of the United States, because I had to relearn English when I was in high school, and I was very proficient at language, so that helped a lot.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_03: I remember when my mom died, um, I made a vow when she was being uh what is that word when they're putting them in the earth, buried, when she was being buried.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_03: I made a vow that wherever I went I would be strong and she would be proud of me, and I would do my very best to keep her memory alive and the strengths and the um the most important qualities that I learned from her, which is partially why I'm still alive and kicking.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: So at some point you came back to the states to live permanently.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_03: Was that I was uh actually realizing the other day that those formative years of my life were the most important ones where I learned how not to be.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_03: And coming back to the states affirmed that what I had learned was not at all a good way to be, and that I had to learn a new set of rules to survive, and so I did.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_03: I concentrated on being good and studying and working hard and living with my dad, his wife, and their children.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_03: I learned how to completely disassociate a part of me that I had learned to become when I lived in Mexico and to become a new person.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_03: So that was a huge disconnect right there from culture, from family, uh, food, language, and all the things that made me connect physically, emotionally, and psychically to this body.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_03: So that was really challenging.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think that that journey was particular to you, or is that common to the immigrant experience?
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_03: I believe that some aspects of it are a common aspect of it because when a person comes from a different culture, they have to learn to acculturate to the dominant one.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's not just the food or the language, but it's all the habits, and and it's the way that people live that is completely different.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_03: So that part of it is real for everyone.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_03: What was particularly challenging for me was that I left two days after my mom died, and most of the contact that I had from everything that I knew that was familiar to me was severed.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_03: I wrote letters to my sister, to my former boyfriend, and uh other family members, and they didn't write back.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if it's because they were struggling themselves and they didn't really understand the need that I had to stay connected.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_03: But when I graduated from high school and I had saved enough money, I flew to Mexico to visit, and I found that my life, as I had known it, um this is hard.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_03: Just three, four years before had been completely dismantled.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_03: I was trying to find my siblings.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_03: I I found just one.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_03: My mom's second marriage had four children, but the one that I connected with was my biological sister that I uh originally went to Mexico with.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_03: And so we continued to stay in touch, but it was sporadic, and I felt that because I had left the country and the family, I was uh accused because they felt that I didn't love them.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_03: And the reason why I left was because when my mom was dying, she asked me to come to live to Mexico, to, I'm sorry, to come from Mexico to the United States so that I could do something with my life because she felt that if I stayed there, uh I've always been a caregiver and a caretaker, that I would probably end up being my sister's nanny and I would not educate, finish my education.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_03: She hoped that I could do something better with my life.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_03: And she said, if you don't like living in the States after you learn English and you have something to sustain yourself financially with, you can come back and live in in Mexico.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_03: And I thought, oh, that's that sounds pretty good, but what about my life?
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_03: What about my family?
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_03: And so it took about 20 or no, it took about 30 years before I could have this conversation with my sister and explain to her that it wasn't my choice, that I was given um a gift by my mom so that I could have freedom, so that I could hope for a better life for myself, since she knew that my fate would not be a very positive one if I was left there.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: I was only 16.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: I can't even imagine the feelings of dislocation and disverything that you must have felt as a young woman, a very young woman, to have left your family, lost your mother, go to live with a father you didn't really know, who has moved on to a new life in a new country with a new language and a new culture?
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: I like it how I don't that seems impossible that anybody could survive that, but but you did, and how did you do that?
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: How did you, you know, with all this movement and shifting and no solid ground, how did you find solidity?
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_03: I studied, um, I did a lot of work physically.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I took care of my little baby half-brother.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_03: He helped me a lot.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, how so?
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um, when I was connecting with his innocence and his need for care, I found the mother within me.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_03: And I found that that mother that is in my heart is the mother that has helped me to get through the toughest times of this life.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my god.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_03: I just realized that that's what it was because no one gave me those words, but everyone said, Wow, you're so good with the baby, and it's like I've always been a mother.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_03: I had four younger siblings that I helped to raise because mom was always working from her second marriage, and uh I found myself being useful was a good way to be, and so that's what I did.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_03: I was very useful.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_03: I did a lot of house tours after school.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_03: I was a top-notch student, and I learned quickly how to acclimate myself by doing all the right things.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_03: So doing good work and studying and being a good daughter helped me to survive.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: That part about finding the mother within there it feels like there just couldn't be anything more important than that for anybody.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because our mothers are human, you know, but the mother within is unaffected by circumstances, isn't she?
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: And it's she's perfect, you know, perfect in all ways.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like having uh an invisible friend that's a mom, you know.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_03: I love that.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_03: I really like the way you describe her.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, I don't know if you can see her, but she's right there.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_03: So, so uh all the forms of the divine feminine have come to me in the last 10 years from the Hindu culture, from the Toltec and Mayan culture, and even now from the circles of women that gather on Zoom to talk about our experience being a woman and listening to each other and being heard and holding space for each other just so that we can be a human being and not our identity that we formed through our work or our status or whatever, you know?
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, um we share something in common in that I was raised through Catholicism as well.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like just as you were speaking about it, that although the divine feminine has been suppressed, not just in in that religion, but everywhere, um, in Catholicism, I feel like it was always pushing at the seams, like those of us like who who who what Catholic girl did not resonate with Mother Mary and even Mary Magdalene and all the all the feminine um characters in the religion.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like it was there, even though like I'm I have chills because I'm just now realizing how how it was there and it how how it was driving me personally through that through that path, but now it's just bursting out all over and it's it's no longer underneath the surface, it's it's there.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, how did you bridge your experience of Catholicism with a broader understanding of spirituality?
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_03: So I mentioned to you that my mom was banned from the church, and even though no one really spoke about it, I knew something was really wrong with that.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I continued going to church with my grandmother, but something about it didn't sit well with me.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, there are times in our lives when we have aha moments, and that came back to me when I was married, and uh my former husband thought that it would be good to have our children baptized, even though they were much older.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_03: He thought that it would help our marriage if we would embrace the religion, and so I went back to church and I went with my heart open, and uh I met a wonderful priest, and we had long chats, and I recognized that it was a religion of men, and that I did not have a voice, that I could never have an equal status, I could never be a priest, even though I've always been extraordinarily interested in the scriptures, and I studied extensively in different um paths.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_03: I studied the Bible with Baptists, with Jehovah's Witnesses, and then I recognized when I went back to the Catholic Church that none of that was sanctioned or allowed in the church, but rather it was sanctioned because we were not supposed to know, and so I started searching and I prayed a lot, and I became depressed and I asked for help.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_03: So I remember sitting outside of the church in my car, feeling very sad and asking God if this suffering was going to help to open the eyes or be of some kind of service to the world.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_03: I could bear it, but I needed some signs, and so the next thing that happened is I got divorced.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_03: I just couldn't find my way because I started meditating with the help of an Indian teacher who illuminated me to the fact that I was carrying a divine in me, and she is feminine, and she has a strong voice, and that sound and vibration raises my awareness to who I am and who I can be in order to be able to access my connection in a deeper way.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_03: And so I we had to become divorced because that is in complete opposite of the uh Catholic teachings.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_03: I found my own way to connect with my divine that was completely separate from the scriptures, and when I found that God is really vibration and light, I was ecstatic because I recognized all of all of us, life itself is made of vibration and light.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_03: God is everywhere.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_03: I never knew that.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_03: So that became the the stepping stone to my journey.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean that that that image of God as a figure or a character outside of yourself, not just outside of yourself, but outside of everything, that um, you know, we're kind of here in chaos and we better pray for help because this is a mess, you know.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um I almost feel like my experience um I had a I had a few breaking away points, but one of them was when my children were young, we decided to raise them as Catholics because both of our families were Catholic, and it seemed like they should have something rather than nothing.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: So that was the choice that we made.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I decided to become a Sunday school teacher because I wanted to make sure that the right messages came through.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I was the, and you know, second grade is a very important year in in um in the life of a Catholic.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I decided to teach second grade, and I kind of did my own version of how I'm not surprised.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: But one of the things that broke me away permanently was that I could not tell these beautiful little seven-year-old second graders that they were sinners.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like I just could not do that.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so um that was kind of like my I got them through and then, you know, went a different way.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: But let's shift a little bit and talk about this idea of sound and light as God being sound and light, and how how you came upon this discovery and where it led you, because this is probably not something that is familiar to a lot of people, this concept.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_03: So at this point, in my awakening process, I was completely dumbfounded by how the vibration affected me, literally, and the sense of inner well-being and peace that I felt every time I played a crystal bowl.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_03: So someone said, Why don't you start holding meditations in your house?
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_03: And that was a year of transformation, it was 1999, and that's when I met my first in-depth spiritual teacher on my birthday, which is September 9th.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_03: So do all those nines together, and I knew there was something significant about that particular day, and in that particular year, I studied shamanism, I studied vibrational healing, I learned from the best teachers.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_03: It's like the floodgates were open, and I was given all of these teachings at once.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_03: I was really immersing myself in a deep and profound experience about the alchemy, the transformation, and what happens when we open our hearts and we say yes.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_03: So I created healing hearts with the idea that right here in our hearts is the center of transformation, the place of alchemy where we can transform all of what doesn't serve us and all the difficulties that we have managed to survive and transform it into something that is much more useful and beautiful.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_03: So I started having um meditations on Fridays, and I would be terrified.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_03: I would be like, these people are gonna call my bluff and say, You don't know what you're doing, what is this?
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_03: But instead, what happened is pretty soon we would have people standing outside waiting to come in.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_03: So instead of having meditations once a month, we had to change them to once a week.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_03: And then some beautiful soul invited me to look at the idea that perhaps I was sitting on a gold mine, she said.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_03: She was uh a wonderful person from the Chicago Healers Network, and she said, I have never met a more naive light worker, so I didn't even know that that's what I was.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_03: So, speaking about forming new identities, I became a light worker, a bold lady, and a yoga student at the same time.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_03: And uh I thought this is nothing new to me because I've always had to try to figure out who I am, and people were telling me what to call my work, and I was accept accepting of all of that because I understood that language had to be given to that gift so that people could access in their mind what was actually happening, and so the evolution continued to this day.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_03: I'm still finding more ways to access vibration and sound into different aspects of myself when I'm not feeling well, or when I hear that someone is not feeling well, and I call upon the vibration and the sound of who I am, the goddess within to bring the best aspect of who I am so that the I am can heal.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_03: And I understand that it's not me that I am a channel, but I understand that there are certain ways in which the alchemy of the vibration and the sound support transformation in a very brief period of time.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_03: So everything that I learned was organically, everything, and I trust it, and I think that that is one of the most amazing things that I have discovered about my path is that I trust.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's really powerful because you know, I have been feeling for a while that when people outside of ourselves establish criteria that we need to meet in order to become what we want to become, it it takes the process out from within us and puts it in, puts, you know, basically puts the power and the value in someone else's hands.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm looking forward to the day when these um that accreditation, if you want to study, and that's fantastic, like follow your intuition as you did, but don't rely on somebody else to tell you what you can and can't do.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, you're a you're a healer and you use sound, and there's like, you know, where's the degree for that?
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_03: You know, like well, just so you know, recently after having volunteered at the at a prominent organization for cancer for 15 years, uh, the power changed hands, and they asked me if I had an accreditation or a paper or a certification for for uh sound therapy.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_03: So and I said no, but I can tell you that it works because that's how I pay all my bills, and that is how I have watched people transform and heal and grow for the past 30 years.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, how did they take that?
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: Did that work?
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_03: She got her face was red like mine is right now.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_03: Um she said she didn't she didn't know what to write in her form.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_03: And I say, I studied with the best, but I don't have an accreditation.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: I I think it takes a certain amount of courage to stand your ground because it's just a different way of of being in the world.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we just have a certain way of being, and this is you know a little bit different.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_03: I had had the same experience after I was teaching uh at the high school where I first learned English.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_03: I was teaching English as a second language, I became the head of the department, I then went to work at the College of Dupe and became the head of their department, and then I was informed after five years that I needed to go back to school and and get license to be a teacher.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my gosh.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_03: And that's when I left corporate America.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, and what a what a loss.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: What I mean think about it, like how many, how many gifted and skilled artisans and and people that were overlooking because they don't have the paperwork, you know.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_03: I just got mad, and I I think sometimes getting angry is really helpful.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_03: Um I haven't been angry too much about this path because people are very gracious, and the community has always been very generous and gracious to me.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_03: But from time to time I've run into institutions and organizations where people say they want me to come and work there because I'm popular, and I think that that word means I can bring money, and I just take a deep breath and I swallow my pride and I say, so be it, because my work has taken me to places that most people have only dreamed of, and it is because of this work and because of this faith and this heart that I'm sitting here by grace talking to you, and I always have to come back to that.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think it's the work that has brought you through along on that amazing path, or do you think it's your authenticity?
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_03: It's a really good question because I can't separate the two.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_03: This is how I've lived my life now for some time.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_03: And every day when I wake up after I have done my sadhana and yoga, I open my appointment book and I hold it up to the heavens, and I asked to be blessed because I really don't know what's going to happen.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_03: So sometimes it looks like I have an appointment and then it gets changed and it gets rescheduled, or people cancel, and then something else will come in, and then I will start to smile again because it's a dance, and so I see life this way that there is a dance and it's always happening automatically, and that as long as there is movement, there's life, and being authentic and being honest goes hand in hand with accepting that this is how I live my life.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_03: Does this make sense to you?
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: How did you get comfortable with that trust?
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's not an easy thing to do.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I've had a few near-death experiences where I have seen that my path has been guided from the beginning and that I had to learn one by one all those lessons being from a different culture.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_03: And it became more apparent when I went to India six years ago.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_03: I felt really connected to the culture and to the people, and it wasn't the teachers that were attractive to me, it was the gardeners and the lady who came to clean our room, and I had this fascinating conversations with the gardeners and Machu Picchu, also, because they were the real people to me and the shamans, but not the tourists or the people who were in charge of things.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_03: I've always looked at the people who to me feel most authentic, most grounded, and also the people who I connect with my heart.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_03: And I pray, I pray that I can be this person always accessible.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's so beautiful.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh, that's so beautiful.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: That brings me to tears.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: Ooh, and that's not an easy thing to do, to be that real and vulnerable, because you know, you open you're opening up.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's one thing to open up your mask to rejection, you know, that's hard enough, but to open up your authenticity to rejection, that is a deep, deep sting.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: But I find that once you once you are tapped into that authenticity, what you become authentic, you you kind of become impervious to some of those um criticisms or slights, or um yeah.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: How how would you explain that?
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: Do you find that to be true?
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: And how would you explain that?
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_03: I explain that with my extended family.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_03: So remember, I spoke about my sister earlier, and now uh one of her children lives in this area, and I have become more um comfortable being around her.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_03: And my niece has brought to light something that I had imagined, which is that the whole um extended clan of the family that I belong with think that I am a hippie.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_03: And I started laughing, and I said it must be because they have seen pictures of me wearing tie-dye clothes, and so I just make light of it and I just say, see, yeah, I understand.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_03: I'm simple and I dress uh comfortably because I want to feel good, and so whenever people try to put me in a box, I look for this.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_03: This is called trickster or coyote energy, and I I I think I inherited it from my father because I can always make light of things that can be punishing or stinging to my soul, and I understand that what she's telling me is be careful, don't let yourself be too open and reveal who you are because they will come and get you.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_03: And I say to her that they can't, they can't come and get me because there's nothing to get, it's just me, you know.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so we cook and we tell each other what's happening in the day, and uh, sometimes she wants me to teach her about meditation, and sometimes she just wants to talk about her drama, and I feel that for the first time I'm reconnecting in a real authentic way to my family through her and through my daughter who actually see me and they don't judge me.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_03: But I have been judged all my life because I have done things that were not status quo, you know, and it's the anger that has saved me.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_03: I call it holy anger and the sense of humor, and then come back to I just want to go for a walk to the river and just toss it down the stream with the flowers and say, let go of the resentment and the past and just be grateful for the lessons that I'm learning, and better that I learned them from her than from someone else.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, that's this making sense.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, absolutely.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: What a gift.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_01: What a gift.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_03: All interwoven, you know.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, the work that I do at the river is really huge right now.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_03: I'm seeing that the shamanic part of my work has come to fruition, and I started to rely on the elements for guidance when I saw that the people who wanted to come, and then there was a prediction from the weather forecast that it was going to be too cold, but because they had courage, they came, and during the entire ceremony, the sun would shine and the snow would melt, and we would be comfortable, and the wind would cease so that we could finish our work.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_03: And as soon as we were done, and they would be walking back to the river, the wind would howl and would take their hat off their head, and they would say, How is this possible?
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_03: And I would say, because there is a higher authority, and this is a way to learn to release that most westerners do not understand.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_03: The elements are our friends, and they're here to support us and to guide us, to teach us, and to hold us, just as much as the divine feminine and the sound and vibration are a part of it.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_00: I I feel the same way about the elements, although it hasn't been, you know, a part of my um, you know, external teachings or trainings or anything like that.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: But I live near Lake Michigan, and I have I've called Lake Michigan my mother for the way she holds me for a long time because the other day I was sitting in my room and I could I could feel the lake, my back was to the lake, and I could feel the lake pushing up my shoulder blades and lifting me up.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: And it was just um, you know, it's such a when you start to tune in to that aspect of life, that aspect of life starts speaking to you.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_03: You know, okay, we are more than 75% water, and I studied a little bit with Masaru Emoto, who became a famous teacher because of all the work he did when so much.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's one of my favorite books in the world.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, The Hidden Messages and Water.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_03: And so that is how I became enamored with water, because if I can share, my first experience of divine in me and awareness of how God moves through me was watching the ocean when I was 14 at a family vacation, sitting alone while everybody else was somewhere doing something.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_03: I was looking at the flow of the waves, and I recognized that there was a connection between the way the waves flow in our breath.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_03: And I saw God.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_03: You and I have that in common too.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_03: We're in love with water.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: And all the surfers that I know, they're they're surfers are like some of the most spiritual people I've ever met because they play and live and breathe on the water as often as they can, and then become one with the water, you know, like that's what surfing is is to become one with the water.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_03: So I can tell you that I have become friends with all the elements now because recently the one that I was not really clear about is the wind, which is vata.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_03: And you can see that there is very little vata in me.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_03: It's pitta, and it's all the other parts of me that are not really uh named in Sanskrit.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_03: I feel like we are all parts, different parts of the elements and different parts that become uh accumulate an accumulation or an amalgamation of all the different experiences and we change, right?
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_03: So I started to become Vata because of the technology part, because I started doing a lot of work uh this way in the last four and a half months.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_03: I have become friends with electronics and grateful, but also because I know that all I have to do is go to the river, and when the wind comes, all of that tension just disappears.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_03: All of that uh uh feeling of tightness that I get from being in front of electronics just flies into the wind, and I say thank you because until recently I didn't know there was such a thing as a wind bath.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_03: But that is so refreshing because then all the cobwebs and all that stuff that we carry in our minds is just anyway.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna try that because I'm challenged by the wind.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm very challenged by the wind.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_00: When it starts to get really windy, I just want to go inside, you know?
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I've I've had like this relationship with the wind for a long time, so I'm gonna try that, and hopefully that'll shift it for me.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but try not to cover your head.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I will.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_00: All right, Yolanda.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_00: I think this might be a good time to switch to our lightning round if that's okay with you.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_00: Are you ready?
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, okay.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: What in your life are you most proud of?
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_03: The only thing that I can say for sure is my connection with my divine essence is getting stronger, and I'm completely guided by it now.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_03: Trusting it every day of my life.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's beautiful.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_01: What a way to live.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_01: What a beautiful way to live.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, did you have a nickname as a child?
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, it's still showing up sometimes when I'm doing the Zoom calls.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_03: It's Yoli with an I.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_03: Somebody put it in there, and I have tried renaming myself Yolanda Lozano, and it comes back to Yoli.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I noticed that it says Yoli on there right now.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'll help you with that later.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's cute though.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, what personality trait has gotten you into the most trouble?
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_00: I love this question for you.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_03: Wow, well, I think you already know the answer.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_03: I have a lot of fire in me, and I don't think before I speak.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_03: So everything that comes out of my mouth is what I'm feeling in that moment.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_03: And sometimes I'm not nice and I'm not polite, and what comes out of my mouth, I can hurt people's feelings.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I've been told that I can completely undress a very powerful person with just a look or a few very intense words.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think that it would be surprising to people since you have, I think it's disarming, I bet, because you have such a sweet voice and a you know cherubic face that um with the dimples and everything that's camouflage, and then suddenly it's like bam.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_03: Somebody said to me the other day, I know that you are a good person, but I would never want to piss you off.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_03: And I just winked at her and I said, That's not a good way to be true, but yeah.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, on a scale of one to ten, how strict were your parents?
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_00: Ten.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_00: Ooh, that's hard.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_03: Very, very straight.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I remember my mom didn't talk to us when we misbehaved or we did something she didn't like.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_03: She would just give us that look.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_03: It was not um a commanding look, it was more like, really?
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_03: You're doing that?
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_03: It was more like a disappointing look.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_03: And sometimes when I'm upset and I do that, my partner says to me, Please don't look at me like that.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_03: And then I just say, I'm sorry, it's my mom, or I'm sorry, that's my lineage.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's the book.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_03: You've heard of La Chancla, you know, when people chase somebody with the sandal down the street, like in Coco.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_04: Uh-huh.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_03: Remember that sandal?
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_03: That's called La Chancla.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_03: And so that is uh a um a trait that strong Mexican households have because of the need for discipline and the need for authority, and probably because there's too many children and the parents are exhausted.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so La Chancla has become like a joke.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_03: But actually, I actually I saw my mom chasing my sister with her sandal, and I thought, oh my god, what if she really hits her?
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_03: What if she really aims right and like causes harm to her?
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_03: So it reinforced my good behavior, as every good sandal does.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and then finally, if you could ask an animal a question, what would the animal be and what would the question be?
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_03: Wow, so the two animals that came, the first one was a whale, and I can I do two?
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_03: Of course, no problem.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_03: I can ask a whale.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_03: Um how is it that she is able to hold her breath and be so big and so strong and not harm anybody around her?
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_03: And um the trickster, the coyote, I would want to ask her, I would be a female coyote.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_03: How does she keep her sense of humor so she doesn't step on people's toes?
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_01: Beautiful.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_00: I love sounds like you're asking for a very specific reason.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_00: So, did you bring a question for me today?
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_03: I saw that part, and uh let me see if I can recall.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't write it down, but it is a perfect question.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_03: I would love for you to share how your work is taking you to the places that you least expected, and what are you hoping to achieve with these beautiful presentations that you're doing?
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this has been such a long journey for me because like many of us, I um I always this is gonna sound um maybe I don't know how it's gonna sound, but I always I always was under the impression that I was an exceptional person, but I didn't think I was any different from anybody else.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_00: I I thought everybody was exceptional.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_00: And my life was a process of you know layering over that with doubt and criticism, self-criticism and um, you know, conditioning and blah blah, you know, all that stuff.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's taken me a long time to uncover that.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm motivated by a sense of service for sure.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_00: And as I get older, I'm also motivated, motivated by a sense of urgency that um I have something really important to say, and I have to say it like it's now or never, like I don't have forever, possibly.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_00: I don't might not have forever in this in this body, and so um that has because what I've learned, I feel could be so helpful to people in where we're going as a collective.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_00: I um have to have found myself in a position of being way more vocal and visible than I'm really comfortable with.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I I don't feel that I need to share as much of my personal journey with people as I do.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_00: The only reason that I do it is because it's I feel it's so important to have an example and to be an example of what being open and vulnerable and authentic really looks like and what the work really looks like.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because, you know, we don't have a lot of examples of that because people keep their personal stories to themselves, and a lot of professional people offer an offering, a product, but they don't they don't they're not necessarily open with how they got to that place, and I realize that maybe that's not everybody's path, but I feel really strongly that that that's my path, and I think that the the place that that has taken me that I did not expect is that I would be sort of simultaneously alone and also um more totally okay with that.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that that that path might take me to a place that other people can't necessarily follow me, but that I I had I was okay with that because my service is to my authentic self and to God.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_03: Can I say something about the last part of your revelation?
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_03: And I feel strongly about that.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_03: Don't be surprised if people ask you to train them to do the very thing that you thought you could only do alone.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_03: Interesting.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna think about that.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_03: When somebody comes and says, Okay, I will pay you to teach me how to do that thing that you do, and I will study with you and follow you and watch you, then you will know that that is your legacy.
• 56:55
  unknown: Yeah.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I I've always felt that in in the times when I've tried to, I've never felt that my particular offering is like a one-on-one coaching type thing, or even um, you know, when I was teaching yoga um and meditation, I didn't really feel like that was really the right platform for me either.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_00: But the writing and the this podcast, um, that feels like right like where I'm supposed to be.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_00: So um, yeah, I have another book coming out, and um, you know, that's kind of the way it's rolling for me.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_03: That's really exciting.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_03: What is your next book about?
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think we'll just talk about that offline, but so I'm gonna sign off for us now, okay?
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so Yolanda, I have loved talking with you today.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_00: I love your spirit, I love what you have to say and how you bring it forward is so beautiful.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_00: And you do have that both the softness and the fire that is like wow, it's like the whole deal.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much for opening yourself up to being with me today and sharing some of that personal story.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate it.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_03: It is really an honor to be here with you, and I sincerely wish that you continue to do your podcasts and that millions of people will benefit from them and learn wonderful things about being authentic and being real.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much, Yolanda.