Tami Simon: You’re listening to Insights at the Edge. Today my guest is Elena Brower, who is here with us in the Sounds True studio for this conversation. Elena is a yoga instructor, designer, and artist who is devoted to cultivating meditation as our most healing habit. Elena offers yoga and meditation as a way to approach our world with realistic reverence and gratitude. With Sounds True, Elena, along with her coauthor Erica Jago, has created a beautifully designed book called The Art of Attention. Elena is also working with Sounds True on a forthcoming book called Practice You: A Journal of Self-Discovery, where she takes the reader through a meaningful personal inquiry process that will evolve into clarity of purpose and discovery of the actions that are needed in order to live a life blessed with nourishing relationships and meaningful self-expression. During this visit to Sounds True, she’s also recording a new audio learning series called The Return Home.
In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Elena and I spoke about this new series, The Return Home, and the importance of breaking our addictions as part of that return. We talked about five foundational principles of returning home: attunement, allowing, alignment, acceptance, and advancement; and Elena led us through a practice for calming ourselves by breathing deeply to activate the vagus nerve. Finally, we talked about the role of forgiveness, prayer, and personal artistry in living in alignment with what Elena calls “our home frequency.” Here’s my conversation with Elena Brower:
Elena, you’re here at Sounds True creating a new audio learning series with us called The Return Home. In this teaching series, you introduce the idea of a “home frequency” that we each possess, that we each have. What is a home frequency? What does that mean?
Elena Brower: The best way to describe it as I’ve learned it is when—if you recall a time when you were really happy, really contented, really feeling like you were thriving. And even if you take two breaths to think about this time and the quality of your body and your whole being at this time in your life, the first thing that comes to mind for me is the moment that my son was handed to me—put in my arms. We ended up in the hospital we weren’t meant to be in, so it was very special to get him. I remember that moment and I was really just—everything was just perfect. There’s a feeling, a wellspring, of total body bliss.
Whenever I recall this memory, I’m in my home frequency. My whole body is buzzing, emanating that frequency. So, when I talk about in this program—and I’ve learned it from a couple different teachers, but one in particular—people around you can pick up on it.
TS: Can you return to that frequency even as you’re describing the story to me? Can you invoke it, just like that?
EB: Yes. That’s the idea.
TS: At any time, you could invoke your home frequency?
EB: Any time. Any time. And it’s not relegated to one event either; you could think about many different events in your life when you were just super at ease, super happy, super available—and you’re there.
TS: OK, let’s talk about that for a moment. I can imagine some time of great bliss and elation—the moment that occurred to me was when my now-wife touched me for the first time, and I felt her touch.
EB: [Gasps] Oh God, I’m gonna cry.
TS: And I felt her touch, and I just felt it. But, at the same time, just to be honest, it feels like a memory—like, I’m not right there, really. How do I get back to that feeling so I’m actually really in it, not just conjuring up a memory?
EB: The idea is to spend a few breaths there. Really take a second—even if you can’t close your eyes, to just breathe deeply, and feel that feeling. Especially if it’s in the context of a couple—what a privilege that that’s the first thing you thought of—you guys can actually do that together. Keep things very alive for yourselves. But yes, that’s the idea. It’s just a few breaths away.
TS: And you believe everybody has some frequency like this—some vibration, some felt memory that they can call on? Why is that so important?
EB: I think—well, first of all, it’s a scientific fact—every one of us carries a number of possible frequencies. We’re walking around in a low frequency, in a high frequency, we’re busy busy busy, low low low—let’s say it’s like low-beta frequency going all the way up to—you know, you’re sitting here and you’re thinking about this beautiful memory, moving into gently alpha, maybe even skirting theta, and everything kind of gets really quiet inside, and you’re feeling who you are when you are at your best, most present, most available, most in contact with whatever it is that you would call a feeling of love.
TS: Now, you link this, also, to our capacity to tune into our intuition.
EB: Yes.
TS: So help me to understand that—that link.
EB: Let’s say I’m having a really hard time and I—as it happens, every now and again—my mom passed within the past several months, and every now and again, I just get lost in it. I want to call her, I want to talk to her, and I can’t. Somebody will bring something up, and I’m sad.
The first thing I can do is choose—either stay in the sadness, call somebody, complain about the sadness, commiserate, find company in the misery—or I can go and think about something that makes me deeply happy like this moment of being handed Jonah, or holding my boyfriend’s hand. Easy stuff. It’s the moment of choice; it’s the fork in the road. Every second, there’s a fork in the road exactly like this. What am I choosing? Am I going to hang out here or am I going to hang out there? When I attune to my home frequency, which is that happiness, I’m not denying the fact that there’s sadness there, but I’m choosing where to direct my energy.
That attunement is what I hope to convey through this course, because I think it’s a gift that I got to have the choice—especially at this time. Am I going to choose to be really super sad and dark and miserable about this loss? Or am I going to choose, as we were saying before the interview started, to see this as an opportunity for my own stewardship now that my mom’s gone, take responsibility for my life, do great projects and look for the good in things and moments? I want to choose that. I want to attune to that.
TS: OK. But I think lots of people connect to this idea of feeling there’s a choice point, there’s a fork in the road. And there are lots of choice points every day: call and commiserate; remember my home frequency. Well, I like the “call a friend and commiserate” option.
EB: It’s familiar to most of us.
TS: Yes, and I like that—and I have a lot to complain about, by the way. So I’m gonna go that way. I’m curious—there you are, you’re at that choice point. How have you trained yourself? What do you call on such that you are actually making this return-home choice?
EB: I actually don’t see any other options. I’m surrounded by people who—I’ve surrounded myself with people who don’t see any other option than [to] go and look for that happiness, look for what it is that you can do to help serve, celebrate.
And again, I’m not saying you’re denying what’s happening at all. I’m just saying that that used to be my choice: I’ll go smoke pot and be by myself and not talk to anybody, and then when I do talk to somebody, I’m going to call them and I’m going to complain and then I’m going to feel better about it. That [was] familiar to me for years. Now, I don’t have time for that. It’s not that I’m feeling rushed, it’s that I only want to serve in a good way, and me serving in a good way is me feeling truly, deeply good within myself. So, I don’t see any other choice, then, to choose to attune to that frequency.
TS: Now you mentioned to me—as you said, we were talking briefly before we began this conversation—that you don’t feel you would be here at Sounds True recording this teaching program and having this conversation if you hadn’t gotten over the addiction of regularly being at that choice point and choosing to smoke a joint or whatever people do with marijuana—I know we’re here in the state of Colorado, but—
[Elena laughs.]
TS:—it isn’t exactly my lexicon. But whatever that is, yes, OK. And how did you drop that addiction? How do you use the principles that you’re teaching in Returning Home, so that other people can have some insights here into how to break an addiction?
[Elena sighs thoughtfully.]
TS: And you’re the one who presents it as an addiction.
EB: I do present it—
TS: I know some people may not, but for you, that’s what your experience was.
EB: We’ll take it in two parts. First, it definitely was an addiction for me. I woke up every morning and I didn’t feel like I had a choice. Really, inside of myself, there wasn’t a choice. It was, “I have to smoke in order to X. I have to smoke in order to make this phone call; I have to smoke in order to feel good enough to go here.” It was like that. And I look at myself now and all of the things that I’ve accomplished since I quit almost two years ago, and I can’t believe how much time—I mean, that I feel like I wasted with all of that.
The principles—choosing to attune to what is highest within myself—that whole addiction, the whole process of getting the marijuana, preparing it, rolling it up—this whole process, what is that, really? It’s not a celebration; for me, it wasn’t medicine, even though I know it is for many of my friends. It was a need. And when there’s a need, I was stuck.
So now, what I came to after—gosh—a good year of really watching every day—making a promise, breaking it, making a promise, breaking it—”Today’s the last day. No, tomorrow’s the last day.” For years—almost two years—I was doing that. But [for] a year I was watching [myself]. And when I finally decided I was done, I was just so committed to it that I decided that I would do it, not publicly—I did something publicly that would keep me accountable, but I didn’t announce that I was quitting my addiction.
For 40 days, I made a piece of art for every day, based on a book that a dear friend of mine wrote. And in doing so, I sort of had my—you know, I’m older; social media was kind of a reach for me when I started, but I had that whole practice of being responsible and committed to social media to build a platform that is now really fun to use and enjoy and make art with. I did that for 40 days, and at the end of the first 40 days of me quitting smoking was when I was able to talk about it. But for the first 40 days, it was just something I was doing every day, to make art and clear my head.
That attuned me to something much higher, and it sounds so—I’m sorry to say it—it sounds a little bit shallow now in talking about it, but really, I was back into my art, I was back into my painting, I turned on a switch that had been turned off for so long because those—maybe that hour, those first few minutes of the day—was spent dropping my kid off, dropping my man at the train, and then rolling up the joint, going up to the roof, and smoking it. Then sort of cleaning myself up from that.
Instead, I was making art and connecting with myself, and having a meditation, and maybe even having a practice, a yoga practice. It changed everything. That was when I was able to start to synthesize from attunement, what could I allow into my space that wasn’t there before? I’m allowing art in again. I’m allowing other peoples’ eyeballs into my life via social media. I’m allowing my integrity—because I was busting my integrity every day by smoking and saying that I was this yoga teacher and teaching breathing, and then smoking.
That became—if you were to follow the way that I’ve laid out the course from attunement to allowing to alignment, I began aligning myself with a completely different paradigm. No longer was I the yoga teacher who also partied a little bit. (How fun.) Now, I really wanted to align myself with the yoga, thank you very much. Meditation, daily—thank you very much. Keeping my integrity so my work doesn’t feel like work anymore, it feels like my life. And it changed everything for me.
TS: So interesting. So, I’m imagining someone who’s listening who experiences some way that they’re not as congruent as they want to be in their life. Maybe they have said to themselves, “Really, I really want to eat this way, and I don’t. I’m going to start tomorrow.” But every day is tomorrow—kind of thing—there’s a “tomorrow” when I’m going to start.
Maybe it’s something else, some other way—”I’d like to commit deeper to my yoga practice or my meditation practice, and I’ve been saying this for a couple years, and I’ve been observing it for a year. I’m at that place where you were, where I was in that year where I know —I know it. I basically know I’m slightly out with myself.”
EB: Out of integrity.
TS: Yes. “I kind of get it. And I’m listening to this now. How am I going to make that shift?”
EB: I think one of the best things I did was tell just a couple of key people in my life that this was what I was doing. I didn’t make it public right away—and especially if you’re not somebody who is sort of a public person, one or two people to help you. Ask for help. Reach out. And be there for yourself in a new way; maybe you’re adding in another behavior, another habit that you can gently replace.
I was thinking when you were talking: there might be somebody listening who just needs to be more kind to their kid, more kind to your parent, more kind to your partner. Whatever it is, tell this person, “I just realized that I haven’t been as kind to you as I should be. I haven’t been as grateful to you as I could be. I want you to know that I’m aware of it, and I want you to know that I want to change it.” In starting that conversation, it’s almost like a window opens in the fabric of the world and something changes. Nature abhors a vacuum; she’s going to rush in to fill that space. It will happen.
TS: You mentioned that you begin with attunement, then you move to allowing, and then this idea of alignment and integrity. I didn’t quite get the “allowing” part. Help me understand that.
EB: It’s a funny thing. I struggled with the order of this for a while, and I landed this way because once I felt like I was attuned to what I wanted to be, I had examples all around me of people who had done this—who had beat their addiction and gone on to great things materially and spiritually. What is it that I have to allow into my life that will help me? What is it that I have to allow out of my life [laughs] that will help me?
It was funny, because coming from a yoga background, especially the background that I’ve had, alignment kind of jumped into my space first. But really, there’s a moment of deciphering, “Well, who’s in and who’s out? What’s in and what’s out?” I’ve never really taken on the 12 Steps because I didn’t feel like I aligned with it, I didn’t feel like I resonated with it so much. But there is an element of people and places that I really appreciate, and that for me is allowing. Who am I allowing near me? Where am I allowing myself to go? How am I allowing myself to spend time? What am I allowing into my space energetically?
Then, once I have all these pieces in place, I can choose how I’m going to align with anything.
TS: Then you move on to acceptance and advancement. I just want to make sure we cover these five A’s. So, acceptance.
EB: You know, you get to the point where you’ve attuned to the best of yourself—you’ve allowed whatever needs to be in, in. You’ve allowed whatever needs to go, out. You’ve aligned yourself in the best way you possibly can with what needs to happen, what is happening—responding rather than reacting. Acceptance comes into play, where you have a chance to really either say, “You know what? I fully accept myself as I am, I fully accept this whole situation as it is, even though it’s not exactly what I wanted or envisioned or imagined. I’m accepting it, and I’m going to choose how I respond to it.”
It’s very practical; it’s not sexy, there’s nothing fun about this. It really is a very practical way of looking at any situation in your life. If you’re listening to this, think of any challenge you’re having right now. You’re going to attune to your highest self—”How would my highest self respond to this? How would my friend whom I respect the most respond to this?”
TS: That’s a good question.
EB: That’s fun, that’s attunement. If you can’t figure out what the happiest moment is, that’s great—I go with that because I have some friends who are just so impressive—who’ve done such great, wonderful things. So I think about what they would do. “What am I allowing in? What am I letting be done from my life?” And then, “How am I aligning with what’s happening, and am I really accepting it, or am I not? Am I still wishing it were different?”
To go back to the example of my mom, I could spend a long time wishing I had acted differently for the first few days, weeks, months, even, of her death. I wished I’d been more in touch, I wished I’d invited her over more. I had all these great plans of having her do some work with me and for me, and all these different things. But then I hear her voice and I know I have to accept [it] exactly as it was, because it was her time and she knows what I was thinking.
The day that she had her heart attack, I took a photo, and it was all my crystal bowls on my desk, and they were—the sun was streaming in, and it was 1:30 in the afternoon, and I thought, “I have to call my mother. My life is exactly as I want it ever to be. I’m sitting in my own house, it’s such a beautiful day. This house, this room, these bowls—this collection of bowls I always wanted in my life—they’re here, and I’m going to call her.” And then I didn’t, and I don’t know why. I was like, “No, I’m just going to hold it for myself. It’s going to be great.” And two, three hours later, she was down, and we had one day to say goodbye, because my dad gave her CPR.
Could I accept that, or could I still wish that I had called? I’m going to accept it. That’s acceptance. Like, really, it is the way it is for a very good reason. How do I move on? How do I move forward? How do I hold that understanding like, “Next time, I’m going to call. Next time I think I’m going to call somebody, I’m going to call them. I’m going to take care of them. I’m going to do what I think to do.” That’s acceptance. It’s how it is. Act well.
TS: And then, advancement—is that the natural outflow?
EB: It is the natural outflow, but what I loved about the way the course ended up is that advancement really is the very simplest thing that you can do to rest your body, relax your body. Think about how you can apply every one of these five principles in the simplest possible way. So, it’s surprising and not surprising that an advanced practice is being able to sit still for a few minutes, really, daily, and really do it.
It’s not that you have to get any more complex; throughout the course I offer all kinds of practices that I’ve used—everything from Sat Nam Rasayan to energy medicine. But really, the most advance practice is just sitting still and being with yourself. So that, to me, is advancement. You could go through this whole course and learn so much about how you respond to different things, but the most advanced moment is just you and you.
TS: When you were talking about acceptance, one of the things I flashed on was how—at the very beginning of your book, Art of Attention—such a beautiful book.
EB: Thank you.
TS: The very first note of the book as I was looking at it—first there’s just the beauty of the book, which is the first note. But the first words are really about forgiveness. And I thought, “What a curious way to begin a book on the art of attention.” I wonder if you can talk a little bit about why you decided to begin the book that way.
EB: I have to say, that book—much of it was not cognitive; it was so intuitive and so natural. When it came down to how to start that chapter—and we knew that chapter was going to be the beginning, “Reduce Tension and Find Forgiveness.” My coauthor Erica Jago and I, we—I would basically just send her the liner notes from the class that I taught on Yoga Glow that she chose as one of the chapters for the book. It was very obvious to us that that was the opening chapter because the whole class—the whole sequence it’s based on—even when things seem to be speeding up around you, how can you maintain a center of gravity? How can you be a center of gravity within yourself?
That happened to be the quote that I read during the class. Then we had this moment where we could decide, “Well, we could put any quote. This is our book now, we can do anything we wish.” And I read over the quote a few times, and I wrote it out in my own hand, and I laid it out, and Erica laid it out—we had a few options in front of us. We’re like, “That’s definitely the quote.” Why? Because to start anything, anytime—at least in my own experience—the first thing I have to do is forgive what I think it should have looked like, it could have been, it should be. Just forgive myself for failing in any way; start from a place of forgiveness, and then everything is possible. It’s like a huge field of potential.
For so many years, I couldn’t forgive myself for anything. I couldn’t forgive anything I was doing. I was so disappointed with myself for myriad reasons. When I started that book like that, that was kind of the beginning of quitting, even though I didn’t for a couple of years.
TS: Tell me more about the breakthrough of quitting—this, you could call it “the critic being in charge.” How do you activate forgiveness in your life like that?
EB: You know, I just went back to what it is that what I know that I’m good at. When I was a little girl, when I think about who I was at my best—and I’ve done some sort of psychological work to get back to that person and welcome that person in; we’ve all done that to some extent—she’s a little artist. She is afraid, she is the sweetest little girl; she only wants to be loved, she only wants to give love, and she only wants to be understood. When I think about who I am now from that perspective, forgiveness is easy. Like, “Oh my goodness, can you just forgive the many years that you gave your body away, the many times you gave your integrity away, the many times you abused yourself in any way?” Yes. The minute I’m able to call on that in my body, everything is possible from there.
And to be honest, I don’t know how it started. I don’t know—I think it was just enough shame and enough guilt and enough blaming myself and other people for my circumstances that finally I just got sick of myself. I will add that starting around 2000, maybe 2001, I started doing some fourth-wave work with one teacher, and it helped a lot because I had no idea what I was doing, and most of the time I would go and sit with this teacher and I would just cry because I couldn’t muster the words, really. And I was just embarrassed about the week between the last time I sat [there] and cried and now. I did all these things I swore I would never do again, and now I’m back and you’re seeing it, and I’m crying. But enough observation like that of all those ridiculous choices—and let’s call them “misdeeds,” because they kind of were from the perspective of my highest self—I just got sick of it. I was done.
And I really wanted to be this person that I am—I really wanted to have a valuable contribution. I wanted to make a child. I wanted to help somebody along in this world in some way. And now, I get to help many, many people, and that’s such a privilege to me.
TS: I noticed as you were describing you as a pure, young person, I felt so touched by that—touched by feeling that part of you and seeing that in you, and touched by my own deep innocence as well. That’s such a powerful thing for us to tune into.
EB: It is. I’m now wishing I would have added that into the course! [Laughs.] Maybe next time. Maybe next time.
TS: So you spoke, Elena, about what you referred to as perhaps the most advanced practice—just sitting, sitting quietly. I know that a lot of your teaching work has to do with helping people become aware of their breathing. In the Art of Attention book, you have a great quote from Leslie Kaminoff—I love this. “The core of yoga practice works with what is already present to identify obstructions to the breathing and the function of the mind.” What’s already present—to identify these obstructions to our breathing processes.
And then you go on and you teach people practices—and this is just one example, but I thought we could talk about it and maybe you could even take us through it. Which is: how we can activate the vagus nerve. I think this is just really some interesting findings of neuroscience today and how our nervous system works. So, could you talk a little bit about that, and then maybe take us through the practice?
EB: Sure. Sure. Stephen Porges made the discovery—as anyone who is even remotely related to neuroscience knows—[that there are] two pathways—and this vagus nerve is the longest nerve in the body, and it runs all over the place through your body. The lower vagal pathway is in charge of, as you can imagine, all the lower functions—digestion, organs. But the upper vagal pathway is the pathway that, as infants, is activated when we need to identify our caregiver—when we need to identify their voice. It’s hearing, it’s vision, it’s the subtlest facial cues, facial muscle cues. To activate this upper vagal pathway is to literally bring a profound sense of calm to the mind.
When I think about it in the most simple terms—and we could actually go through it right now. If you’re listening, just take a moment to close your eyes if you can, if you’re not driving or doing something important. Invite your chin down the slightest bit, a couple centimeters toward your chest. Then invite your chin back slightly, so you’re activating what’s called the Jalandhara Bandha—it’s something that my teacher Yogarupa Rod Stryker uses a lot in practice to bring circulation to your frontal lobes and literally soften and calm your thinking. As you breathe here, just start taking a few deep breaths, already just with this slight incline of your head, your front brain—which is where all of your creativity, your intuition, everything that is helpful is present and active—all the sort of emergency alerts are now being dialed down, turned off.
So, as you breathe here, you can feel in your body a quieting and a softening, and a different quality of presence. Just take a few breaths there, and you can feel how anything that was just in your space even just a few moments ago that remotely related to some trigger or stressor, has now receded to the background, and in the foreground is your breathing; maybe you’re even smiling. [Breathes deeply.] Your body is slowing down.
Now, holding that, very gently open your eyes. You have the opportunity to bring that state to whatever it is you’re going to next. What I love is that you can take that activation of the vagal pathway into anything. You know? I take it to my kid. When I remember to do this with my kid, and he’s really in this state, giving me a hard time—which happens infrequently, but it definitely happens. I’ll put it to you this way: if I forget, I’m an absolute monster.
TS: I believe you.
EB: Believe me. And if I remember, I really am an angel and I’m so proud of myself. Now it’s like, 75/25 angel to monster, but it used to be the exact opposite. Just to know about the science of it—for me at least, [it] was very helpful to know, “OK, I’m activating the front brain.” I also studied Dan Siegel’s work and Lisa Wimberger’s work. I learned a lot just by understanding how the brain is working when I’m closing my eyes, going inside, and dipping my chin down and bringing my attention inside. It really does help; it really does change everything in the space.
TS: So powerful, the dropping of the chin. Can you help me understand how that simple physiological act has such a powerful effect?
EB: In the simplest terms, Jalandhara Bandha is the throat lock, and what it does is it brings your attention—I probably won’t do it justice, but it brings your attention from the base of your brain. It sort of wraps the circulation up and over so your front brain gets a little more circulation and you can lock off the breath that’s in your torso and be able to have a little more breath capacity here. When Yogarupa teaches it, he always teaches [that] once you have that lock, to then lift the breath up and open up your collarbones just beneath it, so you’re actually getting like the guru—bigger with each breath, and holding that big space.
Combined with the more circulation in the frontal lobes and the large expanse of vast breath capacity in your lungs, you have a very different person than the one who’s doing precisely the opposite things—which is chin out, heart stuck, no breath in the chest, all brain, all face, all yelling. It’s a completely different vibration. My only interest here is in keeping it very simple—and from what I’ve experienced myself, that has been successful for me in the most quotidian moments—sharing that to the best of my ability without making it too complex or heady, because I will go there quickly.
TS: I love these pith instructions, if you will, that are physiologically based, like bringing in the chin. Are there other instructions like that—that really start with the body—that you’ve found are terrific go-to techniques?
EB: Yes. You know, even as little as just sitting here right now and without moving a thing in your skeleton, just spread your breath out in your lungs. It makes you smile! It makes your organs smile. You don’t have to move your body, even though immediately upon my saying that, you want to. But that’s such a nice expanse of space that we don’t actually explore when we’re sitting and having a conversation or sitting at our desk doing work—it’s not something we think about.
The little things like that, I really enjoy finding that in my own body and seeing how it works, and then sharing it. It’s such a context where folks can really benefit from—even just sitting at their desk with headphones on, if they’re listening to this right now, and all of the sudden, somebody is opening up their lungs and they might be nicer in five minutes, when we finish talking, than they would have been otherwise.
TS: Now, you yourself have studied with many different teachers and in different traditions—yoga traditions, other traditions. I’m curious to know if you sometimes have the sense of melting-pot confusion or, “Oh, this is a new contemporary way of embodying what has worked for me [from] many different traditions,” and how you’ve sorted that out.
EB: I have gone through that moment, for sure—well, I even have two mantras from two different teachers. For a long time I used one, and then now I’m using the other. I feel like it makes me more able to serve in the work that I do because my main mission now is to serve the teachers who are already teaching. We have so many yoga teachers in the world, and I don’t want to train new teachers, I want to really serve the ones who are already teaching and help them feel at ease, and really like they’re doing the job they should be doing. I want to share all the different understandings and disciplines that I’ve studied and bring what’s relevant to each group or each teacher.
So, I teach these very short, three-day, five-day training modules. I haven’t done a really long one—I’ve done one 100-hour module, and those teachers are still very close to me to this day. But in those short modules, I’m able to tailor what I offer to each group based on anywhere from San Francisco to Zurich. Based on where I am, based on what’s needed, based on the level of experience that the teachers have, what am I going to offer them? I might offer them this kind of meditation, I might offer them [that] kind of meditation. It really depends.
After a little while, I’ve now come to realize that the extent and the expanse of my studies actually gives me greater range of offerings, which I really like. I find it valuable.
TS: I know one of the traditions that you’ve trained in is the kundalini yoga tradition.
EB: Yes.
TS: I’m curious to know what kundalini awakening means to you, and did you have something that might be called—”Oh, you know, before this point, my kundalini wasn’t awakened, but then after this point, my kundalini was awakened, and here’s how I know.”
EB: I don’t necessarily feel qualified to speak on this; I just want to say, “I don’t know.” What I do know is I’ve had profound experiences with teachers. I’ve had experiences where I’d gotten in somebody’s presence and just couldn’t stop crying for an hour. Is that kundalini? I don’t know. I [still] have experiences like that to this day that aren’t quite as drastic or dramatic—I was much younger then—but I definitely feel connected to the idea that there is something inside of each of us that either awakens or doesn’t.
It’s not to say that there’s some superior entity that could awaken it for somebody and this person who doesn’t have that energy awakened in them is inferior. I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying that at some particular point, each of us makes a choice; we put ourselves with teachers, we choose to be students, we ask for help, we ask for guidance, and whatever [it is], that highest possibility within ourselves gets the chance to be revealed, or it doesn’t.
I like to think about it like that rather than some—I mean, I’ve learned kundalini from kundalini masters like Kundalini Yoga 3HO, but I’ve also learned about kundalini from Yogarupa. He takes it very, very seriously. There is that energy that is coiled up at the base of the spine; it is something to be deeply respected and cared for and observed and trained.
So I could come at it from many different sides, but really from my own personal heart, I feel that I definitely have had those experiences. I don’t know if that makes me in any way more qualified to talk about it; as a matter of fact, I don’t think it does. But I definitely feel connected to the fact that we all have this potential energy—either we choose to put ourselves in the way of great teachers to help us unravel it and unpack it, or we don’t, and it’s fine. Everyone is here to do what they’re here to do.
TS: Now, just in terms of digging in a bit to your personal biography, it’s interesting to me that you went to Cornell University and got a degree in design, and then from that point, you somehow later became a yoga teacher. Then your love of art has come back into your life in so many different ways. Let’s just go back to getting a design degree and how you became a yoga teacher. How did that happen?
EB: I was working in textiles and apparel for a really long time—six, seven years—long in terms of being in your twenties, not that long now. I was living in Italy, and I was sitting by myself one Sunday evening at like 5 [PM] in this beautiful apartment on the Po River. I had everything, it seemed, but I was alone and I felt like I wasn’t doing what I should be doing. I’ve since read a couple of books and—it was my zone of excellence, but not my zone of genius. Let’s put it that way.
I decided that I wanted to come home and I wanted to serve—I didn’t know how. I looked into it and I realized that maybe it would be a great idea for me to learn how to teach art to children. So, I went to the New School, and for half the year I taught 10-year-old kids at City and Country in New York, [and] half the year I taught at Bank Street—littler kids; 5, 6, 7. I had the best time, but I also knew that wasn’t my zone of genius.
Somewhere mid—the second half of the year, I went to take a class at a gym with Cyndi Lee, who proceeded to then open OM [Yoga] later that year. This was in 1997 or 1998, so it was a long time ago. She—at the end of the class, I was smitten with her because she was using everybody’s name, and it was a very full class and she knew everybody. There was something so familiar and comfortable, which really took me.
I went up to her and I said, “I want to thank you. That was just so different and comforting and lovely.” And she said, “You know, I’m going to do a teacher training. I’m opening up a studio, and I’m going to do a teacher training. Would you be interested in exploring that?” She handed me this piece of paper with a bunch of questions; it was an application. I took it home, and then for the next two days, all I did was make art pieces to answer each of the questions. Then I knew that this was something that I should be doing. I had been practicing yoga for probably five years, six years.
So, I started her training and by the time I came around to teaching a sample class and considering if this could be a real, viable option for me as a career, I didn’t know that it would—I didn’t know that yoga was going to become what it is. There were no studios in New York; she was the third yoga studio in New York aside from Dharma and Jivamukti. That was it, and then Cyndi, OM Yoga.
I just enjoyed it; I enjoyed taking the learnings that I had acquired from teaching the children and having the challenge and the risk of teaching my peers—keeping their attention and inviting them on the journey that I so loved of yoga. I got—my classes started to get bigger, then it turned out that I wasn’t really, really actually doing what Cyndi needed me to be doing in terms of her particular sequencing and vibe, so we parted ways and I started teaching elsewhere. Then the classes just got big, and it all kind of happened. I opened up my own studio a couple years later. Suddenly, I didn’t need to freelance anymore. I had been freelancing designing textiles for a while, and I didn’t need to do it anymore because I was making enough money to support myself at the time with privates and classes and some workshops, and things like that.
That’s kind of how it happened. I feel like it was more of a timing thing for me, because I started when it [yoga culture] started.
TS: Interestingly, you were also going through your zone of genius. You—something inside you said, “I’m going to keep going until I find that.” And that’s interesting to me, even the importance that you put on this idea of your home frequency and that purity in you as a young person that you could remember. It’s just interesting that you had some kind of homing instinct to that part of yourself.
EB: Yes. Yes. Which is how I can accept everything that happened with my mom, because I know that she was only always tuned into that in me.
TS: Hmm. When you say “accept everything that happened with your mom,” what were you referring to?
EB: Meaning that at the very beginning, right after she died, I was so regretful of the fact that I hadn’t been more present with her. She would’ve loved me to be seeing her once a week, and I was really seeing her maybe twice a month, maybe once a month. “A lot going on,” quote unquote, but really I could have given her more time—and to accept exactly how it was, because the time that I did spend with her was just stellar. The last few visits we had were just excellent. Even the last time I saw her, I was rubbing her feet, rubbing her arms—it was hurting, her left arm, which is the heart attack coming, and it was like two weeks prior.
But the homing frequency—I’m so glad I found it, you know? I’m so glad that I can sit here with you and have this conversation and reflect. The expert way in which you’re pulling from all the different parts of the interview and bringing it all together like this in a way that I wouldn’t have even done so—I feel so lucky for that understanding. Even that—that my mom was just tuned into that genius—I’m not calling myself a genius, but the best of me.
TS: We talked about your love of art, and how that’s also thread through your life story in some interesting ways. We talked about how, when it was time to break the addiction, you did a 40-day—
EB: Art project. [Laughs.]
TS: Yes, and that that helped you.
EB: On Instagram!
TS: And you know, the book, Art of Attention, has to be one of the most well-designed and beautiful yoga books that has ever been created. What I’d love to know is: from your perspective, how does visual art communicate yogic principles? How do you see that? What are you trying to do in Art of Attention to give people an insight into some of these principles through the visual medium?
EB: I first of all want to start by giving credit where credit is due, which is important. My coauthor on that book, Erica Jago—while I designed the sequences and ultimately had kind of the last word on how things were arranged, these layouts and these concepts and the way in which she superimposed Sophia’s mandalas—Sophia Escobar’s mandalas—over pages—that wasn’t done before, and now I see it being done everywhere. I’m not tooting my own horn, really—I’m tooting Erica’s horn! [Laughs.] It was all her.
When she started to present the pages to me to represent the various practices that we were going to put forth in the book, I started to realize that the way in which we perceive visual has an impact on our state internally. So, as the book started to reveal itself—and it’s kind of a time warp when you’re talking before the interview actually started about your paths, and you were saying how you feel like those five years of your life you don’t even remember—that time of designing this book was like that for me.
It was—Erica was living in Hawaii (she still lives there part time), so I would put my son to sleep at about 8, 9 o’clock, I would go to sleep for three hours with him in his bed, I would wake up at 12—get this—and we would work for three hours from my 12 to 3 am, her 6 to 9 pm. Six hours, it might even be more—it was her evening time, dinner time. That was when we worked. And every single night, as some other spread came through, and I would go over the—I was the editor, the copyeditor, so I would go through that, and we later gave it to Linda Sparrow for the last go-over.
But every night, I would go through and I would see this art and I would think, “Wow, this is going to change the way people visualize the practice of yoga, the practice of meditation, the practice of pranayama. It hasn’t been presented like this.” It’s always a picture of a person on a blank background. I’m not putting it down, but nobody had ever imagined that it should or could be this level of artisanship. What’s the word I’m looking for? Artfulness.
And Erica brought that. Erica brought that. She did such a beautiful job, and I would just get so excited every night. I was so happy to wake up at midnight and work for three hours, because I knew what was happening in my heart. It was a privilege to work on it. Now, since then, she’s gone on to create other projects, and she teaches retreats all over the world. She’s enjoying a great level of success, which makes my day, makes my whole life really.
And I very reluctantly came around to the next project, which you guys are publishing, called Practice You. When Brian [Galvin] came to me and said, “I think we want you to do some kind of a journal. I don’t even know what it’s going to be, but that’s the idea that’s in my mind,” I thought, “Great! I’ll totally—I have a great picture of what that’s going to be, and I think I know who should illustrate it.” He was like, “No, no, no, no, no,” smiling, “It’s you. You’re going to illustrate it. I know that you can.” And I was like, “No, no, no. No, no, no. I really can’t.” And for about 48 hours, he was very clear. It was kind of cool. He just took the command and was like, “Nope, it’s you. That’s what’s up.” I even went so far as to ask this person that I really wanted to illustrate it, and she couldn’t do it; she was too busy.
So, I sat with it for 48 hours like a petulant little kid, going, “I’m not going to do this. I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to do it.” And one day—you know, the homing device was beeping. It was the middle of the night, [I] got out of my bed, went to my floor, took out a whole bunch of watercolor paper, watercolor palettes that were dried up and dusty, a big jar of water, and started reaching my brush into the piles of dried-up paint. You know you can use watercolors forever. And I started painting. And the book was born. That’s was it.
And now, from my hesitation and my reluctance to creating this journal—which has an element of such childlike innocence to it, I feel. But it [also] has the weight of a life—at least 45 years of a life lived. I feel really strongly that this is going to be a helpful book in a completely and utterly different way than Art of Attention was. It’s not a yoga book; it’s not even meant to be a book about meditation. It’s meant to be a journey into yourself—you practicing you. All the prompts are really—they’re not even questions; it’s more of, “Some part of me knows how to heal this. This is how I—these are the habits I’m creating to become my highest self. These are my prayers going up. This is how I pray for softness.” So you’re invited to fill in how you do this, how this is true for you. It was very organic and very unexpected, how it ended up happening.
TS: You mentioned prayers and evoking different kinds of prayers. I’m curious [as to] the role that prayer has in your life and in your work—actually, both.
EB: I start almost every class with a prayer now. When I found—I found a particular book called Prayers of Honoring by an author called Pixie Lighthorse—self-published—my understanding of prayer was really born. I was raised Jewish; I feel very connected to that religion, but I also feel very connected to the mosque that I went into in Istanbul and I feel very connected to the churches that I go into when I’m visiting France or Italy. I’m not discriminating against anything—I really feel connected to any holy space where much prayer has happened. But these prayers really brought me into how I could design and enjoy the act of praying right now, in this skin, at this time in my life, with the world as it is.
Mostly for me, prayer is calling on the ancestors, calling on the great spirits, calling on all the great ones to be with us here and guide us. It’s that simple. So, when I teach, I do that—sometimes out loud and sometimes just inside of myself. But I always find that I’m helped. Something helps me, and it feels like I’ve asked and I’ve received. Every time.
TS: It’s a very simple and direct approach. You’re calling on the ancestors. You’re calling on those who have gone before. Do you have some sense, when you do that, that beings are coming? Or what’s happening for you when you create that kind of invocation?
EB: The best way I can describe it is that when I’m asking, there’s some kind of—I want to say—a descent of a blessing force. There’s an awareness that I am not alone. I don’t necessarily see or feel beings, but I feel helped, I feel led. I feel like a student, and that is probably the most important feeling that I have as a teacher—is that I’m not in charge. That, I think, is what makes the work that I do feel very natural and substantial and valuable.
TS: I notice I feel very at ease being here with you, Elena.
EB: Same.
TS: You’re very—it’s easy.
EB: Same.
TS: I just have two final questions for you. So, here you are, a yoga teacher in high demand internationally—author, painter, documentary filmmaker. You’ve talked about also being a mom, and how—
EB: That’s my best job. Hardest job and best job.
TS: —obviously, how important that is to you. And you know, I think some people say, “Well, you know, does she have it all? Is she torn in seven different directions? What’s it like?”
EB: Such a good question. I’ve had all of these experiences—of feeling torn and feeling like I have it all. Right now, I feel like I have it all. I feel very much at ease. It could be because I’m here and my family is being cared for and everything is sort of happening without me.
But in that, that means that I’ve done some great work to organize my life so that—Jonah’s dad and I—we haven’t been together for five years. We’re now the best of friends, helping each other all the time. His—this is, by the way, what I think is my highest achievement—his wife is [a] soon-to-be very well-known author and working with a dear friend of mine [and is] one of my sisters. She and I have built a friendship that is completely exclusive of everything else in our space, and because of that, I am able to enjoy a week here of working pretty hard, even though I’m well-prepared so it doesn’t feel crazy or arduous. I’m able to enjoy this time and feel at ease and leisurely because all of that work has been done.
And that’s not to mention the fact—here’s a brag, the first time I’m gonna brag right now—is that my partner, whom I met on the street—my partner James—who’s one of the most gifted visual and creative artists that I know. He found me on the street. He waited until I was out of a relationship to cleanly connect with me. And he and my son’s dad are so tight. They love each other so much. All of these little points I’m adding, even though they seem fairly inconsequential, this is what points to me having it all. All these humans are all connected and all getting along, and everything is so harmonious in my personal life.
So, yes, over the course of a day, I have my network marketing business, essential oils, I have my schedule of yoga travel, I have my meditation teaching, I have these courses, I have the book, I have the paintings—everything is happening, but it’s all just happening because my personal life is well-organized and loving. I think that’s my highest achievement, honestly; that’s what makes me feel like I have it all.
And yes, some days it definitely feels like a big jumble of various different revenue streams and jobs and responsibilities. But you know what? If you really think about it and know what’s needed on any given day and organize your time well—which I pride myself on doing—I’m in pretty good shape. I’m cooking my lunch and my dinner and things are going well. I’m very fortunate.
TS: One final question for you. This program is called Insights at the Edge, and I’m always curious to know what someone’s personal growth edge is, if you will—what you’re working on, really, in your own crucible—or Practice You, your new journal—in this sense, what’s Elena Brower practicing?
EB: I’m practicing being consistent with everybody. My son, as I’ve mentioned, sometimes gets a real volatile side of me, which is why I can speak about all this so readily. I’m right there—my edge is: how can I be more consistent when I’m annoyed? It’s that simple and silly; I’m annoyed, I’m frustrated, I’m feeling like nothing is going right, the timing is wrong. I’m such a perfectionist. How can I be consistent in that moment?
And I know this seems very shallow and of no consequence at all, but to an almost 10-year-old boy, to see his mom transition from extremely volatile to slowly and verbally taking him on the ride of me wanting, wishing, and willing myself to be more consistent over time—that, to me, is my edge, and that’s where I think the most valuable insights that I have to offer are coming from—is me showing him my journey, showing him where I fail.
Every single night—and I teach this everywhere I go—every single night when he’s going to bed, I ask him about what I could have done better that day. And I encourage all parents, and even partners, to do this. What could I have done better today? It’s not delving into negativity, really; it’s giving the other person a chance to really be honest about what might have even subtly disappointed them, and clear it out for the next day, just clear it out. Because otherwise, those little disappointments accumulate over time. They accrue and they become moods, attitudes, relationships. So to get them out of the space is a really good idea. That’s my edge—to take his feedback and wordlessly say thank you, and I’ll work on that.
TS: I’ve been speaking with Elena Brower. She is the author, along with Erica Jago, of the book Art of Attention, as well as a forthcoming audio training series from Sounds True called The Return Home, [as well as] a forthcoming book that includes her very own artwork, Practice You, a journal that takes people deep into their own personal inquiry process and development. Elena, thank you so much for being here with us at Sounds True, and for all your deep work. Thank you.
EB: Thank you so much for having me. It’s an honor.
TS: SoundsTrue.com: Many voices, one journey. Thanks for listening.
