summary

In this enlightening conversation, Mark and Jyoti explore the profound themes of self-love, mindfulness, and the healing power of nature. Jyoti, known as the 'Love Whisperer', shares her journey of embracing imperfection and the importance of pausing to reconnect with oneself. They discuss the significance of listening to our bodies, the impact of love letters, and the transformative power of forgiveness. Throughout the dialogue, they emphasize the necessity of self-care and the role of nature as a healer, encouraging listeners to cultivate a deeper connection with themselves and the world around them.

takeaways

• Self-love is essential for personal growth.
• Nature has a healing power that we often overlook.
• Forgiveness is a choice that leads to love.
• Listening to our bodies can guide us to better health.
• The pause in our busy lives is crucial for mindfulness.
• Embracing imperfection allows for true self-acceptance.
• Practicing self-care is not selfish; it enhances our ability to care for others.
• Love letters can serve as powerful reminders of self-compassion.
• We are all messy human beings, and that's okay.
• Connecting with nature can ground us and bring peace.

titles

• The Love Whisperer's Journey to Self-Discovery
• Embracing Imperfection: A Path to Self-Love

Sound Bites

• "The pause is powerful."
• "Self-care is not selfish."
• "Forgiveness brings love."

Chapters

00:00

Reconnecting with Nature and Self

04:30

The Journey of the Love Whisperer

12:51

Embracing Imperfection and Self-Love

16:26

The Power of Pause and Presence

23:21

Listening to the Body and Energy

30:21

The Importance of Self-Care

34:33

Nature as a Healer

39:53

The Impact of Love Letters

44:41

Forgiveness and Self-Compassion

47:24

Grounding Practices for Everyday Life

specialedrising.com

www.lovefromjyoti.com  www.specialyoga.co.uk

https://www.gofundme.com/f/join-rays-respite-care-mission

Hi.

Hi, Jyoti

How are you? Wow. It's so great to see you again. Thanks.

I'm very well, thank you.

Yeah, you too. You too. This kind of fixed the best for

It's so nice to see you again. It's so weird.

There's some people that just get inside you, you know, and I've like missed you. I met you one time, but I've missed you. So I always had the intention of having you back on. was just a matter of the right timing. And this seems to be the right time for me. I wanted to have you on because you're just a you just embrace this kind of energy that I feel like we need all the time. But this season when people are kind of like tuned into a little bit, I thought maybe.

So, we'll

it would be an opportunity to get inside people When they're moving around their lives so quickly and crazy during the regular year, they're not paying attention, but this might be good time for that.

yeah, I'm very grateful to be back with you.

love that room. that a yoga practice room or? It's about, okay.

It's like

little cabin. You know when I do one-to-one sessions or small groups, this is where I do quite a lot of my Zoom as well.

Yeah, yeah, that's fantastic.

Okay. Right, right, right.

Okay, yeah, it looks familiar. It looks very peaceful,

It

is, I used to come in here and you go,

Yeah, exactly. And that's how I feel about when I see you. I just go, and that's what I want to bring to the people today. I want to bring that feeling. And I was actually going to come in and have no questions at all and just say go. But that wouldn't be fair. So I have questions, but I figure we could just start and just then go because there's there's so much to learn from you and you have such depth.

in just the way you present all your ideas about nature and self and It's just beautiful. you don't have to be so eloquent today. I think that's naturally who you are. Right, it just happens. I'm sorry. I'm just really, I'm really excited to see you I'm kind of stumbling a little bit at the beginning here. So ⁓ is that your dog? Who is that?

anything else to be honest. ⁓

Yeah. This

is Micah. He's almost nine and he's my little angel. It was really weird the other day I went to, it's my birthday coming up and a friend of mine said to me, he reads Tarot and he's very psychic and he said, do you want to come pop in? I'm like, okay, fine. And he's got this beautiful obsidian black.

Micah? wow.

Okay.

orb ball so I put my hands on it, he passed it over to me, it's quite big, know put your hands on it and just pray or do whatever you want to do and the dog literally put his head between my hands and he was cropped up with his little face. was amazing. So

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Really?

he was so sweet, and he sits in all of the sessions. There's only one child I work with who's really, it's too obsessive for him to have the dog in there. But apart from that, because he's just there.

But yeah, no, it's totally fine.

Really?

Okay, right.

Yeah, he just emits, he absorbs your energy, right? And just kind of takes, yeah, that's true.

I think I absorb it actually, know, because I think it's

a co-regulation story we've grown on.

Yes.

That's a beautiful love story right there. So I guess before we jump into just about everything, maybe we could just remind people a little bit about yourself and your mission, and then we can go in every direction we want.

Oh, for

is Jody Jo Manuel and I

Go for it.

I think I'm a love whisperer. That's the of avatar that I've kind of imbued and embodying. I have been practicing yoga for over 50 years. But yoga from as well as a physical practice, for me it's more of a...

You

way of being as opposed to something you do. So when I hear all these people that say I do yoga, I say, ⁓ that's interesting because for me, I want to be yoga. I want to be in that energy, that space where I'm connected and I'm united with spirit and my body and my nervous system and you know, all the parts of me are just in alignment. So, and that for me is what yoga is. So I've been practicing for a long time. When I started to teach years and years and years ago, I somehow or another

and I'm still not quite sure how it happened, I've ended up forming an organisation called Special Yoga which ⁓ is a training now. We had a studio in London for 17 years, which is now not there anymore.

We've become a kind of more remote training school for parents, educators, therapists, yoga teachers who want to learn how to use yoga as a therapeutic intervention for children and adults with special needs. And that special needs can be everything and anything from high anxiety to diagnosis of, you know, autism, unusual diagnosis that most people haven't heard of to, you know, very physical complex needs.

everything that you could possibly imagine in the middle. And what I realized in doing that is that actually, the reason I call myself the love whisperer is because I think that what we do is we use yoga as the vehicle to impart love. love comes in those kind of, ⁓ love is one of those words that's banded around an awful lot, you I love those trainers, or I love this, or I love that, or know, whatever. But actually, pure love isn't that. I really like your trainers would be probably better than you.

You

I mean, I like my trainers. I don't know. Yeah, I guess I do love them. Go ahead. Same.

I'm not even wearing trainers, I'm wearing socks!

When we really embrace love, it's very unconditioned and it's very unconditional and it's very free. And I think that the way in which we come to work with the children, we're looking at how do we regulate the nervous system, how do we get into that aligned state that I was talking about, how do we use the mind well. At the end of the day, the Yoga Sutras talks about yoga being the stilling of the mind, which for me means being the master of your mind. Very difficult.

thing to do, you know, because the mind goes and pulls us in every billion and one directions all the time and when we start to get stiller in our nervous system the mind changes and we have a little bit more, and I say a little bit more, a little bit more perhaps control or observance of our thoughts as opposed to letting them rule us and so as an evolutionary process as the love whisperer

Absolutely.

I've done a lot of inner work on myself because I think that one of the things that we want to do is to learn how to cultivate our presence so that our presence offers, without doing anything, just in our state of being, we offer a place of peace for anybody.

and the children and whatever else. So in our work at Special Yoga, we look at breath work that regulates the nervous system. look at heart meditations. We look at, you know, obviously tools of movement, breath, massage, sound, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, we like some of the kind of yogery stuff to, but with the intention to bring regulation. And I think that one of things that we don't recognize is how our state matters and how we show up really

Mm-hmm.

matters.

So, and I think we're so busy, people are so busy doing this and doing that and trying to fix this and trying to fix that and you know trying to you know...

achieve things in the world where actually I understand that and I've also been there too and I can go there for sure. But somehow if we can step back we allow a flow of energy to come through us so that we're not doing all the work. There's an energy that can move through us that allows the drive forwards in a more useful, peaceful, graceful...

right.

Right.

I wouldn't call myself

graceful by any stretch of the imagination, but there is that kind of possibility. Ultimately, I guess, I've been a freedom seeker all my life and I've wondered what freedom is. And when I'm coming more more and more to realize as I get older, that freedom is totally about me releasing my inner fears, all of the places within me that hold me back from being fully sovereign and in my power and in my being.

And it takes courage to do that because sometimes we have to face places inside us that, you know, really dirty, marquee, shame, things. But when we do, the other side of that is freedom, for sure. And I'm on the journey like everybody else is on the journey. I'm just very verbal about being on the

Yeah.

⁓

But you're verbal about it, but you're open to it. And I think that too, we get caught up as humans, There's like a system and this rat race, whatever you want to call it, that we immediately kind of get absorbed into. And that becomes kind of the norm that we process through. And it takes a real conscious effort to step aside from that and to think in the manner that you think, because you're a searcher.

Mm-hmm.

obviously, you you're always trying to improve and understand and not everybody is built that way. But I understand that this really would be the way towards a more peaceful world with ourselves and with each other.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. But you know, wherever anybody is, they can take steps, they can take pauses in their day, they can just take moments of just going, okay, I'm just going to stop for a second and I'm going to feel my feet on the ground. I'm just going to stop for a second and I'm going to take a breath. I'm just going to stop for a second and put my hand on my heart and reassure myself that I'm okay. You know, those little things add up and they make a difference. And when you start to...

Mm-hmm.

do that then you overwhelm the high levels of anxiety. I mean we're living in a world right now that is so anxious, it's so anxious because everybody's trying to get somewhere, achieve something, scared, worried, what's going to happen tomorrow and the only thing that we have for all of us is this moment. If you're projecting into the future it'll be with anxiety, worry, fear, overwhelm, concern.

future that's

not promised.

And we don't know. We don't know exactly. So we're worrying

about something that we don't even know whether it's going to happen or not anyway. And because it always happens that way, so therefore it's going to again and I'm worried about it. Well actually, you're inviting it. Absolute respect. My own journey would teach me, it taught me that that's...

Mm-hmm.

An invitation for it to continue. That's not an invitation for it to change. And if we're looking backwards, then we're with regret, with, you know, again, fear of repetition, of mourning what you've lost, all of those things. And, and I understand that, there's that dance because we're all messy. I mean, we're all messy human beings, you know, and if we can just honor ourselves as messy human beings and stop trying to perfect, whatever perfect is, because I've never done what that is anyway. I don't know what it is.

Yeah,

doesn't exist. It's literally a word that spells perfect, but that's about it. It's spelled perfectly.

And perfect. But also it's usually about what

you've been taught perfect is. You know, concept of it. So it might be earning lots of money, it might be achieving certain things, might be, you know, studying certain things, it might be whatever it might be. And that's what you've told will make you a perfect person. But actually, for me, that's rubbish because your perfection is in your love and your heart.

Yeah, right, your concepts of what perfect is, Yeah.

And we're all perfect. And we're all perfectly imperfect. And we're all imperfect, perfect. you know.

Mm-hmm, perfectly imperfect.

I prefer that, imperfectly perfect. I prefer that. Or perfectly imperfect.

There you go. Yeah. So that's how

I see the world. And so I've ended up writing, I ended up actually written two books this year. One has just come out. It's called 52 Love Letters to You, which I'm super proud of. each letter offers you a moment to pause and reflect on something, whatever that might be, for the courage test.

you

Yes.

Yes, I want to get into that.

Mm-hmm.

how

you live, your thoughts, just inviting the possibility of a little bit more presence and a little bit more peace and a little bit more connection to your divinity and a little bit more connection to love.

What made you come to the place where you wanted to write? And these are letters, each individual letters that you wrote to yourself. Where did that concept come from? Where did you come up with that idea?

I don't

really know actually. I think I started to write it as a narrative book and I thought to myself I can't do this you know it doesn't make sense. I've been talking into camera for a while I've got a YouTube channel called Love From Jyoti and it's had you know astonishingly high amount of views although this was...

Well, that's understandable why. I'm

trying, I want to turn more people onto you.

and it would be good because the subscribers are quite low

but the views are high and I thought well I'll write a book from this and then I tried to write a book and I thought the world doesn't need another self-help book it doesn't and I woke up in the middle of the night one night and I thought I'm gonna write myself a letter

Mm-hmm.

That was it. ⁓

And when you thought that... I'm sorry, go ahead.

And I wrote it as 52

letters, so you got one a week.

I was going to say, did you wake up and I'm going to write myself a letter in relation to I'm going to create a book about letters or I just wanted to write myself a letter and then all of sudden it kind of blossomed into that. Yeah.

Yeah.

It's

really interesting and I opened it the other day. I woke up one morning a few days ago and I was really in a washing machine, know, emotional washing machine and I did some breath work. I kind of sat with what the feelings were inside and did all the processes that I do and sort of was able to kind of get myself into the drying machine, let's put it that way, or the tumble dryer. And as I came out the tumble dryer, I I'm going to just open my book and I opened it and it was exactly what I needed to hear. And that's what's so interesting.

get the feedback that I get off the little talk set that I do is thank you this is exactly what I needed to hear today and so for me those letters are just a way of transmitting that to you.

And like little reminders, right? And yeah.

And in the book there's

a place where you can, each one has a little title and then each at the end of it has a quote and then after the quote there's a little space where you can write your love notes to you.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that's what I love about that. I wanted to ask you where that idea come from.

I

just thought,

I don't know whether somebody mentioned it to me or whether it came to me, I'm not sure how it came, but the whole idea of making it interactive for you, where you could write all your anger out or your annoyance out or you could just write thank you or you could write a letter to you that's relevant to you or you could write about something that's been touched and you, it doesn't matter, or not right at all. It's not a relation obviously, but I think there's that kind of, when you've got that kind of possibility rather than you've read that, now you have to go and find your journal.

Yeah.

Right.

Sure. Right.

pull your journal out, to find it, it's this way.

It's right here. Yeah, because you might have that immediate response

and you want to put it down right away because you might forget.

and inevitably your immediate response

is actually the most accurate because it's not come from the mind, it's come from somewhere deeper inside you.

Right, right, that makes sense.

Yeah, that's your visceral response to an imp, Yeah, I want to, I'm glad you touched upon the pause because I wanted to talk about the pause and the importance of that. And it seems like I haven't read the book yet. I have a friend who immediately bought the book because I turned her on to our first interview and she immediately went and bought the book. So yes, and I'm getting the book myself. is there a theme that runs through it, a thread that runs through it, or each one just kind of addressing all different things?

Thank

I think the

overarching theme is kindness and compassion to you and bringing you back to that state.

And I think that's where taking the pause also kind of leads to that, right? It's almost like a first step.

Yeah, was interesting.

I just finished doing a...

an eight-week course for a charity, a non-profit in UK that supports parents of neurodiverse children. And the first one when I opened it and I went round and I asked everybody to share, if they wanted to, wasn't obviously, it wasn't obligational. And the stories, I mean, if anything could make my hair straight, those stories would have done. Because these mothers really struggle. I mean, they're really, really struggling and they're lost in their kind of psyche.

of distress, despair, overwhelm, fight. And what I know from the work that I've done over many, years is that when we're able to take those pauses and we're able to take those moments, that somehow it de-escalates you, your response. And in the co-regulation world, it then de-escalates your child.

Mm-hmm. Right.

And what I noticed over the eight week period

is that, because every week we did a check in to say, you know, how are you? What have you taken away? And I didn't use a yoga mat. didn't, we weren't, we weren't practicing yoga. We were, I was giving them a lot of different tools and techniques to pause. What might you do in that pause moment? You know, or what might you do when you first get out of bed in the morning? Or what might you do before you get out of bed in the morning? You know, what might you do when your child's about to, you know, knock everything off the shelves in the supermarket?

Mm-hmm. Right.

Mm-hmm. Right.

or whatever it might be, or before you go in and fight with services to try and get you on your child's needs, whatever it is, you know, it's just to come back and regulate because in that state of regulation anything you then go and do is going to be better.

Mm-hmm.

Absolutely. It's a rehearsal, right?

Yeah, and what was interesting was each

one of them took different tools away because it was what worked for them.

Right, because I was going to say, I was going to mention, you know, we're all different, every individual, and we all understand the same ideas differently, right? So how to get across an idea in the way that Jodi understands it to this group of people who understand it maybe in their own way. How do you get that kind of regulation of understanding?

Thanks.

You

talk about the differences in our nervous systems. You know, I have very different nervous system to my children, particularly one of my daughters, you know, who likes everything very ordered and, very, you know, on time and, in a box. For me, that is like the most distressful place for me to be. where I'm like this, and that drives me insane. You know, so just in that place, just between us and our children, we may have different nervous systems. So what works

Mm-hmm.

may not work for you, but what I do know is that what works for you in terms of calming and cooling your own nervous system will have an impact on your child's nervous system because you're their rock.

Yes. And like you talked about your energy, right? And your child picks up that, that, yeah. And I think that that's a great reminder.

Always, always, always. And that's an overriding response

we've gotten from special yoga, people that are, parents particularly, but not exclusively, I have to say. But, you know, anybody that's working with these kids is that, you know, because we're all so busy trying to do for them, we forget ourselves. But we matter, we matter. I mean, how else are the children going to learn if we're not there?

Mm-hmm.

Yes, right. Yeah, and it.

Yeah, that's my constant message too. mean, you're a human being, you deserve as much as your child deserves, right? And you need to have that time for yourself. But it's so hard when you've got so much responsibility. It's more than that. Yeah, well, I am not surprised. So go deeper for me.

But I think it's more than that. I think it's more like... Well,

I mean, I've had this conversation on innumerable occasions where, you know, teachers or parents have come to me and said to me, yes, but. Yes, but. So I switched it because what they weren't able to do was to put themselves first. And I get that. That's not how they were raised. It's not what they believe. It's not how they think it's selfish. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

Whatever story, whatever the story is. So what I did is I turned it around and I said, supposing your tank was so full, do you understand how much more you could serve? How much more you'd have to give? How much greater your ability to be there for your child or children is? And that's the switchboard for a lot of them.

because they're not necessarily able to do it for themselves, but they are able to do it for their children. And if taking care of me means I can take care of you better, then I'm going to do it.

give them a reason beyond themselves. It's interesting the stories we tell ourselves, We convince ourselves. That's such a great point because we're told a lot of stories about how life is supposed to be and how we're supposed to live our lives. And depending upon who that message comes from, we move in that direction, right? But the idea that as humans, we're just born into this world and expected to just go, right? Without any kind of training.

It's like we get to go to school, we learn it. What's that? No,

There's no training to be a human, there? ⁓

there's no training to be human. We go to school, we learn how to read, we learn how to write, we learn math, but we don't learn how to be a human being. And such a foundational thing, like just not even talking about death, right? So we're prepared for birth, but we're not prepared for death. All these things that we fear and all the things that we don't want to look at ourselves. And that's obviously missing.

That's the one that always amazes me, you know, and they talk about it in the yoga philosophy too, but it's the only one thing we know, for sure. mean, not the only one thing, for sure. don't know when, how, or whatever else, but you know, we do know it's gonna happen.

And

Exactly. Why do we ignore it? Why do we ignore it?

Yes, absolutely, we just don't want to face it. But just our humaneness with ourselves and with each other, that is completely ignored. And unless we go and search for it. What was it in your life that made you a searcher?

I

think I always have been. think I always have been. And as a very young child, I come from a difficult background, let's put it that way, where there was quite a lot of abuse in my family. abuse sort of, in different ways. And I was gifted, to be honest, with a voice that would come down and reassure me from somewhere. And... ⁓

Yeah.

I think that's what always has guided me and helped me and I still hear it from time to time. I still hear it a lot actually to be honest. But it's so normal for me, I don't even notice when it's coming now.

And I think that's probably partly what put me on the path. also it's like, and very early on, one of the messages was, is you're here to break the chains of ancestral chains of abuse and neglect and abandonment and, you know, poverty and, you know, all of the blah, blah, blah stuff that most of us will have somewhere in our, an aspect of anyway, in our ancestry. And...

Mm-hmm.

Right.

So, and I loved philosophy at school. mean, I remember sitting in the first philosophy class and they said, you know, do you realise that you might not be here at all? You might be sitting on the back of a bus. And I'm like, what? I could be on the back of a bus and not even be here? Yay! I'm much more on the back of a bus. And it was just the whole concept of the fascination of the mind and the fascination of, just...

You

spirit and how all of that interweaves itself. don't know, it's always just interested me. Much more than anything academic, I'm not academic at all. I mean not at all. I'm not unintelligent but I'm not academic and...

No, you're very intelligent

You you don't have to be academic to be intelligent. No, I'm just saying we don't have to prove ourselves through academics in order to be worth something, right? And to be intelligent. Yeah, I know. I'm similar. When I was a teacher, I didn't like teaching the academics. I was really in it for the human connection and the development, the child development and helping that child discover who they were.

If that's what turns you on, that's great, but it doesn't.

No, no, no,

and help to self-regulate and things like that. The academics was something that I had to do, but I had very little interest in it. I did it.

I bet all this will really benefit

from your presence.

⁓ thank you. Well, my goodness, the lives that you've touched, how do you go about with children that are, If they come into you and they're new to the whole practice, what's the kind of thing that you do initially to try to connect with them? Because everybody's going to be coming to you from different places, right? So is that even a question you can answer?

Well, it kind

of is actually because what I teach everybody to do and whether I teach you online, whether I teach you in person, it doesn't really matter, is listen. And I'm not talking about listen to blah, blah, blah. I'm talking about listen. Listen to connection, listen to energy, listen to the child's body, to the... Communication is so much more than verbal. So we communicate through our eyes, our heart, our movement, our...

touch, a rhythm, And so when you watch a child, will always tell you what they need. You know, is the child going into a corner? Are they jumping? Are they, kind of glazing out? what's the physicality? what are you getting from their physical form?

that's going back to presence, you see. When you're really present, you can hear things that you can't hear when you're not present, because when you're not present, you're in your thinking mind. And when you're fully present, you're in probably the most powerful part of you, which is intuition and beyond.

right? And then you're just there with them so we teach in special yoga a toolbox and actually what's amazing is I'm very excited we've just launched an evergreen course because all of our online courses have been webinar led with times and this means no webinars so it's completely self-learning so anybody from anywhere in the world at any time can come into it so I'm very excited about that and we offer clinics at different times of day and we could arrange other times as well to accommodate time differences around the world.

That's exciting, yeah.

where you can come in and ask questions and be supported and whatever. But back to the question of it's about listening. So we teach a toolbox. I don't teach you a methodology. I don't think you can use a methodology. I threw class plans away in my second yoga class when a blind man and his dog showed up and I didn't expect that, and there was a woman in the class who was terrified of dogs and I'm standing there going, ah, okay.

Hmm. change. Yeah.

So all of a sudden I have to completely adjust, right? And I have to navigate and

support this woman to reassure her that the dog's not gonna go anywhere near her. I have to teach a blind man who can't see me and I'm used to demonstrating. So I'm having to then use language and touch differently. And I realized that she needed reassurance and then there was a bunch of other people in the group as well. So.

Mm. Right.

I threw my class plan away that day because I had to. There was no way I could follow what I meticulously planned out for that day. But what I learned in that moment was, is that when you have a class plan, you're not present.

you're not present to actually what the needs are that are in front of you. So I've never used a class plan since. Yes, we can create a frame. Yes, we can understand how things work one after another and so on and so forth. ⁓ Sequencing would be the language. But we don't need it.

Hmm. Sure.

Mm-hmm.

If you're really tuned in and you're really present and you've really done the practices and you understand them inside yourself, then you don't need them.

so for me it's just be here now and learn. So when I listen and I can see that a child's, you know, for example, might be tapping a rhythm on the wall, I'm going to connect with that rhythm and then I'm going to bring them into probably some other rhythm singing.

Mm-hmm.

because I know that that child can connect to that. If the child's rolling itself up in the yoga mat and hiding in the corner, what I know is that they're gonna need some deep pressure and squeezing before we can start. And so how am I gonna use their body to bring them in and teach them how to give that to themselves without causing any problems? Totally.

Mm-hmm.

It's responding, right? It's responding on your part, right?

When we're married to notes and plans, we have expectations and when they're not met, it throws things completely haywire and we're out of it. Like you said, we're not connected And I agree with you. I have a client too who's very involved and...

daily he's in some sort of pain every day if it's not a headache it's stomach it's whatever it is and you just have to go with that moment you can come in with these thoughts but i come in every day and just like so where are at today you know and how are you doing and what do need and i agree that's how we're that's actually how we honor each other i think than putting these expectations to achieve things that might be beyond them certainly in the moment maybe not forever but in the moment

One

of the things we very much work with is no expectations.

Because expectations create anxiety, you because you expect things of yourself and you expect things of the child and then when they're not achieved you beat yourself up, you self-sabotage your thoughts for sure and then it's going to be much harder to come in because you've already got an attitude about what the child hasn't done or hasn't given you because you want that appellate for you to say I've achieved this. So drop the expectations. I say, you know, I put an intention out into the world every time I do anything that just has made this group for the greatest good.

Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And I never know what's going to happen. And you know, you've got that kind of freedom and there's no anxiety around it. It works.

Beautiful. Right?

unfair is it to the child to put these expectations on them if they can't meet them and then you're disappointed in them. I mean, you just create this kind of just avalanche of negativity in their lives and create more stress, it seems to me.

Thank

I think

that's right and I think that what I've seen from kind of pediatric professionals who have boxes they have to tick and teachers that have boxes they have to tick is that when they're able to put their boxes away and relax and be with the children, those boxes are more get ticked

Yes.

Are you able to communicate this to parents in a way that they're able to respond?

Mostly,

I mean, you know, can't guarantee that, know, not everybody's...

sure, not everybody, do you have, I was gonna

say do have an idea? No, we just talked about having a plan. ⁓

you

not everybody is going to respond

to my madness, know, or might be seen as my madness. But I've been doing this for a long time and I know it works and you know, more and more and more and more. And I just came back from Mexico a couple of weeks ago and I taught a training there and you know, the beginning of the training was a weekend where we had, I don't know, an additional 10 mothers. Actually it was a couple of fathers as well. And the feedback that I got just from those two days from them was amazing. You know, I had one mother that said,

had asked about that.

slept for ten years, I finally slept and literally hugged me. You know, and I met her child, you know, and I could see that actually her state was...

my goodness.

It was almost allowing him and encouraging him to continue to behave badly because it was an expectation that would keep happening. And as soon as she relaxed and let go, he shifted. And then another mother had some tools when the child, she'd take the child to a restaurant and he went into a meltdown or whatever, and she just managed differently and the meltdown stopped fast and they ended up having a lovely meal together. And Noona messaged me to tell me the story and thanked me.

you

I don't know, it feels to me that that's what we need to learn how to do is to relax and be here. And it's hard, it's not easy because it's not what we know. And it's not, for so many of us, it's not a natural response because we're so used to living in survival and higher alert. But that's why we get sick, that's why we're on medication, that's why we're falling over, that's why in some cases why, you know, it's worse for our children.

Right. And we stay in that state because the powers that be want us to be in that place. ⁓ So the medicine continues to roll. That's a whole nother conversation. ⁓ I mean, we know it. It's the elephant in the room. But yeah, we won't have to go into it. ⁓

I'm not going to go to a political conversation I'm not going to go to, but...

But

I know that even the very little bits, just very little bits, just stop and take a breath. Stop and feel yourself. Because when we're in overwhelm, we've disconnected from our bodies. And when we're highly traumatised, we've disconnected from our bodies. When we're anxious, we've disconnected from our bodies because we're all inside our heads. So if we can just find very gentle...

ways of just coming back, just for a moment. You know, that connection of how your feet feel on the ground, that breath, that, you know, give yourself a squeeze, give yourself a hug. Just little, and it's little things, but those little things add up and make a difference.

They do. And I can speak from personal experience. I had an anxiety disorder and when I was going through it, prior to it, I was a painter and I used to see the world in terms of paintings. I'd see images and I'd think of that as a painting. And when I was in this place for the period of time, that was completely, I didn't even remember that it was a possibility. And then one day I remember being calm and all of sudden it happened again.

And I thought, my goodness, I've been missing this. This has been, this has been such a big part of my life. And this anxiety, this disorder took it away from me, know, kind of stole it from me. And so I know exactly what you're talking about when you say that. When we're in it, we were missing the world around us. We're missing life.

Thank

and you talk about the power of nature, could you talk a little bit about that? Because I think it's really important.

I'm quite privileged. I was born and raised

in London and I've always liked the sea. The sea's been my happy place. And you know, if my parents ever took me to the sea, they couldn't get me out of it. Must have been a mermaid in another life or something. Well, I was swimming every day and I've been back from Mexico, I haven't braved it back yet. My body's still cold. I can't walk.

⁓ Do you still do your do you still go swimming every week?

every day.

Gotcha.

I'm going to go at the weekend and I'm going to go to a sauna that's by the sea so I'll get them that way as well. Apparently about nine degrees.

How cold is that water right now?

⁓ You're amazing. Anyway, yes.

I need to remember what it was like. anyway, circumstances

in my life invited me to move, know, or gave me an opportunity where I could move. And so I ended up moving down to the coast, you know, nearer nature and everything slows down as soon as you're out of the main cities anyway. And I just found that walking on the cliff top where there's, you know, bushes and gorse and, you know, plants and then there's the sound

of the sea and everything goes okay okay and I think nature's our great healer and you know the you know the more kind of hippie-ish people would say take your socks off and walk barefoot and they're right because what happens is underneath the earth is a crystal grid and

So if you think about, you know, just allowing yourself to stand on the earth, you're actually taking the energy of the earth, which is blocked by shoes, for sure. and usually they're synthetic anyway, and or some aspect of them will be synthetic. So there is something really powerful about being in nature. You you've got your tree huggers. You might think they're bonkers, but actually the trees have wisdom. They hold energy, and, if you just

near a tree, even have hug it and breathe, you'll breathe in all the energy but they're emitting what we need, they're emitting all of the pieces that we need in order to really feel healthy and well in our being.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

trees are alive, right? They communicate with each other. So they have something for us,

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, there

are amazing documentaries out there about how mycelium, you know, it's like the underground networks of the world. It's amazing. It's amazing. And you know, we forget how powerful nature is. And if we just allow ourselves to be near a tree or, you know, look at a tree, know, green as a colour is very healing. It's the colour of the heart, actually. ⁓ It's you feel reconnected somehow. So for me, it's amazing.

Mm-hmm.

I mean I'm privileged to have a dog, I live at the of my road there's a little field, the field if I walked a little bit further would take me down to the sea. I mean I'm very privileged in that way. But even in London, you walk down the road and there is a tree somewhere, there's parks, so go to them, go to them. Honestly, for me makes the world a difference.

It's beautiful. Yeah.

Yeah, certainly there's with plenty of trees.

I find a lot of peace in just looking up at the sky, know, just looking at cloud formations and just getting taken by that. One of the interesting things with my client, when we do take walks, he's a boy that his chin is basically stapled to his chest, right, typically. When we're out walking, his head is straight up, he's looking at the trees, he loves to look at the tops of the trees.

beautiful.

And I'm like, that's so telling, right? It's just a natural thing. This boy that has so many distractions and suffers so much on a daily basis, he's out there and he's connected to this nature. And I want him out there more. I think it's just something that's missing. And I hear your message loud and clear and I agree with you. And I think that people that get trapped in the cities, they don't think about it enough or they get maybe not even think about it, maybe want it and they just don't have the time to get to it.

Yeah.

Yeah, go find a tree on the corner if you can, right? Or just look up in the sky. It's always there.

It was

interesting, I visited one of my daughters who living in Northern California at the moment and I visited her on my way to Mexico and we didn't have a car for the first 24 hours and so we had to walk everywhere and no one walks anywhere. No one walks anywhere and she's looking at me, mum no one walks anywhere. Everybody gets in my car and I'm like why?

We're missing out, Jyoti

I I get in my car

as little as I can and I walk as far as I can most days, you know. It feels better.

Yeah, and

it does feel better. And when you're in the city, you can walk everywhere. There's no reason to have to get in a car, There's actually more reason when you're in the more rural areas, but walk. I agree. One of the questions in line with the pausing

Good.

What do you hope shifts in people when they're reading your book, right, the 52 love letters? What kind of shifts are you looking for people to have with those letters? Have you thought about that as far as what the impact might be for people?

I have a little

bit. Not many people have read it yet because it's literally just come out and a few people, literally a couple handful of people looked at it beforehand and before it was published because I had one copy. And what was interesting was that people went, ⁓

Mm-hmm. Right.

Share that around.

It was that... ⁓ And on another occasion it was, wow, that's really interesting, that's really given me something to think about. That was from a 26 year old boy reading the one about unconditional love. I don't know why, don't know what that touched. I don't need to know.

Hmm.

Okay.

Right, because you don't know his background. Right, exactly.

But I think it's,

Right.

for me, it's really about an invitation. It's actually an invitation to just connect back to you so that you can start to find some of your innate joy, love, connection and peace. Because the world would be a better place if everybody was able to do that.

For sure. Yeah, that self-compassion, that having empathy for yourself, And that self-love. And if we don't have that, it's really hard to do that for other people, I mean, I think some people forget themselves. I know plenty of people that just put everybody else before them and they forget themselves. So they've got the compassion and empathy for others, but they don't have it for themselves. But I don't think you really understand it until you have it for yourself. I really don't think you truly understand it,

That's my feeling about it.

And even for me,

know, there are depths and layers in it anyway, you know. And some days I feel it more, some days I feel it less. That's okay, that's part of being human too.

Sure.

Yeah, because we are hard on ourselves, even when we understand, even the higher level of thinking, we can still be hard on ourselves, right? I mean, it's impossible not to be.

Where did I

take those spells from?

Where? ⁓

So you have, you are working with children still at this point.

Yeah,

don't, because I travel a lot. I don't have a large roster of children that I personally see. I see more children when I'm running training programs, to be honest, than I do in my day-to-day life. My goal moving forwards is to move out of the UK and be, know, my base somewhere warmer, which I'm working towards, and to travel from there and perhaps to set up a non-profit around...

around me that would then facilitate being able to be of greater service in places where there really isn't any money, know, like parts of Africa. I mean, I get calls from so many people from so many places, from Cambodia and Ethiopia and here there and, you know, and even in parts of Mexico, to be fair. And, that resources, I'm, I'm not a rich person. I mean, I'm rich in many ways, but I'm not, you know.

Yeah.

No, I

understand. In order to be able to travel, you had to need funds,

it costs money

and then I can also put other people out to do it as well so that there's a wider range because I'm not going to be here forever and I want to build up more people behind me and I have a lot of teachers I have to say but there's always space for more to be able to follow your calling within this context of this work.

that's wonderful.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, so you have

travel to where I want to go or where I can go and speak as much as I can about love because I feel it's really important and about pausing and just being in the moment and being the love whisperer whispering love moments to you in your little ears and to... yeah.

Yes, love letters.

Can you

talk about the love a little bit more in terms of how people can attain that for themselves when they feel like they're so behind, when there's such an accumulation of responsibility and years of learning and needing to be retrained in how they look at the world and themselves? Does that make sense?

Well, of the... Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.

⁓ I did a Masters in Spiritual Science this last year as well, that was the other thing I did. And... One of the practices that I really took from that whole training was self-forgiveness. And I don't think we do enough of that. You know, I think we're too quick to beat ourselves up rather than to forgive ourselves. And in that space of forgiveness, we let go. And in that space, then love can come.

Because if you're in that self-deprecating, self-sabotaging,

putting yourself down, feeling unworthy, feeling unloved, feeling unmet, feeling whatever you're feeling. You know, we've all got aspects of all of those things anyway, because we've all got wounded children, you know, that are, you know, connected to all of our archetypes anyway, in each of them and beyond the real wounded child. Then that's the language that we're going to be hearing. So that's when we listen to the language and we go.

Absolutely.

I have a choice, I'm going to forgive myself for all the places where I've judged myself. And there's something very powerful. Yeah, and I think there's something very powerful about choosing forgiveness, because once forgiveness comes, is love. It's just there.

think that's so key that we have a choice.

It's very interesting forgiveness, because we tend to think, ⁓ somebody does something to us, therefore we have to go and forgive them. But it actually doesn't work that way, because usually we need to forgive ourselves.

Hmm. And there's a healing that comes with that.

healing,

huge healing comes through. And you can really go into that, I forgive myself, I forgive myself. And then love, know, love is an energy, love is the energy of the universe, you know, but we can't hear it because we're too busy trying to do, be, exist, function.

Yeah.

dysfunction. I don't know whatever we're trying to do. I don't think we try to just fundamentally dysfunctional. but I think love is the, you know, know, love is the purest energy that exists on this planet. For sure. It's purest form. Because it's, it's just there.

and in that present moment we can just be here and it's almost like a smile, you know, except it's more than a smile.

⁓ That's a perfect way to put it. And you know, we can express it through our kindness for each other, If we have more kindness, it's just what a difference it makes. What a difference.

But it's very easy to be kind

to other people. But are you kind to you?

Hmm, absolutely not. I mean, yes.

That's always my question, know, where are you in this picture? And that's why self-forgiveness as opposed to forgiveness of others is actually more valuable

Totally. Yeah. Right.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, mean it comes back to, it starts with us, right? All of it starts with us first before we can, yeah, absolutely.

You must say it matters. You matter.

Everybody matters. so even being able to put your hand on your heart and say, I matter, and really mean it, in whatever way you can accept that in this moment in time, keep doing it.

Absolutely.

Hmm.

Yeah,

yeah, until you believe it. The last thing I want to ask you is before we talk about how the people can get your book, it's just what do you do to ground yourself personally when it comes to those moments where you're feeling a little. At a joint.

Well,

I have a number of different practices. I really like shaking through my body and really making a lot of sound when I'm doing it. I put loud music on and I literally shake it all out, you know, until I'm sometimes I'm crying, sometimes I'm screaming, sometimes I'm laughing, but just, know, and I can do that for two minutes, one minute, three minutes, five minutes, 10 minutes, whatever. That's one practice I do when I'm really, you know, when everything feeling like this, I just have to, you know, I'm close to explosion. Let's put it that way.

having a new.

a way of releasing and moving energy because emotions are just energy in motion so if you can move the energy it shifts the the sense of the emotion it doesn't you know we don't get rid of anything we just transmute it and work with it and

Right.

Yeah,

Yeah, so

now that you're right.

that's one way I do it. Sometimes I need to move. Sometimes I need to literally go marching out for a walk. Sometimes I do yoga. I literally do a strong physical practice or gentle physical practice actually. Sometimes I lay down and just do breath work. Sometimes I stop for a moment and feel my feet on the ground and just put my hand on my heart and reassure myself.

Sometimes I put my hand on my heart and do a heart meditation where I'm just inviting myself to reconnect with myself. So I have a lot of different tours in my toolbox. Every one is on where my energy is.

Right, kind of know what you need in that moment, It's your response to yourself in that moment. I'm so glad we ended on that because that's really so a wonderful takeaway for people to practice How can people get your book?

Thank

⁓

You can buy it through my website which is www.lovefromjoti.com If it's not sending you to be able to purchase it then email me and I will sort it out. ⁓ When you self-publish or when you're of on my messiness, is very early days for me, I'm learning my way through this, but there are boxes of books on my landing.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Well, I'll be having you send one my way soon. I will put the contact in the show notes so people can have that.

you

Yeah, it's www.lovefromjoty.com.

And then next summer there'll be another book coming out which is about parenting the special child. And that'll be coming out through a UK-based publisher but we haven't got a publishing date yet and we haven't agreed on a title. but they've approved 90 % of it so I'll just send the last bit in and wait for there.

Okay. ⁓ Yes. Yes. Okay. Yeah.

nice.

You

It's gonna be a take.

Well, you don't need to have a book to come back on, it's another great reason to have you come back and we can talk about that. absolutely. As long as I'm doing this, you're gonna be here at least once a year, if not more. So I need you in my life and I feel so lucky to know you, as I know many, people in this world do, because literally the world knows you. And ⁓ you do have grace and you may not feel it, but you do.

Thank

Okay.

and your energy that you emit to the world. ⁓ I'm just so grateful for you. And I wish you all the best. And I'm here. Yeah. And if I can do anything for you, I'll be happy to promote your book. And I'll continue.

Thank you.

And also just to say that if people

want to study at Special Yoga, it's at yoga.co.uk. And as I said, we've got this evergreen course now. if you're US, because I'm imagining a lot of your audience will be US based, time is not relevant. You can come any time. The course is on our website, ready to purchase.

Yes.

Okay.

Mm-hmm. Okay.

Wonderful. Do you do any of these courses via Zoom for people too? Your other courses? You do. Okay. Good. Okay. All right. Well, I'll post all that information and thank you so much for your time today. I just, couldn't wait to see you today and I'm so excited. I don't want to let you go, but I know time is of the essence.

Yeah, there's a zoom option and a non zoom option.

Thank you.

God bless you. Thank you so much for being here. I can't tell you

how much I appreciate being invited. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

⁓ It's my joy, my joy. All the best in the season and always and I'm gonna get the word out about the book.

Thank

you. And to all the families and people that are listening. I wish you peace and I wish you find a pause.