Study YOGA

TRANSCRIPT

PERSIA JULIET

Amy:

Welcome to the Study Yoga Online Summit. If you are seeking beyond the sea of superficial yoga, flooding your feed, yearning for insightful conversations and community, or are a sincere seeker devoted to the depths of studentship, then this study Yoga Masterclass series is the nectar that you need. Persia Juliet is a yoga teacher, trainer, mentor, and founder of Soma Chandra Yin yoga teacher training with more than 19 years of teaching experience. Her passion for teaching is greatly influenced by energetics such as meridians, chakras, and energetic subtle anatomy. When teaching, Persia’s attention leans toward theming to topics such as the deities and Chinese medicine. Persia has been teaching yoga for two decades across Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and Bali, where she currently resides teaching both in-person and online courses, including her signature 50 hour Soma Chandra Yin teacher training alongside yoga teacher mentoring, and her latest offering, Myth Mantra Movement. Welcome, beautiful woman. It’s so great to have a slice of your time today.

Persia:

It is such an honor. I have been following you for years and gobbling up your posts like they’re delicious snacks!

Amy:

You’re the sweetest. You’re the sweetest. I’ve been loving you for years too, back in good old Sydney days, long time ago, long time ago. So let’s talk, your latest creation Myth, Mantra, Movement has in some way influenced our direction of the conversation today. And you’re sharing with us the nectar of sacred stories and the medicinal nature of mythology, particularly through the lens of Hindu storytelling. And I’ve personally observed some teachers, yoga teachers, who are not sure about the word mythology as it can imply something that is false, a myth. And this is because mythology holds really eternal truths in the teachings that come through those stories. So there is truth there, but the word mythology, I looked it up in a dictionary, and really it actually relates to tradition law and legends, which all hold a really mystical allure and potentially illuminating revelations. So would you like to begin maybe by sharing with us a sacred story that will reflect this timeless elixir of storytelling?

Persia:

It would be my honor. So I’m going to invite you, Amy, and all the listeners at home, just to take a moment, lean back somewhere comfortable, let your eyelids rest down, feel your sit bones on the floor and your feet relaxed on a soft texture. I invite you to take a deep breath in, and a long smooth aaaahhh, as we travel back in time to a beautiful journey, and traveling way, way back on a day that is Ganesh’s birthday. And on this day, all the deities and the local town loved Ganesh so deeply that they wanted to put together a wonderful feast, a banquet in Ganesh’s honor. So Ganesh, very excitedly went with his trustee, Mooshika, the little mouse, and together they journeyed to this wonderful banquet in the warm light of the sun. When Ganesha walked in, he saw a particular table just laden with beautiful silk cloths and filled to the brim with Modakas.

Now, Modaks are ganesha’s favorite, sugary sweet. You could liken them to a donut stuffed with jaggery root and fresh grated coconut. So without being too social beelined for the table and took his beautiful trunk and started to pop the modaks in his mouth, savoring the sweet taste, one by one by one, Ganesh almost fell into a trance of this sugary blissful high. And when the moment passed, he suddenly stopped and realized, oh my gosh, he’d eaten the entire table. He looked down and saw his big, beautiful belly was just swelling in a bloated over fullness. And Ganesh actually felt shy. He felt a little bit embarrassed that he completely lost himself in the moment and cleared the entire table with nothing to share with anyone else. He was too shy to be seen at the party and even too shy to leave. So he hid behind the table for a long while, waiting for the sun to set and the moon to rise.

When that moment came, and it was the cool darkness of night, his trusty friend Musika squeaked at him and said, Ganesh, it’s time to go. I’ve got you my friend, step onto my back. And together this giant elephant put his little hooves on this tiny little mouse, and they snuck off out the side door of the party and began their journey back through the forest and on their way home. Now, halfway through their journey, the great serpent snake, Vasuki, popped out from behind the trees. Of course, snakes eat mice is their dinner. So poor little Musika had a scare and squeaked and went on his hind legs. And as he backed up on his hind legs, Ganesha went flying through the air. Ganesha hit the ground with a really strong thud, and the impact was big enough that all the modaka went flying out of his belly and hit the ground.

Mortified, Ganesha started to scramble and grab all of these little sugary donuts and put them back inside of his belly. And as he was doing this, he heard a very cold, snide, silvery laugh. This laugh was bellowing from the sky and all around him, he didn’t even have the courage to look up at this point, and he just grabbed the snake with his hands, wrapped it around his belly, and fashioned the snake as a belt to hold everything in, but also to represent his own fearlessness. He swung his eyes up to the sky, and there he saw Chandra, big and full staring down at him, just laughing. I mean, this episode was way better than Byron Baes on Netflix. Way more hilarious. So Ganesh feeling just rather mortified, insulted, embarrassed, yelled back at the moon, “moon, you think you’re so perfect and beautiful and round and full, I will show you, and I curse you for laughing at me”. And in that moment of anger, temper, and passion, Ganesha broke off one of his tusks. As he hurled his tusk at the moon, he yelled with all of his might, “moon, you will never ever be whole again!”

And it said, the moment that Ganesha’s tusk went bang and impacted the moon, this is where today we see the crater on the full moon light like a scar in the night sky. And the impact of ganesha’s tusk was so strong that the full Chandra, the full moon fractalled out and this fractalling out created what is now known as the moon phases, that there is a dark night once a month with no moonlight in the sky, that that dark night slowly builds and builds the crescent to the half, to the full, and then wanes its way back out again for the dark night to return.

Now, the story would be cut short if it ended here. So after this very, very impactful evening, which yes was on Ganesha’s birthday and happened to be when he was rather young, a little bit more immature in his experience of life, well many, many, many moon cycles later, Ganesha was approached by a very, very revered sage. And the sage asked him to be the scribe, his writer of what was going to be a download from the universe, a download that is now known as the Mahabharata. And when Ganesha was approached, his initial response was actually to decline, who am I to be a vessel to scribe such an important text? And it said at that very moment, the wise sage handed Ganesha back his broken tusk. And he said, with this, my friend, with this, and together they created a piece of poetry, of beautiful, significant art that impacts the lives of many. Still today. I invite you, wherever you are listening, just to come back to your breath, if it’s paused, to come back to your beautiful body, to allow your belly to relax and open so softly that you too have ganesha’s belly. And perhaps it’s not about being stuffed with donuts, but it’s about becoming big enough to hold the entire universe within your central body. But when you feel ready, I invite you to blink, open your eyes, come back into this space. As we continue the journey of conversation and possibly how the story impacted you at home. And you, Amy…

Amy:

That’s beautiful. Thank you so much. Just delightful. It’s definitely one of the stories I have actually not heard before, so that was a real treat. I appreciate that so much. So I’d love to take this storytelling focus here into a more personal realm, let’s say. And so recently you shared on Instagram your own personal experience with stories through your relationship with your father. And so I’m just wondering if you wouldn’t mind sharing a little bit about that with us here as a means to demonstrating how stories hold the potency for healing and connection very much in the turbulence, the realistic turbulence of our lives.

Persia:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, to give a bit of background and to preface, I’ve asked my father permission to speak publicly about our history as well because it is personal. And as a little one, as a little girl, my dad was not around at all. He split when I was not even one years old. And quickly after he split, he really went down a dark hole of heroin and drug addiction. So I mean, that was my first sort of 20 years with my dad was him being an addict. And as a little girl, I’m sure you can imagine how deeply I yearned for my father, for a male presence, for companionship, safety, and also guidance, and I just didn’t have it.

So I would find that when I would get to see my dad, there was such a hunger in me and a high emotion of trying to figure out why didn’t he love me enough. And if he loved me enough, surely he would quit drugs and that our love would be strong enough for him not to be an addict. So needless to say, our hangouts were fraught with tears and tension and just they never worked out so great. And the change happened when my dad started changing our hangouts to be poetry and songs and story time. So in the few times where we’d hang out in person, he would take me to parks and we’d climb trees and he would tell me stories about how the sun came to be and creation stories about how the earth first started. And it was just a way that I could relax and be with him without all my emotional stories about us as individuals in the 3D world. And now in this modern age today, there’s a lot of research that’s going into the power of storytelling, and there’s something known as heart resonance and also heart coherence. And that when someone is sharing a story through the voice, that if the listener is really attentive, that actually their heart rate changes and it syncs to the storyteller and it brings you together on a journey of the highs and the lows in the story. And that syncing of the heart rate itself just starts to create a symbiosis between the listener and the storyteller.

So yeah, that’s a little extra piece. But basically, I moved countries a lot with my mom every two years. So the only way that I could maintain my connection with my dad is he would put little audio cassette tapes in the mail to us, and those cassette tapes would just be full of Irish folklore tales. He’s half Irish and Ukrainian Tales, he is half Ukrainian. So I got to connect with my own heritage a little bit, which I was completely estranged from growing up. And yeah, I got to listen to stories of banshees and fairies and mighty kings who failed. But within the story, there’s always threads of love, of grief, of loss, but of triumph. And I think somehow it maintained my hope, my imagination, and my dreaming that my dad and I could one day reunite. And I’m very, very blessed to say that that’s true. Yeah, it was the thread that allowed us to stay connected in some way. And yeah, we started doing big repair work in my mid twenties and now in my early forties, getting close to mid, we’re friends. I wouldn’t say that we’re father daughter, but we’re really good friends and we still talk in poetry and story. Yeah,

Amy:

It’s very moving, am deeply grateful for the honesty and the vulnerability in sharing such a personal story and experience. But it just highlights how these sorts of things can be very unifying. They just help us connect with other people. Obviously, the stories of what have helped connect to you with your father, it’s been like the seed of healing that was planted so long ago that even you sharing that story with me and with obviously the listener here, it’s something that is just bringing us together. And when we looked historically speaking, pre the technology we have today, a lot of communities connected through story and songs like stories through songs, and it’s just such potent healing that perhaps we’re so disconnected from. And I suppose for myself too, as a mother of two young children, reading stories to our children is absolutely mandatory every day because science tells us that it also just develops the intellect, our capacity to have socially a greater social intellect and capacity to have empathy.

And yeah, it’s just so important, which perhaps leads to the next direction that we’re going into. And very much listening to you, you have a beautiful voice. I’m sure many people, particularly students of yours have told you that before. But in my opinion, since meeting you and practicing with you in Sydney many moons ago, long time ago, it feels like a bit of a past life, but you’ve not only always been an incredible teacher, but very masterful at theming and sequencing postural yoga classes, even back then. I know that’s one thing that people were so drawn to. They were drawn to you, they were drawn to you, but how you wove just everything that was in your heart and that you’re passionate about into the practice, and particularly for the yoga teachers that are tuning into this conversation, but also for those who would like to have a similar appreciation or direction woven into their personal practice, what are a couple of important considerations or suggestions or tools that you would have for someone so that they can experience a far more wholesome, perceptive, reflective practice within this particular context of stories and storytelling?

Persia:

Yeah, absolutely. And I just want to say how much I appreciate your languaging. I’m really keenly listening, and it’s so refreshing to not be asked, what are three steps to do this?

Because it’s so nuanced. And I think that’s what really excites me today about creating courses to support yoga teachers is intentionally I keep them smaller, less crowded with lots of people because each teacher has their own unique set of gifts. And also, just to go back to the story of Ganesha and the Moon, I really believe that it is our trials and tribulations. It’s our pieces that we might feel are broken because the moment in history where we felt shamed in our lives or we reacted violently in some way due to anger, that it’s that broken part that then becomes your absolute nectar of gold as a teacher because you’ve had direct experience and you bring the full compass of, for lack of better terms, the light and the dark together. They have to come together. It’s not just about the light. And then you get to share with students, practitioners in such a more visceral, tangible, tactile way.

So I just want to start by that. Each teacher is so unique, and where the shift really happened for me is, I won’t mention any names, but I was actually working at a yoga studio in Sydney that had pulled me aside and said, Hey, we love you. Your classes are packed, but please don’t use Sanskrit terms and stop with the mythology and no more deities in your classes. We really want to appeal to the mainstream conservative crowd and just keep it really–they didn’t use the word vanilla, but that’s what I heard. And not just for how we associate vanilla, but also for the colonial aspect of it as well, just take this thing, take out its history, take out its color and its flavor from its source of origin and just make it, this is a movement. And I adhered to that and my light went out. It really did. So that’s when the passion really came in for me of like, wow, what a stark contrast. And at that period of time, I started getting really into Sally Kempton because she was still alive and on Yoga Glo, which was the thing to access knowledge back in those days. And she’s a beautiful storyteller, and her book, Awakening Shakti, got me into stories and opened the doorway for me of the goddesses.

So if I was to give tips, I would even say, start with that book, read through it and notice what particular deity just speaks to your soul. You’ll feel it. It’s like your hair stand up on end, your cells start to tingle. And then to take the next step further would be to explore the Bija mantra, which is very simple. A bija mantra is usually one sound, which is a sanskrit sound. And to practice it at home and to really get into private chanting at home and maybe with Mala 108 times, and then just sit in the aftermath and really steep, let the vibration sink into your body. It’s a nectar. And then from there, maybe write notes from your own imagination. What do you see? What do you feel? What does this vibration mean to you? And then from there, you can start to flesh out practices.

An example, whenever I do the Ganapati mantra, which is longer than the bija, I always feel earth feel grounded. I feel my legs, I feel like I’m home, I’m capable. So that’s how I influence those particular classes. Their feet, legs, hips grounded, I belong here. So yeah, all sorts of things. Saraswati feels very, very different to me. Very fluid movement, rhythm, non stopping voice, speech, poetry. So I know I’m not giving easy, simple steps, and I don’t think it’s meant to be that way. It’s like an invitation to go on the journey of exploring deities and stories, and I guarantee you’ll be chosen, something’s going to choose you, and then just dive in all the way. Yeah,

Amy:

Even mentioning Sally’s book, it reminded me that in the last 12 months, we’ve invested in these very, very famous comic series in India for decades now, the Amar Chitra Katha, they’re like a comic series, but there’s just so many of them. There’s hundreds of them. And we got a big box of them delivered from India, and that’s what we’ve been reading, well, more so to our seven year old. Our two year old’s too young to sit with them at the moment. But yeah, it’s so interesting because they’re the Hindu stories through comic form, so you’ve got the visual there, but aspects of them are also suited to an adult that to the degree that our child has to ask questions, and then it prompts discussion, which I really love. It’s like stories really prompt this contemplation and discussion and deeper inquiry. And also something that I thought of as you were speaking then is the healing power of processing our own stories, like our personal therapy, which you’ve touched on definitely.

But I can’t help but think particularly as yoga teachers, the value in writing out our stories. And then it’s like that journaling and keeping a diary and really writing out almost your life story or elements facing the things that you’ve kind of omitted from the mind, the front of mind, because you sort of don’t want to go there just yet or haven’t created the space to go there. And one other thing on that note that I picked up that I think you mentioned quite recently on Instagram that I feel also is valuable to yoga teachers, but to everybody as well. And that is, it is generally ideal to share your experience or even your trauma or whatever, the darkness and the light when you’re out of it, when you’re on the other side of it, when you’ve gone through it. I don’t know if you want to speak to that because as yoga teachers, we’re human. You can rock up to a yoga class and something really horrible just happened before, and you just have to be in that emotion and it can influence how you teach. But there is this sort of culture, I think particularly on social media to share a little bit too openly sometimes when we’re in the thick of something, rather than coming out of it, being able to share the teaching, the healing from that. Do you want to share anything around that?

Persia:

Well, and just to add to that, this new wave that’s coming through of trauma dumping to sell something,

Amy:

Totally.

Persia:

Wow. So I have to be very mindful myself. I think we’re really influenced by culture and obviously what we’re taking in with our eyes and ears. And yeah, I really have to watch myself that that does not filter in and through. And yeah, look, my greatest learnings have come from my own mistakes, for lack of a better word. So many times in my first 10 years of teaching yoga, I would share way too much personal information with a room full of people. And what I got to see was many, many things. One that people are very interested in your life, especially if you sit up on a podium and you’re a quote-on-quote teacher. And so quite often I would share personal stories that might involve a previous partner or might involve a close friend or a family member, and students would literally see that person in a cafe and be like, oh, I was in Persia’s class and she made this reference about you and this theme.

And then that person would cycle back to me and be like, wow, not okay. And I completely agree. Another thing that would happen is it’s hard to describe, I would call it a projectional hook. So you overshare personally, you overexpose yourself. It’s called a vulnerability hangover, but it also allows students to then connect to you through their own story, and then they’ll project their history, their perception onto you as a bond. It’s not a healthy bond, and it plays out in very, very funky ways. So one thing I would say too, for all teachers is be really mindful of love bombing, because when that bond comes, honestly, usually after class, that’ll be the relationship of that student love bombing you. And if you as teacher take that on as your identity and that you are so wonderful, it gets even more sticky and icky. So always remember the practices, the practice, the teachings themselves hold the power.

And I hope that as teachers or instructors, we become conduits and vessels, but that you don’t get lost and think that your identity and who you are is what you’re sharing, if that makes sense. Yeah. So for me, student-teacher, I don’t love that labeling, that relationship became very clean and healthy once I switched to storytelling, mythology, cosmology, astrology. And what I started doing was obviously still having a wild, full robust human life. That’s what I want in my life. I want the experiences. I don’t want to avoid it. I am a householder. But then to speak in story time. So look, this is a slight overshare, it’s a vulnerable example, but I’m happy to share because it’s process. I had a miscarriage eight months ago. It was very, very massive for me in my own personal journey. And at that time I felt like I had to keep teaching. So my classes became about Parvati and her deep, deep longing to be a mother, and they became birth stories of Ganesha and of grief, and of rebirth, of hope, of creation. And it really helped me be with my emotions, but in a global story where so many other people could identify in their own way with their own experiences of life without me, blah. It’s universal. Yeah. So I love that. That’s the way I teach these days.

Amy:

And it’s so much more enriching for everybody, really. And it’s not as heavy. It’s turning that darkness into light. But I have to say, there’s got to be definitely discernment at play here, because you mentioned the miscarriage you had. And I think that there are instances where sharing this kind of stuff is very medicinal because, I mean, context always matters, but women often suffer in silence through miscarriages. And I think sometimes by sharing that this has happened, it normalizes it because it’s actually a really common thing, and it helps us have the strength of other women around us. There’s more solidarity in that. And so I think that there are certain circumstances where definitely sharing our personal situation is okay, and obviously if we’re facing particular struggles to just not as a theme for the class, but let our community know or let our students know because you might need space or you might need time, or you might just need some grace or understanding or patience from people. So as I said, there’s context to everything, but yes, exactly as you’ve articulated. When we take our own personal circumstances and we can share them in a very universal manner, it’s far, far more wholesome for sure.

Persia:

Absolutely.

Amy:

Before we close, is there anything else that you would like to add here?

Persia:

I think I just want to respond to what you beautifully shared, and I agree wholeheartedly. And what I’m learning in my maturity, like Ganesha growing up from a little boy is the appropriate setting. So I’m very, very happy to share personal details. But in a public yoga class in Bali where there’s tourists coming in and people that you’ve never met. So just for teachers, really look at your setting, who’s in the room, really see people and feel them, feel where they’re at. So as an example, Soma Chandra was sold out and running eight days after my miscarriage, and I knew I could not cancel. And that’s how we opened. We sat in circle. That one mysteriously happened to be all women. And in that sharing, I mean, wow, what opened up was more than 50% of the women had been through a very similar experience within the last couple of years. So the bond was so deep, and the safety to grieve and cry, gorgeous. So I agree and feel the appropriate moment, feel the appropriate setting. And if you do choose to go into deep vulnerability in your yoga classes, always include an after-balm, like a tool that someone can use when they leave the yoga class that helps them regulate and feel more integrated.

That just felt really important to say.

Amy:

That’s incredibly helpful. Yeah. Beautiful. Beautiful, Persia. Thank you so much. My heart feels very, very full and very warmed by everything that you’ve shared here. Thank you so much. Thank you. And listen, if anyone is tuning in and you happen to be in Australia, Persia’s coming to you, she’s coming to Sydney to teach her Myth Mantra Movement offering at Rare Studio in Bondi in October. Do you want to, just before I continue, do you want to just tell us a little bit about, give us a little summary about what that offering is, what it’s going to look like?

Persia:

Yeah, absolutely. Myth, Mantra and Movement will run October 18th to 20th at Rare in Bondi. And what it looks like is the mornings are a very deep immersive practice, because we have more time, I get the freedom to really go into the finer details of each myth or story depending on your preference of language. So it’s about half an hour of story time, and then we bring the story into movement so that it’s somatic. Each class is very specifically tailored to the story. We go into deep, deep mantra meditation. And then I’ve personally curated really specific journaling questions around the myth, how it can relate to you. So we take some time just to journal, come together, share all of our unique interpretations of how the story touched our hearts and souls, how we might integrate it into a yoga class. And then the afternoons are more unusual.

It’s really inviting teachers to either take a piece out of the myth that resonated for them, flesh it out into their own theme for their own yoga class, or to research their own ancestry and to start to bring in tales from their own ancestry and explore, well, how can I weave in my own ancestry into a yoga experience? Because there’s so much beauty from all over the world. And for whatever reason, for me, just when it’s from India, I think I have a feeling that you’ll resonate with this because I’ve been watching you for years. It’s like everything comes online. And I don’t feel that with Greek stories and Greek mythology, which is incredible. It’s fascinating, but it doesn’t hit my soul in the same way. And so we’re all unique.

And so part of this course is also exploring, okay, what’s going to light your soul up? And then at the end, one of my favorite things to do with teachers is just highlight their gifts. I love it. I think it’s one of my skill sets to really see people. So yeah, I always do a bit of feedback, highlighting gifts, and then just one or two simple things of like, okay, and how can you keep growing, constructive feedback, but never to break someone down. I really disagree with that. Like little sweet breadcrumbs to, come on, lead them forward. Yeah.

Amy:

It sounds so incredible. It sounds so incredible. So yes, October, anyone based in Australia, that will be happening at in Sydney, is the information for that going to be on your website or the Rare studio website?

Persia:

Rare studio website. And it’s all up now.

Amy:

Yeah. Okay. Fabulous. So people can jump on a book. Great. And otherwise, to connect with Persia, you can head to her website, which is her name, persiajuliet.com. And Persia also has an incredible YouTube channel, which is loaded with beautiful practices, which you can access for free at any time. So we will have this linked up for you also on the summit webpage. Thank you for being here and tuning in. Don’t forget you can upgrade to gain lifetime access to all of these wisdom fueled conversations and Persia, it is always such a delight. Your presence is always so fueled with warmth, and I appreciate having you share your knowledge and enthusiasm for the depths of yoga. So thank you. Thank you.

Persia:

Oh, it’s a deep honor. I love what you do. Thank you too for everything that you put out there.