Finding Balance in a Chaotic World: Rod Stryker's Journey from Actor to Yogi Master

What if our current mental health crisis stems from something as fundamental as our disconnection from our own nervous systems? In this transformative conversation with yoga master Rod Stryker, we uncover why slowing down might be the most revolutionary act in today's hyperactive world.

Rod shares his remarkable 50-year journey from psychology student to Hollywood actor to internationally respected yoga teacher. The turning point? A profound realization that yoga was offering him the self-understanding he'd been seeking through academic studies – an embodied philosophy touching something deep within him that formal education couldn't reach.

As our discussion unfolds, Rod clarifies a critical misunderstanding: what most Americans practice as "yoga" is actually just "asana" (the physical postures). True yoga, he explains, is a quality of attention and presence that can happen with or without physical movement. T

Perhaps most valuable are the practical insights Rod offers about nervous system regulation through practices like Yoga Nidra – a state between meditation and sleep that provides profound rest without requiring the discipline of seated meditation. His upcoming book on this practice promises to make these powerful techniques more accessible to those who need them most.

Ready to experience the difference that even five minutes of stillness can make in your life? Visit RodStryker.com or download his Sanctuary app to begin your journey toward greater presence, wisdom, and genuine w

Spiritual guru, two-time #1 best-selling author, and higher consciousness advocate Shaman Isis (aka Cynthia L. Elliott) is on a mission to turn the tide of the mental and spiritual health crisis with mindfulness practices, incredible events, powerful content, and motivational storytelling that inspire your heroes journey! Learn more about her books, courses, speaking engagements, book signings, and appearances at ShamanIsis.com.

Ready for a life transformation? Ready to bring your dreams to life? Then you will want Glowup With Shaman Isis: The Collection of inspiring books and courses filled with life lessons and practices that raise your vibration and consciousness. 

Ready for a life transformation? Ready to bring your dreams to life? Then you will want Glowup With Shaman Isis: The Collection of inspiring books and courses filled with life lessons and practices that raise your vibration and consciousness. 

Chapters

• 1:53 Introduction to Rod Stryker
• 3:02 From Psychology to Yoga Journey
• 6:02 Acting Life in Los Angeles
• 12:52 Yoga's Evolution in America
• 17:36 What Yoga Really Means
• 24:09 The Mental Health Crisis Connection
• 35:43 Technology's Impact on Our Nervous System
• 45:57 Finding Stillness in Modern Life
• 55:30 Closing Thoughts and Resources

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:57

Well, hello, hello, hello and welcome to Glow Up with Shaman Isis. I'm your hostess with the mostest Shaman Isis, also known as Cynthia, to my friends and family, and I am really jacked for today's episode because we're interviewing a true yogi master, a true teacher, Rod Stryker. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 2: 1:16

I'm thrilled to be here. I'm thrilled to be with you. Thank you, cynthia, I have to ask right off the bat how long have you been practicing yoga? Well, I actually started formally practicing it when I was 19. I'm now 67. So if we do the math, it's getting right up there. It's a bunch of years, decades. I used to think it was 40, but it's actually now, well, more than 40 years getting close to think it was 40, but it's actually now more than well. More than 40 years getting close to 50 years.

Speaker 1: 1:43

Well, well, I'm gonna have to unearth some of your history because on the show. We like to share people's journeys. Um, I I have to just ask out of I'm dying of curiosity that the acting transitioning into being a yogi. Uh, how did that happen?

Speaker 2: 2:00

wow, okay. So, um, you know the acting life, I gotta say so. Let me just first say that I went to college thinking I wanted to be a psychologist and I had some experiences in high school that really, um, that really uh, I don't know. I just immediately sparked a powerful interest in human psychology and how we interact and how we learn to know ourselves and things like that. And, in truth, probably what was going on was psychology was affording me this view, a way of seeing and beginning to understand who I was, never mind who other people were.

Speaker 2: 2:40

I then discovered yoga as I went to school, studying psychology, philosophy in university, university of Denver, and then I moved back to LA and I had been doing yoga on my own right, still a junior in college, and I moved back to LA because I really had lost interest. I was no longer enthusiastic about philosophy or psychology, at least studying in that way. And, oddly enough, cynthia, I tell you the truth, the minute I started experiencing yoga, I felt like I had discovered what I was hoping to find in my studies in school, in university. There was a way, something was like this embodied philosophy, something was touching me and I was feeling a deep part of myself that I'd probably been searching for for a long time. Fast forward, I moved back to LA, didn't finish college Friend took me to a yoga class and it was the first time I'd interacted with a teacher.

Speaker 2: 3:42

Live, that was great, but now it's really. Well, what am I going to do? What am I going to do? And you know, I grew up in Los Angeles and I think maybe anyone who's grown up in Los Angeles sooner or later has said to myself well, you might as well just be an actor, right. I said to myself well, you might as well just be an actor, right. But truly, I kind of fell in love with the craft and the thing about acting allows you it's not just to play other parts, but it also is a kind of way of exploring yourself that maybe you're afraid to do in life?

Speaker 2: 4:17

Yes, you get to feel different streets and some streets, listen, I've always been a really good, straight, pretty straight laced guy, so you can be an actor in a part that's dangerous, passionate, that's violent, that's sexy. So you get to experience all of these different parts of yourself and I got to be honest with you. I was still doing yoga, but acting was affording me this other kind of experience of myself that I didn't know in my childhood and it just gave me something altogether different to play with and yeah, and it stayed with me for quite some time. I mean, if you're interested, I'll tell you about how it ended, but I will let's we can fill in some blanks before that how it ended, but I will let's we can fill in some blanks before that.

Speaker 1: 5:06

Yeah, yeah, I uh, uh. So did you enjoy act before we get too deep into yoga.

Speaker 2: 5:08

I want to. Did you enjoy acting? I did, you know I did. I did not enjoy the business of acting and it's a, you know it's a serious business. It's not like you're in any other town in america other than maybe new york or san francisco, where people do regional theater. They do the local theater. It's not about getting famous.

Speaker 2: 5:29

In la you're probably acting in order to be famous and you're encountering other people who really want to make money off you as an actor. So the thing it's a business. And uh, I I used to kind of think about my people I knew who were still in other towns and still just did acting for the love of acting. But in la that's really hard to do. Even small plays are showcases. So everyone's trying to be seen and everyone's trying to get famous and get the soap wrong, get in the movie and get the series and and and, by the way, everyone's looking at you to do that.

Speaker 2: 6:08

It's not just, as I said, a local kind of theater thing that could be fun. So I enjoyed. There's a craft there, good acting craft. I mean it's a, it's a skill that you can develop and that I kind of really enjoyed right up to the end. But the business did not. That was not my thing and I think, ultimately, I'm probably too sensitive for the amount of rejection that you get as an actor. I just I don't think I had the heart, I don't think I had the skin for it.

Speaker 1: 6:37

Well, I think somebody. So I acted to make money very similar to you in New York in the 90s and and I had to have a conversation with myself one day because I was like, why are you skipping half the auditions? It was like because you don't want it. You don't want it enough. Look at all these people who want it so desperately.

Speaker 2: 7:10

Like it's time to, like you know, move on with a career yeah, and and I mentioned the end of it you, at the time I was dating, I was in a very serious relationship with someone who had had a career in Hollywood. She was a bit older than I was, but she was really a wise person and I told her about my, like you, kind of reaching this point. Where am I meant for this? Is this something I really want to do? And yet it was also this kind of reaching this point. Where am I meant for this? Is this something I really want to do? And yet it was also this kind of thing like if you've been dreaming about something long enough, it's hard to give up the dream, even if it's no longer your dream, if that makes any sense, you still want the thing that you've been wanting for a decade. Part of you doesn't want to walk away from it because then you got to well, what's the next dream? You got to figure that out.

Speaker 2: 8:03

But I remember we were having this conversation, I remember where we were at the time and she said listen, and now I had been teaching yoga for about a decade and, as I said, it's the. It's now barely 19. Let's see where are we at? It's right around 1990, barely, maybe late 80s, and she says listen, let's just, let's just be clear. She said you know the only difference what you do and what you do actually helps more people than what jack nicholson does. At the time he was just as big a movie star as there was he. He gets paid a lot more than you do, but you actually make the world, you actually do something for the world that he doesn't do. And it stuck in part because who she was and her experience. But it really began to speak to me and it gave me permission to walk away and, like you, it just wasn't my dream. It wasn't my dream so, but that that conversation made a difference.

Speaker 1: 9:08

When you were doing. I'm dying of curiosity about this because I lived in. California in the nineties, early nineties, and I don't remember yoga being very as as popular as it is now. Is that my imagination?

Speaker 2: 9:21

Was I just looking in the wrong place? No, no, no, no, no, you're 100% right, it was. I mean, when I told my father my father wanted me to be a lawyer or a doctor or something you know typical and when I told him I was like getting serious about teaching yoga, there was just a long pause on the phone. I mean, there is no way it was a career. There was just no way. No one was doing yoga basically in the country in the early 80s Other than you know. People were doing yoga, some in LA, some in New York. A few celebrities were doing it. No, you're 100% correct.

Speaker 2: 10:00

I remember, though I can remember the day driving down. I was in LA and I was driving down the street Century City, just outside Beverly Hills, and I saw this giant billboard for Macy's, I think, and it had a part and they were selling a sweater, but they had a person in the yoga pose and I went. I literally thought to myself, oh, things have just changed and that was actually sorry. That was 2005 and it would be, and that was the beginning. And, by the way, they weren't doing those billboards in, say, ohio or illinois. That was la, and that was the first time I saw okay, it's, it's gone, it's gone, it's gone, something's happening here. And because I was in LA at the time and I had been teaching then for 10, 15 years, you could really say that LA was kind of where, where kind of it happened, where yoga became something different.

Speaker 1: 10:58

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 10:59

Yes, that celebrity started doing it. There was that famous to to you know, madonna suddenly publicized the fact that she was doing yoga. There was that famous or infamous moment where Sting went on the Tonight Show and he do you remember this, and he and he. I'm doing yoga now and I can have sex for eight hours I remember this because I was like that's gonna hijack the message that I mean hijack it.

Speaker 2: 11:27

You know it went in on so many directions simultaneously one, of course, people wanted to do yoga, to have sex for a straight eight straight hours and then two it, you know everyone. The whole thing got so spun out and and there were just little things here and there. That's that started to build this snowball. And so by the late 90s and early actually around 2010,. 2015 is where it became something. It really Teacher trainings, exploding yoga studios, and yoga studios were now's exploding Yoga studios. Yoga studios were now the new aerobic studios, if you remember those things.

Speaker 2: 12:06

Oh yeah, I taught aerobics and I recently became a yoga teacher, so yeah, Okay, you know, I lived around the corner when I was in LA from the Jane Fonda aerobic studio.

Speaker 1: 12:16

I was going to bring her up because I remember her and Allie, I forget her name beautiful, very famous actress when I was a kid, kid when I was in my 20s and 30s. Anyway, there were two really iconic women who really pushed forward the yoga in terms of celebrity.

Speaker 2: 12:36

Allie McGraw, that's it.

Speaker 1: 12:38

Yeah, that was it uh, that's it, yeah.

Speaker 2: 12:43

Yeah, that was it, okay. Well, she was actually the person I was talking about, who I was dating, who was the one who, um, suggested the only difference between Jack Nicholson and I was that I was doing more for the world and he was making more money.

Speaker 1: 12:54

So talk about an icon to have that conversation with. I mean for your perspective it would be different, but but you know that's somebody with such experience.

Speaker 2: 13:03

Yeah, and a really bright as I said early on, even when I didn't disclose her name just an exceptionally bright, well-read, worldly person who'd, you know, been married to Steve McQueen and, and, uh, robert Evans, the head of Warner Brothers, who's the godfather all this kind of stuff. So she'd seen it all. She'd seen all of what LA was and what acting was and what wasn't, and, you're right, she was one of the people who put yoga on the map, Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 13:29

So in my one of my books I wrote about, you know, when I first started to really learn about yoga, I was kind of surprised by some of the things that I was learning, because when, when yoga first became popular, it felt like we took the clothing and the outfits but we didn't like carry over the yogi lifestyle into America. It's like we like to commercialize stuff but we don't bring over the wholeness. The holistic wellness aspects seem to be kind of missed by a lot of the people who are chasing the trend. Would you agree with that, or is that just my perception of that?

Speaker 2: 13:57

Anyone listening to us right now and not seeing me. You're not seeing me nod, because what I'm, what I'm doing right now, is going. I'm in. What you're saying is absolutely right now. On the one hand, by pulling out the, if you will, the philosophy but more subtle aspects of it and making it about exercise. That's, in part, what made it popular. On the other hand, it also diluted its impact so significantly, and really you're 100% right.

Speaker 2: 14:29

Yoga is about the mind. No doubt you can. You know. Here's the big confusion. Let's just clear this up.

Speaker 2: 14:35

What happened was there's a word you know, yoga is a Sanskrit word and there's another word, it's called asana. Now, asana means pose or position or posture or seat, and you know this is what everyone thinks of as yoga, as you go to class and you do these postures. But yoga is not necessarily asana and asana is not necessarily yoga. In other words, you can do poses and not necessarily experience yoga, because yoga is a quality of attention, a quality of perception, a quality of relaxation, and you can do yoga, experience yoga and not necessarily do the poses Right. So what happened in this country? What happened was we should have just been saying I'm going to asana class and we would have reserved the yoga part for effectively calming the mind and becoming more present.

Speaker 2: 15:42

That's really what yoga is. It's about being present. You know, I used to say this this is one of my messages early on. And listen, we go to cirque de soleil you remember cirque de soleil, right where, feet on the head, they're doing the most crazy stuff you could possibly imagine beyond, beyond, beyond, the most advanced yoga poses. But we don't. We go there for the show of their physical beauty, capacity, all that. We don't go there because they're spiritual giants, you know. And so that means that moving your body a certain way, it can be beautiful, it can be challenging, it can be wonderful, it can be a lot of things, but it isn't necessarily yoga. And you nailed it, you exactly are right. And to this day, we're kind of still in this confused world. What really is yoga?

Speaker 1: 16:39

Yeah, as a woman I get a little bit irritated. I mean, I grew up in gyms, I've worked at three over my lifetime, took kinesiology, exercise, physiology all this I was going through didn't want to know what I wanted to do when I got older. And one of my pet peeves is the outfits that women are expected to wear to work out. I mean they're super cute but I don't know if I would wear them to work out and I feel like. I feel like it's like selling us on the lifestyle over the practice, the spiritual side of it. But you know, maybe that's just my own prejudices.

Speaker 2: 17:10

No, you know, it's true. Unfortunately it became part of the thing, especially in LA, new York, san Francisco is and you know we don't have to name the companies that promoted this idea of like if you didn't, you know really promoting the body orientation of it. It was listen again, we both know aerobics. As I said, I lived near the jane fonda aerobic studio, so I would see women, mostly women, coming and going with. You know, the same kind of outfits, more or less just wind back about 20 years, 10 years. So, yeah, the outfits didn't change much. I think they got rid of those high, what were those called those knee leg warmers?

Speaker 2: 17:57

I still wear them of course you did, of course you did I'm a baby of the 80s. It makes me feel like I'm 12 again yeah, but to be honest, listen, uh, listen, uh. You know I do to this day. I do yoga every morning and I'm wearing some loose $20 old Navy sweatpants and I don't know the difference. I, you know they don't. That's my yoga. There's no.

Speaker 1: 18:22

You don't have to have a tight outfit on to do yoga, to understand yoga, that's, that's for sure uh, can we talk for a little bit about, uh, raising human consciousness and, uh, yoga, because I I so for the mission of all the work that I do? Uh, the magazine everything celtic foundation, which I started a year ago, is to raise human consciousness as a answer to the mental health crisis, and one of the things that I talk a lot about is is the power of yoga to help you get command of your experience. What are your thoughts on on yoga as a tool from from mental fitness?

Speaker 2: 18:58

and the mental health crisis. This is, this is well, I didn't, I didn't know we had this in common. This is one of my favorite subjects as well and I think, look, even what you're bringing up is so relevant today and so meaningful in two ways. One is our relationship with ourselves and two it's the relationship we have with each other, just the global, the cultural, the societal, like. We don't all have to have the same opinion, that's my opinion, but let's honor each other as being human and I and now so it's an indirect way of answering your question but without a measure of self regulation.

Speaker 2: 19:39

So you know, just speaking very plainly and basically, our nervous system really has an on switch and an off switch. On is sympathetic, we're activated, we're stimulated, we're more aggressive, we're actually more afraid, we're more angry, more reactive, and then you flip the switch the other way and it's calming and relaxing and centering and replenishing and restful, and you sleep better and you become more responsive and more patient and, neurologically speaking, the front of your brain comes online. So when we're stressed, we're in the most primitive part of our brain where anger and fear and, by the way, that's the default mechanism. Our brain, we're anger and fear and, by the way, that's the default mechanism, and for good reason. We're trying to protect ourselves, so we're always on lookout. For does this make me angry? Does this make me afraid? Is this worthy of fear?

Speaker 2: 20:39

And, to your point, is yoga is brilliant. It's brilliant. Wow, look at that, it's brilliant. I didn't do that on purpose. I don't even know how it happens. I don't even know how it happened. It was whatever. It descended from above. That was wild. What was I saying? Yoga is brilliant for self-regulation. You know what we were saying before. It's not a fitness thing, listen. Regulation, you know what we were saying before. It's not, it's not a fitness thing, listen. I, uh, I do yoga every day, but I also do for my ex. I don't consider it exercise. I do high intensity interval training, I'll do rowing, I'll do. You know, I do some weights.

Speaker 1: 21:25

That's my exercise. Yoga is my medicine. I love that Cause I you've you've just explained to me one of the things that I really struggled when I had my spiritual awakening, like I lost the weight, I was able to fast for two months. It was the weirdest thing. Talk about being another, like body. I went from being 80 pounds overweight to suddenly being able to fast for two months. If that's not spiritual intervention.

Speaker 1: 21:40

I don't know what is but I lost all the weight. But I really struggled with, um, adding yoga to sitting sitting. Still, it was a struggle for me and uh, and I ended up taking hot yoga near me and I was living in new york for my book launches and I took hot yoga and for 260, I committed to doing it every day for 60 days and I only missed two times, and that is the when the flip, the switch was flipped.

Speaker 1: 22:06

It was that constant exposure to it and I realized that switch was flipped. It was that constant exposure to it and I realized that it was my mental health it was helping, not my physical health as much, although I did look amazing well, listen, the hot hot yoga or stanga yoga.

Speaker 2: 22:20

There are some very active styles of yoga and I gotta say, if else, what they definitely do? They definitely condition the body, but they force us to pay attention and ideally we're linking our breath to movement. And even that small thing. It sounds so simple, but when I coordinate breath to movement again, this is part of the prefrontal cortex, it integrates me and so I will, in the beginning at least, experience a certain level of mental clarity and capacity to be focused or attentive. However, some of those more active forms of yoga still dysregulate the nervous system. They don't necessarily calm us down. If you did do it for a year, two years, three years, so six months, nine months a year, anything might be helpful, but we have to become more selective in time.

Speaker 2: 23:16

So, to your mental health question. Such a great topic. I hope we can continue to unpack it a little bit. The idea here is that when you look at how much we're overstimulated in our culture, how much is coming at us, this is all new. A hundred years ago, our nervous systems were in an entirely different, encountering entirely different world, and that's the nervous system that we've all had and shared for thousands of years. And so just in the last, with social media and whatnot, the last 20, 30 years, we're asking our nervous systems to deal with stuff that they're not trained to deal with.

Speaker 1: 23:58

I love that you said that, because it's what it is it is. I passionately believe that we are literally walking around with gaslighting devices in our hands and our bodies are just simply not, and that's why we have such a huge mental health crisis. We're gaslighting and fear-mongering through social media and through news media and just media in general. Anybody wants to sell clicks to people 100%.

Speaker 2: 24:20

Listen, the technology was developed ultimately and continues to be enhanced, to make money, not to spread health and wellness. You know the people who are making money on social media from the actual technology itself. In fact, many of them don't let their kids use their phones. You know that, right? I mean, you go through the list and the actual developers of the technology forbid their children from using it because they know the impact on it. And I would say, yes, that's a massive contributor to the mental health crisis we're in. And you know, I still my youngest kids are still teenagers, teenagers, and they are having to deal with certain aspects of life and having to process things because of the technology that my older kids did not. You know, 15, 10, 15 years older.

Speaker 2: 25:22

We're making it harder and harder for human beings to find that rhythm where we can adapt, which means to consistently adjust to what's happening in our environment, what's going on in our relationships, and to do it in a way that's not reactive but is adaptive. You know and those two things are real, listen, this is scientific the better I am adapting. So life is always changing. This is a traditional view of yoga and I think we can all admit life is changing, my body's changing, the world is changing, the weather is changing, people's opinion of me is changing, everything is changing. So how do I adjust to those changes? My capacity to adjust to those changes will to remain steady in constant change determines how well I will grow older, how well I will live, how the quality of my relationships.

Speaker 2: 26:39

And so yoga and this is the part of yoga where I really I mean this is an element of yoga that I really emphasize we can determine the direction of change. We can influence the direction of how we respond to changes in our life, and the most critical thing that I'd want everyone to understand is some of us, some of how we encounter and respond to life, is in our control. We have to slow down. We have to choose 5, 10, 20, 30 minutes a day where we slow down, we give our nervous systems time to adjust and only then, by coming back to what you know, strengthening our process of what's called homeostasis, our ability to continue to adapt efficiently. And, by the way, our brains are not meant to be in hypervigilance. We're not meant to be. We can't sustain highly stressed states indefinitely before we get sick, before we act out, before we suffer either physically or mentally. We're just not meant to be hyper activated. We have to get still once in a while hyper activated.

Speaker 1: 27:59

We have to get still once in a while. Yeah, it's, uh, I think that's what led to uh, most of my audience knows my spiritual journey because I shared in a couple books, but I, uh, I burned out and I mean I I had worked for 30 years like I had worked since I was a teenager but I I had done nothing but work and I didn't have a real life of my own.

Speaker 1: 28:14

I was masked, highly masked, and constantly, was constantly trying to manage everything around me. Um, because I was trying to engineer very particular outcomes and and that makes you really great at marketing and PR and running an agency. But it sucks as a human being. And I woke up one day and I could not schedule, keep uh like any like. I couldn't even like look at a calendar, check my email, like that's how burnt out I was. And it took, um, it took being quiet for a long time, actually I'd say almost two years before I was able to start to function again as a as a human being and, uh, definitely meditation and yoga huge part of that healing journey. My nervous system was absolutely shot.

Speaker 2: 29:01

I really hope people take in what you just said. I really do. I mean, that's real. And again, it's not because you are weak, it's not because you don't have good intention, it's not because it's simply, it's neurological. It's like we're. We are human beings who, for tens of thousands of years, knew what cycle the moon was in. We'd spend time in nature, we'd go to sleep not long after it got dark, we'd wake up before it got light. All of that's been thrown out Now. Those are the things that they seem kind of basic. All of that's been thrown out Now. Those are the things that they seem kind of basic and yet they really don't have a lot of play in our current lives, you know, because of modern life. And yet, without that linkage, our body and our brain is going to suffer and it's only a matter of time if we don't break it up.

Speaker 2: 29:52

As you said, it took time, it took silence. Now, the one thing I would say is that yoga has some things to contribute protocols, if you will, strategies to speed up the time of that healing, in other words. Uh, notwithstanding how burnt out you were, it took two years. It took what it took. I'm sure there was physiological repair and emotional, psychological repair. You know, we have to kind of recoalesce ourselves Right, and I've I've been through those stages. I've been through plenty of stuff in my life, so I understand that. Luckily, there are protocols, like you mentioned yoga, meditation, no-transcript repair. So, as I said, there are strategies where we can be more effective at repair and renewal and finding balance and, and you know, know, it's one of those things that that I'm trying to provide and uh, and I'm dedicated to because I know the effectiveness in my life, I've seen it in the lives of others, seen in the lives of my kids.

Speaker 1: 31:45

So yeah, yeah, I'm really glad we took this turn in the conversation, to be honest with you oh, I'm glad to hear that you know I, uh, I think, um, we help other people know that what healing is possible by being authentic, and it took me such a long time to learn to be authentic uh it wasn't that I wasn't nice to people, but I I did not know who I was and that's a strange experience to have at 50, to wake up one day and be like I don't know who the hell I am.

Speaker 1: 32:11

But I'm going to go do the work and it was. You know it's not and this is what I was. We said earlier about the spiritual journey not for the week of the faint of heart, because it was the. It got hardest at my year year three uh of trying to really really understanding that my nervous system had been shot and that cptsd was going to be something I would have to manage.

Speaker 1: 32:31

But I think, people need to hear. Like you know, we have enough perfection. We, so many people, and I think the vast majority of human beings on the planet, are living in the lowest vibrations because that's, um, that's the victim mentality uh that we're trained into, uh, thinking is normal and uh, it's such a miserable, miserable place to live and watching that transformation in people's lives, when they begin to see that you know that it is possible to heal from anything and that you can actually drive your life experience, that you can actually choose your perception. Now, I'm not perfect. I certainly have my days where I still get triggered every once in a blue moon, but the vast majority of my experience is really beautiful and that's that's due to spiritual practices.

Speaker 2: 33:26

You know, yeah, yeah, well, said, I think, um, two thoughts I had first of all, um, I just want to make sure anyone listening to what you said, because it really comes out of deep experience and growth and evolution and discovery. But it's as if I just want to again just acknowledge that we're not bad. In other words, you were not bad for where you. You know the thing that got you to this place of burnout. You were driven, you were motivated and, as you said, you were nice, for the most part right, you were making a positive impact as you understood it at the time. And again I want to say it's, look in part, psychological, but it's also even more basic than that. It's our neurology.

Speaker 2: 34:02

We are geared to fundamentally look at the world and try and figure out what's dangerous and what do I need to push back on? What is the source of my anger? So what do I have to be angry about? What do I have to be fearful about? That's what the social media algorithms are. Totally it's like. It's like just pulling us in like chum for sharks. It's just like if there's something to be angry about, if there's something to be afraid of, it gets higher priority in your social media scroll period. That's just how they work it, so it really is like they're working with our neurology, our primitive brain.

Speaker 2: 34:40

So no one's bad for looking at the ambulance as you're driving by slowing your car down and checking it out. So, number one, I just kind of want to say to everybody we're all doing the best we can with what we know, right? But now I also want to say this, and and your, your story speaks to that, which is, you know, the buddha described the process of uh, becoming awake. But I means awake, you know, the awakened one is naturally and this is his quote, it quote it's to go against the stream.

Speaker 2: 35:17

To do what you did and to do for any of us, to take responsibility for ourselves, is to actually step out of the norm, is to actually step out of the flow, because most of us, where we'll look, most of our points of reference on the landscape of the world, are people who are swept up in the anger and the fear and the basic primitive responses. And, uh, to go against the stream is what you did. And anytime we make that choice to get quiet, to still ourselves, to reflect, we're going against the stream it's nice to see, it's nice to see in my lifetime, uh, the change.

Speaker 1: 36:02

Well, I like that we shifted away from organized religion, because I could give a whole talk on on the problems with it. I mean, it did provide a structure for us on which we were told how to think and behave and you know what, how, what to do, and, frankly, apparently a lot of us needed that. And the collapse of organized religion is is one of those other leading factors, along with cell phones, to, to putting people in this victim mentality and survival paradigm, which is the bottom of the consciousness scale, and, uh, I just think it's so important to spread that message. Um, I wanted to hear a little bit more about what you're up to these days, because I know you're a busy man.

Speaker 2: 36:39

Well, thank you. I am actually on the final draft of the book about this practice called Yoga Nidra that I shared with you, and, for those that don't know, this is this extraordinary practice, that Yoga Nidra is both a practice, but it's also a state, a state of awareness, and it's a unique state that hovers between, say, the height of meditation and sleep. And so, as you slowly begin to, you do it lying down, and so, in a way, for many people it's an opportunity to enter into a meditative experience, but to do it without the hardcore discipline of sitting as you would in meditation and meditation. Anyone who's tried it knows this, probably has had the same experience, which is that when you start meditating, you find out not, you don't find necessarily and discover the meditative state. You discover how distracted you are the moment you start focusing. You find out how hard it is to focus. Yeah, right, and so, unlike meditation, what yoga nidra allows us to do, instead of finding that rhythm of meditative awareness through concentration, it asks us to relax, and it's, and it shows us that behind the movement of the mind is an enduring state of ease, and sleep is the entry.

Speaker 2: 38:14

So I've been teaching that. I was one of the first Americans to start teaching it around the country and I produced recordings for that and then that would become the basis of my app. I have an app called Sanctuary with Rod Stryker and there's a hundred meditations on it and then there's 50 different yoga nidra practices. So that's still alive. I'm still contributing to that. That's still alive and well. I'm writing, I'm still creating courses. In a few weeks I'll go to two weeks I'll be in Europe and I'll be teaching in Europe. And I'm not doing less In my old age. I'm basically just doing the things that I love. And I think to your point can create the greatest difference.

Speaker 2: 39:02

And I just mentioned one other thing about that app. I did mention that I have two teenagers. I have a twin twins, daughter and son, and you know they're just 17, just turning 17. And I see the level of stress in their lives and and to be honest with you, it actually it's um, it's it's, in a way, a hard thing to talk about. And a important thing to talk about is a dear friend of mine uh, his, um, his wife's um daughter at the age of 15, uh committed suicide about, um, this was about a year and a half ago and, um, I was so struck at this memorial was standing, we were standing graves are graveside and there were at least 50 young people, so there was several hundred people, but there were 50, uh, teenagers there, her, her classmates and they were inconsolable and I went home and I was so moved and I was so disturbed by and by the way, not a big surprise, we know this happens within the next six weeks two of her classmates killed themselves.

Speaker 2: 40:11

Yeah, it has a, it has this cluster thing that happens. And I then determined that, okay, this app, most people who are going to use this app are adults. And I then determined that, okay, this app, most people who are going to use this app are adults. But what I want to do is give any teenager anyone who has a subscription can give the gift of the meditation, yoga, nidra practices to a teenager, Because both of us it sounds like we share this common interest, this passion. For how do we bring, how do we look at and begin to create some kind of effect on the pervasiveness of mental illness in this country? And it's not hit anyone harder than teenagers.

Speaker 1: 40:54

Oh yeah, when I share the statistic that the number two cause of death in young people is suicide, it absolutely shocks people and I'm like that is stunning, it's stunning, it's stunning.

Speaker 1: 41:06

And yet, you know, we're superheroes with cell phones that allow us to have access to powers that we've never had before access to information, access to everything that a person could possibly use. Yet we're facing this, and I care really deeply about this. It's actually going to make me get teary-eyed yeah, used, yet yet we're facing this and I, I, I care really deeply about this is actually gonna make me get teary-eyed yeah, I hear you warren me too, me too it's just, uh, there's a way forward and we live in a world that is, that has been built to keep us distracted and it's like so simple.

Speaker 1: 41:38

I mean, to me it's so simple. You know, it doesn't have to be about religion, it doesn't have to be um about, um, your family. You can literally learn the tools and get in command of your life experience and when you know there's a solution and and yet pushing it forward is, I mean, I've I've come up against so much like I don't say resistance, but it's been a challenge to get this conversation off the ground, to talk about raising human consciousness as the answer to the mental health crisis, because people don't like talking about mental health still.

Speaker 2: 42:06

Yeah, yeah, you know, and yeah, no, thank you. Every time I think about this young girl who I had had dinner with several times, who no longer is alive. Every time I moved to the edge of tears, for sure. And, moreover, to watch the impact that that loss had to her friends, and that even two more felt justified and in doing it. And so, you know, when I watch my kids, my teenagers, and they're both ambitious and they both are straight A students, and God you know, amazing, amazing, it's a gift. I don't know what we did right, but we did something right.

Speaker 2: 42:49

But still, the level of stress that they experience and they literally look at me. Last night I was sitting at dinner and they said you know, I'm stressed. I said, well, let's talk about it. How about we go do a practice? How about we just take five minutes? You can. Five minutes, you can change your state, and what people should know is the tools to One remedy some of the impact that that modern life is having on us and to find a better way, because I think we're both believers that when we slow down, there is an inner intelligence that allows us to really make the best decisions in the moment, decisions that are not driven by our most primitive instincts, they're not driven by our psychological conditioning, but they really are like our own inner guidance, our own inner wisdom, and that thing wants us to thrive. It's always ready to help us find the path to thriving. But if we don't slow down, we can't be with it. We can't hear it. It gets drummed out by all of the noise, either internal or external yeah, one of my big concerns.

Speaker 1: 44:03

I have an 18 year old son as well. Um, one of my big concerns for them is that, you know, I don't think, I don't think we we quite understand or have really accepted this as a society that we we allowed the technology to come in and sort of take over everything. We're all like yeehaw, look at all this technology we have, but we never had a conversation about how, putting a superpower device and all the world's information in the hands of a child, what kind of long-term impact that was going to have, the speed, the constant, you know, and that we're seeing that in the statistics that are going on. So you know, I talked to my son and I try to tell him it's almost like I want to get a bunch of professional athletes together that meditate and have them do a whole campaign together because he would benefit from it.

Speaker 1: 44:46

But he's like I can't sit still.

Speaker 2: 44:49

Yeah, yeah. Well, listen, you know this book, dopamine nation begins to help us understand it. I mean again, I keep going back. There are elements of this that are just in our nervous system, our neurology, and we are. We're slaves to it. The interesting thing, like you said, like the technology came, there was never a conversation, there was never like a manual about OK, this is the threshold when it's effective and helpful, and this is the threshold. If you pass it, it actually is pathological. We know that the more time you spend on social media this is this is not a newsflash, but I'll say it anyway the less happy you are.

Speaker 1: 45:27

Ooh, yes.

Speaker 2: 45:28

It's just. It's just. All of the research confirms it again and again. The more time the less happy. Meanwhile, the thing is delivering. So you know what I heard when this I heard this about I was I gave a presentation at the aspen ideas festival about a decade or so ago and there was a neurologist there and it's when, really, the first of the researchers coming out and she said do you? She presented this idea and basically it explains why you and I, why we have all seen this. Have you seen four or five teenagers sit at a table and they're all on their phones and they're not interacting.

Speaker 1: 46:06

They're texting each other sometimes.

Speaker 2: 46:09

Ask yourself, you know, ask yourself why they're not looking at each other's eyes. You know why are they not actually eye contact? You know why there's more dopamine. You know why are they not actually eye contact. You know why there's more dopamine. They're literally getting a bigger hit of dopamine by being on their phone than they would be by looking in each other's eyes. Now what happens is the multiples of dopamine you get it's okay, we do the little bit of the science the dopamine hit you get is so big on your phone that your brain then dulls your dopamine receptors.

Speaker 2: 46:47

Now what happens is social interaction used to give you dopamine. Like if you and I were sitting in the same place and I was eye to eye with you, cynthia, I'd get a hit of dopamine. That's why we were motivated sit around the fire and talk to each other in the old days and all that well, now what happens is it's too dull. The brain is dulled by the dulling down of the neural receptors to dopamine because your phones deliver so much that your brain can't tolerate it. So now what happens is you and I have a conversation without our phones and it's too dull. We've been dulled only to be able to, in a way cope with how much dopamine phones create. So it's really math. It's just, in a sense, math why we're addicted to those things oh yeah, oh yeah.

Speaker 1: 47:40

I think that's why uh they, I talk about this.

Speaker 1: 47:43

I uh in my speeches on consciousness, the um, uh, the timing of the fourth industrial revolution, the age of ai, and one of my three books was on on a ai and its opportunity for the fourth industrial revolution to put america's dream back on the map.

Speaker 1: 48:00

Because we, you know, we sent all our jobs and our you know talent and skills uh, way a long time ago because of capitalism, um, but um, I believe that the age of ai happening at the same time as the age of aquarius, and the level of you know we finally reached that we needed enough people to reach higher consciousness to tip over into the age of aquarius.

Speaker 1: 48:19

It was the only thing that was kind of holding us back, uh, from that label of enough people being reach higher consciousness to tip over into the age of Aquarius. It was the only thing that was kind of holding us back from that label of enough people being in higher consciousness. It's like I really believe that that is not an accident that we're there's so much conversation finally around this topic. It's so important and really the cure to me is the cure that that, no matter where you live, no matter what language you speak or what your you know family history story, is just keeping it as simple as teaching someone how to raise their human consciousness by using their triggers for growth, and we don't talk about religion or prayer or whatever it is that will distract somebody. I really think that's the answer.

Speaker 2: 48:58

And from where I sit, I just want to remind anyone listening to what you just said. It's not just the knowledge of what you just said, it's not just knowing that. That's true. The question is how you implement. So, unless there's a living experience that allows you to remember who you are, again, it's not even a story whether you apply a Christian overlay on that, or Jewish or Muslim, it doesn't matter to me. The bottom line is that if we regulate ourselves, what comes forward is the kind of wisdom.

Speaker 2: 49:37

Now, in Sanskrit, the languages of yoga, it's called prajna, and prajna means the light of wisdom. But you could ask what is the light of wisdom? So, basically, what it's saying is when your mind gets quiet, it's not empty. The emptiness gives rise to a discovery. And what's that? It means that, inherently, each of us is compassion. We're held together by a sense of love, if you will. Some people call it coherence, but the state of coherence is a kind of holding the trillions of cells. Why are they all working together in concert? It's called cohesion. Another word is love.

Speaker 2: 50:25

Okay, and the Buddha says our basic nature when we get still again, this is cross-cultural, it's everyone on the planet we get still, there's love and there's the light of wisdom. And what is the the light of wisdom? It's the insight that allows you to be more free. And, um, you know the gift that? The gift I was given is to discover that at relatively young age. I remember the first time I sat down to meditate and I was amazed that it didn't take thinking. In fact, when I began to quieten my thoughts, there was a treasure there and I had no idea. I just had no idea that quiet your mind down and you're okay, and wisdom comes forward about how to expand and express that okay to others, to yourself, to the world.

Speaker 1: 51:34

So true, the gift of learning to be quiet has been. I used to spend and I know other people can identify with this I was always in my head, always overanalyzing everything, always trying to control every aspect I could. That was a trauma response from unhealed trauma, and I didn't know that at the time. I just thought I was being type A. It's so funny when you look back and you're like all that time you were, you're so type.

Speaker 1: 52:02

A and it's like no, it was just a CPTSD response, but I would lay in bed at night. Now You'll find this interesting because you talked about sleep and yoga nidra. I went 20, well, it was probably more than 20 years, never sleeping more than 45 minutes, such profound trauma that I could not sleep. I heard everything and I remember when I first started my healing journey and it was just this extraordinary gift to get to a place where I just remember one day realizing that my mind was no longer spending hours in bed at night on the carousel of thought. You know hours I would spend two hours at least in bed at night on the carousel of thought. You know hours. I would spend two hours at least in bed at night on that carousel. And it was a, it was amazing. I was. I stayed sane.

Speaker 1: 52:51

And to get to a place where I could actually, you know, not only sleep two hours, which is unheard of for me, but, um, to feel rested and to not have a lot going on here. I never realized that not having a lot was actually a really good thing.

Speaker 2: 53:09

Well, we don't get a lot of reward for that. I mean, you're right. I mean, listen, you know we live in a highly transactional world and I get it. You and our worth is very much. Listen, you know, it's one of the great things about our country and one of the challenges of our country. If I'm not generating value, I have no value. I'm only as good as the value I generate, and the brain has to go out and do a lot of work to generate value. And, um, you know it, it's a great place if you're ambitious, but it also, if we don't get off the treadmill of our ambition, we can get really sick, you know, mentally or emotionally, physically or whatever.

Speaker 1: 53:47

Yeah, Rod, I could keep talking to you for like another hour. You're so fascinating.

Speaker 2: 53:56

And we should do this again sometimes because you bring a lot. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I appreciate where you're coming from in having these conversations.

Speaker 1: 54:07

Thank you. Yeah, it's been an extraordinary journey. If our listeners wanted to check out your work or follow you on social media, where would they go?

Speaker 2: 54:17

Rod Stryker Rodstrykercom is the website. Uh, rod striker official on instagram and uh, you know the app is named sanctuary and I really, you know, I just want to again encourage people to uh, consider they don't. We don't have to take a lot of time. A little bit of time will make a lot of difference and I really try, try and remind people, go against the stream. Just five minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes can make a huge difference in your life and the practice. You mentioned, yoga nidra. Just one more plug for that.

Speaker 2: 54:53

It's not just a method of a power nap, it also helps us sleep or go back to sleep. And you know, long before, 20 years before, there was something called COVID. The World Health Organization said sleep loss was actually the pandemic of the time. 20 years earlier, earlier and right before COVID, the World Health Organization said mental illness is the new pandemic. And so we have to. We have to take steps and in a sense, unfortunately, we have to go against the stream because everyone around us is caught up. There's very few. I know it's a voice and you mentioned that it's gaining momentum the opportunity to go against the stream, to regulate, to raise our awareness. We are gaining momentum. Look, we're having this conversation, uh, but I would again just offer that we we owe it to ourselves. We shouldn't postpone our happiness and there's no reason to wait, and that we take these steps that can make us better inside as well as outside, and how we relate to each other.

Speaker 1: 56:10

I appreciate your, your. It's so nice to interview somebody with with so much experience. I mean you've really seen the trend. You've seen the transition. You know the shifts in yoga from when you were doing it in college to through the 90s and to now, and wisdom is priceless, so thank you. When is your book coming out?

Speaker 2: 56:38

You know it won't be out till early next year. These things take a while, and publishing dates take a long time. I'm looking forward to sharing it, though, with the world and you know it really is an invaluable practice and I'm trying to help people understand, both from a scientific and even from a spiritual perspective, why it does what it does. In the end, it's just about encouraging people to do it. You know that's where it comes down to.

Speaker 1: 57:06

Well, you guys. Thank you so much for joining us today for Glow Up with Shaman Isis Rod Stryker. Thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your experience and wisdom. For those of you who are not familiar with my work'm, shaman isis also known as cynthia to my friends and family, and uh uh, I've written three books, which you're going to go check out on my website shaman isiscom, unleash the empress, which shares my spiritual practices, um, the ones that helped me lose a ton of weight. Memory mansion this year is my journey from catholic orphanage to prd new york city, pr divaa, to learning to love myself. And then the third book is A New American Dream Conscious AI for a Future Full of Promise, and it's more of an academic analysis of how we can use the fourth industrial revolution to benefit humanity. But if you're not already working on raising your human consciousness, I highly recommend it. Go visit shamanicistcom. And if you're not already subscribed, what are you thinking? This is intelligent listening, so please subscribe. And thanks again, you guys, for listening.

Speaker 2: 58:08

Bye.