157: From Juvenile Delinquent to Radically Loved: A Meditative Journey – with Rosie Acosta

Her childhood was filled with danger, confusion, and angst. 

Picture East LA in the 1990s – neighborhoods filled with gang violence. Police were overstepping their authority, creating fear and mistrust. Drive-by shootings. Riots. Burning buildings. All the media portrayals from that era were very real for Rosie Acosta in those days. 

Growing up in such a harsh environment took a toll on this episode’s guest. By the age of fifteen, Rosie found herself standing before a judge, facing severe penalties for a surprisingly bold and brash crime.  

Her youth had plenty of anxiety and confusion. Because she witnessed people getting stabbed, shot, and beat up on the street, Rosie had PTSD. She also knew nothing about health and nutrition in her young life. Living on the “McDonald’s Diet,” Rosie was over two hundred pounds at one point, living a life of quiet desperation. 

Confusion followed Rosie around like a dark cloud, mainly due to the spiritual mixed messages and failures she witnessed happening inside her community growing up. (Rosie shares her childhood in detail with Wade during the first part of the episode. Wade’s attention is riveted to her compelling story. Don’t miss it.)

But then, one day, her mother left some brochures on her bed, and that’s when Rosie’s journey took a spiritual turn that changed everything. (You will hear her powerful story about how meditation and yoga transformed her soul to a place of Radical Love.) 

Today, Rosie is a yoga and meditation teacher and a holistic health coach who works with a wide range of students. Her clients range from East LA residents to Olympic athletes, NFL champions, NBA All-Stars, and military veterans who have seen combat. 

Rosie is on a mission to help others overcome adversity, anxiety, and low self-worth and replace those negatives with radical love. She has been featured in Yoga Journal, Well + Good, Forbes, and the New York Post. 

If you want to feel radically loved, hit that play button. 

In this podcast, we cover:

• What was a typical day like in Rosie’s childhood and how she navigated all the dangerous traps
• Her recounting of the day she skipped school to seek enlightenment
• The exact moment when Rosie’s spiritual awakening took place
• Why do people need to get past their “Amazon Expectations” 
• Why does the law of attraction kick in when you get your fitness on track
• Why and when things turned in a positive direction for Rosie
• When a person exudes electromagnetic attraction and becomes what they seek
• How yoga led her out of teen crimes to teaching yoga to star athletes
• How Rosie mentally pushes through those lazy, apathetic moments we all experience

The Power of Intention

At one point, Rosie says, “I do believe in the power of intention and the power of belief. Also, the right people are coming in at the right time.”

“The moment that I started to bring my awareness to feeling good and focusing on my body and my health, everything else started to fall into place.”

“I started getting different job opportunities. I ended up working as a hair salon manager for this celebrity hairstylist. Here I was 19 years old and an ex-criminal – yet I got asked to run a million dollar business.”

“Now, he didn’t need to know my colorful past. At the time he offered me the job, I was working at another salon, and he recruited me because he heard that I was doing a great job.”

“So that’s all it took – one opportunity. One person believed in me and gave me that sort of positive feedback. At the time, I was still learning more. I got more into nutrition and health. I got off the McDonald’s diet. I started eating organic foods. I read the China Study. I went deep into wellness. I made a new set of friends.”

“My world started to expand. I started to see the difference in putting your energy into things that were making you better. I felt better. I started attracting people in my life that were also doing the same type of work that wanted to be better as well.” 

One thing Rosie loves about yoga is THIS

Another snippet of Rosie’s wisdom: “One of the main things I like about yoga is cultivating discernment.”

Wade asks, “What does that mean to you?”

Rosie: “For me, it means knowing what to do when you’re off of the safety of your cushion. Because I know what to do when I’m on my mat. I know what to do when I’m on my cushion. That’s easy for me. I’ve been doing it for years now, almost two decades. That’s easy.”

“But taking that and actually going out into the world and being a kind, compassionate, present human, that’s a different story. There are so many variables thrown into that, which are happening simultaneously. Discernment means to know the difference between knowing what’s going to serve the highest good.”

“Sometimes things that you may not think are going to serve your highest good serve do serve your highest good.”

“It’s difficult to navigate a world that’s full of impermanence. It’s difficult to navigate a world that’s constantly changing.”

Wade and Rosie then go into more conversation about impermanence and our mortality. Death is a topic that is kept tidy and tucked away in western culture. But Wade brings up the eastern view of death, and Rosie expands on our impermanence and how we struggle by clinging to this material world. 

This turns out to be one of Wade’s most in-depth interviews – a conversation that goes deep into the spiritual realm of our existence. Rosie’s clients see firsthand how physical transformation leads to spiritual transformation. Or, at least it should. The person must be mindful to include spirituality into their life for a complete sense of wholeness. 

Can you feel the radical love? Tune into this episode and tap in! 

Episode Resources: 
Check out more about Rosie Acosta & Radically Loved
Rosie Acosta on Facebook
Rosie Acosta YouTube Channel
Rosie Acosta on Instagram
Rosie Acosta on Twitter
Rosie Acosta on LinkedIn
Radically Loved Podcast on Apple Podcasts

Read The Episode Transcript:

Wade Lightheart: Good morning. Good evening. And good afternoon, wherever you are. It's Wade T. Lightheart from BiOptimizers with another edition of the Awesome health podcast. And I'm excited today because we have none other than Rosie Acosta who is here. We've had lots of cool chats before, but you actually got here to the bio home, which is awesome. And for those who don't know who Rosie is, let me read a little bit of her biography, which doesn't really do her justice, but it will give you a little bit idea. First off, she grew up in east LA in a gang riddled neighborhood. She transformed her life as the founder of radically loved yoga health and wellness and host of the podcast. Radically loved it's a great podcast. Please check it out. As a yoga and meditation teacher and holistic health coach, she works with a wide range of students from those in her east Los Angeles community to Olympic athletes, NFL champions, NBA all-stars in veterans from Afghanistan. We were just talking about Kobe Brian, former client, the tragedy of all that. And then Rosie's mission is to help others overcome adversity and experience radical love. She's been featured in yoga journal. You know, that one way they always have to like the beautiful meditating girl on the front and well, plus good, well plus good. I never ever, I don't know that one forks and New York post Rosie, let's get the computer away. Welcome to the, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited. Yeah. So let's first off the word radically loved. What does radically love mean to you?

 Rosie Acosta: Oh, wow. What does radically low to mean to me? Well, it's so much a basis of why I do what I do and, and how I actually was able to transform my life from growing up in a really chaotic environment and to get to the place where I am now, because there is this belief that we are radically loved, radically supported by God source, whatever higher power of your understanding that the universe works for us and not against us. And so the whole idea behind radical, well, not only does radical the root word mean root. But I just love the idea of going into this place and just feeling radically supported and radically accepted and just radically loved. For me, it was the catalyst to creating a different life, to see the world differently. And so I wanted to create I don't know that I necessarily started off as wanting to create a business, but it was more of an idea to create a community or create a just a place for people to feel accepted and to feel that they can be who they are without feeling judged or not accepted.

 Rosie Acosta: It's a long explanation. Yeah.

 Wade Lightheart: That's okay. It's radically loved. I'm sure encompasses a lot of things. Talk to me a little bit about what was it like growing up in a gang riddled kind of area of east LA, all that sort of stuff. And that's kind of like, you know, take us back to that time. And what was it like as you were growing up as a child and stuff during this thing, and it's just kind of shootings and gang members and all those sorts of like, what was that whole

 Rosie Acosta: Like? Yeah, I mean, it was awful. It was, it sucked

 Wade Lightheart: When you say that, like what was, what was a day like, like how would you navigate the world and that kind of investment?

 Rosie Acosta: Yeah. Well, thank you. That's such a, a great way to frame the scene because when you grow up in an environment like that, and you're there from when you were a baby, essentially, you don't really know that there's anything different. You kind of grew up in this environment where it's normal to live in fight or flight. You're just used to it. It's, it's normal to not be able to sleep at night. It's normal to have fear walking outside of your door. It's normal to see a drive by shooting it's normal to see people physically fighting it's normal to see domestic abuse. It it's, the chaos is so normalized in those types of scenarios, especially back, it was during the nineties, early nineties, and there was a lot of things going on in LA. At that point, there was a lot of you know, police brutality. There was a lot of violence going around at the time, the Rodney king riots,

 Rosie Acosta: I think one of the most poignant scenes in my life that I remember so vividly that really encompasses a metaphor of that time in my life as a young child was seeing the smoke, the thickness of the smoke and the Ash come down from all of the burning businesses during that time, after the riots and being able to driving to see relatives of ours that lived in that Normandy in Western area, and just seeing things that were still on fire and not seeing any firetrucks or anything, it was really like to me, it was very reminiscent of movies that I would see. It was just a scene out of a movie and it was scary. It was really, really scary to have those experiences at such a young age, because in my mind, I'm also, I'm a recovering Catholic. So I grew up in a very Catholic household where we would go to church on Sundays and my grandmother would host these prayer circles once a week.

 Rosie Acosta: And there was this big cognitive dissonance because here I am learning about faith and about ritual and about how this higher power, this God will create a life of abundance and and you know, like peace in your life. And then on the opposite side of that, I'm seeing all of this chaos. So it was a very interesting observation to make at six, seven years old, to see a group of women praying and asking God why this is happening and not getting an answer back. So it created this interesting understanding of a paradox at such a young age. And I think when you ask the question of what it was like, I mean, looking back now, it, it felt very like educational. I was learning so much in my little tiny six-year-old body experience of the world and being able to see things as they were, and then have people say, oh, you just have to pray the fear away, or you have to pray the gang violence away, or you have to pray the, you know, anxiety or stress away.

 Rosie Acosta: And it just, it didn't work. You know? So at a young age I was questioning so many things. I was questioning so much of my surroundings. And that's also something that is a little bit SAC religious to do, because at that point, it's not that you're questioning a system, you're questioning your faith, right. You're questioning, oh, you're not, how are you questioning God? Or how are you questioning the belief or the efficacy of prayer or of belief. And so it was, it just created a ground for me to later on as a teenager, start to act out.

 Wade Lightheart: So taking yourself into your teenage years, obviously you're seeing what seems to be the paradox becomes almost unbearable because you're like, wait a second. And I had a similar thing when I was a teenager, right. Is like, I grew up in a Baptist church in a little small town. And, you know, it was kind of, Jesus loves the little children of the world and he's this great guy and he's an infinite love. And then you get old enough and you go to the big church and they're like, and if you don't worship this guy forever, you're going to burn in a lake of fire forever. And I'm like, whoa, what happened to the Jesus loved me guy. Right? Like what, what, like what happened here? Like somebody is not telling me the truth, right. I'm not getting the full picture here. And it wasn't resolved until many, many years later when I discovered Yogananda's and those principles.

 Wade Lightheart: And I was like, oh, he resolved all my issues with organized religion. So that was cool. But going back to that paradox point that, that you're having, at what point did you, there's a shift here that happens in teenagers comp quite common, but that we start to rebel about the things that don't make sense, because we're old enough to see the things that don't make sense, but we're not old enough to really be a mature adult and understand responsibility. Right, right, right. Or what we can control and what we can say, Hey, why can't everybody love each other and be aware you can all be rich and famous you're right. Yeah. Because

 Rosie Acosta: That's sort of the, especially growing up in LA that's, that's, that's a thing. That's what you do. Right. So, yeah, during that transition my parents had split up and so my mom was raising my older sister and I, and yeah, I was acting out, I was suffering from PTSD from seeing people get shot and somebody gets stabbed. And just being in this intense experience, I was suffering from debilitating panic attacks and insomnia, and I was on the McDonald's everyday diet. So there was all kinds of, it was a recipe for disaster. Right. I just wasn't feeling my best. And yeah, I was, I started to get in trouble with the law. You know, I was hanging out with the wrong crowd kids that you grew up with. There's really only, you're either part of the crews that have created people that you've grown up with, or you basically become like a book nerd, you know, you're just basically focused on school and you're kind of part of that crew, or you're a bad kid. Like there was, there was only two options, right. During that time, especially in the school that I was. So you decided that you'd be a bad kid, but

 Wade Lightheart: Whatever now, how would you define that?

 Speaker 4: So I, you know,

 Rosie Acosta: You, you're 13, 14 years old ditching school and, you know, smoking pot and drinking and not just going to seven 11 and stealing things and, you know, just being tagging walls and just being, you know, bad, not, not a good child. So it's

 Wade Lightheart: Kind of a form though, of I've natural rebellion, which somehow you kind of know what's going on isn't right. Right. And so there's that anger that comes up because the motivation is like, well, you know, screw all these people, right? Yeah. Yeah.

 Rosie Acosta: It, and it felt so it's also the tribalism thing. Right. I wanted, I didn't want to be spurned from my tribe. It was, these were kids that I'd grown up with. So it just felt like a natural thing to start to fall into those types of patterns. So I ended up getting in trouble with the law a handful of times. And the last time it was for trying to steal a cop card and usually an idea that doesn't work out well. Yeah, no, it didn't. And I got arrested and, and I got it was pretty eyeopening for me actually at that point, because I realized, wow, this is, this, isn't a game. This is my life. And just seeing where my life was headed. I remember going to the court that day and my mom dressed me up in all of her, you know, her nice clothes. I was wearing this turtleneck. And I was just, you know, this, trying to look the part as a good kid and then everywhere around, I just see, you know, people, gang bangers dressed in like their baggy jeans and like t-shirt, and, you know, shaved heads and tat it up. And here I come in in front of this judge and he's kind of looking at me like, what,

 Speaker 4: What are you doing? What are you doing here? Like, what are you at this time? I was 15. Wow.

 Wade Lightheart: Very, very does a big T

 Speaker 4: Turner. Yes. That that's, you're right on the fence of where, what direction,

 Rosie Acosta: Right? Yeah. And so that was the pivotal moment. I really didn't want to go to jail. And I gave myself the out to say, Hey, like, thankfully I wasn't, I didn't get any jail time, but I did get like a hundred hours of community service. And my mom had to pay a couple thousand dollars in damage that was done restitution or something. And there was a couple other things that I had to do. I had a curfew, I couldn't leave the state. I couldn't be out past six o'clock. And it was just sort of like my teenage life was over. And I just decided that, that, that was it. I needed that catalyst to get my life together. And, and I thought in that moment, while I was in court thinking I can easily see my life going in that direction. Those a part of me that didn't care, rebellious,

 Speaker 4: That rebellious part of you, that's just like, yeah, like I don't

 Rosie Acosta: Care. Like, go ahead. Fine. And I see that a lot now at my age and doing what I do working with kids that are at risk youth and have been through traumatic experiences, have seeing that energy of like, I don't care and nothing matters. And, and I don't matter. Right. And, and it really was an embodiment of, I didn't think I mattered and I didn't think that my life mattered and I didn't understand what the point of life was. And as the universe likes to do it likes to present you with opportunities to make different choices. And that's around the time when I got introduced to the self-realization fellowship. Wow. And my mom actually worked by the center off sunset Boulevard. She was working at the children's hospital at the time, and I was still really struggling with anxiety. And one of her friends had said, oh, she should try meditation as a way to quell the anxiety. And it might help her with her sleep. And my mom and I didn't really have great communication at that time. So she kind of left all the Yogananda pamphlets that our friend had given you at home. So she kinda left them on the bed. And I came home and I saw I'm like, what is this? And I started read through the, you know, the power of the, the power of attraction and self-realization and all of these different, like cool things. Cause you know, Yoganonda always has the

 Speaker 4: Best, that's the best stuff. Especially

 Rosie Acosta: For a teenager, you know, it's like, what is it? This is interesting. I read through some of the things and there was a schedule with the little pamphlet on it that gave the address. And

 Speaker 4: So at the time I was still

 Rosie Acosta: Kind of ditching school because I felt like I needed time to think about my life. So I w I was still ditching school. So the next day I did school and I took the bus from east LA to Hollywood to go see what this session.

 Wade Lightheart: Wow. So back in those, I guess it would be brother Bhakta, Nanda, or [inaudible] at the church. I don't know. I don't remember.

 Rosie Acosta: There was definitely, I mean, it was very, I remember exactly all the people that I saw, the minute that I walked in, because everybody was smiling. Everybody was like, so nice. And I just thought it was so weird. I

 Speaker 4: Was like, this is weird. Why aren't people

 Rosie Acosta: Smiling? I don't understand. And then I went into that main temple right before they were giving a lecture. And you know, I go in and the woman that was, she was like greeting and very nice. And I go and I sit down and it reminded me of being in the Catholic church. It was, you know, it's inside, it's got the, the, the, the pews, you know, and you're sitting and then there's all the pictures of all the, the, the teachers and the swamis. And, and then there's a picture of Jesus, right. And then I'm like, oh, I know him, Jesus. Yeah, he's familiar. I get, I get him. And so I sit there and then this woman comes up and she's giving this lecture and she's talking about what, you know, this meditation and she's talking about happiness and how we're responsible for our own happiness.

 Rosie Acosta: And you know, all of these things that just sounded so interesting to me. It was very intriguing. And I'm sitting there waiting for like the guy or whomever to come. And I didn't know what it was. I'm like, is this lecture, my meditating, I don't understand what's going on. But then I realized like 30 minutes and I'm like, oh no, she's the, she's the guy. She's, she's the guy, she's the person that's talking about. This is the thing, you know, and I remember that something happened, there was something that happened during that experience. She had us close our eyes and I was not a fan of that because I grew up, it was dangerous. It was dangerous. You have to constantly be alert. And so I didn't, but I, I did just kind of bring my eyes down a little bit. And she was kind of guiding a breathing practice.

 Rosie Acosta: And then she just said, okay, calm, relax your shoulders. And then take a deep breath. And that moment was she in invited us to take a deep breath was the first time I'd ever actually felt my body, like what my Bo, like I felt my body. And it was so wild because for me, that's all it took to say, oh, there's something else out here. Like, there's something else present. Oh yeah. So to me, when people talk about having a spiritual awakening or a spiritual experience, I go straight to that moment. So it doesn't have to be something spectacular or some great vision. It could be a spontaneous, has taken a deep breath and feeling your body because that, that's what it was for me. And if you think about trauma, or if you think about people that have experienced intense experiences, and I'm sure this is maybe something that you can relate to. We're so focused on getting out of body because that's what can allow for the survival of an intense experience. It's like, oh, I just have to take myself out of this scenario, which happens a

 Wade Lightheart: Lot in traumatic situations. Like whether it's being held hostage or a prisoner or your life being threatened or rape or extreme violence, there is a defense mechanism that a person kind of checks out from whatever is going. And it becomes almost a hypnotic state. That one goes, but that the trauma is there, but your S your psyche kind of fractionated in a way to protect you. Yeah. Right.

 Rosie Acosta: Yeah. And so, if you think about then getting back into your body and getting grounded, or getting more centered, so to speak, you have to reenter your body. You have to reenter that space. You have to create the sanctuary within yourself and feel safe within that. And for me, that was where yoga and meditation really came in to save the day, because those are the practices that were able to get me back into feeling my body and, and returning to finding meaning and finding purpose and yeah. Like wanting to actually create something

 Wade Lightheart: It's really cool. I think a lot of people, you said something really, I think very important is that taking that first breath. I mean, we think of, you know, spirituality and all the magical things that can potentially emerge out of that, but what could be more magical than our breath? I mean, the fact that we're living and, you know, breath is the cord that ties the soul to the physicality. And it's one of those things that happens automatically. But you also do consciously, which is really unique aspect of breathing and the different types of breathing. So after that, so you're you go from the police station to the meditation center, meditation station. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. The meditation is so, so, so, so then what emerged after that? What, what was, what was, what happened in your life? Because obviously, you know, one little session isn't going to break you out of the environment that you're in. Do you still have to overcome that? I would say that the negative momentum, the momentum that's taking, you downward, the environment that you're in, you get this little. Oh. But you know, you gotta, you gotta work your way out of this. So what happens after that?

 Rosie Acosta: Yeah. So I, there's a desire born from that where I want to learn why I feel the way I feel. And I dove deep into the world of meditation and learning more, a yoga philosophy, exploring Buddhism, just all the different paths. Right. And I became a student and it took, it took a handful of years. I mean, it took a while for me to finally get to a place where I really began to integrate what I was learning so much of what I was doing at the time was just for myself, it felt good to learn about different paths and different ways of living life. I needed light. I needed tools for living because I had spent so much time being out of my body that I needed to reintegrate myself into a world of, okay, now what do I do? Like, what am I going to do with myself?

 Rosie Acosta: And it's funny because I really do believe in the power of intention. And I do believe in the power of belief and the right people coming in at the right time. And it just, the moment that I started to bring my awareness to feeling good and focusing on my body and my health, everything else started to fall into place. I was getting different opportunities, different, different job opportunities. I, I ended up getting a job, working as a hair salon manager for this really famous celebrity hairstylist who was 19 and an ex criminal. And I was being asked to run a million dollar business. And he didn't need to know my colorful past. At that time, when I, when I had that offer, I was working at another salon actually that he had recruited me from, because he had heard that I was doing a really great job.

 Rosie Acosta: And so that that's really all it took is that one opportunity that one person believing in you and giving you that sort of positive feedback, that you're doing something well, and I did. And at the time I was still learning even more. I got more into learning about nutrition and health. And as I said prior, I was on the McDonald's diet. So I obviously changed to that. And I started learning about organic foods and I'd read the China study and I was really going deep into the world of wellness. I'd made a new set of friends and little by little, just my world started to expand. And I started to just see the difference in putting your energy into things that were making you better. I felt better. I was attracting people in, in my life that were also doing the same type of work that wanted to be better as well.

 Rosie Acosta: And so that started to just grow and grow. And over the course of a few years, still working at the salon. I met my partner who I'm with now. We've been together for 18 years. So we met when I was 20. And that really helped shape my life because it showed me. Okay. So if you have a desire to do better and to be better, the universe will respond to that so long as you're doing the work. Right? So as long as you continue to show up and you continue to move through whatever obstacles are, are coming up. During that time I did my first yoga teacher training. Not because I wanted to be a teacher, but because I wanted to deepen my practice, I wanted to kind of explore why I felt the way that I did. I wanted to know why I wanted to know what the reason was.

 Rosie Acosta: And what's interesting is people see me now, or students now, and I do these retreats or just talking about it. People see me as somebody who's very spiritual, which I find really fascinating because I am, I have a spiritual practice, but I have it because I'm too logical of a person because I'm very black and white because I'm very, I need to know the di I need, I need the facts. I need to know why I'm feeling this way. I want to understand it because if you think about it from that fragmented thinking from when I was a child blind faith, for me, wasn't an option because I didn't see it bear fruit for anybody. Right. Right.

 Wade Lightheart: He saw what blind faith was getting. Exactly.

 Rosie Acosta: And so that was always a little bit of a, it created a little bit of sort of defense mechanism. I didn't want to fully dive into something, even though it felt good and doing what I was doing felt really good. I still felt like there's that part of my brain, that doubts, right. Which has been the culprit of many of my failures because of that doubt, right. Where I, I need to be able to toe the line between having belief radically radical love, and also being that sort of left brain. What is the logic in this? And I feel that for me, that's, that's my spiritual practice is to be able to get in that state of merging the two, because I mean, that's what yoga is. It's the study of opposites. And when I think about it now, I'm so grateful that I had the experience that I did because I was able to learn about paradoxes early on. So then when we're dealing with things like impermanent, we're dealing with things like change, we're dealing with things that are out of our control. I'm able to manage those situations in a more efficient or fluid way, because I know that we have no control. Right. Right.

 Wade Lightheart: So after working in the salon and doing your teacher training and all this stuff, like, so how did you make the transition to the person that you are today? Like, it seems like a still associate it's

 Speaker 4: A long, it's a long wait. I, I also

 Rosie Acosta: Show people that it it's many years, like there's many years between all of these things that happen, because I that's just the way that life is. I see now some people that they want to become a yoga teacher, they want to become a podcast or they want to do everything. They want to do it quick. Correct. Right. And it's, it just, it's the downside

 Wade Lightheart: Of the, what I call the, the Amazon expectations. You know, it's like, it's not here in 24 hours. Like what's the problem. Yeah. And then, and then they, the self comparison starts to happen. Oh, well, so-and-so because there's always some YouTube, that's got a million followers at 17 driving rolls Royces and, you know, hanging out with celebrities and stuff. And if I'm not that then maybe I'm not good enough, or I haven't been recognized or, you know, why I'm better than that. Like, you know, we have all those defense mechanisms. So

 Rosie Acosta: Get this because I have so much respect and admiration for, for athletes and people that work with their bodies. Right? So you have the history of, you know, bodybuilding and working physically. And to me, that is the best metaphor for any path that you take, because it takes time in order to build muscle, you have to tear the muscle down in order for it to build back up and it takes time. It doesn't happen. You don't go from one day to the next, to be in a competition.

 Wade Lightheart: Well, I think that's kind of one of the, if you go to potentially's eightfold path, most people think of yoga primarily as a sauna. Right. Right. The postures first start with Yama, niyama the moral, the do's, and don'ts the world. Nothing you just don't want to be. Otherwise you become like a powerful Darth Vader as opposed to [inaudible]. Right.  but I think when you get to a sauna in which is essentially body discipline, the process of discipline, your body creates it's, it's a mental game that you have to play with. You have to get physical discipline, and then that mental construct can beneficially lead to spiritual realization. And I think it's that chop wood carry water, do the practice, do the practice. I don't feel like doing the pressure, do the practice until it becomes embedded into that. And I think physical discipline, whether it's yoga, athletics, performance could be anything that leads you to, that will start to open up awareness of mental discipline. And then you move up through the ranks, which is, you know  you know, concentration and, you know,

 Speaker 4: Then the meditation, yeah. You

 Wade Lightheart: Gotta go through like body disciplines. And when I went to India and learned about the, the history of bodybuilding in India, which goes way, way, way back then, most people don't know this. It was one of the forms of discipline one of the yoga disciplines and it's, so there are different pathways for different people. Yeah. And I think a lot of people miss that step, and a lot of athletes will kind of master the physical side of it, but you can see this in the pro ranks all the time. They, if they don't get the mental side of the game, they've got, as they say, they got all the tools, but no toolbox. And of course, then you can have both, maybe you've got the physical characteristics and the mental characteristics, but you end up in this re the resentment of success and you see people self-destruct at that level, because, you know, having all the money in the world and all the isolation in the world and all the athletic stuff. Yeah. That's all cool. But that, doesn't, it's not what makes you a human and doesn't mean it's certainly cool and fun, but that doesn't, that doesn't feed the soul. And you either get that you take that and go to the next level and become a kind of a magnanimous self-expressed person, or it tends to erode into some sort of narcissistic self-destructive nature. You see that happen. And I think, I think a lot of people don't understand that the intense focus of what success could lead to it'll test you as much,

 Rosie Acosta: 100%. And just to go back on what you're saying, because it does relate to the yoga sutras of Patanjali, which is one of my favorite yoga texts, because it doesn't just say the eightfold path, it gives you many ways, right? The whole book is about if this doesn't work, try this, if this doesn't work top us video, yet each bar up haunted Dani. So if that doesn't work the fire that you need of transformation, the study of sacred texts or surrender to God, like those are the different ways of, of getting into this expansive place. What you're saying though, I really love, because I feel like people don't talk about it enough, and it's such a great example of social media, whatever, the energy that you cultivate is only going to expand. What's already there. So the difference between Darth Vader and B one, right?

 Rosie Acosta: If there's all, if, if you're not working with the inside of you at your core, the things that are creating imbalance are the things that are creating a despair or anger, or the things that like to stew. When you begin to do all these practices, it's just going to magnify whatever's there. So the whole idea behind yoga is that we need this sort of, yeah. The Yama, the new Yama in order to live a good life, to be a good person, to be compassionate, to, to have these different, different like foundations create a solid life. Okay. Because you begin a ritual, you begin to sort of do a way with the things that are afflicting you. Then you can begin to express and expand all the goodness that you want to bring into the world. You know, you start to just innately.

 Rosie Acosta: It's not like, oh, I want to be a good person. I want to be a good person. Don't S don't tell yourself you want to be a good person. Just be a good person. Right, right. Don't just say, yes. Oh, I want you to create a separation. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's the whole oneness experience. It's like, I am what I am and I am here and I can, I can create this experience now. So whether I have the ma the millions of dollars in the rolls Royces or whatever, or not that that person is it. If they don't work on the internal, they're never going to be happy. They're never going to find the satisfaction. They're going to go from one thing to the next, just like you were saying, the Amazon thing, just to go back to answer your question about how, because it relates to what I'm saying during that transition, when I decided, okay, this is what I want to do for a living.

 Rosie Acosta: I was working at the salon, had closed during the recession and yeah, about oh eight. And then I had this opportunity to go work for a personal trainer. And it was awesome. And I was just learning so much about the business and about wellness and about the impact that you can have on people's lives. And after a couple of years, I just was not happy. I just felt like I wanted to do something. I wanted to be able to expand what I was learning. And I wanted to work with people. And I wanted to be able to be the one that was leading retreats and workshops. And it wasn't necessarily coming from a place of, oh, I just really want, I mean, yes, I wanted to help people like the people I grew up with understand that they have, they're powerful that they have so much power.

 Rosie Acosta: They don't even know. But at that moment, I think I had so much to learn because it definitely felt like I just was done. You know, that moment where you're just throwing a TA, it almost felt like an internal tantrum where like, I know all these things, I have all this information. I need to go teach this. Right. And I'm so glad that it didn't work like that. I'm so glad that I fell on my face, that it wasn't as quickly as I thought it would be that it took many years for me to actually build a community for me to actually show up. And it actually took me starting with one student, two students, three students, four students, 10 students, 20 students. Now I'm moving to a different city. And now it's back to one student back to two students. And that experience of having things not work out. And I'm sure you can speak to this as a business owner. It's like, those are the moments where you just grow the most, where you really learn what it is that you actually want to do and what you want to create. I think

 Wade Lightheart: The worst thing that can happen to somebody is, is outrageous success early on in their life. And there's a couple of reasons for that one. I think they oftentimes, and I've interviewed a few people like that. The number one, there's a sense of unearned components on one level or everything is this easy. And then three, they're the resources you have the crash. If you're at the, if it's a bigger crash, if you're falling on your face from the first floor or from the penthouse, you know, the, the, the fall from the pen, the one from the first floor of suboptimal, the pentose often isn't. And you see that, particularly at what I've noticed in, in, you know, the classic 28 years old rockstar, famous person death at that age, which in the Pythagorean model, you have the zero to 27 is your youth stage.

 Wade Lightheart: The power stage is 27 and 54. And the wisdom stage is 54 to 81. And if you get past that, you get another youth stage and can coordinate to that in the Indian tradition is that you spend the first, third of your life under the tutelage of the grow and developing whatever skill it is here in the world. And you take the second part to live what they call householder life, where you are supporting your family, creating your craft or your field. And then once the family's kind of moved on from that, you move into the third stage of life, which is where you become the hermit. Again, you go back and to your spiritual study that you'll laid down early on in life. And I think in the Western world, everybody wants to get to the power stage. And, you know, if you don't manage to get wisdom with that, you know, it's like having a really powerful car with no steering wheel sooner or later, it's going to crash into something and you might not survive it.

 Rosie Acosta: I mean, it's, it's so wild. I was just having this conversation with one of my friends and he was saying, you know, people our age and we have similar backgrounds, we, we didn't Google it. We earned it. Right. So it's, it's the stark difference between getting information, download, having a quick download and thinking, okay. Yeah, I have the knowledge. There's something about having to wait that creates a more integrative experience.

 Wade Lightheart: I call it the it's kind of the emergent of the sacred. Yes. That, which is sacred, is not something that happens quickly is the cultivation of of 

 Speaker 5: Well,

 Wade Lightheart: Sacred to me means there needs to be spaciousness. So that, that which emerges out of the emptiness can then be recognized, which is actually a principle in quantum mechanics, which is the fundamental aspects of the universe. Like things are blinking in and out of existence. I mean, we're hurdling through space right now, like one and a half million miles an hour. And then

 Speaker 4: The galaxy spinning at 500,000

 Wade Lightheart: Miles an hour. And like, we're kind of, we're not going like this. We're actually corkscrewing through space. Like I think about that, like in the, in the earth is spinning at 24,000 miles an hour. And then I get in my car and I'm doing 70 miles an hour down the highway. And I like, I feel like I'm going fast at 70, but the whole thing is moving at this outrageous space. And, you know, we don't know if we're going to slam into someone I'm like, wait, whoa, whoa, there's so much miraculousness. But without the space to hold that to, to contemplate that, if it's just, I want, I get, I move on, we don't are able to take it. And I think that's potentially, there's an opportunity in the digital age with discovering that, but it's not readily apparent because there's only so many Amazon orders that you can put forward. You can kind of fill that, like you get bored. Yeah. And our neuro

 Rosie Acosta: Processing is not able to process everything that's coming in. We're just not built that way. We're not as quick as a computer, we need time to integrate. And we're so used to that. We're such an ocular society thing. We're constantly taking information in and scrolling and having ad blindness because we're looking at something we're not giving our brain. That's why people have so much anxiety and so much stress because we're just putting things in constantly. And I'm driving while I'm changing the music. While I'm trying to send a text while I'm talking on the phone, and I'm thinking about where I'm going to go after this next meeting, it's just, there's this constant of wanting to hit the fast forward button. Like let's hurry up and hurry up and get there. And I think that the biggest gift in having a practice or being able to cultivate more presence is the whole idea that we really just don't know. We have no idea. We have no control. Right.

 Wade Lightheart: So let's talk about when things did start to turn for you and like every great success our, you know, in athletics that I always share with people, if you're going to be great in athletics, you really have to learn how to lose and to take the lessons of the temporary loss in the short term, to get more out of your capabilities. And I have my pseudo nephew, one of my dear friends, she has a little boy and I'm uncle Wade to him. And he's really good. He's like six and he's out playing on his BMX bike and he's really good. And so he got started and he's got a coach and he's just winning like crazy. And then he moves up to the next rankings, which is kids a little bit bigger, a little bit older, and he gets beat. And then he gets beat again the second time.

 Wade Lightheart: And the second time he, he, he stopped in the middle of the race when he realized he couldn't win. And then he came back the next time again. And you know, she, she talked to me about it and I was like, yeah, he's he, he's in that. He's in a very delicate moment right now. And that is, is he going to be able to take the lessons of losing and not seeing as he's a loser? Or is he going to take those that desire to win, to become better, to, to be beaten? The best thing that can happen to you is to fail. The best thing that can happen to you is to be beaten because now you have the opportunity to go, oh, I'm not all that in a bag of chips. Right. I gotta, I gotta dig deeper. I gotta coach harder. I gotta learn more. I gotta train her. I got to do whatever it is I need to do to become a recognizable as a skill. And, and the top of any field is a very small segment of people. And in of itself is of no reward. I think that's a lot of people like being wealthy and famous, or, you know, have your successful business or your practice or your millions of followers or something. Yeah. It's cool. And it's cool for about 60 minutes tops. And the more it happens, it's like,

 Speaker 2: Well, we just made another few hundred thousand dollars cover. Oh, we just got a hundred more thousand on

 Wade Lightheart: The end. It becomes like, I think when you don't have it, you think you make it out to be more than it is. Yeah. But that being said, it is nice signposts along the way that, Hey, I'm tracking the right direction. So when did that happen for you? Like, what would you then

 Rosie Acosta: Everything that you just said is so true. And I love everything that you just said because it's one of the, the most poignant lessons that I feel like everybody needs to experience and needs to learn, especially because the makeup of the mind, the nature of the mind is to always want what's better. Oh, it would be better if, oh yeah, I got that a hundred thousand dollars. It would be even better as if I was able to get to 150. Oh, would it be better if I got to a million, it it'd be even better is when I get to 5 million, you know, like that. And it's always going to be that way for forever because that's the nature of the mind.

 Wade Lightheart: And there's always, as I said, like, you go into you drive your yacht into Monte Carlo, your 150 foot yacht and you go, wow, I got the biggest yacht. No here comes, you know, the prince of Kupol pool, Tupac and his vote

 Speaker 4: Twice as scores, [inaudible] winning

 Speaker 2: That you can't win in that game. No.

 Rosie Acosta: And the thing is you're, you can, but to what avail and at what cost. So for me, I think things started to turn when I just completely immersed myself in what I was doing. And I wasn't worried about the results. I wasn't worried about getting followers. I wasn't worried about getting recognition. I wasn't worried about getting, you know, the celebs or whatever. It just, honestly, it just started to happen. I was just so focused on doing something that I was passionate about. And it really is, you know, when people say, oh, I would just immerse myself into my practice and into my craft. I do believe that there's something that happens. The universe responds to that. And it's only ever in my life when I've experienced successes has been when I immersed myself in what I was doing wholeheartedly, not, oh, so I got this person.

 Rosie Acosta: I wonder if I can work with this person now, or I wonder if like, yeah, if I can fly and work with this team now, and because it does happen, I would be lying if I didn't say like that. It didn't, it absolutely does. But in those moments for me, it's like you said, the moment you get those accolades or you get the, you know, I wanted to, I loved working with yoga journal and it's like, it was a dream to be on the cover of their magazine. And then once I did, it was great. But then, then what? So I did it, what's now what what's next? Somebody else is going to be on the next cover. Somebody else is going to be number one. When I launched the podcast, I was top 10 for like eight months. And then the minute I wasn't on the top 10, I got to the number one spot. Then somebody else is going to be on the number one. Right. That, that sort of thing that happens where you get to that, you get to that. And or that goal, there's always going to be another, you know, I work with athletes. I work with athletes that have been in the Olympics and it's interesting to work with them because they're just a different type of makeup. They're just a different type of person. You know, what, what have you noticed? So

 Speaker 6: It's,

 Rosie Acosta: I'm very fortunate to work with some really incredibly talented, skilled, committed people. But every single one that I've worked with athletes specifically, they really love what they do. Like they love it, not just, oh, I have to go to practice. Right? Just like I get to go. I'm excited. I got practice in the morning. Like I'm trying to do my yoga before then because I got to do my meditation practice and I got to get good sleep and I've got to do this. And it's inspiring because I know that not, they're not all that way.

 Speaker 4: You know, the best are the best are.

 Wade Lightheart: I can remember James Harrison, who played for the Pittsburgh Steelers and he, at the last season, he goes to one of his arch rivals the new England Patriots. And he's a legend in his thing. And of course, Tom, Brady's a legend. And being a guy that you always is trying to whip the quarterback apart with his defensive position, he goes, yeah, I went to new England. I wanted to hate the guy. Like I just like, I didn't believe it. He goes, and then I went there and I'm like this guy so nice. And he's like, it's freezing cold. It's snowing out. And he's, you know, and we've got a practice and he's like,

 Speaker 4:
 We get to practice in the cold.

 Wade Lightheart: You know what the other guys aren't doing this we're going to be so ready when like he's jazzed up about the hardest. And then I heard Jocko Willink. One of the, one of his favorite videos is good. I don't know if you've ever seen it. He's the Navy seal Mount. And the model of the Navy seals is the harder it is, the better we like it. And you can imagine like, these are under the most extreme conditions of life and death. You know, that you can imagine. And if his video is, I recommend everyone listed as good, and this guy was coming to him and saying, why, you know, I know what you're going to do. This guy would come to him with all the problems. And now, and every time I come, he goes, I know what you're gonna say. And he's like, what are you going to say?

 Wade Lightheart: And he's like, good. He goes, yeah. Cause, cause there's some good. That's going to come out of everything. Didn't get the gear. Good. Didn't get the promotion. Good. Didn't get funded. Good mission got canceled, got beat, good. You know, like this is his mentality to deal with the most extreme conditions to find the good in those circumstances, which leads me with these athletes who I think a lot of people don't really comprehend. Like, okay, you are good in your high school. Maybe you were good enough to get to a state championship or a national championship, but then to be a professional or Olympic athlete is just, it's just a whole other dimension of commitment that's required. You've got to have the talent, you've got to have the ability. You gotta have the work ethic and the consistency over decades time. And the difference is one 10th of a second, one 10th of a second. You get there one 10th of a second year, too late, you know? And it's, it's like the Razor's edge of all the time on every single thing. And for many of them, their career can end at any single moment. And the unusual thing about being an athlete is that you've kind of, it's particularly in the professional demand, you go through your career and you're done, but time, most people are just coming into their own, such an interesting field. I'm in all of it. It's

 Rosie Acosta: Athletes, it's musicians that are incredible at their craft it's actors or actresses. I, I mean the, the, the one commonality that I've seen, that I love to be in the presence of the people when they're in their zone of genius, when they're just in there for some people it's business, right. It's like you get, I mean, you're definitely passionate about what you do, you know, so you definitely get in your Yogi too. So there's that, but you get into this zone where you really do feel the presence of the moment and to tics to witness that in somebody else, you know, that you're experiencing divinity. Yes.

 Wade Lightheart: Art to me, to me, that is the definition of art. So art is when we can witness the cultivation of a skill in any given area, not as a mentation, but as an, as an unfoldment. And that could be, you know, the gymnast in the Olympics, jumping off the bar and doing this triple thing and then landing it, or the football leaning over three defenders and reaching out with one hand and catching the ball or a singer hitting the notes on the thing. And the hair stands up on the back of your end, right. Or it could be like walking into the yoga meditation center and you see, you see the monk or the Swami, or, you know, and they're there and they're there, there's a presence that you witness. And to me, that's what art is. Art is the combination of skill in outside of the mental realm.

 Wade Lightheart: It's, it's good. It's gone beyond mind. Yeah. You know, it's, it's a beautiful, it's a beautiful and witnessing that you, cause you kind of illustrated, that's kind of where you kind of got into your craft where you started to attract those types of people. And I do believe this is the electromagnetic attraction when you become that, that, which you are seeking and you automatically happen. And there's a, a synchronization that happens and there's a folly within it because it's kind of like, as soon as you kind of you're, you're kind of meditating and you get to that no mind place and like I'm there and then you're done,

 Speaker 4: You're done [inaudible]

 Wade Lightheart: So, and I think people who have achieved the highest levels of, of accolades and, and capabilities also kind of recognize that energy in someone else, they see it. So they, they see the world is different, but the posers versus the, the expressionists.

 Rosie Acosta: Yeah. I totally agree with that. It's, it's such a fascinating observation to experience with other people too, that are on that same frequency. And I 100% believe everything that you're saying like attracts, like, and when you are in that energetic frequency of presence, abundance, gratitude, you're able to bring those synchronicities into your life. There's no going out to seek it. I mean, I think it's important for us to constantly be doing what we it's sort of like putting the work in to get there. I'm not saying

 Speaker 4: You just sit there by your [inaudible] for yeah. You meditated in, it's kind of like

 Wade Lightheart: The, the downside of the way the secret. I talk about this all day, because I always see the law of attraction is the after effect of the law of intention. You got to kind of put out the energetic intention, airy ways. And as you keep running that signal over and over and in physics, that would be the collapse of the wave function and the Dirac equation, which in a quantum universe, if you hold an intention in mind, its intensity and magnitude of the wave, eventually coalesces into the appearance of that in this temporal realm. Now we see it as a causality of, we look backwards, as science says and says, oh, we're going to go to the wall. You know, you're in this situation where you were a kid growing up in a bad neighborhood, you get arrested. And then that didn't, you changed your life and you went to a meditation thing and then you got into yoga. And then we went to that. So we can look backwards and say, those are the signposts, but those are just flags. They're not really the causes of what put you there. There's a part of you that are driving to the mastery of your craft, right? And in the mastery of the craft, that is that intention, which is yoga, which is an inward thing, not an outward thing. And then the inward thing becomes so depth in, in, in like embodied in not just what you're doing,

 Speaker 4: But who you are, you become that.

 Wade Lightheart: And in the coming of that, there, whether there is recognition by the world or not is irrelevant. It doesn't matter. Right. When it, when it doesn't matter, that's when it tends to happen and becomes beautiful. What would you say?

 Rosie Acosta: I wouldn't say one. I mean, that's what I was saying earlier, that those moments in my life where things have worked out have been those moments where it really didn't matter whether it worked or didn't work. It's just what is happening in that moment. And I think one of the main things, I actually want to go back to what you said about mastery, because I find it to be so important to actually go in. And if you want to be really good at something, you need to invest the time, just like you're saying, it's, you need to seek the guidance of wise teachers. And you know, in the, in the sutras, it says that you have to have a teacher that you have to, you don't have to, but the whole idea is to follow a guide whose light's a little brighter than yours to show you the way because somebody else has already been down that path. Somebody else has already knows where all the potholes are so that you don't step into them

 Wade Lightheart:
 Or knows how to get out of it when you inevitably do. And

 Rosie Acosta: So, and that's the part of mastery that I feel is kind of a dying art, the whole idea of having an apprentice and having somebody, you know, assist you for a long period of time. One of the things that I really loved about working in, in the hairstyle and the beauty industry when I was managing the salon was there's a process of graduation. So to speak, you have to assist you. Don't just become a celebrity hairstylist. And in fact, I knew a lot of the celebrity hairstylist. Now I knew them when they were assisting and what you, what people don't see, especially on social media was the years and years and years of hard work that happened before people don't see the years and years and years of hard work that you do when you launch a successful company or when you're, you know, fortune 500, they don't see how much money you invested that didn't work, how many products didn't actually launch, you know, all of the things.

 Rosie Acosta: And the thing that I love about that process is you have to start, everybody starts the same. You start washing hair. And then from washing hair, you're basically helping everybody. Then you may get assigned to a stylist for a couple of years, a couple of years, two to three, four max, it's like going to high school. And then after that you get on the floor and then you have to start from the beginning. You start with your one student your one client, you start with one and then you begin to build and build. And in that whole process, you could either lament and begrudge that you're not where you want to be, or be grudge of the people that you're assisting or just look to see what's not happening in your life and how much time's going by. Or you can utilize that time to perfect your craft, to learn as much as you can to learn from your teachers, to use it as a way to have this immersive experience, teach you what you need to learn in order to get to that successful place.

 Rosie Acosta: We don't do that because we want everything quickly. We want to have the ex, we want just the good stuff, right? We want what's better. We're wanting what is, oh, no, but this is, this looks so much better. If I, I love my house, but it would be better if I was closer to the beach. Oh, if I was closer to it, it'd be better. If I was on the beach would be even better as that. If my friends lived closer, oh, it would be even better as if we could all live in a little community. It there's always going to be that. And if you can recognize that, that's just the nature of your roommate that hangs out out there with you. And you're the witness. Just observing it all. If you can continue to differentiate that. So one of the main things that I love about yoga, and I did do sit down to one thing and that's learning discernment, cultivating discernment. What does that mean to you?

 Rosie Acosta: In, in my personal terms, for me, it means know what to do when you're off of the safety of your cushion. This is what, so that I know what to do when I'm out in the world. Cause I know what to do when I'm on my mat. I know what to do when I'm on my cushion, easy for me, I've been doing it for years now, almost two decades, right? Not a problem. It's easy, but taking that and actually going out into the world and being a kind compassionate, present human, that's a different story. Yes, you're now because there's so many variables thrown in now into that, that are happening simultaneously. Discernment means to know the difference, to know the difference between what is going to serve your highest good and what isn't. And it's not about always doing, what's going to serve your highest good. Sometimes things that you may not think are going to serve your highest good serve your highest good, like your, your, the, what you were saying about the good, like good. Oh, that happened good. Oh, this happened good. It's difficult. Navigate a world that's full of impermanence. It's difficult to navigate a world that's consistently changing. I mean, that is the one constant,

 Wade Lightheart: Well, yes, the only constant has changed, but I think you said something very poignant there that needs focus on, and that is a world of impermanence. So, so much of the drive and life today, I think is towards accomplishment, achievement acquisition of whatever people, possessions, power, resources, titles. Yeah. All that sort of stuff. And those are all cool. But they all pass. So they all are in permanent. And if you can recognize the sooner one recognizes that that's better. That is discernment. Okay. And the question I have is in, in how yoga in your practice of yoga, and we can talk maybe about your practice of yoga, how has that helped you in that journey from a troubled teenager in a police car, looking at, I could go to jail versus someone who's teaching yoga to some of the greatest athletes in the world.

 Rosie Acosta: That's such a great question. You know, I, I think about this more often than I probably should because I, I don't know sometimes because I'm a morbid thinker and I think about death. Oh, I think we're going to go there in a second. Yeah. I think that's a really, I think that's a good practice, but I'll, we'll, we'll come back to that. Yeah. The whole idea of, so the question is dealing with impermanence. I know that I believe that everybody has a purpose. So I believe that each one of us is here to fulfill some call. And for the most part, if we are attuned to that call, we will be compelled to do the things that we need to do in order to get there. I believe that we're like seeds, a seed has an imprint that knows it's going to become a specific flower or a specific tree. Right. And acorn

 Wade Lightheart: Only becomes an Oak though. That's true. It doesn't become a tulip.

 Speaker 4: Right. Right. And

 Wade Lightheart: There's nothing innately better about an Oak tree than a look. And I think that's a mistake. Some people make, they see something is better than others or like, cause an Oak trees bigger. It's

 Speaker 4: Better than the two of them. Right. You know what I mean? He lives a hundred years

 Rosie Acosta: And that's like, there's always going to be that comparisonitis right. Comparison's the biggest joy kill. But the whole idea of that imprint that exists it's in the ground, in the dark, it's going to grow towards the light and it's going to then become this. And it's crazy because it grows growing into itself. And that's what, how it sprouts out. Right. Let's use the flower example or the tulip example that imprint is in this little seed. There's no guide or pathway or spreadsheet or goalposts.

 Speaker 4: Yeah. That's going to be like, oh, there's the seed. How

 Rosie Acosta: Come I'm not as tall as that other tool up over there. Why isn't it? What I don't understand. This leaf is growing a little bit weird. Should we cut it off? Just, just does it just grows. And I think about that for, because then it only lives a short amount of time. It doesn't live forever. Right. It's going to wilt and die and it's going to go back into the soil and then feed the next seed that grows up. Right. So I think that in every experience this is where I get more of it. Right. So it's going to be good to lead into the next question. I believe everything means something. And then I believe that everything means nothing. And my ability to hold those two, it's like, I'm not going to

 Rosie Acosta: How is it like if I get praise, I try not to buy into it because I also don't want to buy into my criticism. Right. So if I can maintain a balance between the two and not buy into the hype and be humble and remember where I came from, then the moment that I'm not doing what I'm doing now, and I don't have the attention that I do now, then when I don't have it, because I won't, it's going to be somebody else it's going to be another yoga teacher is going to be another minute. Maybe they're not going to have the same experience or background that I do, but there'll be doing the same thing I'm going to be okay. Right. And there, there's no amount of money or external success. That's going to tell me that I'm not. Yeah. So I guess that's the way that I deal with that in permanence

 Wade Lightheart: Teachings of favorite pipe, parts of Yogananda's things he says be so immersed in God that I can stand immense the crash at breaking worlds and remain unshaken. And I think that's the centerpiece that the idea of yoga is to stand in the middle of the yin and the yang in the middle of order, in chaos, in the middle of fame and failure in the middle of, of, of financial success and financial disaster in romantic love and total aloneness. Because even when people look at, you know, what are the big things, okay. They want their career, right. They want the right partner

 Speaker 4: To be, to be loved.

 Wade Lightheart: Maybe friends, acquisitions and stuff. But if you think of, let's say love, which is a big one and you're talking radically loved. Right. Okay. So let's talk about that. We'll get to the death piece because they're, they tie together when we think of our intimate partner or even in having a child or even our relationship. When we first learn about this, maybe with the relationship of a parent or usually a grandparent where that, which you love the most, we'll be sure to be taken away

 Speaker 5: From them. And

 Wade Lightheart: Part of the aspect of say intimate love, I think, which is what a lot of people are really seeking. They're seeking the love of the divine through their partner. You know, the 100% total acceptance of everything, warts and all. Yeah. That love is also going to bring the deepest pain because when that person's going to hurt you or things don't work out or, you know, it could be infidelity could be sickness. It could be financial stuff, could be all sorts of things that could come out of those situations. But sooner or later, one of you, chances are one of you is going to die between the other. And so one is going to experience the full force of bitter separation. And oftentimes before the person dies, if his particular thing know that they're going to die beforehand, then they are subjected to the fact that they can't be there for their partner to the next phase. And there is great many movies about that. And people who've gone through those transitions experienced that firsthand. And there's a beauty it within the tragedy and that it's, it's, it's, it's radical love. And now about moment. And that's how I see radical, like real love is to say, I'm going to accept the pain of separation because the, the value of the supersedes, the amount of pain I'm going to experience, I'm willing to take that on. Yeah.

 Rosie Acosta: Well we do, we do it every day. I mean, we accept that. We just don't think about it because we're humans and we have temporary amnesia. Like we don't think about death because it's not in front of us. Right.

 Wade Lightheart: That's a Western thing. Now I think in the Eastern world, like we've kind of anise create this antiseptic kind of world where death is put away and there's like boxes of ceremonies. We don't talk about it. It's not in front of me where you go to the ER, like you go to Veranasi. For example, I was in Varanasi two years ago in August, two years ago in August. And it went all around and little by little thing. And I got a whole trip on that one, but I remember sitting in this little restaurant place and it was not a restaurant. It's like a little place. And it wasn't far from the Shiva temple there. And you're just selling this. We went to the crematoriums, where they're burning for people. And if they can't afford to burn, they just throw the bodies out into the water and you see the dead bodies floating down there.

 Wade Lightheart: They're burning people so they can spray their ashes in the gang Ganges, which is a super traditional thing. And Varanasi is built on a city of it's thousands and thousands and thousands of years old. Nobody knows how old this place is. And it's been a spiritual center and it's very chaotic and very dense and really hard to be like. And I remember sitting in this little Lassie shop and we're sitting there having our losses. And literally like every couple of minutes is a group of people with a dead body going by. You're sitting there like, it's like, imagine sitting here your Starbucks and they're just running dead people by you continuously

 Speaker 4: Constant, or you

 Wade Lightheart: Go down the streets and there's dead people on the side. Well, they just died and they're just lying there in the street. And in these environments, death is very present. It's very real. And it used to be that way in our societies that you, you, you saw grandma when they died or grandpa, and oftentimes it's painful and tragic and horrific. And yet here in the west, we just kind of put that in a box. We don't, we don't, we don't deal with that very well. And you talk about morbidity and you get kind of more of it in that you contemplate death. What has the contemplation of death given to you to allow you to express what it is to be radically loved? It's it's

 Rosie Acosta: Everything it's perspective. I think about it every week. I think about it more often than I should. But why do you say, because I think growing up in an environment like I did, I was constantly being faced with it. People were dying and it was, people were getting killed. It was sort of just in my face, it was always present. And it was something that I always knew was going to happen. My mom was in a very horrific car accident. Like there, there was just always the thing of my grandmother basically raised my sister and I, she was the one that was our caretaker and she was older. So it's like, I know she's going to die. When is she going to die? You know, that whole thing as a child, it's very traumatic because nobody wants to talk about it.

 Rosie Acosta: So I think for me now, and I think it's more of it because I don't necessarily, it's not coming from a fear-based place. It just coming from a, it's going to be a next adventure, right? Like, we'd have, nobody knows, like, that's the beauty of death. Nobody like nobody knows where we're going. Really, nobody living. Maybe we do. We have an idea in depending on what you believe, you know, but for me, the thought of, if I don't wake up tomorrow, did I live today? Well, yes, that that's, that's the thought every night before I go to bed, I think, okay, I'm going to go to sleep right now. I might not wake up tomorrow. Did I do every sometimes I'm like, yeah, I don't care. Like I did not text the person, whatever.

 Speaker 4: It's fine. Like, it's fine. Maybe I won't wake up tomorrow, but that's part, but that's part

 Rosie Acosta: Of my integrated practice. You asked about my practice earlier. And one thing that I talk about this constantly is that I'm not, I'm a morning. I love waking up in the morning. I'm an early riser. I wake up at 4 45 every morning for the last 10 years consistently every day, I've never missed a day of practice. And I wake up knowing how good and how incredible it is to be in that magical time and to just take in the divine and see the sunrise. And we have a beautiful place now, like birds are chirping and it's just incredible. I can wake up in that space after I do my practice. When I opened my eyes in the morning, I am not a happy camper. I don't wake up thinking, oh no, I opened my eyes and I'm just like, oh, like, who am I? Oh, this ha oh, okay. This body. Oh, oh right. I'm in this. Okay. Wait, what do I do for a living? It's sort of that integrating process. Totally get it. You know what I'm saying? Like you're entering into this world. I got so many, I got a great story. Okay, good. I had a

 Wade Lightheart: Friend of mine and his name's Doug I've lived with two GYNs. Both of them's names went by Tony flow. Very, very interesting. Both kind of mystical kind of characters that came into my life that both of them had gotten out of a strange relationship, but needed to be needed a roommate for a while. And this happened literally 10 years apart from me. Same name. Yeah, very interesting. And the first Tony flow, we were doing all sorts of crazy experiments on with hedges feedback devices on her head and, you know, switching between gamma and alpha and Delta and stuff like this, right? This micro-current technology. And we had little clips on it. It was like burning

 Speaker 4: Our ears. Sometimes we leave it on too long. And we got

 Wade Lightheart: Reading, watching limitless and doing crazy. Anyways, we were kind of experimenting with these alternative meditative states. And one day I fell asleep on the couch, which almost never happens with me. I went into this kind of feta state and was out and was in that state where you're not asleep and you're not

 Speaker 4: Awake. Right. You're pure theta.

 Wade Lightheart: I understand it. That's what excited is now because of dive dove quite deep into that realm. And he came in the door, oh, this was in Vancouver in a long time ago. And when he came in the door, my body jumped up, like sat up straight, but I was still in the theta state and he's very perceptive and the body had done it things since thing, but my consciousness wasn't fully immersed in it. And then I felt my identity start to rush in and get synchronized at the body. And he actually witnessed the same thing happened to me. He saw that I wasn't there when I woke up, like the body snapped up. Like he could see the separation and I could see the stuff. And that was my first big integration between the soul as the soul and the body as the body. And then how identity emerges in that waking thing. Oh, I'm this person I've got it. And we often design or define ourselves by what I have to do in the Western world. Not

 Speaker 4: Who I am. And then that's. Yeah, of course. That's

 Wade Lightheart: The deeper integration of what Dr. Hawkins talks about as, what am I, as opposed to, I think it was what was that? The fellow's name that lived on drawing a Geary here, hail there and

 Speaker 5: Oh oh

 Wade Lightheart: Ramana run up Vermont.

 Speaker 4: And he was like, who am I? Who am I?

 Wade Lightheart: And then, then Dr. Hawkins says, he asked not who am I? What am I, as, as opposed to who indicates almost like a body or notification. So pretty interesting. So in, in your integrated practice and can you kind of run us, you talked about that morning stuff and then the condom we still got there's, there's a couple pieces here that I'd like people to, to kind of connect the dots if you will. And that is your practice on the map. And you can share if that's a description or how that is your contemplation of the impermanence of physicality, the contemplation of death, and then this space in between that we would call you

 Speaker 5: Your life, your career, your influence, all that stuff. Like

 Wade Lightheart: How, how does that all synchronize together? What a great

 Rosie Acosta: Question. I'd love to hear what your responses to this, because I really want to know what you're proud. We didn't get to that later.

 Rosie Acosta: Yeah. So before I go to bed, that's just something I do right before I close my eyes. I just think I do a run run through of the day. There's a beautiful thing that happens with sleep. And I don't know how much practice or how familiar you are with yoga nidra. It's a, it's, it's a sleep based meditative practice. It's also one of these things where, and, or do yoga nidra to get to that place. It's it's basically like a Shavasana that's guided and it is it takes you straight into that beta state. So the whole idea is to remain in a relaxed, present awareness that in-between state right before you wake up where, you know, yeah. And you're just hanging out there where your body, they they've been actually doing a lot of research for vets specifically that have PTSD, where you're going to draw has been used.

 Rosie Acosta: And they've seen some really great results with their ability to then reintegrate and relax. And, you know, the body given the opportunity will heal itself by itself. And in order for a lot of people that have suffered trauma, they they've not been in that relaxed state. So if you think about it in sleep, it's the only time we ever get to disconnect from the mind not dreaming when you're dreaming, you're awake, you're in your, you know, you're still in that awakened state. And most of the time when we're dreaming, it's only for a few minutes, because most of the time, the whole idea is to go into that deep REM sleep dreamless sleep. That's where you're getting the most rest, where you're in that floaty realm. But that's really the only time that we can disconnect from our hurting, from our suffering, from anything that is playing the mind, if, think about it, because when you wake up, you have to remember, oh right.

 Rosie Acosta: Oh, my partner left or right. They're not here anymore. So I've heard so many people talk about losing somebody. I mean, I've, I've lost people in my life. And for me, we, we are dog parents. And so we have for babies and we have gone through some loss with that, but the whole experience of having to remember, oh, I'm awake now. This is who I am. This is what I do. This is what I have to do today. Oh, right. The person that I love is not here. Right. You don't wake up knowing that somebody's gone, you wake up and there is that integrative process that has to happen. So you're going to address just a practice that I would recommend for everybody. I do about five to six days a week. There's required. I have a recording on YouTube that people can listen to. There's no ads on it. You could just, you know, it's like a 20 minute guided sleep based. You do it on your back. So everybody could do

 Speaker 4: It or do some show notes on that. So where do you get that? Yeah,

 Rosie Acosta: It's on yeah. It's on Rosa Acosta on YouTube. You just find my channel. It's there. You're going to draw. Yeah. And I can send you some stuff too. We're all similar. Yeah. Cause there's going to be some people that could ever go for that. Yeah. And it's so great. I mean, to me, that's where my path, when we talk about my teaching, that's really what I'm passionate about right now. Like I love teaching yoga nidra because it's sort of that deduction of doing all the Asana and then you're doing the pranayama or you're doing the breath work and now you're teaching meditation and now life skills, you're learning philosophy. And then, oh, yoga nidra should also be a part of that process. Especially right now, I'll kind of segue back into what I'm saying, but because we are overstimulated and we're constantly tense and we're going to sleep getting Pronto depleted.

 Rosie Acosta: So prana is in yoga. It's vitality. It's like the force, it's our, our energy source resource center. So our Pronto is constantly being depleted. It gets depleted by negative thoughts. It's getting depleted by electronics. It's getting depleted by relationships. It's getting depleted by your duties. And in order for us to fill our Pronto, we need to be doing things that give us life going out, being outdoors, having conversations with our loved ones prayer, meditation, yoga nidra taking time away from your devices except this podcast and doing the things that are going to fill you up. So for me, it's so much of my practice is dependent on where my product is when I'm depleted. It's so easy because I'm crabby, I'm irritable. I am really engaged my roommate that lives in my eye. It's like my mind, right? The monkey mind, my mind is my roommate.

 Rosie Acosta: So I'm engaged in everything that's happening there. So when I wake up in the morning and I'm reintegrating back into this person, this, this person that I am this career, this identity that has been created between though, that sort of samadhi like state to this person that I am, then I, I get up and I go into my little Zen den and I move my body because movement is such a huge thing for me. It's it movement has been the way that I've been able to move through trauma. It's been the way that I've moved through grief because so much gets stuck in our body, right? There's our issues are in our tissues and it's sort of the storehouse of energy, high charge points in our body or shoulders or hips people. Oftentimes when they're doing hip openers say, oh, you store a lot of anger in your hips.

 Rosie Acosta: Or there's just like certain parts of the body that really store a lot of memory, a lot of energy. And so I have to move my body right away because it gets me out of that, oh, I have to do this. And now I have this and oh, I have to get back to this person or I'm doing this, or I've got to pay my bills or whatever it is, you know, I have to do humanly things. So it just gets me back into my body. And then the minute that I moved my body around, which is how in the sutras, it says, you know, you do your Asana before your pranayama so that your body is now in a more relaxed state. I do some breath work. I might read a contemplation in a book. And then I sit and then I do my meditation practice for 45 minutes to an hour.

 Rosie Acosta: And many things happen during that. I try to meditate. I always say I try. I attempt it because the roommate's just constantly there she's a list dogra for, she loves to make lists. She loves to make plans. She loves to acquire things for her future in her mind. Oh, this, oh, it would be really great if I could do this meditation in Hawaii somewhere. And so once I emerged from that practice, that typically is about almost two hours. I can do anything. I come out of. I come out of my Zen den and I'm ready to take on the day. I'm less bothered by things I can deal with getting on the computer for a while. I may write for a couple hours. I may answer some emails. I may record whatever I do at that point just is so much more seamless because I feel okay today could be the last day, right today, something terrible could happen.

 Rosie Acosta: I could get in my car and have a car accident. I mean, on my way here, there was a pretty tragic accident that I saw on the freeway. And my thinking is always, oh, that person or their family or the people it's like, you feel bad for the people that get us, they get left behind. Right. Because that person is now on to the next adventure and where he's still here living in this scenario. And so, yeah, I mean, that's just always been part of my process. That's why it just going back to your question on impermanence. I feel like for me thinking about how everything is, impermanent allows me to navigate those difficult moments too, when you're grieving or when you're going through something really difficult or you get some bad news, I know that it's not going to last forever. And it's an interesting conversation, actually, one that I would like to ask you, navigating those moments when people are feeling hopeless or they feel helpless in some way navigating that intensity when it especially grief, right?

 Rosie Acosta: Because grief feels like there's, it's never going to end. It feels like it's just going to last forever. And it's one of those things that we're talking about with time. It gets better over time. It does get better over time. It's, it's going to hurt a little bit less the next day. And like you go through a really tough breakup the next day, it's still gonna hurt. I'm not saying that thinking about it is not going to cause pain, but time does quell the intensity of that feeling. So for me, having all of these practices, doing all of these things, having this awareness has just really helped navigate through things that we have no control over. You have control over how you react and you have control over how your body reacts. You have control over your breath and you have control over making choices that are either going to help and serve your highest good or not. That's my answer. And I'm sticking to it. Love it. So

 Wade Lightheart: Where do you think your practice and you it's like that expression of you in the world? Who does it serve and how does it serve you? And you serve the greater aspect of self, which is all of humanity on, on some level. Like how do you, how do you navigate that relationship in, in your life with yourself and your interactions with the world and the people's lives, who you touch?

 Rosie Acosta: That's such a great, it's a great question. Yeah. You know, I, I, a few years ago I stopped seeing my practice as something that served me personally before I would say, you know, Tori, my life partner he always says this thing where he, he doesn't talk to me until my practice is done. Right. So we re we have this rule that it's like, just don't talk to it. Like, let it go and do its thing. And then it's beautiful, you know? So, so, and it's, he has respected that for many years. And it's great because there's that understanding of she needs to do this before she enters in. And I used to think, oh, my service to the greater good is me showing up as this grounded person, not this like frenetic. Why, how does any of this matter? Like, why am I here?

 Rosie Acosta: Like, what is this all about? You know, energy, this manic person. But I, I just, there's been a transition. That's happened over the last couple of years where I, I don't really see my practices serving me. It's just, it's just a part of something that needs to happen. You know, it's, it's not necessarily about me and how it's serving mean now my cup is full. Now I can go serve others in a way, I guess it works that way. But it's almost like doing my practice is my gratitude prayer to the universe to say, Hey, because if I think about it, it's serving me. It's two hours out of my day that I could be doing something else, you know, like I could be done. Yeah. I could be sleeping. Exactly. I'm telling you. And here's the thing about that. I have to, even now, as long as I've been doing it and not miss a day, there are, I would say 80% of the time where I have to convince myself, like, just do half of it, just do a third one every day, this morning I woke up and I'm like, okay, just do 20 minutes.

 Rosie Acosta: But then once you're there, it just

 Wade Lightheart: Interesting Jocko, Willink says the same thing. And he's the Navy seal, which is coming at it from a completely different house, but it says the same, he gets up, but yes, has, is he's famous for his Instagram. I was out for 30 days. Yeah. He's a, four-thirty, he's the guy that kind of did that. That's how he started his Instagram, just taking a picture of his watch every morning. And he talks about that, right? Like yeah. Get after it. Yeah. Yeah. And it just,

 Rosie Acosta: And it just, it just happens. You know, it just kind of creates this thing. But I just, just, just

 Wade Lightheart: In that moment, because I think a lot of people struggle with that piece right there. How, like the moment where the rationalization can come and just hit the snooze button 10 more minutes. What, like, how do you knit the rationalizer? Like, what is like, how do you knock that out? You know? Like what, like, you kinda, it kind of it's

 Speaker 4: There let's do it. You just,

 Rosie Acosta: You just roll yourself out of bed. You just, you just make it happen. I w when, during my McDonald's diet phase, I was, I was almost 200 pounds. It took a long time for me to get healthy into, you know, I wasn't a gym person. I hated running. Like, it was one of those experiences where I always go back. That's sort of where that training happened. That you have to just do something every day. You have to just,

 Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah. Broccoli

 Rosie Acosta: And this grilled chicken, like how much broccoli and grilled chicken can I eat? I mean, I didn't just stick to that. There was other things I ate, but no, but it's hilarious, you know, to think about it in that way, because it does take a certain level of audacity to just do something. And to me, it's the short term feel good of sleeping in is, is not, it's gonna make it for me. It just makes me feel worse to say, okay, I'm going to just sleep in some more, as opposed to just getting up. I compare it to drinking. Like I don't drink. And the whole, the only reason why is because I think about it like this, I always regret drinking. Always. I never regret not drinking. So for me, it's like, I've never regretted doing my practice ever if ever I've delayed it or slept in.

 Rosie Acosta: I always regret that. I always feel like, oh, I should have woken up. Or maybe I slept until five 30. Like I should have just because now I'm not going to complete that my whole cycle. And it's, it creates this thing. And I know that there's a, a fluidity that needs to exist because of attachment and all of those things. But I find it a small, a small thing to do to embed that greatness aspect of honoring yourself and honoring having that self-respect and that belief in yourself that you can do something. I mean, for me getting up at 4 45 and like moving my body in a way that feels good. And then sitting down and meditating is so much easier than having like some of my clients or students that wake up and are hitting their body hard. And they're like at the gym or like bodybuilding, you're not like pumping iron.

 Rosie Acosta: And to me, that's way more heroic than moving my body a little bit. And then sitting down and meditating for me, that's like, I'd rather be doing this. You know, I love to run now, like one of the incentives for me to get healthy is I signed up for the LA marathon and I've run four marathons. And so I wouldn't still, after all these years, I still wouldn't consider myself a runner, but I do love to, I do fancy a run. I love running it. It makes me so happy and gets me into the zone. So there is that aspect of movement. I really feel for the people that have a hard time with just making that decision and just doing it because it's hard. And I do like to acknowledge that it could be really difficult for some people to, to just, just do it because there's so many excuses, right? Oh,

 Speaker 4: Just do it. I mean, one of the best, yeah,

 Rosie Acosta: Just do it. Just like they say.

 Wade Lightheart: So as an advocate for yoga, the practice

 Speaker 5: As a teacher,

 Wade Lightheart: What do you hope to instill in your students?

 Rosie Acosta: My intention has always been to empower my students, that they have everything they need already. One of the things that I love to say at the end of classes, everything you need is right here right now in this present moment. And understanding that as a concept for living is one of the greatest gifts that I received. And I feel one of the greatest gifts I can hope to instill in my students is to just know that this breath is perfect. This body is perfect. Your life is exactly where it needs to be in this moment as chaotic and as messed up, as you might think it is, you're here now, and you can make a different choice and yoga and meditation offers the foundation and a guide to show you to demonstrate to you that you can go from one to the next, to the next to the next. It's like how we do everything on the mat is how we do everything in life. So if you're able to show up on your mat fully and be fully who you are and be fully accepted by this little rectangle in this space, then why wouldn't the acceptance be the same off the mat? Why wouldn't the ease ability of going from one pose to the next to the next, be as easy as, you know, waking up and going for that run or calling that person or applying for that job,

 Speaker 6: You know, does that make sense?

 Wade Lightheart: Where can people find out more about instilling this practice in their own lives? If they're so interested,

 Rosie Acosta: They can go to my website. They can go to radically loved.com. They can follow me on Instagram, Rosie Acosta, and all of the offerings. Are there

 Wade Lightheart: Any, any thing that you'd like to share with our audience before we wrap this side of the interview? I feel that

 Rosie Acosta: Right now, more than ever, it's so important for everybody to feel seen and to feel connected and to feel supported. And that's always been my biggest intention with creating radically loved. And if I could just say one thing to everybody, if the one thing that they leave with this conversation is, is just one statement is that they are radically loved and radically supported. And that they're here, they're present in this moment. And if this is all that we have, and this is all that exists right now, then this moment is perfect. And

 Wade Lightheart: Take that beautifully set there. You have it. That's another edition of the awesome health podcast. And of course this has been an awesome one. I'm sure you're going to be back again because I think we only opened up a door into the infinite, and there'll be plenty of time to dive a little deeper into that conversation. So thank you for joining us today. Really appreciate it. Thanks Wade.