Jenee: 0:06

Welcome to the Heartlight Sessions, a podcast about light working your way through dark times. I'm Janae Halstead. I'm a singer-songwriter, holistic vocal coach, intuitive guide and plant medicine facilitator. I'm also a survivor of childhood abuse, autoimmune issues and my 30s also a survivor of childhood abuse, autoimmune issues and my 30s. I'm on a lifelong healing journey and, along the way, I want to share the ideas and teachings that rock my world. Every week on Heartlight Sessions, I call in artists, healers and thinkers to explore what's helped them live and thrive from a heart-centered place, Because the heart, it's where the best things happen. If you've ever wondered how to unlock your biggest breakthroughs or how to come back from that stuff that tried to kill you, you know the stuff I'm talking about, the stuff that's supposed to make you stronger. Or if you've ever wondered how to just do you straight from the heart, you're in the right place. So join me, won't you? Let's turn on that heart light. We are live, and I'm so excited to have this next guest sitting in front of me.

Jenee: 1:25

I have my friend, Lindsey Rose, and I met Lindsey in 2017, 18? I think so. Yeah, we were at Camp Grace with Guru Jagat. We were both volunteering at the time. Yeah, and we were volunteering for the fashion show which we were standing on the edge of the entry of the catwalk and we were standing across from each other. You were wearing this like red cape and, yeah, it was like I just instantly fell in love with you and then come to find out that we have the same birthday we do, the both of us and the icon, john Lennon yes and.

Jenee: 2:16

PJ Harvey amazing and Jackson Brown. It goes on and on.

Lindsey: 2:23

It's an artsy day, isn't it? It is. It's an artsy day.

Jenee: 2:27

Yeah, we, we share that very special day. And and then I watched you walk down the runway. It's not walk, but flow down the runway and it was like mind-blowing. So Lindsay is a self-declared movement mutt. I would say Is that what we're going to say?

Lindsey: 2:47

Self-declared movement mutt, yeah, absolutely. I am a mixture of all of the different styles of movement that I have studied throughout my life and continue to keep studying and expanding because I am a mover and a student forever.

Jenee: 3:07

I am a student forever too. I absolutely love that. Yeah, so dance choreography. You're such a beautiful dancer. And yoga, yoga teacher. So we are celebrating. Today is the official opening of Solo Yoga and Boxing.

Lindsey: 3:30

I am acquiring, or I have acquired. I have acquired a yoga studio that I have been teaching at for the last seven years, and the timing of everything mean it is divine, and so the studio dropped in at a time in my life when I had taken a unplanned pause. I was not taking in any more freelance work or adding any other teaching jobs or things to my schedule at the time. I just felt that there needed to be some spaciousness and I kept praying for the next come in, because the last two years has been a pretty wild ride in my life, really branching out there and trying to figure out what the thing is that I'm going to land in and and see grow and come to fruition over the next 20 plus years of my life. I'm really at that stage where I have taught so much for other studios and other people across the country that I'm I'm wanting that home base and that central container to let all of my creative offerings flow from.

Lindsey: 5:07

So body was in a pause state. I was going through some interesting autoimmune things and I didn't. I didn't feel like doing much, so I rest, I rested, and the message that I got from that was that this is an essential resting time, like when the thing drops in. It's going to be like hit Game boosters, yeah, uh-huh, you are going to be going, going, going, going going.

Lindsey: 5:45

So I loved that time to just be in a very, very slow, sloth like and almost like a hermit type type state of being um um, despite the outside pressures around me encouraging me to do more and work more which, yes, it was challenging financially because I was doing the amount of work in the material world that I needed to just pay my bills, no more, no more than that. Um, but things have shifted now and I am up for the challenge.

Jenee: 6:35

I feel like, uh, I am much more aligned in the, in the energy of, of doing and going and jumping up onto that wind horse and and riding it to where it wants to go wow it's so important to and it's hard to be able to be in that space of the void which a lot of my friends are in and have been in for the last four years, and I was very much in that where I was just like what is going on? I'm like lost. You know I, what am I bringing in? Like what is my mission? All this stuff and like, yeah, same thing, like kind of earning the bare minimum just to pay the bills and like like kind of earning the bare minimum just to pay the bills and like you know, that can be, can be like a very, very frustrating place to be. But if you know, I'm just wondering how you navigated that. You know it sounded like you navigated it pretty beautifully it was definitely hard.

Lindsey: 7:39

It was definitely a friction in my relationship to my significant other around around that subject specifically. But he has always been very supportive of how I work in the world and since I my early 20s, I have gone rounds of life having more traditional jobs that are longer hours nine to five, like in one place, either serving at a restaurant or working retail, and that really can only last about three months maximum for me, especially if I'm not doing any teaching or movement or yoga dance outside of that. If it's only the one thing my soul like has an identity crisis, I kind of just blow up and yeah, it's like I. I get to a point where I'm like I literally cannot do this anymore.

Lindsey: 9:00

Um, so those ebbs and flows have happened many times in my life and I know now, as being in my late thirties, that the movement and the being in a studio is is my happy place. This is the work that I have been gifted to do on planet earth. It's a joy of mine. Do I not want to do it some days? Absolutely. But through through providing those gifts, I'm also gifting myself the opportunity to get out of my Virgo rising analytical brain that's always hyper, fixating on every little aspect of life and self-reflecting, and self-reflecting more, and have Venus and Virgo.

Lindsey: 9:57

I'm like yeah yeah, when I get to teach any movement class, whenever I'm in a room moving, will that through. What I have to teach and what I have to say is relief for whoever's in the room that day for their greatest good. And when that happens, inevitably I leave the room feeling so much better than when I walked in, because I can't be in my own headspace. When I am being a channel for movement with live bodies in front of me, there just is no room for the BS and the stuff that is cycling through. When I'm laying on my couch with my cats scrolling Instagram, yes, yes, in comparison mode, yeah, it's an immediate drawing me into the present moment. That is also medicine for me.

Lindsey: 11:24

So I'm very grateful that this alignment has happened, where the studio owner of Solo Yoga and Boxing said hey, we want to sell this studio. The ideal person for the studio to be handed off to, in my mind, is you. Are you interested? So this really was a an alchemy of timing between the opportunity arising and me knowing that that was the right opportunity for my, my life's path from here. Are you?

Jenee: 12:11

staying with the boxing?

Lindsey: 12:13

yes yeah, really yeah, yep, we're staying with the boxing. I mean, wow, a huge part of my teaching, uh, movement yoga is rhythm, is the rhythmic intelligence, and there's such a satisfying rhythm to your body when you feel your mitts hit the bag and you have that like one, two, three, pop, pop, pop happening in the body. It's a. It's a different rhythm. It hits literally, no pun intended. It hits differently than when it's just you on your mat, right, do it doing the yoga, doing the breath, or you in the dance studio listening to the music and meeting the music. It's a different exploration of your own rhythm and strength.

Jenee: 13:13

So inside is there like a boxing ring.

Lindsey: 13:17

There isn't a ring, so the space is kind of like half and half. So one half of the studio space is boxing. We have 12 teardrop bags from the ceiling, the aqua bags, and then there's a divider and a yoga space on the other side. So best of both worlds. Yeah, we're creating a space for warrior saints. I love it To have that real life, practical application and experience of themselves.

Jenee: 13:55

I love that. Are you also going to be teaching dance in there?

Lindsey: 14:00

Eventually, eventually I want to do some classes that are a little bit more open, so not like you're learning choreography, but just movement exploration, and I also do want to do some fundamental choreography classes because that gets people excited. People. You know, people want to dance. We were made to dance, we, it was dancing and singing were one of our very, uh, first ways to express ourselves artistically. So everybody has that, that deep cellular remembrance for dance and for singing. So, and I'm not sure if you feel this way about about the voice, but if you have a body, you can dance.

Jenee: 14:58

I totally tell people, if you have a body you can can sing, everybody can sing. I say that all the time. It's like my biggest mission, absolutely.

Lindsey: 15:07

Somewhere along the line. Yeah, somebody told you that you couldn't sing, or you couldn't dance and then you stopped and you can always pinpoint it with people.

Jenee: 15:16

Almost always it's like teenage years Someone told you to shut up or you sounded bad, and like you're in the choir and then somebody puts you in the back. It's like it's always, like it's almost always pinpointable, you know, yeah, it makes me really sad. I really I worked with a lot of kids back in the day and like their parents were always like I wanted to sing and I and so, but then I hurt, you know this and that, and someone said I couldn't. And I started like hearing that more and more from parents and I was like this is so weird. Yeah, I'm like someone hands you a Lamborghini and they don't tell you how to drive it, and that's like literally the same thing with the vocal apparatus. Why do people think that they, you know? It's like, okay, you don't know how to sing, so therefore you can't sing. It doesn't make any sense, doesn't make sense. You have to learn how to use the apparatus.

Lindsey: 16:15

You have to learn how to you know how to drive the car, you got to learn how it operates exactly and then you can start to fine-t and strengthen it and become confident in it, and the same is where the body is moving to one set of mantra throughout the entire class. So that's amazing. A little bit more ingrained into the physiology of the body because that's what you're listening to the whole time. That's amazing.

Jenee: 17:11

Who's here?

Lindsey: 17:15

You're running around the yard right now. Who is?

Jenee: 17:19

there's a bunch of deer. Oh, a deer. Okay, it's freezing up a little bit, so okay, um, well, that's amazing. What are you? What's one mantra that you're like working on with the class?

Lindsey: 17:35

yeah, yeah, a healing mantra ramadasa sase, so hang nice. Yeah, and that one. It doesn't take very long to get hooked in your in your mind either. So I, I like the just the more compact mantras so that if people have not worked with or heard these mantras before, then it's more likely to to stick with them. Yeah, cool, yep, it is cool.

Lindsey: 18:11

And I, about a year or, yeah, that's what I've been over the past two years a couple of pieces of dance choreography for concert dance to mantra music, and that was a completely different experience as someone who's watching it from the audience and seeing it on stage, with the sound of the mantra coming at you through the big speakers and the lighting as well. I synced up the lighting to move through the chakra system. So, yes, the beginning of this piece was was like a deeper red hue, and as the 11, 11 minute dance went on, it cycled you all the way through the chakras and ended in a nice bright white light right at the crown. Yeah, that was uh to to Chakra, chakra, varti, nice, and Simrit does a. It sounds cinematic. Yeah, the first time I heard that mantra I was like this would make an incredible dance piece, because it just takes you on this journey.

Lindsey: 19:40

So I pulled from the imagery of, of yoga, and and just a sacred ceremony of what those shapes are, that the bodies are making and what the movements are of bowing, to create a piece that was transformational not just for the dancers partaking in it, but for the audience members as well.

Jenee: 20:11

Wow, Can you? What is concert? You call it concert. Concert contemporary.

Lindsey: 20:18

Yeah, what is that? Yeah, so within the dance sphere, there are dance studios that children grow up dancing at, and some of them are ballet based. Other studios are for competition dance, which is a whole realm of dance training that I happened to grow up in.

Lindsey: 20:42

Like lyric dance and Yep, yep. And as you make it to the college age you get a little bit more into to modern dance as well as contemporary dance, but in a way that the movement and the length of the dance pieces can be anywhere from three minutes to 34 minutes, whereas at the dance studios those dancers are learning choreography and rehearsing these dances that are about three minutes maximum. So in the concert dance sphere there will be a whole evening, a whole conceptualized storyline and theme that can range in time from again like five minutes to an hour. Whoa With all the same dancers.

Lindsey: 21:49

Yes, they are not all on stage for the entire time, but there's different exits and entrances. It's very much like how a movie is set up. So you have there. There's different scenes, there's different feelings to each scene, there's different lighting. The music takes you on a journey.

Jenee: 22:10

Yeah, I'm thinking about um the great studio in New York. I can't for the life of me. Yeah, the Alvin Ailey dance company, thank you. Yes, and just some of their. You you know, taking you on this like amazing journey and yeah, you've got it's almost like a play.

Lindsey: 22:30

It is yeah, it is very much so a journey, and it's a journey in the process of creation too. I remember when I first started choreographing I would figure out with the music what every single movement was going to be, what timing of the music it was going to be on, and I would teach it to the students verbatim. Like this is what it is. You repeat it. I would give them the corrections to make sure that it looked exactly like how I wanted it to look. This was very like graspy, like it has to be this way. You know didn't really leave much, much wiggle room for mystery, uh, or a happy accident to drop in, because I was very much like it has to be this way.

Lindsey: 23:27

And when I did the piece that I was just talking about the chatra, chatra varti, as well as anything that I've done really over the last seven years I pick a song, I I have an idea I might make three or four, eight counts of movement, and then I leave the space open for the dancers and the divine to create the piece together with me. And I find that when we're working in the moment and there's a little less structure to what the exact movement is things appear that I would have never thought of in a million years, like things happen in the studio where I'm like that is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. We're gonna keep that. That's, that's going, that's going in the dance right here and then let's keep going, cool.

Jenee: 24:36

So yeah, that's. It's a co-creation, like between.

Lindsey: 24:41

It's like a tri, a triumvirate, or what's the word uh, yeah, a trio, a trio of collaboration between myself, the dancers and the divine wow that's beautiful and that sometimes it can be a challenge to come in and just trust that whatever is going to come, come out, will be the right thing, because so many choreographers just want the, the control of the space and using the dancers as their paintbrush and what they, what they want to see, rather than how would this idea move through your body? Dancers, you're the ones dancing it, so how can we create that experience for you?

Jenee: 25:38

And how old are these young women?

Lindsey: 25:42

Yes, yeah. So these dancers are ages 18 to 24, so they're in the the pre-professional stage of their dance training, and so then I also get to play a little bit more with them, because they've experienced a little bit more life, so they have some, some deeper emotions to, yeah, to draw from and we have some larger topics to to discuss. I love that, it's a blessing. Are you gonna continue?

Jenee: 26:18

yeah, are you gonna continue to teach at this, like caliber, with your yoga studio or outside of it? Are you going to be able to balance?

Lindsey: 26:28

that. I think so, I think so, I think so. Uh yeah, choreography and and dance is so deeply ingrained in me that I could step away. And I have stepped away for a year, two years, and have been able to come back to it and it's always amazing to me just that, like muscle memory and that that mental muscle that I had spent my my youth really flexing and working just stays with me. And I think, I think I used to put pressure on myself to just pick one, like just pick yoga or just pick dance and just do the one thing. But I find that when there's an ebb and flow of if I'm working more in the dance world and there's just a sprinkle of yoga, and then it shifts and I'm working more in the yoga world and there's just a sprinkle of dance, each thing that is a little bit more bigger and pulling more focus in my life becomes informed by when it was reversed.

Jenee: 27:45

if that makes sense.

Lindsey: 27:46

So like if I'm really working in the in the dance world, then when I shift back into the yoga sphere, I'm not the same yoga teacher because I have learned so much from from that work in the dance world. And then, when that reverses, it's like I'm not the same dance teacher because I've evolved spiritually through my, through my own personal practice and and through what I am gifting other humans.

Jenee: 28:17

One thing that I love about the women that I met in that community, in the Rama community, is this thread of spirit and source, or God, or whatever you want to call it, and that being sort of the foundation for the exploration of like, whatever your medium is. You know, and yeah, I really love watching you and seeing your evolution and how you, you know, just, you're always working and you keep evolving and and I was thinking about what you were saying earlier, um, in the beginning of the conversation about you know, when you're not, you know creating, if you're just doing, if you're just working or doing something and you're not creating, there's an unraveling. And I really, you know, I've been thinking a lot about because I'm going to be 50. I can't believe it next year, I just can't believe it. I'm going to be 50. Forever in my head, are you like 40? I know, Me too.

Jenee: 29:28

It's just crazy. It's like how does this happen? And I'm like, well, okay, I just bow so deeply to artists because people don't really understand. Like, when you make a commitment to be an artist and to bow to that, you kind of have to navigate the rough waters. I'm sure, like working in an office and getting, you know, 80 hours a week under your belt, I'm sure that's just like its own thing, but I just it's yeah, I'm really so relate to everything you're saying and it's like, oh my God, all the odd jobs I've done and all the shit that I still do in full fucking commitment to my art, you know, and I'm slowly building an empire. But it's like this is, this is real, Like this is, and I have friends that are in their 70s and 80s that are like like just retired from waiting tables or just you know and they're, they're dancers or they're musicians and it's like it's a, it's a big spiritual path.

Lindsey: 30:33

It is, it's not for the faint hearted.

Jenee: 30:36

No it's not.

Lindsey: 30:36

It's really a huge blessing and it also is the most difficult thing to maneuver through there. The first time that I I had my I call it my life crisis with dance, or like my breakup with dance, I was 19 years old. I was living in New York City. I was pursuing dance career. I had my heart set on this one job which was so you think you can dance. It was like season three so you think you can dance.

Lindsey: 31:16

I made it to Las Vegas. I had auditioned in New York. I'm like I'm going to be on the show, new York. I'm like I'm going to be on the show. I did all of my um, all of my visualizations. I made my, my vision board. I'm like this is it, this is my destiny. I'm going to be my, I'm going to be a famous dancer because of the show. And I went to Las Vegas and I made it through the first two rounds and then I got cut after the hip hop choreography. I flew back to New York and I don't think that I left my bedroom for like two days. I was just sobbing, calling my mom, like I don't think that I'm supposed to dance, this was my thing, this was it. I keep getting the no's from all the auditions.

Lindsey: 32:11

You know, I was just naive. I came from a winning competition background and had not experienced defeat before in the dance realm and moved out to the big city and it was just like no, no, no, no, and I did not have any tools whatsoever to deal with that in a healthy way. So so then I really like pulled back from dance. That was my first time in my life that I was like okay, well, maybe this isn't the path, and I moved from New York out to Las Vegas and I was living in Las Vegas with a friend of mine. I wasn't.

Lindsey: 32:57

I didn't get hired for any dance jobs. I didn't move there for any dance jobs. I was just like New York City is not for me, I'm moving to Vegas. And I started working at Lululemon, and I worked at Lululemon for three years, for one year in Vegas, and then I moved to Los Angeles with my sister and I worked at the Lululemon in Beverly Hills for two years and that's where I found yoga. Wow, through that job and I ate it up I was taking yoga all over LA with a lot of the best teachers of that era.

Jenee: 33:40

So a lot of yoga teachers of that era. So Tracy Anderson was in that.

Lindsey: 33:47

Yeah, yeah, I did a little like bounce back and forth Because I wasn't quite ready to land somewhere. So I went to school in Los Angeles for dance at Santa Monica College and while I was there I got into teaching fitness. I was a bar teacher for Pure Bar and I taught for that company for about five years and that was really my first teaching to adult humans ever. So that really taught me a lot about just the things that a teacher needs to know how you're speaking voices, what words you're saying, what your sound is, how you're moving around the space and looking at all the bodies, how you're queuing, what your musicality is all of all of those important details. And then, yeah, I bounced back to Minnesota for a couple of years and still kept dancing and teaching and then went back out to LA because I was like I'm still going to dance, I want to dance for Beyonce, and I ended up teaching at the Tracy Anderson method in Brentwood.

Lindsey: 35:07

That was a very wild, wild, wild experience. That movement methodology is so layered and complex. Yeah, like I had to learn their mat class. They had dances, cardio dances. They had their own specialty reformers made. They had their band classes. So they had Thera bands hanging from the ceiling that you would put on and it was kind of like this Like there was less gravity because your hands were pressing on the band, so like less impact when you were jumping, but that was like a whole movement school in and of itself. Did you have?

Jenee: 35:55

to pay to learn, or did they just hire you and train you?

Lindsey: 36:00

no, they hired me. Uh. So when I was in their teacher training program, I was getting paid for my study hours and for my assistant teaching. Of course. I got to the end of the of the program and they offered me a job and was very much based on what the physical body looks like and the balance of how much one was exercising and what they were eating. I didn't feel like that was right.

Lindsey: 36:42

That sounds crazy. I didn't feel like that was. That sounds crazy. Yeah, so it didn't seem healthy for me there. It was a kick-ass workout, but I had already had so much uh body image, uh complexities in my mind that it was not a healing conducive, you know, forward yes, atmosphere in that category for me. So so I said thank you for letting me learn all of these things, but no thanks and then from there like so I met you in LA.

Jenee: 37:18

Were you living in LA at the time when I met you? No, I was living in Minnesota.

Lindsey: 37:24

Yeah, I had left already. So, yeah, after that last time in Los Angeles, I moved back to Minnesota and did my yoga teacher training and I was like, okay, I want to teach yoga and that was a big gift to myself. And I've been teaching since then. That was 12 years ago, wow, yeah.

Jenee: 37:48

So did you initially train in Kundalini, or what did you train in?

Lindsey: 37:52

My first yoga teacher training was in Hatha yoga, so it had the, the. The vinyasa style of class comes from that lineage and I chose the program purposefully. That was not a corporate yoga program, because I was really you know the yoga posture as a dancer like the yoga posture is very simple for me to understand and like perfect, if you will, because I just had a really deep level of body awareness. So I was more interested in learning the philosophy behind yoga and learning more about Ayurveda and tantra, like tantric energy, the, the chakra system, the nadis, the marma points. I wanted to know the esoteric and the subtle teachings and so I found this wonderful program through Devanati Yoga in Minneapolis and they still, to this day, their programming is like mind blowing to me Really. Yeah, how, how, um, it's just like all of the, the layers, they do a really good job of of coagulating aspects.

Lindsey: 39:15

You know it's a. Yoga is a very broad, broad subject. Yes, it is so. So that was my first yoga teacher training and then, five years later, I found Kundalini yoga because I was like I want more meditation, I want more breath work. I'm missing that from my yoga practice, and boy did that give me a whole lot whole lot of breath, whole lot of mantra, whole lot of meditation.

Jenee: 39:41

It's like I say it's the um, oh, what's? What's the word? It's the, the weird house on the on the end of the cul-de-sac on the left.

Lindsey: 39:55

It's not for everybody, but I can say that through my experience in kundalini yoga, and specifically through Rama and Guru Jagat, I was opened up into a whole different awareness of my own sound current, of my own creativity. Yeah, I was very dance centric and I love to paint and I love to sing and and that's what led me into doing voice lessons with you and we did voice lessons for a- while yeah.

Lindsey: 40:41

And got a ukulele and started playing an instrument and, uh, I think that time in my life was just so rich with creativity because of the yoga practice and the encouragement from the community as well. It's like you can be your. You know, you can be a bank teller and then have this yoga practice and create beauty and creativity in everything that you do.

Jenee: 41:15

Yeah, that was a big teaching of hers which I really appreciated and she really demanded that of the people who really studied with her in the women's teachings. It wasn't an option in the women's teachings. It was like you know, there wasn't an option like you were going to do. You know, each year we would have you know, you got to pick up an instrument or you gotta learn how to write a book.

Jenee: 41:38

Yeah, you got to write a book or you got to you know public speak and that stuff like changed my life. You know it's like, it's stuff that I still use to this day.

Lindsey: 41:50

Yeah, you know, absolutely it was a blessing. So it was a blessing. I'm grateful that I was at that place in that time, I know, and I got to meet you.

Jenee: 42:03

I know and the women that I, that I met from that I, that I met from that community, are just still to this day like the most. I just revere those women the most Like everyone that I know from that community has gone out. They were already doing amazing things and then they just continue to go out and do these incredible, like everybody's evolving. Yes, and that's the one thing that I think is so interesting about the women that were drawn into that space is because they were so again, like spirit really was guiding each, like we all have such a deep, deep relationship with, like I don't know, with our commune with God and with nature and our own personal evolution and just being like lightworkers or starseeds or whatever, just being like so hungry to sort of evolve. So in any subject you know, movement and dance or you know, just like everybody I know, is doing something so unique, yes, and forefront.

Lindsey: 43:12

Yes, yes, and and visible, I think.

Jenee: 43:16

I was hiding also. Yeah, like what were you saying?

Lindsey: 43:20

That was hiding for the last couple of years. I think that was like a big expansion for me during that time, which was like five to seven years ago, and then, after that big expansion, you know, a lot of things shifted in that particular community.

Lindsey: 43:41

And and and that really put each of us in a position to have to navigate navigate it on our own. Yeah, you know of like, okay, what. This was a great tool and experience. And now how does that weave its way into my life and how I understand my relationship to God? To look like, to feel like, and how am I going to like craft that in a way that is unique to me?

Jenee: 44:20

Absolutely what I gained from that time. It's just like there's so many priceless is that the word? Just like so many teachings that are really like just even the idea of the, the idea of forward motion and the idea of like understanding your own sort of like spaceship. You know your own? I guess I don't. I don't even remember what she used to call it, but it's like seeing. You know, before I was in that community I was really hiding, like hiding in plain sight. I was on stage performing in front of the public, but I was literally like hiding and you can see it in my face. You can see like the darkness and almost like a flower that is inverted.

Jenee: 45:12

And through that work I was able to kind of pull those layers of fear, just the my own internal terrors of being seen and witnessed, and pulling those things off which are really like they are subconscious thought forms. People can say that shit's crazy. They if they're not like, if they don't understand the yoga or they don't understand like the realms of, like you know that kind of teaching and how that works, but it really truly is like it really truly affects your field, your energy field and how you're moving through the world.

Lindsey: 45:49

Yeah, I want to rewind to you and your like unfolding and evolution, because from where I sit watching you evolve from that time until now, like the album that you just created, whoa, when I first listened to the whole thing beginning to end, it immediately went on loop and I think I listened to it for like two days in a row. Wow, because the sound currents and the different lineages of mantras that you pulled from were just like straight from the mother there was just a resonant, very clear frequency coming from each of the songs so.

Lindsey: 46:47

I am very curious to ask you on your own podcast about your work and your journey in creating that album, because you know, yeah, the lineages that they're from I don't know very much about, but I'm curious to hear your take on that.

Jenee: 47:11

Yeah, thank you so much. It just means the world to me to hear you say that and to be recognized in that way. Um, yeah, I really feel like this was a cocooning with, like, the mother, like with the ma frequency, with this love of the divine. And I, when I started it, I knew I didn't want to just do the Gurmukhi. Um, you know mantras and I had, I had been doing a lot of study in like, all of the esoteric realms and I was also at that time starting to serve psychedelic medicine and pulling that in and it just expanded my awareness and consciousness of like, of the field of sound and even more than what I was doing, I mean kundalini just fully opened up that field for me in understanding sound and the sound current and everything.

Jenee: 48:19

But, yeah, when I started down the path of psychedelic medicines, it opened me up in another way and, um, and it kind of took those, those teachings and like amplified them. You know, and I, I, I feel like I went through sort of a um initiation with sound and I had always loved the Sanskrit mantras, so there's two mantras on there. I always loved the Sanskrit mantras. So there's two mantras on there, asatoma and the Gayatri mantra. I had always loved those Sanskrit mantras, like any Sanskrit mantra that I would hear, I would like almost cry, like I would want to cry.

Jenee: 49:04

I would feel like I knew the mantras like deeply and I, but I was very resistant Cause I was like I'm not, you know, you know, I'm not Hindi, I'm not like, this isn't my faith and I don't, you know, I don't really know if this is appropriate and I already came from like one you know situation where I was like questioning my my own appropriation around things and you know so, um, but yeah, I just kind of like prayed on it and sat with it and and was reading a book that was talking a lot about the goddesses and kind of like through the goddess work, that's more where, like, all of this entered, so it was like through the initiation and the ideas of the goddess work. That's where, like, each mantra sort of came in, and like the Tara, the green Tara, like I, that was one of my I sat with that mantra and meditated with it and just allow that to come in, you know, and they've all come in in sort of a feeling way of like how would I embody this mantra? Like I've heard so many good versions of it, but how? How would this feel as the divine feminine moves through me, you know? And so I would just sit with it and I'd play with like different melodies or whatever, and really like when I got into the studio, like Dave, who I work with in Boston, I'd be like there's this or there's this, and he'd be like, oh, the first one, and it was kind of always like that with every melody and the acetoma was a prayer that had come to me a while back and it was.

Jenee: 51:04

It's really how I knew it was a prayer to help with self-worth and self-esteem. Oh, wow, when it's really, and it makes sense because it's actually a prayer of, like the words are Lord, lead me from the unseen to the seen, from the unreal to the real, lead me from death into life. So it's like, lead me from that illusion of the not self, so that, as a Toma had like, I sang that in the way of how I wanted to like tender my soul If you know someone is suffering.

Jenee: 51:48

It's like not a lullaby, but just a whisper of the most sacred prayer.

Lindsey: 51:55

It's so beautiful. Thank you I mean that one really sticks out to me. All of them have their own very pure, beautiful, soul-filled quality to them.

Jenee: 52:08

Yeah, but.

Lindsey: 52:09

I also wanted to ask you about the Ide Ue Ue. Yeah, Ide Ue Ue.

Jenee: 52:16

It's so breathtaking. It's a Yoruban song. It talks about Oshun, right, yeah, about Oshun. It came through the lineage, I think it came through to Brazil, like through the African lineage, and it's about Oshun and it's actually about her, like her bracelets, which is very interesting and I don't really know, like, the significance of what the bracelets are. But yeah, I just got like Melody, always like haunted me and then I started. I took lessons with Karen or his daughter. Who's like an amazing, like she sits in ceremony and plays.

Jenee: 52:58

And she's a profound like player, like amazing guitarist and singer, and so, yeah, I took lesson with her and I wanted to learn the Brazilian finger picking style. So it's kind of like it's still like I'm just in the Zygo, like baby I would never play in front of a Brazilian, but like unless it was her, but like I'm in the you know baby phases of like learning that guitar style, but yeah.

Jenee: 53:30

I just wanted to do songs that, like, really hit my heart Was the process of making that into an album, healing or cathartic for you.

Jenee: 53:44

Yeah, it was very healing and it was also like I felt like I had finally found my place in music. I could not get back to like the singer songwriter world. There's like nothing I wanted in the singer songwriter world. Like I was already kind of unhappy before the pandemic and I put out an album. Like I was like this is it. This is the album. I'm like so happy. It was like in the stride, like 2019. I'm like and then, like the pandemic hits and I'm just like deflated balloon. So many artists were. I think, yeah, I don't know, the further you get from the stage, the harder it is. Yeah, you know. And then I'm like, okay, years are going by. I haven't been back on the stage. I did a few performances. I was like super dysregulated and I was like there's nothing about this world that I want anymore.

Lindsey: 54:45

You know, you're a different person, you know you evolve and similarly for me in dances. I wanted the big jobs, I wanted to dance for the big artists and my exodus from LA was I just didn't want to be in that atmosphere anymore. It was not, it wasn't conducive for my own continued growth spiritually or as a mover totally, which is really difficult. I still deal with, you know, that mentality of like when I, when am I going to do something noteworthy? And blah, blah, blah. But what I'm doing right now, as far as spirit is concerned, is significantly more noteworthy than me. You know, just having the clout of dancing for a famous artist or being in a movie or doing something that's ultimately just feeding my own ego. And then once I do that and check that off the list, then what is my spirit going to want me to do? What I'm doing right now?

Jenee: 56:00

Exactly, and yeah, so finding like this way home, I guess I would say with with mantra, it's like I actually am not singing about myself.

Jenee: 56:14

I was like so bored of myself I don't want to sing a singer songwriter song about love and heartbreak. I never sang those songs anyways, but like I'm like now, singing spirit is like moving through me. Yes, I'm singing to the other things in the world and it's not about me at all and I can just let that pass through me, you know. So now I am like I want to get back out there. I just have to figure out how I'm going to do that.

Lindsey: 56:45

You know Great Well you just keep praying on it and it will drop in. Thank you, you know, because the sound current of that.

Lindsey: 56:51

It and it will drop in, thank you, you know, because this the sound current of that and I've heard a few of your other songs in your previous albums, but whoo, the, the sound resonance that comes out in this album is really really something special. So please can continue on your exploration in that realm and keep gifting us your, your beautiful expression of how a spirit wants to move through you and and I'll keep I'll keep doing that with dance and with bodies.

Jenee: 57:21

I love it. I love that promise any like cool revelations lately that you've had kind of in all the things that you're playing with.

Lindsey: 57:36

Yeah, I mean the big one I talked a little bit about earlier was just like creating space. We are habitually conditioned to fill everything up to the brim. You know our schedules, our wallets, our refrigerators, our guest tanks, like everything it needs to be full, and there's a real trust in the divine and yourself. When you start cutting things out and you resist the urge to fill it with something, you're just like I'm going to say no to the things that I really don't want to be doing. I'm going to say no to the people that I really don't want to be hanging out with doing. I'm going to say no to the people that I really don't want to be hanging out with.

Lindsey: 58:36

You know, I'm going to cut out the food or drink habits that I feel like are not conducive to my well-being anymore and instead of finding something to replace it right away, like sitting in that space is like this liminal area where you can kind of just like float and like how can you create more space in your physical body? How can you shift your relationship and your perception of your body and space like around you, by creating as much width and height and and depth in in in how the body is moving, as well as the breath through that you're also making more expansion and space in your mind. You're almost like you're suspended in outer space, where, like really I mean, unless you're in a rocket ship or there's an asteroid projecting itself through space like you have, like you have to wait until something passes by you to grab it or to touch it, you know so.

Lindsey: 1:00:04

I think that's where I'm at like, Like I love that.

Jenee: 1:00:08

Yeah, I've been getting a lot of like the image lately of the um, the tree of life or the torridial field that is us, and that there's a you know the flow, it's the, it's the waves, it's the tides, and like there has to be a give and receive, so so all things go out and all things come back, and just that idea of the toroidal field or the tree that's constantly recirculating. And I think if you're stuffing your life with all these things and you're numbing yourself out and did this, and that it's like you're not making room for the receiving aspect, absolutely.

Lindsey: 1:00:50

You know, yeah, it's the same. It's the same concept of of. If you're gripping your money so tightly in your palm, then your hand isn't open enough for more to come.

Jenee: 1:01:03

Exactly.

Lindsey: 1:01:04

I love that. So it's. It's that uh, realization of, of, of the grip strength, and you know it doesn't always need to be open, but, like you said, it's a giving and a receiving and when you're receiving you cannot receive. When you're gripping and holding and condensing and contracting, interacting, there is a there is a natural um breath and ample liminal space to receive.

Jenee: 1:01:38

Yep, I love that. Oh, it's so good to connect with you let's not make so much time go by next time I want to know more and be in your life and like absolutely Well, hey.

Lindsey: 1:01:49

I have a studio now, so you come here to Minnesota and we'll get you to teach a women's vocal healing experience Get out of the heat yeah. Don't come in the winter.

Jenee: 1:02:05

No, I'll come when it's too hot here. Perfect, yeah, that sounds great.

Lindsey: 1:02:10

When do the?

Jenee: 1:02:10

doors open.

Lindsey: 1:02:12

They're already open. I'm just like taking it over. So it's just going to keep rolling along like it has been, and around May, june, I'll start to release some new programming and new events and offerings I'm really excited to bring to Wisconsin, like the studios in Wisconsin.

Jenee: 1:02:37

Okay.

Lindsey: 1:02:38

When you think of Wisconsin is like beer and cheese, like those are the hobbies in Wisconsin, but there is a community that's really wanting, you know, events that do not revolve around drinking, yes, um, events that promote healing and wellness and connection in the community. And so I look forward to being a little cosmic event planner of sorts in wisconsin.

Jenee: 1:03:06

I love it and I will totally take you up on coming and teaching.

Jenee: 1:03:09

So yeah it was a pleasure. Thank you so much. Thank you. The Heartlight Sessions podcast is executive produced and hosted by me, janae Halstead. It's edited, mixed and mastered by me too. And that theme song you hear? It's called Heartlight. And yep, you guessed it. It's edited, mixed and mastered by me too. And that theme song you hear? It's called Heartlight. And yep, you guessed it, it's from my record. Disposable Love. Got questions about a certain healing modality or about heart-centered healing, or maybe you just need some advice on life, love or creativity? Send it my way, email me at letters at heartlightpodcastcom. Until next time, I'm Janae Halstead, and thanks for listening to Heartlight Sessions.