#144 - The Yoga Lifestyle with Yogi Aaron

In this episode of the Morning Upgrade podcast I talk with Yogi Aaron about his morning routine, living a yoga lifestyle, going beyond just stretching and postures and much more.

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Announcer  

Welcome to the Morning Upgrade podcast with Ryan Cote, where we feature casual conversations with entrepreneurs about personal development and growth.

Ryan

Hey, Aaron. Welcome to the Morning Upgrade podcast. How are you?

Aaron

Great, Ryan, thanks for having me here.

Ryan  

Yeah, I'm excited to talk to you about your yogi, which is a Yoga expert, or yoga teacher, I guess, and stuff. They're gonna ask you questions around that your morning routine all are normal, normal topics. But let's kick it off by you telling everyone who you are and what you do for a living, which Gary told the audience. I'm breaking protocol here. And this is what happens and something you're grateful for.

Aaron  

So I'm your gear, and I'm from Canada, moved to New York for 10 years, and ran a yoga studio, kind of a little mini yoga empire if you will. And then, in 2010, I moved to Costa Rica and opened up a yoga retreat center called Blue OSA yoga retreat and Spa. And I am, as you said, a yoga teacher. I'm also a yogi Gilkey is just someone who practices yoga and leads or endeavors to lead more of a yoga lifestyle. And one thing I'm really grateful for these days is my health. And my ability to and the strength that I feel in my body at this moment.

Ryan  

Do you do anything? Besides, is yoga 100% of what your fitness is? Or do you run with weights? Just curious about that.

Aaron  

Yeah, that's, I mean, that's a good and deep question. Because a lot of people, I think when you said, Do you do anything else besides yoga, I think what you were intimating, integrating is like, do I do anything else other than stretching, so I don't stretch, actually. And for me, yoga is really a lifestyle, it's more of a mindset. And it's a mindset that helps you to start or to always stay in touch with your life purpose, to stay in touch with who you are at your core. And so there are many different practices in yoga, and some of them are asanas, and unfortunately, the whole Asana thing has just really kind of taken over the yoga world or taken over the world. Because everywhere you look on Instagram, it's always people just doing postures. So the answer, the short answer is, yes, I do yoga-related postures for very specific purposes. But yes, I also walk, hike, a swim. I do I love going to the gym and doing more, kind of not so much bulking up working out, but just more strength training, maintaining, etc, etc. So I do a lot of different things. I always try and stay active. One of my axioms is to use it or lose it. So true. I've always tried to use that. Yeah,

Ryan  

yeah. So I want to come back to yoga, I want to learn more about the lifestyle for my audience listening, which might be more of a yoga lifestyle. I'm gonna come back to that. But first, let's hear about your morning routine. How does your morning start,

Aaron  

my mornings usually start waking up. I always make coffee in the morning. It's kind of like my way to the ground. And there are all kinds of reasons for that. There's actually history about that. But that's what really helps me to ground, and I take stock of my life. Every day. I always go and ask myself, Am I living my life purpose? Am I really doing what I was meant to be doing? And sometimes I look at my things to do and more and more, as they get older too, I'm really starting to ask that question. Like, is this really important? Is this what I meant to be doing? And is this, you know, in alignment with who I am and what I want to be doing in my life? So for me, like being very purpose-oriented, being very purpose intentional is something that I really bring into my day. And oftentimes, I'll just use affirmations as well. One of my favorite affirmations is that this was actually really big during a pandemic. It's kind of been big at a few different points in my life, but especially during the pandemic, when I felt like life was closing in on being the worst thing to happen, I think to human beings that we feel smaller. Our nature is to feel expansive. So one of my favorite affirmations is I'm opening myself up to the universe of limitless possibilities.

Ryan  

Haley did a lot. I want to learn more about the yoga lifestyle you mentioned. It's funny because when I asked that first question, Do you do anything else, I associated yoga with stretching? Yes. I was asking that. Not knowing I was asking that, but yeah, I give us a sneak peek into a quick rundown of what the yoga lifestyle looks like if anyone listening to this is interested in yoga.

Aaron  

Yeah, I mean, one of my big kind of drives right now just to kind of back backpedal a little bit is to flip the script on yoga and stretching in the yoga world and bring people's awareness to what yoga really is about the yoga is really about the unfolding of our purpose and living the life that we're supposed to live fearlessly. And the first axiom in yoga is to become fearless and work on removing your fears. Because when you're in fear, you know, you can't do anything. So we need to do that. And so a lot of my routines are geared around that. But yoga lifestyle. It's such a loaded question. Part of so the first axiom is to become fearless. The second axiom is to stay aware and stay present of the absolute reality within us, which denotes this idea that within all of us in all things, really, animals and humans, but specifically in humans, there's a part of us that is changeless. And by when I say change the list, I also mean indestructible, and therefore always continues. And so each of us has that changeless part. And the part of the routine of the yogi, to be quite frank, is to always maintain that awareness of A, the changeless part of ourselves, but also the world that is constantly changing around us. And so you asked me a question before we got talking about do I feel attached to. Or do I miss New York, and I was able to walk away from my old life in New York in come to Costa Rica because I was aware that there's this impermanence, you know, to that life I had in New York? And so, by accepting that impermanence, I'm able to move on to do other things. I'm not staying attached to what was. And so part of the part of living a yogic lifestyle is that and so we do lots of different things. There's meditation, there are relaxation practices, there's chanting, doing karma we're doing like volunteering and helping out humanity. So we're constantly doing things to challenge ourselves, to understand who we are at our core. And be always mindful of that, you know, if you want to call it the sacred part of ourselves,

Ryan  

was there a moment in your life that you can think of that came to mind that got you into yoga or this deep into becoming a yogi? It was your

Aaron  

point? Oh, absolutely. I mean, the simple answer is I just wanted to stretch. Which is ironic. I mean, I always tell people like it's stretching is what gets him to go because Sophia is just becoming physically healthier. And so I did that when I was 18. And I just want, I just saw my body tightening up. And I knew it was not a good thing. So then, I got into yoga. By the age of 2829, I really started to hurt myself. And ironically, at that moment, I met my teacher, my real teacher. And he started to unfold, really, the potential of what yoga could be in my life, and they gave me practice. And I always tell people that practice is really what got me to where I am today. So that's why I got into yoga, but then it really started to unfold about 10 years later.

Ryan

Little did you know, you'd be running retreats in Costa Rica.

Aaron  

Oh my god. I always tell my students to be careful when they breathe. Because if you change your breath, you're going to change your destiny in a powerful way.

Ryan  

Yeah. So the question is about yoga. I want to ask you something different. Let's talk about habits. What are your pillar habits, self-care habits, and pillar habits that you rely on? Besides your yoga lifestyle?

Aaron  

Yeah, I mean, my affirmations but some of my pillar habits is waking up early in the morning. I always feel like waking up early is one of the best ways my tires are wired up. I usually get up around five o'clock. But my teacher Swami Rama always said, As soon as your eyes open, get out of bed because it's doing that habit starts to change something profound in your mind. In each human mind, do we have a tendency towards, like, I can't pull out a better word right now, but it's not exactly what I mean? But it's laziness. We all have a tendency towards laziness. And I'm not talking about what we do in life. I'm talking about the actions of mind and so we always want to kind of go towards that sloth like you inertia, if you want to say that. And so the best thing that we can do as humans is activate that part of our mind. That's like, Get up and go. Another habit of mine is to drink. I always drink about three cups of water every single morning. And as I drink in it, I always say to myself, Yes, I'm getting my internal shower. And then sometimes I'll repeat other affirmations as I'm doing that new habit. Well, when I say new, I mean, like in the last three years, what has started to develop is walking. And so every week, I usually walk a few times a week. When I say walk, I mean, like, 10 kilometers. So I usually go on long walks that take me a couple of hours. And it's just it's that moment. It's a reminder to connect to nature, to just breathe, and to feel and experience. So this is just a few.

Ryan

Are you pretty strict with your diet? 

Aaron  

Oh, that's a loaded question. Yes. And no. I would say more No, than Yes. These days. Right now, I have been in the past, I really work on eating live foods. I work on eating foods that are fresh, that don't come in again, or a package. And that's, I would say, that's probably the biggest habit, especially owning a yoga retreat. I you know, we are dedicated at the yoga retreat to serving him fresh farm-to-table food. And so that's kind of what I tried to embody in my life.

Ryan  

So let's talk about your business. I'm just this question is more for curiosity's sake. So maybe give a quick answer. I'm just curious about what a typical day looks like for you as a yogi. That's, that's like my curiosity question. And then my other question is like, what have you what do you do to grow your business for the entrepreneurs listening?

Aaron  

Okay, so what is my life look like? It's Yoki. So I said, the first axiom was to become fearless. The second one, stay aware of the opposite reality. The third one is to work hard in life, to do your duty. So I always kind of work hard. I'm, I'm a very hard worker. For anybody who's thinking about an entrepreneurial path, it's a lot of work. And I don't care what anybody says. But if you're going to be successful, you got to work hard. So I work hard. That's my day, I wake up early, and I have my morning routine, but then I usually hit the pavement running, I usually do that for a couple of hours, because in the morning is when my mind is usually precious, and then I work out. Sometimes I go for a run or a walk. And then I come back, eat something nutritious, and then hit go back to work again. So that's kind of my day, and it goes all the way up until around six 630, usually by six 630. I do a hard stop. And then I don't do anything else. I don't look at work until the next day. Your other question was about entrepreneurial tips. As I just said, you just got to work hard. But I think that it's also really important for entrepreneurs to constantly have personal check-ins, what is my purpose? What is it that I'm working towards? What's my mission statement, if you don't know those things, you're going to become like the proverbial Tiger chasing your tail all the time, and you're going to end up going nowhere. Or you're going to end up doing something that you really don't like or relate to test in the long run. So it's really important to just keep doing personal check-ins. And then that way, if you don't feel like you're on your purpose, either you stop doing what you're doing, or it gives you an opportunity to self-correct. I remember during the pandemic, it was such a great thing on so many levels, because it really kind of gave us a moment literally to pause and reassess. Who are we? And who are we serving? And to who do we want to serve? And what kind of people do we want? What kind of clients do we want to bring into our space? And so asking that kind of question. And being honest is so important so many times, you see entrepreneurs just easily go down the survival rabbit hole, which doesn't serve anybody, especially themselves. They just will do like anything to survive. And that's not what being an entrepreneur is about. Being an entrepreneur is really about thriving in life. Yeah.

Ryan  

100% What kind of challenges Do you run into like in your business as running yoga retreats? Like what challenges

Aaron  

so being a yoga teacher is one of the greatest joys I have in life. However, when you opened up a yoga retreat center, I think yoga retreat centers used to be more revert revered. Now, it's become more of a hospitality thing. And I think that's been the hardest challenge because as a yoga teacher, I get to, I get to have communication with people in a certain way, there's a certain mutual respect in the hospitality. People don't really have a lot of respect for the people that are serving them. And that has been one of the hardest adjustments, I think. And that's been kind of like my Achilles heel over the last 12 years. And the way that I've kind of moved past it, there are a few tricks, but one of them is just hiring really great staff to provide us because I'm a yoga teacher, we say honest things. And, you know, a guest doesn't always want to hear honestly.

Ryan  

It's so interesting. Every industry has like such different, I would have never thought you would have said that you know, that the yoga retreats have become more of a it's more of like hospitality thing now, which has its own challenges.

Aaron  

There's that HBO series, you know, white low does, which is just so spot on. I mean, I just love that joke because it's like, those are our guests.

Ryan  

Alright, I've got one last question for you, Erin. And then we're going to wrap up with your sharing how everyone can connect with you. My question for you is about the meaning of life through a three-year lens and experiences thus far. What is the meaning of life,

Aaron  

the meaning of life, from my lens and from a yogic perspective, as well as to just be happy. And happiness comes from fulfillment in the fulfillment comes from our ability to go out and manifest and live our life purpose. That's it in a nutshell.

Ryan  

That's periodic Grimore. Excellent. All right, Erin, this was great. If someone wants to connect with you, where should we send them?

Aaron  

Send them to Gilkey erra.com. I have a lot of freebies on my website. One of them is my pain-free series. I also have an affirmation series to help people to kind of sink into their purpose and how to manifest it. So that's the best way Yogi berra.com Perfect.

Ryan

Thanks for everything you shared.

Aaron

Thank you so much, Ryan. Appreciate it.

Announcer  

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