The Breakfast ClubBest Of Full Interview: Devi Brown Taps Into Spiritual Practices, Mindfulness, Healthy Boundaries, Self Acceptance + More
Best of 2024 - Recorded July 2022 - Devi Brown Taps Into Spiritual Practices, Mindfulness, Healthy Boundaries, Self Acceptance. Listen For More!
Wake that ass up in the morning.
Breakfast Club Morning, Everybody's DJ Envy Angela, Yee, Charlomagne the guy.
We are the breakfast club. We got a special guest in the ballot. That's right, this divine being having a human experience. Master, well being, educator, don't to keep going. Oh. She has many teaching certifications. She has many teaching certifications including meditation, breath work in the child, healing, and spiritual psychology. She's an energy healer. She hosting leads many spiritual spiritual retreats a year. She teaches in God's Deli Meditations on the Choper app. She advises on well being. A teachers mindfulness for several corporations. She's an author of a book called Crystal Bliss, and she hosts a podcast on the Black Podcast Network called Dropping Gems. It's my good sister. And she has a four year old that is taller than Charlamagne. That is a fact. Wie, that's my god son. We're talking about the quest is a big little boy. That is a fact. Yes, welcome, good morning, Good morning. How are you, Debbie.
I'm incredible, I feel incredible. Okay, this moment in time is a lot, but it's also there's magic in it for all of us.
What makes you feel so incredible?
You know, I think I'm excited about where we all get to be in our lives in this moment, Like this is the first time ever in human history that we've all been able to become higher versions of ourselves, like so many at a time. We all have more resources, more support for mental health, more support for emotional health. So it's like even when I get to see friends I haven't seen in a while, like, I feel like we get to meet each other at new levels. You know, we get to have deeper conversations with the people that we love. We get to be, you know, just set our boundaries, be ourselves.
People say, what are you talking about?
Debbie does multi pox?
There is COVID and we're in a recession, interest rates at at all time high, but you still find the positive out of it, you know what it?
Life is both the human experience. We're always oscillating between these two ends of the spectrum, joy and grief. And I think that, you know, the viewpoint I have of it, and something I really had to come into in the pandemic was the moments that feel like joy, I have to let myself feel all of it. You know, I want every inch of delight when it's present, because life is hard, life is challenging. Like we walk to the table with so many things that we've experienced that no one knows about, and then we're alive right now with you know, it is what it is, all the things happening. So when I get a chance to be with people I love, when I get a chance to do anything that sparks in my spirit, I try to feel every single piece of it.
There are times when people feel guilty too, because they may be experiencing a lot of positivity, but there's so much going on around you that you don't feel like you can even celebrate that.
Yeah, Yeah, and I think it's important to because that's that's what allows us to sustain. Like, I think the thing we've all gotten so wrong about the human experience is like everyone thinks that the goal is always supreme happiness and that if it's not that, then those are the periods of your life you don't really sit with or look at or talk about. But we need the grief, we need the pain just as much as we need everything else. So you know, even in the midst of the moment in time we're having now where everything is crazy and it's been crazy, you know, it's I wake up every day and I'm just like, but how can I fuel my fire? How can I keep that internal oven inside of me just constantly going for myself, from my life, from my child.
Can we go back to to like almost the beginning, right, because when you think of you know, deVie dev A lot of us probably know deVie Dad from radio. You know, we started, Debbie Dev. I met you at kDa in La in like seven, and you know you on Sway Show. But it's like you've always been this spiritually connected person when you when do you like first remember that like connection to a higher power? You know.
I think so many things play into that. I think by nature, I'm an only child raised by a single parent, which is a certain kind of experience that kind of keeps you in your head a lot. So I think that was a piece of it. But I've always just been fascinated by transformation of any kind. Like I was definitely reading self help books as a little girl. I was just so interested in what made people themselves but also what kept people from becoming themselves.
Now, one time you decided to give this all up, right, Yeah, you would. You were very successful doing radio. You were in Houston, they were talking about syndication, you were talking about moving back to la and then you said.
You were one of the best radio personality in the country. I mean, it's still one of the best personalities period, but you were on the radio as one of the best personalities in the country.
And then you said, I'm done with this. Well what made you say, you know what, I don't want to do this anymore?
What?
What?
What was they.
Need? You know, it was a couple of things. I think the amazing thing about the show that y'all do is you guys have established something so rare and different than has ever been I think in broadcasting, and you guys get to show up as your full selves at work. You get to have the conversations that matter to you. Where I was when I was doing radio that had started becoming so closed off. You know, at one point when I was working in radio, I was able to have meaningful conversations like I went viral with Kanye, went viral with Kendrick talking about mental health. And then you know, the powers that be they just say talk less talk less, you know, where I used to have a talk break where I could really connect it, like do that in eleven seconds, but say the whole liner, you know. And it's just I just felt like I wasn't able to use this gift of communication at the level that God really commanded of me, at the level that felt fulfilling to me. And so I knew that I needed to find I wanted to have different conversations, and I think you know, when I left radio, that was like twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, so the kind of conversations I was having weren't really popular at the time. Like I wanted to kind of talk about some of the darker stuff. I wanted to talk about some of the more complex, complicated, complex things, and I just kind of do that on the terrestrial radio. I was at like I remember one of my bosses at the time was like, I want you to start doing a segment about groupies where you take callers and ask them what celebrities they slept with Jesus. And I was like, sir, do you know me at all? Like I was like, well, I can't do that, so let me let me find my place, and you know, I wanted to have more adventure. Like I At that point, I knew spirituality was the leading leading journey amission from my life, and so I just said, I have to invest everything about myself to that.
And let me ask you this. You did say back then, those conversations weren't as popular as they are now. And definitely now I feel like people are having those conversations about spirituality about mental health a lot more. But there's so many different conflicting things, so much information out there, so many people that you're like, Okay, who do I listen to? Who do I trust? Who do I believe? Right? So how do people manage to kind of filter through all of that noise?
Ooh, that is so good because it is like the wild West out here, Like it really is, like you know, I think everybody should vet everyone that they talk to. And I think what's really important is there is this kind of split between people that are enthusiasts and are sharing processes that maybe worked really well for their individual lives. But we all have complex lives. We all have so many experiences that made us us. So I think it's just really important to connect with people that are deeply studied that are experts in this space, you know, work with people who have embodied what they're saying, not just sharing maybe the tips and tricks or not just you know, saying the things of like I've read this book and it said this, but who has been applying it to their life in a way that it's transformed them and this is their way of being? Those are always the people I'm like kind of guide more in that direction. And I believe in a holistic view. I think if you know, for anybody listening that feels called to a healing journey or any kind of like internal exploration, you have to do it for mind, body, and spirit. You know, therapy is incredible and it's one of the foundational steps, but you also need everything else. You need body practice, you need something that really feeds and grows and builds your spirit. Like, we can't just do one thing. It has to be an integrated approach to have real transformation.
Can we expand on that? I remember you telling me that you know years ago us this like in the therapy is great, and I'm glad you're in therapy, but you need more and just therapy to transform your life. Like, what exactly does that look?
Like, so even with therapy, there's so many different kinds of therapy, and I think a lot of people, especially now, because we're just so new to all of this, everyone goes to cognitive therapy, which is kind of like the standard talk therapy. For some people, that is actually not the best option. Depending on what you are coming to the table with, potentially what kind of traumas or experiences you've had, you may need somatic therapy, you may need DBT, you may need all these different styles. And so that's why I say, like, also get creative with it. When you're on your journey and you start to feel maybe a little stuck, something isn't working, start exploring, start googling, start asking more questions. But the piece about therapy is it keeps you in your head. It helps you understand yourself and the things that have happened, and it gives you the language to talk about it. But it doesn't always give you the opportunity to live this new knowing. At that that point, it can be really powerful to invite in like spiritual practice or a self care practice, so that you are applying acceptance to yourself, You're applying loving to yourself. You know, It's one thing to know everything, but to know everything and still love yourself, to know everything and come into compassion for the people that have harmed you. It takes many different processes.
And you know, you're a master well being educator. You have you know a lot of certification. What does that look like too for people who will be like, oh, how do I know she just didn't read a book. Yeah, like you actually invested in yourself with this.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean I've read a lot of books and I've done a lot of process on myself. This is also you know, probably fifteen years of therapy on myself, a lot of working with healing practitioners all over the world. But yeah, I dedicated really the last ten years of my life. Even while I was still in radio, I was also enrolled in different programs and just amassing my knowledge. You know. My thing was an And I really encourage anybody listening for whatever field you're in. If you're called to something, if you know it's something that you know, not just in the way we used to say it, like you do it if it was for free, No, if it's something that you're curious about, like you're always thinking about it, you're always trying to find different facets of it, invest in yourself. You know, I knew this was my path. I knew I was called to help people heal, to help alleviate internal suffering. And I didn't want to just do it from a place of like motivation and positivity. I wanted to really know what is the deep process of transformation? And also what are all the things that people are facing? You know, what are things that keep what are the barriers that are in place for different kinds of people that keep them from healing?
And what books helps you?
What helped you on your journey?
Oh?
God, so many things, so many books. I think one of the books that I love and I speak to this book a lot. But it's simple, it's short, but it is powerful and can used on it daily basis is The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra. What I love about that book is it really expands your understanding of what life could be like if you really come into a place of surrender of trust that everything that was unfolding is ultimately for your highest good, even the things that may not have received your consent, even the things that still feel like an open wound, coming into acceptance of that, and then really alchemizing all that life has given you to transform, to create, to have new possibilities. That book really gave me, like the zoomed out expanded view of what could.
Be essentially bought up. Deepakchopra, I want to talk about your prime Shewed sessions. Yes, yeah, Draymond Green on now in particular, So you're talking about just the mental well being and so being able to focus right with Jraymond Green, Why in particular do you think athletes need to focus on something like this and how do you think it helped them?
Gosh, I think it's so important. First, like Religion of sports came up with this phenomenal content concept. This is their beautiful body of work. They tell really powerful stories, and it was myself and it was Deepak and we were in this really beautiful process with Draymond. What I think is so important about that not just from the athletic lens, but from the masculinity lens, Like I think this is really a moment of divine masculinity, of men's transformative healing, of men's kind of awakening, and so the opportunity to kind of work with someone who already has such ingrained dedication, discipline, knowledge of their body, knowledge of themselves. I thought was a really amazing experience because then we just got to go in and kind of chisel a little bit, you know, kind of fun intune the process.
How receptive was he to this at first?
So receptive, like so receptive he came in and it was it was just a joy and a privilege to work with Draymond because he is so smart, so self aware already. And he came in saying and if you watch the show, Deepak asked him, you know, where are you at on an emotional level from you know, one to ten? And I think he said he was a four. And then Deepak said, well, then you're suffering, you know, And we don't always look at that when everything else is amazing in our lives, or if you're super successful, got all of this, you know, acclaim opportunity that piece. You know, we often just say like, oh yeah, I feel it there. It's like a little seed in the pit of my stomach or sometimes in my heart, but eh, I'll pad everything else around it. And you know, he came into the experience like, Okay, how does this work? Tell me x Y and Z and then by you know, by the later part of our sessions when we were meeting, he was like, Okay, so I've read this book. I've read this book. I've read this book. I understand it like this, and he was just really ready to feel things that maybe he hadn't felt before.
Oh, I want to get back to the sessions on Amazon, but I want to talk about the connection with Deepok, because I call you Tupac Chopra, right, and so to see you and Deepak actually working together now was like surreal in a lot of ways. How did that connection happen?
Oh my god? Surreal? So godly. You always got to listen to the whispers of God, you know. I feel like when you can really get into a space of following the flow of where life wants to lead you and not where you're trying to make it go, miracles happen. And so you know, with Deepak, I was absolutely a student of his work and just I was so transformed. Deepak has written over ninety books in his lifetime, Like his depth of knowledge is so massive. So it really started where I was burned out. I was working in radio, Like we talked about in my twenties and I ended up getting shingles, which is highly painful for anybody that's had it, but it's also specifically something you don't get to like your seventies and your eighties. I had it in my twenties, and I was like, this life isn't sustainable, like clearly for people.
That don't know if I'm not, I heard of it, but I don't know what it is.
So shingles is a virus that lays dormant in your body after you have the chicken pox, and it's typically something that doesn't manifest until you are in your elderly years, but it can be brought forward with a lot of stress, and it is very painful. It often presents as like a big rash somewhere for a length of time, and no medicine alleviates the pain. For me, it felt like there was a frozen ice pick stabbing you in your nerve, really painful. And so this was like, you know, ten years ago, and I went online and I just typed in like detox, help retreat something, and the first thing that popped up was a photo of Deepak and it was for his health center. And so I ended up going on a ten day detox retreat and it changed everything about my life. And I ended up doing so many of the programs that Choprah offered, which eventually led me to do their teacher training program and get certified in meditation. And so our relationship was really just growing and building. And when Chopra Global launched about two years ago, I ended up coming on board as their Chief Impact Officer and meeting some of their initiatives.
Was that pressure?
What does that mean?
Was it pressure? Did you feel pressure once you were in that position?
No? I felt so aligned.
For me.
It was just it was just the deepest acknowledgment that my path was what I was envisioning, that I was exactly where I was supposed to be. So I think I really trust myself. I trust my life, I trust myself, I trust my expertise. So I felt like it was divine alignment.
I applied these skills to your life. How have you been handling things differently than you used to when you were younger?
Ooh, everything, you know? I think for me boundaries like really just understanding myself and understanding that you know, this is my movie. I'm the star of my movie. I'm a supporting character in a lot of people's movies. I'm a supporting character in your movie, you're a supporting character in mine. But I have to make myself in my life a priority. And to do that, you really cannot care what people think. You cannot allow other people's projections to change how you think about yourself or make you bend or contort in any way. And I think that that was one of the biggest things. It's like, just by being alive, we're constantly comparing. It starts in our childhood with our parents, with the kids in school, but especially as adults, especially if you work in the entertainment industry.
Especially with social media.
Oh my god, especially with social media, like it's impossible not to and so just really kind of zooming out of that matrix and just saying like, I can't care what anybody else thinks. I have to trust that my path in my life is mine.
Oh that's one way to create a healthy boundary, And what are some other ways to create healthy boundaries?
So healthy boundaries, the first part is you have to become really aware of yourself and who you are. I think a lot of this boundary conversation tends to tilt into using boundaries as more of a wall, a wall of protection, a barrier against other people, and also a judgment of other people. When I hear people talk about boundaries, even on social media, I think we have to really upgrade our understanding of why we don't have them to begin with. You know, it's like everyone's like, no, I'm gonna have boundaries, and you know, and anybody that doesn't have my boundaries like you're cut out of my life. And people don't want to respect your boundaries, and there's such this like harsh judgmental view no one does until you got them. And the thing is, the people in our lives that are trying to climb over them don't understand what they are either, which is why they don't even apply them to their own selves. So I think on the journey of finding boundaries of coming into self awareness, as often as it's possible, we always have to try to steep it in overall compassion and non judgment. A lot of us are doing things for the very first time, a lot of us have just heard about boundaries for the very first time. And very often if you don't have boundaries already, it's because different things happened in your life that led you to kind of disregard yourself in certain ways or not think that you had the right or the worth to choose yourself first. So it's all the process, and we just have to go slow and gently.
So question, are you we born with boundaries and then they get toyed down at some point we never have them and we have to learn how to build them.
So there's a multitude of reasons. But I think one of the reasons that I most often and work with and see in our childhood certain things have to happen for us to become the best version of our adult self. There has to be certain kinds of role modeling in place of behavior. There has to be role modeling of care, of understanding, of listening of language. If we have experienced certain emotional neglect, which millions of people do, even if your parents don't want to or don't know that they're doing it. If you're experiencing any kind of emotional neglect or traumas big t or Little Tea, it affects the way your core identity is established. Your core identity is established in childhood, that is the peace of you, that isn't the roles you play, but it's the piece of you that thinks that you're worthy, that thinks that you have rights, that knows that your emotional life matters. If you're not given that opportunity to grow that in a safe way, you don't know how to set boundaries because you don't under understand yourself your own needs, You don't understand what you require.
And sometimes things bad happen to you or people burn you, and then you're like, okay, moving forward. This is how I have to move.
Absolutely, And I think when that stuff happens in our adult life, even still, it usually comes down to an original wound that happened in childhood. There was something in the dynamic with the child and the caregiver or whatever adults may have been present, where their needs were not looked at, and you maybe had to please the person that was caretaking for you to get what you needed. And so then in your adult life you find yourself repeating those patterns in so many different ways, and friendships and relationships and the jobs that you choose, and the way that your dynamic with your boss and your coworkers is like it permeates everything about your life. There is nothing more important than childhood.
Now when you talk about you know, everybody has their own journey, right, yeah, and you have family, your friends, your man, and your child. So you base your circle now because there's going to be some people that are into the things that you're into, some people that don't care about it, some people that don't believe. So how do you keep your circle? Do you keep those people that are not in your circle? Or do you set up those boundaries? But it's like, all right, well, if you're not believed, I'll wait for you to be a believer to be in a circle. So how do you go about your your normal day?
Oh?
I don't think people have to be believers. Like, I'm not looking to convince anyone, And I'm okay if we are not aligned in our beliefs, but.
I would be a friend with somebody like you know, Charlemagne goes outside likes the hug wood.
Right if he wasn't a tree sir? Sorry, okay, if.
He wasn't a wood hugger, right, could you explain We can explain that if he wasn't a wood hugger, he loves but if he wasn't that way, could you be around him as much? If he wasn't as grounded as he was, or if he wasn't doing the work on himself, could you still have him in your circle like that?
Or you know, the.
Structure of our relationship would have to change. I want to be in judgment about him, like I want to judge a person, because we're living different lives. However, I have to prioritize what is actually nurturing my own life and my own growth. And so I think first I would say this, all of us hold on to too many people for too long. That is what I feel. A lot of it comes because of social media. It's this natural Oh we kind of had a click, I'm gonna follow you, I'm gonna follow you back. Now we're plugged into knowing the nuance of every person we've ever met life forever. There's not really the room for that, you know. So I think the way that I look at my life is I'm a very very open person. I love connecting with people. But when I look at how my life is actually built, it's not sustainable for me to have active relationship with a lot of people. And so over the last two years, like I've massivily shed in my life and Some of them were highly intentional, like friendships that were misaligned because of character, because of integrity, because of choices, and there had to be hard conversations. Some of those hard conversations turned into re establishing the friendship, like we were able to get to new ground and rebuild. Some of them were more of an awkward heartsh goodbye, and many others were really just let nature do his thing.
And how are those conversations? Like, So, let's say there's somebody in your click you need to have a conversation. Yeah, because they're not following the same journey that you're following. You just don't want them around you, honestly, So how do you have those conversations?
So if you're me, you just have them. I don't have a lot of fear around any of that because I think I love myself, I love my life. I feel aligned, and so I'm not taking other people's misdirected emotions personally. So if someone is upset in our conversation, that's not going to rock me, and I'm most not going to take on a lot of guilt about it. I trust that my choices are made in integrity. But you know, you have to be direct, but you also have to know yourself to be direct in a way that it's actually healing and beneficial, not you know when people use that term brutally honest or I keep it real. Real is relative. You're real is based on your life experience, and it could be completely fraudulent to someone else based on how they recognize real. So I think there has to be a certain amount of self awareness in yourself before you have that conversation. And it's important to come into a space, if possible, of more neutrality so that you can walk away from something with lasting peace.
As a friend, right, and because I'm sure to people listening. So as a friend, let's say Nick, the camera guy, let's say do you guide him first of what you think of being a friend? Like, Hey, Nick, I think that you're doing this too much. I think you need to fall back and look at this or it's one of those things like, Bro, you're not going in my direction.
I gotta go yeah, because it can be two preach great question.
But you know, as somebody who's done the work, who's read numerous books, who's you know, done what you're supposed to do, how do you do that? As you know with the friend.
So what I did for myself was when I started noticing that some friendships felt misaligned or non reciprocal in the ways that were important to me, I just made a mental note and I told myself that I was going to slowly observe it. So you could do that in a way of saying I'm going to give somebody three strikes or three chances. But I just started slowly observing and still interacting with the person. How the flow of our relationship was, how often did we talk, were they able to show up for me? Was I showing up for them? Did it feel reciprocal? And I just watched it over the course of a year. Like I knew I was called to kind of radically shift and make space in my life, and I gave myself really a year to do it. So I started just observing people from a far noticing things, keeping mental notes, and then I really prayed about it. I said prayers, I set intentions around it lead me to the aligned friendships and partnerships allow me to remove with ease any friendships or connections that are not serving or misaligned. You know, I think it is important to bring God into all of it. I think it's important to bring just a higher energy into all of it. Once that was done and I started really saying, okay, yeah, that's not a fit. I just called people up directly and I was like, Hey, I want to talk to you about our friendship. I want to talk about our relationship. And I said, I just want to let you know I don't have a lot of judgment around you or this, but I need to share how I'm feeling. I usually had supporting examples of you know, this experience happened, this is the way it made me feel. What are your thoughts on that. We went back and forth a little bit about it. Some people in my life said, thank you so much for telling me this. I felt something changing between us. I never saw that. I didn't even notice I was doing that, but you're absolutely right. I'm sorry. We were able to rebuild some people. It's just like, okay, all right, what all right for? Show? You know or f you like? Okay, but da da da da da da da. So I think walking into setting boundaries, walking into shedding people, you have to also walk in with the confidence of it's okay if I lose them, it's okay if they don't understand. And it's also okay if they blame me. None of that has anything to do with me.
You know. It's like the word ease is a very powerful word because you know, you know, you know, I thank God for you daily. I tell you this all the time. But it's just like our relationship, It's never been a time we didn't share information. It's never been a time we didn't have, you know, deep conversation. It's just like things evolved and went from Yo, Charlottage listening to this nipsey hustle bullets ain't got no name, or arguing about Kendrick Lamar, you know what I mean to read deep October seven spirituals like it just seemed effortless the whole time. Yeah, And is that what you should look for?
I guess absolutely. And I love us as a case study of that because we've been friends for now like fifteen years, and we've seen each other at so many junctures of the journey. But what we always had was non judgment. We always had an openness, We always had an ability to talk things through. And I think you don't want to just hold on to people because of a length of time or this like false sense of loyalty, which no one actually has a real definition for that word, like it changes with everyone. If you look up the definition of loyalty, it just means in affinity. For I'm fond of I like, you have to really look at, like, what is kind of doing life with a friend? Can there be more grace for that? Can there be more ease? Can we go six months without talking because we're both in a different place and then come back together? I think we would be allowed to. But yeah, being able to kind of just evolve as equals at every step is what I look for in friendship. And I'm also okay with things not having to be that deep. There's some people in my life I trust them to be themselves and I show up as myself and I give them what they can handle of me.
Mm hmm.
Now, how does people's mental health affect their physical health?
You don't pray for you don't pray about me every day?
You don't.
I was like, what is envy thinking over there?
I do thank God for you, you, thank God for this whole situation. This situation changed our life.
We're openness with deep. I just want to know why you never told.
Me that he like, I hear you don't say it, envy, let me see what the blood is.
I hear womb talking.
I was asking about mental health affecting people's physical health too, because I feel like that's a theme as well when it comes to athletes, but the everyday person.
Oh my god, all of us, and now, thank god, there's so much science and studies coming out to back it up. There's phenomenal books on this. The Body keeps the Score as an amazing book. Resma Meenican my grandmother's saying, trauma is stored absolutely in the body. Our experiences don't leave us. And that's why, you know, when we were talking about kind of that approach to really heal, you have to bring your body into it. So you have to have different practices and processes that allow you to love on your body, to kind of push out of your cells, out of your skin, your experiences. So I think even you know, if someone's in like a cognitive therapy and maybe not ready for some of the other stuff, I always say, book a massage appointment for after your therapy appointment, and then think about the awarenesses that came in as you're getting the massage, think about things you want to release as you're getting the massage, or you could do self massage, self stretching at home, because the trauma absolutely stays with us. And I think we've seen in our communities so many diseases, you know, so many different things manifesting that it's just like, how is this possible? It can't just be died, it can't just be this like there is a there is a grief present that is bringing on this sickness in people's bodies. And I think it's just that's why we have to do that kind of holistic approach. That was a massive part of my journey. I was in therapy for many, many years, and I understood a lot, but not much was actively changing. And then when I came in and I started seeing a somatic therapist, I started doing somatic processes that really helped me to understand my body's reactions to every moment. That's when I became really empowered. You could feel your triggers in real time, but then also soothe them in real time because on this healing journey, no matter what you do, we're still on earth, We're still in this crazy environment. Very often the people near us are not changing in the ways that we are. So it's just so so so incredibly important that we honor ourselves, that we honor our bodies, that we come into a space of being able to, you know, ideally get through our wounds, our triggers faster. We're not just looking for happiness. I'm I'm in my wholeness. I'm in my sovereignty. I am deep in mastery on many different parts and also learning in other pieces of myself. But you know, I look at happiness for me, isn't the goal. The goal for me is the fact that something that used to hurt me, that I may ruminate over for a week, for a month, that may make me feel sick to my stomach about myself. Now if I think about it, it's two seconds I felt it. Oh yeah, because that did happen to me. I accept that and I release it and I move into the next moment. So I think that's that's really the goal for healing.
Let's stay of Let's second real quick, because I want to know why is self care vital for black and brown bodies. But I also want you to talk about the energy healing you do. Like I mean, you know, people saw a glimpse of you doing it the Draymond on the Sessions we talk about that.
Oh my gosh, that was my favorite part of doing the show. We were in like the Redwoods. We were in this forest in the bay and I got to do reiki energy work on him. Energy work is incredible. It has changed my life. I think that I think that our communities should be empowered with becoming facilitators of reiki, of chakra healing, of energy work, and I think that we should be using it on ourselves and in our families daily. But energy work works with the energetic bodies. So there is this field around you that is unseen to the naked eye, but that is kind of the energy that protects you that also magnetizes things to you that can also be injured by different emotional wounds. And energy is an ancient sacred practice, specifically reiki, where you use your energy and you work with the person's energy feel to bring healing into their environment. So it is believed that this helps to heal and alleviate physical wounds, mental wounds, emotional wounds, and it's also something that just really allows you to feel enlivened, that gives you access to the feeling of present moment, of groundedness, of peace inside of your body. And I've done energy work on you too.
It feels like a spiritual massage, like you could literally feel things being removed from you as the energy, the energy work is being done. Like you get up feeling light like damn, what was on me? You know? Yeah, that's how That's how I felt.
I was gonna ask, as mama bear right, if a four year old, how do you raise him? Because you know, you've been in the world. You know what's good, what's bad, what's negative, what's positive? So you know, how do you raise him? Do you put him in school? Do you put him around of the kids whose maybe parents are not on the align with what you what you do, maybe not on the same journey. You know, even though you might not give him social media, you know, his friend might have it, or his friend might get things from house. So how do you raise your four year old?
Oh? My god, that question is so hard. It's hard. So you thought about it, God, not every day all day. It's hard. You know. I think about my child every second, so many things envy, you know, I feel like we're all kind of on this journey of doing a lot of lineage healing. We're bringing forward for our kids, maybe things that never existed in our family systems. Ever, because you think about the impact of slavery, you think about the impact of all of the structural and societal oppression that has existed since, and in black and brown communities, there has always been a wounding in the parent child relationship to some degree. You have your outliers, you have those you know, one in a neighborhood, healthy family sometimes and then everyone else. It's like you just see this lack of emotional regulation, lack of ability to be your authentic self so much fear so for me knowing that I can't control the world and also feeling the daily grief of that when you have a child. The thing that I really look to do with my son Questmandela, I love you so much, is teach him how to be aware of himself. I am not going to be able to control everything that happens in his life, and I don't want to hold him in an environment where he's just wearing rose colored glasses. So I just look to really build his emotional intelligence at a very young age. And so a lot of that is using affirmative words. Since he was an infant, I would sit over him every night and I would say, you know, I love myself. I am loving and kind, I am strong and resilient, I am creative and curious. I am kind. And then now he says them for himself every day. He says, I love myself, I'm cherished, I'm valued by my mom. You know, I'm teaching him the words that will help build his core identity to be in a foundation of deep worth. And then I think, you know, what's important is teaching them how to identify their emotions navigating in the world. That's a skill so many of us didn't get. And so with him, when he's upset, when he's happy, I try to give him language for the things that he's feeling, even before he can use the words. And when he's upset, you know, I ask him, do you need a hug right now? You know, what are you feelings? And he was like, I'm frustrated, I'm feeling frustrated, I'm feeling upset, I'm feeling sad, and just greeting all of that and not taking it personally and not letting it change the way I feel about myself. Or assume that anything is wrong. I think that is one of the things that comes up with even the best parents who just want to shower their kids with love. Depending on what our life experience is, parenting is one of the most triggering things you could ever do in your life. It shows you where all your own wounds lie. It shows you where maybe things happen in your childhood that were different and things that you maybe needed that you're now giving your kid. So many of us are loving our children in a way that we were never loved. So I think just giving him the space to be a kid as well is really important to me. Everyone that meets my child is always like, he's the sweetest guy ever, or he's so happy, or he's so this. And because I'm not trying to shift his behavior, I'm not telling him he needs to grow up faster. He's four. He doesn't need to be super sophisticated. He doesn't need to have to know how to shake hands perfectly, or how to do this or that, or how to appear like a little adult. He is his own being and I let him be himself.
Do you let him play sports? His dad play NFL football? You talk to a lot of people in the sports world. Do you allow him to play that? Because it feels like, even in sports, they take this one emotion and they make you use that motion against their opponents, right, And it's usually anger, right, it's usually aggressive. Right. You never seen a football play that's nice, like, Hey, how you doing today? I'm gonna tackle you in a second. You don't see that, you know. So do you allow him to play football in sports? Because that's not something you thought of already.
No, he will not play football, you know that, matter of factly, And that's something that we really talked a lot about, even during my pregnancy, and that is a that is a wish and to desire from his father as well.
No, it's it's because you know that he's four, but he size of an eight year old.
Coach is going to say, is let the record show before he physically ever got here, I said that he was going to be seven feet tall, three hundred and fifty.
Well, what's the reason I knew that?
Yeah, you know, science is showing how much football can affect your brain, and I'm not willing to take that risk with my child. And I think that some of the science that is coming out is also showing that kids as early as playing even flag football are getting concussions, and that children who are even playing in high school are showing effects of CTE. And I'm just I'm completely unwilling to risk my child's brain. But I think, you know, I'm open to other kind of sports. Like I always say and laugh, I'm like, he can golf. We got volleyball, badmintonball, baseball, you know basketball? Yeah, so no basketball, no boxing, no football, nonis he can he can make his own choices when he's an adult man. Yeah, he can run track. You know, he can meditate, We could do yoga.
Lacrosse is on the come up across too, though I now lacrosse is tough.
There's some polo.
Now, let's talk about how a person can build a daily self care like spiritual practice routine just start healing and changing their life. How does a person do that?
Oh, this is the most important thing. And I know, I know you have yours. Now do you guys feel like angel letting v You guys are have like your morning routines and tradition for kind of.
Not for me in the morning so much. It'd be more before I go to bed, before.
Bed, that's perfect too. I'm I do some in the morning, but always lam I mean, y'all wake up very early, but my practice at night is where I get like, really really deeply connected. So everyone talks right now about changing, about growing, transforming healing, you have to make it sustainable so that it's actually becomes your lived experience and not just something you speak but are not acting or living. That is what your daily practice does. And I think you know sometimes in the mainstream you hear the word self care and it's like, yeah, girl, go shop in have some self care. Oh, go take a bag, get a massage. Yes, And your self care is it's really the practice that supports your life, that supports your destiny, that supports your healing. And so what you want to do when you're building a practice, first, identify how much time you have. I know a lot of people work really hard and have a lot of responsibilities. So even if only five minutes is possible, please please try to gift yourself with this. But if you can be more expansive and spend thirty minutes, spend an hour, that could be really powerful. What you want to do is you want to build your daily practice around the four pillars of wholeness, which is mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual. You want to find something to do every day that falls in one of those categories, and so that could look like For mental, that could look like journaling, just getting your thoughts out. It doesn't have to be dear diary style. It could be a couple bullet points, so it could be wow, I noticed that I keep thinking about this one thought every day. It helps to build or reestablish your intuition, which is also something that a lot of people lack because they so often go against what their gut tells them to do. Our intuition is our soul's GPS. It's our guiding system as the human experience. So it's really important that we ignite that ability in ourselves. That's the mental category. Looking at the emotional category, that could be meditation every day, you know, really sitting getting still, getting quiet, and opening up your internal world, really coming into a space of knowing how to be with yourself, how to meet yourself, how to remember all of who you truly are, outside of the roles that we play in life, outside of the things that have happened to us. You look at physical for some that's a workout, like I know you'all be working out. Everybody be working out every day, But that could also look like a daily stretch practice. That could look like yo, that could look like remembering to massage your own shoulders at the end of the night because you're aching and you deserve your own touch. And then if we look at the spiritual category, that could really look like affirmations every day speaking life over yourself. And let's take it a step deeper than some of the ones of like I am abundance or I am love or I am strong. Really call forward what you want to embody. You know, one of my first affirmations and my healing journey was I'm a precious child of God, leading, leading from my heart's center. Yeah, I think that was a piece of it. I'm a precious child of God, leading from my soul's center, working in mastery of my being. Saying that over myself every day changed me. So doing something every day that supports who you are and who you're becoming and who you have become is essential. It also teaches you emotional regulation, which means that every day you can go into the world as your true self and not as the version of you that's constantly reacting to things.
So I got to update my mantra. That's the mantra I've gotten. We was in Mexico.
Oh yeah, yeah, it's an update, okay. And I always say, when it comes to when it comes to our affirmations, our mantras keep evolving them. Once you feel that something clicked into place and you have really been wearing that, let's hit something else, you know, maybe start to notice what are some other little crevices of my life that I want to refine. If I feel that I've healed my or really done a lot of work around my trauma, maybe now I want to start to investigate. What's my relationship to money, what's my relationship to prosperity. Let me heal that dynamic. What's my relationship to the masculine to the feminine in my life? Let me look at healing or evolving that experience. But there's always more, there's always deeper.
Why is it being on a healing journey so comp and so exhausting.
Because our lived experiences are you know, we are to be alive and to be human is to be deeply challenged every day, you know, for a lot of people that meant having really challenging experiences as young people, as adults. For others, it's just turning the news on every day and seeing how painful it is to be a witness to so much tragedy, especially so much tragedy that you know, we don't really have the opportunity to shift fully. It's hard to behold all that we're seeing right now.
It is, and.
We're doing this very dualistic job of staying present in our lives, updating our social media, doing all the things, raising our kids, doing the things, and seeing people shot dead on a daily basis. You know that we don't even know the long term effects of taking on this much grief every day, which is another reason why having that daily practice it makes it not just easier, but it does give you the opportunity to have more joy even through the midst of all of this.
I was gonna ask you, you know, with especially with kids, I'm noticing and I'm seeing kids are more emotional, right, Yeah, They're more explaining their feelings, expressing their feelings, trying to find themselves at an early age.
Is that a good or bad thing?
Right?
And the reason I'm asking most people be like, Oh, that's a good thing. But I'm seeing a lot of kids not being able to find themselves and hurting themselves, committing suicide or being very quote unquote emo as kids say, So is that a good thing a bad thing? Because as a kid, that's one thing I don't think I thought about. I don't know if anybody else in the room thought of As a kid, I didn't think about how I felt. I just went outside and had fun. I went to school because I had to. I ate because I had to. Nowadays, you know, kids are you know, they're finding out more about themselves. They're telling you why they don't want to eat vegetables. There, it's more of that. But it's that good or is that bad?
I think because we're encouraging conversation. Like I know, growing up, I my dad shut up, punched me in the chest, you know what I mean. Like we were taught to suppress our emotions a lot of time.
Yeah, yeah, and on. You know, from my view as a kid, I was always talking about my feelings to the point that it made all the adults in my life really irritated. And so then you kind of hide them a little bit. I think there you know, there is no good or bad, and I think that it's both at the same time. And what I think is so important about being a conscious and active parent in your child's life is really witnessing them for themselves, not through our lens of projection of who we want them to be or who we were at their age, but looking and saying, you know, if my child is this way, if they are quote unquote emo, or if they are a deep feeler or feeling this pressure to know who they are, how can I one soothe that a little bit? You know? How can I make that more of a gentle experience for them and the words they use with themselves? And then also how can I support that? How can I if the community they need for who they are is not around them, how can I look to supplement that in their lives? In some ways, I think it's both. I mean, I think it's incredible that kids are as self aware as they are. It's kind of mind blowing, you know. I work with a lot of gen z Like I just taught for a semester in Atlanta with this group of young men who were roughly around the age of sixteen. So many of the things that I was teaching them, they were so familiar with those concepts already, which was like, what, how do y'all know how you feel already? But then at the same time, it can become too much of a focus to where you're not giving yourself the chance to be something new, to learn new things.
I have two more questions in the action I want to ask of you. But first question is what does self acceptance look like?
Self acceptance looks like deep surrender and deep trust. To accept yourself means that you are aware of all that you are, including the things that may be a little bit unfinished or the things that you may have judged, but to know that it all serves purpose. To have acceptance is to also have this trust that I may not like everything that's happening right now or that has happened to me, but I do understand and trust that it is serving a purpose I don't yet know, And so I am an acceptance of what currently is. Doesn't mean you don't want it to change, doesn't mean it doesn't have the potential to change. But I'm an acceptance that this just is. When you come into acceptance, you come into your personal power because you're not trying to fight everything. You're not trying to control every outcome. You're creating this space for more to unfold. And that's where you get to be creative with yourself. You get to be creative with your life. You get to be a co creator of what this journey will look like for you. But you have to be an acceptance. If you're in judgment of yourself, if you're in judgment of your life experiences, it makes it almost impossible to change any of them in a really meaningful way.
Is that the first step to beginning to love yourself? Because that's my second question, How do you begin to love yourself?
I think they're kind of both happening at the same time, But I will say, you know, to love yourself, it's a constantly evolving process. But I think it does require that daily practice that I talked about. Loving yourself requires your own sweat equity into yourself and your body. Loving yourself can't be related to how really you look, how other people are validating you or not, how they're treating you. It has to be like I exist and that's enough, and that alone is worthy of love. I am breathing right now. That is worthy of love that is worthy of gratitude, no matter who I've been, no matter what choices I want to redo, there is more to me than one definition.
So yeah, the action I want to ask is, like, you know, I know we have a lot of people listening right now. They might have seen the sessions they you know, probably listening to dropping gems. I want to do like a mindfulness minute, Like what's what's a breathing exercise? Is something that we could do to like just ground people right now in this moment.
I would love to are you guys all going to do with me?
Sure? Okay?
I want to ask everybody right now listening connecting to the sound of my voice, Angela envshar come into a relaxed state with your body, and I want to invite you to gently close your eyes and if you can just uncross your arms a little bit and let your back sit really supported, let your spine feels straight and supported. And I want you to just notice your body now with your eyes closed, and notice how your seat feels, how you feel in your seat, and just see if there's an opportunity to feel a little softer inside of your body right now in this moment, release any tension that may be in your shoulders. Let your forearms just be really gently on the tops of your thighs. Maybe turn your palms upward into a state of receiving. Unclench your jaw there's any pressure present, and now let yourself just stretch your neck a little bit from side to side. Your eyes are closed, and now let's connect to our breath. First. Begin to notice how your natural breath is feeling in your body, how it feels in your chest, in and out, supporting your existence. And now I want to invite you to take your right hand and place it over your chest, right at your heart center. And now just notice what that pressure of your hand feels like. Would you like it to be a firmer touch, a lighter touch. Can the palm of your hand connect to the core of your heart? And just notice the support that you feel in your body holding yourself in this way. And now we're gonna begin some deep breathing through her noses. We're gonna do some big inhales through her nose and then out of our nose, and we'll do this three times together. And what we're looking to do is take a big deep inhale, slowly fully starting now filling your chest and really stretch, take it a little more air, and then hold the air at the top once it's in, allow it to circulate for moment. And now as we breathe out of our nose, I want you to do it slowly and fully, really pace yourself on that exhale, let it all come out. And now we'll begin that breath again in through your nose, let your chest expand your heart open, hold it and release. And now begin again in through your nose and hold it and release that breath. And I still gently closed hand over heart, allow yourself to return to whatever breath feels natural and nourishing and internally. Right now, silently to yourself, I'd like you to repeat, I am calling forward my highest self.
I am calling forward my highest self. I am calling forward my highest self.
I am calling forward my highest self. And I want you to think about something currently present in your life, something that has charged it could be perceived as good as challenging, but something that you've really been chewing on lately, some dynamic maybe in your life or relationship, or something you're excited about. And I would just want you to hold that seed in your mind's eye, whatever is unique to you that you are working with in this moment, and I want you to think about any nourishing or evolutionary choices or lens of perceptions that you can shift to around whatever this morsel is that you're chewing on, whatever is present. Is it about surrendering, Is it about an action step, or is it just an observation something that can be released and now based on your unique experience that you're holding in your mind and your heart, I want you to think of an intention around it. And maybe it is my intention is to release this, or my intention is to really feel all of this, or my intention is to manifest this, and silently within your own hearts to yourselves, I want you to state that intention my intention is, and you can do it inside in this moment, and everyone connecting to the sound of my voice listening, I hope you're doing the same. And now we're going to do a cleansing lion's breath, which is gonna be a deep in hell through your nose, and then it'll be followed out by signing it out through your mouth with your tongue out and it'll sound a little like this, So we'll begin our in hell now through our noses and release through your mouth. And now shake out your hand that was on your heart, allow it to drop back down to the tops of your thighs. And as you feel ready, gently open your eyes. Ah, how do you guys feel?
How can I want to sleep this night?
Oh?
I want to do that. I've been telling iHeart for the longest. We need a mindfulness minute on the radio during the middays. I've screamed into a million different executives. It needs to happen.
People need that, and you know that experience that we just did, and everyone could start and end their day like that. We probably spent maybe a minute there. If I wasn't talking and you just did the breath with them, maybe thirty seconds. That is a daily practice. What we just did that was breathwork. So that's an experience that you can invite into your life to regulate your nervousness. Yes, because what was happening internally as we did that was our body was able to come into the present moment. We were in the moment of what is We were inside of our bodies. Many people that heard my voice were connecting to parts of their bodies for the first time. If you're under deep stress or you have had trauma, you don't feel present in your body, and so to just be able to settle into yourself and then to give yourself that nourishing breath that resets your emotional center, it changes what's possible. The thing about trauma, depression, stress, anxiety, it limits what's possible in your life because it limits the choices you make and how you view yourself. When you have daily practice and when you do a breath like that, it reconnects you to the truth of who you are when you're coming from your authenticity, when you're not triggered, and from that space, it's limitless because you're able to make endless amounts of choices of who you'll be, how you'll behave, what you'll do. And that's what so many of us need. We just need to be able to be anchored into the moment, to feel like ourselves inside so that we can make the decisions that really honor our lives.
If you do with panic attacks, anxiety attacks at work, school, whatever, it is like that that gets you right back to where you need to be.
Well, Thank you so much, Debbie for v brand.
Tell them where to follow you dev hit me on Instagram at Debbie Brown, my website Debbie Brown, and on Amazon Prime Video. Watch the Sessions. It is an incredible, incredible documentary by Religion of Sports, myself, Deepak Chopra, and NBA superstar Draymond Green.
Are there going to be other sessions?
There are going to be other sessions, and we're really excited. I can't say anything yet, but we're really excited about how that is going to unfold. But that is definitely the intention. You know, one of the things I love about the work that I do is supporting people who have lives of high impact. You know, when you can show up in this life of impact that you're living as all of yourself, how you're actually meant to change the world becomes more alive and more possible.
And pick up Debbie Brown's book, Crystal Bliss. Your Devil was talking about crystals way before everybody else was. That book dropped in with twenty fourteen yeh twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen, Like yeah, And make sure you subscribe to V's podcast Dropping Gems on the Black Effect Podcast Network. It's so many you know, high level conscious conversations on that podcast. So make sure you subscribe to that
Black Effect Breakfast Club is Debbie Brown.
