If you want peace in the world, start with your own peace. But right now that we have is the recycling of trauma, and the memory of trauma is anger. The desire to get even is hostility. Blaming yourself is guilt and shame. And then the depletion of energy that happens as a result is called depression, which is the number one pandemic recycling of trauma. So if we want to change the world, we have to stop recycling trauma.
Today, we're bringing you a conversation straight from the Lake Nana Impact form at the KPMG's Learning an Innovation Center's Lake House in Orlando's Lake Nana Community, a place where the brightest minds come together to shape the future of health, wellness and medical innovation. This is my legacy, host it by me Andrea Waters King alongside my husband Martin Luther King the Third and our good friends Mark and Craig Kilberger. Let's dive in.
Before we begin today's episode, we want to let our listeners and viewers know that we will be discussing issues related to violence, suicide, and mental health. Some of the topics may be distressing if you or someone you know is struggling. We encourage you to seek professional support. Resources like the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline dial nine eight eight or the Crisis Text hotline text home to seven four one seven four to one are available twenty four to seven.
Please know that this conversation is for information purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Your well being is critically important. Please listen at your own pace, and please don't hesitate to take breaks or skip ahead of needed Welcome to My Legacy, where we explore what it means to create a living legacy. Today, we're honored to sit down with two extraordinary individuals who have dedicated their lives
to healing, mental health, and transformation. Chopra is the pioneering doctor whose teachings on mindfulness and consciousness have impacted millions. He's the founder of the Chopra Foundation. He's written over ninety five books, including multiple New York Times bestsellers. Gabriella Wright is an actress and the co founder of the Never Alone Initiative, a movement dedicated to mental well being and suicide prevention. Through dynamic storytelling and powerful advocacy, She's
helping people find hope and healing. Deepak, you've known Gabriella for a while. What about her journey inspired you to want to collaborate with her.
Well, it's a long story, but I suspect it's a good one.
Yeah.
The most important thing is that Gabriella, she had a traumatic experience during her childhood and she took that and reframed that trauma into an opportunity to help other people. And so she started this movement called Never Alone, which is a global forum for people getting together with four
ideas attention, affection, appreciation, and acceptance. And the hope is to create global online and offline communities where people take the responsibility for healing each other emotionally and spiritually.
So attention which means deep listening, affection, deep caring and love, Compassion, appreciation, noticing that everyone is a unique history of the universe.
And acceptance, accepting everybody just as they are radically. That's the initiative and we're very proud to associate with her and that thank you.
Deepakak.
You started your journey in India where you were raised in a family that was deeply rooted both in medicine and in healing in spirituality. When you go back and help us understand some of those early moments that helped shape who you are.
Yeah, my father was a military doctor in the British Army. He was a pioneer in his own way. He was the first person to describe what we now call high altitude heart failure when the Indian and Chinese army, who were at war, he was in Tibet doing cardia cat and discovering a new disease. He was a fellow of the Royal College. He was for a time a physician to the Queen who just passed away, and he was very famous actually, But he was a hardcore scientist and
my mother was the extreme opposite. She was totally immersed, I would say, in spiritual longing more than anything else. She read spiritual poetry to us, including the poems of Roomy. But she would spend all day singing hymns, spiritual hymns,
but they're all in the former stories, mythical stories. And before we went to sleep at night, she would start with a great story and then she would stop at what is now called a cliffhanger, and then she would say, I want you to dream up the rest of the story for the night and make it a happy ending, and make sure it's a love story, because if it's
not a love story, it's not a good story. Me and my little brother learned how to actually take the moment of crisis in the story to make it a happy ending and make it a love story no matter how you know, what was everything was wrong when to stop, But in the morning, everything was right when we woke up.
That can be taken into the world.
Yeah, now, so you know, we learned how to reframe every adversity as a happy ending and a love story.
What's your favorite Roomy? Do you have a favorite Roomy quote or passage from Roomy?
I have many. One of my favorites is if you're not naked by now, go back to sleep, And that's a many levels naked of spirit. When you're totally vulnerable, then you surrender to the divine. Of course, Roomy is very ecstatic, so you know, it's always full of the intoxication of love. Yes, in one way or another. So you're not just a drop in the ocean. You're also the ocean in the drop. Yes, stop being small, You're the universe in ecstatic motion.
On my phone, I get Roomy updates once every three hours like that. Throughout the day.
It's it's a great way to feel intoxicated with love.
It is Gabrielle, who are some of the most influential people in your childhood and what are some of the biggest lessons they passed on down to you.
I would start probably with my father. I mean, I know, it's because I always used to I realized very young that I was very lucky to have my father be my father. Does that make sense, Like just very very lucky, especially when I was at school and I realized what was going on in other people's homes. And so my father is an artist. He was one of the first to do video art in the sixties, so performance art, huge paintings, sculptures, and he always kept our imagination alive
actually very much like your mother. And so because he would tell us stories at night, and he would make sure that the three sisters were in the story. So we were in the story. We were traveling through a magical mirror every night and going into other worlds where we were saving people basically, and there were dragons and giant tomatoes and all of these fantastical things. By the way, way before Harry Potter. So just letting you know, yes, this is way like way before Harry Potter. The English
have something in common. We love dark humor and fantastical imaginations, probably because the weather is really bad in England, but we have that. And so he has been very instrumental in my life. And then when I looked at other figures, just because when I was growing up, Sir David Attenborough as well. So David Attenborough was someone very influential in my life. I've still never met him, but the fact
his reminiscent voice, his understand and awe of nature. And I was brought up in London, so yes we would go on holiday to different places, but never in the exotic places that so David Adenburgh would show. And so that always gave me a lot of freedom in my thoughts actually, but I didn't know it was that at the time. So when I say childhood, probably till you know fifteen, and then of course Shakespeare, you know the you know, the fight for freedom of thought, speech, place,
Gandhi as well. But these were all things that came with education. I suppose later on my roles models changed and evolved, but those were the keys of how I started being falling in love with life. Despite all, like you said earlier, despite challenges.
Growing up in London, did you fill a connection with Gandhi in India?
You know, my mother is French, Portuguese Mauritian and I Mauritian. We have Indian descent and creole, so we're a big mix. Not particularly when I was growing up. My mother was very much involved in science. She's a marine biologist, so we didn't have we had a cultural mix, but everything was integrated. Like, for example, when you go to school in London, there's something quite extraordinary is that every culture
is mixed. So you have a Bangladeshi teacher, you'd have a Pakistani lunch day, You'll have very unfortunately disgusting custard English custard for desert, you know, but everything is, you know, very culturally mixed. And I haven't seen that in any other country to be honest to this day. So I was lucky to have that. So everything was just integrated.
I suppose my first understanding of India was when actually something happened to me that pushed me into an understanding beyond what I was act experiencing as suffering, like and I was looking for something through a solution where is the root of my suffering. And that's when things came to me the Gandhi teachings. Other than just learning at school, I'm talking about outside of school, classic school. I'm talking about where did the wonderment comes from? You know, the
desire to know more? And that came to me after I experienced physical abuse and rape when I was eighteen. So I was pushed, like my soul was pushed to a yearn for that, and in a good way, you know, I wanted to be thrown into the abyss is because we have to find different ways. We have to get out of our structural understanding of life and what we think life is and also what we think we are,
you know, out of the labels, right, the labels. So yeah, that's how I would say, say the spiritual journey begun.
To understand the post traumatic growth, we have to go back.
To the trauma.
Yes, absolutely, and deep hat you indicated it a moment ago where you reference that there was this moment that happened in your life that was and it sounds like a number of moments that were deeply pivotal.
Absolutely, and if.
You could and if you feel comfortable, go to those moments to help us understand who you are and also to speak to us a little bit. But this extraordinary work you now do on mental health, and I understand part of that's inspired by Paulette.
Yes, absolutely, yes, So I suppose you know we are a moving landscape and to echo to doctor Deepak Chopra's teachings, and what we do is we unravel our conditioning. And that's important because when we experienced trauma like I did, like I said earlier, a sudden rape and it hurls you into self reflection and experiencing physical pain, but we
realized that that very quickly becomes mental pain. So all of a sudden, it becomes something that is around you that you're constantly involved in, and it kind of blurs your perception of reality of what truth is. Everything is blurry. Everything leads to mental confusion, physical confusion, and you have
no zest for life anymore. And the fact of if you can't go, if you don't have the tools to go back to spirit or quote unquote the blank canvas of who you truly are, then all you see is a landscape that is tainted with darker colors of your perception. And that for me, I did not want to live. So that was a choice I made. I said, you know what, thanks to my childhood, I've experienced wonder and awe and the imagination. I want to go to go back to that. So I was lucky to have that
foundational understanding of what is possible. So that was the very lucky. But I had to get back there. So you have to create a bridge, you have to find a system, You have to ask questions. And I definitely didn't want to go down a numbing of emotions. But in my case, I was more interested to go back to the route and up route the suffering, and that led me to wisdom traditions. One thing synchronicity. You ask
the question. You meet a stranger all of a sudden he's meditating in a park, and there I am meditating, not knowing what meditation was, but by imitating posture, it starts as simply as that. And that led to that
was eighteen. Now I'm forty two. Goodness, it's been half two thirds of my life and there's not one day where I don't miss meditation, but where I'm not embracing the beauty and the joy of immersing yourself with your soul and your spirit, and yes, you know it's up and life is full of mountains and peaks and valleys. That's the beauty of who we are. And so when you know to how we started at mental health. I lost my little sister to suicide six years ago and
it was it is a tragedy. But then I realized we looked around and knows every forty second someone dies by suicide in the world. And I was like, oh, my goodness. I was not aware of this. And I only became aware of it because my dearest little sister died by mental health challenges and we were uncapable or the system, and the system were uncapable of giving very tangible tools. And I said, wow, here we are in the deepest blind spot of society, So how can we
do something about it. There's something that just springs out of you and you want to create bridges with others and that kind of is that compelling. The compulsion was to how can we create And of course I met doctor Deepak Chopra and that's just led to a very simple collaboration where we're just expanding on bringing consciousness into mental health, into understanding from a more holistic place, what
we can do to be in communities. We obviously use technology because Deepak and Punacha Machaya, who's also a co founder, are absolutely involved in how to democratize access to mental well being, spiritual wellbeing, all of these things that actually you know, matter that link the words together in our body mind.
As an experience, Lake follow and subscribe to my Legacy podcast and importantly share this with someone who needs a little reminder of their strength today.
Now back to my Legacy DOGG.
Want to ask you mental health in the West, unfortunately, is often separated from physical health. Now, you have taught millions of people the inter relationship and the integration of mental health and physical health and the connectedness of health. What do we need to do with how do we bring mental health and physical health together in a more substantive way. Yeah.
You know when I speak to people at conferences and they're all talking about mental health and ask them please define the mind, and they can't. Most people, even experts in mental health, can't define the mind. What is the mind? Where is it? So let me give you a definition that originally came from this. Neuropsychiatrist Dan Siegel came up with this definition the mind is an embodied and relational process that regulates the flow of energy and information. So
we say where is the mind? Most people point here, But I can't have a mind in the absence of other minds. There's no such thing as a mind by itself. So once you understand that, the mind is both embodied, not just in the brain, in the whole body, because you know, you say, my heart is full of sadness, I have a gut feeling, I have a thought. That's all the mind. It's not in the brain. It's embodied,
but it's also relational. Therefore, the mind has no location, right, It's not here, it's not here, it's everywhere, and it's relational. Once you understand that, then you say, what's the body? The body is also entangled with other bodies. You know, you know, my body is made of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, which is recycled stardust, and every time you eat food, you're recycling start dust. So the body is also an entangled process in a deeper ecosystem of relationships, so is
the mind. And the mind is sensations, images, feelings, and thoughts, imagination, desires, memories. The body is a perceptual activity, which is entangled with the mental activity. Okay, so I say, think of something that happened two weeks ago that caused you distress. Close your eyes and just think of something that caused you dress and immediately feel discomfort in the body.
Okay.
Then I say, okay, now switch, think of somebody that made you feel happy. You know, he bent on his knees, opened a bottle of champagne. I said, I'm in love with you. Will you marry me and not feel your body? Switch? Right? So, in these traditions, the Eastern Wisdom traditions, the body mind a unified process in a deeper domain called consciousness. So consciousness is both the body and mind. The body is perceptions and the mind is cognition or mental activity, and
they're inseparably one. They're not even connected, They're one thing. And in these traditions, therefore, the body is not considered a material entity. The Buddhists called the body conceptual body. The Indian loss Us call it the carmic body because everything that you have experienced or interpreted in the past is now present as what we call the body mind. So once you understand this that actually there comes another
deeper dilemma because we call about mental health. In the deeper reality, there's no such thing because the mind is always dualistic, me and the other. It's you and me, okay, So already we are dualism. So the mind by definition hovers between pleasure and pain, happiness and sadness. It's never at peace. So saying peace of mind is an oxymoron. Okay, You cannot have a mind unless you have the dancing of opposites. And these opposites are not opposites or contradictions,
their complementarities. Because to experience hot, you will have to know what cold is. To experience pleasure, you have to know what pain is. So the mind is dover at peace. What is at peace is the awareness in which the body mind is a process, and that we call the spirit. So there is only spiritual wellbeing. And if you have spiritual wellbeing, then your mental and physical well being as a byproduct. You don't even have to seek it.
How does one do that.
By going beyond the mind, So, which is in spiritual divisions called transcendence stillness. Roomy, we were talking. God's language is silence. Everything else is poor translation. So God's language is silent, Just shut up and you'll be at peace. I think we spend too much energy speaking about banal things. Meanwhile, galaxies are tumbling across the cosmic horizon faster than the speed of light. But people get agitated, you know, Red Sox or whatever. You know, what was the other team
or you know this team or that team? Well, yeah, whatever, So we waste our time getting it's entertaining, but ultimately there's only spiritual well being, you know. So even when you're in the midst of a turbulent mind, you know, people say you should be happy all the time. Well that's very artificial. A happy mind all the time is a turbulent mind. It's an exhausting mind, just like a negative mind is also exhausting. But a peaceful mind is not the mind, it's the spirit. So every time you
feel agitated, you go back to yourself. But we ignore the spirits. It's like a fish and water looking for water because where it is water. Okay, It's like the fish is made of water. The fish is made of the ocean, but it doesn't know that. Okay, we are made of the spirit, but we ignore it. For the mind, the body, and all our conversations.
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You've said that the world is on fire and so are we, and that the chaos around us is a reflection of our own interstate. How do we as individuals begin to create peace within ourselves so we can create peace in the world.
Mahutbanghani said, the only way to change the world is to be the change yourself. So you have to be the change you want to see in the world. If you want peace in the world, start with your own peace. If you want love, then start giving love. Love can only be shared by those who know how to give and receive love. Peace can only be created by those who are peaceful, not by peace activists, but those who
are at peace. And if you have a critical mass of people who want to be the change they want to see in the world, who are the change, a critical mass that would translate into peace in the world. But you need that critical mass right now. The critical mass that we have is the recycling of trauma. So when we say and the history of humanity is in a way the history of trauma. Ever since the Middle Ages, we recycle trauma, and the memory of trauma is anger.
The desire to get even is hostility. Blaming yourself is guilt and shame. And then the depletion of energy that happens as a result is called depression, which is the number one pandemic recycling of trauma. So if we want to change the world, we have to stop recycling trauma. And that can only come about if we are at peace with ourselves. So, as I've been said, forever peace
begins with us, with ourselves. It's not happening because of the melodrama of social media, news, networks, entertainment where violence is romanticized. You know, World War One, people who want the war they get medals as heroes. The other side war criminals. So you know who's a war criminal, who's a war hero? What is war? It's murder, you know
when you look at the history. And I hate to be a political since now we have permissioned to be a political But colonialism, slave trade and piracy went together. You know, slave trade and colonialism and piracy are the same thing, but they were done under a uniform with medals. Long live the King, live the monarch. That has to stop. We have to stop glorifying trauma. Even now star wars, you know, the war against cancer, the war against drug.
Everything is a war or metaphorsed themselves. We're not talking about creative solutions. We're talking about war. You know, I beat the cancer, I got rid of the cancer. No, there's a creative way to solve every problem. And that creativity comes from deep within our soul, you know, so our soul. When we refer to God, we say the creator. Right, So every act of creativity is a divine act. And that's not an algorithm, okay, that is that is the spirit. That's the only way.
We come from a place of power, being for something rather than against, you know, being for health rather than being But I also know that we have to before we leave our house every day, put on peace, you know, put on love you know, whether you know it's through meditation, you know, if it's through as your you know, blessing your water as you eat, you know, playing sounds that uplift you and tune you in before you even tune out. So that's an incredibly important part of my day and
how we start our day in our home. What are some rituals for you, Gabriella that that you, that ground you, and that set you, set you a glow on your on your daily.
Oh god. I use everything as a tool, you know. I literally it's like I use my environment to amplify my practice. Does that make sense? So that's the first of all, it's having that awareness. So if because I travel a lot, so everything becomes my practice. The one practice that I do before metadate, I take a shower and obviously, I mean, it's good to say a power but at the water, I see it cleansing the emotions.
He's doing that because that was I didn't say that. Yeah, but that is absolutely one of the things exactly because we are.
So emotional these days because of so many things going on extraordinary times. So it's so I like, and I visualize that all of it's actually a Tibetan practice. If we were to take it a little further, where we see a gray gray matter just kind of go leave our bodies, not only through our breath, but from a physical perspective, go down the drain and it's recycled back into you know, this extra ordinary planet and ether. So that's you know, But then of course I have my meditation.
But I and that's the sitting meditation. But when I'm walking out the door, I'm going I have my inner mantras. So I'm hearing my mantra in every sound around me. So it's a private, sacred practice. So yes, sometimes I have longer times. I'm not. Deepak has leisurely hours of meditation before he even starts the day. I sometimes I only get thirty minutes. Sometimes I get forty five. Sometimes I only get ten. You know, different ages, different times,
different demands of life. But I get it, and then I carry the mantra with me into the day, and I always have that thing that Deepak said. It's like you go back to what is observing the experience, being the observer, not only but actually becoming the space that you're in and understanding that we're all all in, each and every one of us. So I'm actively observing constantly. If I'm feeling a little distressed after, I'll go and wash my hands. You know, I'm using water a lot
and the elements grounding myself. Obviously, can't take my shoes off in New York too much and ground myself in some lovely dog shit. But I don't do that. But I imagine I visualize, you know, so using what I have because you have to become a spiritual ninja. You know, you have to become a spiritual ninja. There's rules and regulations, but no, you adapt it because we are the landscape. From a consciousness perspective, we are everything deep packing.
Gabriella, thank you for sharing your wisdom, your thought, your consciousness and your love with us today. Part of the show is we always invite our listeners and viewers to incorporate into the daily practice ways that they can deepen their legacy. And so I'm so grateful to the two of you. When you talk about the attention, the affection, the appreciation and the acceptance, I what beautiful forwards. And I hope people share that out on social media and
amplify that out the pack. You talked about the history of humanity is the recycling of trauma, and we have to consciously stop stop that recycling.
Stop recycling drama in your life with everyone that you meet.
Powerful and Gabriella, you gave us some simple practices. From that cleansing of that water to that grounding of our feet, to the glove and the kindness and the seeing each other is fundamentally connected, always so Deepak and Gabriella, We're grateful for you joining us today from the Lake Nona Impact Forum at KPMG's Lake House in Orlando's Lake Nona community, and thank you for living your legacy every day.
Thank you for joining us. If you enjoy today's conversation, subscribe, share, and follow us at my Legacy Movement on social media. New episodes drop every Tuesday, with bonus content every Thursday. At its core, this podcast honors doctor King's vision of the beloved community and the power of connection. A Legacy Plus Studio production distributed it by iHeartMedia creator and executive producer Suzanne Haywood co executive producer Lisa Lyle. Listen on
the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast. Until next time, may you find inspiration to live your legacy.