Jeremy Engels: Living Namaste – Yoga, Mindfulness, and Building Community

Jeremy Engels is a distinguished professor of communication and ethics at Penn State University, specializing in rhetoric. He is acclaimed for his exploration of the intersections between yoga, mindfulness, and community building. Jeremy is a prolific author whose works include "Living Namaste: A Practical Guide to Yoga, Mindfulness, and Building Community" and "On Mindful Democracy". His academic and personal journey incorporates a deep engagement with yoga, meditation, and the foundational principles of rhetoric, making him a unique voice in the fields of philosophy and mindfulness.

Visit Jeremy: https://jeremydavidengels.com/

Key Takeaways:

• The embodiment of "Namaste" involves recognizing and honoring the divine within ourselves and others, promoting harmony and community.
• Engaging in yoga and mindfulness practices can alleviate loneliness and cultivate a sense of belonging and connection within communities.
• Jeremy's experience as a rhetoric professor highlights the powerful role of language in shaping human interactions and nurturing democratic values.
• Bridging philosophical concepts with physical practices like yoga fosters a balanced approach to addressing personal and societal challenges.
• The pursuit of understanding complex philosophical and ethical principles can significantly impact personal development and community well-being.

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Transcript

Todd McLaughlin: 0:02

I'm so happy to have this opportunity today to meet and speak with Jeremy Engels, and Jeremy is the author of a book called Living Namaste, a practical guide to yoga, mindfulness, and building community. Jeremy, thank you so much for joining me today. Can you tell me a little bit, a little bit about how your day is going and how you feeling,

Jeremy Engels: 0:21

yeah. Thanks for having me. It's so great to be here. And hi to everybody who's listening. It's awesome that you're here as well. Yeah, good day. It's the end of, you know, we're this will be released in June. We're talking a little bit earlier than that. It's the end of our semester. I'm a professor, and it's finals week, which means I'm all done for the semester, and so I'm feeling really good today. Actually, nice.

Todd McLaughlin: 0:46

Do you get a whole summer off as a professor? Do you get to take a couple months of no school, or do you teach summer A and B at the university?

Jeremy Engels: 0:56

Yeah, so you know professors do a lot of different things during the summer, some will teach. I'm not teaching this summer. This summer will be, you know, it's usually a time to kind of catch up with research, to start a new project, to read something that you really wanted to read for a while, to, you know, maybe catch up with friends who've been busy. There's always a lot of conferences in the summer, and I've had two books come out this year, and so I'm doing a lot of different events for both of those books, which is amazing to connect to people who care about yoga and mindfulness and living in ways that are a little more harmonious than you know, maybe the ways that we're accustomed to.

Todd McLaughlin: 1:40

Yeah, great point. Can you tell me what, what, what, what are you a professor in? What is your sure?

Jeremy Engels: 1:47

Yeah, so I, you know, it's kind of interesting. I, you know, I started meditating back when I was in high school, and a lot of that was because I grew up with really severe asthma. My asthma runs on my family. I grew up in Kansas, out on the dusty prairie, and in a town called Wichita, which is a pretty bad place for people with asthma and allergies, and you know, and so I had, you know, I spent like my 10th and 11th and 12th birthdays in the hospital, getting breathing treatments, and when I got a little bit older, I, you know, became interested in learning some ways to relate to my breath a little bit differently, and so I started meditating in high school, and you know, so much of meditation, especially mindfulness meditation, is really focused on our relationship with our breath, as is yoga, of course. And I thought after high school I joked with my mom a lot because it freaked her out, and it was fun. I joked that I was going to shave my head and move to India and become a monk and study meditation, and she told me later on, like, she passed away a couple years ago, and we were talking right before that, and she said, you know, you weren't joking about that, like, you were pretty serious, I think you might have done that, but I read a book called Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which, you know, some people might be familiar with, it's trip

Todd McLaughlin: 3:22

Persig, yeah,

Jeremy Engels: 3:23

exactly.

Todd McLaughlin: 3:24

I love that book.

Jeremy Engels: 3:25

Oh, me too. And the main character in that book is a professor of rhetoric, and, and so I started learning everything I could about rhetoric when I was in high school, and I realized, you know, this is what I want to study. This is what I want to do. I want to teach this, because to me, rhetoric, which we could think about, rhetoric is like the study of the power of language to bring people together, to push them apart, to start wars, to build peace, and as somebody who's always been really interested in peace, I thought this is the skill set I need to do good work in the world, and so I went to grad school and got my PhD in rhetoric, and then got an amazing job in actually the best rhetoric program in the world, which is at Penn State University, so I live in Central Pennsylvania, in the kind of the northern part of the Appalachian Mountains. It's beautiful, beautiful here, and yeah, and so I'm a professor of communication and ethics. Yeah,

Todd McLaughlin: 4:34

amazing. How or why is University of Pennsylvania known as like the greatest school for rhetoric in the world. Well, how do we earn that title?

Jeremy Engels: 4:44

It, I think, it has to do with a couple things. Rhetoric is such an interesting field, like it's something that you know a lot of people, when they hear that word, it's almost always negative. It's like, oh, it's just mere rhetoric. Or, like, sometimes rhetoric is like a synonym for bs or manipulation, but rhetoric has always been really closely associated with democracy and citizenship since ancient Greece, and about the time of the Civil War in the United States, a number of universities were founded mostly in the Midwest, but also in places like Pennsylvania, called land grant universities, and the universities were set up to be places where people could be educated to be citizens and leaders and compassionate people, and those are the universities that typically have had strong rhetoric programs, because you can't really be, you know, a strong citizen and effective leader if you don't understand how to use and not be used by language, and for whatever reason, Penn State traditionally had hired really important and good faculty in that area, and by the time I got here, you know, we had assembled just this amazing group of just brilliant, brilliant, brilliant teachers and scholars, and it's only gotten better since I've been here, and yeah, it's pretty amazing, actually. I don't know, I can't imagine doing anything else other than being a professor. It's a really wonderful job. I love teaching, and I think maybe the only other thing I love as much as that is being a yoga teacher. So

Todd McLaughlin: 6:33

amazing. So, do you, to what capacity do you teach yoga? Is that online in a studio, is it an asana-based practice? Is it breathing practice? What forte you like to work with?

Jeremy Engels: 6:47

Yeah, so I like to joke that my wife was my first yoga teacher. She wasn't actually, but when we were in graduate school, she started taking some yoga classes, just as a way of managing stress, and you know that's I think what brings a lot of people to yoga, actually, is you know life is stressful and it's anxious, and so she would take a class and then she'd come home and show me a few things, and and then once she, she got her PhD in clinical psychology, and we moved to Penn State, and we both started jobs here, and we started going to a yoga studio here in town, and really, really enjoyed it for a while. We trained to be teachers. We got our 200 hour and our 500 hour. Both of those training programs involve going to India and studying at the Krishnamacharya Yoga Institute in Chennai, so I spent several months in India studying yoga as well, and but about it was about 13 years ago, or so, both my wife Anna and I got really badly injured practicing yoga, and it happens, you know, to a lot of people, and it was really, really fortunate that just about that time where we were hurting, we encountered this amazing teacher, her name is Laura Hyman, and she was in Princeton at the time, and she teaches a kind of yoga, she's a physical therapist, and so her yoga is really based in physical therapy and functional movement. And we just happened to stumble across this workshop that she was teaching in our town, and decided on the spot, we're like, we're going to Costa Rica with her for a month, we're going to retrain, we're going to learn how to do this, and it made all the difference in the world. And about 11 years ago, we got together with some friends here in our town, and decided to open up our own yoga studio. And so I co-own a yoga studio called Yoga Lab, and it's our 10 year anniversary, actually this summer, which is

Todd McLaughlin: 9:00

cool,

Jeremy Engels: 9:01

and

Todd McLaughlin: 9:02

yeah,

Jeremy Engels: 9:03

it's thank you. Getting through the pandemic was, you know, is an accomplishment, but it's such a joy, actually. So I teach, I teach yoga and meditation at the studio, and then the three owners, we run a teacher training every year, and so I teach yoga, philosophy, and history, and through that, and and then I also lead a meditation group in our town, and it's been so amazing having a studio, it's, you know, a place where people come together and practice being more in tune with themselves and with other people and with their bodies and their breath, and I feel like it really makes a difference, actually, in the community having this hub where people can come together, so yeah,

Todd McLaughlin: 9:54

that's awesome, man. So cool to hear. I'm, I'm curious, are you willing to. You name what type of practice both you and your wife were doing at the time that you both got injured, and were they the same injury, or did you both have your own separate type of injury? Was it something that was self-induced through you pushing your own bodies, or was it something that was induced via an assist or assist from a teacher? I'm just curious to pick your brain a little bit, because I think a lot of us that have gotten a little bit older and been around the yoga for a long time have met this has been a natural trajectory for us to go from intense practices into restorative and ones where we're, you know, managing this a little differently. So I'm just curious to hear a little more of some of that nitty gritty detail.

Jeremy Engels: 10:35

Sure, yeah, we, you know, I think the style we were practicing was, you know, I think it was just kind of a typical American vinyasa practice that in some ways was kind of loosely derived from the kinds of things Krishnamacharya was teaching, you know, Ashtanga and others in those kind of styles, Pattabhi Jois, and so you know was a style that I think I don't know, I think yoga teachers mean so well often, like I love yoga teachers, like what a noble thing to want to do, but a lot of yoga teacher trainings don't have sufficient emphasis on anatomy and the way that the body actually moves, and you know, we're teaching people who are moving their bodies first, and, like, I love the philosophy, I love the history, I mean, that's what I geek out about, but I'm teaching people who are moving bodies when I'm teaching asana, so I injured my back really badly, my lower back practicing, and I think it had to do probably with, I don't know, there's a number of poses that are taught in kind of traditional ways that can be really hard on your SI joint, and also, if you're trying to practice like back bending without sufficient core strength, or without sufficiently being warm, and without it being balanced out with twists and whatnot, it can, you know, the risk to reward ratio is, you know, out of balance a little bit, and so I hurt my back pretty badly. My wife hurt her shoulder pretty badly, and her neck, and it was, I think, it was from doing headstands for her, and it was to the point where we thought she had some nerve damage, maybe permanently, and fortunately, that was not the case, and so now the kind of yoga that we do, we've cut out some of the poses that you know people traditionally do and really love, like we don't do headstands anymore, we don't do shoulder stands anymore, just because of the risk to reward ratio, and you know, your cervical vertebrae and your neck really aren't meant to bear weight. It's very difficult to do that, and there's a lot of great academic studies showing that even really experienced yoga practitioners are at risk of injuring themselves in like headstands. So we instead practice dolphin and forearm stand and handstand and and it's a, it's a great substitution, and like handstand, you can modify to make it easier in so many different ways to make it more accessible, and and then we've changed the way we teach some other poses, and we really start every practice with doing bridge to work up, wake up your glutes, and then really good core work to wake up your core. We focus a lot on hip and shoulder mobility as well, but also like keeping a long spine and folds and bending your knees and using a lot of props, so we use a ton of props at our studio, and try to make it really clear to everybody that props don't mean less than, you know. I think that's unfortunately, you ever run into that kind of stereotype? Oh, yeah,

Todd McLaughlin: 14:13

yeah, they weren't allowed, like when I went to India, and my sword, or Jewish, Danga, it was like you were not allowed to bring a prop, and you would be chastised if you brought a block in the room, if everyone would have made you feel really uncomfortable for doing that. So, oh, 100% So, you're right to kind of build that awareness about, hey, you can still use these things, and it doesn't mean you're a lesser yogi or a lesser person. You're not a bad person now that you're using a little, accepting a little bit of help from an outside source. I know I think that's super important. I agree, that's been

Jeremy Engels: 14:43

really.. it's been great. Yeah, we, you know, it feels like at least this kind of yoga we're teaching now has really opened up, you know, yoga to to a lot of people, and I love it when people come to the studio. You know where they have back issues or shoulder issues, and then they practice regularly a couple times a week for six months, and they're like, that went away. I feel better, I feel stronger. And ultimately, that's what the practice should do for us, I think, is it should help us to age well and to feel better in our bodies.

Todd McLaughlin: 15:21

I agree. Well, amazing. Jeremy, can you tell me a little bit about your book, the impetus for the book, and what the book is about, and what you hope to achieve in the writing of this book?

Jeremy Engels: 15:32

Sure, yeah, so I, you know, as a somebody who has a background in philosophy and history have always been really interested in the ideas associated with yoga and also with the possibilities that are there in this practice that we have, and you know, at some point I got really interested in the word that a lot of us say at the end of class, Namaste, and thinking about how you know a lot of my students will will say that word at the end of practice or or not, but often don't really know what it means, and in explaining that to people, you know, I found that Namaste actually, at least to me, isn't the end of yoga practice. It's like a moment of continuation. It's a way that we remind ourselves to see the divine in ourselves, to see the divine in others, and to treat other people with dignity and respect, but also to recognize the possibilities that we have for working together off the mat to transform the world, and so the book is really about, like, it's less about, like, the history of namaste, because that history isn't particularly interesting or long. I mean, you can tell the story pretty quickly, but it's more about kind of sketching out the possibilities of what would it mean to really practice that as like a greeting and a parting when we come together with other people.

Todd McLaughlin: 17:19

Yeah, amazing. Well, what are you finding as you're putting it into practice? What type of results are you finding?

Jeremy Engels: 17:28

Yeah, so I think embodying namaste, at least as I argue in the book, means remembering three things, so it remains remembering first and foremost that we each of us is divine, and then remembering that other people are divine, and then remembering to live the word together, and so I found that when we remember our own dignity and we remember the dignity of other people, it's only natural that we become more compassionate, more patient, more connected, and we're better able to respond to the world rather than just reacting to the world, and that allows us to choose care over judgments and to build communities where everyone feels welcome and safe. So, those are some of the things that I've found in teaching this to people.

Todd McLaughlin: 18:35

Yes, that's amazing. Can you, if we just pick apart the word dignity, just a little bit sure, that's a really interesting word, like dignity. Where does that come from? Why, why do I treat people with dignity? You know, is that something that comes from my parents taught me to treat people with respect. Is it that when we are at a state of peace that we, that dignity just comes out of a peaceful state, and then where do we lose dignity, and why would we lose dignity? Like, what is the cause of us losing dignity? I tend to assume I know we're not supposed to assume anything. I tend to assume that dignity comes from, like, our natural, like, our innate as a human. It comes like we have that built into our DNA, but somewhere either we're defiled or someone makes us feel horrible, or.. and we start to lose our ability to feel dignified within, and therefore, obviously, we lose it, and the attempt to share it with others, but I'd love to hear your own take on maybe the role of dignity, where it comes from, and how can we cultivate more of that, even in our own lives.

Jeremy Engels: 19:51

Yeah, those are such good questions, and I think I think I feel pretty similarly to what you just said. I think you are. Articulated it really nicely, so Namaste is a very typical greeting, and also parting in India and Southeast Asia, that's become global, and it means literally, I mean, namas means I bow or I bend, and te means to you, so I bow to you, I bend to you, I acknowledge you, and that greeting, that hello, when it was brought back to the United States, to Canada, to North America, to Europe by students who went to India and Southeast Asia to study yoga with masters in the 1960s and 70s. The meaning of the word shifted a little bit, and that happens with words all the time, you know, linguists talk about loan words, so like words that we borrow from other languages, and English borrows so many words from other languages. We borrowed a lot of words from that are derived from Sanskrit and come from Hindi. So borrowing words is totally natural. The fact that we would borrow a word and its meaning would shift a little bit is also really natural, and so I think it has to do with Ram Dass, the great, you know, spiritual teacher of the 70s, 60s and 70s and 80s. He often talked about namaste as being not just I bow to you, but the divine in me bows to the divine in you, or something like that, and I think that's become the definition that's most often cited in some form by people practicing yoga. The divine in me acknowledges the divine in you. So, what does it mean to be divine? What is this divinity? Here it's difficult to talk about, because I think we're talking about something that's beyond language. So, like, any attempts we make to pin this down in language are going to be limited and potentially open us up to misunderstanding. So, I recognize that as a teacher all the time that you know we have to be careful with our words and also be willing to take our words seriously, but see beyond the words as well, and so the divine in me, I think one way to think about this is the capacity that every person has, and I genuinely believe that every person has this capacity to step back from a situation, to step back from something that is happening, to pause, to slow down, to settle, to look clearly, and then to choose how to respond to that situation from that place of peace, and so when I think about the divine within, I'm thinking about this place of peace that all of us have inside of us that meditation teachers often call awareness. All of us have the capacity to act from a place of peace and awareness. One of the practices that helps us to really touch that place of peace and awareness that we have inside ourselves is, you know, mindfulness, mindfulness meditation, and for me, the worlds of yoga and mindfulness are not very separate at all. I think of yoga as a practice of mindfulness. It's like mindfulness in motion a lot of times, and so I'm always thinking about when I teach asana or practice asana, how can I cultivate mindful awareness. How can I settle? How can I tap into this place of peace inside of me? Another thing that we recognize when we practice mindfulness, I think, when we practice yoga, is that the world is constantly changing, like everything is changing all the time. I thought when I first started meditating that to be a good meditator, and like, what's a good meditator, right? I mean, like, that's a whole other conversation, but I thought I had to be able to like sit in perfect stillness, not moving a muscle, you know, not thinking any thoughts, but I know now that that's impossible, like our minds are made to think, they're constantly doing this, they're constantly darting off, but I can. Relate to my thoughts in a different way that I'm taught to. I also can't sit in perfect stillness, because I'm always breathing and my heart is always beating. So, there's always motion, right? There's always movement. Everything is changing, everything is in motion, but it's in motion in this just beautiful symphony, it's like a dialog of individuals and ensembles, where what you do, what you say influences me, it impacts me, and vice versa. When we occupy the same space, we're literally sharing the air, we're sharing atoms, we're fundamental. fundamentally interrelated, and the fact that any of us are here right now in these bodies in this moment is a miracle, like if you think of how many things had to go right over the course of 6 billion years of a universe, or over the course of the last, you know, 10 generations of any of our families with our ancestors. If any of our ancestors had, you know, fallen off of a cliff before they were able to procreate, we wouldn't be here, right? I mean, it is a.. it's a miracle that we are here. I think that that capacity that we all have for peace, that recognition of the interconnectedness of all things, and then the acknowledgement of the just the sheer miracle of being alive. I think dignity is rooted in all of those things, and if we're better able to relate to those parts of ourselves, that kind of wisdom, that deep place of peace in ourselves, I think. Then we're better able to relate to that in other people as well, to acknowledge that, and that's what the practice of namaste really becomes about. It's like remembering the divine within me, remembering that I matter, that the choices that I make matter, that I am capable of being so much better, of being so much more, maybe than society tells me I am, and then acknowledging and recognizing that in other people, if we greet other people from that place of common ground think about the kinds of communities we can build. I mean, like, think about the kinds of conversations we can have. I think that infinite possibilities open up the moment we're able to meet other people in that space of Namaste. beautifully

Todd McLaughlin: 28:05

said, amazing. I'm so grateful to have this chance to speak with someone, speak with you, who you've been spending so much time studying philosophy, teaching, also bringing the yoga part in, so not just sitting at a desk and reading books, but also getting onto a mat and having a physical experience or experiential wisdom to blend into it. And well said, Jeremy, that was beautiful. So you feel like each time we either say the word or we hear the word, we could even pause a little bit to really take in what we're actually saying and what that actually means, and then that could potentially create a different field of awareness that if we start and stop in that place, and I like the fact that you use it as it's almost like a connector piece in between this moment and that moment, or like, you know, maybe we all had to take the time to drive into the class, and we all landed at the same place, and we get involved in this group experiment, or experience, or both together, and then at the end I say namaste, and you say namaste, and then you go off into your world, and I go off over on this side of the world, and, but in that recognition, and instead of just saying it in passing, like, and namaste, I don't even know what I'm saying, I don't even know what this word means, but everybody's saying it must be cool, so I should say it too, and actually say, like, no, what we're acknowledging here is that the work we just did together and the work we're about to do, either together or apart could extend to the next person we meet, so I guess then if I then go to the grocery store and I don't, I know that I probably I don't know if that person practices yoga or not, I don't have to say namaste and have them then explain to them what the meaning is, but I could still live in the namaste, so to speak, like I can live, I can treat them in the namaste way. And in a way they would learn namaste through my actions, and in a lot of ways, like I agree with you, 100% we start going down the word train, like we might lose it, right? We might, we might, we can't pin it down, you can't pin consciousness down, it's almost like it's like,

Jeremy Engels: 30:57

yeah,

Todd McLaughlin: 30:58

so that is really cool, Jeremy. I have so many questions for you.

Jeremy Engels: 31:02

Yeah, I

Todd McLaughlin: 31:02

guess. When I, what you

Jeremy Engels: 31:04

just said, though, was so beautiful. I mean, that, like, you, you summarized the book so perfectly. It's, you know, I was really interested to learn. I, I'm not very good at Sanskrit or Pali, but I've studied them a little bit. I wish that I had some teachers who are closer, that I, you know, I could really dig in, or to have time. But the words in the ancient Indian languages for mindfulness, in Sanskrit the word is Smriti, and in Pali, the word is Satti, and both of those words are translated as mindfulness, but they also mean to remember, and mindfulness is a practice of remembering to come back to the present moment, right, like every time our mind wanders off, and we do that in yoga, you know. When we make it a practice of mindfulness, you know, coming back to the sensations in the body. You know, I, when I teach breathing poses, like I love breathing warrior, every time the hands come to heart center is a reminder to come back to this moment, but mindfulness also is a reminder to remember the things that we've learned from our practice, um, to remember the insights that we've gained, and so I think that, like, every time we say namaste, it could be a reminder, a reminder to connect to the divine in ourselves to recognize the divine in others to meet on that space, and then you don't even have to say namaste to do that, right? You can say hello. So one of the chapters in my book is called Hello is the most important word in the English language, and actually think it is like hello and all the synonyms. Hello, hi, hey, because that's the word of greeting, that's the word of connection, and I love your example of being in the supermarket. I actually talk about that in the book at one point, because there's a really fun meditation, a lot of meditation teachers do, mindfulness teachers do, called the intensely frustrating line meditation, where you're like stuck in a line in a supermarket, and it's really annoying, and you want to just pull out your phone and like lose yourself in something, but that's like the best opportunity to practice just being present, being in your body, greeting people with a smile, saying hi, so yeah, I cut you off, but I was really inspired. You had to say,

Todd McLaughlin: 33:50

"Oh my gosh, thank you. No, I'm glad that you have something to say that makes my job way easier. I, where, where I really want to, I'm super curious about, because I didn't know that you were a doctor of philosophy, and that you study rhetoric, and you brought up, brought up ethics, and in my own journey into yoga, I started to fall in love with philosophy through my love of yoga, so I went down the track of Indian philosophy, or philosophy of India, and I still love it to this day. And then I felt like, well, this is just one corner of the world where philosophy has been held in a long-standing tradition, and it seems like an Indian philosophy, no stone has been left unturned. I mean, almost every single idea that's out there has already been investigated to such an incredible level of depth that it's hard to come up with something new. There even is something new in the world of thought and idea, but then I thought, well, let me start looking into Western philosophy and start going into the Greek world and looking into the, the, you know, just all these different elements of. I'm sorry, I'm looking for the word that's like critical thinking in the like the Kant era, like the 17 and 1800s What is that period termed the Enlightenment? The Enlightenment. Thank you. And I'm finding it so fascinating. Now, one idea that someone had presented to me, and I'd like to hear if you think this is true, or you can maybe enlighten us a little bit on this idea, is that in the world of India philosophy, a lot of it is based on a cyclical sort of orientation to the world of this idea of birth, life, death, reincarnation, rebirth, life, death, reincarnation, that you're just on a continuous loop, and then we have different philosophies say. Buddhism, that kind of, or Buddha might have said, like, if you do good enough, eventually you can get off of this loop, and you can, you can leave this earthly plane, and then you have these ideas that no, let's enjoy, like the tantrics, let's enjoy this loop, and let's just keep looping, like, let's just loop, why we want to get off this loop, then that the Greeks did something very interesting, they got us off the loop and put us on a line.

Jeremy Engels: 36:07

Yeah, they put us

Todd McLaughlin: 36:08

on a line where there was the past and there's the future, and then maybe in some world of idea that you only have one life, that you don't come back, you got this one life to live, and whatever you got to do, you got to do it well, and you get one shot at it. Can you tell me if I did hit the mark and add any other little tidbits of info that could help us to understand the evolution of philosophy throughout the global culture?

Jeremy Engels: 36:36

Oh, wow, yeah, I love this conversation. This is great. I mean, this is the kind of stuff that I get really excited about, and you know, it's when we're talking about global philosophy, it's so difficult to pin anything down, right? I mean, because there's always going to be 1000 counter examples to any big schema that we articulate, but I think that you're right, that there's a sense in a lot of Indian philosophy of various degrees of, yeah, of a cycle, right, of either a lifetime cycle, or even a moment to moment cycle, and those, you know, that idea of karma can be interpreted in so many different directions, right, in so many different ways, and I think typically that sense of, like, a, you know, a telos is the word we would use, direction, like a line, really is is very closely associated with, you know, Greek philosophy, for sure. And I don't know, I think it's interesting to think about. I'm of two minds, actually, like, because part of me loves speculation, and I just, I love ideas. I mean, I love to talk about ideas, I love to learn about different systems of philosophy, and try to understand them. The other part of me is very much a Zen Buddhist, in the sense of, well, does this really make a difference to how I'm going to live my everyday life, whether, like, this is true or this is true, you know, and the Buddha had this great parable I like a lot, where he talks about how, you know, there's a man, he's out walking in the forest, and he gets hit with an arrow, boom, like arrow in the chest. Somebody else walks up to him, and the man who's hit by the arrow isn't probably going to wonder about, like, where did the arrow come from, or what is the metaphysics of motion that leads to arcs, and you know, was the arrow actually moving or not? You know, there are thought experiments that suggest that kind of break our perception of whether an arrow moves or it doesn't, you know, the guy who's hit with the arrow probably isn't thinking about what happened in a previous birth or maybe what's coming in the next birth. The guy who got hit by the arrow wants you to get the arrow out and wants it to be better, and so, like the Buddha said, we should live our lives like our heads are on fire because you know we just, we know we have this one life, right? We don't know what comes before, we don't know what comes next. We know we have this moment, this present moment, and so can we live in that space of the present moment to the fullest extent becomes, I think, a really important question, you know, for us too, and so I try to keep those two perspectives in mind, because as somebody who's definitely prone to, you know, you know, getting involved in a nice philosophical conversation every once in a while, so yeah,

Todd McLaughlin: 40:24

great point. Well, that sounds like a great way to keep a balance with it all. Yeah, another thought I had when you said that I work with a lot of other PhD level people that are all, I'll say, highly intelligent, or you guys are spending a lot of time molding. Over lots of different thoughts, ideas, and sharing them, that would be fascinating. Do you find that it does get a little too heady sometimes, and that being the yoga guy as well is trying to pull people a little bit back down into, like, pull the air out. You guys just pull the arrow out, like, yeah,

Jeremy Engels: 41:00

absolutely. My one of my really good friends, who was an amazing biologist here at Penn State, and the best teacher I've ever known, he passed away a couple years ago. His name was Chris Pool, but he said academics are like brains on a stick. He's like, we have these big brains, and then we forget that we have bodies, and that's not true of everyone, but it's true of a lot of academics I know, and I think the beautiful thing about being a yoga teacher is the blending of mind and body, you know, and remembering that, remembering not just that we have bodies, but actually the state of our bodies will impact the state of our minds, right? You know, a body in pain will probably be more likely to have a mind in pain, and I think a lot of times when it comes to addressing, you know, suffering, which is something that we're all, you know, concerned about. In my other book that came out this year, it's called On Mindful Democracy. It's, it's not a, like, a partisan political book at all. It's much more thinking about how we build better communities. I talk about there's a kind of suffering that's just innate to the human experience. There's, you know, and I call it sorrow. I mean, in the Buddha talked about this, yoga teachers talk about this too, right? I mean, we get older, our bodies get sick, we die, people we love die. That's just inevitable. Hopefully, hopefully we get older, I guess.

Todd McLaughlin: 42:51

Yes,

Jeremy Engels: 42:52

but then there's also a kind of suffering in the world that humans inflict on other humans, and that's not inevitable, and I think that suffering has to be something that we are willing to work together to address, to you know, to alleviate. So many people I meet come to yoga because they are suffering a lot of times they're suffering things in their body or their minds. I'm always very clear, I'm not a therapist, I'm not licensed to be a therapist, and so I really try to be clear about my scope of practice. A lot of times people are really suffering from just pure loneliness, I mean, it's.. it's an epidemic in our culture of just being lonely and isolated because of the ways that we live our lives. The connection that we build in our yoga studios is such a powerful way of alleviating the suffering of loneliness, I think a lot of the forms of mental suffering that people come to yoga for, actually a really good way to begin to address that is by going through the body, by building strength and capacity in the body, by helping people to feel more at home in their bodies, to feel like their bodies aren't enemies, but instead are friends. I think a lot of yoga is like about befriending our bodies again, and I think it's such a blessing to be able to teach an art, a practice, a set of skills that can help people to come back home to this body.

Todd McLaughlin: 44:55

I'm so glad you bring all that up, because I've been noticing feeling in the air, if that's a good way to say it, or a way to say it here in our own studio of increased appreciation for all the things that you mentioned, loneliness. So, like, we're able to dispel a little bit of loneliness by coming into a room and not having our phone with us. Yeah, actually, a pretty, pretty interesting thing, and I think you and I were probably maybe similar in similar age, where we remember not having,

Jeremy Engels: 45:35

oh yeah,

Todd McLaughlin: 45:35

something to distract us when we felt uncomfortable in the line, you know, there was a way to just like. How to deal with it, you know? Like, whereas now you can, I guess. Another big question is, are we really escaping it by letting ourselves go into the phone? And it's a good question. It's distracting us from it, but we're still not feeling great. Like, if we're uncomfortable in the line, and we go, 'I'm just, you know, I'm gonna go look at my phone, let's pick out a couple news stories here while I'm standing here. Well, that's not going to make you feel great, not right now. The amount of information, like the information on the phone, I'm starting to feel a little bit more like I'm trying to stay away from taking external information in that comes in from my phone, because, a, I don't know if it's real anymore, it's always slanted from somebody else's angle about what they want me to think and believe, and so I've been trying to kind of move away, as I'm moving away a little bit from that, and more into just the interactivity of the people that I'm facing, interfacing with here in the studio every day. I think we're all just feeling like so happy, just that we have something that we enjoy doing, and we can come together and do it for a little while, and I don't know if that's being amplified, more appreciation for it if it's because I'm appreciating it more than I'm thinking everybody else is appreciating it, if it's a collective appreciation all happening, but it personally to me everything you've said resonates a lot to me with me regarding the value of a community space for for us to get together,

Jeremy Engels: 47:03

yeah. I think you're right. I mean, I think that we're oversaturated by the flood of content on our phones and our devices, and we might feel like that's a way of coping with the loneliness epidemic, but, but it's not because we bring our loneliness with us. I mean, that's the thing that you know yoga, yoga teachers and meditation teachers have always said. You can run off to a cave, you can go to a beach, I mean, you can go on a retreat, and those are great things to do. I mean, to get away for a little while, but you always bring yourself with you, and so you can't really run away from the things that cause you the most pain. But there are ways we have very deeply human ways of dealing with loneliness of showing up and being present with other people, engaging with them, talking to them, listening deeply with compassion, acting together in ways that are creative and interesting and new and vibrant, and I really think that yoga and meditation studios increasingly are going to serve that role in our culture. I hope of being these, these hubs, these like there aren't very many community hubs anymore, right? I mean, like, where do you, where do you go?

Todd McLaughlin: 48:36

Great point. I mean, we hear there's a little bit of a resurgence in the church, yeah, gatherings, because the disconnectivity is causing people to really now kind of appreciate coming back into a space and having a ritual and just being, you know, quiet and that type of thing. So we hear that seems like a stat that I keep hearing from folks, right? Beyond that, I don't feel like schools, I mean, maybe you feel differently in the university environment. I have a middle school aged daughter who's kind of like, "Dad, it's horrible, man, it's not fun. I kind of remember it wasn't that fun either, and that was a long time, you know? Like, I'm like, you know, it's so hard to coach kids and be like, "Just go and do it. You know, I had to do it too. You know, part of me is kind of like,

Jeremy Engels: 49:23

right, right,

Todd McLaughlin: 49:25

but I hear you. I think it is. I think it is playing a valuable role these days,

Jeremy Engels: 49:30

and there's something really beautiful about coming together with people in a community where you're trying to tap into the better parts of yourself, like the more peaceful, compassionate, loving parts of yourself, which, that's what we're doing when we practice yoga, that's what we're doing when we meditate, like we're trying to tap into this great potential for love that all of us have, this great potential for peace, and I think that's probably why people might go back to places of worship as well, because there's also that potential in those places, you know. I think it's why people are doing more communal walks in nature now, and you know, bird watching together, or whatnot. We need it, we need, we have to adjust somehow to, you know, this mediated life that we live in, and so I think I think it's a place where us, as yoga teachers, have a lot to offer.

Todd McLaughlin: 50:32

Yes. Wow, Jeremy, I wish I had another hour, two hours, maybe three hours to keep chatting with you and get to know you, I. Really enjoying your vibe, and everything you've had to say, and the way that you're connecting to the practice and sharing it with your community is just.. I'm very.. it sounds incredible. And with an attempt to kind of mark that we're getting closer to our namaste together, is.. Can you tell us where we can get your book? It's available now, I think, with just a few days ago, from the time of me released podcast. It's now officially available, and people can purchase a copy. Where's the way that we could get a copy that actually, where you earn the most? Because I know sometimes if I say go to Amazon, you buy it there, but if someone goes to either to a bookstore, obviously that's going to support a small business that's a brick and mortar style business. But is there a website that someone goes to that gets it a little more direct without putting a bunch of middlemen in between?

Jeremy Engels: 51:35

Sure, I mean, that's thank you for asking that question. You know, I think that so the publisher of the book is called Inner Traditions. They're, I like, they're fantastic. Yeah, they are great. They are

Todd McLaughlin: 51:49

really great. I've gone, I've gotten on their website and looked at all their books, and I've interviewed a few people that have been published by Inner Traditions. I hear great things from everybody, and the work they're doing is really, they're spot on.

Jeremy Engels: 52:03

Yeah, I've loved working with them, and so you can buy the book directly through their website. There's also, like, bookshop.org is a really wonderful website that aggregates lots of independent booksellers, and so it's a way of supporting independent booksellers buying online, and I think anything we can do to support our local bookstores we should do, because again, they're so important to the community fabric, and yeah, but, and you know, if you'd like to stay connected, I've got a Substack that's called Zen in the Art of Democracy, and also had a website, it's my full name, Jeremy David ingles.com and I've got an email list on there, and there's lots of events coming up. I'm going to be in Boulder doing a book signing in July, and there's going to be a retreat at Kripalu next year in 2027 and yeah, but I'll keep you posted. Yeah,

Todd McLaughlin: 53:07

awesome, man. You're getting out on the road a little bit with it. That's so cool. I can be teaching classes as well, and doing a little bit of yoga, teaching and book signing, and being able to blend all that together.

Jeremy Engels: 53:17

That's the hope. Yeah, being able to do little little mini retreats and some book signings, and but I'm really excited to connect with, well, anyone who's interested in this, but especially other yoga studio owners, you know, I, anything we can do to support each other right now, I think is so important, and so if you own a yoga studio, you're interested in living Namaste, reach out to me, email me, and let's connect.

Todd McLaughlin: 53:46

Yeah, amazing, Jeremy. I agree. I think if we could get a little network going, we could, especially with the online facet, we actually can support one another. I know sometimes we feel like, well, he's over in Pennsylvania and I'm in Colorado, I could buy a book, and that supports, but then this idea of trading ideas, and, and something that I'm really grateful for the internet in relation to these smaller communities, we can stay connected. Well, oh man, well, the next time I bring you on to the show, I think we're going to have to go down. I love the fact that you worked your Substack title off of the Zen and the art of the motorcycle maintenance, I'm thinking maybe because the question, when I started reading what mr. Persig brought up in relation to philosophy of quality versus quantity, still I think everything I'm always going back to his little, his investigation into just quality and quantity is just fascinating from the world of work and business and yoga and everything. I just think that that's like such an interesting conversation. So, maybe I could have you back on the show, and we could just do a big quality quantity conversation.

Jeremy Engels: 54:57

I would love that. Let's do it.

Todd McLaughlin: 54:59

All right. Awesome, Jeremy. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you taking time. Cheers, my

Jeremy Engels: 55:03

friends. Yeah, thank you.

Todd McLaughlin: 55:04

Have a great, thank you.

Jeremy Engels: 55:13

That was awesome.

Todd McLaughlin: 55:15

Yes.