In this episode, we share how and why we wash our brains each morning by filling up our tank of life before we try to take on the challenges of the day. We also discuss the benefits of waking up early, hydrotherapy, earthing, yoga, going on a mental colonic and much more.
Dr. Dan even tells an interesting story that Tony Robbins told him about the first time Tony met Yogi Bhajan. Very few people have heard the full story.
Resources Mentioned In This Episode:
Transcript: (Read Time: 61 Minutes)
Dr. Dan: Hey, fellow rockstars. Dr. Dan in the house, and we've got …
Siri Shakti: Siri Shakti in the house. Hey guys.
Dr. Dan: That's right. Welcome back, welcome back. Today, our topic is going to be your daily practice, which is also going to include washing your brain daily.
Siri Shakti: That's right.
Dr. Dan: Which I love. Some people are listening to this going, what?
Siri Shakti: We love to wash our brain.
Dr. Dan: Going to wash your brain? You know, some people say … I don't know, did we ever have anybody say to us, “Hey, you guys are brainwashed,” or anything for doing this stuff? I don't remember.
Siri Shakti: They never said it verbally, but I picked it up-
Dr. Dan: With their eyes?
Siri Shakti: … mentally, yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Dan: With their eyes, they were just staring at you?
Siri Shakti: They were totally thinking it.
Dr. Dan: So you just knew they were thinking that. Good to know. Good to know. Okay, well, yeah, it's funny because it comes from … I remember somebody saying that their whole family thought they were brainwashed, like, “What's all the stuff you're doing? You're just brainwashed!” Or whatever and they're like, “Yeah. I mean, you wash …” Guru Singh actually says this. He says, “Yeah, why not? Why not wash your brain? You wash the rest of your body. You should be washing your brain as well.”
Siri Shakti: That's right, yeah.
Dr. Dan: That really stuck with me, because once I heard that, I was like, you know what? That's exactly right, because we really had to wash our brain, basically, because we had so many negative thoughts and negative-
Siri Shakti: Old conditioning.
Dr. Dan: Conditioning, and traits, and … Not traits, but things that we had done. I'm trying to think of the world that I would use there, but habits.
Siri Shakti: Yeah.
Dr. Dan: You know, habits, and the word you just said. What was that word again?
Siri Shakti: Oh …
Dr. Dan: See, you already forgot, too.
Siri Shakti: I already forgot.
Dr. Dan: We both saw a squirrel on that one.
Siri Shakti: No, no, no, wait, wait. Yeah, anyways. Moving on.
Dr. Dan: Yeah, moving in.
Siri Shakti: That's pretty bad. Okay.
Dr. Dan: Nice. Nice. Okay, so-
Siri Shakti: It was good in the moment.
Dr. Dan: Exactly.
Siri Shakti: I'm living in the moment.
Dr. Dan: Nice, okay, so washing your brain daily, and I thought that was awesome, because I'm like, yeah, you really do. And I never thought of it like that, but that's exactly what we tell people to do, is you need to change things up. You need to do something different. You need to … You said it. One of the other episodes, you talked about success leaves clues, right?
Siri Shakti: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dr. Dan: And all the successful people that we wanted to model after, this is … Some of these things that we're going to be talking about today, or all of them, are things that we acquired from more than one person, from a handful of people that we wanted to model after. We took the best of what they were doing and modeled it, and that's exactly what we're going to be talking about right now. Right?
Siri Shakti: That's right. When we talk about daily practice, over the years, with the studying of different successful people and taking a look at their lifestyle and what it is that sets them apart from the average person, what I began to notice is that there was a common theme that these people … And let me say that when I talk about success, many times, when we say “successful people”, we think instantly financial success, which is beautiful. We want financial success. But I'm talking about people that are successful not only financially, but it's mind, body, and spirit balance success in their life. Relationships and spiritual life.
Dr. Dan: Also, the beauty of … Just to kind of jump in on there, the beauty of success is you define it.
Siri Shakti: Well, yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Dan: Many people will say, “I'm not successful because I'm not making this, or I'm not doing that.”
Siri Shakti: Absolutely.
Dr. Dan: Whereas in somebody else's eyes, they look at you like, oh, you are successful. You know?
Siri Shakti: Right.
Dr. Dan: And that happens all the time. I remember seeing a great video on Facebook not that long ago, maybe a couple years ago, where it was a cartoon and it showed a picture of somebody sitting on the street, and they were looking at … They saw this person on a bike ride by and they go, “Wow, I wish I had a bike.” You know, like they couldn't afford the bike, basically. And then the guy on the bike pulls up and stops at a light and sits there and sees a car and says, “Man, I wish I had a car.” Then the guy in the car sees another guy in a nice car and says … Exotic car. “Man, I wish I had that kind of car.” You know? It just keeps going and going.
Siri Shakti: Such a good point, yeah.
Dr. Dan: And I thought that was great. But yeah, continue.
Siri Shakti: Well, yeah, and you know, what I really mean is that successful … What I've noticed that people that are successful but people that are happy and successful. They have this common thread where they have a certain daily routine that they stick to, and they've created this routine that they commit to on a daily basis that helps them to step into those shoes of feeling empowered and feeling like they're the ones that are in control of their lives.
One of our favorite teachers, Tony Robbins, I know we talk a lot about him, and then my teacher Guru Singh, both of these men have certain routines that they follow. I know Tony is really big on doing meditation. He does hydrotherapy, which we'll be getting into in a little bit. Exercise routines, things like that. Yeah.
Dr. Dan: One thing I was going to mention as well was why this is so important. The obvious reasons, we're going to be talking about that, but I'll give you an analogy of filling up your tank of life. You know, in life. An example would be if you're driving in a car, and you're driving from let's say Los Angeles, right? Los Angeles to … I don't know, let's say Miami, Florida. Okay?
Siri Shakti: Okay.
Dr. Dan: I have no idea how far that is, but …
Siri Shakti: It's pretty far.
Dr. Dan: It's far. I think we end up having … So I can get a direct flight, we have to drive down to Los Angeles, because we're in Orange County, and from there, then I have to fly. And I could have sworn it was five or six hours, or something like that for a direct flight. So imagine how much further that's going to be in a car. It's going to be pretty damn far. So let's just make up some numbers here, because I was too lazy to do any research on that, and I just pulled Miami, Florida out of my butt. We're just going to say that, okay?
So let's imagine that it'll take three tanks of gas in your car. Okay? Let's just say that. Let's just say it takes three tanks of gas, so you're going to have to fill up the car three times in order to get there. Well, what would happen if even though your car needed three tanks of gas, you decided to, you know, I'm just going to skip the first tank and I'm just going to drive there on empty. Is that going to work?
Siri Shakti: No.
Dr. Dan: No. Heck no. Okay, let's say you had a half a tank of gas in the car, and you decide, you know what? I'm going to skip the second tank and I'll just do the third when I get there. No. That's not going to work either, right? Of course not. Or what if you say, you know what? Okay, it just needs to be filled up. I'm just going to fill it up with water.
Siri Shakti: Yeah.
Dr. Dan: Or I'm just going to fill it up with some other kind of liquid, like Gatorade or something else. Of course it's not going to run, right? You have to be putting in the right kind of fuel.
Siri Shakti: Yes.
Dr. Dan: The right kind of energy it needs in order to give it what it needs. And the same thing goes for your body, it's no different. And these are things that we're going to be talking about, and this is how it's kind of like if you're going to get on an airplane. If you're going to get on an airplane, you want to make sure that that airplane has been serviced and checked over before you go up in the air, right?
Siri Shakti: Yeah.
Dr. Dan: I mean, how many people here would be willing to say, you know what? I'll take a discount if you don't check the plane at all? Yeah, that would be pretty scary. But that's exactly what we're talking about right here, is you've got to maintain yourself. Your body, your brain, your everything. Your spirit. All of them. Whatever you want to call it, you need to maintain it. You need to do a pre-check, you need to do all those things, and it starts with, drum roll, what does it start with? Waking up early.
Siri Shakti: Yes, yes. I just want to touch on what you just said right now, because I think that a lot of people can relate to this, that our lifestyles nowadays are very, very busy. There's so much that is expected of us. We have jobs, we have … Many of us have commutes. We have children, so many things pulling us in different directions. And I can tell you first-hand that if you are not … Like you were just saying, Dan, if you are not filling up your tank of life, if you're not taking care of your physical and emotional body every day, then you're not going to have enough to give back.
That's one thing I've heard many times among mothers, is that you can't give what you don't have. And that's what most of us are doing. Most of us are running on empty, trying to dish up as much as we can. How can you do that? You can't, and I know from personal experience in trying to be a mother and trying to take care of our children that if I'm not filling myself up, I just don't have it in me to take care of them the way that they deserve to be taken care of.
Dr. Dan: Yeah. Hey, if you want to talk about what these things we're going to be talking about have done for us, I'll start off by saying that I was never a person that would call myself a morning person. I still don't really wear that badge, saying, “I'm a morning person!”
Siri Shakti: Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Dan: But I would be the perfect candidate for the least likely to be a morning person. I mean, heck, I had my dream job, sort of, when I was working in nightclubs and I was bouncing in nightclubs. I'd be up all night and I wouldn't have to work until 9:00 or something, 9:00 PM, and then I'd be working till 2:00, 3:00 AM and I was done. And I could just go home and sleep in. My whole life, I always loved to sleep in, and my mom had to throw water on me to get me to go to school so many times, because I would not-
Siri Shakti: Your poor mom.
Dr. Dan: I would not get up. I'd stay in. Because the problem was is I'd want to stay up till 2:00, 3:00 AM every morning, every night into the morning, because I had a burst of energy that came in and I hear that a lot, especially in my industry and my business. I've heard so many people say, “I get more creative at 2:00 AM.” That's because it's quiet, you know?
Siri Shakti: Yes.
Dr. Dan: Because the whole place is quiet. You would get that same energy and better, because it's not the end of your day, being in the beginning of the day, of the morning, because if you get up, and obviously the earlier you get up, the more quiet it's going to be, and less busy it's going to be, and the less consciousness going on. With other people, I should say. You're not going to be dialing into that. I think when we started out, I think we started going down to 5:00 AM or something.
Siri Shakti: Yeah. Can I jump in here? Because I just want to-
Dr. Dan: Go ahead.
Siri Shakti: … give a little background. How we initially got introduced to this idea of … I mean, obviously we knew about creating a schedule, things like that. But 10 years-
Dr. Dan: Which I hate. I don't like schedules.
Siri Shakti: Yeah, I don't work well with those, either. But-
Dr. Dan: When you said schedule, you meant a regimen or something, right?
Siri Shakti: Like a regimen.
Dr. Dan: Yeah, yeah.
Siri Shakti: Like a regimen, yeah. And we've heard about that. So 10 years ago, my husband and I first got introduced to yoga, and we actually … Our favorite is Kundalini yoga, which you'll hear us talk a lot about. And one thing that was-
Dr. Dan: Yeah, that was 2006.
Siri Shakti: Yeah, 2006.
Dr. Dan: In case you're listening to this in the future.
Siri Shakti: One of the things that I thought was so intriguing is that part of the practice is these yogis would wake up early in the morning, now that you know … They actually teach that you wake up before the sun comes up, the two hours before the sun rises, which is called the ambrosial hours. That is the time of day that is the most quiet, is the perfect time to do your creative endeavors. Many people actually wake up, like Wayne Dyer and Deepak Chopra, they talk about how they always write their books during those hours, because the collective consciousness … And what I'm talking about is the chatter of everyone's minds, is much quieter then, because everyone's asleep.
And I'm sure you've experienced this before. Maybe you went outside. Maybe you went clubbing or something, and you got home late, and you're outside and you can feel the stillness in the air. It's just this certain type of clarity and energy that resonates in the air at that time.
Dr. Dan: And it feels magical, right?
Siri Shakti: Yes.
Dr. Dan: And you're thinking, “Oh, it's my buzz,” or something. You know? But it's not.
Siri Shakti: “It must be my buzz,” yeah. No, no. No, it's really what's going on and the energetics of what's happening at that time of day. So as we started getting into Kundalini yoga, we're like, gosh, these people are waking up early and they're doing what is called a sadhana. A sadhana is a daily spiritual practice that you do consistently, and it's really what you want to create it. For some people, sadhana is yoga, like it is for us. It's meditation, yoga, things like that. For others, it's different things. It's maybe doing something creative, or I don't know, something physical with their body.
Dr. Dan: Yeah, it's tapping into the energy of the universe, the multiverse.
Siri Shakti: Yes.
Dr. Dan: That's really what it is when we say spirituality.
Siri Shakti: Yeah.
Dr. Dan: That's what we're talking about. You can call it a higher power, you can call it God, you can call it Buddha, you can call it whatever you want. That's what we're talking about.
Siri Shakti: Yeah, exactly.
Dr. Dan: It's different for everybody.
Siri Shakti: Yeah.
Dr. Dan: Well, I was going to mention that prior to doing this, each day was like a struggle. I felt like I was walking … I felt crappy in the morning. I'd always have a headache, and be just slugging through. You remember those days.
Siri Shakti: Oh, yes.
Dr. Dan: I felt like I was walking through mud, through my day. That's what it felt like. And everything was a struggle, and I was just dealing with everything being thrown at me. I can give this example and actually see it, because I have contrast, because I know what it's like now to be not being like that. Where some people might be listening to this and they're like, well, mine's not that bad. Right? Yeah, some days I feel tired, but I have my coffee, and I do my own morning routine, which is listening to some talk radio or drink a Red Bull, or I'll go for a quick run before I go to work, or before I go do something.
But what I got to say is, is that you don't have that contrast yet to what it's like to not do those things and to do what we're talking about. Once you do, then you're going to be like, oh, that makes sense. It's like trying to explain what chocolate ice cream tastes like to somebody who's never even had chocolate or ice cream.
Siri Shakti: Yeah. Right.
Dr. Dan: It's like, no, I get it. I've had cold, wet stuff before, so …
Siri Shakti: Oh, yeah.
Dr. Dan: I've had an ice cube melted, and I know what ice cream would taste like, then.
Siri Shakti: And I was the same. I was absolutely the same. Most of us, and I would say for myself, I followed the more typical Western culture type of morning routine, which was …
Dr. Dan: Go out to the chicken farm and …
Siri Shakti: Well, I don't know if-
Dr. Dan: I'm just kidding. Go milk the cows.
Siri Shakti: … my chicken farm … Yeah, milk my cows.
Dr. Dan: That's what I think of when you say Western. You know?
Siri Shakti: Well, Westerners.
Dr. Dan: Yee-haw!
Siri Shakti: You know? Americans and things like that. Okay. Very funny. But mine was wake up whenever my alarm woke me up, which was after the sun came up. Kind of fumble and stumble out of bed, probably … Well, first, I'd probably hit my snooze button once or twice, then get out of bed. And then I remember I would go downstairs, and I don't drink coffee, but I would still have either tea or I'd have some sort of healthy energy drink, because I needed that boost to get me going. And get breakfast started, go wake up the kids.
And I always remember feeling … Every day felt like a race. It started immediately, and it didn't stop until my head hit the pillow at night. And I can always remember, and this is like you talked about, the contrast when you … You know. At this point, I always felt like the day was on top of me. Like I was stuck underneath it, looking up, and the day just had control over me.
And what I notice is, as we started to create a daily plan for us in the morning, which we called a sadhana, and we started waking up earlier and doing this practice, all of a sudden it was like I was on top of my day instead. And I can remember you, Dan, you would say … At the beginning when we would start this, I wasn't as consistent. Now it's every day, it's a daily commitment. And you could always tell if there was a day I didn't do my daily practice.
Dr. Dan: Oh, yeah. I'd be like, “Go do it.” “I did it!” “No, you didn't, you're lying.”
Siri Shakti: I'd be all crabby and irritated and snippy. You know, all fun qualities.
Dr. Dan: Nice.
Siri Shakti: Yeah. Maybe we should explain a little bit about what we … You know.
Dr. Dan: I was going to mention as well, one more thing is that … It actually just came to me. I was thinking about it as I'd mention in one of the other episodes, I was talking about writing my book. And until I started waking up early, it was something that I started to do, and I'm like, “I'm going to get up early and I'm going to get up at …” I think we were saying 5:00, 5:30, I can't remember exactly. But somewhere, 5:30, 6:00 AM, you know, let's just use those numbers.
Siri Shakti: Okay.
Dr. Dan: Because I know some people listening, going, “Man, I wake up at 10:00 or 11:00 right now. I can't imagine 5:00.” Well, you could work down to 5:30. Right? 5:30 should be your goal.
Siri Shakti: Yeah. You don't just do it all at once. You slowly move down.
Dr. Dan: Yup. Let's just say 5:30 or 6:00, something like that. I'd get up, and … Okay, so my normal day, I would struggle to get any part of my book done. I might get half an hour of creativity in there, and it would be forced, and it was so difficult. Well, once I started getting up early, oh man. It was insane. It was like what it is today, where right before this episode, I was able to just write down my notes in five, ten minutes. It came to me, and I could just do it. I'm like, this is what we're going to do. This is what we're going to go over. You know?
But prior to that, it was never like that. And I was able to be able to create, and I can do that any time now because of that. So as long as you … Because if I don't follow this, and I struggle through my day, there's no way I'd be able to create the stuff that I create today.
Siri Shakti: Yeah.
Dr. Dan: You know? And there are days, and it's funny … Let's mention this now, then, ahead of time. Are we perfect? No.
Siri Shakti: No.
Dr. Dan: I'm close to perfect, but … No. So, well, I'm-
Siri Shakti: Almost there.
Dr. Dan: I'm perfect who I … In my own way, let's just say that. But am I perfect, meaning do we do this every single morning, no matter what, and we never miss a day or anything? No, that's … No. We don't do it every single day perfectly. There are times that we screw up. Let's say one to three times a month, on average. There's sometimes we don't even miss one, but there are some months that it's one to three times, maybe four times in the month.
Siri Shakti: I just have to jump in there that-
Dr. Dan: That you do it more, you mess up more?
Siri Shakti: That I'm better than him. I'm joking. No, no, I was going to say that for me, this is so important because if I don't do something, at least … Let me put it this way. Actually, I don't miss any days, because I will at least sit down and do even just a five minute meditation. Because I know for me, if I don't sit my butt down and do something, it's going to affect me that day. If there's something going on that's interfering with me getting up to do what I need to do, or let's say I'm just not feeling good, or you're sick or whatever. Things happen. Life happens. For me, just the act of even sitting down for a few minutes is what keeps me consistent. So no, we are not perfect. Has there been days that I've missed? Yes, there has been.
Dr. Dan: Well, let's rephrase that, then, okay.
Siri Shakti: Okay.
Dr. Dan: I guess I should have said that differently, because when I say, “Are we perfect in we do it every single day,” and when I said that we don't on those few days here and there, what I meant was I guess to say, to clarify-
Siri Shakti: Yeah.
Dr. Dan: … was that there are some mornings where instead of doing a 30 minutes to an hour, we'll do five, ten minutes.
Siri Shakti: Absolutely, yes.
Dr. Dan: We'll do a short meditation or a couple yoga poses, or do a chanting or something like that, and yes. But there are some days that I do miss fully. In those cases, I would probably say once a month, maybe, that might happen.
Siri Shakti: Yeah, I'd say that. Yeah.
Dr. Dan: There was a time when I had a really bad stomachache. It wasn't that bad, but it was bad. And the day got away from me, and it just happened, and I had to slug through the day. But it's funny because in the past, when that would happen, and then my wife would know, oh, you slept in, you needed it, but you need to tune in. You need to do something. Right? And I'd be like, “I just want to suffer today.” Then she'd be like, “What? Why do you want to suffer?” And I was just like, “Because then that was I can appreciate the beauty of what I have by suffering today, and then tomorrow I'll be doing it perfect.” You know?
Siri Shakti: He really does say that.
Dr. Dan: I do. And I do suffer. And I do. But that's okay. My point is, is be committed to doing it. But if there's some reason, like you got to hop on a plane early that morning or something, or something has … or you have a sick kid or something, you have to take care of them, be okay with yourself if you have to do a shortened version of it.
Siri Shakti: Right.
Dr. Dan: If you just need to chant in, or even if you're with a sick kid, and they finally fall asleep, and you're exhausted in the morning, and you're just like, you know what? I'm just going to do some deep breaths and do something internally or something, or do a yoga.
Siri Shakti: That's right.
Dr. Dan: You know, something. But be okay with it, and understand that it happens. Just don't make a habit of missing it or, as I like to call it, suffering.
Siri Shakti: Yes. Yes. And one thing that I love that Yogi Bhajan said, and for those of you that don't know who Yogi Bhajan is, he is the man that brought Kundalini yoga to the west. We'll be getting into his story in another session, but just wanted to mention something that he would always say, is that sadhana is a completely selfish act. Let me clarify. That doesn't mean that you're a selfish person. Having a morning practice is something that is selfish because it's something that is completely done for yourself. It's something that you do each morning to help yourself fill up your tank of life, fill up yourself, get yourself into that balance each morning so that you are ready, willing, and able to do the things that you need to do in your life and be there not only for yourself, but be there for the people that you love. The people in your world.
Yeah. Like I said, sadhana is different for everyone. For us, the way that we enjoy doing it is we always do meditation. We love yoga, so we do yoga. Part of Kundalini yoga is doing chanting, which is really just singing. It's using a different sound current. We do some chanting, and we usually end by doing a little prayer. That's just our routine. That's what we like. And something that I'm going to do is I'm actually going to put up some videos of some yoga sets, and different things that we enjoy doing for our sadhana that you can try out and see if it's something that you would enjoy doing and that you could incorporate into your morning routine.
Dr. Dan: Exactly. Oh, and a little bonus here for y'all, for you Tony Robbins fans, who we mention his name a lot, one thing that's cool is if you are a Tony Robbins fan and you've listened to … If you've been to his events, or you've listened to his tapes, you might have heard him talk about a story of when he talked about uncertainty in his life. And he talked about him having a doctor seeing that he had a tumor. He actually told a story where he went to a shaman or some spiritual leader that said that he found that, “Oh, there's a tumor, you need to go get this checked out.”
There's a bunch of variations of the story where he doesn't even mention the shaman or whatever he called it in there, I can't remember. But he talked about the uncertainty of going to a doctor and them saying, “Hey, you've got a tumor on your …” What was it? The pituitary gland, however you pronounce that. And they said-
Siri Shakti: Yeah, pituitary.
Dr. Dan: Yeah, they said that, “It might be nothing, but you need to get this checked out, because it could be bad. It might need to be removed.” And he went to a doctor and the doctor said, “I'm the specialist, but I need to look at this,” and he had to wait a couple days, and then they said, “You need to come in so we can talk about this,” and he's like, “Can't you tell me over the phone? Because I'm freaked out.” And he's like, “No, I'll see you in four, five days.” Then he's like, “Seriously? Now I got to sit there for four, five days?”
Anyways, that story was actually … He was talking about Yogi Bhajan. Yogi Bhajan is the one that actually told him that. He said he was supposed to give him some of this energy transfer that was supposed to give Tony this tremendous energy, and Tony's like, “Yeah, give it to me. Hit me with it. I want to feel what this is,” you know? And he started to do it, and he had to stop and say, “Look, man, you need to go to a doctor, because I sense there's something in there.”
Siri Shakti: Wow.
Dr. Dan: So he's the one that actually had said, “You've got something going on with your …” I can't even say it.
Siri Shakti: Pituitary.
Dr. Dan: There you go. Pituitary.
Siri Shakti: That's okay.
Dr. Dan: Okay, gland, right? “You've got something going on with that, so you need to go get that checked out.” Little fun fact for those of you that-
Siri Shakti: Oh, that's cool.
Dr. Dan: … have heard that story before.
Siri Shakti: I actually forgot about that. That's so cool.
Dr. Dan: Yeah. I forgot where Tony actually … I want to say that was at the first platinum event I went to where he was talking … That's how he was introducing Guru Singh, was saying that that's how he met him.
Siri Shakti: Oh, yeah.
Dr. Dan: I want to say at the time, it was 30 years or something, or 20, 30 years prior to that.
Siri Shakti: Yeah. And to connect the dots for all of you, our teacher, Guru Singh, who we learn from, his teacher was Yogi Bhajan. So that's how it all connects.
Dr. Dan: Exactly, yeah. I think I already mentioned this, but Guru Singh is … Or, Tony Robbins is the one that introduced me to Guru Singh at that actual event. That was in 2006, yeah.
Siri Shakti: That's beautiful.
Dr. Dan: And then came Kundalini yoga and all that good stuff that we use today.
Siri Shakti: Now-
Dr. Dan: What are we going to talk about now? What they should and shouldn't do?
Siri Shakti: Do you want to get into the hydrotherapy part first?
Dr. Dan: Yeah. First, I'd like to start off by saying what not to do.
Siri Shakti: Oh, what not to do. That's a good one.
Dr. Dan: What you don't want to do is you don't want to drink coffee or any kind of stimulants first thing in the morning. I know a lot of people's ritual is the first thing you do is they have their coffee pot turn on at 7:00 AM or whatever time they're going to wake up, and then they like to get up and drink that coffee before they even open their eyes. You've seen those old cartoons, or those cartoons where the person can't even see until they drink their coffee.
Siri Shakti: Uh-huh (affirmative).
Dr. Dan: We're going to say, “Don't do that.” We're not saying you can't drink coffee.
Siri Shakti: No, no, no.
Dr. Dan: We're just saying, don't start off your day with the coffee and then sitting down and watching some negative news or something like that.
Siri Shakti: We're saying first do your daily practice, your preparation for your day before you go and have your coffee. And then go for it! If you love coffee, go enjoy it.
Dr. Dan: Exactly. Start off by … Let's talk about the first thing you want to do is you want to get up and, before you start doing any yoga or anything like that, you're going to do our favorite thing, which is hopping in the shower.
Siri Shakti: The shower, yes. It's really interesting because before we got into Kundalini yoga and I started learning about the infamous cold shower that we're going to be talking about, which is also the other name is hydrotherapy, one thing I didn't realize is that … At the time, but Tony Robbins is really big into this, and I didn't find that out until I went to his resort in Fiji, and he …
Dr. Dan: What was that, life mastery? Is that what that event was?
Siri Shakti: Yeah, life mastery. You do a cleanse and get your body in shape, and-
Dr. Dan: Yeah, that was 2006 as well.
Siri Shakti: Yeah, 2006. Yeah.
Dr. Dan: That cold-ass tub they had.
Siri Shakti: They had a-
Dr. Dan: Or not even a tub, it's a …
Siri Shakti: … hydrotherapy pool. You go from the sauna, you're all hot and sweaty. You jump into this freezing ice cold pool.
Dr. Dan: It was the size of a kiddie pool, but deep. It was like-
Siri Shakti: It's deep, yeah.
Dr. Dan: What was it, 15 feet deep or something? Or 10?
Siri Shakti: Yeah.
Dr. Dan: I mean, it was pretty deep.
Siri Shakti: You jump in and I don't remember how long.
Dr. Dan: And your bathing suit fell off once. I remember.
Siri Shakti: Did it?
Dr. Dan: Yeah, the top came off.
Siri Shakti: Oh, everyone got a show, then.
Dr. Dan: I don't know, I think it was just one person that got a show.
Siri Shakti: Lovely.
Dr. Dan: But he said, “Don't worry, you're not my type. I don't like women.” So you were okay.
Siri Shakti: He said that?
Dr. Dan: Yeah, he did. I remember.
Siri Shakti: How do I not remember this? I think I blocked it out.
Dr. Dan: Yeah. I don't remember his name, but I remember that's what he said.
Siri Shakti: But I trust you.
Dr. Dan: He was laughing. He was like, “I got a show, but don't worry, you're not my type.”
Siri Shakti: Wow. That's … Okay. I actually trust you, because you have a really good memory. So yeah, first … That was my first experience with hydrotherapy. Then when we got into Kundalini yoga, another aspect of the practice is that the first thing you do after you wake up is you go into the shower. Now, we've changed this a little bit, because we used to only take a cold shower.
Dr. Dan: For years. For years, all we did was take a freezing cold … I mean, the coldest that knob would get is the shower you need to take. And it's got to be the coldest. Fun story, when we moved into this house that we're in now in Coto de Caza, we actually … The upstairs shower wouldn't get cold enough.
Siri Shakti: No.
Dr. Dan: I even bought a thermal or … I guess it's called a thermal. It's a laser that checks temperature, and I also bought one of those, I don't know, food thermometers as well so I could test the temperature of the water, because I'm like, “This water's not cold.” And-
Siri Shakti: We need it colder!
Dr. Dan: Yeah. Imagine when we called the repair guy, the handy guy, and I was like, “Hey, our shower doesn't get cold enough.” And he's like, “Wait, you're talking about hot enough, right?” I said, “No, cold enough.”
Siri Shakti: Cold enough.
Dr. Dan: And then he's like, “What?” I had to repeat myself three times so he understood I wasn't confused or something, so he had to come, and there was something wrong with the thermostat or something. It's a little thing they had to replace. It didn't take that long to fix. But for a good month, because we were too lazy to have it replaced or we just thought maybe it's the pipes, because we didn't really understand it was the thermostat. We didn't know the internals or whatever. We just thought, “Have no idea why it's not working.” We ended up … For 30 days, we would actually go downstairs and first thing in the morning, we'd jump in the freezing cold pool. That was our morning.
Siri Shakti: Oh, no, no, no. Let me explain this correctly. We have a really cool water slide, rock water slide.
Dr. Dan: Oh, yeah, yeah, my bad.
Siri Shakti: We would quietly, because it was early in the morning, didn't want to scream out loud and make my neighbors wonder, “Who just moved in next door? These are weirdos.” Okay? We would go down the water slide into the freezing cold water, and at that time, it was almost winter, and it just so happened to be pretty cold. Yeah, we're in California, right, but it was actually pretty cold then. The water was maybe 58 degrees or something, I think. So yeah.
Dr. Dan: Which doesn't sound that cold, but-
Siri Shakti: Oh, it is, though.
Dr. Dan: Yeah. When you're comparing … Even 70 degree water is really cold. Because you can't … It's not the same as air.
Siri Shakti: Oh, let me tell you.
Dr. Dan: Outside air.
Siri Shakti: I can tell you firsthand, I did a triathlon in a lake that was … They said it was 60 degree water, and at the time, I had never done a triathlon in that lake before, and oh my god. I thought I was going to die. And it was 60 degrees! I was wearing a wetsuit, so I can tell you; freezing. It was so cold.
Dr. Dan: Yeah. It's different than air temperature.
Siri Shakti: Yes.
Dr. Dan: There's the scientific reason why, but I'm not going to get into that, because …
Siri Shakti: Yeah.
Dr. Dan: We started off by doing cold showers.
Siri Shakti: The cold showers.
Dr. Dan: That's all we did for a couple years. And then we took a little bit of a break. I think in the last … I forgot which episode it was. We were talking about being inspired to wake up early, and I think you had mentioned that you'd recently watched the Dalai …
Siri Shakti: The Dalai Lama.
Dr. Dan: Or you saw something on the Dalai Lama, how he wakes up early, and it inspired you to start waking up early again. Because we took a little break from that time.
Siri Shakti: Yeah, because just like anything else, things ebb and flow, and I was struggling waking up that early. So for a while, I wasn't waking up quite as early. But when I watched that video of the Dalai Lama, I was very much reminded of the importance of doing that, so I got back to that.
Let me explain the benefits of the cold water, okay? Cold water is really, really amazing. First of all, the power of water is amazing. But what it's going to do is when it hits the skin, it opens up the capillaries and increases that circulation and wakes up the entire nervous system. But on top of that, it's actually going to clear the toxins at the most deepest level of your body.
What I say the bonus is, is that cold water keeps your skin looking so radiant, so healthy and young. It's funny because often times, I have different parents that I know of my kids' friends and things. They say, “What do you do with your skin? It's so amazing.” I'm like, “Oh, cold showers.” And on top of that, what you do before you step into the cold shower is you actually give yourself a little massage. You take pure almond oil and let me tell you that your skin, the body, loves almond oil. Almond oil does not clog the pores, like many different oils do.
Dr. Dan: Yeah. It makes you oily, but it doesn't clog your pores.
Siri Shakti: Oh, but it feels so good afterwards. Basically, you just put it in your hands. You rub your whole body, just lather it in, massage yourself. Then you go ahead and you step into the water. One thing that we were saying is that we used to only take cold showers. But recently, I'd say a few months ago, we learned that there's a huge benefit to the warm water as well. Warm water, what it does is it actually relaxes the body. It dilates the blood vessels, which increases the blood flow, and then it's actually going to ease any of that feeling of stiffness that you have.
First, let's go in order here. You rub your body with the almond oil, then what we do is you step in and you take a nice, warm shower for a few minutes. And then, ta-da! Drum roll. You turn it to-
Dr. Dan: The very coldest it gets.
Siri Shakti: … the coldest it gets. And-
Dr. Dan: All the way down.
Siri Shakti: You know, it's really … What I have found is that if you relate to the experience in a powerful way, then you're going to get the most out of it. What I like to do, because over the years, doing my studying, I have learned that different indigenous tribes, what they do is they utilize the power of water by plunging into cold streams and things like that, so they use hydrotherapy. What I personally do is when I turn the water to cold, I imagine that I'm one of those ancient indigenous people. That I'm part of one of those tribes, and that I'm using this water to awaken myself this morning, and to align myself for my day.
It becomes more than just the active, oh, I'm standing in freezing cold water. This sucks. For me, relating it to it in this way, it becomes this experience where I feel a deeper connection with sense of spirit and purpose. I don't know, how do you relate to it? Do you just think to yourself, “This sucks”?
Dr. Dan: I will say that … First I'll say it by saying that when we used to just take cold showers, I think those were actually harder, because-
Siri Shakti: Amen.
Dr. Dan: … it's already a little cold in the house or whatever, you're just waking up, and you know you're about to just get in a cold shower, right from the beginning, and that sucked.
Siri Shakti: Yeah.
Dr. Dan: But once we started doing the warm ones, I'm like, this is … It's kind of a double-edged sword, I guess, because … I don't even know if I'd put it that way. But you can trick yourself into getting in at least, this way, is what I feel like. Because you're not going to turn down a warm shower, so you get in and you turn on the warm water, and the secret is, is we're going to talk about bathing tips here. Is for me at least, is I first start with just washing my privates. Right?
Siri Shakti: Thank you for that.
Dr. Dan: You're welcome. I think everybody wants to make sure that I do wash my privates, right?
Siri Shakti: I know they were all thinking that. But I'm glad you offered it.
Dr. Dan: My point is, is because you don't want to run your privates under the cold water. There's actually a whole reason behind that, we can get to another time. I start with that, and then no more than about three, four, five minutes in the warm shower. And then you step out, and I put it to the coldest it'll get, and then I do some deep breaths. Right?
Siri Shakti: Yeah.
Dr. Dan: I do a breath of fire, which is … Through the nose. I'll go …
Siri Shakti: Yeah, I can always hear you. That's when I know, oh, he's stepping into his cold shower.
Dr. Dan: Yeah. Sometimes I'll do it in my mouth, or sometimes I'll do it through my nose, whatever. Then I'll step under the cold water. And then I'm just okay with it, you know? It's very cold and shocking at first, but within about 10, 20 seconds, I just kind of let go, and I allow myself to be under there, and then it doesn't feel bad.
Now, the reason I even had to mention about cleaning my privates first was because what I do … I don't wash my entire body under the warm water, because then you have nothing to really do under the cold water, and then you're just going to stand there for a minute or two or three? Because you're supposed to do equal. So if you're going to go three minutes in the warm, you need to do about two or three minutes minimum for the cold as well.
Siri Shakti: Yeah.
Dr. Dan: You don't want to just go under the cold for 10 seconds and go, “Oh, I did the cold!” No. You need to do a little longer, so that's why I … Then I'll wash under the cold water. Because now I have something to do, and I'm able to do that.
Siri Shakti: I guess I should start doing that. I don't do that. I just jump up and down, and run around.
Dr. Dan: That's why it sucks for you. That's why it sucks for you. I told you that. Because you have nothing to do. Because I've tried that myself, too, where I've just stood there for three minutes, and I'm just standing there. Okay. You know? It was kind of boring, so you've got to make sure you do that. But I will say … One thing I want to mention real quick is in case you missed that, pure almond oil. Okay? Don't get almond oil that's 10% or 50% or 80%. You can go to Whole Foods. You can get it on Amazon as well.
Siri Shakti: Yeah, and our favorite kind … We can even post the link.
Dr. Dan: Oh, you wrote it down?
Siri Shakti: Yeah.
Dr. Dan: Cool.
Siri Shakti: Our favorite one, the brand is called Now Essentials. Like he said, you can get online, Whole Foods, Sprouts …
Dr. Dan: I've bought it on Amazon before, too.
Siri Shakti: I could have sworn once I saw it at Target. They might have started carrying it, possibly, but that is great.
Dr. Dan: Health food stores, they'll all have it.
Siri Shakti: Yeah.
Dr. Dan: Three minutes, three minutes is what you want to do. And the other thing I was going to mention kind of answers your question you were saying, was that prior to … You've heard me say this before, where I'm about to get in the shower, or before I get in the shower and I'm like, “I've got a headache.” It's just kind of that feeling you get when you first wake up sometimes, and you're just like, ugh, and it feels like it's dragging on already when you first get up, and you just don't want to get up. Well once I get into that cold shower and I get out, man.
Siri Shakti: Oh yeah.
Dr. Dan: It's like, okay, I'm ready to go! Let's go!
Siri Shakti: I mean, big time. I'm telling you.
Dr. Dan: Felt like I drank a six pack of Red Bull or Rockstar, or whatever the heck the craziest drink is. Monster. I don't know what it is today, but whatever it is, I drank a bunch.
Siri Shakti: One of those things.
Dr. Dan: But I feel better. I feel good.
Siri Shakti: Oh gosh, one of the funniest things Yogi Bhajan would say. One of the quickest ways to get close to God is to take a cold shower, because when you jump in, you'll be like, “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!”
Dr. Dan: Yeah. There is something they tell you to say, right? Which is … What was it called? Waheguru, waheguru.
Siri Shakti: Waheguru.
Dr. Dan: I used to do that when we first started doing it. Now I just do the breath. I thought that was funny.
Siri Shakti: Yeah.
Dr. Dan: So that's awesome. Okay, so yeah, you start off with the cold shower.
Siri Shakti: After that, when we sit down to do our practice-
Dr. Dan: Oh, but then you put on almond oil when you get out again.
Siri Shakti: Oh, yeah, yeah. I always do the almond oil afterwards, and then get dressed or-
Dr. Dan: And you can dry off after, too. You can put on the almond oil and then dry off after.
Siri Shakti: Yeah, so that way you're not getting the oil all over your clothes.
Dr. Dan: Yeah, you're not … Which isn't bad for it, but you don't want to be oily everywhere you go.
Siri Shakti: Yeah. Then get changed, and do you want to go into our own personal practice of what we do, or …
Dr. Dan: Yeah. I mean, it's going to be different for all of you. I mean, depending on what time you're getting up and what your daily schedule is that you have to complete. Because I work from home and we set our own hours, the next thing we'll do is we'll have a little bit of breakfast, and then we'll go on a morning walk most of the time. Do something like that.
Siri Shakti: We're talking about after we've done our yoga and meditation.
Dr. Dan: Oh yeah, my bad. We skipped over the yoga meditation.
Siri Shakti: Yeah. That's what I was wondering. Okay. Then we get into what we call our sadhana. And for us, that is starting out by doing some yoga. Moving our body, working on breathing. Now, in Kundalini yoga, we call this pranayama, which is consciously using different breathing techniques to create a certain change in the physical and emotional body. We do that. We also do a meditation, and one thing that I love that you may be interested in is when I was first starting to meditate, meditation for me was confusing. I was like, what do I do? Do I just sit there? Do I be quiet? Right?
In Kundalini yoga, we do a little bit of silent meditation, but a lot of it is with chanting, where we sing a certain mantra, or we do a certain movement or a certain mudra, which is using our hands in different ways. What I have found is great is YouTube is just a world of beautiful, beautiful yoga videos, guided meditations. I have found it really valuable that I can look up … Let's say I want to work on … Oh, let's say you're dealing with anxiety.
Meditations for anxiety. Boom, you'll see all these great guided meditations. That's also one way to start out, if you want to try meditating. You can sit down and-
Dr. Dan: Or you could just go to our website, because we've already added some videos and we'll be adding more.
Siri Shakti: Absolutely, yes.
Dr. Dan: You could request a video. You could be like, “Hey, Siri Shakti, make a video for this.”
Siri Shakti: Yes.
Dr. Dan: Because to be honest, I see you searching for videos all the time on YouTube, and some of them are pretty bad.
Siri Shakti: Oh, gosh.
Dr. Dan: You're scrolling for 10, 20 minutes to find the video to do.
Siri Shakti: That is true, yes.
Dr. Dan: So I'd reccomend just request a video. Siri Shakti can-
Siri Shakti: I would be happy to make it.
Dr. Dan: … put that on our list, and start making a video and adding more. Our whole goal is to have just a ton of videos, like a wealth of videos. I know we've added a couple already at the time of this podcast that we're doing right now, this episode, but we'll be adding more and more. Within a week or two weeks, we might have 100 videos on there. We'll see.
Siri Shakti: Yes, yes.
Dr. Dan: Something like that.
Siri Shakti: And I think my main point in saying that is that when I first got started, I felt like I was alone out there. And then I suddenly found out, there were so many resources. And one of them is these beautiful videos. And yes, I will be so happy to make any videos, so please put your requests out there and I'll get to that.
Dr. Dan: Nice. Okay, one thing I'd like to mention before we even go through any more of the yoga stuff, first off, this is not your typical workout gym-style yoga. Okay?
Siri Shakti: Right.
Dr. Dan: The type of yoga we're talking about, because I know when people talked about yoga prior to that, that's what I always thought. I was like, oh, yeah, so it's going to be like that. And then once we did it, I was like, “Whoa, this is different. This is different than anything else I've ever seen or tried or anything like that.”
Siri Shakti: Yes.
Dr. Dan: It's pretty amazing.
Siri Shakti: Oh, yeah. I practice many forms of yoga. I love all the forms of yoga. They're so beautiful. The one thing that I really enjoy about doing Kundalini yoga, especially in the morning, is that it's very, very meditative. When you sit down, you're really coming into a place of meditation where you're sitting down, maybe moving through a few postures, but you're not going to be doing cardio.
Dr. Dan: Exactly, yeah. Kundalini yoga, I've heard several stories about how it begun, and why it was created, but basically, to shorten that story so we don't have to go through that, it was basically explained that Kundalini yoga was developed for the householder. Opposed to you having to go to a cave away from everybody and just do yoga and meditate for 20, 30, 40 years in solitude. They said, you know what? Some people have to have families and need to be part of the world, so let's develop it to where the householder person can do it, the average person.
Siri Shakti: Yes. It's very much designed for someone who needs to be really grounded and rooted in the modern day world that we're living in. You can use this practice and still have a family, a job, all the things that you need to do in the world. And this form of yoga is really going to create a firm foundation and balance for you to be able to do those things.
Dr. Dan: Exactly. Start now doing this yoga. You can be okay with doing five, ten minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes just to start. It doesn't have to be where you need to do 40 minutes or an hour or anything like that right from the get-go. Something is better than nothing, so I'd reccomend starting with 10 minutes. 10 minutes might be a couple movements. Again, we'll have more videos on rockstarinlife.com.
Siri Shakti: Yeah. When we started out, it was very basic. We did four different movements and a guided meditation. And it maybe took us 15 minutes. And now we do it-
Dr. Dan: Yeah. I would start with the videos on rockstarinlife.com, and just start with that, because I know a lot of people listening to this are going to be like, “Well, I do want to do something, but I don't even know what to pick.”
Siri Shakti: Yeah.
Dr. Dan: So go ahead. Go to rockstarinlife.com, and pick one of those videos, and we'll be adding more, and you can pick whichever one, and we'll probably even have something in there, like how to start your morning routine and go a little bit deeper into that. But for now, just pick and choose any of them that you want to do.
Siri Shakti: Yeah. Get the experience. Have the experience of what this beautiful practice does for you, especially first thing in the morning, starting your day. It's going to be immediate. You're going to feel the benefits. It was that way for us, as well.
Dr. Dan: Perfect. Okay, so after doing the yoga, then we usually have breakfast. You go to the restroom, do any of those things that you need to do. Get everything settled. And then for us, we'll go on a morning walk. Even if it's-
Siri Shakti: Morning family walk.
Dr. Dan: Yeah, family walk as well. Sometimes the kids fight with us, so we just go, forget it. We'll just go without them. It happens. Or if it's raining really bad outside. I remember when it was raining, we actually … And again, we're in southern California, so it doesn't rain that often. But it does rain sometimes, and if it does, a couple times the kids loved it. We went to the mall. Indoor mall. We don't have a lot of indoor malls, but we got some.
Siri Shakti: Yeah.
Dr. Dan: And they loved it.
Siri Shakti: We walked through the mall. One time, we actually brought umbrellas, though, and we did walk in the rain.
Dr. Dan: Yeah, we did.
Siri Shakti: I liked that.
Dr. Dan: We did that, too. You can make it fun and do that. But it's good to just get out there and do some exercise and get out in nature and do all that good stuff. You could also get a treadmill, elliptical trainer, something like that to do some morning exercise, and you could work out. You could do whatever you need to do to keep yourself healthy, because obviously you need to do those things. But it's also good, no matter what, and we'll get into this, which is called earthing. I don't know if we want to jump in that now.
Siri Shakti: Oh, let me just touch on that, briefly.
Dr. Dan: Okay.
Siri Shakti: Because for me, that's a big part of my daily routine. I do this every day. Give you a quick explanation, if you think about human life, a long time ago, humans were really, really connected to the earth, because we would have our hands in the earth, we walked barefoot. Now, fast forward all this time to modern day human life. We're not as connected. We wear shoes, we drive in cars, we don't usually grow our own vegetables or our own food. People grow it for us, so we're not out there planting with our hands in the dirt. So we are often times lacking that earth energy.
Don't take my word for it. Go online and look this up. There has been multiple studies done on the relationship to the human body and how it actually connects. The earth energy is a real, tangible thing. What you do to balance this out is you take your shoes and socks off, and you go outside. You can just do this for three minutes a day, and what I do is I walk outside. I either stand on the grass or I stand on the cement, but it has to be unpaved cement. It could be … Like in our backyard, we have-
Dr. Dan: Like rocks.
Siri Shakti: Like rocks, yeah, like rocks. Also, you could stand on sand, or even just dirt.
Dr. Dan: Not asphalt, and not sidewalk.
Siri Shakti: Yeah. Sorry, AstroTurf doesn't count either.
Dr. Dan: Yeah, no, that doesn't work.
Siri Shakti: All you do is you just put your bare feet on whatever surface you're standing on for three minutes. And that is going to help to ground you.
Dr. Dan: Yeah. Grass can be at a park. Grass. It can be the sand. The ocean, or a beach, or something like that. Rocks, like you said. There's also earthing mats, as well. If you can't get outside now.
Siri Shakti: Oh, yes.
Dr. Dan: I still … That's not a supplement for that, so not saying if you get a earthing mat, then you don't have to go outside. I would still reccomend you go out there and do that. What I did is I bought … It's an earthing mat. It's a thin mat that you plug into the ground plug of your wall, of your outlet, your socket, which is actually … And I didn't really know this until I started researching that, is that that's … The ground is actually grounded to your house. It's like there's a ground thing that goes … All of those electrical sockets go into the ground. There's a pole or something that goes from the concrete that goes down into the ground or something like that.
Siri Shakti: Okay.
Dr. Dan: They all attach to that, so by plugging it in there, you are grounding yourself. I actually use that, and I have it under my desk. When I'm sitting there, I have my feet on top of it, and you can do that, or you could just have one with you and just stand on it for a couple minutes, just to break it up. But still get outside and still do that, though.
Siri Shakti: Especially being in front of electronics a lot. I know we are. Our family is. Getting outside to do that is so important. I just have a little story to tell. When my daughter was 13, she was going through a challenging time. She's a very sensitive girl, just like myself. Energetically really sensitive. She was really worrying about things very much in her head, and I called my teacher, Guru Singh, once, and his wife picked up. Guru [Pakarma 00:55:59] is his wife. Beautiful, wonderful woman. I explained what was going on with Kayleen, and she said, “Have her go outside.” This was my first time hearing about this. “Have her go outside, and do some earthing. Stand on the grass for three minutes a day.”
Within a week, I noticed a huge shift in her emotionally. She was doing so much better. Much calmer, because what she said to me is that there was too much mental energy. Everything was happening in the head, so it brought the energy down to the feet and grounded her, and balanced out her body. And sure enough, it worked. That was pretty beautiful.
Dr. Dan: Nice. Yeah, so earth daily. It would be great if you have a job, and you're in an office or something like that. Take a break. Take your shoes off, go outside.
Siri Shakti: Yeah.
Dr. Dan: First go outside, then take your shoes off and stand in the grass. You know?
Siri Shakti: Yeah.
Dr. Dan: Or something like that.
Siri Shakti: And don't be embarrassed that you're going to look like a cool hippie, frolicking in nature.
Dr. Dan: Well, I don't think they were until you said that. Now they're going to be thinking that.
Siri Shakti: No, I always think about that. Be proud of it.
Dr. Dan: People are going to be looking at you. They don't really know.
Siri Shakti: No, I'm just joking. Just playing.
Dr. Dan: Nice. Nice.
Siri Shakti: I'm playing.
Dr. Dan: Obviously these are things that can help you. There's other things like reading. Reading a book, and listening to positive stuff, like this podcast. Listening to this podcast. And doing less of. At least less of, if not eliminating, the things like watching news. News is shorts for negative entertainment while-
Siri Shakti: Sitting.
Dr. Dan: … sitting, yeah. I remember the first time I heard that, many, many years ago. I thought that was interesting. But we went on what we called a mental colonic, which is where we removed a lot of these negative things from our body and cleansed ourself from it. We went for I think it was two years where we didn't actually watch any television. We did watch a movie, inspirational type movies or any movies that uplifted us, we were okay with. But we didn't watch any negative entertainment. No negative TV or movies or anything like that. We didn't look at the news or newspaper or anything like that. I don't even think we even listened to music for that whole time. We were just listening to positive stuff. At the time, it was audio books. Books on tape, because this was before the time of podcasts or iPhones or iPods or any of those things like that.
Siri Shakti: Yeah. And it may sound extreme, but we understood that for us, that's what we needed at the time to cleanse our mental … what was going on up there.
Dr. Dan: And I wanted to be successful. I was sick of struggling, and I'm like, you know, hey, if this works, because it was suggested to us by one of our mentors, I was like, if this works, then that's awesome. I was like, well, if it worked for these guys, I might as well do it. You know? Some big name people you guys have probably heard of.
Siri Shakti: Yeah. I think that that's really part of learning how to be aware of yourself, creating that self-awareness. As you grow in your self-awareness, you'll start to see that you have this internal gauge, and I have definitely felt that over the past year become very clear to me, that I can now feel within myself if I've been picking up too much negative stuff or watching too much negative things that day, and I need to balance it out with some uplifting things. And I think with the world that we live in right now, we are bombarded with images. News and everything that's happening in the world, and we're not saying that you can't watch the news, you can't keep up on what's happening. Or, you know, with politics, all that fun topic right now.
Dr. Dan: It's just like saying that you can eat cake, but don't eat it all day long.
Siri Shakti: Exactly.
Dr. Dan: Don't eat it with every meal, right?
Siri Shakti: Yeah.
Dr. Dan: Instead, you can have a small slice once a day or once a week. The more you eat it, the less it's going to … the more you're going to feel like crap.
Siri Shakti: Yeah.
Dr. Dan: The same thing goes.
Siri Shakti: What we do is we'll see what's going on and maybe turn on the news or we like that funny news. Who's that guy that does the funny news?
Dr. Dan: I don't know. Who was that?
Siri Shakti: Seth …
Dr. Dan: Oh, yeah, one of the late shows or something.
Siri Shakti: Is it Seth?
Dr. Dan: Trevor, and Seth.
Siri Shakti: Trevor Noah, yeah.
Dr. Dan: And Seth.
Siri Shakti: They're so funny.
Dr. Dan: He's kind of funny, but yeah.
Siri Shakti: Just to see what's going on. And then I shut it off. I'm like, “Okay. I've heard what's happening.”
Dr. Dan: They give the highlights of what's-
Siri Shakti: They give the highlights.
Dr. Dan: … kind of gone on, and regardless of what your point of view on your politics, or if you don't agree with what they say. There'll be times that we're like, yeah, yeah, we don't agree with that as well, but at least they give us the highlights in a comical way. So we can laugh about it a little bit. Doesn't have that same electrical charge, right?
Siri Shakti: Yeah. Yeah. Because I know some people that we've talked about this very subject, and they have admitted to having the news on constantly, and that they started to see how it was really affecting them negatively.
Dr. Dan: Oh man. We go to my parents' house, right?
Siri Shakti: Uh-oh.
Dr. Dan: Yeah, they're probably listening, so yes, I am talking to you. Or our friend's house as well. Sometimes we'll go to a friend's house, or we'll do dinner for a holiday or something. And they'll throw on the news, and I'm just like, man. It's like the news is they're shoveling crap down your throat constantly. It's not like those short shows where they'll talk for five, ten minutes about something and give you the highlights. They draw out something that could be explained in ten minutes to three hours. You know? They take long pauses, and they wait for that dun dun dun. You know? It's like, come on. Just tell me the highlights, that's all I need to hear. So yeah, avoid that stuff. That's a no.
Siri Shakti: Yup. That's right.
Dr. Dan: All right. Is there anything else you wanted to cover on that? Because I was going to cover a couple other things.
Siri Shakti: No, that's it.
Dr. Dan: Okay.
Siri Shakti: Moving on to …
Dr. Dan: This is one thing we're not going to really get deep in, because we've been talking for quite a while now, so I want to try and keep these a little shorter. But as far as something that's coming up soon, too, is what we'll talk a little bit about healthy eating. Plant-based diet. Again, when we are talking about these things, we're not saying, “You know what? These are things that you have to do.”
Siri Shakti: Right.
Dr. Dan: “And you have to do them 100%.” Even if you just tried it for a few days, seven days. You know what, I'm going to commit to this for seven days and see how I feel, and then I'll either continue doing it or I won't do it. Or even if you say, you know what? I'm not even going to go full on exactly what you guys are talking about. I'm not going to go 100% plant-based diet. Instead, I'll just do 30 or 40%, or 50%, or 60%. You can pick whatever number you want.
Now, of course we would reccomend going 100%. But you know what? Anything is better than nothing. We're not here to force an agenda on you or anything that we feel this is how you should be or anything like that. But we are saying, give it a chance. Try it out. See if you like it. See if it fits. Right?
Siri Shakti: Yeah. We're just going to be sharing with you the things that we have discovered for ourself that has worked, and we want to share it with you, and our personal experience.
Dr. Dan: Yeah. Now, keep in mind, this is coming from a guy that would have never imagined ever doing yoga. I used to be 250 pounds, I used to body build, I used to eat five pounds of meat a day, 40 egg whites a day.
Siri Shakti: Yup.
Dr. Dan: I ate so much. Fortunately, my parents own a restaurant, the Copper Skillet in Dublin. Dublin, California, not Ireland. And I remember I would have to get crates of eggs to buy them from my dad to bring them home. And I'd buy these big things of chicken breast and stuff. I was a big meat-eater, and I completely … I was sold on this. Once I tried it out, I'm like, “Wow. Plant-based eating is amazing!” And people say, “Oh, you're limited to what you can eat. Don't you miss certain foods?” And I'm like, “No. I feel like there's so much more!” Before, it was all boring.
Siri Shakti: There really is.
Dr. Dan: It was chicken and rice or beef or steak or something. A sandwich. It was so boring. Now, it's like you can make anything out of anything. You're just like, whoa, this is amazing. And again, we'll go deeper in another episode, but I just wanted to put that out there, that we will be talking about that at some point.
As far as … One thing I was going to mention … Oh, another thing, too, is if you work at a job, here's a couple recommendations I have as well that can help you with your daily practice. A couple things would be I have a stand-up desk, which is amazing. I love it. Sometimes I forget to put it up, but a lot of times, I do, and it's electronic, so I have it set so I can just press a number, it goes up. Press a number and it comes down. I'll stand for a couple hours, and then I'll press it to go down, and when you're first starting out, you might only stand up for a half an hour a day. But anything is better than nothing, so I do highly reccomend getting a stand-up desk if you need a desk. The one I got is called … It's the Jarvis desk. I'll link to it in the show notes, or on the blog so you can get it there. rockstarinlife.com.
You can get one … I know Ikea also carries it. I think at Ikea, it's four or five hundred bucks. But I checked out that model. It wasn't as nice as the one I got. The one I got actually is … They have it in many different top covers. I ended up getting the bamboo one, which is amazing. I got the really long one. And you can get … These start at $400 or something like that, and I think they had free shipping on them as well when I looked at it last. I think I paid around $900 to $1,000, which isn't that much for when you take a look at what I got on the desk, because I got all the upgrades and everything as well. Take a look at that. Again, I'll have that link on there, but it was the Jarvis stand-up desk.
Also, I'll use a balance board, which is pretty cool, where you can stand and balance your body. You can get those on Amazon for 20, 30 bucks or something like that. I'll stand on that for a couple minutes at a time during the day, and it keeps me going through the day, so I'm not just always sitting.
Take walk breaks. Take walk breaks in between. If you have a little break at … If you work at a regular job and they're like, “Hey, this is your break time, and that's it,” then you know what, do what you need to do. But get out there and walk. Even if you got to just walk around the office or something like that, it's better than nothing.
And then drink enough water. Regardless if we're not just talking about work here, we're talking about everybody here, is you need to drink enough water. So many conflicting views on how much water you should drink a day. I don't measure. I just drink. I just carry a 32 ounce … I think it's a 32 ounce. Or is it 64? I don't even know. Let me look at this. I can't see. All right, you talk while I look.
Siri Shakti: Oh, yeah. Basically, what he does, and what we've all-
Dr. Dan: 24 ounces.
Siri Shakti: 24 ounces, okay.
Dr. Dan: That's the one. I used to have a 32, but I think I broke it. But yeah, so I carry this everywhere I go.
Siri Shakti: Yeah.
Dr. Dan: And I just fill it up. I probably … I don't know.
Siri Shakti: And I do, too. He made me.
Dr. Dan: Yeah, I probably drink … All our kids carry them, too. We have them for everybody. I probably drink, I don't know, six or seven of these a day or something.
Siri Shakti: Yeah, probably.
Dr. Dan: It's going to vary. You kind of know … Here's the thing, though. If you don't carry a bottle with you, and it's not in front of you at all times, then you're probably going to drink a heck of a lot less, because it's not there. It's not in front of you. So by carrying it around with you, you're going to drink as much as you need, is the point I'm trying to make. Right?
Siri Shakti: Now I'm thirsty. All this talk about water.
Dr. Dan: Water, water, water.
Siri Shakti: And I forgot mine.
Dr. Dan: Water, water, water. Drink enough water. One thing I want to mention … Is there anything you want to cover on that real quick? Because I was going to move onto preparing for bed.
Siri Shakti: Oh, no, that was what I was looking at too, because I have a few things I wanted to share abour preparing for bed.
Dr. Dan: Okay. Do you want to start, or do you want me to start?
Siri Shakti: I'll start.
Dr. Dan: Go for it.
Siri Shakti: Yeah, so one thing that I just started doing a few months ago, because yes, I do my morning practice, yoga meditation, but I had never really done an evening type of practice. Over the past months, I've started meditating each evening. After I brush my teeth and everything, I get into bed, I put on some ear buds, and I either do a silent meditation listening to beautiful music, or I do a guided meditation.
I have found that my sleep has been so much better, whereas before, I tended to have a hard time falling asleep. He can even be a witness to this, that I would toss and turn. I'd be like, “I'm hot, I can't fall asleep.” But now, when I do my meditation, it relaxes me so much that I just close my eyes, roll over, and I am out. Into my deep sleep pretty quickly. That's what I do.
Dr. Dan: Nice. Nice. Yeah, let's talk about what they need to do. First off, I wouldn't watch … Don't watch TV too late at night. It depends on … Everybody's a little different. First off, I'll say definitely don't watch anything negative.
Siri Shakti: No. No, no.
Dr. Dan: No news, nothing that's going to make you depressed or think about things. Don't watch Poltergeist or Paranormal Activity or anything like that, where you're freaked out at what's going on in the house or anything like that. We like to reccomend getting into bed about 10:00 PM. It's going to be different for everybody, but I wouldn't reccomend getting in bed any later than 10:30. 11:00 is kind of pushing it on some nights, but that's typically what we do. We try to get in bed by about 10:00, 10:30. The kids fight us. They're getting a little older now, so it's a little bit more tougher. But we do everything we can for ourselves to get in bed by 10:30. What else would you say is good for that?
Siri Shakti: It would be earlier, but when you have … Even those of you that don't have kids, I'm sure sometimes you have a lot of … Not sometimes, but many times, have a lot of things going on. I know for myself, my daughter's on a dance team, so by the time we get home, it's 9:30.
Dr. Dan: Yeah, that makes it tough.
Siri Shakti: So getting to bed earlier is not going to work. One of the things, too, in Kundalini yoga is … One of the things that you can do before you go to sleep, especially for those of you that run hot like I do when I sleep, is you run your feet under cold water, which helps to cool down your whole body. Really, it does work. Usually I would lay down and my body heat would be … I'd have to kick the covers off. When I use the cold water on my feet, I feel like it just cools down the whole system. That's something that's really beneficial.
Dr. Dan: Do you do that every night, you're saying?
Siri Shakti: No, I don't now, because ever since I've started doing the evening meditation, that also seems to … It's almost as if I had too much energy when I was jumping into bed. And then I expected myself to be able to fall asleep, so that created a lot of heat within me. But now, when I do the meditation, it calms down my whole system. Basically, calming down my energy and then I don't feel like I'm overheating.
Dr. Dan: Yeah. Some nights, like the nights you get home late and weekends and stuff like that, we'll stay up and we'll watch a movie or something like that.
Siri Shakti: Oh, yeah.
Dr. Dan: But again, like I said, we won't watch anything negative, like the news or anything, or a scary movie, or anything that's-
Siri Shakti: Right before bed, yeah.
Dr. Dan: … a movie of people being murdered and killed or whatever. We'll watch something inspirational or a comedy or something like that, that allows us kind of just laugh and have a good time, and connect and do that. You don't even have to do that. You could read a book, you can listen to an audible book or something like that. An audio book or something like that.
Another thing I'd reccomend as well is don't talk to negative people, whether this is … Actually, I forgot to mention this during the day is try and avoid all the negative people in your life. If people are making you feel … The people that make you feel pretty crappy. First, have a conversation with them and let them know. This could be a whole nother conversation that … Or a whole nother episode we talk about, which we probably will, right? Which is the one where we mention love your family and choose your friends?
Siri Shakti: Yes.
Dr. Dan: Think I might have mentioned that before, too. But definitely don't talk to them before bedtime, near bedtime. Because the closer you get to that bedtime, the more it's going to be on your mind, the more it's going to irritate you. Definitely avoid them at night. If they call at 5:00 … I'd say even before dinner. 5:00, 6:00 PM, I would just avoid their call and I would maybe text them and say, “Hey, sorry, got really busy. Can I call you back tomorrow?”
Oh, here's another thing you could do if you wanted to, if you really got to get sneaky. My mom's going to think I did this to her, but I didn't. There's an app called Slydial. It's S-l-y-d-i-a-l. It's a free app. I think they have an iPhone app, and I think you could also do it from the computer or something, too, probably. Or a number you can call or something. But when you call it, you can call somebody's cell phone. It only works with cell phone numbers. Let's say I didn't want to talk to my wife, and she called me, and she's bugging me, and I'm like, ugh. I really don't want to talk to her, because she's so negative and I'm getting ready for bed or something.
Siri Shakti: Hey there.
Dr. Dan: Or whatever, she's sleeping on the couch because she's been mean to me all day or something. No, I'm just kidding. But if I wanted to do this, I could just use the Slydial app. I call her cell phone number, and what it's going to do is it's going to go straight to her voicemail. It won't even ring on her phone, and it'll just show she had a missed call and a voicemail from me. So I could just be like, “Oh, I guess I missed you. Sorry. I'm going to get ready for bed, so we'll just talk tomorrow,” and turn off my phone. But now I called her back, so … I'm just saying that this is amazing. I've used it several times.
Siri Shakti: I remember that, yeah.
Dr. Dan: I think it's pretty awesome. It's Slydial. I think it's Slydial.com or something like that.
Siri Shakti: Yeah, and one thing that I'm famous for … Yes, I'm going to put myself out there and admit, I love … For some reason, when evening time comes, all these important things come to mind or I start worrying about something to do with the kids. And I love to go to my husband and be like, “Let's talk about this.” But what I have learned, and I'm getting better at, is to not talk about serious things before bed. No, no, no. Save it for the next day, because basically what we're saying is just don't load yourself up with information and stuff before bed.
Dr. Dan: Yeah, don't talk about the meaning of life, death, taxes, money …
Siri Shakti: It's time to decompress.
Dr. Dan: Do I have enough money for this, or we need to get Christmas presents, or presents, or something for somebody, or what am I going to do about my job, or … Completely wipe that away. Think of it as you're putting it in a box. Imagine you're writing down all the things that you're worried about and all the things that you have to deal with in the next day or beyond that, and you're stressed about it. Imagine you're going to write those all down, and then you're going to take that, fold it up, fold up that piece of paper, and you're going to put it in a box, close the box, and you're going to take it downstairs and you're going to put it in the kitchen or something. And then you'll tell yourself, “You know what? I'm not going to look, think, or even touch that box until tomorrow morning.”
Siri Shakti: Yeah. yeah.
Dr. Dan: Some time tomorrow, whether it be in the morning or afternoon or whatever. But you're scheduling it for another time, so you're not allowing yourself to be stressed, because it's not going to help you. You're not going to be able to fall asleep.
Siri Shakti: You're not going to be able to fall asleep, and what I found is that then you wake up in the morning and that same vibration that you felt right before you went to bed, you feel it first thing in the morning.
Dr. Dan: Yeah. I won't even talk to people on the phone, you know this. I won't even talk to people on the phone too late at night.
Siri Shakti: No, you won't.
Dr. Dan: Definitely for business. If my mom or something calls, or my dad, or a friend or something calls, I'll talk till maybe 5:00 or 6:00 PM. But past that, I get too amped up and I get too wired. And then I have a hard time calming down. I try not to do that. Definitely business, I won't talk on the phone after 5:00 or so, because it's kept me up nights because then I start thinking about more and more and more, and I've just got this energy.
For some people, it might not affect them as much. But for me, it does. Obviously if we got to go pick up our daughter, or go out to dinner or something and it's 6:00 PM or 7:00 PM, when the clock hits 6:00 PM, it doesn't mean that we just don't talk to people and just stare at them, and they're like, “Oh, was it a good dinner?”
Siri Shakti: No.
Dr. Dan: And we just look at them in silence. They're like, “Thank you, have a good day!” And we just look at them. No. We don't do that. I'm just saying, when you're getting … Because it's different. It's when you're getting home and you're trying to wind down. That's the time. That's the time that you need to make this part of your preparation. Right?
Siri Shakti: Yeah. And you know, everything that we've just talked about in this podcast, it really comes down to you having awareness of yourself. Of figuring out what are the things that are going to work for you? Even as far as with this evening routine that we're talking about, what works for us is going to be a little bit different for you. For Dan, he was saying he can't talk to someone on the phone past 6:00. I'm a little bit different. I can … I have to go pick up my daughter from dance, so I'm socializing with all the parents at 8:00 at night. But when I come home after that, that's when I need to shut it down. Mine's a little later.
Dr. Dan: It has more to do with when you get home. It's not when you're out. But if it was 11:00 at night-
Siri Shakti: “Sorry, it's 8:00 at night, I can't talk to you.”
Dr. Dan: Yeah. You're not a gremlin, where you can't get fed after midnight, otherwise you turn into one of those crazy ones. That's pretty much it. Pick and choose some of these, and preferably try them all. Put them on, see how they feel, and see how that works.
Siri Shakti: And have fun with this. For instance, talking about this sadhana, which is your daily practice. Have fun with it. Figure out what's going to work for you. If you want to try out, like we talked about, yoga and meditation, go on our website and try out some of these videos. If you feel called to, I don't know … It's going to be different for everyone. It's very individual. And so is the rest of your routine throughout your day. But I definitely encourage you to try some of these things that we've been talking about today, because we know first-hand how they've worked in our lives. It is clear as day that these tools work so well.
Dr. Dan: Yup. Okay, before we get into your rockstar mission for today, I definitely want to mention that you should go to RockstarinLife.com, subscribe, and download my books I put on there for you guys, and check out the yoga videos and all the other cool stuff we have over there right now. Are you ready for the rockstar … Oh, do you want to give them the URL? rockstarinlife.com?
Siri Shakti: Wait, what?
Dr. Dan: I knew you were going to look at me like that if I said, “Can you give them the URL?” I wanted you to kind of jump in. But then you'd be like, “What is it?”
Siri Shakti: How about, “What's a URL?” No, I'm joking.
Dr. Dan: “What is it?” It's kind of like we joked around … My daughter was saying this, but … And I've heard that on I think it was Married with Children or something, or some show, where they said, “In case of an emergency, call 911!” And then the person's like, “What's the phone number?” You know?
Siri Shakti: Oh my gosh.
Dr. Dan: Or I've seen in another show where they were like, “I need to call 911! Oh man, I can't remember the number! What is it?” You know? It's pretty funny.
Siri Shakti: Yeah. Sorry, when you asked me that question, I had a deer in the headlights, like what?
Dr. Dan: Yup. Go to www.rockstarinlife.com.
Siri Shakti: Oh.
Dr. Dan: That's rockstarinlife.com.
Siri Shakti: Thank you for that.
Dr. Dan: You're welcome. Next time, that's your job.
Siri Shakti: Okay.
Dr. Dan: Cool. Your rockstar mission is for you to pick and choose. Grab a handful of these, if not all of them. Write them down and do these for the next seven days. Start out for the next seven days, and I want you to journal every single day. Write down how you're feeling, how it went, what was great about it, what you're going to do different about it tomorrow. Just write that down, so you're taking note. You're taking a … Part of your journey. You're documenting your journey.
Siri Shakti: You're documenting, yeah.
Dr. Dan: Because this is really cool. I go back to some of my old journals that I've written in years and years ago, and I'm just like, “Wow, I can't believe I've came that far.”
Siri Shakti: Yes.
Dr. Dan: It's like looking at yourself in the mirror when you're losing weight. It's hard to see. It's like looking at a clock and waiting for 20 hours to pass, and you're watching the clock, and you're watching every second go by. It feels like forever. By the time it hits, you'll forget about the last one. It's really important to do that. Do that for the next seven days, and after the next seven days, I want you to take stock in that and be like, “You know what? This feels amazing. I'm going to add more, if I haven't added them all. And I'm going to do this for the next 40 days.” Do it for the next 40 days.
Siri Shakti: And we say 40 days because it takes 40 days to create a new habit. In yoga and other spiritual practices, the number 40 is very significant. Even in the Bible. You'll see stories in all different religions, even, where the number 40 is significant. But I bring up the one about the Bible, I always remember this one, because they say, “How long did Jesus go into the forest? He went for 40 days.” I forgot, what did he do in the forest? Did he meditate?
Dr. Dan: I don't know. That's probably what he was doing, but …
Siri Shakti: I'm going to look that up now that I've told that great story.
Dr. Dan: Yeah. Now we're going to get boycotted by the churches.
Siri Shakti: No, no, no. No, but what I'm saying is that … 40 is significant. Whenever I'm trying to-
Dr. Dan: I think in every religion, they have a story-
Siri Shakti: And spiritual practice, yeah.
Dr. Dan: … about the 40, 40, 40. It's always 40.
Siri Shakti: That's right, yeah.
Dr. Dan: They went to the desert for 40 days. They went to the tree and meditated for 40 days. There's always something.
Siri Shakti: Yeah. Yeah, so whenever I want to change a habit, I always do it for 40 days. I do a certain practice for 40 days to work on changing that.
Dr. Dan: Awesome.
Siri Shakti: That's what you'll be doing, is you'll be committing to that 40 days after you've done your first seven.
Dr. Dan: Yup. Guys, agree. Guys and gals, you agree to take on that mission, your rockstar mission? I'm hearing lots of yeses.
Siri Shakti: I'm hearing it, too. Yup.
Dr. Dan: I love it.
Siri Shakti: Yup, picking up on that.
Dr. Dan: All right. I have nothing else for you. Well, I do, but we're going to let you have that soak in, and let you guys get out there and do this for the next seven days and 40 days, and we will see you next week. Don't forget to go to rockstarinlife.com, download the books, check out the videos, the yoga, the meditation, and all the other cool stuff we'll be adding there.
Siri Shakti: Awesome.
Dr. Dan: Right. Anything else you want to add?
Siri Shakti: Nope, that's it.
Dr. Dan: All right.
Siri Shakti: This was great.
Dr. Dan: All right, let's do this on three. Ready?
Both: Be a rockstar in your life, and make the world your stage.
Dr. Dan: Keep on rocking.
Siri Shakti: Yes.
Be a RockStar In Your Life.
& Make The World Your Stage!
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