Exploring Gratitude With Deborah Charnes

In this enlightening episode of Women's Dream Enlightenment, host Megan Mary interviews Deborah Charnes, a certified yoga therapist and author. Deborah shares her journey from a high-pressure corporate job to becoming a yoga therapist, emphasizing the importance of gratitude and positive transformation. They discuss the meaning of enlightenment, the power of dreams, and practical tips for incorporating gratitude into daily life. Deborah introduces her book 'From the Boxing Ring to the Ashram,' which offers quick, actionable tips for improving well-being. Tune in for an inspiring discussion on spiritual growth, self-discovery, and the intersection of professional and personal enlightenment.

Transcript

You're listening to Women's Dream Enlightenment.

Dream decoding,

Deep discussions,

And spiritual stories of self-discovery to inspire your personal enlightened journey.

I'm your host,

Megan Mary,

Founder of Women's Dream Analysis.

Let's bring in the light.

Welcome,

Today we have Deborah Charns,

A certified yoga therapist and author.

She spent decades exploring the world,

Uncovering holistic secrets to health and happiness.

Committed to improving others' well-being,

She left the high-pressure demands as an international corporate marketing communications specialist to become one of the first bilingual certified yoga therapists.

She has published over 500 mind,

Body,

And lifestyle articles as a travel blogger,

And her latest book,

From the Boxing Ring to the Ashram,

Wisdom for Mind,

Body,

And Spirit,

Explores tips that can be practiced in as little as 10 minutes a day to jumpstart one's health and happiness.

Welcome,

Deborah.

Hi there,

Thank you so much for having me.

Yes,

Absolutely.

There's so many things that we can discuss,

From the corporate strategist background to the yoga and sound healing and dreams,

So much in between.

So the first question I'm going to ask you is the one I ask everybody,

And that is,

What does enlightenment mean to you?

I think that's a really good question,

And I think for everybody it is different.

From a lot of the training that I have had with the yogic world and the spiritual world,

We are taught to seek enlightenment.

And to me,

It's not something that you just press a button and it's there.

And sometimes I question,

Will I ever get there,

Even though maybe I have been on that path for most of my life and I'm not a young kid?

So I guess the way that I look at it is how you can be a better person.

The word for yoga means union.

And the way that I like to look at union is it may be union,

Traditionally we say union of body and mind and spirit.

But to me,

It can be union with a creator,

Whomever you consider a creator.

It can be union with mother nature,

With something bigger,

With a spirit,

With magic.

It can be so many different things.

And ultimately to me,

What enlightenment means is to be happier,

To be healthier body,

Mind,

And spirit,

And to help others and be more giving.

Because unfortunately in our Western society,

We are trained,

Gimme,

Gimme,

Gimme,

And I want,

I want,

I want,

And looking at what your neighbors have and wanting that.

And to me,

If I go to all of the principles of yogic philosophy,

We don't want to have wants.

We just want to be content with everything.

And in fact,

My most recent blog post,

It features a lot of quotes from one of my teachers who I feature in my book,

But it's all about gratitude.

And one thing he talks about is every time he looks at a person,

He looks at them with a positive lens.

Whereas sometimes we might look at somebody and I'm like,

Like,

Hey,

I mean,

I can be judgmental too.

I try not to,

But what the heck are they thinking or doing or saying,

But we need to have that positive lens with everything we do.

And likewise with our life,

Instead of saying,

Oh gee,

I want a new car or a new phone.

Thank God I can walk or thank God I have public transportation,

Or thank God I have Uber and thank God I have whatever I have.

Yes.

And so many people believe that when you acknowledge all the things that you have,

You open the pathway to receive more.

A lot of people think gratitude means I have enough.

And it's really just introducing that mindset and that energy in yourself that you appreciate it so more can come to you.

It's complex in the way it works.

And I think people misinterpret it's kind of like be happy for what you have.

In other words,

Don't expect more and don't ask for more.

And a lot of people believe abundance is our birthright.

So we are supposed to have a lot of what we want,

But we shut ourselves off from it because we are thinking in lack.

And also we're feeling like we have to be humble in our.

.

.

Well,

One of my spiritual traditions,

The one that I'm probably closest to,

And several of my teachers in my book are from this spiritual tradition,

Is we are taught we have nothing.

Everything that we consider we have is the universe.

And so if I say I have this phone,

Well,

It's the universe that gave me the phone.

Or if I had a really good dinner,

It's the universe.

And nothing is ours because when we're born,

We have nothing.

And when we die,

We have nothing.

Yeah.

And that's a whole nother expansion of that idea,

Right?

It's like you need nothing because you're so much more,

You're so much a bigger part of it than you know.

Something else though that I was thinking with what you were talking about before is that in terms of the gratitude,

And an entire chapter in my book is about gratitude,

And the last blog that I mentioned,

It's all about gratitude.

I'm with my grandbaby a lot.

And if I do something that makes my grandbaby laugh or smile,

I'm going to do more of whatever it is to make him laugh or smile.

So that same concept of,

You know,

In terms of being grateful,

And then you will receive more.

It's kind of like that.

Yes.

And one of the mantras that I live by is the hand that gives is the hand that gets.

And I feel that plays into that too.

Because when you're giving something away,

You're not feeling lack,

You're giving without the expectation of getting,

But by giving,

You then do receive.

And whether it's just that feeling of,

Oh,

I helped someone else,

And you feel so much better,

Even though you might not get something physical back,

Or you may,

Someone else then does something for you,

You know,

It's a cyclical process.

So tell the listeners a bit about your background,

How you went from this high pressure corporate job to traveling the world,

Which I know you were doing before then,

But to really dedicating your life to being a yoga therapist.

Well,

I think I've always been a wanderlust.

And I took my first solo trip out of the United States when I was 16 years old.

And I do that all the time.

Still,

I'm big on solo travel.

And I try not to be the typical tourist because I want to immerse myself in the lives and in the cultures and the traditions of other places,

Even if it's Montana,

I've never been to Montana.

But that's a perfect example of if I were to go to Montana,

I would want to kind of get a feel for the people,

How they live there that might be different from how I live.

So I have always had that wanderlust.

But you get to a stage in your life where you feel you have to work your tail off.

And I was always afraid of losing my job,

The career or where I was working,

It was normal to have mass layoffs twice a year.

So I was always worried about that.

It never even occurred to me ever to quit my job because I was,

Talk about gratitude,

And this was before my gratitude practice.

I was so thankful every single day to have that job.

And I always said,

I will never,

Ever leave it.

And I think,

Again,

In terms of the whole concept of gratitude and having a positive mental attitude,

Even though there may have been many things that I didn't like about my work,

Life and my career,

I always justified by seeing all the positives and not just the money that I was making.

It's not like I was a millionaire,

But it was a steady income and I had healthcare insurance.

So those were the things that I really cared about.

But I really wanted to feel,

And I still do of course,

As if I'm helping other people with what I'm doing.

And as I said,

I justified it a lot of times.

So finally,

The turning point for me was two weeks in a row,

I went to my spiritual community where I was teaching yoga and there were lectures by two different people,

Completely unrelated.

And yet what I got out of those lectures was that I needed to leave my job and be more true to myself.

Because even though I knew that there were a lot of really good things that I was doing through my work,

Ultimately,

Where I was getting paid from,

If you follow the money trail,

They were businesses and products and services,

Which I never,

Ever believed in,

Which I never would have bought.

But again,

I always saw the positive.

So anyway,

I decided I'm gonna leave and I will go out on my own.

And the name of the business that I selected,

And this was in 2011,

Was The,

T-H-E,

Write,

As if you write a book,

And Counsel,

C-O-U-N-S-E-L,

Because I was always a writer and I was always a strategic communications counselor.

And on the back of the card,

I put dedicated to positive transformation.

And the majority of the clients that I took on when I went on with myself as a solo practitioner were nonprofits.

So I wasn't getting paid tons and tons of money,

But I felt good about helping out the nonprofits and I felt good about what we were doing for our community.

Because as much as I try to see the glass half full,

There are a lot of things I don't agree with in our society and in our culture.

And unfortunately,

I always felt that most of my clients were contributing to the negatives that I saw in our society.

So it just felt really good to me to be able to provide strategic counsel or whatever else these clients needed,

Where I knew they all had good,

Positive mission statements,

And it was about helping the community.

Yeah,

I completely understand that choice.

I have always,

Always tried to work with companies whose mission resonates with me,

Because as much as it's a job,

At the end of the day,

You're putting your energy into it,

And you want that energy to go towards something good,

And you want to be making a difference.

And so that's always been really important for me as well throughout my career.

And so I completely understand how important that is.

And also,

Even so,

There's the spiritual career,

Right?

And that's a totally,

I would say,

Totally different.

It is and it isn't.

I used to think that the two shall never meet and that they were separate silos,

But they're starting to cross-pollinate.

All of the spiritual businesses still need websites and still need communications,

And they still need to reach the right people and to provide their services and run their events or whatever it is.

So it's interesting how you convince yourself that you have to be over here because that's this,

Whatever,

And you forget that what your skills are,

Where you're needed in the world,

Is also needed where you really want to be.

And I have,

With all my travels,

I have met many people who made that conscious choice when they were much younger.

I just always felt,

Well,

I couldn't because I had to provide for the family or whatever.

It wasn't about me,

It was about others.

And then again,

I got to an age where it's like,

If I eat just rice and beans every day,

I'll be okay.

Yeah.

So I want to talk about your book,

But I also want to talk about your experience with the dream world and what dreams have led you on your path,

And were they prophetic or were they guiding in your experience?

Well,

First of all,

I want to mention a recurring dream that I used to have when I was much younger.

I was flying,

But I wasn't flying.

It was more as if I could just will myself to float in the air from one spot to another.

And I don't know what that actually means,

But my interpretation was that I can go wherever I want to go,

Whenever I want to go,

And I'm not being tied down because to me,

The most important things in my life have been freedom in terms of independence.

And that is something that I still,

I don't remember when I last had that dream.

However,

It still comes into my mind a lot.

And then overall,

What I would say is if people were to ask me about my dreams,

I would say,

Oh,

I never remember my dreams.

And that's what I would typically say.

However,

There was a book,

Well,

First of all,

Since March of 2020,

I've been leading an almost weekly virtual book club on social media.

And basically all I do is I pick one book every week.

I read a few passages and then I comment on it.

And one of the books that I read a couple of years ago,

I don't remember the title,

But it was about Kabbalah,

But it was about dreams from the Kabbalic standpoint.

And what I got most out of that book was you have to keep a dream journal.

And so I do have a dream journal.

And also you have to,

In the dream journal,

Put down your interpretation because that helps you.

And also many,

Many years ago,

Maybe 25 years ago,

I had some Jungian therapy and they would always ask about the dreams.

And so I definitely recognize the importance of dreams in our lives.

Yes.

Yeah.

I'm glad that you ran across that and it really got you to keep the journal because so many people say they don't remember them and they're just not paying attention.

It's kind of like saying,

Well,

I don't know how to do yoga.

Well,

Have you ever done it?

Or,

You know,

I can't meditate.

It's too boring.

Or yeah,

You do.

You're just not making the time.

So it's just the intention and the practice like yoga,

Like any kind of practice really.

And what I did to kind of get it kickstarted is I would have a salt lamp going next to my bed with my journal and a pen so that when I would wake up at two o'clock in the morning with a dream,

I could jot it down really quickly.

And you can tell in my journal,

Some of the pages are hard to read because it must have been very dark,

Even with the light,

Whereas others are more legible.

If anyone finds my dream journal in an archaeological dig many,

Many,

Many years from now,

Yeah,

It's sometimes I'll even accidentally write over what I'm writing.

So then it's one on top of the other,

And it can't even be deciphered.

But sometimes it's good,

Legible,

Other times,

Not so much.

But I feel like as long as it's captured in whatever way you can,

That that's the effort,

Right?

And that's the important part.

I try to get people to write down as much detail as possible.

But sometimes when you remember five,

Six a night,

You're not sleeping because you're trying to record all the detail.

And a lot of people don't have that problem.

If you push yourself to try to interpret.

So for example,

What I dreamt last night,

Because of course,

Most dreams are kind of like,

Why did I dream that?

It's kind of like,

Where'd that come from?

And I dreamt about someone,

For me,

A young kid,

But it's a medical student,

Somebody that I've known since he was a kid.

And I dreamt about him being hired by one of my former clients to work out of the United States.

And I remember thinking,

That is so odd that he's a medical student,

And he wasn't being hired to work in healthcare.

Anyway,

When I kind of interpreted it on myself,

The way that I interpreted it was,

I know him from a spiritual community,

And I felt that him taking this job in my dream,

I felt it was going to hamper his spiritual side.

And so my interpretation was,

For me,

Oh my goodness,

I haven't been doing my job of beads for a while.

And I need to prioritize some of that myself.

I like that interpretation,

Because a lot of times when people appear,

I encourage my clients to think about what that person represents,

And how you conceive of that person,

From a personality perspective,

And then also what they're doing.

And then also what your perhaps judgment or reaction is to what they're doing.

And so it's almost like he's going to go down the path that you went,

And that you may want to have that hindsight,

It's 2020,

Like,

No,

Don't do that,

Because now you have the knowledge,

Right,

Of going through that.

But anytime,

Really,

That we say,

Well,

This was a derailed moment,

And I was not in alignment,

Perhaps it was,

But many times,

Particularly when you stay with something for that long,

Possibly those justifications,

They're not even relevant,

Because you were where you needed to be.

Maybe you were bringing your other world into that world,

As opposed to saying,

Oh,

But I'm totally out of my element,

I'm supposed to be over here.

Maybe your sense of energy needed to be there.

So there's a lot of ways to look at the choices that we make at the places we end up,

Right?

And in fact,

I don't remember if this was the dream or my interpretation.

I know in the dream,

I was concerned about his well being.

But again,

I don't know if it was later on in the dream,

Or me thinking,

No,

He's going to be okay.

Meaning he's stronger than me.

And he's able to manage things better than me.

Well,

Then I would almost jump to the next level to say that he is almost representing you in the dream,

Your now learned self,

That can handle that decision better.

Exactly.

Yeah,

Totally.

Interesting.

Well,

I also want to talk about your book.

So from the boxing ring to the ashram,

Where do we start in the boxing ring?

Well,

First of all,

Back in the day,

When I was doing all the work that I didn't really like doing.

First of all,

One of the things that I used to do from promotion standpoint was I did promote boxing matches.

And I have to say that I had always thought of boxing as being brutal.

Why are people knocking each other out?

I mean,

I just don't get it.

So that is part of my life.

However,

The boxing ring in my book is a beautiful story.

And it's actually the last chapter in the book.

Basically,

Each chapter is another one of my teachers.

And the last chapter is one of my teachers,

She was a coworker of mine in the holistic world.

And she had been a top ranked professional boxer.

And she got hit too many times.

And she ended up with dementia pugilistica.

She with all of that,

You know,

Of course,

Comes chronic pain,

Severe clinical depression,

Obesity,

I mean,

You name it,

It's just things just get piled on,

Because you're no longer living the life that you wanted to live.

And she was actually suicidal,

She had PTSD,

She had so many different things going wrong with her,

You know,

It's just spiraling down,

That she finally checked herself into a brain center where they work with people with cognitive disabilities.

And she was there for quite some time.

And today,

She is one of the most positive people I know.

So her chapter is all about finding that grace and gratitude.

And she switched,

You know,

From being a boxer,

To being a Tai Chi instructor.

And to me,

She is the most beautiful Tai Chi instructor,

Because of what she shares with people and her whole attitude.

It's more than Tai Chi,

She just infuses that gratitude and huge smile all the time.

So anyway,

That is the last chapter in the book,

The reason why from the boxing ring to the ashram,

Because again,

I consider boxing to be brutal.

And an ashram is a place for spiritual studies.

So I consider that to be the pinnacle for peace and seeking enlightenment.

And many of the people in my book,

Live at or work at ashrams,

I believe four of the chapters take place from different spiritual foundations and in different countries.

But four of them are actually in ashrams.

I like that.

I like how you integrated all of the wisdom from all the different gurus and traditions,

All of that that you've experienced over the years into that one compilation.

And I really wanted it to be something that would be easy for people to tap into.

So that's why the bottom line is each chapter has something that you can do in 10 minutes,

A day or less,

Each chapter has a give it a try,

Where I give you suggestions of what you can do in 10 minutes,

A day or less.

And then also each chapter has my teachers sharing five easy tips.

So for example,

I'll just look for the one from the boxer,

For her five easy tips,

And it'll give you an idea.

I'm just going to read the highlight of each one.

Okay,

Display gratitude with a great attitude.

Number two,

Adopt great habits that lead to greater happiness.

Three,

Take control of your life for don't give up and five smile no matter what.

So again,

Just simple things and then my give it a try,

Which is something that I really like from the gratitude section is I created gratitude cards.

And so my give it a try as I tell you how you can make your own gratitude cards.

And again,

They're really simple to make and almost have them as like Oracle cards where like I'll go to my class with all my gratitude cards and let people pick a card.

Yes,

I really like that too.

I think it's important to practice those kinds of things year round.

And I don't want to forget to mention affirmations because I listened to one of your talks where you were talking about affirmations and I personally have had a lot of benefit from using those.

I use those as part of my dream integration work along with the sound healing.

Those types of things can only take a few minutes a day,

But they can really help with the mindset that needs to constantly be reset,

Right?

So it really is important to have that as part of a regular practice too,

So that you're always resetting to that state of gratitude.

Also,

One thing that our society,

That it's not that they push,

But that it's prevalent is New Year's resolutions.

And again,

I don't believe in New Year's resolutions,

But I believe in affirmations and your affirmations can change every day or maybe they morph or maybe you have the same affirmation for a long time.

You've got to go with the flow of what's right for you.

I'm a big believer in affirmations as well.

Yes.

And that's something that you can just pick what is relevant for what you want to achieve,

Right?

Because there's so many different types and so many different things that you can repeat.

It doesn't have to be the same one all the time,

But having those little reminders can help you get back on track.

And to write them down.

The same thing with the gratitude.

I feel it's important.

And the same thing with your dreams.

I believe it's so important to write them down.

Something that I did before I left my job,

When I was thinking about leaving the job,

Is there was some kind of an exercise that I read about and that I followed and it was mapping out.

So it wasn't necessarily affirmations,

But it was mapping out what I wanted in the future.

And I put them on three by five cards and put them in a drawer.

Didn't look at them for maybe four years.

When I took them out four years later,

They had all come to fruition.

So even though I didn't look at them,

To me,

I'm a big believer in writing things down because I believe that it kind of gels,

Even if you're not looking at it.

It plants that seed,

Not only in your subconscious,

But in the universe as your request,

As your intent.

Very powerful.

Well,

Thank you so much for being here today and sharing your book and your journey.

And your affirmations.

I'm sure that they will help the listeners start off their year on a good note and hopefully inspire them to continue those practices throughout the year.

Fabulous.

Thank you.

All right.

Well,

Thank you again for being a guest.

I really appreciate it,

Debra.

It's been fabulous.

Thanks so much.