12 Steps from 12 Gurus to Enhance Self-Love with Deborah Charnes

Jennifer Norman:
Hello, beautiful humans. Welcome to The Human Beauty Movement Podcast. My name is Jennifer Norman. I'm the founder of The Human Beauty Movement and your host. I created The Human Beauty Movement to help inspire well-being in the form of radical self-love, radical self-acceptance, and radical self-expression. On this podcast, I invite beautiful humans from all corners of the globe to join me for open conversations about their life lessons and the important work that they're doing to help heal humankind. Take a moment now to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode. I am so glad that you're here joining me for today's show.

Jennifer Norman:
Did you know that depression, anxiety, and recurrent pain impact 72% of Americans, while another 61% suffer from digestive disorders? My guest today understands firsthand that emotional, physical, and spiritual pains go hand in hand. Deborah Charnes is a remarkable woman who has spent 50 years exploring the world, uncovering simple tools for health and happiness. Plagued by chronic lower back pain and digestive disorders in her early years, she knew she had to make a lifestyle change. Previously a corporate exec, she decided to ditch those high pressure demands in favor of traveling, learning, and gaining fresh wisdom from a dozen gurus on various continents. Deborah became one of the world's first bilingual certified yoga therapists, and she's made it her life's work to never stop learning or sharing. She features some of her favorite lessons for optimal wellness in her book, From The Boxing Ring To The Ashram: Wisdom For Mind, Body, And Spirit.

Jennifer Norman:
I can't wait to dive in. Welcome to the show, Deborah.

Deborah Charnes:
Hello. It's a joy to be here with you.

Jennifer Norman:
It is truly a joy. I love that you joke that your happiest and healthiest days rolled in after you qualified for AARP discounts. I just want to give a shout out to everybody like myself who's vibrant over 50. Yay for us!

Deborah Charnes:
It's even better once you're over 65 and get benefits.

Jennifer Norman:
That's what I heard. That's what I hear. It's true. It's true. Your life is truly your own. I want to hear all about your background and how you came to appreciate holistic health.

Deborah Charnes:
Actually, I came into the holistic realm very early in my life. You mentioned that I was diagnosed with both digestive disorders and a back issue when I was very young. And fortunately, I also am very thankful that I had those problems very young because I went to specialists when I was an adolescent, and fortunately, neither of them recommended any surgery or any meds. They talked about different habits, lifestyle habits that I needed to change. For example, postural alignment or strengthening the core for the back. Sleeping on a hard bed. I personally am very comfortable sleeping on a rug, on my floor, on my yoga mat.

Deborah Charnes:
My daughter might think I'm a little weird, but I tell her all the time, it's better for my back. And so I came into elements of what I know today as yoga and yoga therapy through those issues. As far as my digestive disorders, I didn't know what meditation was. I didn't know what breath work was, but I found them on my own, instinctively, intuitively. I recognized that if I breathe just slowly and if I had a mindful approach to relaxation, that was really the only thing that would help me with severe pain.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. When you are able to use your breath to calm your mind, calm the heart rate, the vagus nerve, a lot of people are very familiar with what the vagus nerve does these days and how it really is so powerful.

Jennifer Norman:
You have to tell us a little bit more about your background. Let's dive into the fact that you had these former issues. You learned early on from practitioners, but then taught yourself.

Deborah Charnes:
Yeah. Well, first of all, I also want to give credit to who I call my 13th guru, because my book is based on a dozen of my gurus around the world. But the 13th guru is my mother, and she used to always be very skeptical of modern medicine. At the same time, she did go to a number of holistic professionals. So at a very early age, I heard the connection between mind and body, which, you know, I don't think it was, again, at my age, because I'm 65. So when I was a child, I don't think it was all that common. So I did learn about that from her. And my mother was diabetic.

Deborah Charnes:
She required insulin shots a couple times a day. So I was always aware of diabetes. And my mother was a very educated diabetic in terms of how to manage her blood sugar. So that was also something that I was exposed to very young. I never had. I never ate anything white for the most part. You know, it was like my mom would make cookies and she would joke that, you know, they weren't like cookies, they were more like rocks. But I ate them and I liked them.

Deborah Charnes:
And still today, I am a big vegan, gluten free, low glycemic baker and cook. And, of course, everything without any sweetener tastes wonderful to me. And to me, the heavier and the more fiber and seeds, the better. But again, for other people, they might think of them as rocks instead of cookies. Anyway, from a dietary standpoint, I was also exposed to that early on. My mom bought all of her peanut butter at the health food store, which was freshly ground. And, of course, I have taken everything I learned from my mom, and I upped it. So I avoid peanuts.

Deborah Charnes:
But I love freshly ground almond butter, macadamia nut butter, sunflower seed butter, cashew butter, and tahini.

Deborah Charnes:
I consider sugar a drug.

Jennifer Norman:
Yes, yes.

Deborah Charnes:
And many people are addicted to sugar. And of course, society says it's fine to be addicted to sugar.

Jennifer Norman:
It makes them buy more, more regularly, and so it fuels an economy, you know, that is based upon addictions. We could probably have a whole podcast on that alone. But you had these certain things based upon your upbringing, what your mom taught you early on. And so it was almost glimmers or glimpses into what was to come.

Deborah Charnes:
Yeah. Well, also in terms of what, sometimes you just can't explain where it comes from, but some things come from inside, for example, such as my discovering meditation breath work. Well, another thing that came from inside when I was 16 years old was vegetarianism. And I didn't know the term vegetarianism. I had never met another vegetarian before. But I was in Mexico, and I was visiting a slaughterhouse, and I personally can't understand how anyone can visit a slaughterhouse and not become a vegetarian.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. Yeah. I think that that would be the case for many of us. I don't like to know what it is that I'm eating sometimes when it comes to meat.

Deborah Charnes:
I was with a group, and to my knowledge, I was the only one that pretty much vowed that day to not eat meat again. Everyone else continued to eat the meat. One of the chapters in my book is about a satvic lifestyle. Satvic is an ayurvedic term, and it means pure. And traditionally, satvic means vegetarian, but it also means a lot more things. So there are a lot more things that you do with a satvic lifestyle. And I talk about how back in the day, when I was a vegetarian, you know, it was, you know, I remember eating in Mexico on a bus. I remember, you know, they handed out sandwiches, and I think I ate white bread with mayonnaise and lettuce, which, of course, I think is so disgusting now.

Deborah Charnes:
I would never eat white bread. I would never eat mayonnaise. I would never eat iceberg lettuce. It has no nutrients. That was my only choice. And I also went hungry many, many times. And I chose to go hungry rather than eat whatever else there was.

Jennifer Norman:
So now in, I think it was 2011, you decided to pack it up. You were in corporate America for a while and just decided, you know what? This isn't for me anymore. And you made a lifestyle change. Can you tell us about that?

Deborah Charnes:
Sure. I loved the work that I did, but my work was always very stressful. I worked 80 hours a week. I traveled all over the United States and oftentimes beyond the United States because I was responsible for us hispanic and latin american marketing communications for some of the biggest brands out there. I did. I worked with CEO's, I worked with celebrities, I worked with politicians. It was very stressful and. But I loved it.

Deborah Charnes:
You know, some people are fueled by that stress, right? It's like a turn on. And it's also a drug. It's a drug as well.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Deborah Charnes:
And I believe inherently, I'm the kind of person from an ayurvedic perspective. And from the doshas, it's more kapha. And the kapha people tend to be, it's called, it's considered grounded. The kapha people, it's water and it's earth, but we can be sluggish.

Jennifer Norman:
I wouldn't peg you for a kapha.

Deborah Charnes:
Okay. Yeah. But it's because in order to counteract all that, I turn everything on and I don't part of a satvic diet, which I mentioned before, satvic is no caffeine. So I don't use the common drugs that most people use to keep them going. So I have to turn now inside to my own internal energy to keep me going. But anyway, I think that all of the stress and all of the nonstop travel kind of fired me. Fired me, fueled me, not fired me, losing my job. It was my fuel.

Deborah Charnes:
And I got used to all the stress. A lot of people, again, a lot of people use the stress in a positive way. I was also. I did a lot of work as crisis management and crisis prevention. So crises were normal for me. And when I'm talking about a crisis, a crisis, I'm not talking about, oh, what dress am I going to wear today? Or oh, I'm stuck in traffic.

Deborah Charnes:
I mean, I'm talking about, of course, things such as shootings, you know, shootings or bomb threats.

Jennifer Norman:
Things that are serious crises, significant traumatic events.

Deborah Charnes:
Yeah. So anyway, I did that for decades. And I was constantly doing my own breath work and my own yoga. And of course, I always had my own vegetarian diet. And I was trying to eat healthy. Even when I was traveling. I would take powders with me like protein powder or green powder or, you know, powdered food that I could just add hot water to and have nourishing food because a lot of times I would be at convention centers where there was no option for anything healthy to eat. So anyway, I got used to that.

Deborah Charnes:
And finally I was at my spiritual center and it was kind of wild because two weeks in a row there were two different lecturers. So it was not the same person, it was not the same topic. But what I got out of each lecture, again, different topic, different lecture. But what I got out of both of them was I need to leave this career because I was promoting services and products which I knew I was always promoting services and products which I never supported myself. I never believed in any of the services and products I wasn't presenting.

Jennifer Norman:
Oh, interesting.

Deborah Charnes:
So, you know, it was kind of like I was doing work that I didn't believe in. So I decided to leave the corporate world. I opened up my own boutique agency and I only took on clients that I believed in. And my tagline when I opened this up in 2011 was "for positive transformation". And this was all, of course, from a corporate communications standpoint in terms of positive transformation through marketing communications and positive transformation of the community through the kinds of clients that I wanted to work with. And once I did that, what's kind of interesting is all of a sudden more positive transformation of myself took place here. I was all about, I'm going to help you client positively transform our community through, whether it be through arts or through health or whatever. And yet I found that by leaving the corporate world, I was able to do more positive transformation of myself.

Deborah Charnes:
And I ultimately became a certified yoga therapist. And to me, yoga therapy is all about positive transformation of body, mind and spirit.

Jennifer Norman:
That it is, that it is. And that is one thing that I preach relentlessly, that the world changes when you change. It's symbiotic. And it cannot be helped that when we are putting forth that we have dissonance between our work and what we truly value, or when we are go, go, go, going and we are letting adrenaline and in some cases, like you said, a little bit of ego, you know, people thrive on it, then they love the titles, they love what they'll be able to do in terms of meeting success out in the world that will fuel you to a certain place, but can, can leave you feeling empty when it's not really self fulfilling, when it's not really feeding your soul and getting back to that place where you realized that through your spiritual center. In these two talks, these whispers that are coming to you, and you realize, I need to start fulfilling myself. I need to start looking inward at what I value and then helping others. And in helping others, you are helping yourself. You are making a transformation inside out and outside in.

Jennifer Norman:
It's a very powerful lesson.

Deborah Charnes:
Exactly. And just as in the time when I was at the slaughterhouse and I may have been the only person that became vegetarian, there were obviously many other people that were in the room both of those weeks when I was in those sessions, and I'm sure none of the others decided to leave their jobs. But again, it was something that, of course, for me, it had been festering. I knew all the time, my entire career, I pretty much knew that I didn't believe in the products and services that I was promoting. And so I wanted to take my knowledge, my experiences, and carry those through to the products and services that I felt good about. And again, that would make positive transformation in the community.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. More and more people these days are looking for that, that values alignment, because I think for far too long, perhaps, we have been at the mercy of having a job, getting paid, doing the whole going through the motions. And it was almost like, you know, your rite of passage, you go to school, you go to college, you get a job, you get married, and you're checking these boxes and you're ticking off the boxes along the way. But ultimately, not very often in the past had we been in a place where we really questioned, why am I doing this? How do I really feel about it? What is this really, you know, what is the impact that I'm having? What is the legacy that I'm leaving behind? And it's nice that en masse now, I think a lot of people are really turning to a different kind of life, a different kind of way, and a different kind of a model of what success truly is in life.

Deborah Charnes:
I'm jealous because when I travel around the world, I meet so many young people who are already embracing, and it took me so long, and I am wowed by these young people.

Jennifer Norman:
Bring it on. I think that for a lot of time in America, which is where this podcast is based, there was always a lot of comparing. It's like America always had this sense of pride and ego compared to any other nation. As, like, we work the hardest, we make the most money, we are the most successful, we wear that badge of honor that we're working 80 hours a week you guys are lazy. You don't, you know, you're taking, what, two months off in the summertime? But, you know, what kind of a life is that? We didn't realize what we were doing to ourselves and that it's going, it's not sustainable. It's not sustainable living. And now all of a sudden it's like, wow, the blue zones, wow, Italy, wow, all these places where people are living longer and they're actually happy.

Jennifer Norman:
What? We didn't realize that "happy" was something to be successful at.

Deborah Charnes:
And as an example, so I needed, one time, I needed my gallbladder removed. I scheduled the gallbladder operation for the Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving so I wouldn't miss any work.

Jennifer Norman:
Yep, yep. Some people plan having babies in that same way.

Deborah Charnes:
Right? I mean, now of course I recognize that what is so important is you talked about before is self care. And that's why I've been for ten years now, I've also been leading first love yourself workshops. And some people, you know, tend to think, oh, first love yourself. Isn't that being egotistical? No, it's about taking care of ourselves and then, only then can we take care of others. And self care is so important. And again, here, another perfect example. When I worked the corporate world, of course I would take my daughter to the doctor when she needed to go to the doctor. I never went to the doctor, you know, I just, that didn't matter.

Deborah Charnes:
I didn't need to go to a doctor. I was fine. So I avoided even something like that because I didn't have the time, because I was working around the clock. But again, my daughter's welfare would be part of my job. Right? So look,

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah, you'd criticize and scold her, "you gotta go to the doctor". Meanwhile, you don't do it for yourself.

Deborah Charnes:
Exactly. And so that's why, you know, I lead these first love yourself workshops because I find it is all too common that people in our society, and especially I tend to work with a lot of women because I'm in the yoga industry and women in particular are kind of trained to take care of their children, take care of their parents, take care of their partner, take care of everyone at work, take care of the environment, take care of whatever. We take care of everything but caretakers, but we don't take care of ourselves.

Jennifer Norman:
And we cannot pour from an empty cup. Tell me when you started traveling the world and meeting your famous twelve gurus. I want to hear all about this.

Deborah Charnes:
Well, I started traveling the world very early because my grandparents lived in a border town. In California...Well, in both Arizona and California. They lived in Tucson, and then they lived in San Diego. So I always crossed the border when I would go and visit them. Back then, we would drive. I was raised in Chicago. We would drive from Chicago all the way to Tucson, and we would drive. And then they moved to San Diego.

Deborah Charnes:
So we would do those cross-country drives, you know, in our non-air-conditioned car. Right. And so, and I have family in Mexico as well, so I was always exposed to Spanish language. And then when I was 16, I did my first exchange program. That was when I went to the slaughterhouse in Mexico. And from age 16 on, I repeatedly, pretty much every year, I would go by myself back to Mexico. And then I went to college in Mexico. I also went to college in South America.

Deborah Charnes:
And so I've, you know, I've been traveling always. It's been a part of me even as. Oh, and by the, and my degree was in social anthropology. And social anthropology is all about understanding other cultures. So you have to travel and not be a tourist, but deep dive into the culture of the countries where you are. So I have always been doing that. And, of course, in terms of my yoga practices, I've been doing yoga as long as I can remember. I've always done yoga in Mexico and in South America.

Deborah Charnes:
So that was part of my formation and my growing up, it was just part of what I always did and what my values were. But as far as my gurus, it's kind of hard to...How do I pick my twelve? Right? And as I said, the 13th is my mother. So, of course, I grew up with her. But the first, the earliest guru that I talk about in my book is, and this is my book, From The Boxing Ring To The Ashram, it is somebody that I met 37 six years ago when I was living in South America. And I'm not going to share the story of who that Guru was, but I will just say that years after I met him, so it's a man. Years after I met him, I was in Miami, and I turned on the television, and I heard his name on television, and I found out that he had, I knew him as a very healthy, mobile, young professional. I turned on the television, I saw that he was running for the vice president of a country in South America, and he was now paraplegic.

Deborah Charnes:
So I won't go into his story, but basically, the concept of that chapter in this book is how laughter is the best medicine.

Jennifer Norman:
Yay.

Deborah Charnes:
That's my guru for the concept of laughter as medicine. So you have to read the book to find out who this person was and find out what happened to him, because his story is incredible. And then, of course, the statistics about laughter as medicine are also just amazing. It's so important. And so that's why I chose that as one of the topics of my book.

Jennifer Norman:
Well, the name of your book From The Boxing Ring To The Ashram, is quite curious. And so did you have a guru that was a boxer?

Deborah Charnes:
I did. However, usually people ask me if I was a boxer.

Jennifer Norman:
Yes, I was going to ask that next, but since you were a yoga instructor, I figured that you were a lover, not a fighter.

Deborah Charnes:
That's exactly why I came up with the title for the book, basically. So my personal background is, when I did marketing communications, I used to promote boxing matches for a beer company. And, of course, I don't drink. Right. I haven't had. You know, I worked as a bartender in the United States and South America before I was 21. I pretty much stopped drinking alcohol by the time I was 21, but I used to promote boxing matches. But the name From The Boxing Ring To The Ashram, to me is such a dichotomy, because I think of boxing as being so violent.

Deborah Charnes:
And, of course, Ashram is so peaceful. But the last chapter in my book is about a female from Texas who became a world class boxer in California. And unfortunately, she got hit too many times. She suffered multiple traumatic brain injuries, so she ended up with dementia pugilistica, which is basically what Muhammad Ali had. And she was forced, of course, to leave the boxing world to save her life. She returned to Texas. She checked herself into a brain rehabilitation center, but she had gone from. And, of course, so much is not just the physical.

Deborah Charnes:
It's not even just the mental. It's the emotional. So she went from 130 pounds to 400 pounds because boxing was her life. She couldn't.

Jennifer Norman:
And once you stop that exercise, too, it's.

Deborah Charnes:
But it was also much emotional, you know, just because that was her life. And she, you know, what she was living for, she couldn't live with anymore. Anyway, by the time I met her, she was the most beautiful, incredible Tai Chi instructor. So she took her physical movement practices and switched from boxing to Tai Chi and is the most positive person I know. And she's so peaceful. And it's the last chapter in the book. And some people have told me it was their favorite chapter. Some people have told me they cried tears of joy when they read that chapter as well.

Jennifer Norman:
Oh, that's lovely. That is lovely. I would love to also know, what do you think are some of the biggest concerns of our society?

Deborah Charnes:
Well, where do I begin? Just because we were talking about self care and first loving yourself? I want to talk about one of the chapters of my book, which is based on a swami who's an American who has been living in India for much of his life. And the concept of that chapter is really about love of self, love of others, love of nature, love of the planet. And the title of that chapter is Happiness Isn't A Big Bank Account. And again, in our society in particular, we are so focused on earn, earn, earn, save, save, save, spend, spend, spend, have the biggest house, the biggest car. Well, not in California, because you're eco friendly. Here in Texas, it's have the biggest car. And again, I worked in the marketing communications field my whole life. I know that we were encouraging people to buy and consume things that they did not need.

Deborah Charnes:
Yeah, it's all about consumption, and we really don't need that much. And one of the, one of the things I talk about is one of my favorite comedic schticks is George Carlin. And he has one that's talking about stuff. He's basically talking about how people accumulate so much stuff that they don't know what to do with. And it's hilarious. But of course, George Carlin passed away quite some time ago. So his recording of that is from a long time ago. But we've gotten so much worse as a society in accumulating more and more stuff that we don't need.

Deborah Charnes:
So that's just one example. And then, of course, everything is based on what my swami says. But then I talk about people like George Carlin. I also talk about the book spark joy. So the books spark joy is, you know, if, if something material in your life doesn't spark joy, get rid of it. And the less things you have. But if you're surrounded by minimal things, but if they all spark joy, then it's better. So that's one thing.

Deborah Charnes:
The other thing that bothers me. There's so many things that bother me, the Standard American Diet. And you go on in my chapter about satvic lifestyle, I talk about, you know, the dairy industry, the egg industry, and the reason why I stopped eating eggs and dairy was because, again, I've lived in different countries and I've worked in different countries, and I'm very used to seeing animals treated with more respect. And they, they eat the eggs from the hens in their yard. They milk the cows that are in their yard and they're happy cows. And you know, you know, while they're giving the milk, they're happy cows. The hens are happy hens. But the way that the american factory farming is horrendous and we, again, the marketing world has convinced Americans that we need so much protein, which is not true.

Deborah Charnes:
We have been taught that we need so much dairy, which is not true. And what I always tell my clients, I never tell my clients, be a vegetarian or be vegan, but be mindful of the source. Even if you're vegan, be mindful of the source of what you're eating. So for example, there are a lot of vegan cheeses that are made from potato starch. I have to be very careful. I have to follow a low glycemic diet. I do not want any potato starch in my diet. However, you can find good vegan cheeses that are made from cashews or other more wholesome ingredients.

Deborah Charnes:
Anyway, the Standard American Diet. SAD. And that spells out what it is. And in addition to the chapter in my book that's based on Ayurveda, so I have one chapter in the book based on Ayurveda and another chapter in the book that's based on sattvic lifestyle, which is very much about being mindful of what we consume. But from an ayurvedic standpoint, what I find fascinating and this is one of the areas that I specialize in as a yoga therapist is what we call the digestive fire. From an ayurvedic perspective, we believe that we are only as healthy body and mind and spirit as our digestive fire. So in other words, if you have sluggish digestion you're going to have physical, emotional and spiritual backlashes. And again, this comes from Ayurveda, which is 5000 years old.

Deborah Charnes:
What I find fascinating is that modern medicine, the study of the gut microbiome confirms all this. It's something that not that many people are aware of. But from the study of the gut microbiome they do say that everything is related to, to your gut and your digestion. And I also want to say that Hippocrates, of course, the father of medicine is attributed, we don't really know who said what, right? But he's attributed to saying all disease begins in the gut. And again, from the gut microbiome perspective, there are 22 million bacterial genes and they say that that even affects, again, our mental health, as well as things such as Parkinson's, which are, of course, very complex neurological diseases.

Jennifer Norman:
My entire podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes. There is nothing in our material that is here to treat, prevent, or cure any kind of disease. This is not medical advice. Neither is it therapy. So it's always important to know, to go to somebody who is a professional in order to be able to seek the kind of advice and design nutritional support that is right for you.

Jennifer Norman:
There is so much value in Ayurveda. There is a lot of information now about probiotics and the gut biome and healthy bacteria out there that's in the literature. There is evidence supporting the benefits of both. And I don't think that one precludes the other. I think that from a genetic and DNA perspective, the way that I eat is going to be very different from the way that Deborah eats is going to be very different from the way that you eat. And whether or not you choose to eat meat, whether or not you choose to eat dairy, whether or not you choose an ayurvedic or a Mediterranean diet, that is completely up to you. I think that the compelling thing to always think about is listen to what your body is telling you.

Jennifer Norman:
How do you feel? How do you feel after a meal? How do you feel during the day? Do you feel more self love in what you're eating, or do you feel like you're doing it because you had a bad day and you just need that bag of chips, or you just need that bowl of ice cream, because you just need to, like, coddle yourself into feeling better? Do you feel like you're addicted to certain types of foods? Maybe it's sugar. Maybe it is alcohol. Maybe it is caffeine. It could be any of those things. See, what happens if you do make a little bit of a change and just notice, notice what you notice, as they say.

Deborah Charnes:
And I also lead workshops in digestive disorders and also in weight management. And I do want to mention that even though I am trained in ayurveda, I am not an ayurvedic doctor, which is a totally different level. And I see an ayurvedic doctor. I have been seeing an ayurvedic doctor. Well, I've been seeing ayurvedic doctors for 14 years. And the person that I feature, my guru that I feature in my book on the chapter on Ayurveda, was my ayurvedic teacher in India.

Deborah Charnes:
But what I do wholeheartedly encourage everyone, it's exactly what you were saying, is the principle of ayurveda is everyone is different. And not only is everyone different, but everyone is different every single day and every hour of the day. Which may be why, again, if you listen to your body, maybe in the middle of the day, you crave the ice cream, but I hope you don't crave the ice cream at 02:00 in the morning. And the other thing that ayurveda teaches, which now is becoming more popular, you know, in terms of local food, the same thing, you know, you should eat what is seasonal and you should eat what is grown near where you are. And we do know now, or we hear now about, for example, the positive benefits of local honey. So if I'm consuming honey from, let's just say from the UK, it's not going to benefit me as much as if I consume honey from Texas, from my region.

Jennifer Norman:
Because that's where you're living and that's where your environment is, and that's where your natural embodiment is. And so eating local makes very good sense. We've become so transient as human beings. For thousands and thousands of years, we barely moved outside of our villages, and now we are transplanted. I was not intended to pick up from Korea and move to Los Angeles, but now I have an American diet, and things are different. And so my body is going to react very differently now that I'm here. It's almost like I have to understand that there is a give and take between my nature and my nurture.

Deborah Charnes:
Right?

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. Yeah. So you talk a lot about chronic pain, obesity, anxiety, depression, digestive orders, all of these physical ailments, mental ailments, and understanding that nutrition is a way forward meditation, you know, being a yoga practitioner and breath work is a way forward. What are some of the other things that you find beneficial for people who might have some of these proclivities in their lives?

Deborah Charnes:
Well, what I consider my book, so my book again, is twelve chapters from twelve different gurus. And I really consider my book a yoga or yoga therapy in disguise book. So, for example, laughter is medicine, right?

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Deborah Charnes:
But there is a thing now called laughter yoga. And laughter yoga was created by a physician in, in India and his yoga teacher, wife. And he talks about, he has all the statistics about how laughter, and in particular laughter yoga, how it is good for your circulation, how it's good, they say that you can build a six pack with laughter. And so I always tell people I have a six pack, it's just underneath my layers of fat! But there are so many benefits of laughing.

Deborah Charnes:
And what's kind of wild to me is that they have found, there were studies in maybe Australia, somewhere on the other side of the ocean or oceans, and they discovered that simulated laughter, which is what laughter yoga is, has even greater benefits than spontaneous laughter. So anyway, that's kind of wild. The other thing that I talk about in my book, another chapter. So again, my book is not what a lot of people think of as yoga, but to me it's all yoga. Another one of the chapters is my guru is a US Air Force chaplain, Rabbi. And the concept is a weekly, it's like Sabbath, but it can be a secular Sabbath, or we also sometimes call it digital disconnect.

Jennifer Norman:
Yes, yes.

Deborah Charnes:
And it is so important for everyone to get off of their devices more frequently because we tend to be, we're like octopuses and we're.

Jennifer Norman:
Yes.

Deborah Charnes:
Holding so many devices all around us and our cars, you know, unfortunately, and I grew up in Chicago where, you know, we take public transportation, which is better than being, than driving. But it's still, ideally, stay home once a week and just stay home and enjoy the company of whomever is living with you or yourself. You know, go for walks in nature, you know, don't go in your car, just appreciate the surroundings and find more time for mindfulness, you know, once a week, if you just disconnect all of your devices, ideally for 24 hours, it's going to bring about a much better balance in your mind, body, spirit. And yoga is all about mind, body, spirit, balance. So that's why to me, this is all about yoga, even though it's not about, we're not doing a downward dog.

Jennifer Norman:
Boy, that is a tough ask. For so many people to give up a device for 24 hours, it's like cut off your arm. I know that that's a hard one for a lot of people. I have tried it. I know that getting my phone off of my nightstand was a big coup for me at night time, like not having it there and moving it into a closet or into another room, because I know that even just your parasympathetic nervous system is on when you know that your phone is close by. And so, yeah, those things are not easy habits to break. We will, you know, be real here, but can be so beneficial. I do love that.

Jennifer Norman:
I know even for people at, you know, meal time, making sure it's a no device meal time even might be a start for you.

Deborah Charnes:
Well, taking that even further, I mentioned, you know, the digestive disorders and the weight management workshops that I lead. So I do a lot that focuses on mindful eating. And a very common yogic tradition is silence at your meal. Now, we are raised that, well, I shouldn't say this, I was raised that meals are family time, and that's when you share with a family. Unfortunately, now, too often meal times are go through the drive through or go to the food court and you just feed your face and rush on. Yeah, but in yogic tradition, what is very common is you sit by yourself. Well, you can have as many people around you, but you sit and you kind of close yourself off to the others and you just focus on your food and you don't talk to anyone. And again, that's more mindful eating.

Jennifer Norman:
And if you can't get to that level, a lot of people say grace. They say, you know, have a moment of silence beforehand to give back thanks, to bless the food and give it positive energy. Because as you said, the way that the industry manufactures food is not very mindful. It's getting more mindful than I think that it was. There are more mindful choices because of the recognition of how devastating it was. And the way that food was served up was just like calorie dense and nutrient poor. And so getting back to recognizing the importance of the energy flow of how it gets from farm to table or wherever you get your food, and that it matters each step of the way and making sure that there's respect, thanking everything that it took to get your food onto your plate. So much had to happen in order to get the food from where it was to your plate.

Jennifer Norman:
And even those simple moments to start could be a step for you. And just feeling a bit calmer, a bit happier, and more fulfilled in your day.

Deborah Charnes:
Another thing I wanted to add is, again, I really like looking at different cultures and different practices from different countries.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah, yeah.

Deborah Charnes:
And, you know, we look at French food, and we, as Americans, think, oh, there's too much fat. You know, there's cream, butter. Yeah. And, you know, they're drinking a lot of wine. So we tend to sometimes look down and think that our diet is better yet. Of course, they have found that the French people are healthier. But one of the things that I found when I was in France, this was a while ago, but it would drive me crazy, because again, I want quick, quick, quick. Right.

Deborah Charnes:
I'm used to getting served immediately, but when you go to a nice restaurant in France, you might pick from six different foods that they are going to serve you. Each one will be a very small portion, and it can take an hour and a half or 2 hours before you all of those little plates.

Jennifer Norman:
It's true.

Deborah Charnes:
And the idea, of course, is for you to savor every morsel and to not scarf it down, which we are trying to, you know, to scarf it down. I have to say, in Paris, last I did, it bothered me to see so many people eating on the run, too. But again, if you think of traditional customs, and I do believe that in the United States as well, our ancestors, it took them a lot longer to cook the meal, and so it took them a lot longer to sit and enjoy the meal.

Jennifer Norman:
Yes. Yes. What are some of the more surprising or fun stories that you've had from your travels? I know that we've talked about you going to France and to India, South America, of course, in Mexico. Are there any that stick out in your minds that you'd like to share?

Deborah Charnes:
When I was in India, I mentioned that I'm not an Ayurvedic doctor, but I am trained in Ayurveda. And we were trained. We did a field trip, and as we were waiting in line to board a boat, we were amongst a group of maybe 300 people waiting to board the boat. And our Ayurvedic doctor teachers, they taught us to identify the Ayurvedic constitutions, which are called the doshas, just by looking at people and seeing how they moved, seeing all their mannerisms. So the official way to identify a constitution, which is very similar to Traditional Chinese Medicine, is through pulse testing and also even looking at the tongue. Again, very similar to Traditional Chinese Medicine. But we were taught to look at people and how they acted and to guess what their constitution was based on that. So that was really fun.

Deborah Charnes:
We went to a diner in India with, again, it's, it was all our group of ayurvedic students and our two ayurvedic doctor teachers. So we go to a diner, and it's the same menu for everyone. But you're able to choose your choice of bread. Now, of course, it's not bread as we know it in the West. It's the different Indian breads. And so one of our teachers, he said, I'm going to order the bread for each of you based on your constitution.

Deborah Charnes:
So he would just go around and quick, quick, quick, say this for you, this for you. And he said, for me, Uri, which is deep fried, I've, like, never eaten deep fried fried food, like, in my life. It was like, you know, I was always like, you know, I was always weight conscious. I always had a tendency to carry more weight. So again, I would never in a million years ever choose to eat something that was deep fried. And. But sure enough, you know, he knew that that was what I needed for my dosha.

Jennifer Norman:
Oh, interesting. I did a test. I think I was bidoshic. Is that how you say it?

Deborah Charnes:
It's common. You can also be tridoshic. So tri is very even. But everybody is typically, nobody is 100% one. It's always a range. You have three levels that are part of you since conception, and then every day you have different levels. So it's your levels upon conception and then your levels right now.

Jennifer Norman:
Interesting, interesting. Yeah, I think I was kapha pitta, if I'm not mistaken. I don't know if you can tell just by looking at me or if I stick my tongue out, if you'd be able to tell.

Jennifer Norman:
I would love to invite everybody to pick up Deborah's book. From The Boxing Ring To The Ashram, no doubt it's filled with fascinating wisdom in very digestible, pun-intended, tips and tricks and lessons into your life. Deborah, I want to thank you so much for being my guest today. Thank you so much for all the fun stories. And for all of the life lessons that you've imparted, it's been wonderful.

Deborah Charnes:
Thank you. It's been a joy to be here.