[Music] [Applause] I was 11 years old and my identical twin sister Mickey and I were running for our lives imagine winter in a suburb of Montreal Canada we were cutting through the French school on our way home from a more immigrant English and French Japanese school down the street and this time this G of 10 French kids threw snowballs at Mickey and me and for the first time we stood up to them we threw snowballs back what ensued was the scariest physical altercation I had ever been a part of w
e were circled by these 10 scary French kids surrounding us and all of a sudden after this hair pulling and scratching and hitting Mickey screams R we're outnumbered 10 to two let's burn Rubber she literally said those words let's burn Rubber and we ran home as fast as our little legs would carry us with these 10 scary French kids running after us we run up the stairs panting frantically panting the doorbells my sweet Japanese mother opens the door and sees this chaos in front of her and screams
what is happening here as Mickey and I cowered behind her and then the French kids start shouting racial slurs at my mom which I'd never heard before and we ran inside the house as she called 911 and waited for the cops to come they did and they patrolled our neighborhood for the next two weeks after that we were safe at home or were we our dad came home an hour later and you never know we never knew what kind of dab we were going to get my dad is from India and as an aside Indians rarely belie
ve in therapy at least in my dad's generation so I have a lot more compassion for him now some days you'd be so happy and the best dad bringing us candy and giving us huge hugs with his booming laughter and other days he would come home stressed from work and take it out on us if we didn't bust the plates or set the table correctly after dinner this day he was stressed and yelled at us and screamed he didn't care that we just Liv this very scary experience I remember after he flicked me began ma
keing as hard as it could in the nose we crumbled to the floor hoping we would stop screaming for the pain in our face to go away all this to say there were many moments in my childhood where I felt lonely unsafe in my body and misunderstood by the World by my father by being a half Japanese half Indian girl living in French Canada sometimes I think this is how I gotone into the world of community building but as a good student and athlete who seemed to have it all together I had a hard time tim
e expressing these feelings I was too ashamed to share about my many moments of loneliness and feeling misunderstood at home even to my twin sister the shame is real especially in high performing Asian households show of hands have you ever felt lonely and misunderstood by the world right look around the room there's this quiet shame in it for all of us yet it is a truly Universal experience I know my mom and my dad also felt Lonely Too in many moments of their lives leaving their families acros
s the ocean to start a new life in America and what do you do when nowh is when nowhere is safe you realize that no one is going to protect you but you so you look after yourself you protect yourself no matter what the cost this mentality of going at it alone perpetuated by Capital markets education systems Health Care Systems governments technology religion and a culture of materialism and the news media has led to keeping us in a trance of toxic individualism so what is toxic individualism it'
s about living a self-centered life with total disregard for what's good for the Greater Community its self-centeredness selfishness and a lack of concern for others and the common good toxic individualism is about the pursuit of personal goals and self-interests at the expense what's better for your community is well-being and where competition and isolation take over when we just focus on the me and not the wi or as Dr Dan seagull so beautifully says the mui a beautiful integration of the me a
nd the wi the result is what we're seeing today and yes there is Merit to going against the grain and taking the Uncharted path and not just being sheep following the herd we can't ignore our egoic human nature and our Drive to succeed and connect with our self and identity but it's when we do at the expense of the greater whole that we end up in this crisis and ultimately the demise of our civilization and let's be real civilization is about creating a world we all want to live in Civilization
is built on togetherness so it's no wonder that one in four Americans have zero friends to confide in and this number has tripled in the last 30 years and turns out having poor social connections is as harmful to your physical health as being an alcoholic and twice as harmful as smoking cigarettes our immune system collapses our creativity and sense of purpose mutes our productivity declines and our lifespan decreases by an order of magnitude while loneliness can be seen and feels as painful as
having a broken bone the shame of sharing our loneliness with others carries even more pain is this talk fun or what I promise I'm going to turn this around um the thing about loneliness is that it travels across socioeconomic racial political and Comm and every community in between it can imprison anyone I want to share this graphic that I created to display this concept that no one is immune to this experience there are many archetypes of individuals impacted by toxic individualism as you can
see these are all individuals on their own mountaintops alone there's overworked human there's the popper that's been forgotten by the world but then there's the billionaire that everyone wants something from but they don't feel connected either there's a single overworked mom there's the sick the Elder the pubescent hormonal teen there's the proud human who's Too Proud to share about their loneliness the professional the intellectual the anxious and depressed Lady Gaga she talks about this and
the many celebrities that are imprisoned by their Fame people who watch Fox News people who watch MSNBC it's everyone guys H people addicted to technology and social metrics people who live in fear State this is what loneliness looks like in this country the New York Times did an in-depth feature on this experience of loneliness by Decades of our life that really really touched me I wanted to share that today a few minutes of it I feel loneliness in my chest just a heavy weight on your back my c
areer has isolated me I don't have a partner I don't have kids right after I got married and people just fell away as a single parent I retired my greatest fear is dying alone it's a doozy loneliness it's a bad one the feelings of loneliness and isolation that I feel stem from losing my dad to suicide at 12 years old I feel like I've always felt lonely what did I do to to like run everybody else away I feel like I just something that makes people scatter I feel like I if I don't try to be succes
sful I'll always regret not having try my loneliness is is ends up kind of being My Punishment does everybody feel like this there must be something wrong with me surrounded by people but yet you're still feeling like you're not even around anybody I'm at this wedding and you know kind of like on reflex I open up my phone and I pull up a dating app and I start swiping and then I look around and there's just like so many people around me laughing and having a good time just being loving with each
other yeah it was a moment of like feeling deep loneliness you might and it goes on and on all the way to your 80s and 90s it's it's a video I highly recommend watching it's it's really moving so how do we get here the way our world is currently set up is pushing us towards toxic individualism capitalism wants us to be lonely so we buy more stuff and perpetuate our culture of materialism governments through policies and regulations pull us apart and polarize US Health Care Systems that treat us
as disposable there's education systems that pushes kids in ATT testing and competition and the news media supporting divisiveness these indiv institutions are feeding our toxic individualism can we be more Discerning about what we're and where we're putting our attention and if you look at every social issue we face as a human species it all Lads down to I don't belong therefore I will dot dot dot abuse alcohol and opio opioids bring a gun to school overeat degrade the planet cut my body cut m
yself off from the world abuse technology these things all make the world a scary place and make us feel anxious and depressed PS the number one cause of anxiety and depression is can you guess loneliness so what should we we be doing instead here comes the fun stuff well first off we need to change the dream of the modern world moving away from the trance of toxic individualism to a culture of true belonging let's first start by redefining belonging in my book belong which I published in 2018 I
defined belonging as a feeling of Deep relatedness an acceptance a feeling I'd rather be here than anywhere else belonging is the opposite of loneliness it's a feeling of ah I'm home and I can exhale here and be fully myself with no judgment or insecurity belonging is about the desire to participate in and making your community better it's about offering your unique gifts to others you can't belong if you only take take take this definition is still true however in the six years since I wrote m
y book things have gotten a lot worse it seems like every other week a news Outlet is writing about loneliness the Surgeon General Dr vvec Mery says we are in the middle of an epidemic of loneliness and isolation New York State just appointed Dr Ruth westimer I love her so much the country's first loneliness Ambassador at 95 years old she's incredible she says that the first most important piece of the puzzle is to admit that we're lonely right the shame and pride of it stops us and it's time th
at we normalize it so while everything I said before remains true I wanted to add to it today today I want to introduce a Brand New Concept I want to Define loneliness and belonging through a whole new frame with daybreaker our Global Dance and Community movement I've spent the last decade traveling the world researching collaborating with and building communities in every continent from the Masai tribes in Africa to the indigenous people of the Amazon to Club scenes from Tokyo to Paris to New Y
ork City to studying with the historians and spiritual teachers of Egypt to working with Scientists who spend Winters alone in Antarctica I've met with hundreds of community Architects across the world and sought to understand belonging from a truly Universal perspective what has emerged from my 11 years of research and is a definition of belonging that expands beyond our relational connection to one another while humans are built for togetherness and cannot survive or Thrive without connection
or meaningful relationships and I can talk for hours on community architecture and experience Design This is my wheelhouse but my new definition after studying the energetics of belonging include deepening our relationship to ourselves through four directions that we've cut off in just the last half century this Revelation was such an aha moment for me when we connect to these four directions we will truly never feel lonely I call this the compass of belonging the north the South the East and th
e West orienting us towards our deepest experience of belonging our physical body being the compass turn to the compass of belonging in any moment of loneliness and it will show you the way I really feel certain of that we have cut off these four directions within ourselves and if we reconnect to each of these directions not only will we feel a deep sense of belonging within ourselves we will begin to relate to each other and to the world around us in completely new and meaningful ways our confi
dence our magnetism our Spark Sparkle and our joy will all come alive and we will actually save the planet I do want to share that it's important to make a clear distinction between loneliness and being alone loneliness is painful it's separation it's hard being alone with the right intention and mindset is actually all one alone all one get it right there's a peacefulness and Magic to Solitude ESP especially if you connect to these four directions this concept serves and supports those who self
-identify also as introverts and extroverts though I can talk about that for hours too okay let's get into it can everyone point to the north beautiful this is our spirit the north is a connection to the spiritual realm you put your arms down now the north is a connection to the spiritual realm a realm greater than or outside the Human Experience to be clear clear this can be spiritual but non-religious which more and more people are identifying with the institution of church is currently losing
10% of its members year over year over year that said our spiritual health is deeply suffering with the decline of religion and face B communities and this cutting off of the north and spirit makes us feel like we're on an island with no support from other PLS by the way when our brain relaxes into Divine space did you know that our cortisol levels reduced drastically that this trust falling to a spiritual realm tells our brain that we're okay that we are held and known brain scans taken during
or immediately after an Enlightenment experience show a decrease in activity in the parietal lobe this section of the brain is associated with a loss of the sense of self and a blurring of lines between the self and the rest of the world when we feel feel connected to the spiritual Realms all of a sudden we don't feel lonely we don't feel like we need to shoulder the burden of life alone our sense of individualism goes away and we become one with the universe we become love this deep spiritual
sense of belonging is why religion has survived and thrived for thousands of years its demise has more to do with the controlling institutions of the church rather than the individual's relationship to God or spirit I do believe there's a place for Spiritual practices turning churches into places we are proud and excited to go to to be together and touch these spiritual Realms some of the more potent Soul practices that support our spiritual health include dance which obviously is my favorite me
ditation breath work yoga prayer rituals ceremony art poetry and sex each of these practices if you do them regularly will support your spiritual health when we design our daybreaker experiences around the world we think about how to architect The Dance Experience to bring our community closer together to each other and to their spiritual selves the selves that are judgment free our MC says always says stop judging yourself and let go that trust fall into the dance floor into the Super organism
a term coined for a group of humans that when physically together like at a concert or Festival are smarter more immune and more creative here's an example of a super [Music] video I'm sure some of you see [Applause] yourselves I think I think Kevin sees himself themselves in the video hi Kevin uh free form movement to music can really take you to spiritual Realms and is one of the most potent somatic Soul practices it is and has been an ancient healing and celebratory technology that we've hone
d over thousands of years and yet today we've mostly seen it as a drunken wedding or an after hours experience if used correctly dance can deepen your spiritual practice and contribute to your health and happiness in real and meaningful ways it's the main reason I've dedicated the last 11 years of my life to daybreaker and creating a sober dance environment to return to yourself and to find your spiritual practice and not Escape yourselves with drugs and [Applause] alcohol thank you and it is so
mething that we are studying right now working with UC Berkeley and the greater good science center in California and our new nonprofit belong Center where we are literally studying the power of Collective Dance For the First first time what happens to our brains when we move together when we experience Joy together when we feel Collective awe together this study will come out in 2026 and starts the spring our dream is for doctors to begin prescribing Collective Dance as an antidote to lonelines
s isolation depression and anxiety currently doctors are prescribing things like meditation which is something that you do by yourself I have a good feeling about this study do you let's go let's go um here are some photos of daybreaker you can see that the collective effervescence one feels being together sober and moving in unison creating a super organism that immediately takes you away from toxic individualism into a state of Oneness and togetherness dance is a practice for many it's uncomfo
rtable but if you break through and see it as a move of meditation the medicine and spiritual connection is always there I really believe dance is not just a party it still takes my breath away after 11 years I do believe if we can reconnect with our soul practice and energize our spiritual health in ways that can look like a dance party and not as sobering are you okay experience that so much of this loneliness space is all about right ending loneliness will not only happen but will have fun in
the process depth and play depth and play The Intercept section of depth and play is where the magic lies in Soul opening experiences and this is just one direction and we could spend hours discussing each Direction and by the way that's that's me at the front right there woo I went from feeling lonely to this whole crew so fun um all right so let's move on to the next Direction the compass of belonging the South the Earth can everyone Point down to the earth below your feet and just take a mom
ent to ground your feet in the earth and just feel the juiciness of the roots from under your feet pouring into the core of the planet feel that for a second we have forgotten that we humans are literally expressions of the earth our skin our organs our bones all materials made from the earth yet the way we talk about the Earth is through the lens of Logistics what is our carbon footprint how much are we recycling what are the new regeneration opportunities how do we stop degrading our oceans an
d soil Etc while that is important what's missing from most of these conversations is our energetic connection to the planet the soul of Mother Earth we are speaking in masculine numbers rather than the reverence and nurturing of a beloved family member as if she is something separate apart from us it's why when I shared in my opening my dad yelled at me and I crouched down instinctively that child in me knew that the Earth was there to protect me I drop to the Earth children know our disconnect
from the planet as an energy body has made us feel deeply lonely it's why I'm most inspired to action around the planet after meeting the indigenous tribes of the Amazon whose spiritual relationship and deep energetic and soul connection to the planet is undeniable for thousands of years and hundreds of generations they deeply understand our sense of belonging is tied to her our mother earth over New Years a few years ago a dear sister and I were in the ocean in nosara Costa Rica one of the blu
e zones hugging each other as we rang in the New Year the water created this beautiful slippery surface with our skin touching and a when a wave crashed over us instead of resisting it we just held each other let our bodies go and let the Earth and and the ocean move us in this beautiful poetic dance I'll never forget the feeling of Dancing with the ocean it felt like it was a three of us connecting with the Earth and each other it was mystical and yes I was sober another way to connect with the
Earth is through shindin Yoku or Forest bathing coined and designed in ancient Japan imagine walking aimlessly under a canopy of trees with your hands clasped Loosely behind your back smelling the forest surround you with deep beautiful inhales my Japanese mother shared about this practice of forest bathing that lowers your blood pressure quarters all levels and I became a guide during Co for our daybreaker community stuck at home take a look here these ples will be special to you and your conn
ection to them will be strong Just Close Your Eyes as you bathe your five senses in nature and just breathe and allow little smile to crinkle the sides of your mouth upward and just take it in as you walk through nature allow your hands to graze over the leaves the flowers the beautiful tapestry of nature as you delicately and slowly invite them into your sensorial space okay before you fall asleep um even in big cities there are parks and botanical gardens everywhere to take advantage of there'
s so much more in the southern Compass to explore but let's keep going moving on to the West in the compass of belonging this is behind you can everyone Point behind you beautiful this Direction imagine your lineage this direction is your lineage your ancestors whether by birth or chosen let's take a moment to close our eyes and connect to our lineage I want you to imagine your parents behind you and their parents behind them and their parents behind them imagine this pyramid of people behind yo
u one is you two your parents loving you behind them four of your G grandparents loving them and you eight grandparents until you keep doubling and doubling 16 32 64 128 256 still doubling 512 1,24 until in just 10 Generations you hit 264 parents behind you 264 people that it took to create the miracle of You In This Moment no matter what your experience 264 humans existed to get to you here to this very moment today you are here for a reason this is your lineage take a moment to open your eyes
it's wild to think about our lineage in this way in literally just 10 Generations it's 2,000 people that it took to get to you it's wild I remember when I first came to America from Canada to go to college in my freshman dorm I asked the other Asian girl across the hall where her family was from and she replied Wisconsin to which I replied but yes but where are your parents from and almost annoyed she said well they're from China but I'm American and from Wisconsin that was the Melting Pot in Pe
rfect action this idea that if you did not assimilate to the American ways you would be left out or ostracized or held back in Canada the opposite was true we call Canada a mosaic of cultures versus a Melting Pot a mosaic being a tapestry of many cultures coming together where every kid I knew growing up went to their family language school over the weekends my sisters and I went to Japanese school every Saturday and Hindi school every Sunday mind you my parents trick just into believing every s
ingle kid at 70s of school um but my other friends went to Greek School Chinese school Hebrew school Italian school every Saturday for our whole lives and there was a deep pride in Sharing where you were from that lack of Pride contributes to a sense of loneliness loss of identity and emotional wellbeing again we're on a little island with no posi no tribe to support us when individuals feel disconnected from their ancestors it contributes to feelings of loneliness and a sense of being a drift o
r rootless part of the problem is people often make the mistake of feeling like they need to go to reject everything they grew up with if they have an issue with any part of it so many of us in this room are Rebels but lineage can often offer a deep feeling of belonging to each of us there are Parts in my Japanese Samurai lineage I love saying that uh that were brutal and filled with violence that I don't want to bring to my daughter's generation but instead of rejecting my entire Japanese linea
ge I want to carry forward the samurai discipline loyalty camaraderie sacrifice and so many other pieces of that lineage we get the opportunity to heal this trauma in this life by choosing what rich rituals and traditions to carry forward I really believe we're each here to upgrade our Consciousness for our lineage and future generations to come and by the way from a scientific perspective our DNA is neuroplastic which means nurture can heal nature going into the Amazon rainforest and living wit
h the AAR and sapara tribes who for thousands of years have carried the exact same traditions and rituals of reverence of the planet Pro to me that cultures that are deeply connected to their lineage and rituals are literally never ever lonely there is no word for loneliness in the ashar and sappa tribal cultures isn't that wild their connection to the planet is so deep they know they're never alone there also wasn't a word for self in the African and indigenous cultures the word self is actuall
y a very recent definition I'm currently creating an altar at my house with totem photos Fabrics candles and stones from all parts of my daughter's lineage so that she can connect more deeply with our ancestors we started chanting a Buddhist chant together every day too to connect a spirit so now we have the north our connection to the spiritual realm we have the South our energetic connection to the planet we have the West our lineage and for our final Direction the East the east in the compass
of belonging the East represents service how we show up in this in the spaces we inhabit and the value we bring to the humans around us when we are in service and creating a value for others through our service we are never alone I'll share a quick story every year for the last seven years during Christmas my family goes caroling at my parents retirement community in Florida imagine a Japanese Indian and Jewish mly Crew singing Joy to the World the Lord Has Come come it really is a sight to see
this past Christmas something amazing happened typically we typically when we do these things like this people smile and receive us and thank us and then we go on to the next house but this time when we rang the doorbell a family of four opened the door and with guitar in hand started singing back to us we wish you a merry Christmas we couldn't believe it and then they joined us for the rest of the Caroling Adventure it was like this Pi Piper moment I want to share the video my sister actually
put together all right so what are the what are we working on for the Christmas caroling today discuss we're moving into rehearsals right now we're trying to make sure that we don't have any cultural appropriation this year in our holiday I feel like for me as a Jew it's all cultural appropriation so I actually can't say we're Japanese have Indian and Buddhist Hindu singing Christmas carols and so are my parents so should also do like behind the tree again okay yeah yeah behind the tree rehearsa
l New Year all right first first victim oh this guy wish you a Merry Christmas and happy New Year anyway if I knew I'd be sharing this video I probably would have not worn pajamas um scientific research shows that being in service can have quite a few positive effects on individual well-being including including increased happiness reduce stress improve physical health enhance life satisfaction positive social connections and a greater sense of gratitude my father being from India talks a lot ab
out SAA as our sense of Duty to our community he would say Radha it is our duty to serve our community sa means selfless service to others and is highly valued in Hinduism value creation often takes the form of selfless service in the community Act of Charity and philanthropy it's why when wealthy Americans go to India to live in an asham they are tasked with cleaning bathrooms kitchen duty and other humbling services to learn how to get out of their egoic selves into SAA or selfless service in
every Hindu and Buddhist chant you're never praying or chanting just for you but you're always chanting for your community too back to my Japanese mom in Buddhism the concept of ichinen sunen can be understood as the continuous process of creating value or fostering positive change in oneself or the world eaching and Sun then literally translates to 3,000 options in any one moment that you have thousands of options to choose from let's close our eyes for one more moment and I you imagine you're
walking down the street at South by Southwest today and you see someone in need will you ignore them will you acknowledge them will you support them will you share kind words in that moment you have 3,000 options which of the 3,000 ways will you choose and how will it serve you and your community members in a generative way you can open your eyes I want you to think as you leave here today how can I add value to every room I'm in it's incredibly energizing to think that way every single one of u
s has unique gifts and how can we share ours with the world whose day can you make today can you plant flowers in the empty pot in front of the house of your neighbor who's raising her grandchildren alone can you smile kindly at the woman holding a screaming baby on the plane that's a message to myself by the way can you scatter bird seed in your yard every time it snows sometimes the smallest things make the biggest difference would you believe that 80% almost 90% of Americans don't volunteer o
ne single hour in this country each year I'm GNA say that again almost 90% of Americans don't volunteer even one single hour each year I'm not going to embarrass you and ask you to raise your hand if you're one of those people but I just want you to ask yourself how can we serve our communities more more meaningfully all this to say there are so many ways to connect to our service to give back to our communities in small and big ways and to remember that when you walk into a room and our are not
waiting to be served or impressed by the host but rather are an active contributor to making it better for yourself and everyone you will not only feel a deep sense of belonging to yourself but you'll have friends for life people want to hang out with people who had value to a space all right who remembers the four directions what's the north what's the South what's the West what's the East service guys great job uh this new definition for belonging I hope and I know will fortify ourselves in w
ays that will give us the strength to solve the biggest issues of our time a day in which you've tapped into these four directions in the compass of belonging is a well- lived day not only will you feel connected it will change your relationship with everyone around you you will become a true magnet for good humans wanting to warm themselves up to your Vibe fire you'll also be a much happier human overall when you meet the spirit the Earth your ancestors and connect with your service in whole ne
w and exhilarating ways and what I would give to the 11-year-old me all those years ago and my sisters is this Compass as a reminder that if you follow these directions you'll always belong you'll never be lonely and I'm excited to pass this compass on to all of you and to my daughter Cay it will resource us Us in all the ways we need to save humanity and the planet and I want to just end with delay dancing Spirit and the Earth she's connecting to Spirit and the planet here thank you and if I le
t's I want to [Applause] somatically thank you now just just before we end just given that we're you know beautiful juicy Community I want to somatically remember these four directions if can anyone who's able stand up okay if you're able to only all right let's inhale arms up connecting to the sky connecting to Spirit beautiful Let's Fold over bending touching our toes we've sat for an hour so feeling the Earth beautiful and now let's stand up straight and turn to your left putting both of your
hands hands on the shoulders of the person next to you and move your thumbs in a clockwise or counterclockwise Direction This is called a massage train where you get to receive from your ancestors behind you and serve the person with love in front of you now come back just take a maybe maybe a karate chop beautiful karate nice awesome now let's come back forward and let's take a collective juicy inhale in and then inhale out out let's put this compass in our pockets it is yours to take a frame
to live by every moment of every day I Believe in Us we got this so thank you I thank you thank you I think we have time for about 10 minutes of Q&A and and then oh and and also tomorrow we have daybreaker um tomorrow morning 99 to noon here in Austin at In Cahoots um if you go to daybreaker uh.com ATX you can join us um I think it might be sold out but uh if you can make it it's not okay I think there's a couple tickets left yeah great um there'll be like 600 people there dancing at Sunrise tog
ether substance free um but we've got a couple minutes for Q&A if you have any questions great okay great there's mics right here Michael Turner and I don't think I need okay the in the beginning of your book you talked about the moment where you decided to change things and start your journey to belonging if you would such a great story love for you to share it yeah I mean I think for me it was you I looked myself in the mirror at 30 years old and I realized that I didn't belong that my sister
and I were throwing a birthday party that night and everyone that was coming it was just not like the juiciest community that we wanted to deepen with it was friends that talked badly about each other that competed with us and it was it was not the most Safe Community and so I think that moment it was like wow where are my people at I'm 30 I spent the last all my 20s sleepwalking and prioritizing my professional career and romantic you know relationships over friendships as a primary and then wh
en I changed my prioritization that totally changed my life but it was really that moment at 30 where I had this moment of like wow I woke up and I don't feel lonely I don't feel I don't feel belonging and I wanted to really do something about that yeah thanks Michael hi hi hi I'm John nice to meet you great presentation thank you so I have a more practical question sure so I lead a fairly large organization in the healthc care space and one of my observations is is that the technology that we'r
e all tied to that was sort of designed and envisioned to bring us all together actually separates us more right think about it and it actually creates environments of loneliness that interview with that gentleman who was sitting at a wedding flipping through his phone on a dating site I really felt bad for him because I'm like my God you know you could have put that phone down and just started dancing with everybody else um what is your perspective on balancing technology with belonging and lon
eliness and how do we in your opinion manage through that activity because this is Insidious these phones totally um I'd love to get your perspective on that the way I think about it it's say you know the road to hell is paav with good intentions you know so this concept right so technology was not created to separate us you know when when Facebook was created Created it was really created to connect us it was to connect you know students in in schools together and so I think the issue happens w
hen big business and Community are sort of tied to the same sort of net goals and and so like religion for example religion you you know yeah you there's religion um to support our spiritual connection to a higher Spirit it was it was a deeply connecting space of belonging until the institutions of religion took over um so what I would say is that you know we're still you know I would say 25 years into technology I would say in about 10 years we're going to look at technology like we look at cig
arettes I really believe that time is coming where there's going to be a lot more of this sort of Education in place where we're going to really recognize and there we're going to be Tau this in school there's going to be a lot of surgeon generals warnings you know like on cigarettes you know sort of smoking but no one smokes anymore um and so I really believe that there's going to be this balance kind of this pendulum swinging back towards technology as well thank you yeah of course experi yeah
so gosh so much that's a whole entire talk too but um I would say that when I think of depth and play I think of the lens of the brain and the body right so I well there's a lot of things right so depth and play meaning if it's just deep into a spiritual experience without the fun and the dance and the music then after a while doing all this personal development work becomes exhausting if it's just just a party and you're just uning you know at the next Festival without the depth you're also th
en lonely or or kind of you feel rootless or or um yeah so so when you think about any experience that we create so for daybreaker for example when I think of um depth and play it really is how do we marry um our spiritual connection to ourselves right how do we get people to open up to their self-expression to open up to the spiritual realm while also making it sort of feel like a party feel feel playful I think of it also the lens of dose do you know about dose okay so I read about this quite
excessively in my book but um dose is a term that I coin for your four happy neurochemicals you can dose yourself on your own neurochemistry so dose stands for dopamine oxytocin serotonin and endorphins which I couldn't believe spells the word dose you like literally dose yourself like no one's ever put that together I was like what um but you can literally dose yourself on your own own natural high just by being really intentional about every element of the experience so the dopamine we would g
et by playing music by waking up early the pleasure reward of coming to an event that starts at 6:00 a.m. that's a dopamine Rush the oxytocin you get by the hugging committee by moments of twirling the MC you know inviting you to twirl your dance partner around the serotonin being you're in daylight right serotonin you get through through being in sunlight you also get through good food we curate amazing food and beverage at our events you also get serotonin from feeling like you're part of some
thing bigger than you um that Spirit space and then the endorphins you get from moving your body that runner's high sex like all that stuff and so so if you can actually design and we really kind of um reverse engineered the most high impact experiences through the lens of our brains and if we weren't thinking about experience design through the lens of how many tickets I can sell but instead the lens of how can I release these four happy neurochemicals you'll get people for Life we've barely sp
end money on marketing we're not investor backed we've been around for 11 years and um I really believe that that intentionality around those neurochemicals and depth and play and entry and exit rituals all the you I have a whole method called the crawl method as well for Community architecture and experience design um but it really is kind of Science and spirit coming together does that does that help beautiful hi my name is Iman um Iman in Arabic means Faith so really you know what you just sa
id about the the sort of the north compass to Spirit just holds so um so deeply to me um I have so many questions but I'm I'm going to narrow it down to two questions one is I'm curious um to know about your experiences or or in in your journey around the world um you mentioned that you went to Egypt you went mentioned that you went to some other places and um I noticed that a lot of Statistics came from the US and I'm just wondering is that just purely because the data is not available other pa
rts of the world or um is this more of an American problem uh and what can we learn from some of the other cultures places like Egypt or other countries that perhaps from your experience that you can share with us um and my second question is I guess what's you know what is the future of belonging and and loneliness like do you do you I mean I'd love to think that things are going to get better but you know is there hope for belonging is there hope for loneliness yeah so thank you beautiful um s
o so let me start with the second question and I'll go back to the first um I think again the problem with our world is that we are so outwardly focused certainly I've been as a community Builder as well and I mean there's so many pieces again to this as well to tackle this this problem but I would say that step one is this Compass of belonging I think that we have again forgotten all of these different directions which is why if I you know if every single person in the world connected to Spirit
to the planet to their ancestors and to service we would all walk around with a completely different chemistry right I think about the the chemistry of loneliness and it really comes from this me Centric world that we've been pushed to by all these forces capitalism technology etc etc so I think step one is really looking Inward and working on these practice these Soul practices these Earth practices and all the compass of belonging and then it's really also about setting up the city how are Ci
ty set up um so that there's more connected experiences we're working on um belong Center our nonprofit and loneliness right now we just we just announced it and we're launching a yellow bench program all around the country and the world at refugee camps where putting these circular belong benches if you want want to sponsor it for your city we'd love to invite you to be to invite our our benches in your city but these circular yellow benches that we're going to put everywhere as an invitation t
o not just sit in these benches facing forward by your which the architecture of ventures in and of itself is just a very individualized experience but if we even just reshaped the architecture the color palette of our cities and the way they're they're they're built um I really feel like it would shift the way we relate just by where we're being moved you know and how we're seated how we're connected um like I would I would love to be around right now on stage for example and I would love to be
able to have all of y'all see each other not just see your back right so that would make it even more connected as an experience so stuff like that the architecture of spaces really Inspire our sense of belonging and so there's a and there's again so many more pieces lighting I mean senses and there's there's a thousand things to talk about in in how you actually uh uh invite more belonging so we can talk about that and then through lens of spiritual um conversation what I learned yeah I think
that so much of the world is so much more connected to Rich ual to spiritual realm being Indian being Japanese going to Egypt I mean everything is ritualized in America it's just rugged individualistic culture you know it's a cowboy riding off in the sunset alone alone on their horse like that's what we've been taught in this country and so to really um I think that we are experiencing it the most here and unfortunately America exports our culture all around the world and so we're exporting this
culture of loneliness to the rest of the world we're exporting this culture of of capitalism to the rest of the world um and I can speak about that for for a while as well but um but I do think that we're very spiritually starved in this country uh non-religious but very spiritually starved yeah hello my name is H I am what you will call a recovering cynic and five years ago like oh thank you 5 years ago I was like oh this is some woo woo woo so like but I wanted to come because I found that wh
at you have is like a very thought out system like you're talking about architecture talking about even Furniture Design all of those things and I wonder like The Dance Part is a wonderful entry point but I wonder like how do you find entry points for people like me totally actually it's so funny we're literally in this conversation right now um with uh with a former Reddit technologist CTO who wants to figure out how to enroll I'm just following you with my eyes um I'm like hello um no just to
um just to architect sort of what is the easiest lowest point of entry so we spent two days in our office literally a few weeks ago workshopping different sort of ways to um enroll people who are feeling lonely but might not necessarily are ready they're not necessarily ready for dance so we we we have all kinds of sort of um experiments that we're running right now uh or that he's running that we sort of supported in um brainstorming with him but um we're we're we're tuning into that through ou
r nonprofit belong center right now we're we're really kind of taking this moment daybreaker it's its own entity we have our own community of 800,000 members in 31 cities right um but it it is you're right it is a specific group who's willing to dance in the morning sober to deep house music so the variables are pretty high um but um but I do believe that there if we can do that and actually have almost a million person community um I really believe that there's a recipe for that we can actually
architect um that that can really blanket a much much larger community of people who be like all right I could dip my toe in and see if this feels good and then wow this feels really good it touches the directions it touches my neurochemistry it feels good it's architected the right way and doesn't matter if you're a cic or not um you'll feel belong recovering syic or not you'll feel connected to the experience and that's really what we're in the experimentation of right now so stay tuned yeah
hi thank you so much I U love the talk I'm a huge fan of your book my name is leeva sorry Hi um your book really stands out and I gift it a lot because it's almost like a whole multisensory experience and it you know the dose the crawl it really stays in your brain uh and I was just wondering if you could share a little bit about what inspired the creative process behind the book and then the whole movement wrapped around it first of all thank you for the question because I appreciate that for m
e the book wanted to be an experience right typically when you when you kind of read books it's black and white words on a white page and it's like this doesn't feel like an experience and I'm an experienced designer right and so I wanted when you flip every page for it to feel like a new wow moment a new experience you know so the whole book is meant to be that and I also design it with childlike illustrations because at the end of the day we're all walking around with our backpacks with you kn
ow with our childhood experiences in them and it's wild as I interview people all around the world they might be in their 80s still talking about Trauma from their 5-year-old selves so um so I wanted the book to feel like this reset to your childhood um and so even if they're complex topics presented in simple form uh um I wanted to feel both childlike and an experience that's why it's a full color book as well that's why I chose my publisher for that reason uh because they they they let me do a
full color uh book and I fought for that um and for everyone who hasn't read read my book I'm doing a book signing at 2:45 in just a little bit today at the book shop um I would love to say hello um but but that is that answer your question it just like it wanted to be an experience it really wanted to be also workbook there's about 25 exercises in the book so you can actually like write in it and make a mess with it and participate with the book because so much of what I talk about with belong
ing is about participation in your community so if you participated with the book all of a sudden the book is more meaningful to you as well so there's a lot of architecture that went into the design of that book so thank you for the question I love that thank you yeah of course thank you so much R Laura here fellow twin so my twin right there yes um so first what speaks to me is your travel and traveling the world so the more that you can travel and immerse yourself or just visit areas and um V
illages and you know I remember going to West Africa for the first time and really having that experience of community in a way I'd never experienced it before and then coming home to my empty apartment as a single mom and you know in the village they have like the people who cook and the people who do laundry and the people who you know and it's just it's so connected in a way and the dancing and the drumming and the you know um so we're all on the Journey of you know personal development hopef
ully and developing the tools to love ourselves and I find you know I'm always dealing with myself and the past and the trauma that comes up that old programming as I'm rewiring it and reworking it do you have any go-to mantras phrases things that when you notice that oh there I go going down what do you say to yourself um I have I have a mantra I've been actually chanting uh morning and night and it's um it's namoo it's a it's a Buddhist chant um and I just chant that for 10 to 15 minutes in th
e morning in the evenings um and it just sort of it's kind of this beautiful mix of J Japan and India coming together um it's a sort of a song about the lot a chanted by the Lotus Sutra and um just being grateful for every difficult moment and just finding the magic of this this beautiful life that we were living in um and uh and I have lots of you know movement practices as well but that chant particularly in the last you know many months has been extremely um life-changing for me so that's a r
ecent one namoo does anyone know the Namo chant yeah beautiful and um so that's been incredible um yeah I think it's like I think when I think about your travels around the world living Living in America the good news is because we have so many cultures together you can still find the Buddhist community in Austin Texas or wherever where do you live Buffalo Buffalo New York great I guarantee there's a Buddhist Community Buffalo New I guarantee there's all kinds of different communities for you to
tap back into to remember um all these spiritual learnings that you've got from your tra your days of travel um it's just about literally where you pay place your attention what are you prioritizing exactly um thank you so yeah this is amazing thank you for sharing and for being of course thank you hello my name is hula I come from Germany I'm a German podcaster I'm focusing on working culture and my interest goes into the direction when you look at our working sort of structure how what do you
think how does it impact the highly dose of remote working in terms of belonging and loneliness does it have an impact on our feelings of being bonded of being of belonging to the system to the organization to the company it might be a bit part apart from your thoughts but no no no I I think about this a lot actually and so you know again remember we talked about the mui the intersection of the me and the Wii and there's this beautiful meaness of like I get to work from home I'm freelance I'm r
emote I I have my own I can control my schedule but then you miss the Wii of being at the office right and so um so I think that we're in this kind of moment again of transition in the workplace where how do you both feel autonomous and be able to do your laundry while taking a zoom call um um and also have the camaraderie of the workplace so I really feel like it needs to be a mui conversation where you sort of interview everyone at the office and you ask them you know what what are why do you
want to work at home why do you want to work in the office and really sort of Workshop um our sense of belonging and the community Tas that one feels um in both areas thank you very much I love the expression I would love to bring it back to Germany yes yeah it's not just the me I it's not just the we I think that there's a lot of again conversation about like everything needs to be we but we we are humans we are independent individuals we are egoic we have our own creative Dharma and so it need
s to be a beautiful hybrid between the two yeah I think we have time for more questions couple more questions okay great hi ra I'm GA hi that it's nice to meet you finally I'm I'm the doctor that prescribes dance as medicine with you yeah like feel this live this doing a workshop at 2:30 on Dance's medicine yes um but I think a question I resonate with EV so much everything that you do and that you've spoken about today and I think as a creative and as someone who's in an industry well I don't l
ike calling it an industry is someone who's working to create a healing framework through which the Health Care system can shift its lens it's a lonely Journey totally for those of us you know who are working towards something that's going to shift these very slow-moving systems and so you know I'm curious for yourself when you were like I want to I want to write this book belong or I want to start daybreaker how did you build community for yourself to move your movement forward because I find m
y desire for community and my um my interest in creating my celium around me can actually be a little bit of a lone wolf work totally it's like a dichotomy so two pieces of this I think the first piece is about just how lonely of a journey is to get dance as part of the ecosystem well fortunately we're doing a study on this so I'm excited I think science and data can support this what what we're doing what we're all trying to do together um so that's the first piece um the second piece is I thin
k so often as humans we wait for our we wait for an invitation right we're always like oh I'm I'm waiting to be invited who's going to invite me but the real key and the opportunity is is can you be the invite can you have the courage to get up and actually invite and create a community for yourself and I think where you know my being a twin is helpful you have a buddy laughing at your jokes all the time um but um but and and had giving more courage whatever to invite people but we were always a
lways hosting people at our home we'd have these apartment parties that were notorious um you know that we're known we do poetry readings all kinds of fun things like at our at our home all the time we lived in Brooklyn together before she kicked me out um just kidding her her boyfriend moved in anyway um it's fine we'll talk about it later the loneliness I felt of that experience I'm just kidding um I'm teasing I'm uh but but um but I think it's really just like the invitation peace we forget a
bout I think we forget that oh we have the agency to just be like let me put it let me go to chat GPT and make a cool invitation on Dolly it'll take 30 seconds and then promise a Cadence of once a month or once a quarter and you'll become known as the awesome Doctor Who throws dance who does who prescribes dance and you do these amazing events quarterly monthly give it a name you what's that soup oh yeah ex right with she's like with doll soup like maybe like maybe you bring a piece of your cult
ure into the experience and and you make it something fun but the point is it's like we don't have to wait for the invitation we get to be the invitation like that's what I've always known somehow um it's just like let me just start and see if anyone comes and the very first daybreaker literally it was the first snowfall in New York City I I have to wrap up to go um but um first Sall in New York City uh it was December 10th we thought no one was coming and we were like all right well that was a
nice experiment and then 180 people came to the very first one wow you know and that sort of built the movement that we have today so yeah thanks for sharing that of course yeah anyway thank you everyone thank you so [Music] much
Comments
i am so lonely, people are robots, save me