[The Ultimate Yogi With Travis Eliot Torrent
Oludare Padilla
Hi everyone. Welcome to How to Live, a podcast that explores ways to live a good life. I'm your host, Shard Lal. This is episode 39. In today's episode, we dive into the world of yoga to explore life principles we can learn from this ancient art. I'm thrilled to have a special guest with us, Travis Elliot. I discovered Travis's yoga classes during a particularly busy, stressful time in life. We just had a baby girl. Work was demanding and I had no time for yoga, but really needed it. Travis's shot effective classes, relatable stories and calming voice helped me find balance and peace that I didn't think was possible.
Today we talk to Travis on how the principles of yoga can be applied to daily life. Travis is a world renowned yoga and meditation teacher based in la, California. He works with the world stop athletes, celebrities, and entertainers. He's created bestselling yoga DVDs, Written acclaimed books on yoga and his chant album, the Meaning of Soul, debuted at number three on the iTunes World music chart. He's been featured in CNN, Huffington Post, Access Hollywood and More. Travis is inspiring yogis all over the world with the community of over hundred thousand students spread across 95 countries.
Travis is also an entrepreneur. His app, inner Dimension TV is used by folks all over the world. That's how I discovered him. We have a promotion for folks who want to try this app. We'll share details at the end of the podcast. What I love about Travis is that he makes yoga accessible to busy folks.
His programs are as shot as 20 minutes. His stories are relevant to the modern context, and he shares insights that can be used in daily life. In our conversation, Travis and I talk about finding life purpose, the power of storytelling, and how it can enhance yoga or any experience, the ego and how we should deal with it.
Success, and how his view of success has changed with. Fulfilling potential managing stress and a lot more. Whether you are a seasoned yogi or new to this practice, this episode is packed with insights and inspirations on how to live a good life.
But before we get to the interview, thank you very much for your support with your support. Now we listen to in over 95 countries, over 900 cities across the world, and we rank in the top 5% in the world. If you haven't already, please do consider subscribing. You could consider leaving us a rating as well.
I've heard your voice doing yoga most mornings. I use the app that you have and I hear you talking to me, and it's a little surreal talking to you in person and having this two-way conversation. Congratulations on all the good work that you've done helping folks live a balanced and meaningful life, and I think a great place to start would be, Travis, what caught you interested in meditation and yoga?
just to give you some context, my mom and dad divorced, so there was a lot going on, a lot of turmoil. I was in the midst of tremendous sadness and grief and adversity and everything that I had known up until that age was really shattered. and meditation practice for me became a way to find healthy solitude and peace within the midst of all that Turmoil also at that young age are not limited with the depths of consciousness that you can access.
You really are much more free I think, when you're a child. So I was able to go to really. Profound states of inner bliss and even visions at times that really began to plant the seeds that would later germinate into finding yoga and becoming a yoga instructor, which didn't happen until I was 26 years old.
So I had been meditating for a few years from about the age of nine until basically I got to high school. And then when I got to high school, like many people in high school I, I explored a completely different path and that involved. Partying and drinking and girls and that continued through college.
So I really took a 180 from that spiritual path for many years. when I eventually discovered yoga at the age of 26. It was like the greatest homecoming that you can imagine. I felt like I was reunited with this kid that I was when I was nine years old, and it felt like the perfect place to be.
And I felt for the first time in many years that I'd come back to wholeness, and I knew from that very first yoga class that I needed to get back to that yoga studio and be on this path as much as possible.
Sharad Lal: What an inspirational story, Travis, you spoke about at the age of nine, you don't have constraints as you do meditation, and Buddhism teaches us the beginner's mind, which a lot of us have to do a lot of unlearning to go back to that stage. To be able to meditate without constraints.
That's really powerful. you At the age of 26. I know you were at LA at the time, at that time you were looking at pursuing a career in acting Was there any event that got yoga back to your life and how did it come?
Travis Eliot: Growing up in North Carolina, eventually I went to school and I was really passionate about all things related to filmmaking. I loved. Everything about it from cinematography to music scoring to acting, I really I really felt like filmmaking was one of the great ultimate expressions of art in modern day society.
And after I graduated college I was working in Wilmington, North Carolina and. Fortunate to get on a really big movie with John Travolta and Vince Vaughn and some other big actors. And after that movie wrapped, I'd worked on that for five months. I moved to Los Angeles to continue to pursue this path in the entertainment business.
But when I got to Los Angeles things. on the outside seemed amazing and fun. Again, more partying, the glitz and the glamor. I lived two blocks from Sunset Boulevard and the whiskey of Go-Go and the Viper Room and all these famous places that I'd seen and heard about in the movies. I was partying and drinking and doing drugs, and it felt like the hole in my soul was just growing larger and bigger I knew deep down inside of me that I was not on a good path. Eventually, I ran out of money and I had to get a job at this hotel, I was working in the banquets department, and this coworker of mine kept talking about yoga, but I had such a stigma as to what yoga was. I. Had a lot of resistance to it.
And I think that this speaks to a lot of men, unfortunately, and males. We think yoga is only for slender females that are super bendy and flexible. And that's how I viewed it. I didn't wanna go, I just didn't think it was the right thing for me. , but luckily this particular coworker kept badgering me over and over again to go.
Sharad Lal: he's done such a service, not only to you, but to so many people who've gained from the experience you got in yoga and then became a teacher. I know many people in this part of the world, Southeast Asia, they remember the tragic tsunami that happened in 2004 in Thailand and I also know you were there during that time.
Travis Eliot: Yeah, absolutely. Just to set up that story, in 2004, the year prior to that, in 2003, which is right after I had gone into my very first yoga class, I had gone on a yoga retreat in Kauai. And I had a near death, near drowning experience in the ocean. fortunately there was another participant on the retreat who was a lifeguard in the San Francisco Bay area who saved my life.
So that sets up the stage for a year later. Now I'm in Thailand and I'm also a student on this retreat I'm on this island called Lanta. We're in tropical paradise. It's just gorgeous. It's beautiful. Staying in a beachfront bungalow, don't have to get in a car. I may be able to walk to the yoga shaah, able to walk to the restaurant, get just amazing, fresh, organic food and drinking fresh coconut water.
It was pure heaven. And at the end of that retreat, One of the teachers that lived there invited me to stick around and start teaching yoga, the thought had never even crossed my mind. I was just happy being a student. I never expected to teach this, but when she posed a question to me, it was a pretty easy decision to make because I loved yoga.
I was in tropical paradise. I didn't wanna leave, and this was an excuse to stay. So I started teaching yoga and hadn't done the teacher training, but I just taught from what I knew and the experiences that I had and the passion that I had for yoga, and I think people could feel that. So I'm teaching for about two weeks or so, and then the day after Christmas, December 26th, one day I'm walking back from the road after having been at the internet cafe.
I'm heading towards my beachfront bungalow, and all of a sudden I hear the owner of the resort just screaming that the water's coming, the water's coming. So I quickly ran down to my bungalow and sure enough, the whole ocean. Was slowly surging in, and what really struck me in that moment was how radically different the whole ocean looked from what I had experienced it for those three or four weeks prior to this particular day where it was a very.
Crystal blue, serene ocean, and now all of a sudden it was dark gray and black and choppy, and it's just creeping into the shore, almost like a scene out of a horror movie. So I run to my bungalow, which was up on stilts. And I just start throwing all my stuff as fast as possible into the suitcase.
And after about five minutes of doing that, I ran out to the porch and I was surrounded by the water, surrounded by the ocean. And I didn't know what to do because I didn't really want to stay there. But also, I didn't wanna get into the water, especially after what had happened a year prior when I was in Kauai and almost drown.
but luckily after a couple of minutes, you may have heard the stories of the metaphor of what happened right before the tsunami came. It's almost like somebody pulling a plug out of the bathtub drain. This happened and the whole ocean receded back out, so the ocean receded. I ran down the stairs and I ran up to the top of a hill nearby.
And then several minutes later, the tsunami wave came and completely demolished the resort. and then a second wave came and finished what the the first one had already done. And so in that instant, I was really impacted by the impermanence of all things. One paradise had been flipped upside down into hell.
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