In this episode, Lisa Cohen talks with Tonya Dawn Recla about her superpowers of listening, finding your truth and being present. She talks about how listening also means listening to yourself and the gift of focus. We also discuss the work yu have to do to make a change, and how that starts within yourself.

Lisa Cohen practiced under some amazing yoga masters. After 22  years on the mat, she is still a lifelong student, still humbled and still in-love with the practice.

One of my new favorite people is on the line with us, Lisa Cohen. She is amazing. She has this amazing resume, and we’re going to talk a little bit about that. She’s practiced under some amazing yoga masters. Her energy, the embodiment of what she portrays is just fascinating. She feels delightful. You’re going to love it. Lisa, are you with us?

I am so with you, Tonya. Thanks for having me.

You’re quite welcome. Thank you so much. I do want to give you an opportunity to get into your background a little bit more, but I first want to start off like I do with all of these interviews and ask you, what are your superpowers?

I am a superpower listener. Listening begins with being quiet and I try to listen very well, that includes listening to myself. That probably comes first. A superpower that I’m just trying to really refine and hone in on is doing one thing at a time. I used to come from the ideology that more is better. I can be a multitasker and I could be so good at so many things, being a mom, a teacher, a mother, a sister and doing all of those things. Now, I just really try to do one thing at a time really well. Even just eating and listening, as I said. When I’m teaching, I’m really in tune with teaching. I think those are two really great superpowers of mine.

I love that they’re so intermingled, that being present is listening in and of itself. Listening to your own timing and listening to what’s occurring. Just giving the people that you’re present with the gift of that focus, I think is huge. It’s beautiful.

Thank you. My teacher would always say, it’s why it’s called the present because it’s a gift you give yourself.

I like that. I agree completely and I really like that you brought that into the conversation, the listening. A lot of times we get caught up in what are we doing for the world? What are we doing for everybody else? For you to say, “I’m learning to listen to me first,” is huge because sometimes the more you go on these journeys, you realize that that’s ultimately all we have, that relationship with our self and then what that’s reflected for others and what others reflect for us. How did you come to focusing on that? Was it an ongoing journey? Was it a singular catastrophic event? What led you to honing that specific skill?

Finding Your Truth: Typically, change doesn’t happen without a crisis. It’s not always easy.

I would like to say that it’s an intermingling, ongoing occurrence. But in my opinion, even though embracing the change is what it is all about, this is something that has just been recent in my consciousness. Typically, change doesn’t happen without a crisis. It’s not always easy. We don’t necessarily want to move into that painful, struggling thing to move into the change, yet it is part of our nature and evolution. What happened for me is that I just had to become a warrior princess and not be afraid.

Fear is a really catatonic, very immobilizing thing, but typically fear just stands for False Evidence Appearing Real. We create all of those things. What happened for me is I ended up just having to let go. For me, it was either let go or get dragged. That was that changing moment. Thank goodness for that, the change just rests upon us. As I said, sometimes that’s in a form of crisis and struggle, but in the long run it proves very good for us.

I love that. I was laughing with somebody the other day, they were sharing this experience that they were having and on the surface it seems, “Oh my gosh” tumultuousness and being dragged around by all these circumstances.” I just started laughing. It took a minute, but they got why that was. I’m like, “You weren’t going to do it otherwise.” On some level I sit back and marvel at the creation we’re capable of to force us into action. I’ll be the first to admit, I’m fairly complacent unless it has to be something different. I setup all kinds of amazing obstacles, hurdles and other things to force me into action because I’m not sure I would do it otherwise.

I knew that we were on this super hero walk together because I think that is the journey of super heroes, to not do things in the same ways. To go places we’ve never been before, to do things we’ve never done before, to find a new groove. Sometimes I just go into a grocery store and I go, instead of starting in the fruit section, I’ll start in the frozen section. By just doing something different, I end up running into somebody I’d never would’ve seen. If I would’ve gone through my same journey, I never would’ve run into that person. It just happened the other day.

I tell people I’ve gone through so many iterations, for me it’s almost always around personal appearance or what are you doing in the world, that type of thing. My head is shaved on all sides, the nose piercing, everything in it. What I do is that anytime I think to do something and I hear a story inside of myself typically or something that I’ve picked up along the way that tries to tell me that I can’t do that, then I force myself to really take a hard look at it. Of course, it doesn’t mean that automatically then I just go and do it. But I really sit back and observe the story. Where did that come from? Was it mine to begin with? Is it one I even want to continue having?

I do find myself challenging those stories a lot. It took me about a week to shave one side of my head. That was a big deal to me. I had to watch all those stories come up and take a look, what does it mean to be a mom? What does it mean to run companies? What does it mean to be a public person? What do all of these things mean? Then really come to that conclusion of what I want and what I want to create. It can be as simple as, “Why do I have to do it that way?” I tell people, you have to question everything. There may come a point in your distant years that you’re eating ice cream and you’re like, “Do I even like ice cream? What am I doing?” It’s that constant being willing to change. Do things differently. I think it’s very bold.

It’s so bold. The change really has to start with us. It’s that same thing, you can point the finger, but when you point your finger there are three fingers pointing back at you. I feel like our kids. I’m fortunate to have had two children that raised me, so I’m really grown up now. They’re amazing teachers. The mirror is there. If you want to change something, then be a good teacher. Change it with you first and see what that feels like and really embrace it. It’s a very old beautiful saying, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” It’s true. You have to start with you. It has to be internalized. That journey inward is a hard one. Nobody said it was easy.

It is absolutely the journey of heroes. When I hear myself saying something, a criticism about other people repeatedly, it becomes a pattern and I’m like, “Okay.” The story I was saying was something around people not pushing through, not busting through walls. I’m seeing this across the board. I was like, “What wall am I not busting through?” When you start to look at the world as being so symbolic, I tell people, Just look at everybody like avatars in your little game. What are they requesting for you? What are they showing you? Be grateful for the fact that they are willing to do that for you.

It is so much easier to make it about them and everything else. I say it’s easy but actually the easiest thing in the world to do is to take it inside, make that switch and then your whole world changes. There’s not that many people who are willing to play at that level of self-responsibility. Because in those upper echelons, there’s no one to blame. You can’t point fingers at the world or the environment or other people or circumstances. There’s nothing else to blame other than what choices you are making.

Finding Your Truth: To make the change is to make a correction. That’s amazing work.

Making that shift, making those changes, that makes the correction. That’s the work there. To make the change is to make a correction. That’s amazing work. That reflection and that honesty, that’s powerful stuff, superheroes.

Talking about superheroes, I want to hear about your journey into and through yoga. You have an impressive list of yoga masters that you studied under. Tell us about how that came about and what your experience was with it?

It was a thrust upon me. I didn’t really know what I was in for. That’s a blessed life. I picked amazing teachers and mentors and my parents and my family. I’ve traveled the world. I had a very interesting business life in Dubai where I was for eight years. I was with Reebok International. I came home to Arizona where I actually went to high school. I went to college also in Arizona. But I had not lived in Arizona since my youth, in high school, so 1991.

I came back to Arizona in the ‘90s. I have three sisters and we’re all yoga teachers. My father was also an incredible and established yogi himself. I went to an Ashtanga class with an amazing master who was a first generation disciple of Guruji Pattabhi Jois. I was in the presence of greatness. As we all are, you’re never quite sure where your gurus come from. I went through that Ashtanga class and that’s more than 30 years ago, 32 or something. I was on the mat and have been on the mat every day since. My teacher, Anthony “Prem” Carlisi, set my way to learn how to stand on my own two feet. Without yoga, I don’t think that I would be good at anything, certainly not a good listener.

I tell my students now that this isn’t about learning on how to stand on your head or your arms or doing all those crazy sort of contortions. But yoga is about learning how to stand on your own two feet. I had amazing teachers. It started with Anthony Carlisi and then I pretty much have studied with all the masters in almost all disciplines of Pasha, Kundalini, Iyengar, Raja yoga. I’ve had a wonderful journey. I now teach. It was my teachers who said, “You are ready to teach.” I didn’t think I was ready. It turns out that I am. Certainly I stood on many shoulders of many masters. I hope that I would be a foundation of some masters yet to come. It’s just a continual learning process.

I love that. It really feels like an amazing gateway for you. My bias is that we’re all here helping to guide each other. We just use different gateways to do it in. Mine started in the spy world then moved into business and due diligence and protecting and risk litigations. Hopefully, that’s just how people find us. Once you’ve committed to this journey, you do serve as a teacher regardless of whether or not you know that you’re ready.

I think that’s one of the biggest things that I serve for people, encouraging them just like your teacher did. You don’t have to feel like you have all the answers to teach. In fact, some of the best teachers are the ones who are most willing to admit that they don’t. It’s a phenomenal model for people in terms of that continued self-development. I really feel that authentically within you and honor the fact that you share that with others and have the courage to, even when you didn’t completely see it for yourself. I don’t take that lightly because I know how many people don’t use that. Kudos to you.

Thank you.

I wanted to get to a couple of solid points here, because I do feel like you have some real grounded information for folks. What would you say to people who are just trying to get started on this journey, into that superpower thing and wanting to take that super-hero journey? What advice do you have to offer them?

Actually, I was reading some of the questions initially that I thought that you might ask me and this kind of catapults me in how I’d like to answer that question. One of the things was, “What is your motto or your MO, your Modus Operandi kind of thing?” I have two things that came to mind. One is the Nike slogan, “Just Do It.” At some point you just have to do it. Just do it. You don’t know that it’s going to ultimately be great or good or it could be bad. All of those things teach you something.  Get up off the couch and change the channel if you don’t like the channel. I think we have the power to do that. Nobody else can make us do that. I think that we have to really dig deep down inside, find the strength and the courage to get up and just do it.

The other slogan that I try to live by and I love, and I learned this from my father who’s very wise, he said, “Should is shit.” If you really want to do something, “Should I do it? Should I go there? Should I do this? Should I think that?” If you really want to, you could. I try to live by that. If I really want to, I could. I don’t need to should it. “I should do this. I should do that. I should be thinner. I should change the channel. I should be healthier. I should do yoga.” That’s all bullshit. That’s what I live by.

I agree. I really actually appreciate the fact that you were just cursing. I outlined Lisa’s background, her philosophy. She’s over 30 years of teaching yoga. She’s passionate about yoga. It’s all about the breath. Then I get to the section that says, “The unique piece about her, she’s a bad ass super-hero.” It just about summed up the gist of our conversation. I appreciate that you’re willing to be all of that in your complexity and to model that there are levels. My favorite quote of all time is Whitman. “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I contain multitudes.”

That is one of the biggest obstacles I see for people going into this kind of existence, into what I call the abstract frequency, because we don’t like to be hypocritical. We don’t like to contradict ourselves. We like stability. We like stableness. We like to know what we’re getting ourselves into. We like to take a stand for something. We like our opinions. We like who we are. We like our personas and our identities and all the obligations that go with it. We like our rules around that. When you start playing in the abstract, all of that goes away.

You say something in one minute and then the energy shifts and the next minute you feel differently. We were talking earlier about there’s no fear of diving in head first when you’re looking at everything from an experiential perspective. Because in the moment it could be absolutely perfect and the next moment it can shift. It doesn’t negate what was, what the experience for you. To be willing to embody all of that is a very powerful stand. People are starving for permission to do that. The more us that are willing to venture to that space and model that for other people, the more courage other people are going to have to do it also.

Finding Your Truth: Being in the now, being in the present is a gift to give yourself.

Being in the now, being in the present is a gift to give yourself, that’s why it’s called the present.

A gift for others as well, but I do like that primary focus being with self because that really is all we can work with. What emanates out from that is the rest of it. We’d like to give our listeners this live in your power story, a time when you got an intuitive hit to do something. Can you think of another one that you would offer to people just to help them understand how this is done? How do you live operating with your superpowers and being this amazing person that really lives in this experiential lifestyle? Can you think of a time when that occurred for you?

There have been so many profound lessons. I just had a very big shift in my life in spending 30 years with someone. That’s now shifting for me, so that’s really personal. I think we all really know our truth. In yoga, we have a saying, it’s a mantra that I say every morning and it’s “Satnam.” It means, “I am truth.” I think we all really have that truth and that divinity, in fact inside. We just don’t always listen to ourselves. My teacher would say, “The heart knows things that the head never thought of.” We really have to maybe be quiet and go inside, as I said before, that a harder path sometimes to really go inside and figure out what that is. Then be really honest and well with yourself.

I wasn’t sure where the path would lead without a partner that I had for 30 years. You leap. You hope that in your truth then that appears, and it does, because again you’re being in your truth and in the now. You don’t know where you’re going. You’re pretty much making a good guess. A good guess in the partners that you pick, in the friendships that you make, in the path that you go and make a good guess. It’s a guess nevertheless. I feel really strong and really powerful when I listen to myself because we really do have the answers.

That is the exact imagery that I had when we created the net membership, The Network of Evolutionary Transformation. It gives the people the courage to leap knowing that there is a net there to be caught. When you interlace that net with support and people who love you, people who’re willing to uphold you high and people who encourage you to be courageous “Guess what? We’re here. If it doesn’t quite workout the way you wanted it to, then you’re fine. We’ll support you in that and we’ll move on to the next thing together.”

As you said that, I had this image of you just leaping and falling into this net and just gently bouncing back up. I feel like that’s exactly what you’ve done. You get to serve now that example for others. We don’t always know where our leaps are going to take us. That doesn’t matter. It’s okay. We don’t necessarily need to know. Sometimes in clinging to wanting to know, we actually negate the whole process altogether. Again, I honor you for that part of your journey. I feel really good for you. Are you feeling like you’re standing on solid footing at this point?

I feel so darn courageous and brave. I really feel like my cape is flying in the wind. It feels really amazing. It took a long time to get here. It really has to be your truth. It can’t be somebody else saying, “Oh you should do this.” There’s that “should” thing again. Or, “I’m seeing you do this and it would be better if you did that.” It has to be really authentic and real for you. When it is, it’s ultimately proved perfect.

I love what you just said about being supported, and I do feel supported. Thank you so much for this amazing forum. Of course, we found each other because we’re soul sisters. I feel that this support is so powerful. Creating our dream teams and making connections in what this life is all about. Being connected and being of service. I’ll just leave you with this. We have to believe in something other than ourselves. I think that’s why we have belly buttons, to remind us that we’re connected to something other than us.

Find out what those connections are for you. It could be saving the whales or certainly being a good teacher to your children and all of those things. Find things to be connected to because that really makes the difference. Learn to tell your story.

I’m excited for our continued connection. Where can our listeners find out more about you?

I have a website. It’s a little outdated but it certainly has lots of pictures and my history. That’s at FlowinWithCohen.com. I have a Facebook page, you can be my friend. I look forward to interlacing our tentacles and being involved with you too. I teach a lot of yoga as well. I teach at four studios in and around the Phoenix area. I teach peak trainings all around the world. You can find all of that in my website and my Facebook page.

We will definitely follow your adventures there and support you the best that we can. I do look forward to engaging with you further. Thank you so much for sharing your time and your essence with us today.

Thank you so much. I’m delighted to be with you. It’s an honor.

To all of you out there, thank you so much, as always. We appreciate your loyalty. Until next time, take care.