Spirit in Action
Yoga & Mindfulness in the Inner City - The Holistic Life Foundation
The Holistic Life Foundation does the amazing work of transforming lives & spirits in inner city Baltimore. The basic tools are yoga & mindfulness taught and modeled by 3 men in the hood. Ali Smith, Atman Smith & Andres Gonzales founded HLF fresh out of college in 2001, working with kids, at-risk people, the mentally ill, and everyone else, providing a model for changed and redirected lives.
- Broadcast on:
- 12 May 2013
- Audio Format:
- other
(upbeat music) ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice, with every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ - Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark helps me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice, with every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ - The many wonderful folks doing diverse good work for the planet that I have here on Spirit in Action come to me in diverse ways. A couple years ago, I had for my guest, my wife's yoga mentor, Scott Anderson, who does amazing healing work with his teaching and practice. So when Scott told me that I just had to interview the three founders of the Holistic Life Foundation, I knew that there was gold to be found in them their hills. I eventually got through to them, no small feat, considering the active and full schedule, these three world transformers keep, and they cheerfully agreed to work me into their bursting at the same schedule. The Holistic Life Foundation was founded in 2001 by brothers Ali and Adman Smith and their friend Andres Gonzalez, with, not a surprise, a holistic perspective to transforming lives. Centered in Baltimore, Maryland, they live and teach yoga, mindfulness, environmental stewardship, and much more from the place of center and spirit that they so passionately embraced without reserve in their last semester at college. Starting with fifth grade students and expanding to more and more branches of the at risk and underserved elements of Baltimore society, the Holistic Life Foundation is an amazing testament to the spiritual power of yoga and mindfulness. Let's head over to Baltimore now to visit with Ali and Adman Smith and Andres Gonzalez, also known as Andy, the Holistic Life Foundation. Thanks to all three of you for joining me for spirit in action. Hey, how you doing, it's Andy. How are you doing? This is Adman Smith. Hello, how are you? This is Ali Smith. It's so good to have all three of you here. You folks don't sit still for a minute. You wanna talk about your recent travels, pulling in information and resources for the Holistic Life Foundation. Okay, so, and I guess our whirlwind tour, as we like to call it, has started in April. We started off early April with a trip to the White House for a ground table discussion on complimentary medicine. We talked about our experience with yoga and mindfulness. From there, we went to Madison for a week to do a week-long residency at the Lincoln School. We worked with about 400 kids and about 30 staff every day for a week. We also got to hang out with Richard Davidson from the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds. All were out there, made some good connections with the University of Wisconsin Cooperative Extension. From there, we went to Denver for the International Symposium Contemplative Sciences. Got to hang out with Mark Greenberg. John Kabat-Zinn, our program officers from the 1440 Foundation, Yilla, and Deena Baudou. And Barry Boyz from mopo.org also. Barry Boyz from Mindful Magazine, Congressman Tim Ryan. From in May, we went to the Yoga Service Council Conference at the Omega Institute. In June, we went back to the Omega Institute for the most of the-- - The MBSR training with John Kabat-Zinn and Saki Santorelli. - And while we're up there, we actually got put on the schedule. We'll be doing a training on yoga and mindfulness, teaching yoga and mindfulness to our urban communities, pretty much for teachers, parents, and yoga instructors. We'll be up there next June, from June 23rd to June 28th, facilitating a training. Well, actually, we've been home for a little while. We had a fundraiser last Saturday, night June 16th. That went really well. We had a good turnout. Before that, on the 14th, we took all of our students on a trip to a local amusement park called Hershey Park, and the parents, which was awesome. I guess the only other things we really have on the schedule, we'll be back up at the Omega Institute at the end of July for the modules and education conference. - But again, in August, we'll be taking our students on, I guess our retreat center has been donated to us by the Shabbal Society. - You know, with all of the stuff that you folks have going on, it just blows my mind. And could you have imagined where you'd be today when you started the Holistic Life Foundation, when you started on the trail to that back when you were in college? - I said, yeah, I personally couldn't have. I'm pretty sure I can speak for the guys, too, as well. I don't think we had envisioned it getting to this capacity. I mean, we always hoped that we would be impacting a large population, but, I mean, again, we just wanted to help people. We really didn't expect to be going to a place like the White House, and to meet congressmen, and guys like John Cavitzin, and Saki, and there's all the connections and all the impacts. I mean, we took 50, over 50 people to a amusement park, you know, and to see the looks on the parents and kids' faces was just amazing. I don't know, I don't want to speak for them, but I believe this park greeted, I don't think that we imagined we would be at where we are right now at this moment in time. And definitely, I mean, Smith, when we first started, like a story that Andy always felt like, we really thought that we were the only people out here in the whole, you know, mindfulness, yoga, healthy movement, but Mark Greenberg from Penn State, he kind of hooked us up with people, and the Garrison Institute and other networks of people who were doing mindfulness initiatives across the nation. So, like, I know we had no idea that these networks even existed when we first started now, you know, being a part of these national networks is a great thing, and a great feeling to know that it's other people out here doing the same work that you are, and, you know, trying to help the world out also. - Well, why don't you tell us what the Holistic Life Foundation is, your programs, but get us kind of from the starch. What did you start out as, and what are you now? - This is how we started off with three friends in college partying. Often, I met Andy in college pretty much out on the bar scene, we started talking and realizing I had a lot of similar interests from there. We started kind of like an informal book club, but we would go read all these books on spirituality and religion and ancient history and philosophy, and any and everything that kind of was interesting to us, astronomy, astrology, and we'd sit and we'd read and we'd talk about the books we were reading, and we saw all these things that we felt could be improved upon. I mean, just, we saw a lot of people suffering in the world, we saw the environment being kind of taken advantage of, and we decided we wanted to do something about it. I remember one day, we were sitting in our history at Oppmann's apartment and Andy walked in room, and he was like, "We'll have all these hours, "what are we gonna do about it?" Time passed, and we were still thinking about ways we could help, and we saw Matthew West go on TV with his commercial with all the question marks on his lab code, "What's the government pay for you to do this to do that?" So we decided we were gonna let the government pay for us to help the world make some positive changes. So we looked up a grant, and I know my degree was in environmental science, so we decided we were gonna find a grant through EPA, and there was one for the ground level ozone detection. So we decided we were gonna apply for that, we printed the grant out, and we looked, and saw you had to have a non-profit organization to apply for granted, we're just gonna give three college, recent college graduates $100,000 to study ground level ozone. So we moved back into the neighborhood that Oppmann and I grew up in, we booked on Google on Google, how to start a non-profit organization, and we started the holistic life foundation. - I'm missing something. You're out doing the bar scene, you connect up the three of you, and of course two of your brothers, so you already know each other, and then Andy is added to the mix. You found out you had these common interests, why didn't you just stay at the bar and talk about your interests? So that definitely took you somewhere else. - I guess that was one of those divine intervention things, like the bar scene set the premise for us realizing that we had some of the same interest in spirituality, ancient history, regular history, a lot of different things, and it kind of let us know that the stuff that we were talking about, we could kind of like parlay that into us just, you know, sitting around together, reading some books and passing on now, which to each other, so that's kind of where that kind of came from. - Plus, we still haven't really left the bar, I mean, we still take our time to socialize, we keep it all in balance. We're not monks, like we live our lives, we spend a lot of our time doing service, but we also still have fun. - And so was there a shift in your life? Was it, here's what our focus is, we're partying versus here's what our focus is, we're learning, we're going deep. - Yeah, I think then, for sure, for all of us, I know that at least our individual practice was enhanced immensely. My gosh, just reading, practicing the yoga, meditating, and just to study in general, those three things definitely enhanced. After that, we saw the effects that it was doing with us, and I think that we just wanted to continue to learn more, and I think that is the reason why we decided to begin to teach it to kids, because we saw what it was doing to us, and how it was transforming us. The party thing, we can get together, have a few drinks, have a good time, but in the morning, we would still wake up, meditate, and do our yoga exercises. Instead of it just being, "Hey, we're just going to go out and party," we have a way to clean ourselves up afterwards, we could socialize, but then we can also get back deep into our practice, and those years following college and graduating, we're just years of the medics practice all day long, constantly meditating, constantly doing yoga, one of us always reading a different text that our teacher would give us, and we just, anytime we find a new exercise, or a new pose, or a new practice, or anything, we would always be quick to tell each other, "Hey, check this out. "Hey, we gotta try this, let's learn this." So I mean, I think it definitely, our lives transformed immensely, following that time period of meeting each other, and saying, "Hey, we want to make a change, "we want to make a difference." And I think we understood that we couldn't just make a change by teaching, but the change had to be within ourselves, so that people who saw us, and that we were introducing these concepts, who saw the authenticity, and saw the practice that we had, because if you don't practice yourself, it's really, you know, you can read about doing something, but you really gotta actually do it to really know and gain that pure knowledge. And this is, I don't know. Another thing is, once you go inside of yourself, that's kind of what led us to do the work that we're doing right now. When you go inside and see that beauty, and that pureness is inside of you, and then you come out to the physical realm, or the mundane realm, and you see all this frictional energy going around, or boarded up houses, or opened their drug markets, or this, you really have to do something, or you will be not true to yourself. And honestly, that's kind of what led us to do what we're doing, is once we went inside, and found that peace of mind, and that beauty inside, coming outside and seeing all the stuff that is not beautiful, we wanted to kind of change it. And, you know, I'm not saying that we're the ultimate, people who can change anything, but we were gonna do our part to try to change it. - Now, Ollie, you said your environmental studies is what you were doing in college. I guess Ottman and Andy are both at college. What were you studying, and what was the basis for this deep interest? Was there some ground support that led you to think that yoga, and this introspection meditation, that this was the place to go from? - Well, me, Ottman Smith, I was a criminology and criminal justice major, and in my juvenile justice classes, they were saying that one of the worst things, or one of the things that made career criminals, was recidivism, is because they keep doing the same thing, so keep being under the same conditions, once they get let out. So, of course, they're gonna break the law in the same type of manner, and be caught up in the system. So, you know, our whole thinking, or at least my whole thinking behind why kind of motivated me to try to use yoga as a platform to try to help people out, is because it's kind of like an internal change, a self-discipline where, you know, you would be reprogramming your mind, and, you know, figuring out what's right, and what's wrong in the practice, and that would help people kind of not break the law anymore, and be caught up in the whole recidivism thing that's going on in cities around the world, you know. So, that's the reason why, you know, with my criminal justice background, I kind of thought that yoga would help to kind of give rid of that recidivism, and to reprogram these people, and to not think in the way they did, and not being impulsive. And then this is Andy, and my major is marketing, so I didn't have much to do, I guess it could have helped with our business, but I think in terms of what God has started was, I mean, besides my family has a strong spiritual base, and my mother always, you know, taught loving unconditionally, and treating others with compassion, you know, that was just something that I was raised with. I think it also had to do a lot with, I'm sure Ali and I can speak more on it as, I mean, the two of them were raised in a family that had yoga as a background, you know, so they saw their parents doing yoga, and we were eating vegan when they were little, so I'm sure that that had a part of us leading more towards that area. - Yeah, this is Ali, I know before school our dad would have me and I would meditate every morning. The church that we attended was kind of like a non-denominational church, where like he would get a reading from the Bible or from the Bible, like Edo or any other spiritual text, and you started with a meditation. Our parents would take us to like all these ashrams and like in the D.C., Northern Virginia, Baltimore area, and we were a little, I mean, yoga was something that was kind of just always the part, like they planted at seed really early, so it was something that was just kind of in our lives, and then you kind of got out of it after our parents got divorced, but I know as we met Andy and got back in, and we're about to graduate from school, we really kind of got back into it, kind of delved really deeply into it, and I'm just an operator, Andy, one of them said earlier how we were, like during the time we finished off school and moved back into the neighborhood, we grew up well on a small street, it was one of those things where we literally spent most of our day practicing yoga, like when you get up before, when you do breathing, you do meditation, we do physical, we do Kriya, we do Hatha, we do all types of stuff, and then the night of the meditating spent our time reading and then just kind of sharing with each other. It was just one of those things that deeply affected us. - Could you talk about the neighborhood where you grew up and where the Holistic Life Foundation is now? - Well, like when we were living here, it was still, this is outman, our neighborhood really wasn't the best of the neighborhood, it was still crime, drugs and violence, but all the older people who were, I guess perpetuating that stuff, they had a sense of community also, and any time that it was like, gonna be something crazy going on outside, they would really tell the kids to go in the house and if guys were out really late at night, they would make them go home, they would make people make sure they go into school. So even though it was some negative things going on in our neighborhood, the older guys, and some of the mothers who were living in the neighborhood also kind of made sure there was a sense of community, and when crack came in in the '80s, they kind of killed that sense of community, that's why there are no families in Baltimore City and our neighborhood because people got caught up in that crack, like a epidemic, and people were either dead or locked up. So with a lot of these kids kind of growing up, being brought up by their grandparents and it was a lot of chaos, that sense of community was gone. So when we graduated from University of Maryland College Park and moved back to the neighborhood, it was really like the Wild West, like if you looked at somebody, you had to be ready to fight them. So sometimes people would just kind of look on the ground because they wouldn't want to test anybody or see if somebody's gonna, like, it was very bad, it was really like the Wild West in Baltimore, and West Baltimore, at least in our neighborhood. That was one of the main reasons why we wanted to affect our neighborhood because that sense of community was gone. And through our programs, how we're affecting all the youth in our neighborhood, the parents are starting to know who we are, and as they see us walking through the neighborhood, they'll ask us, like I know this person asked Andy all the time, like, as he's smoking a cigarette, he's like, "Hey, man, will yoga and meditation help me stop smoking cigarettes?" And, you know, some lady asked me this evening whatever time I woke my dog. She said, "You know, what's the first step of meditation?" I'm just kind of teaching her meditation as our theater on the street. And, like, when we first moved back into the neighborhood, there's no way those questions would have been asked, you know what I mean? And now those questions being asked, we built a community garden and the empty vacant lot in our neighborhood. So, it's a lot of things where you can actually see the transformation of our neighborhood from disenfranchised or just, you know, a lack of unity to actually a community again. You know, I know we're doing the right thing with the work that we're doing. What was it like when you got started? I mean, you were going to go for a grant about environmental stuff, but then you end up forming the Holistic Life Foundation. What were your first projects and how did that go? Well, when we got offered, we were going to do that, that ground-level on-zone thing, but then Ali and Alba's mother has a lot of connections in the school system, and she had an elementary school where they wanted us to teach 20 of their, quote-unquote, "bad kids," their worst-behaved kids. They wanted us to teach them VP football coaches for them. And being that we had our practice, we asked the principal, you know, "In front of us, teaching football would be alright if we could do some yoga with them." You know, maybe since they're, you know, the behavior is an issue, we can get them to calm down, concentrate, and focus more on some of these yoga practices. You know, there's a blessing that she was willing to give us that chance. So we started with that 20 group of kids, and I mean, we blew, we blew, but everyone's minds away, basically, all the teachers, all the parents, administration, which is, you know, it's a common phrase. We hear more and more where people say, "We don't know what it is you're doing, we just keep doing it because you're making a change." And we made quite an impact with those 20 kids. They were all in the fifth grade at that time, and they were going to be in middle schools all throughout the city. We felt like we needed to make sure to keep that group together. We felt like we created kind of like a bond in the family with them. So we told them that we would go, and every day we would go and drive out to each of their middle schools and pick them all up and bring them to a central location. It was the YMCA that up through at Hill. We did that for a few years until that first group of kids started getting a little older and started doing high school, and then we just switched into the group of kids within our neighborhood, and that's when the neighborhood group of kids started. I mean, that first group of kids was fifth graders. Now they're all 20 to 21 years old. Our second group of kids, we've known, at our fundraiser, one of them spoke. He said we knew him since the second grade. He said to me at another, we had known him for that long, and he just graduated high school. And now our third group of kids is this group of kids we do in our local elementary school, and that's kids from pre-K to fifth grade. So at the years of past, we just keep grabbing a little more and more kids. Now our after school program posts about 25 to 30 kids every day. You know, that strikes me as kind of a hard sell. Do you have a choice between football or yoga meditation? Did it take some convincing? How did you get them to that point? I don't think we ever gave them the option of football because-- No, we didn't. Yeah. There was just one of those things that they knew there was going to be something going on after school. The teacher suggested, I mean, the principal suggested football just because, I mean, that's the norm for most youth programs. And I think that we saw how much our yoga practice was affecting our-- It's every level of us. It's basically meant to be spiritually what we saw change inside ourselves. And we figured we could teach this to some other people. And we sure-- we were sure we weren't the only people that yoga would affect in that way. So when we were presenting the opportunity with the kids, they all showed up. I mean, and we-- I mean, it was rough when we started. I mean, kids walked into the room the first day. They were yoga mats all over the place. And they decided they were going to have WrestleMania in the middle of the classroom and all started fighting their wrestling with each other. We broke up fights constantly at the beginning. There was a lot going on, but I think the kids really, really got into the practice. I'm like, once they started feeling how they felt when they were meditating, when they were breathing, when they were practicing the awesomeness, I mean, it was one of those things that they felt their own inner peace. They kind of rolled with it. They kind of got addicted to it, too. And so it wasn't really like they had a choice. It was one of those things that-- I mean, actually, there was a baseball program at the school in the spring, and we would have the baseball coach coming and dragging kids out of the after-school yoga program and making them come to baseball practice even when they didn't want you, because they wanted to stay in yoga. No, no, I want to do another asana. You can't make me go have fun outside. Yeah, and play some baseball. That's funny. Yeah. You know, you mentioned, Atman, you have-- you were going for the degree in criminology, and you're talking about how this could reprogram people's minds, criminals' minds to put them on a different path. Have you actually been able to do that work, or have you been able to go in that kind of a setting, or-- Yes, we have, actually. I mean, we haven't actually gone to the jails yet. Like, we have a program that we're trying to get off the ground for next year in the juvenile jail system here in Baltimore City. But, you know, we have a gang outreach program where we're dealing with the youth in our neighborhood, or just in franchise, and we're actually teaching them yoga. And one of the kids is actually trained to a point where he actually took part in our yoga study with Hopkins and Penn State. We were teaching in the school system during resource time and the fifth and sixth graders. And this guy, you know, he was on the wrong path for a while, and, you know, his father passed away, and his mom, you know, is having problems with drugs, you know what I mean? So, he's definitely the prime person to break the law and, you know, get caught up in the system. But, you know, he had something inside of him that is making him choose a higher route, you know what I mean? I'm not saying all the time that he chooses a higher route, but he knows when he's doing something wrong and feels bad about it. And that's something that's lacking in a lot of these people who don't do the right thing all the time. But, you know, I see that he wants to do the right thing. It's just that, you know, the only support system that's coming here is us. So, you know, if people don't have a support system that most are given in life, it is hard to stay on the right path. But, you know, if they have support and have ways to kind of self-regulate themselves, and like, you know, we said, like, reprogram what is right and what is wrong. And yoga, the yamas and the yamas, you know, if they understand that type of stuff, then, you know, I think we've done our job. And, you know, they'll take it from inside of themselves and, you know, not do something instead of having to have positive influences around them all the time, because nobody, especially in the hood, has positive influences around them all the time, you know what I mean? So, sometimes they will have to look inside of themselves and, you know, be a leader, or, you know, show some initiative as far as not following the crowd. You know, and that's what this yoga and, you know, the mindfulness teach is that it gets rid of impulse and is -- and gets rid of those verminating thoughts which could cause violence among different crews, you know. So, I know that the yoga and the mindfulness is the right approach to dealing with the criminal justice problem. And how is it you're able to bring on these other programs? Like you said, you were aiming to do one next year. You said you had a fundraiser. Are there grants coming in? Is the community rising up to support you? How can you put this together? I mean, we don't need a lot of our time to our program, so, I mean, that helps things go. We have our oldest group of students, those kids we were talking about that we started with in the 5th grade, we're all 21, 22 years old now, and they help us out. We've got a generous man from the 1440 Foundation to support some of our projects. We've got some other proposals in. We had the fundraiser, which was very successful for us, so, I mean, we're getting a lot more kind of personal support, I mean, from people we know, like, from private donors. So, I mean, we're still building our organizational infrastructure to kind of support the things that we're doing, that we're not donating our time all the time, and that we can really do these programs, the scale that we want to do them on. Because there's a lot of stuff that we could, like, the program at the juvenile jail, we could do now, but I mean, it wouldn't be as potent as if we waited for our grant to actually facilitate the program as much as the kids are going to need it there, because the kids are only there for about 60 days, so we need a really, really intense intervention where we can get in there about four or five days a week. We would also like someone to actually study the projects that we're doing, so we can have some concrete numbers that we can go to funders after that initial grant is over and say, "Hey, look, this is like, we're not just giving you any build on evidence, we got a card concrete numbers behind what we did there, why don't you fund us to do this program in other places to train people to do this program in other places so that we can really help these kids change their lives and not end up in an adult jail once they finish up at the juvenile jail." We're speaking with Ollie Smith, Atman Smith, and Andres Gonzalez of the Holistic Life Foundation, Inc., website hlfinc.org, and one of the gifts that they bring that we haven't mentioned yet is Andy's Music, so let's share a piece of that now. Andy, Andres Gonzalez, performs his music under the name "Cutthroat," and here is his song "Amazing." [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] The song is "Amazing." The artist is Andy, Andres Gonzalez, aka Cutthroat, and he's one of the guests here with me today for Spirit in Action. You're listening to Spirit in Action. I'm Mark Helps, meet your host for Spirit in Action, a Northern Spirit Radio Production website, northernspiritradio.org, and we've got all of our archives on our website, seven years worth. We've got links to our guests, like the folks from the Holistic Life Foundation, who are with us here today. You can follow those links, find out more about all of the wonderful people doing these good works in the world. You can also post comments, make donations, help out in many different ways. We're speaking with the three founders of the Holistic Life Foundation, their website is HLF, as in Holistic Life Foundation, INC, like Incorporated, so it's HLFINC.org, and we're speaking with Alisha Razul Smith, we're speaking with his brother, Atman Ananda Smith, and we're speaking with Andy, who's also known as Andres Gonzalez. You're quite a powerhouse, the three of you working together. Are you kind of an ashram, a spiritual community together? Is that how you work? Is that how you focus? Because it seems to me like you really have to have a center to work from, because you're not in what was naturally a hospitable situation. This wasn't like going to a yoga community. You're building it from the center and building it out. How do you do your community? I feel like we're a walking ashram. I mean, because we always, when we go out and we're around each other, there's a certain vibe that we keep around each other. It's a vibe of love and positive energy and service, loving everyone and everything. And not just feeling the physical mundane love, but a deep spiritual love and understanding at the same light that shines inside of the three of us, shines in everyone and everything. So we have to love everything. You can't be angry or hate anything, because you're hating and not liking yourself. So, I mean, wherever we go, we make sure we keep our energy up and try to love the people around us. Nothing sounds like a TV or anything, but people like being around us because they feel our vibe and they feel our energy. We make people feel good. And we have a good time. You come to one of our yoga classes. I mean, you're going to laugh. You're going to have a good time. I mean, our teacher taught us this. I mean, if a student's on laughing and not having a good time, you're doing something wrong. And we like to have fun. We also like to learn. We also like to teach. I mean, it's just, we're all about spreading that good energy anywhere and everywhere we are. Whether in our neighborhood, whether in some other neighborhood, in a really urban environment, whether we're up at the Omega Institute, whether we're out in Madison, doing our programs, wherever we are, we're spreading that positive energy. And you're moving this throughout the schools there. Was that a hard sell? I mean, you mentioned there's a principal there who was amenable to you coming in. I think a lot of schools are, I guess, maybe afraid to bring this kind of thing in because it's got religious overtones to it. Not really. We actually have taken the religious terms, the Sanskrit terms, out of our curriculum. So if we're talking about karma, we talk about the golden rule. Or if we're talking about bakti yoga, we'll just talk about respect or to look again and to respect all those because you see that commonality within us all. And yoga is not really a religion. It may be associated with Hinduism, but it's a spiritual practice. So we don't even say spirits. We make it more about stress relief and being more present and stuff like that. All the stuff that yoga does for people, but we just let them know that it's not connected to a religion. It may be associated with Hinduism, but it's not Hinduism. A lot of Hindus practice yoga, but it's yoga is not Hinduism. I've heard some religious fundamentalists preach against yoga because it's insidious form of this Eastern religion. It takes you away from Christ, that kind of thing. Do you get that kind of push back? Is there anybody locally who said, "Hey, we've got to drive these demons out of our neighborhood?" I've never noticed any negative feedback from anyone. I mean, we can relate yoga to Christians that we work with. We're all about making our classes and meeting the people that we're working with, where they are. If you're a Christian, you can come into one of our classes and we'll relate it to things that are said in the Bible. You can relate yoga to anything. The church that me and I haven't grew up in, there's a big sign on the wall that says, "Truth is one, men call it by various names." I mean, it's the same underlying truth in every single religious practice so that we could walk into a room with Muslims, with Jews, with Christians, with anyone. We could have a yoga class specifically catered towards them and where they wouldn't feel uncomfortable because yoga is about truth. Like I've said, it's not a religion. It's about truth. It's about deep inner truth and spiritual truth and understanding who you really are, which is a part of every religion. I mean, if we're in that situation, we can make it work, but like I've said, in the school system, we take all of that out. But there's no crossover. Our own personal practice looks a lot different than what we do when we're in the school system. I'd like to hear a little bit more about the religious spiritual influences. You said, Ali and Ottoman, that your parents had a strong spiritual focus. Let's meditate before you go to school. Andy, evidently, you didn't have that. What was the spiritual religious mix for each of you? This non-denominational church is part of it, I guess? Definitely. I mean, that was the basis right there. The whole being open to all truths and not just one truth, that's what the whole divine life church of absolute monism was really about just teaching love. That's the religion's love, you know what I mean? And anything else is not. And they all have great ways to lead people on the path. But like Ali said, truth is one. Men call about various names. So whatever path you want, we're all looking for the same truth. Yeah, and I didn't have, I didn't go to the church that they went to or had that same influence that they had in terms of regards to their parents. But it's the same concept of love that I've just mentioned where it was, you know, I was raised a Catholic. I went through all, I want to celebrate through middle school where I did my first communion and all that type of stuff. And it wasn't until I got a little older that one thing that my mother always stressed was that love, was that unconditional love. And, you know, I would hear people talking about her about that. Like, she's such a loving lady, you know, she didn't have to do that for me, you know, but she did it. And that was something I think that as I was raised, it was always around. I mean, there was a little spiritual background term of some Puerto Ricans, I was trying to just be a piece more on some of my author and to that as well, which is a spiritual practice. But I think the main foundation was that love and just treating everyone the way that you wanted to be treated and seeing yourself inside that there's no difference. And Puerto Rico, we all look different, you know, there's people that can look super, super dark skin, people who are really, really light skin with blonde hair and blue eyes. But for us, we're all Puerto Ricans, you know, there was always that oneness anyway. So I think it was just something that was kind of just programmed to my head, "Hey, we're all one, and it doesn't matter what we look like." All I know is I'm supposed to show you love type stuff, so I think that's where a lot of my upbringing came from. One thing I happen to know about you, Ali and Adman, is that you went to the Friends School of Baltimore. Did you get some mixture of yoga or any kind of connection with that there? Because as a Quaker school, their curse is going to be open to that kind of thing. We definitely got exposed at Friends School. We had a time where it was meeting for worship, where you were kind of just sitting in silence and kind of just get into yourself and if the spirit moved you then you would stand up and say something and sit back down. So that was kind of like a meditative practice right there in the school day, and we did that once in a week or something. And then teaching that you have to be colorblind in this world. That's another lesson that we learned here, and that's why we try to spread love to everybody that we can because we're all the same when it gets down to it. And I remember having assemblies at Friends School where there would be like presenters from like all types of religious backgrounds, like I remember just Christians, Muslims. I remember even at one point we had an assembly and the higher Christians were there giving a presentation on what their religious practices were. So it was definitely a really open place where it was all about celebrating diversity and always shapes and forms. You know, we've only scratched the surface, I think, of the actual work you're doing at the Holistic Life Foundation. You started off with these programs with kids. You want to mention some of the other things that you're doing that we haven't touched on yet? Our programs are shifted to like beyond kids to every demographic. We do programs for seniors. We do programs for people at drug treatment centers. These are all the yoga and mindfulness-based programs that we're doing. Drug treatment centers at mental crisis facilities for people with like Schizophrenia, depression, pop-hole disorder. We do programs for at-risk moms. When we just started doing, we do a lot of teacher and parent workshops, schools. We've been doing trainings. Like we train the entire Harrisburg Physical Education Department on ways to incorporate yoga into their school, into their PE classes. We do programs like I've been putting together the program at the Juvenile Jail. We're working on expanding and teaching in other parts of the country. We've got a couple studies in the works for that. Our whole goal is to bring yoga and mindfulness to all the communities that are underserved and couldn't get it. I mean, we've had opportunities to teach it like I am well in the centers. I mean, if we wanted to, I'm sure we could have a yoga studio right now and be teaching there. But we would miss out on a lot of the people who really need these practices. So, we focus on the underserved communities because yoga classes aren't cheap, yoga classes are expensive. So, I mean, most people can't afford them. So, if we can take them to the communities that need them and give them to the people for free, then that's part of our calling. And because we have been doing this for so long and our results have been going so well, you know, our school is going to have to increase. But for the past, like maybe a year or two, we've had to turn down programs that were presented to us that they wanted us to do. But now we're in the process of doing a workforce development program where we're formally training our students who we started off with who've been doing mindfulness in yoga in some fashion for the last nine or ten years and formally training them that will increase our scope and be able to affect that many more communities. So, that's another big thing that we're in the process of trying to get funding for. We're also trying to increase -- we have this residency program that we do as well. I don't know if I mentioned that word. It's a week-long residency. We did one in Wisconsin and Madison and Wisconsin Elementary School where we taught over 400 kids and all of their staff. So, by the time we ended up leaving that elementary school, the kids were leading the table classes. And we've even heard from the principal that said that weeks later, a month later after we've left, the kids are still leading those classes. That's the thing, Ali's always very good at listening all these up. We do a lot of environmental work as well. All right, so environmental work. We do tree plantings. We do community cleanups. We do recycling programs. We do worm composting programs, organic raised bed gardening. We do a lot of advocacy work. We've had a couple of our students present in front of the city council for the city's sustainability plan. We do field trips. We do to nature centers. We do hiking and local parks. We do camping trips. I want to say that's pretty much the only thing I could add is to remove any vases. Basically, what we try to do is the whole concept of the holistic life on our nation is to show the interconnectedness to ourselves and to the environment and the planet. These kids, they walk around all day and they don't really get a seed out of green. The only green they see is a few trees in front of their houses. That's it. So, we try to show them that there's more than just this neighborhood and this little part of where they live and that there is a whole big world out there and that they need to take care that the gutters aren't trash cans. They just show them and introduce them to new experiences. I remember when we took our first group of kids camping and it's nighttime and they could hear the insects and the kids are freaking out. They're extremely scared and I'm looking at them like guys. You hear gunshots and helicopters and sirens all day long and that doesn't scare you, but it's just little bugs out there. But again, the never experiencing that said no idea what it was like to go camping and to sit outside and to feel that environment and experience that nature. That's amazing. Oh, by the way, environmentally, have you done anything with those on? I mean, we're always trying to get kids to decrease the carbon footprint in any way, shape, or form. I mean, getting kids to walk better, getting kids to eat a more vegetarian conscious diet so they're making less of an impact. We're constantly doing a lot of educational work to get kids to change their actions and change the way they think about the environment. Like Andy was saying, they live in concrete environments, but they're connected to the entire planet. And a lot of kids we work with don't have that connection. And once they understand that their actions affect the entire globe and the things that other people do to your environment affect them. And they're a lot more conscious of the decisions they're making concerning Mother Earth. I mean, like if you come to Baltimore, there's a lot of environmental justice issues. Like if we go to a lot of public schools in Baltimore City and we can't ask, because there's breathing exercises for asthma, we can ask the kids, like, all right, how many of you all have asthma? And there's some schools we go through, like 80% of the kids will put their hands up. I mean, and they're not cutting down any trees, but just their actions and the actions of the people around them are affecting their health and the health of the planet. I mean, and it's just the opposite. We went to Madison, where the environment is a lot cleaner than in Baltimore. We asked that same question, and it was like, we were in a classroom with about 90 kids in it, and we asked them, how many of you all have asthma in there and perhaps the teaching was breathing exercise? And maybe two or three kids put their hand up, and that, like, we were shocked. We looked at each other like, I can't even believe this is this way. But I mean, walking around the city, you understand why, but it's just one of those things that the kids get connected to it and we're connected to something bigger than just their neighborhood. They change all their actions. And then, yeah, they're definitely doing something about the ozone problem. And every other, the waste problems, the wasting of resources, like a lot of those environmental problems, they understand why they have to take action, combat those things and change those things in their lives. I think of this program in Baltimore as being inner city, whatever that means. I've never lived in inner city. I've lived in Africa because I was in the Peace Corps. I certainly know diversity in the world. What's the racial mix where you live and in your programs as it branched out to incorporate everyone, or is it still really centered in the neighborhood you grew up in? Well, I mean, Baltimore is really like, they call it like a chocolate city. It's like the majority of the residents here are black, you know, and especially the ones in the city. Some of them live on some other people, like, you know, Caucasian people or, you know, other races may live in, like, different pockets in Baltimore. Like Charles Street or Charles Village or, you know, a couple of other neighborhoods. But the majority of the places that need help are the underserved communities and the residents there are African-American. You know, but we do have, you know, a couple of Caucasian kids in our program. And we've done programs in poor white neighborhoods such as Hamden. So, you know, I mean, but it's just Baltimore is really like a chocolate city. And again, we're trying to reach those populations that are the most underserved. And they just happen to be the majority of the people in non-deserved areas are African-American. Yeah, like we went to Madison, Wisconsin and we did our program out there, the Artisan Residency Program. We were dealing with the same demographics, but they look different just because, you know, the geographical location of Madison, Wisconsin, you know what I mean? We stick with the same underserved communities, no matter what they look like. Yeah, I mean, we've done programs in other communities like the more affluent neighborhoods. Like we've done programs with friends, school and places like that. I mean, in those kids have an old whole nother set of issues that they're dealing with, like they're dealing with stress and they're dealing with anxiety and they're dealing with depression, but from other things. But it's just that a lot of them have the resources to go to a yoga studio or to go to a therapist or go somewhere to get some help. And like I've been saying, like, in a lot of the communities we work with, the parents don't have the resources. The parents may not be around and the kids are just kind of stuck there, dealing with trauma and dealing with a lot of suffering. So figuring out how to help them out and do what we can to make a difference. Maybe you can give me a little piece of advice. There's been discussion in Quaker communities for a long time. A large majority of Quakers in the U.S. happen to have pale skins, right? Even though there's more dark skinned Quakers in the world than there are light skin. One of the things when we're talking about reaching out, someone said to me, well, you know, it's like when you go to Quaker potluck, it's typically vegetarian or it's almost all vegetarian and that's just not going to appeal to every culture around the way. And I know that when my folks came to my wedding at a Quaker meeting, they weren't very pleased that we didn't have drinking and smoking there. And I'm white, but, you know, the Catholic background that I came from, that was pretty normal to smoke drink as part of your party. So as vegetarians yourself, does this get any kind of pushback? It's like where are the ribs or where's the chicken or, you know, whatever that so many people in mainstream America, that they're expecting to be part of the culture that you're bringing them to. Oh, we try to do really is try to expose them to substitutes for some of the meals, like, you know, like a lot of people in Baltimore City eat chicken boxes. There's a place in Baltimore that makes vegan soul food. So for our fundraiser, we got like a whole bunch of vegan chicken wings. You know, we just try to expose, you know, people, it's usually because people are ignorant to the fact that these foods are good and they're healthy for you. It's not that they don't want to eat them, they just don't know. You know, they're just used to eating or used to drinking or used to doing the same things. It's that whole reprogramming thing and teaching people the benefits of something. If something makes sense, then they'll adapt it to their lifestyle. You know, especially if it kind of tastes good, you know, and it was amazing if the fundraiser has a buddy who's Puerto Rican as well. And he came and he is not a vegetarian in any way, so he performed. And we know, we provided chicken quesadillas as well. We understand that there are people who aren't going to be vegetarian, so we provide that food as well. But my buddy, they came up and he had never had a vegan chicken wing and he was blown away. He's looking at me like it was the best thing that he has ever tasted in his entire life. And he just came in 10 minutes straight to talk, "I can't believe it. It's just not meat in this." And I'm like, "Yeah, you see that, buddy?" You know, so again, it's sometimes like I'm just introducing them to something new, you know. We give them the option to eat what they regularly eat as well, but just, "Hey, try this out." It's going to taste pretty because it's about how you flavor it kind of so. We just try to introduce some new stuff and hopefully lead by example and they'll learn to, "Hey, maybe I should try this a little." Yeah, and there's a huge problem with food deserts in Baltimore City where a lot of people live in neighborhoods where they don't have healthy options. Like they, all the food that they give access to is unhealthy for them. And it's a huge problem in Baltimore City. It's a huge problem in a lot of areas where we know that's where we live so we know it's a problem there. So I mean, just like they were saying, just exposure to other options, like making resources available for them to eat a healthy meal instead of having to go to something that's just cheap and affordable and just easier to get access to. I mean, our students, actually everybody, we were what they would expose these things to. It helps them, they know that their options out there and when they do go look for a meal, they actually make an effort to actually look for something that's going to be a little more healthy and a little more. It's better for the plant too. You know, I'm just blown away by the work that you three are doing that the Holistic Life Foundation is doing from the little seeds that were planted in your lives and then, you know, finding this center of, I guess, your walking ashram. It's just so amazing what you're doing for Baltimore and for the world as a whole. I want to thank you, Ali, Atman, Andy, for being a shining beam of light for us, you know, starting from the healing inside and taking that into the world in the prisons in the schools for the mentally ill, all of the people that you're working with. It's just such a beautiful vision and you're transforming our cities in exactly the way we need to do it. Thanks so much for joining me for spirit in action. Thank you, thank you, thank you for the invite so much. We've been speaking with brothers Ali and Atman Smith and their friend and walking ashram mate, Andy Gonzalez. Collectively, the Holistic Life Foundation incorporated on the web at hlfinc.org or follow the link from northernspiritradio.org. As I said earlier, Andy is also a musician and he makes music very much in tune with the transformational workforce these three are doing together. We'll finish today's spirit in action with one more song by Andy Gonzalez aka cutthroat. The song is 105. We'll let Andy take you out and we'll meet you next week for spirit in action. How is talk true friends are hard to come by? Gave me fair warning, morning salute to some rise. My head down, barely see me with my bun tied motionless. Know we alive cause it's long as rise. You word your bum but all I hear is dumb lies. You ignorance is dancing times. You got me tongue tied so many say they gon' be there. Then they run hard, others stab you in your back. Reason we don't come far. People of tune that's why they say that you ain't strong ride. Some people clear your dreams to you. I hope I'm runnin' like the only hate you have is towards yourself. I mean we won't ride but still there's curses. Feelin' curses cause of the gun fights. My light always lit. Even in the sunshine you got nothing to say so your rhymes is filled with punch lines. Some people excel when the pressure's on. Crunch time, others get overwhelmed. Wishing it they was blind. Love is all mighty. Everything's within ya. Everyone's a champion but act like they contenders. Me, me I'm just you. I wish that you remembered. Guess that's what I'm here for. Bring us back to center. Love is all mighty. Everything's within ya. Everyone's a champion but act like they contenders. Me, me I'm just you. I wish that you remembered. I guess that's what I'm here for. Bring us back to center. How'd it come to this? Where's it we got lost? We're standing up living better but tell me, yeah what cost? And is it really better? Just cause we got jobs? For the American dream? I feel we got robbed. My young gun covers his waffles and hot sauce. We should teach cream or wheat not sugary pie toss. Everyone's bitchin' cause they don't know they time dog. Actin' like the audience when you is the Rob Star. You roam around in circles like you drive in a stuck car. The reason that I'm here so you finally can step park. The patient listen to the doctor. Love is all mighty. Got it all but you don't want more. Don't pause in your glass. Crafts from your hot corns. You make a busy mask. Stay choosing the wrong door. Can't control your liquor. Me and my plaskers in the concord. Master these raps are in the track with long pause. Love is all mighty. Everything's within ya. Everyone's a champion but act like they contenders. Me, me, I'm just you. I wish that you remembered. Guess that's what I'm here for. Bring us back to center. Love is all mighty. Everything's within ya. Everyone's a champion but act like they contenders. Me, me, I'm just you. I wish that you remembered. Guess that's what I'm here for. Bring us back to center. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This spirit in action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. And our lives will feel the echo of our healing.