Celebrate National Yoga Awareness Month with this "From the Vault" Big Blend Radio conversation about Yoga Science, Meditation and Consciousness with Leonard Perlmutter, Founder of American Meditation Institute and author, along with Jenness Cortez Perlmutter, of “The Heart and Science of Yoga: The American Meditation Institute's Empowering Self-Care Program for a Happy, Healthy, Joyful Life.” More at https://blendradioandtv.com/listing/the-heart-and-science-of-yoga
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Leonard Perlmutter - The Heart and Science of Yoga
[Music] Well, Leonard Pearl-Mutter is one of the Western world's leading pioneers in the introduction of meditation into the cultural firmament, and I'm going to say, I've got my words all tongue tied here, but he founded the American Meditation Institute in New York back in 1996, and what the grade is, the actual courses taught at the Institute are accredited by the American Medical Association and the American Nurses Association, which right there says to me that meditation is good for us all. It sounds like to me. I know. From what I know is it helps us with stress, and that's a good thing. Leonard also serves as the author and editor of Transformation, the Journal of Meditation as Mind, Body, Medicine, and we're really happy to have him join us on Big Blend Radio today to talk about his new book, The Heart and Science of Yoga, the American Meditation Institute's Empowering Self Care Program for a Happy, Healthy, Joyful Life, and it's really this awesome encyclopedia. Nancy and I call these kinds of books, the Bible books. They're these kind of Bible books where you're going to be going into it a lot, and I've been reading it and really transformed a lot of what I thought meditation in yoga was about. It's really making me think a lot deeper about it, and it's not just me who's enjoying it. A lot of popular medical luminaries like Dr. Dean Ornish, Dr. Oz, Larry Dossie, they have also regarded it as a very accessible source of knowledge about adapting, what's known as the eight steps of yoga science, which includes meditation and really helps all of us who are stressed out in this stressful world. So everyone, again, the book is The Heart and Science of Yoga, the American Meditation Institute Empowering Self Care Program for a Happy, Healthy, Joyful Life, and you can get it at americanmeditation.org. A great place to go as well to find out more about the Institute and their different programs and classes and retreats. Of course, it's on Amazon as well. Leonard, welcome to the show. How are you? I am fine. Thank you for the invitation. I appreciate it. Yeah, you know, we're both excited about having you on the show, and I've been reading your book, and it really makes me sit back and think a little bit further, especially on consciousness, which is something that we've been talking about a lot on the show. I think Nancy, the last two years, and then I don't know what's going on, but as far as, you know, we've heard and read over the last few years is that even the word consciousness was almost like a dirty word, that it wasn't part of psychology or psychiatry, that it wasn't something that was supposed to be really understood or taught. Is that the truth? Well, it seems that way in the culture, I guess it's perhaps the final great taboo against examination, but what yoga science provides us is really a template for understanding consciousness and exploring it and its wisdom and employing it in the world today, which is very, very helpful. And when we talk about consciousness, it's kind of going through your book, and going, "Who am I?" I woke up this morning even doing that now. Well, that's good, that's good. Yeah, no, seriously, it's something that, you know, you automatically, you know, we were actually on a radio show in England the other day, and the host said, you know, tell everybody who you are, and I was like, well, you know, I'm six feet tall, you know, I'm suddenly like, what? You think about your career first, and you think about, you know, your family, you think about, you know, where you're from, but you don't really think about who you are, and you really get down to the nitty gritty of something that is going to take time to understand and get to know. And I realized, you know, reading your book and thinking about it, that this isn't going to be an immediate answer for me. And then getting into the consciousness side, you know, I realized that it goes deeper than even your dreams, you know, visualizations, and it goes deeper than thoughts, right? It's almost like another being that we have within us. Well, that's exactly right. What meditation does is it introduces us to ourselves. Somebody once asked is, is meditation like hypnotism? And I said, no, we're already hypnotized. Meditation de-hypnotizes us. So consciousness is nothing other than our awareness. I am aware of my hand. I am aware of the telephone. I am aware of the television. I am aware of my husband. I am aware of my wife. I am aware of my child. So awareness is the background of all reality. It is within you. It is within me. And within this ocean of consciousness appears gross and subtle objects with which we have relationships. And every time we have a relationship, it means we have to do something. We have to think a thought. We have to speak a word. We have to take an action. And every time we take one of these actions or speak a word or think a thought, a consequence develops that can either lead us in one direction or the other. So if we're honest with ourselves and we acknowledge that we really, in every circumstance, we want to be happy. We want to be healthy. We want to be secure in the world. Then the question becomes, how are we going to get to point B from point A? If we wanted to start a business, we would naturally write a business plan. We might speak to a bank to see if I can get financing. I would have a little survey taken to see if people needed or wanted my service or my product. So everybody wants to be happy. Nobody really wants to be in pain. Nobody wants to be stressed out. You don't see any advertisements and magazines or on the internet for a weekend in hell. So people do want to be happy, but how do they prioritize their lives? And what yoga science does is it provides us a mechanism, a blueprint for observing our thoughts, our words, and our actions and serving only those thoughts, words, and actions that will lead us for our highest and greatest good. And for that project, we need a philosophy of life. We call it yoga. Yoga simply means in English, it means union. And I always conceive of yoga metaphorically as a bridge that connects my outer actions, my thoughts, words, and deeds with my own inner wisdom. And the more that my thoughts, words, and deeds are actually a reflection of my inner wisdom, the promise is that I'll be able to fulfill the purpose of my life without pain, without misery, without bondage. But if I don't have a metaphoric bridge in my life, regardless of what we call it, and remember words are just pointers, you could call it anything, it could be Christianity, it could be Judaism, it could be Buddhism, it could be Hinduism, it could be Islam, you could come up with your own name. Whatever human being really needs, a philosophical, scientific, metaphoric bridge to base our outer actions on our inner wisdom. But if we don't have this type of philosophy and our outer actions actually conflict with our inner wisdom, then that inner conflict becomes the mother of all problems. You see, the mind moves first and the body follows. If there's conflict in the mind, there has to be conflict outside the mind. And what's the first intimate relationship that we have that's outside the mind? Why it's the body? So with conflict in the mind that's unresolved, the body has a pain in the back, the body has high blood pressure, the body contracts asthma. But these symptoms of pain and disease are just reflections of the conflict that prior existed in the mind. Can I ask you to do a little yoga science experiment with me? Okay, sure, we're ready. Okay, okay, it's pretty simple and all your listeners can follow right along. What I'd like you to do, I'd like you to raise your right hand over your head. But before you raise your right hand over your head, I'm going to ask you to do that. I'm going to ask you to raise your right hand over your head without entertaining a thought. So try that now. See if you can raise your right hand over your head without first entertaining a thought. Well, it's impossible. You can't do not happening for me. No, not happening for me either. So now, what's really interesting about that is that the mind has to move first before the body can move. And since the body's actions, whether it's verbal or physical, since the body's actions always bring about a consequence, you know, we've learned that in fifth grade. For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. And that's what yoga science refers to as the law of karma. That's what Newton discovered hundreds of years ago, that for every action, a consequence develops. So we already know what the consequence is that we want to develop from every thought, every word and every act. And that's happiness. We want to be happy. It's health. We want to have a healthy body and healthy mind. And we want to be secure in the world. Okay. So if I can't raise my hand without first entertaining a thought, it means that my thoughts are my richest resource for experiencing the fulfillment of my life because some thoughts are going to lead to words and actions that bring about pain and disease. And yet other thoughts, words and deeds will definitely lead me to happiness. And as long as we have constructed and use a metaphoric bridge in our lives to base our outer actions on our inner wisdom, the promises will always, always be led for our highest and greatest good. Then the only question comes in, well, gee, how do I access my inner wisdom? Where is this inner wisdom? And that brings up a very interesting point that was made very often by Albert Einstein. Albert Einstein said that a problem cannot be solved on the level of which it arises. It can only be solved on a higher level. So what is this higher level? How do we access this higher wisdom so that we can base our thoughts, words and deeds on it? And the answer lies in our conscience. You know, the conscience is only a human attribute. Human beings are the only animal that have a conscience. Now we heard that we have conscience and we know that. And we know that when our conscience tells us something or suggests something, we don't need a Ph.D. degree to know that it's true. When our conscience makes a suggestion to us, we don't need a college degree to know that it's true. We don't even need a high school degree to know that it's true. So what about the nature of our conscience? Interestingly, in Latin, conscience means with science, with science. And so Einstein said, "A problem cannot be solved on the level of which it arises. It must be solved on a higher level." Our conscience reflects that higher level of knowledge. You see, the conscience of our mind acts as a mirror. That's its functionality. That's all it does. It's a pass-through. Our conscience acts as a mirror. And it, our conscience, can reflect perfect wisdom from the super-conscious portion of the mind. That's beyond the conscious portion, beyond the unconscious portion, and the super-conscious portion of the mind, which contains an intuitive library of wisdom. We have access to 24/7. And that wisdom. Like, our integrity, it's like living in integrity, really. It's having integrity for yourself, you know, and understanding. That's right. Not only integrity, but love. Yeah, it's got the love. Whatever the conscience says is going to lead me for my highest and greatest good. So I'm going to learn how to love myself. And I'm going to learn how to love others and consequently be loved by them. You know, it's interesting. A friend of mine today was out on its spring break, and she went to a state park in LA, Area Los Angeles. And there's a beautiful pond with lotus blossoms and everything. It's another reason I had to play this all day. And her and her son, and he's got to be seven or eight, maybe a little older. They sat together meditating. And, you know, I look at that as like this union of mother and child meditating together. And, and I find this to be like, if people kind of slowed down, because I think our world is a little nutsy right now. And I wonder like, like you're talking about your thoughts actually, you know, you're going to become that, you know, we can control those thoughts through consciousness. And if we use yoga and meditation, as we take that love in, like you're talking about love for self and love for others, couldn't we alter what is going on in the world now? Because I think what's going on, people are reacting to it, and it's not, that's not, and it's not out of love. It's out of anger, and it's reactive. And I understand that. Totally understand it. But if we kind of change, can we change what's going on, like through this? I'm so glad that you, that you were brought up to that question. It's so needed in this world. There's so much darkness, there's so much anger, there's so much fear, and desire for happiness and security. And yet, we are being hurt by our own fear and our own anger. Well, let me talk a little bit to this point, because it's critically important in our world. It's one of the most important things that we can examine. First of all, we have to understand that every single thought that comes into our awareness will ultimately lead to a word and an action that brings about a consequence. That consequence can either be happiness, health and security, or dis-ease or pain. So that means that every single thought that comes into my awareness is only a suggestion of what to give my attention to. It is not an imperial command. Now that's very liberating. Every thought is only a suggestion. So if I have a thought that leads to a desire to say something or do something, how do I know I should do it? What if I shouldn't do it? Do I just rely on a book to tell me? Do I rely on an expert outside of myself? Do I rely on a friend to tell me? No, Shakespeare says, above all else, to thy known self be true. That's why we need a bridge of yoga, of union, of outer action to inner wisdom. We need to access our own inner wisdom. We're not taught to do that. We're taught in our culture that all the experts are outside. And we see these experts every night on television, these talking heads that have opinions about everything under the sun. And they're often wrong, but they're never in doubt. I couldn't say we're in big trouble at the expert thought. That's right. Well, we are in big trouble. That's right. We are in big trouble. So every thought is only a suggestion of what to give our attention to. It's not a command. So then how do we know what thoughts to think, what words to speak, and what actions to take? We have a conscience. In yoga science, it's referred to as the buddy. If we can create a space, between stimulus and response, when a thought comes into my awareness, if I can just lengthen the distance between stimulus and response, that little space provides me the freedom to redirect my consciousness, my awareness, to the buddy, to the conscience. That reflects wisdom from the super conscious portion of the mind. It's the same portion of the mind where Albert Einstein, some mathematical equations. It's the same portion of the mind where Paul McCartney hears beautiful melodies. It doesn't mean I'm going to become a songwriter. It doesn't mean that either of you are going to become physicists. What it does mean is that the more that you base your outer actions on your own inner wisdom by listening to the conscience and serving it in mind, action, and speech, all sorts of creative and life-enhancing thoughts will tumble into your conscious mind to enable you to fulfill the purpose of your life without pain, without misery, and without bondage. So let's just say that a thought comes into your awareness. You're watching a television and a coffee commercial comes on. Now, it's the end of the day. It's maybe it's 10 or 10.30 in the evening. And the ego and the senses and the unconscious mind in concert say, "Yeah, let's go into the kitchen and have a cup of coffee. I love coffee. Maybe I'll have a couple of spoonfuls of sugar and maybe some half and half cream." Don't forget the donuts. And all right, as long as I'm getting the coffee, I might as well get a couple of donuts. So what does the conscience say? Well, Leonard, it's 10 o'clock. You know that coffee has caffeine and it keeps you up. You also know that you need a good night's sleep because you have a very important meeting tomorrow morning. So the conscience is going to say, right now the ego does not have the correct perspective. The conscience is going to say the senses and the ego don't have the right perspective. The unconscious habit patterns don't have the right perspective. The conscience is going to say, "Sacrifice the desire at 10 o'clock at night for the cup of coffee." Now, that's an experiment to base your outer actions on your inner wisdom. Are you willing to forsake the desire for the cup of coffee at 10 o'clock at night? Very possibly at 10 o'clock in the morning, the conscience could say, "Hey, a cup of coffee with a donut is not so bad. Enjoy it without guilt." So you know, when you change that, when you go into that where you're conscious, you're following your conscience instead of your ego, right? And you make those choices. It's like when you start, you know, exercising or anything that's positive where your sexual love, right? It is an exercise. It is an exercise. Yeah, and when you start changing, your body starts to change with you. Everything starts to change with you. You know, it's the same thing. Absolutely. Not the energy. You know, the inflexibility, the inflexibility of the mind projects an inflexible, an inflexible body. So if I have a flexible mind, I will have a flexible body. And a flexible body is one that can last for the 120 years that it's designed for to serve us on this marathon that we're running. So the flexible body, that goes into yoga too. That's the one thing too. So when you're practicing the yoga, that's the science of it, right? Two where that's it. The union part makes so much sense because it's not, I think a lot of us think that yoga means we're going to stand on our head. We were going to talking about that at the very top of the show. We were laughing like, okay, you know, I could do that when I was a kid, but, but it's about really using your conscious. So you're making positive, healthy choices for you, yourself, you know, in mind and, you know, thoughts and controlling those thoughts and then, you know, in the outcome of those, the consequences. But you're on that health side when you start to practice yoga, you're learning more breath work and you actually are starting to work on your body too. It's everything coming together. And that's what's the neat thing. I think a lot of us just look at it as a health, as like an exercise thing more than these other benefits of where it actually goes into a consciousness side of things. And that's understandable because we have a very physical culture. So it's not surprising that the first portion of yoga science that has become popularized has been the physical yoga. But even the physical yoga, you see, is really a reflection of the mind because the body is a projection of the mind. So let me ask you this question. Say I gave you 20 gallons of crude oil from Saudi Arabia and I put it into your automobile. You'd be pretty upset because it would wreck your engine because crude oil does not work in a combustion engine. But I had the capacity to take that 20 gallons of crude oil and send it to a refinery in Texas and have it refined into gasoline. Brought it back and I can give it to you. Put it into your gasoline tank and you'd be very happy. You could drive around for three or 400 miles. You see, because crude oil is energy and we know from fifth grade that energy cannot be created nor destroyed, but it can be transformed. It can be transformed and this is one of the most exciting aspects of yoga science. Energy can be transformed. We've learned in fourth or fifth grade that ice can be transformed into water and water can be transformed into gas. And I'm here to tell you that fear and anger and greed, that's just energy. It's my creative energy in a debilitating and contractive form. If I act on the fear, if I act on the anger, that's going to be against my inner wisdom. My conscience is going to say don't speak those types of words. Don't take those kinds of actions in service to anger and fear and greed. If I do serve them, what am I going to experience? Well, if my outer actions are in conflict with my inner wisdom, I'm going to experience dis-easer pain. And if I don't heed the lesson of pain at a low decibel level, the decibel level gets louder and louder and the dis-ease becomes a disease. That's the system. But if I'm aware of fear, if I'm aware of anger, if I'm aware of greed, and there's no problem in being aware of it, once this unconscious force has made its way into my conscious mind, I can transform it. How? Not by serving it, by sacrificing it, by letting it go so that my outer action reflects my inner wisdom. And when I sacrifice the fear, when I sacrifice the anger, when I sacrifice the selfish desire, that contractive debilitating energy is automatically transformed into strategic reserves of a healing and a loving energy, will power and an increase in our creative capacity. Do you think this helps those with addiction? Because when you talk about this, like, yeah, I would say that it would be a huge factor. I know that spirituality is a big deal in helping to overcome an addiction, but I would say meditation and yoga, just to transform that, like, your energy, when you look at it that way, it's fun. Actually, it's like, you know, I'm going to change this around detour. And you look at it a different way, I'm just going to say no. And it is that concept, too, of you can't have everything and you've got to make room for the good. So you have to clean house, you know, your house is really so big. We have to take out the garbage. Nothing. Yeah, I mean, it really is. But to look at it as an energy, that's, I think, some part of it where we don't think of it as energy. We think of objects, like you go into, you know, the gross objects, right? But it is there's energy to everything. I'm one of the people. Oh my goodness. Okay. So rock, okay, there's energy. It's all just imagine, just imagine that, imagine that you're driving down the highway and somebody who's driving very irresponsibly, maybe at 80, 90 miles an hour, cuts you off, drives right in front of you. You have to slam on your brake and a little bubble of anger comes forward from your unconscious mind into your conscious mind and you are aware of anger. Okay. While you're aware of anger, take a look at your hand. What is the position of your hand? All of a sudden your hand is clenched in a fist. You see how contracted that energy is? It makes the, it makes a fist out of a hand. Sure, it's energy and it can be transformed as long as you base your outer actions on your inner wisdom. And the more that you do, the more energy you have, the more willpower you have, the more creativity you have to fulfill the purpose of your life. So is fear bad? No. Is anger bad? No. Is greed bad? No. Right? Again, Shakespeare. There's neither good or nor bad. Only thinking makes it so. So the real question is what's to be done and what's not to be done? And if I can learn to sacrifice these very powerful emotions instead of feeding on them and causing pain for me and everyone else, if I can sacrifice them, imagine each of us is constantly bringing forth creative energy, willpower, a healing force that can nurture us, love us, and turn all of life into poetry and so on. Ooh, I like that. Yeah. Yeah, just when there, you know, that it just seems lately, it's in the elections, that there's a big block like to talk about building a wall. There's like a big wall between, you know, one side of the body and one side of the and the other side. Like, you know, I mean, there's times when watching the television, I just want to go throw off. Yeah. You know, and I think that a lot of people are really depressed right now because it, you know, and it's worldwide. Yeah. That's right. And it's amazing to me that one small, and I do mean small group of people seems to have been able to cause so much despair in such a short time, that it's kind of like a good look at where we really all seem to be. As a society, yeah, as a society, you know, that I think we've been so distracted and we're all so busy on our hamster wheels going around and around and around. And then suddenly, somebody took the pin out and the wheel fell off and we're all kind of looking around and going, what happened? That's right. Well, well, we know where the answer is, the answer lies within. We have to go within, we have to seek within, we have to find the truth within, and then we have to serve it in mind, action, and speech. The problem that we're having, the difficulty why things are in such a mess is because we're not, we're not trying to find a solution on a higher level. We're all looking at the chessboard thinking that if we can move the pieces on the chessboard, that we're going to find solutions. Well, that all is represented by what is referred to in yoga science as a lower knowledge. Lower knowledge is obtained through the process of reasoning from the contact of the mind and the senses with the objects of the world. And lower knowledge is received indirectly. It's hearsay from outside sources like a lecture, like this interview today from a book. Lower knowledge is received through television or the internet or Google. And lower knowledge interestingly includes philosophy, it includes medicine, it includes commerce, it includes technology, the arts, and all the sciences, including political science and government and international relationships. And yet Einstein is talking about a higher knowledge. Okay, and this is considered the highest form of knowledge and it represents the changeless eternal truth that lies beyond the relativity of the senses, the conscious mind and the unconscious mind. It is higher knowledge that always heals and creatively supports every relationship. But here's the rub. Without the guidance of the higher knowledge, all lower knowledge always inevitably leads to pain and destruction. So we need to teach ourselves to build a bridge. I call it a bridge of yoga. You could call it anything you want. Words are just pointers. They're an attempt by one human being to communicate something to another human being, hey, I've experienced something. Oh yeah, what do you call it? I call it yoga. You could call it Christianity. It doesn't matter to me. But whatever you call it, we need a bridge that bases our outer actions on our inner wisdom and we need to examine the mind and the different functions of the mind. We have to recognize that the ego only has a limited perspective. Not that we don't need an ego. I need an ego every day that I drive an automobile. If I didn't have a strong healthy ego, I would not be able to drive an automobile. Okay. But it's a limited perspective and the senses have a limited perspective. I mean, I have senses. I have a body. Life is to be enjoyed. So why not have a cup of coffee once in a while? Why not have a donut once in a while? That's not the problem. The problem is not the coffee or the donut is my attachment to it. Same with the unconscious mind. That has only a limited perspective. But the conscience has a 360 degree panoramic view. The conscience alone knows when the ego is correct and when it's incorrect. The conscience itself knows when the senses are correct and when the senses are not correct. The conscience knows whether our habit patterns are correct or whether they're faulty. And the more that we can coordinate the functions of the mind, coordinate the senses and the ego and the unconscious mind to the wisdom that is reflected from the super conscious portion of the mind through our conscience, the more that we can do that and serve it in mind, action, and speech. We can transform the world. We don't have to go because we are all one. Every relationship is with ourselves. That's why Jesus, speaking as the Christ says, love thy neighbor as thyself. Not because it's just a cool idea, but because on the highest level of consciousness, thy neighbor is thyself, even though your neighbor has a different body, a different mind, a different personality, and different habit patterns. Because the body, the mind, the personality, and the habit patterns are all subject to change, death, decay, and decomposition. And yet, that same consciousness within your neighbor and within you, that same Christ that is within your neighbor and is within you, is one. See, now we've got the Beatles in my mind. I've got the Beatles, the Beatles are singing, "I am you and you are me." That's right. That's right. We have that connection. That's where we can transform and change. The one thing before you go, Leonard, and we really appreciate you joining us and sharing this knowledge. I read a book, Dr. Norman Rosenthal, about transcendental meditation. What interested me too, because it connects very much with what you're talking about, that higher knowledge, that up at the top here. It's like a superpower. He was talking about it was transcendental meditation, how your brain, and I'm not a scientist, but it's basically your brain muscles actually started to change with the practice of meditation. Meditation not only changes the software, the mind, it changes the hardware, the mind, neuroplasticity. We can change neural pathways. It's a beautiful life affirming, health affirming practice. Every human being needs to practice meditation. And it's not that far fetched, because we meditate all the time. When we're eating an ice cream, we're meditating. When we're listening to a wonderful song, when we're looking at a beautiful man, or a beautiful woman, or a beautiful child, or a beautiful painting, or seeing a fantastic movie, or listening to a great concert, what happens? All the energy of the mind goes down to one point. And that's what it is. But with meditation, you don't need a movie. You don't need your wife. You don't need your husband. You don't need your child. You see, you don't need an ice cream cone to train the mind, to always be in that one pointed attention, that bliss and that fullness, which is the nature of consciousness, and be able then to have the freedom to sacrifice the fear, sacrifice the anger, sacrifice the selfish desires, and transform it into strategic reserves of energy, willpower, and creativity that can bring light where there was once darkness. Excellent. And I have to also touch out on the Ayurvedic part of your book, too. I love it. I absolutely love it. You explained it. So I have to be honest, I have a thing about Ayurveda. Well, it was the first aspect of yoga that I studied, because I want to know about my body, and what season, and what season, and what time of day. It's very practical stuff. It's about being in harmony with our bodies, but I believe going back to everything that's going on in the world and everything. I believe also part of yoga science is this connectivity with nature, and Ayurveda, to me, is being one with nature. And I was raised this way in Kenya and in the bush. Yeah, that's right. And a lot of the Ayurvedic practices I was doing as a child, but we didn't know the words or what was happening. It was just a natural thing. It was a natural way of life there. And to learn it now and go through it, I mean, it's the first thing I did. I was like, oh, cool, we've got some of the stuff in here. I need to relearn and get my feet back in it, and it's so well written. Everyone will understand this. And that's what I think is so good. I mean, when I love that it's yoga science, because as much of their spirituality in it, it lets people know that this is something, this is science, like you're talking about, you know? Well, that's right. It's verifiable and it's refutable. If you're inspired enough to do the experiment, if you're willing to give up a cup of coffee at 10 o'clock at night, profound things can change in your life for the better. That's real yoga. We have our herbal teeth at night. We're good girls over here. Well, let me just tell you something about that. Not that there's anything wrong with herbal tea, but any kind of tea, any kind of tea, has some kind of pharmacological property. And so we really have to be careful to use it when we need it for a certain pharmacological property that can heal the body of some kind of condition. So generally speaking, the million dollar prescription is six to eight cups of hot water a day. And it's hot as coffee, and it's hot as tea, but nothing in it. It's a treat for the entire urinary system. And any temperature that you can ingest that's beyond 98.6, normal body temperature, is free energy for the body. It's one of the first things I read in your book. And I was like, okay, so we're not doing the lemons anymore. All that is out. You're just saying pure hot water. It's like, and I remember you're reading. It was like, it's like, that's how you're going to clean your dishes. It does the same thing to your body. Correct. Take the gunk out. That's right. It takes a gunk out. Start doing that. That's my new thing. There's so many things that's practical, and it's like, you're not going to learn this overnight. I tried. Well, that's okay. That makes the whole journey of fun. I know. I enjoy it. This is such a cool book, and I can understand it. And that's what I really appreciate because you see the word science, you're like, oh, and I go, no, but I want to know, because now I know this, like you're saying, it's verifiable. There's evidence. There's proof, and it makes sense. So like, I can understand it. If I can understand it, anyone can understand it. I'm telling you, it's great, and it's exciting. It's very exciting. Thank you so much for writing the book, and also for joining us on the show. Everyone again, the book is called The Heart and Science of Yoga, the American Meditation Institute's Empowering Self-Care Program for a Happy, Healthy, Joyful Life by Leonard, and Leonard, your wife also wrote this with you, right, Janette? Yeah, she was my editor, and she was very, you know, we are spiritual partners, and it's been a wonderful trip. Awesome, awesome, and everyone again, the website americanmeditation.org, and the book is on Amazon too, and thank you so much for joining us. My pleasure, thank you for the invitation. Have a wonderful night, and no coffee. Take care. Bye-bye. [Music]
Leonard Perlmutter, Founder of American Meditation Institute and author, along with Jenness Cortez Perlmutter, of “The Heart and Science of Yoga: The American Meditation Institute’s Empowering Self-Care Program for a Happy, Healthy, Joyful Life.”