Want ideas for life experiences before or after college? How about no matter HOW old you are? Katrina Chester and Cara Evans join in for teaching moments with a beautiful 26-year-old sharing her own experience to free the limited thinking of career options! ~ Lexi Pellegrino is someone who went to college for 4 years, but once she landed in the workforce she did everything she could to not fall asleep at her desk in NYC. After she felt like “this can’t be it” she spiraled into confusion and guilt with a choice to make and seemingly limited options…or not. Two African safari’s later, working with Americorp with FEMA in the US on relief and aid, to cumulatively practicing and surviving for over a year living deep in the mountains participating, then leading youth in cultivating relationships to nature through conservation work when only 3-years-ago she was falling asleep at her desk. Did she wait for chaos and confusion to go away? Tune in to find out! Thank you for sharing your story Lexi! This is a great teaching for us all at any age.

An interesting article on gap years – http://national.deseretnews.com/article/559/how-taking-a-gap-year-between-high-school-and-college-can-improve-your-life.html
Find us…
*Zooming in the Lens online course” – Skype online course with 5-10 hand-picked people from all over the world. For more info log onto FunctionalYogaOnline.com and RamDass.org/zooming. This course is in honor of Katrina’s teacher, Ram Dass, and Maharaji (Neem Karoli Baba). *Join the past ZITL students at Facebook.com/Functionalyoga.
*Music and editing for ZITL Podcast by Ian Hatton from www.ianhatton.com
*For show ideas, topics or questions write to ZITL@gmail.com

a look into the experience of education and life exploration

Welcome to Part 1 with Cara Evans and Lexi Pellegrino for an interesting conversation on the limited awareness our culture brings to the choice of “Gap years” – (taking a year or semester off before college). In reality, we have a choice to apply that term individually too, creating a “gap life”. Not as in being lazy, pursuing nothing, but to allow cultivation for natural motivation to arrive as well from our individual personal experience, prior to school loan debts, and locking down on a career for security. A gap-life could simply be the art of pausing and cultivating AWARENESS to any differences we may feel inside when making a choice from love rather than fear alone, as our futures are never guaranteed. We can fear pausing, or stopping our career sprint as adults, just as youth and early 20’s do. Yet without conscious awareness we spread to our youth, that pausing at all, is wasting time and is a luxury. Yet statistics show that simply is not true…This is a friendly conversation between 3 people with different experiences – one who is celebrating her choice for now, of her experience within a Gap-Life, post-college degree. Hear her stories on Part 1 of “Gap year-Gap life”. 

An interesting article on gap years – http://national.deseretnews.com/article/559/how-taking-a-gap-year-between-high-school-and-college-can-improve-your-life.html

Find us…
*Zooming in the Lens online course – Skype online course with 5-10 hand-picked people from all over the world. For more info log onto FunctionalYogaOnline.com and RamDass.org/zooming. This will be a course in honor of Katrina’s teacher, Ram Dass and Maharaji (Neem Karoli Baba) / suggested donations. *Join the past ZITL students at Facebook.com/Functionalyoga.
*Music and editing for ZITL Podcast by Ian Hatton from Mixforpix.com *For show ideas, topics or questions write to ZITL@gmail.com

Joining Katrina today is Cara Evans discussing a deep desire for us as humans to separate. Seperate people, knowledge, ourselves into “this is ME at work, this is ME at home” etc., Right before our eyes the big topics teach us how separation leads us further into sleep leaving ONE option being right and making another wrong. That isn’t practicing – that is a belief, a role and pretty much all we know out of the box. How could we bridge a gap for a wider vision of who WE are with myopic glasses covering the many perceptions? One common barrier for a lot of us is when we label ourselves as “a more scientific minded person” verse ” a spiritually minded person”. Science for example and their primary practice for studying anything is the investigation. Their pattern in which to do this and the pattern for self-study are very much connected in that they are both gathering information about the object. For people, if we are busy being “us”, the object (and if a practice is done from that part of us) we leave no space in which to take in all angles and perceptions. That would literally be like a scientist cutting slivers of their own skin, muscles, ligaments, tendons and bone off, putting it under the  microscope, and looking through. Eventually, you’ll bleed out. Not very functional. Self-awareness develops the view of ourselves as both subject and object, as does science with ‘specimen and scientist’, and for self-study it’s like being in two places at the same time. We are discussing the similarities of scientific approaches of investigation and our self as both subject and object for our own investigation. So what are the rules of the game of incarnation? I think it’s one way of describing what a spiritual practice IS – noticing what our individual and collective rules are; what are the properties of the specimen?

GREAT NEWS —Ram Dass and Katrina from FYO are busy creating group #3 of Zooming in the Lens online course which will start Oct 29th on Skype, for an online, guided practice with 5-10 hand-picked people from all over the world. An intense, yet down-to-earth; meeting of spirit and mind, supporting and grounding for you to take off from any level, at any degree. For more info log onto FunctionalYogaOnline.com. Registration opens Oct 5th, 2015 on RamDass.org/zooming. 

Thank you to Ian Hatton from Mixforpix.com for editing and music of this podcast. For show ideas, topics or questions write to ZITL@gmail.com