A Toddcast Twist: John Coleman Interviews Todd

In this captivating episode of the Native Yoga Toddcast, host Todd McLaughlin takes a seat on the other side of the microphone as longtime student and avid listener, John Coleman, delves deep into Todd's personal journey. From a life-altering experience at the age of 14 to becoming an influential yoga teacher with a studio in Florida, Todd's story is a compelling exploration of resilience, purpose, and seeking one's path. The episode sets the scene with the harrowing tale of Todd's near-death experience, profoundly impacting his life and propelling him onto a spiritual quest that traversed continents.

Follow John on IG: https://www.instagram.com/jcoleman52/?hl=en

Key Takeaways:

• Todd McLaughlin's journey into yoga began with a formative near-death experience, which inspired him to explore spiritual awakening and holistic practices.
• His global travels, including time in Australia, Thailand, and Africa, enriched his understanding of diverse cultures and personal growth.
• Yoga and meditation were pivotal in Todd's journey, providing him with a solid foundation both personally and professionally as he evolved into a yoga teacher and body worker.
• Todd emphasizes resilience and inner guidance, encouraging individuals to look within for personal truth and not rely solely on external influences.
• Collaboration with his partner Tamara has greatly influenced both his personal life and professional success, culminating in the establishment and growth of Native Yoga Center.

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Chapters

• 0:04 A Near-Death Experience Sparks a Journey Into Yoga
• 5:19 A Journey of Spiritual Awakening and Self-Sufficiency
• 12:53 A Journey of Wanderlust and Organic Farming Adventures
• 19:36 Living Off the Grid Through Global Organic Farming
• 23:49 Hard Work and Environmental Challenges in Western Australia
• 26:15 From Australia to Miami: A Journey of Self-Discovery
• 31:24 A Journey Through Africa: Humility, Hardships, and Self-Discovery
• 39:00 Todd's Journey Through Yoga, Massage, and Global Exploration
• 44:52 A Journey of Love, Yoga, and Self-Discovery
• 50:57 Unexpected Yoga Adventure on a Remote Thai Island
• 52:17 A Journey of Yoga, Community, and Lasting Success
• 54:32 Todd McLaughlin's Journey Through Yoga and Meditation

Transcript

0:32

Welcome to Native Yoga Toddcast, so happy you are here. My goal with this channel is to bring inspirational speakers to the mic in the field of yoga, massage, body work and beyond. Follow us at @nativeyoga and check us out at nativeyogacenter.com. All right, let's begin. Hello. My name is Todd McLaughlin. This is Native Yoga Toddcast, and today I have John Coleman with me here at the studio. John, how are you doing? I'm doing great. Todd, thanks for asking. Thanks so much for sitting down with me today. I've been coming to your studio for almost 10 years now, I've been listening to all your podcasts, and I've really been wanting to ask you some questions, the same kind of questions that maybe you ask the other people, so your listeners and your students get to know you a little better. No, thanks, John, so I'm kind of curious. You know, you've got this beautiful yoga community, this beautiful studio. How'd you get started? Wow. Great question to take you to the starting point of my journey. Obviously, if you're operating heavy machinery, don't close your eyes, but if you have a chance to close your eyes, I'm gonna take you to a moment where I'm lying on my back in about one inch of water, and I'm about 14 years old. I had just tried to jump from about 30 feet on a rope swing here in Tequesta, Florida. And it didn't go so well, and I fell all the way from the top and landed on the way down my head hit a tree, which flipped me around, and I landed flat on my back in about one inch of water right in between these roots that were sticking up like stalagtite stalagmite, looking roots coming up out of the sand. And I hit so hard that I nearly died. Whoa, yeah. What an experience. Had a near death experience, and I knew I could feel, this is it. I knew it. I was like, This is it. So you kind of knew at that point, yeah, that you could die, yeah. The end of it, yeah. I felt, I felt like I was leaving my body. You know, you get that sort of Yeah, awareness of like, whoa. I'm slowly withdrawing from my body. And at that time, my friend's brother went, Oh my gosh. Look at all the blood coming out of his head also. And I opened my eyes, and I put my hand up, and I felt the back of my head, and I looked at my hand, I saw the blood, and I again, just put my arm down, and just, I couldn't move, and I just had this feeling of it was quite peaceful. I mean, I hit so hard, oh my god. It literally knocked the crap out of me. And so to fast forward, my the ambulance came and got on the boat and put me on a stretcher and got me back on the ambulance and took me to the Jupiter Medical Center, in which case the doctors stitched me up and told my parents, who are, you know, so sad when they came to the hospital because, of course, yeah, they said in the morning, whatever you do, Todd, don't go to the rope swing today. So a little bit of a rebel and tough way to get caught. Good response. And it took me about two to three weeks before I could start to walk again. And and it was, it was a really bad accident, and I was very lucky. It was, it was a miracle that I did not have a spinal cord injury, yeah, yeah. And that I rehabbed is relatively. Quick as I did, but the having such a close call at that point in my life, it also knocked the crap out of me, but it also knocked some sense into me. So when you when we're not now, we're like, two weeks down the road after this accident, are you still aware that at some point you could have died? Yeah, my recollection here is at the time, my family were just about ready to go on vacation the next day, so that was part of the thing that was a bummer for everybody, my family, and so they took me with them anyway, and I just remember posting up on a couch and just having a miserable time trying to move right and but when you're I was so young that the body is so resilient, and you know, you just, you make your way again. You just, it wasn't I didn't break my spine. I didn't have spinal cord injury. And I think that was the catalyst, because when I try to go back into my past and think, why did I do what I did in my life? I took a I took the road less traveled. I traveled really far and wide, but I took the harder route, in my opinion, to to get to where I am. Now that's about your whole life. You're saying that you think you always took a more difficult road. I were the ones that nobody else traveled anyway. Yeah, I really pushed the envelope. I think that that experience, I mean, I at the time, I don't know that I I could have later than when I was 18 and I started, you know, venturing out and traveling around the world. I I don't think at that point I was relating back to that specific accident as the catalyst. But now where I am now how my body is now, how my mental, emotional body is now, and I really process all of the experience of my life to try to come up with this sort of like clear picture now that definitely seems like a good starting point, and where that that had a role in my sort of spiritual Awakening and my seeking, my really intense seeking for finding some sort of coming home feeling, or finding my connection with my higher power and that sort of, that journey that I've taken so You know, where I had grown up with relatively religious and spiritual background growing up Catholic. And I always had, you know, read the Bible from cover to cover, and I was a deep seeker in terms of my my Catholic and Christian background and and when I went to University of Florida in Gainesville, and I met the Hare Krishnas when I was 18. That for me, was a big turning point, because I was so curious. I was so curious. I always had this feeling there has to be more. I always really wanted to find the answers to the big questions, the questions that everybody told me, you can't find those answers. Where do we come from? Everyone's gonna say we'll have no idea where we came from. There's great theories about where we came from, but how can I truly know the answer to that? What came first? The chicken or the egg? Yeah, these are questions like, How would I know? How could we figure that question out? So put you on the path. Todd, is that what got you to leave the house and head to college and maybe see the Howie Christians move in with how high Krishnas? Was it that spiritual seeking? Yeah, I think so, yeah, when I look back for sure, because, you know, I also had experienced a fair amount of intense trauma as a child, okay? And I think that played a big role into my recklessness, in my physical adventures. That did not stop with the rope swing that continued on later, yeah, and um, but I think that that had a very big impact. And my search for finding my home, you know, finding, and I know we have our physical home, like our house, and we have our physical, you know, our the home that we think of is like, that's where I live. But I really wanted to get a little bit more into like finding my true home and what my true calling was, and I was very unsure as to what that was. I I battled with some pretty severe depression in my high school years, and so that the. That really served to kind of push me to find my own answers, and I went at it with a relatively reckless attitude, in the sense of that I wasn't going to give up, and I definitely did not want to take the traditional route. And so when I went to college, it was a lot of kind of pushing for me to go and that that would be the only way that I could potentially succeed in life. And so I gave it a try. And I think my my initial discovery of yoga at, you know, at age 18, that caused me to go, Whoa, okay, I gotta go to India. I also had this really strong feeling that I really wanted to go to Africa. Had a strong pull for Africa. What gave you that interest? What did you know about Africa? They said, Gee, I want to go there. So I had a when I was in high school, I started hanging out with this guy from Barbados that was a Rasta Fauci and a Rasta dude, Rasta mom, yeah, and so. And I always felt incredibly inspired by Bob Marley's music. Okay, so, and I gotten influenced heavily from like, the 60s music era, and I was a big fan of the Grateful Dead, and went solid dead. And, you know, I kind of got into that whole, like, hippie Rasta culture, so to speak. And you know, you showed the dreadlocks with I grew, yeah, I grew dreadlocks. You know, I had big old burly beard when I was 16, when I was walking through Jupiter high school with my Birkenstocks and beard. You know, kids would joke around like, oh, there's Jesus look. And, you know, it's a little embarrassing, but at the same time, I was like, All right, if that's, I mean, I guess that's a good role model, yeah. And so, you know that that that felt like a strong pull, and I was always really intrigued by just African culture. And I always had this, I was always I learned, or at least was told, and how do we know what's really true here, but that all of us came from Africa, right, cradle of civilizations, Africa, one of the oldest remains of a human that would eventually evolve to where we are now. As Homo sapiens, came from the cradle of Africa, you know? So I just had this feeling of like, I want to go back to the beginning. Okay, I want to get to the the ground level. And I I really wanted to see the world. I felt like I need to see, I want to see the whole world. Is that when you started, did you start in Africa? No, my Well, no, actually, well, from here in Gainesville, I went. And so this the other part of my vision, too, really took on this idea of, I wanted to become self sufficient, okay, and I wanted to learn how to grow my own food. So I had this dreamer vision that one day I would land on a piece of land. And, you know, because I did suffer some pretty traumatic trauma, or some trauma as a kid, I think that instilled this feeling in me of that the world was a bad place, or the world was gonna go downhill, yeah, that there was gonna be some sort of nuclear explosion, or that there was gonna be some sort of, like, breakdown of the entire system. The grids are gonna go down, ships are going down. And I wanted to be like, ready to go, like, I think I had this really intense feeling that was going to happen, and I thought, I have to get back to the earth. I have to learn how to take care of myself. So that put me on a quest to learn organic farming. And I went to Connecticut. And then I ended up, had a friend in Connecticut that let me stay with her, and I went to Long Island, and I got an apprenticeship on a farm in the middle of winter on Long Island where I'd never seen snow before. I grew up here in Florida, I brought my mountain bike, mountain biking on Long Island roads in the ice and the snow going farm doesn't work out too well. Bags of horse manure going out, spreading them out through these beds, you know? And so I kind of quickly realized I'm not a winter guy. And then I had a chance, or lead to go to Northern California from a friend, from my friend in Connecticut, who took me in, and I did an apprenticeship on a man's farm, John Jevons farm. He wrote a book called How to grow as much vegetables on as little land as possible. And he was like a research farmer, where he would, you know, pull the food out of the ground, weigh it, figure out what levels of fertilizer and what you needed to do organically to be able to get as much produce as possible. So he was really about just maximizing, and you were working with him. Yeah, that was amazing. I know I was not really ready to settle down on any level. So on the when I was like, I was like, you know, I was like, I am traveling. I and he was like, You need to make a decision. Todd. Are you gonna hang here and do an apprenticeship here? And this is where my wanderlush just it was insatiable. I. Couldn't stop so And how old are you now? At this point, I'm, I'm still 18. I guess I turned 19 somewhere in this little equation. Yeah, I think I turned I'm a 19 at this point. So my friend had a farm up in Northern California. I went lived up in Mendocino for um. I spent a year up there, up in the mountains, which was absolutely amazing. I have tons of stories from that period, but I'll jump forward to I worked. I saved up some money, and I thought, Hawaii, you know, I had a chance to go to Hawaii when I was younger, and went between my 11th and 12th grade. So I had a friend that lived in Maui, and I took the money that I'd saved, and I went to Maui, and I bought a really cheap car for 500 bucks, I found a room in a house to rent up in buchalani, and I started working at the chart house down in Kahului. I worked cleaning the kitchen at Mama's fish house on the north shore of Maui, and I worked Valley parking cars at the Grand Wailea over on the south shore. And then I had windsurfed growing up. I grew up skateboarding, windsurfing and surfing. Lived on the beach. I lived for for being in the ocean. So and I was windsurfing and surfing all of the Maui, North Shore, South Shore, and just having a really incredible experience. And I thought, this is, this is where I'm gonna stay. You know, this is it, man, Hawaii's the best. And after about a year, my wanderlust kept kicking in, and I thought, You know what? I really want to learn permaculture. A friend of mine that I met working on an organic farm in Maui. He said, Have you ever heard of permaculture? I was like, what's that? It's a combination of the word permanent and agriculture. I'm like, Well, where did that start? He said they have these permaculture farms in Australia. The founders of permaculture, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, are from Australia. And I was like, Australia, it is going to Australia. So I actually kept my car. I found a person that would let me keep my car on his property, and I flew to Sydney, and I brought a surfboard, and I hitchhiked and bus rode all the way up to a town called Bundaberg in Queensland, which was like, not the place to go if you have a surfboard, the surf is all from Sydney up to Queensland. And I went a little bit north, Northern Queensland to a place but I found in a organic banana farm that I went and worked on and had an incredible experience. There's an organization called woofing, willing workers on organic farms. It's, it's a list that you, anyone can go to, and it's online now. Then, at the time, there was no online, so there was no internet. Wow, that's a whole nother story, right? Like traveling the world internationally before the internet, where you had to get a map, you know, and chart your destinations, it seems impossible, knowing what you know now, what we know now, oh, my God, I don't know how I'd get around without the Internet. I know. Man, I'm sure I did so amazing, and you had no idea what you're getting into. There was no video on No, no, you bought maybe one of those, like fodders book or one of those. Yeah, you know those things, when you were gonna go travel, you'd buy a book from a country that had ideas of places to go. Tell you where different youth hostels were. Video with you. Yeah, it was so different. It was so different. It was amazing. And this is in 1993 that 94 at this point. So I go and I take a permaculture design course in a place called crystal waters in Mulaney, which was an incredible experience. And I loved it so much. I took a second permaculture course. I did two permaculture design courses, and then I met a friend who had a Volkswagen Combi van, old VW van, and he said, Hey, man, I'm going up to up to the northeast of Queensland to Cairns. And so I went with him, and we worked our way all the way up, and worked at different farms on the way. Had some incredible experiences, hanging, living with some of the Australian folk out in the middle of nowhere, and had some really interesting experiences that was amazing. And then at that point, we came back down and decided, you know, I'm going back to that area and do another design course. And I'd met a girl, and then I went back to Hawaii, and because we thought maybe we should get together, I sold all my stuff in Hawaii and moved back to Australia. Got a six month visa, wow. And we toured and traveled all the way from East Coast, all the way Southern, across an old board plane to Western Australia. My visa was running out, and somebody had this grand idea, hey, why don't you get married? And so we said, Sure, so I'd actually married an Australian day one after that didn't work out so good, but I stayed in Australia. She went off and did her thing, and I got a job working. I stayed. Ate on a woofing farm. Oh, yeah. So back to woofing. Woofing, willing workers on organic farms. What it is is you, you inquire with a farm where they say, Hey, I have this farm. So for example, the farm that ended up going to it was like, we have this 80 acre farm on the coast of Western Australia, and we have a vegetable garden. We have a couple of animals. My husband is a large animal vet, and you can come and stay, and you I would go, you call them up. You show up if you get along with them, and they let you stay. They give you food and accommodation, and you work a few hours for them at their farm, and it's just a work trade. There's no money. Actually, you did that, yeah, yeah. I did that all over the world, actually. Oh, really, yeah, and that was how I was able to travel on such a shoestring budget. Because, I mean, I was working. I did not have any funds coming my way from any there was no income. Yeah, once I once I left school, my parents were like, great, Todd, you're off. Have fun. You're not getting any help from us. And I was like, Cool, I'm on my own. I want to prove I want to prove that I'm a man of the world. I can do this. And so I stayed with them, and that was incredible. And I ended up living in that Southwest area of Western Australia for five years. And so I worked and lived with them. Do we live with them the entire five years? No, a lot happened. I mean, over the five years, I lived in yelling up, I lived in Margaret River. I lived in warm up, I lived in. These are all towns in the southwest. So sure, what an amazing place and time in the world. And I love the Australian people, and I'm so grateful for the the way that they open their arms and just took me in and just treated me so well. And I have just such a soft place in my heart for Western Australia. Wow. Yeah. And so now I had this dream and vision of working on organic farms, and that is great, but you don't make money doing that unless you're like a Pro Farmer. You know, with land of your own, you're just doing you got some backing for lodging, and yeah, I'm just just just wanting to travel and learn and see the world type of thing and learn as much as I can. So I got to work with a organic seed collector in Bustleton, which is in like on the cape, and she was an amazing woman, and she taught me how to, like grow organic seed, collect them, and we'd sell. I'd help. I just kind of helped her with her whole business and selling that at the time, I still didn't have a car, I still didn't have permanent residency, I didn't have a tax ID number, so I had to work all under the table. I have a really you know, I appreciate immigrants. I appreciate the work immigrants do. Yeah, I appreciate how hard it is. I appreciate what it's like to live without being able to work a legit job. It's really hard. And in Western Australia, it's a primary producing country, meaning they have a lot of wool and beef and mining and or might, you know it's like, and they have a lot of incredible stuff. But they, they, you know, it's like, very farm culture, very rural. Where I was, all there was, were dairy farms and vineyards, wow. And we're way out in the countryside. Margaret River was such a small town back in at this time period in 94 was there any, did you have any thought about starting your own farm? You've been doing this for a while now, like, like, like, currently, like, do I want to No, no, back then? Well, yeah, money was the problem. Okay, you know, people were like, Todd, you're from America, you know, why don't you just ask somebody there for money? And I'm like, Dude who nobody gives you money? Man, no. There's no GoFundMe pages. Like I didn't have deep pockets. I had no pockets. I literally had no pockets. I had, I think, I think at the time, I might have had maybe, like, 1000 bucks in the bank. Okay, you know, so, and I was like, I'm only gonna spend what I earn. So if I earn 20 bucks for the day, I lived off 20 bucks, you know, right? And I so then I realized, well, this woofing stuff is great. And I finally got my tykes tax ID number, and I decided, and then I was like, I need a job. So then I got a job for Margaret River tree planting and land care services. And thank you, Mr. Rankin for giving me a job and just believing in me and, you know, and again, I had big old long dreads and a big old beard, so, yeah, all these, you know, folks are kind of like, who in the heck is this guy? Man, he's a total hippie. He's from the States, but I was a really hard worker. One thing that my family and my culture and country instilled in me. Is a work ethic that I'm very proud of. I I worked my butt off. I worked so hard physically. I worked well. I worked for one time. So for five years, I did blue gum plantations, where we would show up to these farms that were being converted from old sheep farms, because in Western Australia, you have a salinity issue. What happened back in the 40s and 50s is there is a program where it's basically clear as much trees as possible. And when you have trees, and you have a very ancient soil that exists in Australia, the roots go down so low that it keeps the salt levels deep. And so when you remove all the trees, the salt comes up to the surface and nothing can grow, right? So once the soil became so depleted, these farmers were just like, couldn't even grow anything. This is like desert. Like in the winter it rains, it's green, but during the summer it's dry, dry, dry, dry. So, um, they there. I worked there was a company called Bunnings that was basically funded by the Japanese to grow pulp so that they'd have toilet paper and paper products. So it wasn't exactly the reforestation projects that I envisioned in terms of reforesting to kind of let the earth regenerate, but we got to make baby steps in this process, in my opinion, in terms of stewardship for the earth, right? So, so, and I took the job, and I got paid, and we worked our butts off. And you know, you're planting in the winter when it's cold, and I had, you know, you're wearing a rain jacket and rain pants gum boots, like those big old galoshes. And you know you're, you're walking all day long, for about eight hours a day, just going tree after tree after tree after tree. And it's back breaking. Work, brutal work. My knees were killing me, you know, because I had that horrible wipe out when I was a kid. My back still feeling I still, you know, I was still so young at that point. I mean, I was in my early 20s. I was, I wasn't even 21 Yeah, so I was in my early 20s. This is from like age 20 to 2520 to 24 so I tell you all that because at one point I tweaked my neck so bad I couldn't move, I couldn't lay, I couldn't sit. And I somebody said, Dude, I know this physiotherapist, which is like the equivalent of a physical therapist, and down in Margaret River, and I went, and he used the combination of needles dry needling and manual soft tissue therapies, and he fixed me. Whoa, quickly, I felt great, and it blew me away. And that was my first kind of like, wow, what is this world of body work? Whoa, this is really cool. And I knew, because I was working physically so hard, and my relationship was coming to a close, and it was, you know, very evident and apparent that that wasn't gonna work. And the grass is always greener. Pink eyed goggle view the sky is the land of the where I want to live the rest of my life, you know, came crashing down. So, yeah, time to go. The House of Cards came down. Okay? And so, um, that was really probably one of the most difficult decisions I ever had to make, because I knew when I left, I was going to be leaving officially for good. Even though I had permanent residency, I really knew I had this idea that I would travel back to the states and live for a few months and then come back to Australia and live a few months and then travel back to the States, and I states, and I would somehow get this lifestyle going where I'd be kind of like snowboarding around the world. That's so tough. But again, I had pie dreams on a budget that doesn't wasn't really support that. And there's a there's a whole waking up to reality aspect of the grandeur of the young to the reality and the wisdom of the old. Sure that process that I was going through, those growing pains. You know, I have tons of stories I could dip into and give you many files and stories here, but I'm just kind of scratching the surface of how I got to where I am here now and so, all right, so I decided at that point I'm like, You know what? This isn't gonna work. I can't see myself doing this really hardcore manual labor for very long, or for the rest of my life, anyway. So I really thought I want to learn massage therapy. I want to become a body worker from that the treatment that you received in Australia, this you might want to do. And so I traveled back to here, and I just kind of just like, I'm leaving Australia. I came back here and I found a school in Miami, and I went to Miami, and I enrolled at a place called educating, hands down on Brickell. And this was in 2000 Okay. Okay, so 25 years ago, and I got my license in massage therapy and realized that, uh oh, I need to get a divorce. I can't move on. Oh, you haven't gotten to that. So in the process, I'd bought an around the world ticket and went to, you know, so here I was like, All right, let me, let me continue to travel. And, you know, without going into all the details of all this, but throughout this process of going back and forth between the States and Australia, I got a chance to travel all through Indonesia and surf in Bali, and surf on Zimbabwe, Lakey peak, and had a chance to go to Fiji. And these are just pleasure trips. You're not working. You're just these are a combination of, well, what I would do is, when I would come back here, I would do landscape maintenance here in Palm Beach County and Valley Park cars. So I work Valley parking cars down in Palm Beach, and then and in North Palm Beach, the different like steak houses and like really fancy places, and just work my butt off in the winter season. And then I also even did landscape maintenance here, working with the Guatemalans. And that was an incredible experience, and that really helped me to understand and appreciate because I was never shy to do hard work. And I really love working with the earth and any kind of gardening. And had gotten a ton of experience in Australia, and I got a ton of experience here. I got to work in fruit orchards and olive orchards. I worked in an olive orchard in Italy, and I spent three months working in an olive orchard in an organic garden farm in Italy. How long were you in Italy? I spent three months total, six weeks in grossetto and six weeks in a place called Montalcino. Oh, yeah, it was amazing. Oh, a beautiful say, if you didn't say, and sure, went and saw the art, went to Rome, and I finally had a chance to go to Africa. And I flew to Zimbabwe, and I was gonna work on a roof. I wanted to try to work on a woofing farm. And again, please. I know people listening might think, wow, somebody sponsored Todd and gave him a ton of money. No, I worked my ass off and I traveled on the smallest amount of money possible. That's the amazing, really, because you're right, because when you hear these, because I know there's a lot of folks that you know, you get a trust fund and you go, I'm just gonna go. I did not do it that way. More money. I wanna go to Fiji. That did not happen. Now, my parents did help me out when I would land here and let me either stay with them in their house. I mean, I would always try to find somewhere to live. I didn't wanna do that, but they were kind and generous in that respect. But as far as helping on the level of, let me give you money like I took loans out to go to massage therapy school. I paid those loans back so and then I, when I went to Africa, landed in Zimbabwe, and I backpacked by myself through from Zimbabwe, took busses on the local busses, up through Mozambique and went to Malawi. I climbed up Mount malanji. When I got to Mount malanji, I met this doctor that was an African doctor that was trained in London, but he decided to come back to Africa to serve his people. And he said, Oh, you want to see the real Africa? And I'm all like, Yeah, show me the real Africa. So he goes, let me take you to this hospital that I used to work at. And I went to this hospital, and at the time, they told me that seven tenths of the population in Malawi had the HIV virus. And that is a really intense realization when you walk through a country where you see, I mean, Africa is amazing. Africa is so amazing. Oh my gosh, man, I love the African people. Oh my gosh, I love African people. They are so amazing. The culture there. And it's a, it's a rough place, man, it's a, I found myself in situations where I thought another near death experience is where I thought, This is it, I'm dead. Man, and no, it was a lot of times when you're culturally privileged and you go to a place that isn't of the same level of privilege, we carry the fear that maybe I won't be treated well. And what I found is that if you come with a humble heart, and you come in with true humility, that that privilege falls away, and people open up, and they they share what they have. And then you had those experiences. I had those experiences in Africa. I stayed with Africans and village like settings. How long are you there? How long I was there. How long was that Africa? I planned to go for six months, and I think I made it. I think I made it a little over one month. Because the turning point for me was I when I got to Malawi, I hand wrote a letter and I shipped it off. That was the only way to get the letter to the woofing farm. And now I realize, when I. Was, where was I? Is that melangi? Melangi and Malawi? I thought, I don't know if I'm ever going to hear back from this guy. I don't even know if my letter is ever going to make it, even if the farm is still in operation. So I'm just waiting in milanji, buying time. That's when I decided, let me go climb Mount melangi and and in the process, that was incredible. That was amazing. And when, when this guy took me to the hospital, there was three patients per bed, two sleeping on the floor under one on the bed. And they would rotate every eight hours. Each person would get so when you see people dying of HIV, and you go into a hospital where everybody their eyes are just they stare at you through eyes of like, right, through your soul, right? Yeah. It hit me so hard, yeah. I had this feeling of like, what am I doing if I can't help? Well, first of all, how can I possibly help? What can I do to help? I couldn't think of anything other than potentially volunteer for an aid organization. But then I remember meeting different people working in aid organizations where I saw levels of corruption that were so how you did that? I thought, I'm not organized right now to do that, and I'm not a doctor, like if I had a skill correct, and I was trying to work with permaculture and organic farming, but that's, I mean, let's just be honest. I mean, that takes so much. There's so much to making that work. And where people want your help, that's a whole nother thing, yeah. And then even have the ability to help, and then have the long term strategy, I realized I was way out of my league in the culture, in that Avenue, and then in Africa. Then when I saw the that I don't know, I just hadn't encountered death in that way, where, you know, you hear that story about the Buddha coming out of the kingdom, and like him realizing Whoa, this is suffering, yeah, you know. And which caused him to want to find the solution, you know? Yeah, I feel like that might have been my, my Buddha moment, coming out of my little, nice, little existence, and realizing Whoa, this is, this is more. There's more, there's more. And so I had to reformulate. And so I decided I'm going back. And I made my way all the way back down to Zimbabwe, and I flew out and so other places along those journeys. And I I learned, I feel like I got my teeth cut in Africa a little bit more. Because when I wanted to go to India, I felt like, All right, I've heard a lot of stories about India, how challenging that can be. And I thought, all right, well, I've done some hard places, some some like, and also, you see people like, oh, I went to Africa. It was amazing. Yeah, we had white table linen cloths out on the Safari Savannah. And, you know, I had a nice, like, Land Cruiser delivery out here with this high end camping, yeah. And, man, no, that wasn't that what I didn't have. I wasn't spending the money to have that. I didn't buy my luxury, and I roughed it. So that was incredible. More stories from there, but let me keep going on. So okay, let me back up to the where I led you with. Okay, I got to go back to Australia, get a divorce. I got a divorce, I got that all kind of wrapped up for the most part. There's a lot more to that story. And I and I, and I come back to the States, and all right, I'm like, You know what? I love body work. And my mom was like, Todd, you got to come when I was going to massage school, she's like, You got to come do some yoga with me. And I'm like yoga. I got to do some yoga when I was with the Hare Krishnas, with your mom, got to do some yoga when I was out in Western Australia. I took some my younger yoga classes. I did some hatsi yoga classes. And in Gainesville as well. And and at this point, I was really intrigued about meditation, yoga through Paramahansa Yogananda. I read his book, Autobiography of Yogi, and I was like, my mind was like, going, Whoa, okay, this is the next level for me to kind of take the journey toward. And so my mom said, You got to come to yoga with me. I said, Yeah, mom, of course. So I went with her to a Bikram yoga class, and I loved it. I really butt kicked it was exactly what I needed. What did you like? What, what? What was it that you I liked the heat, okay. I liked the intensity of the heat. I liked the physicality of the challenge of the asana. I liked the physicality and the challenge of the asana, but the mental determination required to get through every class. I like the fact that I was cleaning up my life in relation to getting a little bit more of a better routine about going to bed early, and it helped. It gave me focus to have the yoga practice, intense practice in. Morning to be able to practice massage therapy as my career and profession, and then the philosophical component fit perfectly, in my opinion, for my desire to deepen my understanding of the meaning of my existence. Were you working in the massage field? So, yeah, right after it, right. So another thing I've always the strategy I've always taken that if I'm going to invest money in learning something, I want to make that same amount of money back in the thing that I learned. Right? When I took my permaculture courses, I was like, I'm going to work in permaculture and make that money back. I didn't want to just, like, take courses and not use them, right? I didn't want to just take classes and then just go to the next thing break even. My whole thing was like, if I'm going to do something, I'm gonna actually turn it into a way of making money and bring it back in. And that really is what trained me to learn how to do what I love and learn and earn making off to earn a living doing what I love, which is a hard step. It's really hard to do that. It takes a lot of guts to do that. Sure, I never really knew if I could pull that off. You know, when I was working for other people in Australia, I always thought I gotta, I gotta figure out how to be my own boss, you know, yeah, that was really extremely important to me. I put that on high priority for me. I wasn't sure I was gonna pull that off. But what I loved about massage therapy is I could have my table, I could show up at your house. I didn't need to have any overhead, and I could start earning directly from the work that I did man, and it is a form of manual labor, without a doubt, and I traded one form of manual labor for another form of manual labor. But at least in this direction, I feel like I could use my intellect a little bit more. I love learning about the body, about the anatomy, physiology, I really and it was engrossed in that. And I felt like when I started practicing the Hatha Yoga. You know, I was introduced more into the bhakti yoga culture yoga, which is a yoga of devotion and chanting and using mantra. And so when I, when I came into the Hatha Yoga component of the Bikram yoga, I felt like this. It just solidified everything for me. And so I, I dove head in, and I took two classes a day, at least every day, or two classes a day, and I was practicing massage therapy. You're in Florida. Now, I'm in Florida. I'm into Cuesta. I'm living here at Cuesta. And at that point I had, I had met somebody, and, you know, I had this dream of, well, I had asked somebody, they had asked me, what type of massage you're gonna learn. And I, I said, I actually let me get my timeline right here. What is the order of the operations? I feel like, what happened here is, oh, in the process of getting ready to go back to Australia to finalize some of my loose ends, I also incorporated a trip to Thailand to study Thai massage, and I went to Chiang Mai. I traveled all around Thailand. That was, sorry I didn't insert that in, but that was around about the Indonesia trip, going to Bali. I went to Thailand, and I got a chance to study with a Thai massage master in Chiang Mai named Chang kala set a corn at a school called ITM in Northern Thailand, in Chiang Mai. And that, for me was a huge synthesis, because I'd started practicing yoga when I was the Hatha Yoga, the Bikram yoga, while I was going to the massage school, I was loving body work and I was loving practicing yoga. And someone said, What do you want to learn? And I said, I don't know. They said, Well, have you ever heard of Thai massage? I'm said, What's that? They said, it's the blend of yoga and and body work. And I was like, oh, so I, when I got to Thailand, I've just absolutely fell in love with the Thai people and the Thai culture and Thai massage I did my course. How long were you there? I spent, I was in six weeks in Thailand. I spent, I think studying time is somewhat like between a month to six weeks, and that was absolutely amazing. Chunk call, set of corn is just such an incredible teacher. I love you. Chunk call, and thank you. And I fell in love with Thai massage, and I knew that in there, this is what I'm gonna now. I mean, you know, everything is like you learn something and you refine it, and you grow that, and you learn something new, and you pull that into the fold, and you slowly build one step, one layer, one at a time. And at this point, it was just for me. It was just chasing my passion and trying to build it up as a business as I would go, so I could afford to do what I wanted to learn, but also afford to live and vice versa. You've got a vision now. How to vision kind of look like you've had all these experiences around the world. I knew what I wanted to do, and I found it. I found it. And at this point, I was pretty clear that I wanted to be a yoga teacher and I wanted to practice Thai massage and and so after coming back from that whole trip, coming back practicing time massage, still practicing yoga, my Bikram yoga teacher said, Todd, you should do Bikram yoga teacher training. And I'm like, at this point, I'm kind of like, still not really knowing about Bikram and Ashtanga and Iyengar. I mean, I heard those words as I was going along, but I didn't understand what that really meant. To have a guru differences and to have a lineage and a difference between I didn't do any research on Bikram. I had no idea what I was getting into. Oh, boy. And yeah, man, exactly. So I take off to go to Bikram yoga teacher training in California, Beverly Hills had to get a loan, took out a loan from the bank to pay for it. It's about a $7,000 training, five grand for the training, two for accommodation. And I, oh my gosh, maybe what I'll do, I could, I'll tell you this story fast speed. Okay, and then I could go back and fill in gaps. You don't, you know, some other time I want to try to nail this in an hour. No, one hour, all right, but, but, but there's so much more than I want to hear. So much to each of these stories we do, like, 30 minutes after this one hour. Just kind of like, roll these out. Great idea. People are interested. If you, if you want to hear more stories, reach out, email me, send me a message, and I'll keep going. If you're like, I don't want to hear about Todd, don't email me. I've heard it up. Give me feedback. All right. Oh yeah. So beacon yoga teacher training. Holy cow. What a man, what an animal. Oh, what an intense challenge. So that being said, I come back, I get a job, no no before I go to become teacher training, I gotta back up, because this is probably the most important detail of my life, is I met my wife, Tamara, working at I got a job at a spa doing massage therapy in Boynton Beach, and I come in and there's Tamara work in the front desk as the manager in Boynton and she's a yeah in Boynton Beach, and she was The esthetician and the manager, and she was doing facials, and, man, I think I just got to give Tamara credit, because I would not be here now, mentally, emotionally, the incredible children that We have together the business that we've been able to build and grow over the last 19 years here at Native yoga center. I mean, she's the love of my life. She's my soul mate, and she's really got me through some really incredibly tough times, and her just steadiness and her her humor and her just ease with life and the way that she's just been the greatest partner I could ever dream of. I met her. I met her. I met my soulmate. Yeah, I went through I went through the ringer. I went through the ringer. Man, I really did, I went through the ringer. But I just knew when I met her, I knew I found what I'd been dreaming of. And so when we met, and we were and I was like, You got to come to Bikram yoga, and she started practicing yoga with me, and then I'd already been planning to go do the training. So I went to the training. I came back, and I was so blown away. I said, Tama, you gotta go do it. She's like, all right. And she went out there and she did it. She came back, and we got an offer to run the Bikram yoga studio Mira Mesa, San Diego, through Karen and Mark dross, Thank you, Karen and Mark, that was an incredible opportunity. There's so many people that I could bring up and just thank along my journey. And I apologize to anybody that I did not name, because there's hundreds of you so but I'm very grateful to Karen and Mark and they, they gave us the opportunity to to co own with them. Bikram yoga, mirror, Mason, San Diego. We went out to San Diego, and I'm practicing massage therapy, and we're teaching yoga classes there. I got to integrate and meet all of Tamara's family or grandfather, uncle or aunt or her family from from, yeah, she was born and raised in Newport Beach area, okay? And we had the best time living out in California and exploring Baja and going surfing all over California, going snowboarding and, man, I love California, yeah, yeah, so and so, that was absolutely amazing. And at that point, I want to say in 2005 we just hit this point of, like, you know, we gotta get out of Bikram yoga. And we oh, let me back up 2004 I was like, Tamara, there's got to be a little bit more to this. And I really want to go to India. And she's like, let's do it. And we went to India and we practice. We did a round the world trip where we went there. We went back to Australia. I again, try to type a few loosens there. That's a long story with. The camera, okay, I took her to Western Australia, showed her where I my stomping grounds, in Margaret River. We went to Thailand together. I got to continue my studies and training with my teacher Chung call, and she studied Thai massage with me in Chiang Mai. And then from there, we went to back to southern Thailand, and we took our first astanga class with Ralph najakat down in coping. Yang. Love you, Roth. Ralph, passed away. Ralph, I know you're listening to me right now, if I could call you from Heaven down right now. Thank you, Roth. Oh my gosh. And then Roth set us on course. Man, Roth set us right on course. And we went to India and we studied with patabi Joyce and Sharat. Was that your first ajanga class with Rolf, yeah, and coping Yang, oh, my god. That was Oh my gosh. That feel, that feel different from the Oh yeah. Well, that story. So Rolf is in the middle of nowhere in a bamboo bungalow on stilts on a hill where they said, Okay, by the time we took the train from Bangkok down to Surat Thani, the overnight boat from Surat Thani to Copen Yang. You take the taxi from copenyang to had Rin. You take the boat from ha Rin all the round to haudenom. You get there's no cars. You get your backpack out. We go to the sanctuary like you can't stay here. We go the next place you can't stay here. Then we go to ha Rin. We find a place to stay in this incredible bungalow in the jungle and the island of coping. For those of you that watched the White Lotus, we were there at the that that beach, one of those beaches, it was filmed in Koh Samui and coping, and someone's like, Okay, go to the rock. Make a right. Go up to the tree, climb that trail, come up, and you're gonna see a hut. And we come up, and all we hear is like, who's I breathing? We hear fun feet coming on the ground, the band. We're like, what's going on up there? We look up. We pick our heads up. We crawl up the light. We pick our heads up. We look at and all these people from around the world doing first, second, third, fourth series, hand standing legs behind head, contortion yoga, we looked at each other. We said, let's get out of here. Crazy. We are the wrong place. This is the most advanced yoga group, nothing like Bikram yoga. Can't even touch right? No way. What was going on in the Istanbul world, and what we saw and the energy, the energy was so dynamic energy. It was a time in history where I am so grateful. I'm so grateful John, that I had a chance. It was like, I mean, that's where, you know, here, where he been here 19 years. I draw upon that every day when I show you, yeah, because it was just so magical. It was the energy was so raw and real, and the people were so amazing. I love the Ashtanga community. So, yeah. So then we went to India. We got to study with patabi Joyce and who both have passed away as well now. I mean, I feel so grateful to have the opportunity to hang with Toby Joyce man, and how long did you spend there? And we spent, we spent a month practicing with them the my source. We were a month with Ralph and coping Yang, a month in India with Tommy Joyce. And then on the way home, we from India, we had an incredible adventures there. We went to Spain and landed in Madrid and went to a restaurant, and we went to the bathroom. There's toilet paper. And we came back to Miami and and and visited my family, went back to California and realized, you know what, let's, let's open our own studio in Juneau Beach, Florida. Let's, or let's come back to Palm Beach County. Let's set up shop here. This is where I'm from. This is where I was born. Tara was on board. We did it. We came back in 19 years ago. We opened up in 2006 and you and I are sitting in the same room that we will actually opened up on that side of the that side of the room over there, and then we built this one in 2009 but then we've been here. We just celebrated our 19 year anniversary. And better than I do, studios don't last 19 years. Most yoga studios cannot last 19 years unless there's something really special about that studio. Well, thank you. I mean, thank you. I mean, I've been practicing for a while, and I see studios come and go within a year and to stick around for 19 years. You know, with with your soul mate, working with you. I mean, that's blessing. That's man, you've done an incredible job here. Incredible job. Thank you, John and having you and Mandy here is like you guys have been so supportive. And ever since I started this podcast five years ago, I started at March 27 on my daughter's birthday and my daughter priyas birthday on March 27 of 2020 when the world was falling apart, and this was a rehabilitative project for him, I got a chance to reach out to the international community. Because, you know, when you stay local in one little spot, after you travel the world, you want to be all over the world, right, right, right. And this, this avenue, has given me an opportunity to connect with professionals in this field. Yeah, for. Um, all over the world. I think what this will be like episode number 220 or so, 219, 220, and so, you know, for me, it's a labor of love, because I yoga is my life. Yoga and meditation has pulled me from the abyss, from that moment when I landed on my back and I, you know, was struggling through really traumatic event and events in my past, in my childhood, and to now be able to look back and say, I'm here. There's a purpose here, for a reason. I've gone through believing in God. I've gone through not believing in God. I've gone through every type of different meditation technique and every facet of yoga philosophy I can come across, from Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, I try to study and read and learn and meditate and process every day of my life. I woke up this morning at five and practice meditation, and had one of the deepest, most profound meditative experiences of my life this morning. No joke, really, no joke. Wow. I mean, it was, I won't, I'll save that for another story, but I think there, there's this stuff is real. Man, this stuff works, yeah, I promise you. And it will pull you through the darkest of the darkest, and it'll take you to the highest of the high, I mean, and you can do it all completely sober, right? You know, I've had my bouts of experimentation of all sorts of different things, and I really keep coming back to yoga and meditation and body work and just so. So I guess you know that is my last that's my life in a nutshell, and I'm trying. I wanted to make it brief and concise, but also try to convey some of why do what I do, why I'm here and why I'm never I'm not giving up. No, I'm gonna give up. I'm not thinking about giving up. But, you know, we have challenges. We have big challenges, here and there, but, but like everybody does, it's gonna say you're not alone. Don't give up. Yeah, whatever you do, don't give up. And strive to find your personal truth and and start exactly where you are. You do not have to travel the world. Everything is right here inside of us, just gonna mess you know, not out there. You're not in another country. Your experience traveling the world didn't necessarily have to be where to get to where you are today, agreed? I mean, it did but, but you could do it without track. Agreed, you don't have to go and try to find a guru. You don't have to go and try to find the perfect paradise to live in. You. Don't you make it where you are. What would you suggest you are your own guru? Somebody. And said, Todd, thought, How do I start? You know, I just listened to your podcast. Incredible experience. What you you know, what you've done and created. But how do I start? I would say just wherever you are right now, close your eyes and begin meditating. Good advice. Don't really even try to look for I mean, if you're gonna need guidance? Maybe you might not. I get guidance from people. I get lots of guidance. I'm constantly seeking guidance, yeah, so I'd say we need guidance. I give that, I take that back. I mean, I pray for help and guidance every day, yeah? So, but I also believe it's got to come from within, and it can come from all from within. So I think that. And then once you sit and you meditate and you're like, Okay, I'm eyes closed, or my eyes open, and I'm just like, really feeling and aware that I'm conscious, I'm a conscious being, then that's really it. I mean, it's like, that's the starting that's the story. It just grows. And yeah, it just depends on how far and wide you want to go, yeah, yeah. Sounds great. Cool man. Todd, thanks for so much for sitting down with me today. Yeah, facilitating this. Yo, no, you bought a lot of time and energy, and you've been, you and I have been working, talking to each other, interviewing like this for hours. Yeah, and we had accumulated so much information that I had this feeling of like it's gonna take me forever to publish all this and to skin through it and and also the process that you've taken me through to get to this point today has been extremely therapeutic, because I'm seeing my story from a different angle now, and maybe able to like process it in a different way. And having the chance to talk to you has helped me to reformulate my vision or my view of my narrative, and understand my narrative, and it is a narrative. So I mean, I mean, I'll just be honest with you. We all have our narratives. So once you become aware of your narrative, and you start telling. Your I'm telling my story, you tell your story, tell our story. Yeah, it gets clear. And I think that's very therapeutic, so I have to, I'm very grateful for you all the time you've invested. No, it's been a pleasure, you know, because your stories are intriguing to me. And that's one of the things that, you know, we have an hour show here today, which is gonna, you know, be great, but there's more. Because, I mean, I think your listeners, I think your students, are going to really appreciate getting to know you a little bit better through this one hour. But I think they may be as curious as I am as to what really happened in Australia, what really happened in Africa, what did you learn in Thailand and in India? And maybe some additional shows down the road to dive a little bit deeper in those experiences that you had that really brought you to here. I think we really cool. Thank you. John, yeah, all right. Thanks so much. Thanks so much for being together today. Man, thank you. Thank you. Native yoga. Todd cast is produced by myself. The theme music is dreamed up by Bryce Allen, if you like this show, let me know if there's room for improvement. I want to hear that too. We are curious to know what you think and what you want more of what I can improve. And if you have ideas for future guests or topics, please send us your thoughts to info at Native yoga center. You can find us at Native yoga center.com, and hey, if you did like this episode, share it with your friends. Rate it and review and join us next time you for you know you.