Dustin: Okay, here we are! We’re with Atma today. Atma, thank you for joining us at Our Local Life. We are super excited to introduce Atma, who has agreed to be the leader of our Mind, Body, and Soul, specifically the soul side of that trio. We’re really excited about what Atma is going to bring to the table for the community and the services she offers. So, we’ll just get right into the interview. Thank you for joining us, Atma.
Atma: Thank you so much, Dustin. I’m so happy to be here with you all.
Dustin: So, the first question is an easy one: how would you introduce yourself to someone who’s unfamiliar with your work?
Atma: I would let them know that I focus on presence, coming back into presence through meditation, Kundalini Yoga, and the use of these practices.
Dustin: Okay, yeah. So, let’s pretend, I think a lot of people are in various stages of their journey, let’s pretend that someone doesn’t know anything about Kundalini Yoga at all. Let’s talk briefly about what Kundalini Yoga is and how it applies to the human soul, mind, body, and soul.
Atma: Yeah. Okay, so Kundalini Yoga is a technology that we use for the body, the mind, and the spirit. It consists of meditation, mantras (which are a sound current), physical postures (or asanas), and mudras (which are hand positions). Through this technology, we can have a whole experience with the body, the mind, and the spirit where we come into presence, as I said before.
Dustin: Yeah, okay. Good. And Kundalini is your primary practice. Do you do anything else? Is there anything else that you bring into your personal practice or your community work?
Atma: Yes, so I also do ancestral healing work, and this is based on family constellations. In family constellations, we look at the blood lineage and the trauma that may be held through our DNA and our bodies, our memory and our ancestors' memory.
Dustin: Okay. And so, I think we’ll probably want to go deeper into that because people, I know what you’re referring to because I’ve experienced it on a couple of different levels, and so I’m excited for the community to learn more about both of those. So, we’ll just go into another question. What kind of conversations or communities do you find yourself drawn into?
Atma: I would say I don’t have any focus on any particular person, but a lot of my clients are coming with different mental health disorders or even an overwhelmed nervous system, which is what we all have nowadays with the huge amount of information. So, anxiety, these people may have things like anxiety or insomnia, trouble sleeping, or different disorders or habits that they want to change and live in a more present way.
Dustin: Okay, I like that. That’s perfect. Related to the essence of your work, what emotional or energetic shift do you hope others experience after engaging with you and your work?
Atma: Can you repeat that question, please?
Dustin: What emotional or energetic shift do you hope people will experience after engaging with your work?
Atma: Yes, so presence, coming back to presence. Kundalini Yoga is called the Yoga of Awareness. And more vitality, overall well-being, a hormonal balance, and an overall nervous system that is regulated, and also much more awareness through this presence as we can come back to presence and look at the different things that we want to change or how we are.
Dustin: Yeah, it does. And so, maybe to expand on that, in our podcast for mind, on the mind side of things, we talk about when somebody walks into a room and you can just feel their energy. If they’re having a bad day, you can feel that stress. Or the opposite, someone who’s super happy walks into the room and everyone looks at them at the same time because they’ve got great energy. So, I recognize the idea of regulating your nervous system in order to be able to be in synchronicity and harmony with the natural energy around us. Is that fair?
Atma: I love that, Dustin. That’s wonderfully said, beautifully said.
Dustin: Okay, thank you. What’s one small gesture, phrase, or moment that tells you someone is starting to shift? How do you say, "Oh, it’s starting to work on Dustin"? What is the energetic shift that you can see or feel?
Atma: Yeah, I love that question. So, someone can typically be more relaxed and calm in their energy, and more awareness. You naturally, I mean, you can feel when a person is more present with you here and now. So, I think that’s the point.
Dustin: Yeah, I like it. If your body of work had a soundtrack, scent, or texture, what would it be?
Atma: I love that. I’m just going to let it sink in for a moment. What’s coming to me is spring flowers. Through these practices, you’re renewed, you’re fresh, and your vitality is there. And yeah, I was thinking what song is coming through to me and, do you know that ABBA song, "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!"?
Dustin: I would like to hear you sing it, for sure.
Atma: Okay! Just like a boogie song, like you’re more joyful because by being present you’re more in the body and more in the presence. So, it’s just a joyful song, let’s say it’s just a happy song.
Dustin: I’m trying to find, I’m trying to find this if I can, oh, it gave me a commercial. Okay, we’ll skip the "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!". Can’t wait to listen to it afterwards, though. We’ll link it somewhere here so people who don’t know ABBA can find it.
Atma: Can boogie to it!
Dustin: I like it. Good answer. Spring flowers, for sure, I agree with that one. From one of our sessions, afterwards I ended up having an amazing day. You get into that heart space, you get into that frequency or the things, the woo-woo things that I can’t perfectly describe myself, but I can feel them. And so, yes, I like the idea of spring flowers. Atma, what led you to this kind of service?
Atma: Wow, I love this question, Dustin, and it’s very dear to my heart. I myself was struggling with sleeping issues and insomnia throughout my twenties. Coming to this practice and training in it, that really gave me the tools to heal myself. I tried everything. I tried traditional medicine, all these doctors, all these medicines, but really meditation and yoga, Kundalini Yoga and meditation, were the ones that, without any fail, quite fast actually, were the ones that enabled me to sleep well and to be more calm and to just have an overall better experience in my life. I just had more fun as well.
Dustin: That’s great. Many of us, certainly sleep, that’s something that I’m not able to say I’ve accomplished. Am I a good sleeper or a bad sleeper? I’m definitely not on the good side. And the ability to recognize that something’s off and pursuing a passion to fix what those things are, I think that a lot of people are starting to come to terms with finding that, "Hey, this isn't working for me." Me especially, I’ll try powering through everything, use cortisol to back me up, "I’m going to get this shit done," you know? But a lot of the time there’s no reason to put so much effort into things when things are in resonance, they tend to flow and things are easy. I’ve dabbled in easy and dabbled in very hard. So, yes, I like that answer. Solving for your own sleep issues and solving for your own inner peace, I guess. And you’ve been on this path for how many years?
Atma: Eight years plus.
Dustin: Eight years. Okay, cool. What inner or outer transformations helped forge your voice?
Atma: Inner and outer transformations? Definitely the masters and the teachers that I have trained from. I think they have had a huge impact on my wisdom and my expertise. So, I’m so grateful to all the teachers because I haven’t followed just one; I have learned from many. They say that a good teacher will have a student, but then the student won't stay on for too long because they have completed the cycle of learning. So, yeah, all these teachers and masters that have brought me their transmission, I’m so grateful to them.
Dustin: I like that. Okay. And this one might take a little bit of thought, but what did you have to leave behind in order to arrive where you are now?
Atma: I love that. I have to do it every day: my old identity, my old habits, identity, the ones that are not serving me.
Dustin: Yeah, there’s so many spinoff questions that we’d be in an hour or two-hour long interview if I go down these paths, so I’m going to,
Atma: I really love this! So, if you feel, feel free to.
Dustin: Okay, thank you. So, what kind of experiences do you facilitate? Atma has some stuff that she’s helped build for the course, so there’s a free course that you guys can click around here somewhere and find some of Atma’s work. But when someone comes and they have a specific need related to, we can focus on Kundalini Yoga, we should probably focus on both ancestral healing and Kundalini Yoga, but what type of an experience do you facilitate? Walk me through what it looks like. Let’s start with Kundalini.
Atma: Yeah, okay. So, my Kundalini Yoga is very experiential, but we typically start with the breath, with some sort of breathwork or breath meditation to get the energy flowing and moving within the body and release any stagnant energy. And then we will get into a kriya, which is a yoga set with a sequence. This specific technology can’t be changed; it’s coming from a thousands-of-years-old lineage, and it’s not changed by me, it’s not made up by me. These are coming from ancient texts. The yoga kriya includes stimulating different energy points within the body through the position or through the hand position. So, it’s very specified, it’s a very biochemical technology or practice. And then we get on with deep meditation at the end. Maybe we’ll have a resting period and then we’ll get onto a very deep meditation. You have thousands of meditations, so whether it can be one to release ancestral trauma or another one for better sleep, or, there’s so many I could just go on mentioning examples. But this is what the practice looks like.
Dustin: Okay, yeah. And so then, you mentioned that there’s yoga specifically for ancestral trauma, but let’s pivot over to the ancestral healing and what, is there anything else in a session in ancestral healing? What else does that look like?
Atma: Yeah, I like how both interweave and all these modalities interweave with one another. That’s why these two especially are very good together because you do have the practices for ancestral trauma. But the ancestral trauma, healing that looks like a one-on-one session, and we will work with symbols and we work in arranging the order of the family line. It may not make so much sense to you, but basically what can happen within a family system is that you may be taking the role subconsciously of your great-grandfather because he didn’t resolve things in his life or have energetic resonance through him, then you will come and take his place. It may sound weird and crazy, but I’m very excited to see what in 10 or 20 years or even a longer period what these practices, with the research, if it’s looked into like in a scientific way or if it can be.
Dustin: Yeah, no, you’re talking about quantifying the things that you know to be true. It’s very difficult to have a scientist say, "Oh, because you feel it, it’s true," but it is true because you feel it. But how do you quantify what that feeling is? And so, we do touch on a couple of those things in the podcast, things like your emotions are stored in your hips, right? That doesn't really make sense to most people, and so moving your hips allows you to free emotions. There’s all kinds of, the woman’s egg is actually the driver of the bloodline, and so anything that comes from the bloodline is stored in DNA, in the memory of your cells. All of those things kind of make sense to me. So, yes, I know where you’re going and I’m excited to have our community find out more and learn more as we continue.
Atma: Amazing. I’m sorry, Dustin, but I got kind of distracted with it. I went kind of deeper. Back to the session, do you want me to continue?
Dustin: Yeah, what does it look like?
Atma: Okay, so, yeah, I think basically, yeah, forget what I said before!
Dustin: No, don’t forget it! Just add to it.
Atma: All right, fine! I just, it’s a lot, so I’m just trying to simplify it for you guys. So, it would look like bringing up a challenge, the best way to put it is you bring up a challenge in your current life situation, and then we’ll dive deeper through my guidance, my intuition. We’ll dive deeper into your family system through different questions and through different movements of the body and of the symbols. So, that will bring deeper healing to you or the client.
Dustin: I like it. So, this is a good pivot question: what does transformation mean to you? Not as a buzzword, but as a lived experience. What would that look like manifested in a daily life?
Atma: So, as I said before, having the self-awareness, the presence, and the self-awareness to keep on evolving. So, whether that is changing a habit or having self-awareness of a pattern, how you’re relating to others, and yeah.
Dustin: Perfect. You live in, we’re communicating, you’re in Ibiza right now, is that right?
Atma: I’m in Ibiza, yes.
Dustin: Yeah. And so, along the same lines, I know why you’re in Ibiza, we’ve had multiple conversations about that, but what kind of communities feel like home to you?
Atma: Okay, so I am drawn to people that are coming back to nature, that are living in a more simple way, in a way that’s more connected to the Earth. Yeah, and that are relating to each other in a conscious way, or as much consciousness as they are able to have.
Dustin: Yeah. And along the same lines, how do your personal passions show up in how you serve the community?
Atma: Yeah, so through teaching yoga sessions, I’m here at a studio teaching weekly, and through collaborating in projects like this one with you, Dustin. So, collaborating with others in different events and retreats and private sessions.
Dustin: Okay, perfect. What are you currently surrendering into or learning to trust in your personal journey?
Atma: I love that. My authenticity.
Dustin: You want to expand on that?
Atma: Yeah, yeah. I love that question. So, getting to know myself is the key to me living in full authenticity and being in alignment with the projects, the people, the surroundings. So, all my choices, all my life choices, and that ultimately leads me to having a real life, like a life lived from the soul, from the heart.
Dustin: That’s awesome. I like that. Okay. If someone only remembered one line from this whole interview, if you had to communicate one main thing, what would you hope they remember?
Atma: Live from the heart. Live from your soul, from this moment.
Dustin: That’s beautiful. Atma, anything else that you’d like to add to the conversation here today?
Atma: No, I’m so happy to connect with you guys and with Dustin for creating this amazing project. I’m really grateful to be part of it. Thank you so much.
Dustin: You guys will be able to click around somewhere on this website and find more information about Atma and an opportunity to book a private session with Atma. So, we’re excited to have her as a part of the community and look forward to chatting again soon.
Atma: Thanks so much.
Dustin: Okay. Bye, guys. Bye, thank you everybody. Bye!
