Listening to Your Inner Wisdom (with author Yasmine Cheyenne)

0:03Don't hold anything too tightly. Just wish for it, want it, let it come from the intention of real truth for you and then let it go. For me, our soul is like it's unbound. It's limitless. But we will use words to limit ourselves. When people stop believing that somebody's got your back or Superman's coming, we turn to ourselves. And that's where you become empowered. Courageous participation attracts positive things. I'm Gwyneth Paltrow, and this is the Goop Podcast, where we bring together visionaries, scientists, healers, artists, and seekers. I'm so grateful that I get to interview these extraordinary thought leaders and share their wisdom with you.

0:51And I love listening to the conversations that are led by my co-host and dear friend, Cleo Wade. Cleo is a beautiful poet and author. I deeply admire her and the way she keeps her heart open to the world. Together, we believe that engaging in open-minded, honest, and sometimes difficult conversations has the power to change our lives. All right, over to Cleo. My guest today is educator, author, and wellness coach Yasmin Cheyenne. Her new book, which we talk about today, is titled Wisdom of the Path, the beautiful and bumpy ride to healing and trusting our inner guide. In it, Yasmin shares her own self-healing journey and offers a roadmap to help others listen to their inner wisdom.

1:39Yasmin and I talk about redefining the word intention, how to hold space for life's difficulties rather than fighting against them, the value of community and vulnerability in the healing process, and finding the power in stillness through self-healing practices like meditation. Okay, let's get to my chat with Yasmin Cheyenne.

2:02I am really excited to have you on the pod. I love your work. So I'm a longtime fan. I followed your work online. I have your other book. I am so happy to have this book, Wisdom of the Path. And I want to talk to you about wisdom and how we can cultivate with our own wisdom and also how we may have already done so. But before we kind of jump into this new book, I'd love for you to just share with our Goop listeners your origin story, because I think to be someone who distills this type of wisdom or has this amazing way of articulating or distilling their experiences into something that is helpful for others, it's really helpful to know about how they arrived at that type of being.

2:49And your journey is so unique. So I'd love for you to kind of start in New York and tell us about how you have landed now, where you are writing, writing books like this. Yeah. I'm a born and raised New Yorker, Brooklyn, New York, believe in the whole, you can make it anywhere slogan, wore it like a badge of honor, concrete jungle girl. And I'm also a Air Force veteran. And so I think I am like the opposite of what I would ever have imagined writing and doing the work that I do today. It's actually when I was in the Air Force, I was a victim advocate. And I had the opportunity to support victims of crime, victims of domestic violence, victim of sexual abuse, through their court process through really hard times.

3:39And I think my job was mostly paperwork. It was like, have them sign here and here and then good luck. I just became very interested, almost obsessed with what happens to them after they go through this. I had never witnessed people, person after person go through trauma and then just be like sent free. And they were supposed to just like live life after that. like that did not, I felt like they need more. And so I kind of followed that. It also introduced me to, I've been through trauma. I've never heard that word. No one in my house was using that word. And so that's kind of how I got into this work and began using the writing that I'd always done since I was nine as a way to connect to the harder parts of life that we kind of shy away from.

4:30it's also so amazing that that created a desire to for you to create a practice around healing because i find that even whether it's the worst things on earth that happen to us or even if we're doing something that's like very good for us like the people who do you know a five-day intensive therapy thing but then all of a sudden they're let loose in the world with all of these open wounds and no practice for how to kind of be this entirely new person or having seen or felt this entirely new things. I think this is happening a lot also with people who are doing a lot of kind of psychedelic therapies and stuff too, where these things are revealed without a plan or practice for how to cope with that new information.

5:19So whether that's, oh gosh, I sat in stillness for long enough for the first time in my life in therapy or in or in a therapeutic, you know, retreat, and I could finally see and feel the depths of my wounds. And then all of a sudden, now I'm like out in the world. And, you know, I can't even, you know, get through a dinner or a lighthearted movie without being in shambles. It's really real. I think that a lot of us are being exposed to wellness and healing for the first time kind of like I was 15 plus years ago I think the difference is there is this societal shame to know it all and have it all figured out even though we know we're not supposed to I think a lot of us feel the pressure am I done yet do I do I have all the tools am I doing it right I think the beauty of knowing that I mean it's not really beauty in the moment but life continuously is reminding me that you will never have it figured out.

6:17And I think that's what yeah, wisdom of the path really became an ode to that because so many people I knew were kind of like, I don't know what I'm doing. I keep going through the same things. I don't feel like I'm doing it right. I don't know what my intentions are. I have no idea what I even want to do with my life. I just have a list of things that have not worked out. So tell me, how am I supposed to move forward. And my own life looks very much the same. I can list off so many things that I thought were for sure the answer to my problems at the time that just opened a door to new problems.

6:56But those problems opened a door to eventually I found a way to the other side of them. Eventually I, for lack of a better term, rose from the ashes. And I feel like when we are able to be curious and invite in those experiences as an opportunity for we're being shaken up so that change can occur and that we can find what we really want to be landing in. I think it can be a lot more, we can enjoy the process of life versus fighting against it. And I know I definitely wasn't on my own side for a long time. Yeah. And I think something that is so clear in your book, it's almost like the good news and the bad news is, is that there is no, there, the work is never done.

7:43And I think in that the good news is that if you know that you can level set and say, Oh, you know, I have some days that are better than others. And I still can reach for joy in the midst of heartache and heartbreak and disappointment. And I know that joy and okayness is still a possibility somewhere in that, in that space. I know that tomorrow doesn't necessarily feel like today. I know that, you know, three days ago can feel like a distant memory. There is kind of growth out of all of these, whether they're light or shadow experiences, and there's harmony to be found in that. Like, if I know that this is, it's a continuous feeling of, you know, waves in the ocean, I know, I know what, how to be prepared for that.

8:29I know to not be like, okay if I do this then this and I get to be completely okay and then I get to be happy because also what I have found and and I'm sure that you have moved through this too is sometimes you get what you want and then you don't experience the joy so you're like oh if I can just get married I will be happy and then you realize that marriage is a relationship you go into that just you know, adds to and creates more life in your life, which means it's similar ripples and, you know, patterns and, and everything else that was already there. So do you have, what is that kind of, cause I know you spend so much time in community with your readers and your coaching and all that you do.

9:14And what do you say to the person who, you know, says, I thought that if I just got this, then I'd be happy. And they get what they want, you know, because I feel like we don't talk about that person enough. We're always talking about the person who's like, I tried and I tried and I was disappointed or my dreams didn't work out or my this, it's like, then there's this lonely character who gets all this stuff that they wanted and then doesn't feel that they're allowed to have disappointment or upset. Yeah. I think that's actually most of us, I don't know about you, but like, I can literally point to something specifically in my life right now that I'm like, oh my gosh, I worked really hard for this.

9:51And now that I have it, I'm like, wow, this isn't actually how I want to live my life. I would say to them, and I think I would say to anyone who is, who has met with the idea that you have something that even society says that we all should have and you have it, but maybe you don't want to hold it anymore. I think a lot of people, moms often feel that. That's where I think mom shame comes from where we're like, oh, you have these beautiful children that you're raising in, that you're bringing into the world, But also there's a lot of grief that comes with raising kids and there's a lot of loss of self and there's a lot of feelings that people don't like to hold space for.

10:28So this isn't going to sound politically correct, but I think we have to kind of say F it to a lot of those opinions and thoughts and ideas because they're all projections anyway. When you brought up the idea of marriage, I think one of the hardest things I've been married almost eight years is that they are a mirror of all the things that you don't maybe want to look at anyway. And I think a lot of times when we meet people, that's what's happening. We are mirroring things that perhaps they don't want to look at or things that they need to look at. We are doors to their own pathways and doors to them looking at versions of themselves that they may not want to see or dreams they had that they may not be able to realize.

11:06and I recently like have been this book I don't know if you feel this Cleo but like I wrote this book and now like my whole life is playing out as this book and I think it's one of those experiences where I've realized recently that we have to give ourselves so much more grace and compassion when we have these feelings come up where we are really almost not being on our own side. We're not actually allowing ourselves to be the humans that we are and experience life without the pressure and the judgment. At Goop, we believe the spaces we spend time in shape how we feel and how we connect. That's why we're drawn to Convene, a global hospitality brand reimagining work and meeting spaces centered around design and care.

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12:41Convene for the moments that move your business. You know, because we write very kind of with a similar spirit, something I notice a lot about when my books come out is that they're like you were just saying, they almost, you start to live them. I remember when I was writing, remember love, every kind of thing that I wrote in that book is something that I had to practice in the release of that book, which was really helpful that I knew the words were there and that the instructions were there. And in this kind of manual that I had kind of made, but it was still really difficult. I was reminded that even when you know what to do, or you can say like joy in your life comes from prioritizing people over prospects or all these, you know, all the things and the material.

13:30And so much of my last book was about centering relationships. And I remember when, right before the book came out, when I'm usually kind of getting everything together to gift and do, and one of my best friend's father passed and I just, you know, abandoned ship to, so I could be with her. and you know one of the things that was difficult was to let go of that control person who's like but I usually tie all the bows and I make a note myself and I did it and then I had to choose between whether I could be my perfect work self or my most human human self and I felt grateful that I had written around that a lot so that I knew to just be like present in that but it's still really you know it's difficult and I think that's another thing that is so I felt so much from reading your book, which is that like, even if you teach these things or do these things, no one is an expert on coping with the human condition.

14:25We may be able to find these kind of really well loved and in, in lanes in self development or help or spirituality that, you know, more often than not will help you get from 10 below to at least ground level of an emotional state or are a mindset that will help you kind of progress and alchemize sadness or, you know, anger or hurt into something else that is manageable. But their practices for managing these things, they're not someone who's like, Oh, I know I write these things because I have figured out how to avoid every feeling that is uncomfortable in my human experience. right I also think that we're all like even if you don't write books and you're listening to this and you're like I don't like I don't write books like where's my door where's my openness to experience I think is it's the projection you the projection when someone projects on you and you're in a conversation and you're like what did I just do that's a door when you feel triggered when you look see a post or something or when you read something that's an opportunity to to look into last week, I was on a plane that had a very scary emergency landing.

15:40I was flying from Vegas to DC. And one of the engines stopped working mid flight. And it was the first time like, you know, your biggest fear is like seeing the flight crew scared, like that, you know, and every the panic and the, you know, the pilot not knowing if we're going to make it back all of those kinds of things. And I was thinking in that moment, like, did I really have room in my life for another traumatic like wow there's more I think the beauty of that was realizing like we really don't have the control we think we do anyway the letting go is really freedom like I'm gonna get on a plane next week I'm gonna have my tour I feel so much more grateful that I get to have these experiences I'm looking at my kids like I always love my kids but I'm looking at them with so much more of a fresh Like I'm so happy that I'm here.

16:30And I know that's a perspective that's like pretty dramatic. And I don't want anyone to have to go through that. But I thought back recently, like in the last couple of days, of all of the times that I've had that invitation to look at my life that way. And I really couldn't, I wouldn't sit for it. I was unwilling to be present for it. And I'm not saying that hard things happen to us so that we can have joy. sometimes things happen just because life sucks and it's not an opportunity of course to learn anything things sometimes are just really hard but when we have those invitations I really think that we should pay attention to them and I think that's also what wisdom of the path is inviting us to where have I already went through the tough stuff that I can learn the lesson and gain that wisdom and bring it with me now so I don't have to keep relearning so it doesn't have to feel like a brick the next time it hits me maybe it'll just feel like the ocean maybe it'll feel like a feather Maybe I'll just go with it next time.

17:22And I really think that that's what we're being invited into when we do healing work. It's not that it's going to end. It's how can I be with it rather than be against it, be in fighting with it, be in battle with it as it's happening. Well, and I think what happens is, you know, people enter into the healing work or into a spiritual practice in order to control. And it's actually in order to rest in good, bad, ugly, imperfect, beautiful, wretched, and to say, like, I can live with this. And like you're saying, not be against it or be embroiled with it. And I think that it's a really delicate dance.

18:03I do feel that I have, I've known or seen or had it in myself before, or if I've noticed it in somebody else, I know that that's something I'm being reflected that can be in myself, which is like, is this practice about me coping to control? or is this practice to say like, oh, I think this will help me avoid, you know, feelings I don't want to feel or be above things that I judge or, you know, all of these different ways in which we try to just avoid the uncomfortable. And, you know, something I really love about your book is this way that of like kind of pulling us from like the control that's either like I'm ignoring all these things to control it.

18:44Because if I, if I avoid spirituality or healing and everything altogether, then like, that's one way I think I'm controlling my feelings because I'm not going deep at all. Right. And you can also be on the flip side of that and be trying to control things by obsessing with like one path or one way as the right way, which is also kind of a way of not getting to that deeper wisdom, which is wisdom of the self. If that makes sense. absolutely and I think that's a scary thing for most of us like if I look at myself if I look at the wisdom that I have if I look at what if I'm honest with myself about what I want if I'm honest about what I want to be doing if I'm honest with myself about what my purpose is man then I'm gonna have to do something like I might have to make a change this may not be it my partner may not be it these friends may not be it this life might not be it I think a lot of us are avoiding I know I was for a long time, what felt true to me because I didn't know what I was going to do to get toward it.

19:45It felt impossible. I do think that the beauty of it is, and I just believe this, I know this might sound naive, but I do think whatever path we're on does lead us to where we were supposed to be. I believe the people in my life I was supposed to really meet. I believe that even if I didn't do what I was supposed to do, it would happen. And so that kind of makes me feel off the hook a little bit, especially if you read my story from chapter one to chapter nine, you'll see like, there was like, it's night and day, you wouldn't even think it's the same person. Some of the things that I've experienced.

20:16And I think most of the listeners right now would feel the same way from where they were to where they are and where they want to go. And so I really do think that a lot of the, in the pressure that we're feeling inside is the rules that we've set for ourselves. The rules that we've set for ourselves means that we're in control of changing them, but we adhere to them as if we are subjected to them and locked into them, caged into them, rather than the fact that if we're the ones who set them, then we're actually limitless because we can set other ones. And I hope that this book allows people to feel that and set themselves free.

20:53you think that or I guess what I'm curious about is you know when I think about you you know working with with the kind of survivors of abuse what made you want to go in the spiritual side of this rather than the psych side yeah I love this question I was in college at the time actually and I was thinking about changing my major to a licensed social worker or therapy and then when I learned about the limitations. And when I say limitations, meaning when you're a therapist, the way that you show up with a client is very different than you may be able to with a healer. For example, my story is not something that wouldn't necessarily be a part of the relationship.

21:32I knew that for me to even be interested in doing this work, it was through hearing other people's stories. I was just not interested in just, I think therapists are so important, But that piece for me wasn't the part that was calling at me. It was the story. And so I knew that I wanted to be a part of the storytelling piece so that people could see themselves, not necessarily in my story, but in all the stories and help people find themselves in that. What I really thought about in your book, too, is when you talk about meditation and you talk about it really early on and you write, I struggled to believe that strength could come from stillness.

22:13I thought strength could only come from never stopping, never slowing down. I'd never known a day of stillness in my life, nor in my mind, and was certain that I was strong because of it. And that to me is also something where it's like, I felt your calling towards healing, even in that kind of interpretation of being able to tell that story out of meditation. And I'd love for you to talk about how you found meditation, how, and, and, and how it's become such a healing modality for you. Yeah, I think I'm a very, I was a very high strung person and someone had a friend of mine was like, I really think you should try a meditation course.

22:56At the time I was like into yoga and I was, I was exactly what you're talking about. Like yoga is going to be the thing that's going to save my life. She's like, I think you should sit down and try meditation. So I went and I could not stop my mind. I also want to say that I believe that the only way that meditation could be correct is if my mind was blank. I thought that it was going to be the absence of thought. It became a struggle that to this day, I'm still surprised I kept paying and going to. I hated it. And just to be honest, I sat there, I was pissed. people would come out of meditation and we would share and they'd be like I saw lights and my grandmother came back I'm like oh my god like I literally thought about my grocery list this entire time yeah the word intention and I talk about this in the book but it was so hard for me I remember asking the meditation teacher to actually define it I don't know if as a writer but I was just like what do you mean by intention and can you spell it out for me I'm more of a checklist person intention was not connecting the day that I sat down in meditation and I was able to feel I was able to allow myself to feel the feelings that were coming up I remember crying and I thought I just want to be here and then I was like oh my god this has to be an intention like did they just really want me to say what I wanted for this moment that had never occurred to me I thought you meant like my five-year plan and I think for a lot of people and I talk about I became a meditation teacher after this because I was like there has to this has to be the reason why so many people feel like meditation doesn't work for them because I'm a meditation teacher for people who feel like they can't meditate that's what I've like coined myself it's a feeling of if you're not necessarily in the womb woo for lack of a better term if you're not able to understand all the terminology, if you're not going to all of the retreat, if you're not, if you don't receive yourself, I'm a black girl from Brooklyn.

25:00Like I didn't see myself in any of the people who were teaching any of this work. It was, it was hard for me to connect to, but it freed me because the stillness was where I was able to really allow my nervous system to rest, which was something that I didn't even think I had permission to do. I thought I was always going to be in, in the fight of doing more, being more, being better. And it was the first time that I actually felt like, Oh, I just get to be, I just get to breathe. And that was freedom. Meditation to me feels like almost like those parts of motherhood in the beginning where people tend to only talk about the highs of meditation and they don't really talk about the journey.

25:37So you'll just be like, Oh my, we mostly hear people say, it's like, it reminds me a little bit of breastfeeding where I remember being like, everyone would just say, Oh, I breastfed for two years or I breastfed for a year and a half or I breastfed for da da da. And no one said they were supplementing with formula. And I say that all the time. I'm like, yes, you did. But most people, like what they never told you is that they'd only give you the time that they did it. And when I say everyone, I mean like every single person I ever asked and they'd be like, oh yeah, I did it for two years. And then they would never say they had formula too.

26:06And there's something around not having transparency in the process of it being difficult. And I think meditation tends to have that too, is that most people who meditate, you're like, Oh my God, it changed my life. Oh my God, I got a mantra. And you're like, okay. And what about the time where you were first trying to do it? And it was really difficult or when you couldn't break through or which style of meditation actually helped you because you maybe tried other things and they didn't work. And that story, your story is so valuable in that, because I do think that there's so much that meditation can gift us.

26:44And I think it's often being talked about on the other side of the gift rather than the process of creating that gift for yourself. Absolutely. I think that's the, that is the message of that, this entire book. Everyone wants to talk about the other side. Everyone wants to talk about how it feels when we've arrived. What was the journey like when you were dragging all that stuff with you to get to where you arrived? And that's what I want to hear about. Like, give it to me give it to me so that I can feel like it's possible for me too and when I'm in community with my friends when I'm talking to like when I get together with my girlfriends we got together last night we keep it real like that's what we do when we get together you know we have our drinks we have our tea whatever and we are talking about the real what's happening in our lives we're not sugarcoating it and I feel like that's what healing is needing from people People need to hear like the real hard.

27:44I don't even want to do this. I don't understand joy. Somebody said that to me at a workshop recently. Like, I don't even understand what joy looks like today. Like, how am I supposed to find it? And I think that's what people want to talk about because it doesn't feel accessible when it's only talking about when you've arrived and when you finally figured it out 10 years later. I was trying meditation for three years before it connected. So, yeah. And I know that intention is something that is a through line in this, in your, in all of your work really. And, but, and, and especially this book, how are you, you know, defining intention, you know, in the same way that you asked that teacher to define it for you.

28:26If I'm in your, if I'm asking you and you're my teacher, how are you defining that for people right now? What are you curious about in this moment? what is calling you and curiosity could be like I don't know I look at the book called The Artist's Way and it just makes me feel excited that might be an intention I like to give it vision I like it to be something that you can touch that you can see I think our intentions are attached to our imagination I don't think that's often talked about I think people are looking forward in some version of like a like it it almost feels dreamlike I think when we follow the curiosity of our playfulness, our childlikeness, our innerness, our intentions are as clear as ever.

29:16And I think often we don't give ourselves permission for that because it takes pause, but I think that's where our intentions look. I've been thinking about intention a lot lately also in this idea that you're allowed to value what you want as much as what you need. and I think a lot of the times intention gets lost in needs right because we're like we do so much work to even say we have these needs like I have a need to be heard and like we do have a need to be heard and you can say and I want to say this and I think that is this this kind of the next kind of step from this basic you know because most women especially black women you know we're at this kind of deficit of getting our needs met by society patriarchy all of these different things family structures and you know always having to be the strong one and all these things this idea that we get our tenderness met as a basic need which it must be for each every person on this planet then I think we if we can get there we think we've done a lot of the work and then from there is actually the baseline of where to dream and in that you have to want things for yourself.

30:31And you have to know that it's okay to want. So even when you say, I want this in this moment, what do you want in this moment? Moving from need-based thinking to want-based dreaming, I think is a huge part of intention. Would you agree? Absolutely. And that's why I think it comes from that playfulness and it comes from that curiosity and it comes from that lightheartedness. what I need is more of like necessity in that. It's like, I need to pay my bills. I need to have a job. I need to have food in the house. Like there's these basic needs. And then I need to have a career. I need to, you know, those kinds of things for me, intention is like, what keeps my heart beating?

31:15What makes me feel like I'm alive? What makes me feel free? What make, what am I looking forward to? I love the work that I do, but I would imagine you feel the same way. There's something you're doing today that has nothing to do with this, that you're excited about that I feel like that's our intention. Like I'm going to be in the grass with my shoes off. That's my, you know, like, I feel like those are the things that, and I, for me, the book starts with a lot of the hard stuff and leads towards a lot of the lighter stuff because I found my intention in the, I got closer to my intention. I got closer to myself.