i think the the real difference is bringing that um ancient vibration to it that isn't just coming from me it's coming from generations and generations of of deeply spiritual individuals um who have carried this on and i think you know feeling that is is the biggest difference for me because it's not just me coming up with [Music] something hey everyone welcome back to on purpose the number one health podcast in the world thanks to each and every
single one of you i'm so grateful that you come back every single week to listen learn and grow and today is a very special episode for a million reasons i'm going to start with a couple to get going with this is the first time that radhi and i
are going to do an interview together yeah so this is fun and there's a special special reason for why we're doing it together because today we're interviewing two of our dearest friends incredibly talented the most creative
who have launched a brand new ep called rise which we cannot wait for you to hear it is none other than willow and genevieve harrison thank you for having us thank you this is exciting we're so grateful to be with both of you and uh
sounds like a plan but uh i'm so excited to have you both here we're both so excited to have you have you here and just excited to just have this whole energy here which we have anyway all day long yes and so why not bring it into an
interview so rodney's going to go with the first question actually i am going to get my profession on okay so willow and janavi tell me uh tell me about the first time you guys made your music together oh well that would be surrender yeah i just have to put it out there i was super nervous the first time we got in the studio together because you know listening to your music and seeing you doing kirtan it was a level of like channeling
that i had never seen another musician have and so i was just like wanting to be worthy like so badly to be able to make music with you so that was my that was my initial emotion um when we first started making music together i was probably feeling the same way it was actually such a magical experience and um just as it worked out i was only in la for about i think like eight nine days and we only managed to actually get together in the
studio the night before i was flying out so we knew we had like six hours or so or actually we had as much time as we wanted but we could only meet in the evening so we were like okay there's only so long we're gonna go for
and but there was just such a special energy actually we had met up and we had practiced something and i was nervous too because i find the studio can be a lot of pressure and especially when there's not like a idea that's already set
exactly we didn't have a finished composition or anything but i think both of us were just feeling excited to work together and we were like let's just see what happens let's just have fun with this and if it's not
anything we'll just have had a fun experience and we can work on it another time and we got so absorbed in it and it just was flowing and and i remember that you know it was around midnight when we finished we were like okay let's let's
listen to the whole thing now and we were just standing there and willa was like we were like we're delirious at this point yeah we were sick we were tired but we were we were just and then we came out of the studio and
we're like what was that what just happened that was so beautiful and that it was just so natural yeah so um and it's very rare that i have those kind of like synergistic is that a word yeah yeah um experiences with other artists because
artists are so um i know i'm very opinionated and i have uh very outlandish ideas and sometimes the push and pull of that can be kind of um uncomfortable but for me and genevieve it was like second nature from yeah from the start
it felt like old friends and a and even though we were so different in many ways we there was just this feeling of ease and understanding which is it's like that's what you always hoped for in collaboration with other artists
so yeah we were like we have to do this again [Laughter] i love that the reason it's so special as well is that radhia and i both absolutely adore you individually in your own music so like we would be in a car yeah we'd be playing and listening to you willa yeah like we'd just be listening to your music and then i've known genevieve now for 15 years and so i've always been attracted to her music and and the way she creates
and how devotional it is and so for us to see you both together it's just it's it's so fulfilling so i want to ask you both and we're going to uncover all the layers as we go along but i also just before you start i also just want to thank you both
yes for bringing us together round of applause you guys were meant to meet either way like whether it was through us or whether it was through another way there was a hundred percent like you guys were meant to meet this
was meant to happen and um everybody needed this in their life so i think it was just happened to be us but it would have been somewhere somehow it would have happened because but but i think you you need to take credit some credit
because it's because of what you do if you don't want to take god you're both such special people that you you attract such wonderful souls all around you and you're always i think it's probably going to happen throughout
your lives that you're making these beautiful connections so yeah we were both we always talk about that we're so grateful that you introduced us it's just selfish really because i really wanted some like new music no thank you you guys are both really sweet we love you for that and we're we're loving seeing both of your collaboration and friendship and our friendship or blossoming because of this devotional connect that we all have and
i want to ask you what did you what have you both learned from each other in this process and it can be musical or non-musical it can be anywhere you want to go with it a lot of things yeah i'll say i i feel i've learned so much from
willow i think one of the one of the very obvious things about the process of working together was our different um just different like pace and way of approaching creative work um and willow's obviously had so much more experience
as a recording artist um as a composer you know you've you've recorded so much and composed your own written your own songs and for me um even though i have recorded music it's still it's still something i get very nervous about because most of what i do is is sort of live meditation experiences so we hadn't worked together that much apart from that one song so i didn't really know willow's sort of style and pace production yeah
and the first day i was like i was taken aback i was like wow willow's was so confident about you know what she's looking for and the sound and also fast pace and i i tend to be quite slow too slow sometimes like people are always
wanting me to make decisions faster so although it was like by the end of it i was like wow this has really pushed me creatively in such a wonderful way initially i was like you know i know i was i was trying to like not in a bad way
not in a scary way but it was just like you know when you you just like oh okay i'm gonna be growing here i'm gonna learn something here yeah yeah it take me up a gear um but i love that i you know i i was sharing with someone
the other day that willow's approach is so i feel it's the ideal artistic approach which is which is to be thank you yeah it's it's to be um curious and not overly controlling of the of the end results like it's really to discover
for the studio to be at space of exploration rather than like i want to have this specific thing and it can't be anything other than that it's it's a very playful and curious approach and i think i can tend to be
more focused on like okay but it has to be just like this so yeah but by the end of it i just felt like wow i'm ready to be just more fearless and and creating and more open to what i could discover that's just one thing there's many more
but i love it i think you know i would even almost say like the inverse like i i felt in times that i was overshooting and like kind of getting lost in the oh but what about this and we could do this and maybe it's this then like i felt like jonavi was really instrumental in like kind of bringing grounding me and being like okay what's the intention behind this like i know you like that sound but why are we using that sound you know
what i mean like what's the intent where does that sound go in the song what is that sound going to say like what's the intention of this so like your intentionality with everything you might think that it's sometimes a hindrance but i think it's a blessing because you know you know in your heart of hearts what every single instrument and every single lyric means to you um and you're not just throwing things at the wall like let's see if this
sticks and maybe this you know what i mean and i think those two approaches um they just complete each other in a really nice way um as they say opposites attract yes and i think that this was a case of that yeah what do you
guys feel both of you together and individually what was your intention for the music that you were creating together i always want my music to bring people closer to themselves make them feel like they're learning something or
there or there's a thought that's being planted that grows over time and listening to janavi's music that's exactly how i felt and then seeing it live it was like okay how can i just bottle this yeah just to like i just want to have this obviously it's that's the beautiful nature of it because you can't bottle it and you can't just have it that's why it's beautiful but um you know i think that going into it that was my and i had never made a
devotional album before so i was even extra excited to explore that different part of me and what i could do with with this new you know with this new path in my life i think also just just speaking from having heard you do it
and just hearing you talk about it when we're all having lunch or when we're hanging out and just i feel like your intention was so pure for it like from the moment that you first heard devotional music i remember the first time
it was we were doing a session and then i was like oh crap i can't sing and then and radhi can sing but she chooses not to and then we were like oh let's play janavi on on our phone and then that's the first time we all
meditate in that way then there's willow on the floor yeah i know i'm just like oh my goodness like just fully with your heart open like ready to receive and that's the one thing about you like and actually on that note when you were
even thinking about doing this album i feel like from what jeremy has told me and even experiencing from you you wanted to get things so right so whether it was your pronunciation or whether it was like oh what does this word actually mean like oh how is this word used like you really want to understand the depths you're not just trying to and that's a journey yeah i i want it to continue and i want to keep nourishing that
um because just through this music i've i've found such a deep love for just the bhakti tradition in general um and i'm just so excited to just dive deeper into that and and learn more and just just broaden my horizon in my in my in
that devotional sense which is so beautiful like you want depth you don't just want you know just like oh this sounds really good exactly you know you really wanted to understand it and feel it in you so that other people can feel it
definitely and i think that makes a difference like both of you feel it so deeply and you've experienced it in different ways so you're trying to share that experience with other people but you can only share an experience
that you've had yourself exactly um and so i think you really feel that through both of your music and through your words and it comes from your heart so but i haven't heard from you your turn no i think that definitely that was our desire to
to try to capture the essence of what that is this this experience with mantra with sacred sound and share it in a way that makes it that little bit more accessible for people who haven't experienced it before
so that's manifest in the form of you know these songs like the typical mantra session might be like half an hour or an hour and you're singing the same thing over and over again that might be very daunting for someone who's never experienced that
before so one of our mantra tracks is two minutes long and and and some of our songs are you know touching on stories or themes from the bhakti tradition but they're more in a kind of typical song format with you know a couple verses a bridge like that so it's something familiar but it's conveying something of this uh deep authentic tradition and so i i think it's very natural that when something profoundly affects your life
and touches your heart and is is offers a space of shelter and upliftment you want to share it with other people so that's what we we want to just give it as a gift you know if we can and i i really treasure the fact that we both
had that same intention and it makes working on anything just a complete joy yeah because you feel you feel so aligned and you know and that trust was really there like we both knew our intentions and so you know trying to do things over
long distance because of covid and you know having to make decisions maybe without one another because of time differences and you know that trust was always there because we knew that our intentions were the same
yeah which is also probably why what you were saying before about how your differences actually didn't make a difference in a negative way because you both have such a deep-rooted intention that even if i'm not saying that even if there was
something like oh gosh like exactly but as soon as you take yourself back to the intention you guys are like oh and there were a couple of those things yeah there were naturally yeah which could bring feuds to people
but because of how deep-rooted everything was for you it kind of just didn't hit that strongly yeah we we just we just had to talk it through i remember we had a long phone call because we were trying to do we were trying to do creative things
over over long distance and there were other artists that were involved and you know we just had to call each other and just be like man like yeah this is really hard and that was that was really healing for both of us i feel
um just to be able to express that to one another and to be able to like kind of come back and be like this is why we're doing this let's not stress about something in a material sense um because that's not why we're doing it anyway so
that was a good convo yeah yeah that was wonderful and and even i was i would say even in terms of the musicality of what we were doing like you know willow was was taking the role of producer and um and i i know i it takes me a lot to sort
of sometimes break out of the box of the sound of what i what i do which is often rooted quite in the traditional uh origins of the kirtan tradition so um i remember we were playing with different sounds and with
you know kind of bass sounds and electronic sounds and and willow was getting so excited on the little sampler and i was and i was just sitting behind her like okay let's see where this goes but i always you know initially i was like okay let's see but then i really felt a sense of trust because i knew as we've said that we were both aiming for people to have this um heart connection with the music so i was like i'm going to see where will it
takes it and i trust you know we're both aiming for the same space and that's a beautiful thing there were a lot of things that at first seemed to you to be like oh that sound is a little deep that's a deep bass yeah
and i'm like but trust me people are gonna hear this and go oh it's gonna hit right in their chest and then you hear it and then you're like oh wow like yeah i see i see this and i feel that exactly and it's such a like how you guys ain't
communicating now you can just see there's no ego involved in it it's like you're like yeah you were right and you're like yeah you were right and just the communication i imagine it's so difficult even in relationships it's
it's sometimes difficult even if you know someone for such a long time totally you're sometimes scared of saying something that you think might hurt their feelings but um you know you guys have built such an honest you've built a foundation on
honesty and integrity and so it's easy for you guys to communicate because you know where that person's coming from 100 i think it's a really important part of the story that you guys created this during covert during lockdown definitely being in different parts of the world for a big part of this work coming together for a very short part of it yeah it's like you created a really collaborative piece at a time when the music's needed most
at a time when it's actually difficult to be collaborative and creative like the way the relationship you guys built just to anyone who's listening or watching right now it's fun to watch you both just go back
and forth but to think about the fact that you've actually done this at a time when you weren't always in the same room i i think that's a really important thing to honor and and what i'm intrigued by now is to to understand from both of you and to
hear from both of you about your own journey so we'll start with you in terms of tell us about your own journey you've been sharing so much more about mental health anxiety your own healing always through your music but also through your words tell us about your journey towards wanting to do more even more healing devotional music that you felt is going to help people this year because this collaboration you both created this year
was truly wanting to help people 100 with the pain that everyone's been going through so tell us a bit about your journey to that over the last you know decade it's it's a lot um i mean i don't want to go into like my whole life story but um i mean is that what i'm we're listening should i do that or should i wherever your heart wants to go with you all the way whatever you genuinely feel like sharing from them totally um so my first interest
in you know the lifestyle of just integrity and spirituality and meditation um i was introduced to that at a very young age my mother had a bunch of beautiful art pieces and books about hindu gods and goddesses
and i would just sit on the floor of her meditation room and just like look at these beautiful photos and read you know about the sentiments of these gods and goddesses and from a very young age i was so encapsulated by that and so inspired by
that um and you know fast forward to you know me doing all the with my hair stuff and being a pop star and and having to realize that that's not the content that i wanted to put out into the world that's that's not really the person that i wanted to be um and that was a really difficult decision to make what made you realize that i would go out and i would be with peers like kids my age and i would just be stopped and constantly
oh that's the girl from with my hair oh and i just saw my other friends being able to live and being able to have experiences and being able to make mistakes and not have the whole world know what's going on with them
um and so that kind of made me think like is this really truly the life that i want to be living like i want to actually live i don't just want to be like a caricature for the world to look at you know so um that took a lot of courage to just
say you know what i'm not going to continue there were a lot of people who had invested in me there were projects that were already paid for scripts that were already written that i had to go back on i'm surprised that i didn't get sued [Laughter] it was a crazy time but through that i was like okay now that i'm free of this lifestyle that i don't want to live now what's the lifestyle i want to live and so i was so confused i kind of went
into just a spiral of just like depression desperation i was self-harming i was hanging out with people that were just wrong for me um and that lasted for about two to three years and then i started realizing this is psychotic literally
like i have to stop doing this this is not all this is not the person i want to be either um so i was like okay i hadn't been recording music during that time um so i was like really in the dark like no creative outlet
no you weren't doing anything creative no i was really just in the dark in the darkness i should say and so then i started kind of coming out of my shell and trying to get back into the studio which felt so like weird and daunting because i was like what do i make like am i gonna go back and just be like hey like what am i gonna do you know what i mean um so like the first song that i had put out was it was called sugar and spice you could
probably find it somewhere but um it was a radiohead a radiohead loop um and i remember just listening to that and going i think i think i can continue like that little spark of like inspiration was just like ooh
ooh like i think i think i'm coming back and so you know ever since then i've just been kind of digging more into that and as i've gone deeper just over that time of just you know trying different types of music out learning how to play the guitar
i just really realized that i just want to be in service the only thing that makes you know having this lifestyle um worth it and for me to feel like i'm i have a purpose at all and to not fall back into that dark spiral was making music that i felt would inspire people that i felt would be in service to others and that's really the only reason why i feel like i got out of that dark place because people would come to me and tell me you know that
they were in that same dark space that i was and that my voice brought them out of that and that would just bring me so much joy and and just just make me feel like i had a purpose like there's there's a reason why i have all of these resources and why you know people are looking at me and why i'm in the tabloids and all of this and so it just gave me a reason and this is just expanding on that reason and i'm just so excited to to continue
to expand that reason and to grow that reason and help that reason spread to others um thank you for caring thank you thank you so much that's phenomenal it's amazing how you came to that conclusion for yourself that service was where you wanted to be and that's at the heart of devotional music like that is it so it's it's incredible to hear you explain just the natural challenges that come with your experience of life and the kind of
back and forth and the recognition of both that i don't want to be this but i also don't want to be exactly that's that's thank you so much for for sharing that well before the age of 20. i know yeah oh yeah well it just turned
out it's a crazy life it's a crazy life y'all awesome yeah i love it yeah and janavi i want to hear from you because so as i was saying before jennifer and i have known each other for 15 years rather he's probably known johnny for like
uh since 2012-ish i know i i heard genevieve 2010 or something so a good 10 years yeah known each other i was a fan girl the first time we met rodney was like this is a tattoo i got inspired by it by your music and she was like oh okay she was like that's not what you're meant to do but but you know jennifer you grew up in the bhakti tradition yeah and so this music has been a part of your life forever yeah and it's been a part of your soul but
also it was different being someone who's a consumer of it or hearing it but then to actually creating and sharing it like that journey must have been really interesting can you share that with us that transition of
growing up listening to it but then actually being someone who's sharing this tradition and culture so widely yeah yeah um well i grew up uh being involved in it all the time every day really um you know we would do i attended a school
at the temple that was very near to my house so the school was you know we did regular academic subjects but we also studied the bhagavad-gita and we did chanting together before we started our school day so that was very normal but um it was it
was collective it was you know what i wasn't singing on my own or anything and also my dad was um very well known as a singer of kirtan uh all over europe and other countries of the world back in the cassette tape days the
cassettes used to be everywhere and and um so as i got older i mean he was like you know he was like a hero he is a hero to me but we loved his singing and and i felt i mean i always loved music but as i got older people would be like oh do you sing like your dad and like like sing you must know nothing about that so yeah um we so i think i i was i was quite shy as a very shy and introverted and i also felt this pressure that people
are like wanting to see if i'm also gonna be like my dad and uh and so i just i was too shy to i didn't really know that i knew i could sing because i i sang you know in my in my bedroom in the shower and but i didn't know i remember actually um i went to regular school for a few years and the fir my in my first year of regular school and this is something we share as well like a bit of unusual schooling experiences but my i was so shy
and i was it was because you know growing up with this tradition i knew that okay i'm a little bit different from other other kids and you know i've grown from the age of four talking about life and death and the the body being like a coat that
you know you take off and put on a new body like these kind of concepts reincarnation and karma and kids don't talk about that kind of stuff so i was i was really really shy and the the school play was um the end of
year school play was the wizard of oz and my teacher cast me as the cowardly lion um because i think she knew that it would help me to you know she she could see that i was shy but it would be good for me to play
a role that would kind of bring me out of myself so i remember i had to sing a song on my own on the stage and like you know swing my tail around and it was this moment where i was like oh my god i'm singing in front of people and i it's actually
it's nice you know but but that but that was it then for many years and it wasn't till i was 1920 around your age that i started to uh lead kirtan people were kind of just friends were just encouraging me and i found that it was something that i
felt more and more connected with but it is um because it's it's such a um such a deep tradition and it's a form of prayer form of worship it is kind of a thing where you have to navigate your ego because it's not it's not a
it's not a performance genre of music it's it's a prayer and an offering so um for many years i i didn't i didn't really identify with being a person to sort of go out in the world and like share this with lots of people uh it was just something i did in within my community but um by as circumstance goes you know sometimes destiny finds you and and and you try and push something away many times i think you know jay and i've
had probably many conversations over the years where i've been like i just don't know if this is what i meant to do or like yeah i do this you know that kind of thing where you you keep trying to turn away from something but it kept
coming back to me kept knocking on my door first kept on trying to go no music yeah yeah no music yeah like yes yeah you know like when you have to write a um on a form you know occupation and i would always stop and be like
what do i write there you know am i because i i was a i i wrote i did art i was i was a dancer but i didn't want to write musician or artist or writer i just didn't know what to write because i didn't fully identify with being able to say
this is what i am so yeah it came it came bit by bit and i think one of the big catalysts for me with feeling confident to try to accept the role of embracing my my creativity and and engaging it in service of spreading
this type of music more is the fact that yoga meditation mindfulness those things over the last 10 years became so much more mainstream than they ever were and when i was a child i never would have imagined that
would be the case i thought that was just the strange way that i grew up you know and that like kids used to ask me like so why don't you you know like why are you vegetarian and what do you why do you have a name like that and stuff like that
[Laughter] but now it's like no this is pretty it's pretty normal especially in l.a yeah yeah so yeah it's it's been a it's been a journey but i'm so grateful to be doing this now it brings me so much fulfillment yeah we're grateful to you too for sticking it through and and continuing on and we're never going to let you quit funny yeah music is going to keep coming i don't know but we love that yeah we love that both of you
for everyone who's listening and watching i think there's such a pressure these days for young people especially to find their purpose or discover what they want to do for the rest of their lives and you can see in
both of the way you are experiencing it's kind of not been like that it's kind of been much more of this meandering path than kind of getting lost and then refining and then feeling stuck and then questioning everything and then finding it and
this almost like magical approach to like i found my purpose so i found my you know calling it doesn't work like that and it's nice to see two people who are creating an artistic but it's kind of coming over time it's such a process it's such a journey
and there's so many internal obstacles that need to be looked at and that need to be worked on until you can step into your calling until you can step into your purpose fully um and god knows i'm still trying to step
in yes i'm still trying to step in yeah what would you say are both of your um i don't know daily things that you do in your lives that help enrich you or uplift you what are the things that you've started to do yeah
i think on a daily basis because i feel like they're the things that really make you know a difference if you're doing something regularly yeah i've watched a few of you right now i haven't but um please please continue well i i find um
that daily meditation daily i practice mantra meditation daily and that is something that um i really hold on to like i imagine you know if you take life to be like a river that is the current is flowing very fast um in some of these sacred rivers in india where people uh they take a dip you know as a purifying kind of act they have these metal chains that are in the water that you hold onto when you go in to make sure you don't get swept away
so i i see the the mantra meditation um as sort of like this chain to hold on to in the rushing current of life and it really even though it's not it's not easy i know willow has you know a yoga practice you've been cultivating
for a long time to do anything daily it's not an easy thing and you don't always feel like doing it and sometimes you do it robotically and then you're like ah you know i gotta come back to you know the deeper reason of why i'm doing this
but to just keep that commitment um it develops a relationship with sacred space within it develops a relationship with the divine that really is it's it's a lifesaver it's it's um it gives me inspiration it gives me sense of connection and it and it's a meditation that the particular mantra that i that i recite daily the meditation is on how can i be of service and a prayer for service please allow me to be of service in this
life so i love how willow was describing that that that service it brings you out of that space because every day we have to push against our tendency to be self-absorbed it's like at every moment we tend to be caught in
our head thinking about our own worries and things like that and and to turn that around to how can i serve it's it's such a dramatic you know state change and so for me that helps it helps then you know whether i'm doing one thing or another
just to to keep connecting with that um core reason of why of what is yeah what is the purpose of my existence to serve it makes things it makes things a lot more simpler and joyful yeah i i'm just going to piggyback off of what what janavi said um yes i've been cultivating a yoga practice for about i want to say two years oh we see those pokes yeah yeah yeah i want to say two years or a year and a half um and you know another thing
aside from meditation that i try to do daily sometimes it doesn't happen i read every day right now i'm reading inner engineering by sad guru so that's something that i've been putting my time into every day um so whether it's you know literature
yoga or or meditation one of those things is happening every day so i'm just like john levy said i i truly believe that that consistency and that repetition is what's needed in order to get into a state where it is second
nature where you don't have to think about it anymore where it's habitual exactly and that's that's where i'm trying to be that's where i'm striving to i think what you both are doing keeping it consistent that's probably how
you know you've realized what the benefits are that living a life without it that feels more unnatural than than doing the practice oh i was thinking about how you know both of your practices are things which people have been doing for
years such an ancient thing that people have been doing but what's incredible about your music is that it's i think it's shown so many people who are probably unfamiliar with meditation unfamiliar with yoga or see it as something that's so unfamiliar um that you know meditation music or monty music is for everybody like it's such a universal thing that um so many different types of people can connect to it just by your different backgrounds
that you two have connected to it in such a different way um and how you're sharing it it's yeah it's beautiful to see how different meditation music and devotional music can actually be and how many different types of people it can it can connect yeah yeah yeah yeah i'm glad you put that bass on it so i could turn it up in the car i knew it yeah i loved it the first time i heard it i was telling jellyfish it was just like you've left
it's just all the music what you've made is it's like that perfect combination between being timeless and pure but then being current and relevant and you've created in my in my opinion whatever it's worth like it sounds like a no genre like it's
it's new it's different it's it's not you can't just go oh yeah that's that kind of music i wouldn't even put it under meditational music like it's it's beyond that and i think that you know credit to both of your artistry to be
able to expand that much what's different about creating devotional music for both of you and genevieve for you to to stretch out your comfort zone from a music place of now creating this new genre that you have together
so for willow for you more like what's what's different about korean devotional music for you from your perspective and and then generally from yours like almost going the other way and like oh now we're creating something a bit newer
to what i'm used to yeah um you know my lyrics that you know in the willow album and in art epic kiss my first album um you know i talk a lot about duality i talk a lot about spirit i talk a lot about you know cycles i
have a song that's called cycles on on my first album the language is very modern and what i love about sanskrit is that it it's deeper than language um and i think the the real difference is bringing that um ancient vibration to it
that isn't just coming from me it's coming from generations and generations of of deeply spiritual individuals who have carried this on and i think you know feeling that is is the biggest difference for me because it's not just me coming up with
something wow that's really powerful yeah that's incredible to think of it like that that's so well articulate that's beautiful thank you you accept me oh my gosh oh yeah wow wow i've just been i've been hit by your by
your articulation of that that's so beautiful yeah i think it's so interesting because i think for me it was almost i wouldn't say the opposite because naturally we're trying to retain the the purity of devotional space and like with with recording we set up a little alter like in this in the studio it's it's really nice to have that feel to be a sacred space yeah but um with this ep um because most of the time i'm singing mantra which
i which obviously those words are not mine i'm putting my heart my prayer into it but i'm also trusting the power of that uh ancient vibration that timeless vibration to touch the heart of another and then and for that reason i don't i don't take credit when someone has you know a powerful experience with it it's like oh yeah that's that's what it does that's what it does to me too so i'm just trying to you know be facilitate this experience
but with this uh album i definitely was stretching myself because i think just before we came together i was i'd been recently feeling a lot more inspired to to write lyrics in english that convey some of these ideas and and themes
which was daunting for me because it's not something i it's something i hardly ever do let alone record i i have tons of voice notes in my phone which will never see the light of day you know ideas that i've had but it was so cool
because i didn't think we would actually work on those things but when i showed some of them to willow she was so um encouraging and excited about it and i was sort of like well what do you think like you add your
lyrics into she was like no i love this i think we should go for it i was like really and then so to actually bring some of those ideas to life um for me that was a beautiful experience of being able to come outside of the space of okay this
is just mantra it's not me but here's this here's this you know ancient sound vibration to actually here's some words that i wrote which convey how i want to you know take a snapshot of this um this sentiment for instance of surrender or whatever you've experienced how i've experienced it or what or or what's meaningful to me or to us you know and and for me that was a really uh that was extremely powerful it i came away being like whoa
i didn't know i could do yeah so i'm so grateful for that yeah it was it was it was beautiful i could feel i could feel that that sense of hesitancy that's why i was like yeah i was like let's go full flag are you sure she's like let's do it yeah yeah because i was like you you gonna know the the greatness of you today what's the uh both of you live real lives in the real world you know you you go through your challenges every single day
and people who listen to this are going through their own challenges what's been something that's been really beautiful or powerful for both of you individually that you feel has helped you discover answers at tough times
or find new directions at tough times what is it that both of you have turned to in your own life whether it be musical or not that you think that almost what is it that people can do to express themselves more because it feels like so many of
our feelings do get bottled up and do just get thought about inside what has been powerful for you individually i mean it might it might be a little um unorthodox but i actually really really enjoy looking at myself in the mirror and
explaining like like telling like having a conversation with myself basically like when i'm when i'm having tough emotions that i feel like i don't want to express to other people or i feel like embarrassed or whatever it is um
i always try to like just look at myself and be like no you're valid like explain the full depth of everything that you're feeling and then look at yourself and like explain back to yourself why why those emotions not why those emotions are okay but accepting yourself in a certain way um and you know sometimes when the face time doesn't work and people don't answer their phone you can talk to yourself yeah and it does work it does work for me
it does i love that that's so good yeah i've never heard anyone do that in the mirror journaling to another level yeah you're actually facing yourself which i think a lot of the times we are battling with our own self
rather than with other people and so actually like looking at yourself in the mirror and and speaking to yourself is so powerful it gets deep the tears start flowing and then you start looking at yourself exactly and you're like dang like i see
you like you're we're together in this like we got each other i love that yeah yeah that's awesome i hope everyone tries that out this week yeah everybody's listening or watching try it out i'm being serious it's like sometimes i feel weird saying it because people you know are like that's ridiculous but i've done it no and it has stopped the tears wow yeah i was thinking as you were speaking that for me um writing has always been a
powerful one and it's funny because i i think of the page being like a mirror and i think many people find writing to be like that um to the point where i remember some difficult points in my life where i didn't write for a very long time for probably two years i didn't write anything on a page because i was afraid of what would come out and what i would see i felt just this complete block you know and then to release that to start i always
feel such a relief when i put a pen on the paper and start to write and i was introduced to the practice of free writing some some years ago there's a famous book called the artist's way by julia cameron and this practice of mourning pages
um is something that many people have found a lot of uh yeah just incredible experiences from so i i started to do that and um i still turn to that when i i mean i i tried to do it regularly but it's also one of those things
you go through phases you know but for me yeah so writing is is always a huge huge help um i mean stating the obvious i think you know kirtan meditation music of course but my other huge one which i think will and i share is is to connect with nature 100 just to walk i mean i think i try and go for a walk in nature every day and without fail it's like a bomb it's uplifting it brings me back to myself it sparks ideas and creativity it's
it's just like uh the the the road and the page they're my two friends that really helped me so much i love that yeah i love that that's so awesome and and i guess that's what's inspired a lot of your work i know genevieve whenever
you're doing your bbc pause for thought sessions you talk a lot about the environment and climate change and yeah and that where where do you see that intersection between like art and the environment or climate change or
expression and that is there a synergy there or or is it just something that you feel is a different part of you where your care comes from i think it's absolutely intertwined i mean nature is the most beautiful art that we can witness and observe i'm so inspired by um by the natural world and my mom is a really avid gardener and and lover of you know wild plants and herbs and she sort of brought us up like that to observe and learn about all the
properties of of plants and trees around us so i'm i'm kind of obsessed with plants and flowers and people could laugh at me but it's like i'm always looking inspired by the textures by the shapes by the um by the different aromas yeah everything and so our nature inspires me creatively immensely and in terms of caring for nature i think like like a person the more you know a person the more you care so the more we observe and connect and
feel a sense of relationship with nature um that care it's like why wouldn't i care i'm that it's it's a it's a beautiful exchange absolutely there's a mutual exchange of nourishment going on and i think also with the particular um type of creativity and art you know the questions that i'm asking or that we're asking about service about divinity these these kinds of uh these kinds of things they bring us also closer to our deepest essence
which i believe is is meant to be in harmony with nature so the more that you the more that you're coming into that space again it just becomes a very natural connection to feel and so yeah i i'm kind of a nature addict
and i and i i know like when i visited willow and her home you know there's such a beautiful view of the ocean and it's like it's it's just a it's a part of you right yeah one got to be there and i have to i would i think a significant decline in
my mental health would happen if i were to live in a city yeah um or i mean i do live in a city but if i were to live like amongst buildings yeah exactly yeah um like i need to wake up and see trees just one tree exactly at least at least
one at least one i i need it's i'm a nature addict what can i say just like you yeah um and that's definitely one of the biggest healing agents in my life 100 yeah well we've been talking about this for the past couple of days about
how you see this connection between spirituality and science and physics and spirituality and you've always been very much talking about like science and physics and like but then you're also really interested in spirituality tell us about how you started to see so early in your life the connection and synergy between the two because i think so often they're talked about so separately or 100 they're seen as like divisive or disconnected
exactly yeah um i think one of the the biggest the biggest moment in my life that made me really move towards this um marriage of spirituality and science was um you know i had been reading a lot of spiritual literature um i had been reading a lot of osho a lot of i read this one book called oneness and that book changed my life forever and just the idea of vibration and that everything is vibration really hit me because i am a musician
and music is like the biggest love of my life um and then learning about string theory was ah just opened my mind into such a place that it was like these two things are the same like people think that they're separate and
in some ways they are but in the fundament they're just two sides of the same coin um and so that inspired me to just dive really deep into the physical world and just how things work and that's how i um just got into physics and started
studying physics um and you know i haven't been i've been studying more of the spiritual lane recently it's hard it's it's hard i will say to study them deeply at the same time um but i i study them separately deeply and i go back and forth and then try to figure out how to bring them together in some way but in my life you know i'm constantly i'm constantly relating um my spiritual experiences with you know all of the scientific things
that i've read or you know just being in physics class and telling my physics teacher like oh you should read this book and he's like okay i'm a physics teacher i'm not i'm not a metaphysics teacher um so i just i just want to continue to just get more intelligent and and more intelligent while also losing my ego i think is where i'm trying to go which is kind of um counterintuitive but i think it is possible yeah absolutely and intelligence and
service exactly and so that's that's really just i have lots of goals but that's one of them save the world yeah i have lots of goals um but they all give me joy and and really just my curiosity for both makes makes life just exciting you know those
those two things just make my life feel exciting to me yeah i actually think that that that paradox is what makes it exciting yeah if your pursuit was only to become intelligent you'd get bored exactly and if your
pursuit was only to remove ego it wouldn't be as exciting quite tough and so actually both of them together is a beautiful path and and and often the path that can only be walked when you do both paths to reach to really get it right i love that i love that that's also why i really admire you jay because you while also having been a monk for five years three three years you are also one of the most intelligent people i know um
and that's so inspiring to see that you can do both and that both can be done um it just inspires me to do it it just inspires me to try to actually try to actually put that into my own life um and i'm just so happy that you're you're in my life so that i can i can see you grow and constantly learn from you and that's really amazing to me oh you're the sweetest i'm like getting all emotional now but now we're just gonna be crying no i love
that i really appreciate it no i was like willow's 40 year old grandma inside her talking i know i'm proud i know i love it no i really appreciate that from you it's you know it's i think we both have a lot more in common than we know too totally we're kind of discovering it recently yes i'm just like oh yeah i can learn a lot and that's why yeah i think what we all were talking about yesterday is and i think why we all like being around
each other is and and why who everyone is listening or watching i'm hoping that this is encouraging you to connect with like-hearted people uh connect with uh and collaborate with people that you're close to because when you can be yourself and you
don't have to apologize by asking for permission to say something or expressing who you are and you welcome them i think that's the kind of community that we're all looking for where where people just try it right to
say sadhusanga is that yeah for those who don't know willow's now going to give the definition basically your spiritual family you know the like-minded individuals around you that facilitate your growth towards pure love for god
and that is that's fire in my eyes yeah i want to do drugs yes yes i love it all right so we end every on purpose episode with a fill in the blank and a final five so fill in the blank is as it is we will read out a sentence
for both of you and you both will fill in the blank we've got different ones for both of you yeah okay okay and then we're gonna do a final five so we'll start with fill in the blank and uh you do willow i'll do genevieve okay making music is about unlocking people's hearts peace is found when my actions are in alignment with my values and my heart i love that i want my listeners too i want my listeners to break down in dance with the love of god
that's what i want i love that like that massive dance party we had before before cody yeah yeah okay music allows me to fly vulnerability allows me to be strong the word rise is about moving up going into my heart and um like we said in the song don't hide from the questions within that rise within that's that is that is really good though it's like yeah questions are rising sudden we just try and we'll try and push them down yeah i love that
i wish i knew 10 years ago that other people's opinions don't matter hey [Music] okay january 2020 has allowed me to hmm wow i'm like envisioning 2020 has allowed me to create and create as i haven't before in the past uh well willow creativity is about creativity is about expressing oneself entirely collaboration is about listening yes amazing yes janavi yes um i feel cute when this one obviously from jay's list of questions i feel cute when
prima is coming on to me yeah i'm loving guys jeremy you feel cute when i feel cute when i'm around rodney okay so these are the final five that was very good by the way fantastic final five so these have to be answered in one word or one sentence maximum and they're the same questions for both of you so i'll ask the question and then both of you can go in maybe you guys can be like a buzz or a beep to answer first buzz or a beep yeah buzz
so like he'll ask the question and whoever's got the answer buzz beep oh okay all right i'll get uh all right i think competitive yeah yeah all right okay okay what is the biggest lesson that you've learned this year
we'll put sound effective we'll put a sound effect in to make it more um detachment beautiful the power of community um love that okay the second question is oh this is one of my favorite questions i asked on the show so what do you know
to be absolutely true but a lot of people may disagree with you on what is it that you're so confident about and so sure about in your life but a lot of people may disagree and they may not they may not necessarily understand
self-love is the most important love but i don't know if anyone would disagree i'd say uh connection with spirit and the divine is essential for a purposeful life yes yeah i can see people disagree yeah all right uh the third question is
um if you could set one law that everyone had to follow in the world what would it be if you had to create a new law that everyone in the world had to follow what would it be i know i'm like i'm like i need this to be good um i'm gonna give two different because this is too important to me to just say in one two laws you get two lures you can take janavi's too it's either it's either treat people the way you want to be treated or
treat people with the utmost respect at all times no matter what [Music] i feel like that would help a lot of the wars yeah and a lot of the inequality that goes on yeah thank you yeah wonderful answer i want willow's laws
but also um i was thinking a lot i don't know how this would actually be manifest or policed but um a law to about being truthful and honest can you imagine if yeah everyone had to be truthful if there had to be integrity to one's word
what a place the world would look like with along with willow's laws of love and respect it's like that movie did you see that ricky gervais movie where they actually did that it was like a movie where they couldn't lie or where everyone the
man who invented life yeah yeah that's it yeah that was a funny movie yeah yeah i remember the jim carrey one liar liar totally totally yeah yeah okay so two two more questions left fourth question is what is your personal
favorite song on the ep and why so you can be over one sentence what is my personal favorite song on the ep and why um i'd have to say i'd have to say born to give just because the instrumentation um it's like when do you ever hear a guitar solo on top of a on top of a mantra that's being repeated like we're saying sachit ananda is being repeated um i just was like i've never heard anything like that so i was like i really love this moment i i
think that would be my favorite song i love that that's cool that's a cool reason yeah it's really i mean honestly i actually do love them all equally but kagendra or let go is one of my favorites because um i love the story that it's connected
to which is from the bhakti tradition and uh this this theme of surrender is is so meaningful to me but to to express it in in english lyrics and um yeah i just love it and i love that i love this bridge a lot of people have
been posting themselves singing i just i just love that i was telling willow that i a couple like a few weeks before we met up i um i watched hamilton when it went streaming online and i was so inspired by the the lyrics and the way that the the music was composed and constructed and i think that was in my head a little bit when i wrote this so yeah i love that song lastly the most important one both of you do an impression of each other from
your experience in the studio 100 you're like perfection perfection literally me i feel like that would be such a vibe yeah that's me and then when i'm like on the keyboard trying to find the sound tryna be like okay i could i could see that
maybe i could see that and i'm like okay she doesn't like this let's move on my favorite willow is that it's differently yeah yeah that really hits different yesterday when we were talking about the bhagavad-gita i was like
i kept on saying that i was like different friends oh that is different great statement i love it everyone hey hello and listen johnny the risi people put the link everywhere please please please go and check it out it's it's a beautiful heart open it and fill it with so much joy yeah well i will don't do it it will transform your heart open it and fill it with so much joy oh no we really want you to go check it out and uh thank you so much for
listening today thank you so much and if you don't already go and follow willow and john of you on instagram and tag us when you share it tag them when you share it because yeah we want to hear you guys singing along we want to see you
finding your piece finding your calm and so please please please tag them when you share it because they'll be looking out we'll be looking out and we're so grateful again to have you here on purpose thank you so much thank
you big thank you to roddy hey everyone my name is jay shetty and welcome to my youtube channel every week i'm sharing three videos that are going to help you feel more fulfilled feel more happy and more successful make sure you subscribe to this channel so that you can find out about the videos as soon as they launch press the like button and leave a comment and let's keep making wisdom go viral together make sure you subscribe