Podcast: EP 62 Be the Change You Want to See in the World with Tracee Stanley

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Wellness visionary & inspirational speaker, author of Let Your Fears Make You Fierce, & Founder of The Get Loved Up Community. My core mission is to promote daily self-care, oneness & eco-friendly living.

Hi, I'm Koya

Are you tired and burnt out from everyday stress or feeling pandemic-weary to the point of quitting?

Sometimes, all we need is a deep rest to revitalize our energy. We can take one step back to make a great leap forward. All it takes is time, plus a couple of deep relaxation techniques, to achieve a state of full awareness of the beauty of life.

Today, my guest is Tracee Stanley, a Yoga Nidra instructor who spent 25 years of study on the Tantra tradition, Sri Vidya, and the Himalayan Masters. In this episode, we will talk about personal boundaries for harmonious relationships and thriving in a global crisis.

Her decades of study of Yoga and the Tantra tradition allowed her to apply the principles and philosophies to everyday challenges, especially in hard times like the pandemic, so be ready to get inspired.

Who Is Tracee Stanley?

Tracee Stanley is a notable meditation practitioner and lineage instructor of Yoga Nidra, self-inquiry, and meditation. She is a former film executive with more than 35 films produced and has overseen 30 more productions. But her love for yoga and meditations led her to a major shift to a career she loved most, where she is more attuned to herself. In 2001, she embarked on a journey to self-awareness that led her to study in the lineage of Tantra and the Himalayan Masters, where she was eventually initiated in the lineage of Sri Vidya.

Tracee’s teachings are focused on empowerment, healing, self-mastery, and Sankalpa (intention). She guides her students toward self-awakening to their true nature as they fulfill their destiny for an empowered life. Tracee Stanley is also an author, and her book, Radiant Rest: Yoga Nidra for Deep Relaxation and Awakened Clarity, was recently published and is gaining popularity. She is also the creator of Empowered Life Self-Inquiry Oracle, a tool that provides guidance on how to live your life to the fullest potential using several tools, like a set of 73 Soul Cards that will inspire you to move forward to your true self.

During the sold-out Oprah and Gayle’s Girls’ Getaway Cruise to the Bahamas on Holland America Line, Tracee offered free yoga and meditation sessions to the participants.

“I practice meditation to have constant access to my radiance and power. To live from a place of clarity and steadiness. My meditation practice builds my discipline and ultimately leads me to a place of self-knowledge where I can never forget why I am here, what my life’s purpose is, and how to fulfill it. Meditation is the key to thriving.” – Tracee Stanley

Meditation unlocks the door to a life of thriving, where you’ll experience clarity and peace. It also allows you to build discipline and set personal boundaries for harmony and respect in every relationship.

Personal Boundaries for Harmonious Relationships

We all have our own set of personal boundaries. However, the word “boundary” can sometimes be misleading since it could convey the idea of keeping yourself separate from others. But boundaries can also serve as the connecting points for healthy rules when navigating relationships — intimate or professional. So, I asked Tracee Stanley how she manages personal boundaries to maintain peace and promote harmony in relationships.

“I learned about boundaries when I was in the film business. So back in the day when I first started as an intern, people didn’t have cell phones, … I got my first cell phone, and we weren’t … able to use the cell phone because it costs ‘a million dollars’ to make a phone call. And then at some point when cell phones became … part of the daily ritual, … people expect you to pick up the phone. And they expect you to be answering immediately. And they expect their email to be answered immediately.” – Tracee Stanley

It’s a sad fact today. Too often, our personal boundaries are constantly breached and abused as a result of technological advancements meant to provide utmost convenience in communication. Instead, mobile phones have become the platform for abuse of personal boundaries, expecting us to quickly pick up the call or immediately answer the text messages regardless of the time and day, disregarding our personal space.

“If it’s not urgent, and you know, don’t call. And I … trained people …. that I wasn’t going to return that phone call until I got ready to do that. … I know my flow of what my day needs to be. I know that my creative flow is really from early morning until 12 in the afternoon. So I don’t schedule anything before 12 in the afternoon. I know that my flow for being energetic and getting research done and all of the things that I don’t like doing, … or whatever else, that’s done between 12 and four. And in general, I don’t like to do anything else after four.” – Tracee Stanley

This is where personal boundaries come into play. By setting up boundaries around phone calls and emails and communicating properly with individuals about the personal space you desire, you’ll live a life of peace with fewer distractions.

“Because I’ve created those boundaries, … I don’t have a lot of distractions right now. … I also let my husband know — ‘please don’t disturb me between this time and this time because I’m in this focus work mode.’ And we kind of have … an understanding. … I know when his creative time is, and then I’m there to support whatever needs to happen in the house so he can have his creative time. So, … you need to know yourself and know what your boundaries are. And you also have to have … some communication in the relationship, around how can you help to support each other around your boundaries that are gonna help you to thrive. I just feel like me having boundaries is really good.” – Tracee Stanley

We all have our own creative time of the day where we are most productive and produce better results. We need to know when our creative window is so that we can achieve more for less. This is the secret of those who work smarter and not harder. Tracee Stanly knows her creative time where she is more focused on her tasks, allowing her to get better results for lesser time spent on the work. This enables her to properly set boundaries, resulting in fewer distractions. She also knows the creative time of her husband, allowing both to respect each other’s boundaries and thrive in a harmonious relationship.

Thriving in the Midst of the Pandemic

Our world has gone through so many global crises in its history. Even today, we are facing a worldwide epidemic with the outbreak of the coronavirus. In several countries like the U.S., racism is a social pandemic. There is too much sadness around people who have lost their loved ones. And yet, Tracee Stanley remains calm, high-spirited, and composed, as if there’s no room for frustration and sadness to set in — there’s only hope. I asked her how she managed to remain tranquil and peaceful amidst the chaos and crisis around us.

“We can call out the pandemic of the earth being in crisis and climate change. And we can call out the pandemic of racism that has been here. And we can also call out the pandemic of the coronavirus. So with all three of those things happening, … there’s a lot of sadness. There’s a lot of grief. There’s a lot of anger. And I would say that I can observe all of the ebbs and flows of those different emotions and feelings and thoughts. And at the same time, [I] know that there’s a part of me that is steady and radiant, and I can acknowledge all of those and feel all of those things without pushing them away.” – Tracee Stanley

Realization and acknowledgment are the first few steps to manage your emotions. You have to identify the problems and acknowledge their existence. The coronavirus, for instance, is a health crisis every nation acknowledges as a global pandemic. That’s why there are preventive measures enforced by every country to contain the problem. But when it comes to managing your emotions, you can always turn to your close friends and family members for emotional support. It is important to have someone you can run to for the release of different emotions.

“I feel like it’s really important to have friends[hips] where you can have those kinds of conversations, and you can have 50 different emotions rising and falling in one conversation, going from being really angry, to laughing, to crying, to just being devastated, to coming back to feeling like you’re sharing downloads, to being connected to some other kind of wisdom. That’s really important to be able to feel those emotions. I mean, it’s a certain kind of yoga — it’s called Rasa Yoga, the yoga of emotions and being able to acknowledge and feel them and transmute them so that you can have clarity.” – Tracee Stanley

Rasa Yoga is a mental and emotional exercise where feelings take over the body while the mind is quieted. By communicating with an intimate person and expressing your emotions, you are releasing the energy while acknowledging the existence of different emotions. This allows you to have clarity on your Dharma — your purpose in life.

Knowing and Living Your Dharma

As a yoga instructor, Tracee Stanley believes that people have their own Dharma, which is a Sanskrit word that means righteous living or living in the right direction. In Hindu text, it is defined as cosmic guidance or inner wisdom that governs the universe and the individual. So, if you want to follow your Dharma, you must also follow your inner guidance.

Tracee Stanley follows her Dharma when managing the pandemic and the surrounding crisis, which allows her not to be emotionally affected by what’s happening around her. She’s more focused on the solutions, like helping the community, instead of the problem.

“[I want] us to really be clear on what our Dharma is and what it is that we’re here to do in the world. … And so my action … [is] to help other people get clear on what their Dharma is and what their purpose is. And to help them move into a place of thriving, which … has a lot to do with rest and Yoga Nidra and Sankalpa and Vikalpa and all of those things. … That’s my work to do in the world. So just being clear on my Dharma that helps to address one side of the pandemic and also being of support to people who are in my community.” – Tracee Stanley

Tracee Stanley just showed us the path on how we can be the change we want to see in the world in our own way by focusing on the solution instead of the problem. In times of pandemic amidst the coronavirus outbreak, we can help solve the problem by doing our part in the solution. One of them is to properly observe social distancing or staying at home to avoid the virus and prevent the spread. If everyone does their part, we could stop the spread of the virus.

Each person has the potential to be the change they want to see in the world — including you.

Get Loved Up with Tracee Stanley

There are plenty of life-changing lessons shared by Tracee Stanley in this interview, so please check out the full episode here, and don’t forget to share it with your friends. To get more wisdom from Tracee, follow her on Facebook and Twitter, and subscribe to her YouTube channel for free videos on deep relaxation.

This is such a powerful interview, and I’m sure this would be of great help to those who want to know how to manage their emotions in hard times, especially with the pandemics happening around us, not just in health but also in the global climate and in the social community.

If you felt the love and motivation from Tracee, tag her, @tracee_stanley, and me, @koyawebb, on Instagram with a screenshot of this episode and your greatest takeaways. We would be glad to know what you learned from this conversation.

To conclude this episode, I asked Tracee Stanley one last question — “If you can give a gift to every single person in the world right now, what would that gift be?”

“An hour of deep rest” – Tracee Stanley

If you’re tired and burdened with a heavy load, you take a deep rest to regenerate your energy so that when you get back up, you are much stronger and ready to take on more challenges in life. Tracee Stanley talked more about radiant rest in her book, so grab a copy of Radiant Rest and show her some love because she is truly changing the world by living in her Dharma and sharing it with others. And if you want to start being that positive change in the world, sign up for my 200-hr yoga teaching training — through healthy lifestyle and mindset practices, you truly can change someone’s life.

Until next time, love.

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