Podcast: Jaimal Yogis, Author and Soulful Surfer
Life can make us feel slammed. Jaimal Yogis teaches how to surf the waves instead of fighting them.
Rabbi Rami’s guest this week is Jaimal Yogis. Yogis is an award-winning writer and frequent speaker, and we are delighted to have him gracing our September/October 2020 cover, along with his insanely cute son.
A graduate of Columbia Journalism school, Yogis is featured in our annual Books We Love feature. He has an impressive body of work, including three coming-of-age/journalistic memoirs: Saltwater Buddha, The Fear Project, and All Our Waves Are Water. His latest is a children’s picture book, Mop Rides the Waves of Life. It is about a free-spirited kid (hmm, that hair looks familiar...) who loves to surf. His mom teaches him how to meditate, and he makes the connection between sitting on his surfboard and meditating, learning how to ride emotions and allowing them to pass like waves.
He and Rabbi Rami talk about how the book, like all good children’s books, is also helpful for adults. As they read about Mop to the child in their life, they can recenter themselves at the end of a hard day with a little self-compassion. “For me with meditation, my practice is pretty simple,” says Yogis. “I just need those reminders of why it is so valuable.” Sometimes when we are busy, a meditation practice can be the first thing to go, even when it is the thing we need the most.
He and Rabbi Rami discuss the metaphor of the ocean and how it relates to the divine and how we are all connected.
“The Rumi saying,‘You are not a drop in the ocean, you are the entire ocean in a single drop,’ is something I always come back to, both on a spiritual level and also on a quantum physics level,” says Yogis.
And Rabbi Rami adds, “Just as it is never too late to learn to surf, it is never too late to learn to be spiritual.”
Learn more about Jaimal Yogis at his website. And be sure to subscribe to our podcast (it is free), so you will never miss an episode!
