Ep.53- Conversation with Holistic Life Foundation: The power of mindfulness in helping young people flourish!

Gissele Taraba: [00:00:00] on today’s podcast. We’ll be talking about the power of mindfulness to help young children flourish and become their best selves.

I’m speaking to Ali Smith, Atman Smith, and Andres Gonzalez. They have been teaching a social emotional curriculum for over 20 years in Baltimore and now across America. And they have helped over 200, 000 children with their work, their work with their holistic life foundation. Has been been featured on making a difference on the NBC nightly news, CNN and CBS, as well as, Oh, the Oprah magazine, the Washington post up worthy, mindful magazine, yoga journal, Shambhala sun, and many, many more places.

Their book, let your light shine. mindfulness can empower children and rebuild communities has also been featured on. Good morning, America. Please join me in welcoming them to the show. [00:01:00] Hello.

Ali Atman: Hey, how are you?

Gissele Taraba: I’m good. Thank you so much for being on the show. for

Andres Gonzales: having us. Oh,

Gissele Taraba: so much. I think that the work that you’re doing is so impactful, especially for the future of education.

And can you tell the audience a little bit about how you actually got started on this work?

Ali Atman: I guess the start came from My brother and I got introduced to meditation as young kids from our dad. He was into transcendental meditation. So he would get us up in the morning and we would meditate before morning cartoons. And you know, it was meditation. Woody Woodpecker, Scooby Doo.

 Well, actually Scooby Doo, then Woody Woodpecker. Woodpecker. Off the school.

Gissele Taraba: And,

Ali Atman: And self realization fellowship church based on Kria yoga. My dad, our dad got into the practice from our godfather. He was one of those people that got into yoga in the 60s and never ever got out of it. As we got older, I guess, around the time I was in [00:02:00] 4th grade, Atman was in 2nd grade.

Our parents got divorced. And we lost our meditation practice, but as we got older and, you know, like, life happened, we were finishing up college. We were looking for something to do, we met Andy at the University of Maryland, college park, the 3 of us, like, pondering how we’re going to spend the rest of our lives.

And I’d say 2 important things happen 1, our dad sat us down and told us not to go get jobs in the start of business. He was all about entrepreneurship. And not, you know, I mean, it’s like 3 people of color getting caught up in the the world of the corporate world where you hit that glass ceiling when you look a certain way, and you can’t advance beyond that.

Then he also had a lot of friends that were getting fired and losing their pensions and getting downsized after decades of, like faithful work to certain companies that they were working for. So that happened, and then we got back into to yoga talk. Godfather, he was always trying to get us back into it, but we kind of dove deeply into the practice.

And the combination of of that yoga practice from uncle [00:03:00] will, our godfather, the entrepreneurship push. Of of our dad, and then the 3 of our desire to help humanity and the planet to seem like there was a lot of suffering going on and a lot of pain. And a lot of people taking advantage of other people in the environment.

It’s like, it was like that perfect storm. And then like the stars aligned and the holistic life foundation was born.

Gissele Taraba: Oh, amazing. Sounds like your dad was a visionary because when you look at the world of work right now, there’s so much going on. I think that from a larger perspective, large