Finding Joy in the Journey – Yoga, Music and Creating Community with Lori and Jeremy Lowell

Episode 35 Description

At the beginning of every episode of the Yes! We Rise Podcast, you’ll notice some incredible music, which is all thanks to Lori and Jeremy Lowell of Drishti Beats.

Together, they join Christine to share about their journey and personal upleveling, which led to the creation of Drishti Beats, where their offerings include yoga workshops, yoga teacher trainings, and retreats incorporating their very own music. In fact, Lori and Jeremy met Christine when she took their yoga teacher training certification (which is one of her greatest sources of joy)! 

This power couple of over 35 years have a heart for paying it forward, and they dive into the importance of taking baby steps toward the life you want and the role of our ego. Lean into this episode fueled with reflection, inspiration, and encouragement. Enjoy!

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Episode 35 Show Notes

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Key takeaways

A mission to serve

Lori and Jeremy have a beautiful vision of creating the best possible fitness and wellness environments for all populations. Lori grew up in a musical family with a background in dance, while Jeremy grew up around the piano since he was a newborn. Having been active in the fitness world for decades, they’ve grown and evolved and their approach to fitness has shifted and changed as well.

Launching their yoga performance, music, and teacher trainings business, Lori and Jeremy sought to create a mindful, caring, and loving environment for their staff and coworkers.

In order to create a space to accomplish what was important, they had to figure out what their why was.

Lori put it like this: “our why is to serve. With serving our family, serving our kids, serving our music vision, we just really needed to evolve into a more mindful space through practice.” 

What started with just yoga evolved into spirituality, the language of yoga, the philosophical aspects, and even the yogic lifestyle.

As personal practices evolve, we each get to dig deeper into living a more mindful life. For Lori and Jeremy, this lifestyle came partly in the form of music. One baby step at a time, it evolved into their current project, Drishti Beats, where they incorporate their original music into their yoga classes, teacher trainings, and events. Drishti means “focused and concentrated gaze.”

Cultivating a musical environment at home, their kids started producing music they describe as downtempo, electronic-chill. This led to incorporating their children’s music into the yoga experience.

Doing the work one baby step at a time

We are all dealt a different hand in life. Jeremy lost both of his parents while in dental school. He could have allowed this to take him out, but instead he made the decision to move forward and take the next step with his life.

Doing this is not easy, and it doesn’t mitigate our experiences of pain and hurt, but it does mean that we take agency of where we want our lives to go and how we allow our experiences to shape us.

When working with her students, Lori shares that each person is on their own individual journey. Some show up to class plagued by self-doubt and judgment. She seeks to inspire trainees to start celebrating their inner beauty and outer beauty, freeing them from self-criticism. One of her views is that perfection is the enemy of progress. Perfection often gets in the way of going after what we really want.

Each Drishti Beats student has to manage their own time. Some embrace this really well, while others falter, though it is not Lori or Jeremy’s role to judge or fix them. That’s their journey and their path. Yet they do a beautiful job holding space for each student.

Jeremy was raised with the lesson that “if you can read, you can do anything”. As he explains though, this first requires learning to read, followed by actually reading. This is what he calls “doing the work.” You can accomplish anything, if you choose to do the work.

It may be emotionally taxing work. It may be physical work! Huge transformation does not happen overnight, it requires taking one baby step at a time, moving with and through your journey. However it looks, the key is to continue moving.

Enjoying the process and understanding the role of ego

It is easy to find training environments and retreats throughout the United States where the philosophy is focused on breaking the attendees down in order to then build them back up. Lori and Jeremy have a much softer, holistic approach. 

When we are driven by fear of judgment, it often holds us back. This is our ego, but Jeremy suggests the ego is not all bad. We can allow our self-confidence to be a choice and to use that as a motivator to do the work. 

Inversely, when the ego gets too large, we stop listening to others. We can become arrogant or think we should already know the answer or solution. The ego actually becomes our demise.

As Jeremy says, “you can defeat yourself on two sides, or you can encourage yourself on both sides of your ego.”

Our minds sometimes work so hard to protect us and keep us safe in the ego, but what happens if we let the heart have space to speak? This is a different way of being. 

Meeting students where they are and moving from that doesn’t have to involve a process of breaking down, or activating that fear.

Both Lori and Jeremy talk about the immense joy they feel witnessing students break through barriers, find confidence in themselves, and embrace their transformations with joy. The key message is that approaching growth with this beautiful balance also creates joy in the journey.

notable quotes from Lori

“I want to create a space that makes sense, to accomplish my ‘why’ and our ‘why’. And our ‘why’ is to serve. And so with serving our family, serving our kids, serving our music vision, we just really needed to evolve into a more mindful space through practice.” 

“Perfection is the enemy of progress.”

“For us, we’re constantly reinventing ourselves. And that’s power. And that’s joy. Because it’s always about what’s next. And it’s fun. And it’s interesting, and we love change. And we’re blessed to have each other to journey through this process.”

“What brings me joy is the next step. What brings me joy is community. What brings me joy is giving. What brings me joy is empowerment to others. What brings me joy is music, music, guides us, helps us be complete.”

“Soften is a beautiful word… because when we soften, we allow space.”

“Always reinvent yourself, always. There is always a new journey to be had. This is the biggest lesson: reinvention is critical, in order for you to be able to explore all that’s out there for you that you want to explore… So reinvent yourself and get out of the way of the thought of perfectionism.”

notable quotes from Jeremy

“When you take those baby steps, and really start to move forward, the world is an amazing place to be in. And until the good Lord takes me off this earth, takes any of us off this earth, what can we give to the next person? How can we make the next person’s life easier, more insightful, more confident.”

“Anyone who’s willing to listen to me… I will give as much support as I can. But there’s gonna come a point where I need to stop talking. And then that other person needs to start doing whatever work it takes to get to whatever goal they want to get to.”

“I’m just so excited about what the next day will bring. And you know, Lord willing, if the next day comes, I’m going at it hard.”

“You’re okay with your imperfection. You’re okay with your idiosyncrasies. Everything’s okay. We’re all okay.”

LINKS/RESOURCES MENTIONED

Learn more about Lori and Jeremy Lowell through their website and by following them on Instagram and Facebook.

Discover incredible Yoga Workshops, Trainings, and Retreats along with their own music: Drishti Beats.

The Yes! We Rise podcast features solutions-seekers, change-makers, and those creating a resilient future. We share stories and strategies to inspire action to build resilience and community transformation. To create change, people need to feel like they belong and that they are part of a growing movement. They need to know their voice matters and that they have the inspiration, agency and ability to transform their lives and their communities. They are the key to a resilient future.

From the Navajo Nation to the mountains of Appalachia, incredible work is being done by community members and leaders. Change is often sparked by inspiration: seeing what others have done, especially in similar situations and places. People see that when someone looks like them or lives in a place like theirs, and has created real, true and lasting change, change that will allow their granddaughters and grandsons to thrive — they begin to imagine what might be possible for them. No longer waiting for someone else to come and save them, they realize they are the ones they have been waiting for. But what creates that spark? What creates that inspiration? Learning through stories and examples, feeling a sense of agency and belonging, and getting fired up to kick ass creates that spark.

We Rise helps community leaders and members learn to forge a new path toward creating resilience and true transformation. One person at a time, one community at a time, one region at a time, the quilt of transformation can grow piece by piece until resilience becomes the norm instead of the exception. Together, we rise.