The Detached podcast
Welcome to the podcast. This is a space where I get to vocalize my thoughts and dive deep into conversations with some truly remarkable individuals. It’s not about surface-level chit-chat—this is where we get into the real stuff. We talk about the things that matter: health, fitness, relationships, and the process of breaking free from the limitations we place on ourselves.
I don’t believe in small talk, because nothing meaningful ever comes from it. So, let's dig deep into the topics that can actually change your life. I want to bring you value, provoke your thinking, and help you see the world differently.
If you resonate with these conversations, I’d love for you to share the podcast with others. Your support means everything.
Let's get into it.
Sophia
The Detached podcast
EP 99 : Finding Purpose After a Heart Attack Changed Everything - Allaoua
What happens when a successful entrepreneur with two MBAs and a fashion empire faces a near-fatal heart condition? For Allaoua, it became the catalyst for complete transformation.
In this deeply personal conversation, Allaoua shares his extraordinary journey from high-powered businessman to yoga instructor—a path that surprised everyone in his life, including himself. Having spent 15 years training with Russian special forces in Sistema (a combat system teaching emotional control and fear management), he discovered that this unlikely background actually prepared him for yoga in profound ways.
"I couldn't have tried yoga without Sistema. I was not ready," he reveals, explaining how both disciplines share a focus on breath control, emotional management, and clarity under pressure. His health crisis became what he now calls "the best thing that could happen to me," forcing him to abandon an unsustainable lifestyle of constant work, minimal sleep, and social isolation despite material success.
The transition wasn't easy. Friends who once sought his business advice stopped communicating with him. The financial adjustment from entrepreneur to yoga teacher required significant adaptation. Yet he approached this change with strategic intention, eventually developing his unique approach to yoga that particularly resonates with CEOs, athletes, and others seeking clarity and fear management.
Throughout our conversation, he offers powerful insights on manifestation, visualization, and the importance of detachment. "The more you attach to things—material, emotion, people—the more you make yourself vulnerable," he explains. "The real freedom is to be detached from everything." This philosophy has guided his remarkable reinvention and continues to inform how he helps high-performing individuals today.
Whether you're contemplating a major life change, recovering from burnout, or simply curious about different paths to purpose, Allaoua story reminds us that sometimes our greatest growth comes through crisis—and that true freedom might require letting go of everything we thought defined success.
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Thank you for listening.
Aloha, welcome on the podcast today.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Sophia, how are you feeling?
Speaker 2:Hot.
Speaker 1:Hot.
Speaker 2:No, I feel very good. I'm very happy to see you again here, because we kind of met without really meeting, so I'm very looking forward for our conversation.
Speaker 1:I feel like it's been a couple of years. I was in contact with you when you were doing. I think it was the first attempt for the yoga um world record that you were gonna break yeah, in 2023, 22, 23 yeah, so can you elaborate a little bit on that? What was the?
Speaker 2:strategy. The strategy, but now the vision was to see, I've been in Dubai for 18 years and there's a couple of Guinness World Records that I believe Dubai should have, should own somehow, and being here for so long, I was thinking I need to do something to represent. You know both yoga and the UAE, so the highest amount of nationality in the yoga session was definitely for Dubai, which is one of the most cosmopolitan places in the world, and that was a challenge. So it took me. So I was at the origin of the project and I honestly handled pretty much everything myself. It was challenging. It took nine months, maybe more actually, until the day we managed to do it. I got good support from Dubai municipality and the sports council, but it came a bit later.
Speaker 2:Over the project. We're looking for sponsors because it has a cost. You know to gather people together to pay for Guinness. You know it can go three, four hundred thousand. You know dirham, something like that. So you need to have people Guinness. You know it can go three, four hundred thousand. You know dirham, something like that. So you need to have people who actually support you and brand, who want to associate their image with the like the Guinness.
Speaker 1:What's the, what's the actual process? If you want to, you know, break a world record with Guinness.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a good question because a lot of people maybe are not familiar with that. I was not. So basically, you need to find something that already exists. For example, with yoga you have the highest amount of people doing yoga together, or the highest amount of nationality doing yoga together, or the first yoga underwater, whatever. They have a long list from Guinness, so you reach out to Guinness. You see what records are available to attend what exists already. If you need to take a chance to break it and go better than the previous one, you can also create one.
Speaker 2:That's as far as possible, but it needs to be certified. So it's a lot of back and forth with Guinness first of all. Then, when you find the exact denomination, then you start bringing the process. So the process for us was we need to have one person of each country holding the passport Well, we checked them before. One person of each country holding the passport Well, we checked them before. So it needs to be. I think we're aiming for 188 different nationalities. The person has to be physically there and the sequence needs to be validated before to be yoga. So we had 27 asanas. We kind of keep it basic as well, Because if someone doesn't do one asana it's not validated. Imagine about 200 people doing the same sequence together. It can be quite of a headache and the person needs to stay until the end. The validation process takes some time because the referee or the Guinness official needs to check one by one. So, yeah, I mean logistically it's heavy. Maybe some other Guinness World Record like individual can be easier to achieve because you just need to perform. But when?
Speaker 2:you do something with a group of people, the logistic is quite.
Speaker 1:Your exposure is higher to risk of it not going right.
Speaker 2:It's very high. It's actually almost a miracle to get it, especially the day of the event, because you always have someone who cannot make it. So you need to have a backup, one backup two backup three for every nationalities, in case if one is not making at least one, you know, uh, plus still. I was not just a performer there, I was a part of A manager.
Speaker 1:I can imagine Exactly.
Speaker 2:So all the sponsors. I'm not happy because the name is not on the T-shirt, the other one because the billboard is not right. The TV needs to do that. Everyone See. This is what I felt a little bit. I'm not saying it's sad, but you really feel. Everyone is very individual, everyone is running for his own interest and I haven't felt so much. This is actually the first time I speak about it. This is actually a good question.
Speaker 2:I don't feel so much of the community and so much of the support. When the yoga and the well-being community. It's supposed to be based on the value when you support each other. I found it after 10 years in the industry that it's not the reality and when anyone has initiative, it will be easier for the community or some people in the community to try to destroy this initiative rather than support because they won't get any things out of it. So it's not like the dream world that we can see about well-being and lots of politics. A lot of you know I'm I'm not saying um you know I'm an angel and you know of course you do things for your benefit and but still, I always, always support when I can support, always, like I did. I never refuse any support, either it's commercial or not commercial or it's just, you know, uh, and I received thousands of, you know, decline and I was like it's a bit weird.
Speaker 2:Especially I was managing different studios, so I know maybe 80 percent of yoga teacher here in dubai. You cannot be liked by everyone but I don't think I did anything to deserve like a decline. You know, like someone said no, I don't want to be a part. It's a great opportunity for everyone. I invite 11 teachers to be on stage with me and to help and, matter of fact, the main one they were not interested. It was a lot of junior, you know, like teacher. So maybe ego maybe see, I was working in fashion industry before and I thought ego was at this climax.
Speaker 1:But honestly, the well-being everyone, it's really running for themselves and it's really sad do you think the lesson that was learned to this was to maybe hold back the ego and my own ego, you mean? Oh yeah, to manage your expectations in terms of rejection well, yeah, you learn a lot.
Speaker 2:Definitely, I'm see, I've. I've been working on my ego since way before yoga. I was training with the russian special forces, the, for 15 years. And when you combat because it's almost like a martial art, it's like like urban combat, like all the techniques you don't want to have any ego, otherwise you're guaranteed to lose. It's all about accepting. So it actually gets really physical when you accept people stepping on your face and you know, because you have some training when you are laying down on the floor and people are stepping on you, for you to accept and deal with the two visceral, let's say the two strongest fear that human has, which is the fear of the floor, fear of falling and fear of physical impact. So this is all ego Fear that human has, which is the fear of the floor, fear of falling and fear of physical impact. So this is all ego. So when you start putting your ego aside and you start accepting, so you develop resilience. When you become resilient I mean there's no resilience with ego, it's either one or the other so when you become resilient, you start taking all the hits and deal with them, so not just the physical hits, but everything. So I was not doing that by ego for me to become whatever.
Speaker 2:I was really thinking that this is something who should be done in Dubai. I was happy to drive the project and I was actually looking for help, looking for support and I was welcoming anyone who wanted to jump in the project. But what I've seen is as long as they're not the main character or they're not interested, and that's a little bit. Yeah. So I was a bit I don't expect anything. I was exploring, you know the project, but I didn't.
Speaker 1:I mean it could have happened maybe smoother you know, if the situation was a bit different you just mentioned something really interesting there the special forces. It bring me back to that type of training. How did you get into it? Where were you Elaborate on that? Because I did not know that about your background Secret. Yeah, I did not figure that one out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Before yoga I was doing something called Sistema, so it's the name of the martial art. It's not really martial art, it's a combat system. So Russian martial arts, RMA. It's very old. It has at least 10 centuries old, maybe more. Some people believe it's the reason why Russia haven't been conquered at all, because it's infused into the population. During the USSR it was reserved for the elite forces, so the KGB forces, the self-protection, the nine bodyguard of Stalin, and the Spetsnaz, which has the commandos. Spetsnaz are not so much I mean the military, but they usually fight terrorism more than being in a battlefield, so they're very elite troops. How did I start? My brother is the one who put me there. Like a long time ago he was in charge of the national security of the Eiffel Tower, you know. So he was dealing with like anti-terror and all the threats that are multiple and non-stop. You have no idea how many threats this type of monument are exposed to Can you share any?
Speaker 1:It can go from the. It can be a meeting point threats this type of monument are exposed to. Can you share any sharing?
Speaker 2:on that. It can be a meeting point for two crowds to fight, basically, or just for perverts to abuse and take pictures of other people kids. It can be the place where some people with very bad intentions want to do something.
Speaker 2:I mean like basically anything that can hurt the country or that can promote, you know. So it's very exposed and pretty much all the you know monuments in the world are exposed, but Eiffel Tower is really something, yeah. So it was under a lot of stress and a lot of responsibilities and tried to deal with everything and the crowd as well, even the tourists, like you know, when it's hot they get very irritated, so they can fight. So his role was basically to maintain the safety of everyone, to maintain the peace and to make sure that nothing happened, because if something happened there, it's a worldwide impact.
Speaker 2:So, it's really highly. So it's really highly. I mean, he was not only in charge himself there's different services like intelligence, informations, you know but yeah, he was uh like like handling, like a part of it. So he was into all uh possible techniques to learn how to defend yourself, how to you know combat and, um, he did a lot of martial arts pretty much all his years. He's like older than me and he discovered this, you know. I mean one of them.
Speaker 1:So I was saying, he took you under his wing then. So how many brothers and sisters do you have?
Speaker 2:I have one brother and one sister.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:We cannot say, took him under his wing, he forced me to. It was not like. It was like, yeah, it was not like. It was like, yeah, I was young, I was like just a teenager and tell me, you need to like, be tough. You know, the life is hard and you need to do something. So I was in martial art before, but you know the one that you do when you're kids, like Aikido Sistema.
Speaker 2:It's not a martial art. There's no rules, there's no referee, there's no objective of making points, of being judged. The only objective is to stay safe. So to be able to stay safe, especially applied to an urban confrontation, is just to go home. If you get attacked, someone tries to rob your watch, your belongings or worse, you should be able to do two things Destroy the structure of your opponent, so the opponent won't be able to do anything or harm you, and be able to calm the opponent down. And this is the hardest thing to do, because when someone is upset and angry, have a car accident, the guy just want to kill you. It's very hard to start talking and say, look, we can speak this out. You just have to be tremendously stronger to be able to hold the anger, the emotion and the will of fight, and there is few techniques who drastically calm down any individual who get into this phase, and this is what we study so it has to do with fears.
Speaker 2:If you don't control your own fears, it's very hard to do anything. Fears will block you, they'll make you stop breathing, will make you do silly stuff, make you shake your legs and lose control, clarity. So you won't be able to take decisions with your mind, with your brain, with your cognitive process. You will take decisions with your reptilian. You know, fight or fly, all these things that you don't want to deal with. So we want to basically train people I get trained to maximize the clarity.
Speaker 2:So in a situation, fight, situation, kidnapping, fire, like anything that is really really stressful and impactful for the brain and for the body just to keep your head as cool as possible so you can take a decision that will save you, not decision that can make things worse. Or you know, and the problem in, when you have two upset or three upset people together, you can go to a very high escalation of the situation. So even words can turn into a fight. So if someone insults you, even a little bit, and then you feel you have to reply, and the other one replies and then goes one step further, one step further, then push and push. So we want to avoid drama From the beginning, we do what is necessary to contain the situation.
Speaker 1:What type of person are you in a situation with two angry people?
Speaker 2:Am I angry as well, or no? Yeah, before. Yeah, I had maybe from my roots because my family were all a little bit Tell me about your roots.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I'm Algerian and you know, like other people have a little tendency to get angry, you know a little fast, but it's something I was working on a lot and yoga really helped me. To you know, channel this, I would say Sistema was the first you know method. I would even say I could not have tried yoga without Sistema. I was not ready. Even with like 10-15 years of Sistema, yoga was very frustrating for me, you know, because with like 10, 15 years of sistema, yoga was very frustrating for me, you know, because that was a stepping stone then to your yoga career yeah, definitely, and it's almost the same uh discipline, almost the same mentality, some values system is like fighting with yoga, basically.
Speaker 2:So you use breath, you use uh mobility, use uh emotional control, meditation, so so everything is like the stage or the state of mind or the state of emotional stage that you want to be when you fight or when you have to deal with an aggression. It's almost the same one when you're on your mat, which is tremendously hard to maintain. So how do I react now? I react good, I guess.
Speaker 1:But back then you were an angry child, which is a not angry child, but yeah, I, uh, I.
Speaker 2:I didn't accept disrespect, I didn't accept when people try to abuse you. You know, and regardless of the person, this can revolt me. So as a kid not just for me, also for my friend I had this and I think it's very Algerian, all the Algerians that I know, they have this Fiery, fiery and protective. You know we cannot accept to be mistreated or we cannot accept that a family or friends being mistreated. So I was always stepping in One of my friends, for example, in a nightclub or in a football field, when you know the heat was happening. I was always going, pushing my friend and I was ready.
Speaker 2:For you know, is that only anger or courage or stupidity? I don't know, but it was the way it is, which is good when you can channel it but can be destroying, you know, when you don't have the control over it. And what system I use? Is this? It's just really Russian, or, you know, like all the Slavic people, you know Ukrainian, russian, Belarusian they have this calm and distance and you know we like to say sometimes they have no emotions. They actually have, but when the situation is complicated they can maintain. I don't know where it's coming from, but not like Lebanese or Arabs in general. They're more Spanish or Italian. They're more demonstrative.
Speaker 1:Was there any moment in your life where you just didn't like the person you were becoming? So you had to change what you were doing.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's a deep question. No, I think yeah. Um, you see, I can.
Speaker 2:I can recall some phases, you know, when I went from kids to teenage and from teenage to adults. Let's say I kind of always work in the direction to become the person I wanted to be. So I had this vision of myself older, even when I was younger, like an established, respectful individual with family and with a purpose, and I will always thrive in this direction. So, you know, when your intentions are aligned with your action, you are deep into, I would say, an emotional balance. You know, and this is what sistema and yoga did for me they gave me the tool to align my intention and my action.
Speaker 2:I just done 40 a few months ago and I'm very patient, thank you, and I'm very proud of, like I would say personally, what I'm becoming, somehow, because it was not easy to reach what I reach as a businessman. You know, in terms of financial statue, in terms of book connection, I had the at 30 stores. You know I was doing quite well. You know to stop everything and to start from scratch with something who has absolutely nothing to do with what you're doing before, because I had two mbas, you know I was always programmed to performance, always programmed to make money, to to live a lavish lifestyle what kind of businesses did you have?
Speaker 2:well, I was. I founded a kid's brand called Cute Edition, you know. So I was a kid's fashion designer, basically, but I was more on to the business sides and the strategic development of the brand. And, yeah, when.
Speaker 1:I decided you're in that stage and you're having a very different.
Speaker 2:During the process, yes, but at the arrival, I mean never re-arrived, but at the stage when you feel like you will be content, I was. I mean, something went missing. I think I saw it with purpose. You know, I loved it, I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed the process, but at some point I was missing a purpose. When you basically do what you have been programmed to do, something is missing. But when you're doing what you really want to do, this is how you start finding, you know, a purpose and going through, and this is was the change, basically what's happened?
Speaker 2:I could not imagine that yoga was, uh, my purpose at all, like especially, I mean, either personally, there are people who knew me from before because I lived in California, I was partying a lot in Las Vegas, then I went to Mexico, I lived in China, I got my MBA there, so I was really, like, you know, a party guy and really full of energy. I'm not saying, like yoga, you're not full of energy, but it's different. For example, I could not not do nothing, and yoga teach me the movement in stillness. So it's not because you're not physically active that you cannot, you know, enhance a process of meditation or thoughts of yeah, it's a lot to do with mind and I really feel it was my colleague.
Speaker 1:So, when you've had the transition in between managing all these stores, having a business to yoga, how does the listener, how do they find their purpose? How do they figure out their purpose? Where would they even start? Yeah, what kind of advice would you give them?
Speaker 2:I'm always very careful with advices because it's only value for the person who said it and did it. It's very hard. I don't want to be like everyone say yeah, you have to listen to your calling, whatever. I think there is time for everything. If I would have tried five years before, I was probably not ready for that. So what I can share with people who are listening is to try to move with the flow and not to try to achieve goals by performance, but achieve it by exploration. So this is something that I share already.
Speaker 2:But the more you expect, the more you're disappointed, and one of the worst things to deal with is disappointment, especially coming from your own achievements, because you feel you're not good enough or you didn't do properly, or you know the syndrome of imposter and all these things or from the treachery of other people, for example, when you expect something from someone and it doesn't happen and worse happens and you are devastated. So expectation is a big enemy. Really, I would say expectation and panic will be the two worst enemies of any human. Now, if you put expectations away so you can have a goal, you can have project, of course, but explore the journey through it. It's like in yoga, when you learn how to touch your feet. It's not about touching your feet, it's what you learn in doing the process. So that's life, everything you're aiming to, what you're going to learn, it's during the mechanism itself.
Speaker 2:Once you arrive, you arrive. There's not much to do. The only thing we're sure that's going to happen is our death. We are here for certain decades and at some point we know it's going to stop and we know that our health will start to degrade and things will be different. That's the only certainty of life. Everything else it's like a game. It's. You know. Don't take things too seriously. You know, the more you take things seriously, the harder it gets.
Speaker 2:Jeff Bezos was saying you know problems has to do with inaction. So you can actually, if something is bothering you, you can start, be active and try to find solutions. Just the idea of trying to find solutions is already an action and you will find an outcome, because everything has an outcome. But stress will come through inaction when you let the situation, you know, get like rotten and get worse and worse and then it becomes a problem and it's going to take more energy, more time, more money, more concern, more of everything for you to solve it. So better to explore things, even if you're scared to do something. Do it scared, but do it. Don't leave anything stopping you and don't expect any outcome.
Speaker 2:It's like all the athletes they train, they train. The training is much harder than the competition. I think real champions don't expect to win. They see themselves winning, so they have the visualization of them winning, but they don't expect so. If it's not their time, then they can come back again and they don't destroy. A lot of athletes have been destroyed and you will never see them again because you know it's not the fight or the competition. That they lost is that they lost the ability of being able to move on. So ego is taking over and yeah, that's pretty much the best advice explore your life you just mentioned visualization.
Speaker 1:Do you think visualization can impact your karma?
Speaker 2:what do we define karma? How do you define, because it may have different meaning?
Speaker 1:so if I was, for my own personal opinion karma what goes around comes around. You know, you do something bad, something bad will this would be my definition of my karma. So if I was to do this, if I was to visualize myself, even if you look at successful people right, I'm sure you've come across successful people here in Dubai and they seem like they're doing everything wrong, they're doing dirty things. They're, you know, making money from things that maybe you don't believe in or you don't think has good intention. Do you think their visualization of their success can oversee their karma?
Speaker 2:It's a very deep question and it requires maybe different answers. What comes around comes around. What goes around comes around. What goes around comes around. What comes around goes around. And yeah, it can be a good definition of karma. Basically, you get what you do, you know, so you harvest what you plant.
Speaker 2:Visualization helps you to set a direction. Whether you achieve it or not, you will walk towards this path and it's very useful now. Some people have a visualization. For example, I see myself doing this at this time and having this. It will definitely have some consequences. You know, and this is what you were asking me, are the consequences? Will punish them or will change things? I don't know.
Speaker 2:I think everything is a part of the plan, somehow, and the faster you find your purpose, the faster you align, the faster you grow into this direction. But everything comes with a price. All the businessmen that I know not all, but I mean we have, if you're not a billionaire or multimillionaire and if you didn't build an empire, it's very hard to understand what those persons are going through, what they have to sacrifice, and we always want to see, you know, the house, the car, the lifestyle, but we don't want to see what they have to handle, especially when the empire is built on other people. When you have like 50,000 employees, every single decision, every single of your world can impact a dozen, hundreds or thousands of them. So this is a lot of responsibility. So I have the opportunity to, to, to see those people some of them and to help them. Uh, to help them first, healing, because this is one of the costs as well. How many businessmen have heart attack and burnout Because it takes a lot on their shoulders? So I'm just allowing them to have a break, remove whatever they don't need anymore and try to make space for some other things. And through the process, so we achieve that through stretching, through the process, we try to increase the clarity. And I'm not saying guide them, because I don't guide them, I just create a space for them to guide themselves. So you always find your own decision or find your own answers.
Speaker 2:And uh, yeah, visualization is very important. It's really, you know a lot of people. They believe like manifestation and abundance and well, I would say there's a lot of scammers. To be honest, you know a lot of people. It's like you know some healing I'm gonna be a little um, the controversies here some healing, it's probably the most powerful tool that human had to heal, really. But when you consider that some monks spend like 20 years to study one frequency, one sound, and that there is some people, after a trip to Bali, come back with some gongs and offering some healing, I felt there's a big discrepancy between these two words. So I would say abundance and manifestation is the same. It exists.
Speaker 2:Visualization is very, very strong and very important, but maybe very few people master it and very few people, even if they master it, are able to explain and educate. And if you want to see people who do manifestation, there's a lot of hard work behind and they never share it with people. They never share it. I mean, do we want to share something that will make you different and above everyone, financially and in terms of career? Look at Cristiano Ronaldo, who won the game. I mean you cannot be more successful than him. I mean his wife, his kids, his career. He won everything you can win many times. He's the first billionaire. I mean money is not everything, but it's a marker. You know, and the way he uses money as well, so he invests. I mean he's a businessman and he started from nowhere.
Speaker 2:He was not the best football player, but he worked hard, he had this vision, he has this visualization and he speaks about it. Look at today, he play into a very good team, but sometimes, you know, in Saudi the matches are not as important as the one in Champions League, for example, but even though at every free kick, he's speaking to himself, he's like you can do it, you're going to put it inside, you are the best, you are the best, no one can stop you, it's easy for you, you do it. On the training, see, you have these people who lead on the rips on the lips, and so they always you know, read what he says. So he's convincing himself for something who has absolutely I would not say absolutely, but it's not like the final of the Champions League and he plays everything.
Speaker 2:And if he, he did all this, but still, for every single goal, he keep this mindset. This is real manifestation, this is real theorization and this is real abundance and this is real meditation. Because he's there. The challenge is not great, but he make it super important. Every shot is important doesn't mean that he will put this one inside the goal, but it means that he try everything that he has all his person, his body, his intention, his mind, his emotion, everything is driven towards one goal. To put the ball inside, this is really meditation. And he, if he decide to one day share with the rest of humanity what his technique, I will listen to him know with a lot of attention.
Speaker 1:When you talk about manifestation. What is manifestation to you? What does it mean to you? What is the process?
Speaker 2:I'm not an expert, but I would say it's the materialization of your thoughts, basically. So it's what you have here brought to reality, so it can be many vector. Some people pray. They ask god, which is a form of manifestation. Some people will build plan and strategy, some people will do both. I think everything leads to this and, yeah, just want whatever you wish for yourself, for others, or what you want to achieve. But you cannot only manifest or try to manifest. There's a lot of hard work.
Speaker 2:We go again to the example of McGregor or all the like, the attitude. They put so much effort behind it, the sacrifice, and see if you are ready to sacrifice what they did sacrifice. Maybe you can be elected to sacrifice what they did sacrifice. Maybe you can be elected to have what they have. The problem and you learn this in systema everyone wants to go to paradise, but no one wants to die. So as soon as you can see the effort and the dedication and the sacrifice that comes with, usually you prefer staying in your comfort zone and okay, okay, okay. I wish, I wish that's the difference between you know, I would say athletes and non-athletes, champion and athletes, uh, ceo and entrepreneurs it's just a matter of you know how many effort did you put behind us has.
Speaker 1:Do you have any examples of anything that you've manifested in life like big manifestations? Have a lot want to share yeah what I'm doing now.
Speaker 2:I was always hoping to do something that make me happy. You know that would allow me to do what I want to do and to have freedom. You know my true calling was to actually help people. You know, to be useful, and this is exactly what I'm manifesting. The list is still long. I have other things in my mind, but the process is real. I'm a believer and I think religion are here specifically to make you away from your ego. We always go back to ego. Ego is something very destroying that everyone has. To make you away from your ego, we always go back to ego. Ego is something very destroying that everyone has but should be able to manage or, you know, just shut down. Have you ever taken any good decision when you were angry? It's hard to imagine. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I take space. I'm actually very rarely an angry person. When I was 16, 17, yeah, you know you're learning at that stage.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so this is a manifestation of ego, like anger, why me, why now? No, I should do this, no, I deserve better. And as soon as it, then you start seeing the clarity of situation, that it was not that bad, that the person didn't do that much, that maybe the person didn't want to hurt you. So this is all self-oriented perception driven by ego. Ego is our worst enemy, really. So we are our worst enemy. So the day you start mastering your ego and start understanding that and doing things to help you not being a victim of yourself, yeah, this is really the real manifestation for everyone, like, really, because this opens a tremendous amount of doors. So I believe the real abundance and the real manifestation is that we have opportunities every second. Every second we walk in the street, we had the opportunity to meet with like thousand different people. Maybe these people would believe in you, maybe these people is the last piece of the puzzle, that need for your project, you know, but because we self-center and we close all these doors and we, you know. So I really believe this is the okay, I would say the difference between motivation and inspiration. Motivation it's already late. You need to keep yourself motivated, so you have to put effort, and an active effort, to keep yourself up to the alignment, up to the effort when inspiration it's very passive, you want to receive. So you can get inspired by people, situation, by nature, by anything, but for that you need to be in a state of mind that allowed whatever it sent to you to be received right. So this is the switch that happened with me before I was motivated. I wanted you know I was, you know I was suffering, you know. No, not suffering, I leave things come to me. You know what I mean. It's really more passive and really more comfortable and really more. And everyone can do that. Next time you're sitting in an airport in a waiting area, just open your eyes, open your energy, look around, Don't be scared to talk to people. Maybe you go eye contact and maybe you recognize someone, and you never know, because at the end of the day, it's all about relationship with people. Network doesn't mean network. Like you have to have the best people in your network, not just your network. Any person can be strategic for you and you can be strategic for anyone, regardless. So it's very important to understand that.
Speaker 2:Remember when I was working in the fashion industry or when I was studying my first um, like mba in france. Love my friend. We're working for big names lvmh, you know, dior louis vuitton and like pipier, who now is killing the back in the days, you know was like days. You know it was like the group Pino. So it was like Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent. So during the fashion week everyone was trying to access the fashion week because it was the best thing, because after you have the after party and you see celebrities and you have fun and everything is for free. So when you're a student you really want to be into these places. You know. Let's say I knew big people who was working in industry at like director level. They never helped you. Your friend who work for you know the company, they wish to help you but they cannot because it's very complicated to get invitations.
Speaker 2:I was attending to many, many of the fashion weeks, many of the fashion shows and many of the parties because I met friend one with the security guy. I get invited, one with the proper invitation and we start talking. We start talking, the show was not starting. Then after the show, we talk again. We change numbers and we start talking. We start talking, the show was not starting. Then after the show we talk again, we change numbers and and we found very common points actually with Sistema. It was like, oh, you're doing this, very nice, then we keep contact. And the person started inviting me. So I was coming from the back door, not from the front door, so I was in the backstage. So I was in backstage with them, with mark jacobs, with like like I met them all amazing it was incredible.
Speaker 2:no one, even the director, as I know, could have this access. So this, the highest level of access, came from the lowest uh category of you know job in in this pyramid you have the director, the manager, the designers, the head of design and at the bottom, bottom bottom, you have the person in charge of security, and that's the person. So that's why never underestimate any relation and always develop a genuine relation with people.
Speaker 1:Being a voice goes a long way, and I think it's lost in today's yeah, I see. People are too frightened to just even be nice or have these interactions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because they're scared to be vulnerable, you know, and especially in a big city like Dubai or New York or Paris, and you always want to show more than you have. But this is not the reality.
Speaker 1:There was something that I wanted to talk about today, about you that I I heard on the podcast. You had a bit of a health scare, right?
Speaker 2:there's a reason when I started yoga what happened? Well, my heart was about to stop. I stayed in ICU for like a couple of days. It was very, very, very, very challenging.
Speaker 1:What was the lead up to that? Like what happened.
Speaker 2:When you have this type of arythmia, pre-heart attack condition, there is like a kind of small nervous system inside the heart itself who regulate the pulse. Mine was completely, I don't want to say destroyed, but it was completely out of its place. So it can be anything, can be stress, can be lifestyle. I mean anything we do or any problem comes from the lifestyle. I mean I was taking a lot of protein powder with creatine and maybe some other chemicals and, um, I was not sleeping much. I was working a lot backness, I was smoking, I was partying. So you know, when you sleep like two, three hours per night every night because I was working, I was working day and night, literally I was working, I was working day and night, literally. I was working up at like 5, 6, being first in the office, leaving last sometime midnight and I was so miserable of working so I was thinking maybe I should enjoy a bit.
Speaker 2:So when you're tired and exhausted, you meet your friends and you know, or you're going to a restaurant and party and maybe have a drink or two and maybe smoking a lot. And it was, I think all this. You know, in French we say une fuite en avant is when you escape forward. So I was escaping something. I was running, running with no break, work, health, everything I was running. So just my heart told me, bro, this is not going to be sustainable like this, and that's why I changed everything. I recognize this spring. God, like I don't want to die now. Give me another chance. You know, all these things that you, you know, think of.
Speaker 1:I didn't know, see, I was scared to sleep where were you in the moment of prior to going to hospital or what happened I?
Speaker 2:was in my house. It was morning. It started in the morning. When I opened my eyes, my heart felt very when you start hearing your heartbeats. It's not a good sign when your heartbeats are crazy, when you're laying down and you're over 120, it's not a good sign when you stand and you fall down and you cannot, I mean, and then you have you start to freak out, right, then the adrenaline starts shooting again and then you start being and you don't feel your arms and you don't feel your legs and you freak out. You don't know what's happening. You want to convince yourself that you're okay and yeah, so I called an ambulance. Who?
Speaker 2:was around you, I was alone, and this is some of the things that make me realize as well. I was living in a big villa on Palm seven rooms, but I was alone. I had no girlfriend, I had no pet, because I was literally working there at night and I had a few friends. So that's why it was the change for me. From this day when I decided to make a change. I met my wife, I built a family, I made kids, my life slowed down in a good way, so it was really a wake-up call. It was like the best thing that could happen to me, I guess. Oh, I made it the best thing that happened to me.
Speaker 2:See, I accepted that this is not normal and I don't want this to happen again. So normal, and I don't want this to happen again. So I was literally asking myself what can I change? And I did the change. And it was not easy, especially when you start to feel better. You know it's like. You're like oh, it's okay, I think it's fine, maybe I can go back. No, and this day, everything changed, my mindset changed, my life changed, and it's one of the things that I am the most proud of, because you asked me earlier about manifestation. I manifested the man I am today and the man I was starting to become after this happened, and I wasn't going in this direction, and this is the wake-up call that I receive and this is where I start listening and understanding things. But it had to happen and I'm very happy it did.
Speaker 1:How difficult was it to shed the old skin, the old identity that you had. Because when you go from being a successful businessman to yoga, how does that transition happen?
Speaker 2:It's a leap of faith. First of all, your friends, your parents, don't understand All my friends who were with me in my MBAs, in my university, in my business school. They couldn't understand what I'm saying Because they were looking up to me back in the days. I mean now they look up to me again but it was 10 years of you know, because I was in Dubai. You know I was entrepreneur, I was successful, I was doing good for myself, and so they went from asking me advices to maybe even not talk to me anymore because they don't understand, like, why yoga? You don't do yoga.
Speaker 2:Come on, a lot of people consider I was doing depression, so I was looking for something. I was actually going out from depression. You know that I didn't even experience, but it was here. I understood it. You know, like later from my behaviors, when I say it went smooth, I didn't uh, I didn't suffer too much, it was a big jump. But when you you do it after, you know you just have to swim. You know. But yeah, when you have financially was the biggest uh jump.
Speaker 2:You know, definitely because the salary of uh uh, an entrepreneur with 100 employees and employees, it's not comparable to the salary of a yoga teacher, but I made it. I made it in a different way. I learned how to scale the knowledge that was accumulated and I had a vision. I have MBA, so I mean I've learned how to make brands, I've learned how to scale. And when you do this, when you brander, it doesn't matter somehow if you sell water or if you sell petrol or if you sell services. At the end of the day, it's almost the same mechanism. So whatever I was applying to my fashion brands, I start apply it to myself, so I become my own brand. You know, as simple as this.
Speaker 1:How does one compete? Now, please excuse my ignorance on this, because I love the idea of yoga. I love how it makes me feel. I used to watch yogis and think I want exactly what they have. My background was strength and conditioning coach for seven years. But to compete with a yogi who's literally born into yoga for example, Indian culture, they're born into yoga essentially how do you compete with that? What's the journey? What's the beginning? How do you coach people when you can't even touch your toes?
Speaker 2:You don't compete. It's as simple as that. You cannot compete. I mean my teacher, satyagat, five years old. He's shorter, lighter, he's vegan, he has no belly. He has tremendous belly, he has a tremendous strength. He prays. I mean, he's Hindu. You cannot be more rooted than the tradition of yoga than he is. I never wanted to compete with him and I couldn't. Even if I try, I won't be able. So you just have to develop your own style, your own understanding of yoga, and that's what I did. I didn't even try to be better than anyone.
Speaker 2:First of all, it's not the mentality of yoga. You don't do yoga to achieve performance. You do yoga to explore once again, and this is what I've learned from that. You do yoga to feel better, to be a better person, to act differently and to connect with your body, so you have better health. As simple as it is. Um, so I was not concerned.
Speaker 2:Now it's still a market and you write there's competitors, there's non-people who will teach instead of you and you want to teach instead of them. And because you know this and that, um, I would say there's a lot of studio, there's a lot of opportunity, and even if you cannot teach in a studio, you have online. You can do private. I mean, it's full of opportunities. You just need to have your own signature methods or understanding. So yoga it's a blank paper. What you write on this paper, it's up to you.
Speaker 2:I will not understand yoga the same way that you do or the same way that my teacher did. We just have different perspectives. So it's not about I mean I would say there's as much different type of yoga than it has different type of instructors. My yoga is really anatomical based. You know what kept me to yoga? It's the understanding of human as an entity physical, mental and emotional entity and this is what really triggered the passion I have now for human being understanding. And this passion is what lead me to help people, especially now.
Speaker 2:You know, when you help champions and athletes, you really feel good because you feel like all the sacrifice that you did, all this time that you spend reading, understanding, creating, innovating it come to an end now and it starts to make sense because those people have seen the best physiotherapists, the best yoga teachers, the best pilates, the best. They always try all the methods in their career to be the best. So when you grab their attention and they learn something from you. You're like oh you see, I did something really unique and I should be proud of it, so don't try to copy anyone.
Speaker 2:Everyone has the same trunk yoga, you know, and even I mean between ashtanga, shivananda, hatta. I mean like, even in the yoga world, traditional yoga, where there is a hundred type of different yoga, from ayangar, from and what's interesting is like, all the more recent uh yoga type are created and the name after the creator, so like uh, like ashtanga, have been created by pata, by pata bisdrois, you know. So he creates the fundamental flow and the sequences, like ayangar, the ayangar style of yoga, have been created by Iyengar himself. So I think it's a natural way of using yoga, adapting to your understanding, and come up with something that can help a specific part of people, and I would say my yoga will help a lot CEOs, because of the mindset approach I have on this clarity and fear management and pretty much someone who is already quite advanced in physical development, athletes, sports people. It will, of course, be also suitable for beginners, but beginners who are leading to a certain vision of alignment and understanding. So I really resonate with people who are into, you know, this type of vision.
Speaker 1:What has been the biggest lesson that you've learnt through your yoga practice and teaching?
Speaker 2:There's hundreds, thousands, but I would say nothing really matters, nothing is really important. We are not important. We think we are, but we're not really Like as humans on the scale of the universe. What do we represent? We are temporary here. We're going to be forgotten soon, you know, and this will really help you put your ego apart.
Speaker 2:Every time you feel like, why me, why now? Why I don't have, why I'm not, it doesn't matter Really, like you're just wasting your time, just wasting your time. And this is the same thing with Islam. I am Muslim, so when I put my carpet to pray or my yoga mat to practice, the same mechanism happens Like you are with yourself, yourself, connected with the higher force or connected with your deep inside. And this is what yoga teach people and this is what I've learned from yoga like nothing really matters.
Speaker 2:Just explore your life and, you know, try to make the most of it before it ends. And don't forget to be happy. A lot of people forget that. You know, do we eat to survive or do we survive because we eat or do we eat because of pleasure? Yeah, it should be a bit of everything. Life is everything. There's this dose of difficulty, but this is of happiness when it's time to enjoy, enjoy. When it's time to work, work when it's time to reflect. It's all about being aligned with the sequences of your life because this is called the detached podcast.
Speaker 1:What would you detach yourself away from?
Speaker 2:that's limiting you today the funding book of yoga. One of the funding book of yoga. One of the funding books, of course there's the Bhagavad Gita, but one will be the Yoga Sutras for Patanjali, and I think I believe it's the second sutra, the second most important sutra. So the first one is the present moment, yoga now. Second one is non-attachment. Maybe the third, but I mean it's one of the top three.
Speaker 2:The more you attach to things material, emotion, people the more you make yourself vulnerable. The real freedom is to be detached from everything Doesn't mean that you don't love your kids and your partner and your job. It means that you should not suffer if you get detached from it. And I guess this is the real fundamental of everything. As humans, we get attached to everything to material, to emotions, to life, even life. Even dying is okay, dying is okay. Don't get too much attached to things. And if now I have to get detached from one thing, honestly I don't get too much attached to things. And if now I have to get detached from one thing, honestly, I don't know. I'm living in this philosophy since couple of years now, so I don't think I am too much attached to everything. I'm trying not to be too much attached, and I cannot be more detached than now. Let's put it this way you see, I am in this place where I'm sufficiently detached not to suffer, but still attached to you know a certain degree of it, so I can still enjoy everything.
Speaker 1:Congratulations. It's a very rare answer I get on this podcast. I just want to say thank you so much for today's conversation. It's been so insightful.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure, and I have a gift for you my book. I'm going to dedicate it for you now.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, thank you.