Self Realized with Susan Marrufo

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my name is Georgie and the time is right welcome today’s guest strong and powerful Susan Ruffo. Susan, are you ready to do this? I’m ready, George, let’s do this thing. All right, let’s go. Susan is the founder of the summer ASA center, and is most well known for the teacher for teaching her wildly popular signature course yoga, sex and death. Susan excited to have you on tell us a little about your personal life. So more about your work, why you do what you do? Why I do what I do? Well, this course yoga, sex and death mirrors my own journey over the past, I don’t know, 15 years, I was living in Dallas, Texas at the time, where am I am now it’s rare that I’m here. But I happened to be here now. And I was working in advertising. And I was married. And I had just been living a life that was all the checks. You know, one of those stories like I all of these things, and I was conditioned and taught to believe like, this is what you do to live a happy life, you have this house and you have this husband, and you have this job. And you all have these external things. And I had all of those things, did my was the good girl and did all the things I was supposed to do. And I was

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really unhappy. And I was drinking a lot and very doing, you know, a lot of self destructive behaviors.

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And I have no idea why I couldn’t really put my finger on anything. And so I thought, well, I know what I have tried. And I know that that hasn’t worked.

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So I’m going to just start,

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I’m going to throw myself out there into the unknown and start trying different things and see if maybe something out there can can save me can save this life of mine. And so I left and I quit my job in advertising and I sold my house and

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my husband and I attempted to stay together at this time. But I went I moved out of the country and just got out of the life that I had lived for myself, created for myself. And at the time I was feeling very suffocated by

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knowing it was a life I had created for myself, no one had done it, but me.

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So I just started looking for answers internally instead of, you know, externally as well, because I changed the whole setting, external setting, but mainly so that I could have some quiet and some time to go inside. So I did and that just sent me off on this journey of traveling the world and living in Asia, India, Thailand, and Europe and Mexico and

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studying yoga, and

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the result of my journey and my my yoga practice, which to me is very tied to

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me, my sexual self and my sexual healing and that path, as well as the practices that I have practiced deeply and learned and taught over the years of her death and dying.

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So the the curriculum just poured out of me, you know, after my own my own journey, it just mirrored that. And it poured out. I mean, I thought, well, this is what I’m meant to be. This is what’s meant to be moving through me. And I’ve been teaching it ever since of course it changes over I the first time I taught it was in 2014. And it’s changed and morphed. And there’s been so many different variations of it over the years, as my path has changed. And I discover more about myself and the world and my practice and other people. So

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that’s what I’m doing now. And there’s not it’s a whole different life. Everything did change, internally, externally. And

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I just feel so thankful and so full of gratitude when I wake when I wake up in the morning these days. Well, that’s awesome.

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So you said it was 2014 when you essentially started your hero’s journey? Yes. Yeah. It’s often like and yeah, to the hero’s journey. Yeah. 2014.

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And,

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turns out it wasn’t Dallas’s fault, because turns out

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turns out who would have thought or my ex husband? Or you know, it just, it seems so real at the time, like the finger outward you know the projection

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Have my own mind onto other people. And so that is why I do what I do now. Because I realized that fundamental that fundamental learning or discovery that the this, this world is just reflecting back to me my own mind, and what’s going on up here. And so that’s what I work with people on really, if we just whittle it down and get really to the heart of it, I help people work with their minds. Because the mind is what is the cause of the your experience of reality, like whatever is happening in the mind, in your mind? And

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so you change the mind. You change your world, the whole world changes. So that’s what I do. I really work with beliefs, and limiting beliefs. And we can call it all kinds of things I can I call it mental yoga, I

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call it self inquiry.

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One of the main tools I use for it is something called The Work of Byron Katie, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of that. But I have. Yeah, so I do a lot of

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self inquiry in in that way. And there’s a lot of things we do, but not Dallas wasn’t Dallas, and it wasn’t my my edge. But

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the 2020s are tough, man.

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Yeah, 20s 20s were tough. For sure. A lot of uh,

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I was I was just thinking about this. Yesterday, I was writing about how

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Socrates talked about how the unexamined life is not worth living. And I feel like a lot of us, many of us in this is myself included, feel as you felt feel we’re trapped. And we realize, oh, my gosh, I am doing all the things that were supposed to make me happy that I thought were going to I pursued and worked hard to get them. And now here I am, in this prison of my own design, which makes it extra, extra sucky. So how do I how do I break free, and the only way is to certainly go on a journey. But it doesn’t need to be your leaving New Geography, because, but you do need to figure out how to how to shift things up. Yes. And you know, and that’s the thing is I like to ground a lot of my teaching and in the innocence in the innocent nature of the mind to like, how innocent is we just, we don’t know what we don’t know. And we can’t know it. And that’s how it’s innocent. It’s like, there’s no way I could have done it differently. It was what was going on for me at the time. And it was, so it was honest in that way.

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I was honestly believing the thoughts in my mind. And that’s really, all any of us are ever doing is just innocently believing the things that are moving through our minds without stopping to question it, or stopping to really look and slow down enough to notice what what’s happening in the mind and how quickly I attached to the stories that are going through the mind. And so that’s what was happening for me in my 20s I’m thinking Dallas sucks. My husband sucks everything, you know, all of these people suck, and I just believe it. And I never was taught like how to no one ever said Susan.

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You don’t have to believe everything that goes through your mind. You know.

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So now I I tried to tell myself and other people if they’re interested, and how to do that, like, how to go through that process. What kind of a weird thing, right? That just because the thoughts are in my brain or in my mind, and I’m thinking them and I’m feeling doesn’t make it true or accurate. But until I sort of have that wake up moment, then why would I do anything other than just assume that they’re correct, because they’re mine.

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That’s it. i No one had told me and then I started my practice meditation and really just becoming the word is awareness. You know, just aware, aware of the thoughts first of all, being just becoming aware of what’s going on in the mind and being able to identify thoughts because they happen so fast, you know, but most of us were just like, happening happening happening and I call it like being dreamed. We’re being dreamed we’re not doing it on purpose. I’m not sitting here like thinking okay, I’m gonna think this next, right? It’s a happening and in that way, it’s innocent, because it’s just I’m being dreamed past future.

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past, future, past, future, and asleep, do it. But then, and we can wake up and somebody comes along and helps us out, we get a good teacher a good guide that’s like, hey,

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stop, wake up. What? What’s happening in your mind right now? And notice that it’s just imagination? It’s not actually

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the physical reality, you know, like, what’s happening in the physical reality is usually there’s not ever really a problem.

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It’s just the story that we make about it.

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And so,

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yeah, and how does how does yoga fit in? Well, that is yoga. Really, I mean, yoga is the realization of your truest nature. And it’s so yoga is who you would be without your story.

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Who you would be without the story of past future?

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And so that’s

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what is underneath all of that, what is the thing that does not change? Because all of this stuff is temporary? Right? All of this stuff has the beginning and an end of birth and death, the physical body? Thoughts?

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All of that is temporary. So Yoga is the like, what is Is there something that does not change the absolute? Or some people would call it God?

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Yoga is a system for self realization, capital F, self. And so yoga asks that question, Who am I? Who am I? Meaning, who is that self, capital F itself? Who is, and

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that is the way that I help people. I mean, outside of Asana, which is physical postures, we actually, you know, I do yoga, the,

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the way that

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most of us do yoga, when we think of that word yoga, and I also do yoga in this mental way. But meaning, just to notice thoughts, identify thoughts, become aware of what’s happening in the mind, and

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then contemplate contemplation and meditation, for the realization of what you’re not.

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So that you can realize the truth of what you are, and who you are.

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And I Yeah, and so a lot of people,

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separate mind and body, you know, you hear that a lot like Mind, Body Spirit.

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In my mind, it’s the same, they’re one in the same, they can’t be separated, mind body go together. So if you work with the mind, body follows, it could be no other way.

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So I work with both. And to me, also, when you work with body, you work with mind, right? They’re very bidirectional. They work together. So I wanted to clarify that, you know, when I say mind, I’m not sick for your listeners, for everyone listening out there. And like when I say mind, I’m not making a hard separation or delineation between mind and body to me. They are one in the same you work with one the other follows.

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I love it. So the the course the yoga sex and death course, there is the physical movement that most of us think about when we think about yoga. Yes. And then there’s, there’s there’s training, which will teach me

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how to do the things that we’ve been talking about, and then make it a consistent practice. Yes,

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yes. Yeah. So I basically help people understand some principles of yoga. And then we take those principles of yoga and apply them to

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you sexuality, healing, our sexual selves, looking at our sexual selves. And I mean, like the psychological sexual self, and understanding what’s blocking us from intimacy on all levels, and not just physically, like, true intimacy. And so you can see, I don’t know so that connection to yoga, it’s the intimacy with

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God or source, whatever word works.

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For you, it’s different for everyone but that intimacy with self capital S self and then once that’s there, okay, how do I do

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translate that to others bring others in. And, and then ultimately we get into to death and death in the metaphorical sense like death of the ego.

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As well as the big let go of death of the physical body. So it’s not just ego death that we’re talking about. But we do go through the Tibetan Buddhist practices for what happens when what that tradition

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says happens when the physical body dies. And we get into why somebody would want to be prepared for that. For me, it’s like the ultimate thing. It’s at the heart of my life, like, let’s prepare now, that’s what this life is about. And one of the ways we do that is exactly with what I’m talking about Georgia, like this, this

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Who am I without my story,

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it goes so deep, and it feels sometimes like a death, to let go of this person. That I think I know, like, This is who I am.

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This is the life this this life, this body, these people, this is who I am.

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And we, we question, all of those things, and to do that can feel very scary and confronting, but also on the other side of it is, oh, my goodness, freedom and peace

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and love to all of the things.

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So, who am I am I I grew up here, I did this thing. And then I went to this school and now I did this work, and I’m involved with these things. Well, no, that’s not who you are. Those are just things that you’ve done. Let’s actually explore and peel back the things you’ve done and remove your story from who you actually are.

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Yes, for, you know, I feel like a very inclusive way that feels a little gentler for me is to say, okay, and you are these things and and, you know, so because there’s different perspectives from different spiritual traditions and yogic traditions that get into these, you are not the body and some say, Yes, you are. And and from a tantric perspective, the tantric perspective would say, I am these things also. And, and there’s more to the story, that’s not the period at the end of the sentence.

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These things are real, and, and it is.

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And there’s more. And the truest part, you know, meaning the thing that does not die.

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What is that? And let’s know that because most of us are very well versed in knowing all of this, like who I am in terms of my name, and my body and my job and where I live, and all of those things, most of us have that down.

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So this is about now let’s

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let’s

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look a little deeper.

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That’s a much more delicate and nuanced and appropriate way to say what I did. So thank you.

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I’m with you, though. I’m with you. I mean, I

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that is it.

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The

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thinking about your actual death

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does that help to?

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Does that help help also inform perspective? If if, if I if I face and come to terms, or if that’s the right term or not, you understand what I’m asking? Yes. Yes. Well, it has for me.

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And so that is the experience that I speak to and I’m curious about, what about you for you, when you think about death, and your own death? Does it? How do you feel? What does it do for you? Does it do anything?

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I think about it, and I think about it almost every day I visualize it. And I try and use it as a tool to hasten My my actions and to give myself a greater sense of urgency and importance for what I’m doing.

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Yeah, amazing. I got goosebumps I do it every day. That’s it’s so rare that I hear that because that is often something that is scary for us to talk about. And

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you can then you can speak to this and and I imagine that you

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It is a practice that does put things into perspective in your life and also creates a certain kind of freedom.

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Because when you confront this fear of death, and

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work with it, and stay in relationship with it, it can’t help but change everything in your life. Because there’s a certain freedom that comes

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with the relieving of that fear. It’s like, wow, my life opens up. Because that fear of, of dying

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is no longer there. But it does, it does really put things into perspective. And

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I feel like there’s so many lessons in death that are lessons for life there. There’s a book called The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by so y’all Rinpoche. And I carry I’ve carried that book with me for years, I travel so much. And it’s like one of the books that I just carried with me. And the reason that I carry it with me is because I feel like it’s a manual for life. And when people say, to me, it’s Susan, like, this is so morose, you’re, you’re thinking about death all the time. And I don’t feel that way. Like, I feel like I have a manual for life. Because there’s so much that death has to teach us about life. I mean, a concrete example, I’m going to, I’ll give you is, because it’s fresh of mind. That was talking about it just a couple days ago.

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Two things that that the tradition says, the gift you can give somebody who’s dying, is to say two things to them before they die. And one is I give you permission, I give you permission to die, and to. I’ll be okay.

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And I just, it’s so moving to me to hear those words.

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And I think that there’s so much for me, at least to learn about that in life.

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Because how often do we

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hold on to people or hold on to our ideas about what people should do, and how they should be. Because they need to take care of us emotionally in some way.

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And how loving it feels to be able to let somebody go, I mean,

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for their own sake,

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and that really feel like love to me. And I feel like that’s just something that I work with, in life. So there’s that’s just a small example of how studying death and what happens when you die can help

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you in life, and you’re relating, and your intimacy with others and your intimacy with yourself. So I love it. I think that that’s super powerful.

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Very bold of that human being to have titled The book that they wrote The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. So I appreciate I appreciate audacity

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to write this I know.

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Yeah, I’d be

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curious to hear your thoughts. You should you know, read it. See what you think. It’s, it’s me. Absolutely. Pick up a copy of it. I wrote it down. I will pick it up.

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And we’ll do a follow up, Susan. Yeah, we should. I would love it. I would love to join you again. We can talk all about it. Perfect.

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Susan, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you the soma rasa center? And where can they do the or find the course yoga, sex and death.

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So you can go to summer rasa center.com and also our Instagram, you can follow us on Instagram because we post it’s very current. Our website is as well. I offer yoga sex and death in as level one.

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It is in retreat form intensive retreat form. You can also do it as a six week course. There’s one happening in January in LA with one of

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an amazing facilitator that I’ve trained over the years to do this work. And you can also take yoga, sex and death as an online self paced course it’s called Yoga sex and death basics. So there’s a few different entry points into how to take yoga sex and death.

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I’m depending on what you’re ready for. And then I have a Wi Fi level two, the second death Level Two for those people who are wanting to go deeper. And that is, those are eight modules over eight months. And then there’s the other second death level three,

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which is the facilitator training, you can find all of that information on summer off center.com.

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And you can stay up to date you can also sign up for our newsletter

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through our Instagram profile. So please do I just there’s nothing that fulfills me more than to

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hold this container for people willing to go inside and do their deep work. Yeah, love it.

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As much as I did show, Susan your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas go to summer rasa center.com S A M A R A S A center.com. And check out everything that we’ve been talking about today and then follow Susan in the summer ASA center on Instagram as well certainly link all those in the notes of the show. Yeah.

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Thank you.

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And until next time, remember, do your part by doing your best

Transcribed by https://otter.ai