Age Like a Yogi With Victoria Moran [Episode 979]

This Week’s Episode: 

In this enlightening conversation, Kimberly interviews Victoria Moran, author of ‘Age Like a Yogi.’ They explore the themes of aging gracefully, the importance of community and role models, and the spiritual practices that enhance well-being. Victoria shares her insights on living a plant-based lifestyle, the essence of Ojas,and how to navigate modern challenges with self-care and connection. The discussion emphasizes the power of positivity, the significance of nourishing oneself, and the beauty of embracing change as we age. They also explore the intersection of diet, spirituality, and ethical living. They discuss the balance between raw and cooked foods, the importance of compassion in food choices, and the principles of Ayurveda. 

About Victoria Moran

Victoria Moran is a longtime devotee of yoga and author of 13 previous books on wellbeing, compassionate living, and eclectic spirituality. Creating a Charmed Life was an international bestseller, and Shelter for the Spirit and Lit from Within earned her spots on The Oprah Winfrey Show. She hosts the Main Street Vegan Podcast, is founder and director of Main Street Vegan Academy, and a cofounder of the Compassion Consortium, an interfaith spiritual center based on the principle of ahimsa. She was, at age 66, voted Peta’s Sexiest Vegan Over 50 and in her early 70s trained as a yoga instructor (RYT-200) and raja yoga instructor. Victoria is a frequent speaker and podcast guest. She is based in New York City. For more information visit https://victoriamoran.com.

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Guest Resources

Book: AGE LIKE A YOGI 

Website: https://victoriamoran.com/

Episode Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Victoria Moran and Her Journey

03:07 Aging Gracefully: The Yogi Perspective

05:59 The Power of Community and Role Models

09:02 Living from the Heart: Spiritual Practices

12:05 Navigating Modern Challenges: Self-Care and Connection

14:57 Embracing Change: Aging and Personal Growth

18:00 The Essence of Ojas: Nourishing Life Force

20:59 Connecting with Spiritual Teachers and Wisdom

29:12 The Balance of Raw and Cooked Foods

31:25 Ethics of Food Choices and Compassion

35:46 Living a Plant-Based Life: Personal Experiences

39:40 Ahimsa: The Principle of Non-Harming

40:49 Exploring the Yamas and Niyamas

46:10 Understanding Ojas and Its Importance

51:43 Urban Living and Spiritual Practices

59:50 Core Messages of Aging Gracefully

 

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KIMBERLY’S BOOKS

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• Recipes For Your Perfectly Imperfect Life
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OTHER PODCASTS YOU MAY ENJOY!

• Wellness Insights: How to Listen to Your Body for Nutritional Guidance [Episode 878]
• How the Power Foods Diet helps with Weight Loss with Dr. Neal Barnard EP. 877
• How Not to Age with New York Times best-selling author Dr. Michael Greger [Episode #873]
• How to eat to reduce anxiety with Harvard nutritional psychiatrist Dr. Uma Naidoo [Episode #867]

 

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Transcript:

Kimberly Snyder (00:01.058)
Hi everyone and welcome back to our Monday interview show. I am so excited for our beautiful guest today, Victoria Moran. She has a new book out called Age Like a Yogi, a Heavenly Path to a Dazzling Third Act. This is the author of 13 previous books. My gosh, Victoria, people always comment, I’ve written eight books, but I love how prolific you are that inspires me so much.

She is an international bestseller. She’s been on the Oprah Winfrey Show. She hosts a long time running Main Street Vegan podcast. She’s the director of the Main Street Vegan Academy and she was at age 66, voted to be the sexiest vegan over 50. Victoria, I had to say that so fun. Thank you so much for being here with us today.

Victoria Moran (00:44.056)
You

Victoria Moran (00:48.569)
You

Victoria Moran (00:53.849)
thank you. It’s such a pleasure.

Kimberly Snyder (00:57.09)
You and I follow a similar lifestyle. I’ve been plant-based for many years and my kids have been plant-based since conception. They’re four and eight, they’re exceptionally healthy, but it’s always great to hear from someone living a similar lifestyle that’s a little bit longer just to see that it doesn’t have to, we don’t have to compromise or shift at different periods of time.

Victoria Moran (01:15.993)
Okay.

Kimberly Snyder (01:23.694)
We hear all these ideas about which we’ll talk about in a moment, protein and calcium and just all sorts of things. There’s so many different aspects to the lifestyle today besides diet, but I could say for me, it was a relief to be able to raise my children and continue to raise them plant-based. So thank you for sharing how exuberant and radiant and energetic and…

you amazing the lifestyle can be into our 50s and beyond.

Victoria Moran (01:55.065)
Well beyond in my case, I’ll be 75 this month. And I knew when I was younger, what 75 was supposed to be. It was basically supposed to be when you start kind of leaning forward and you know, you probably maybe getting your affairs in order. Cause you don’t know how much longer you have. Well, that’s true. Nobody knows how much longer we have. And yet I have to say that even when I was very young, I had amazing role models for being older.

Kimberly Snyder (02:00.142)
my god.

Kimberly Snyder (02:23.502)
Mmm.

Victoria Moran (02:24.813)
I was around a lot of very cool spiritual women who were older and in some cases quite a bit older. And when you see that somebody has walked the path before you, then it’s not a scary place to keep on walking.

Kimberly Snyder (02:38.67)
Well, I say, oh my gosh, because if anyone is watching this on YouTube or if you guys are listening to this Spotify or Apple, please look up Victoria now because you look like you’re, you 50, which shows the power of again, the energy and the potential. you and I were speaking earlier about Paramahansa Yogananda, who I write and speak about so much. And one of the things he says, Victoria, and you echo this in your book, he talks about not

Victoria Moran (02:51.815)
Aww.

Kimberly Snyder (03:07.192)
really telling people your chronological age. And people would always wonder how old he was. And he didn’t say it because he said it reinforced karma and it reinforced mental ideas about what we’re supposed to look like when we’re 50 or 80 or 30, right? And that our souls are timeless and we’ve been here many times. And so there’s this energy that we can identify with, which you speak about in your book as well.

Victoria Moran (03:24.715)
Yes.

Victoria Moran (03:33.209)
Well, who was, oh, Carol Channing, the wonderful Broadway singer, Hello Dolly. We lost her, I believe, at 98 a few years ago, but she was a Christian scientist. And so just like Yogananda, she never told anybody her age because in Christian science, matter is not real. And so what’s the point of saying how old it is because it’s not real anyway. But when she was 83 and in a revival on Broadway and dancing like

Kimberly Snyder (03:54.178)
Yeah

Victoria Moran (04:02.553)
crazy, eight shows a week, she decided, you know what, I think it’s more to the good now if I start telling people. And she did. And another role model, we can have the ones we really know and the ones that we see from afar. It’s kind of like spiritual teachers. There are those who are close to us who are living in the body right now, and then others who are not in the body, but they’re definitely with us in spirit.

Kimberly Snyder (04:03.607)
you

Kimberly Snyder (04:10.798)
Mm.

Kimberly Snyder (04:29.818)
well, it’s these, the way shower, right? Because we live in a world as you know, Victoria, which has a lot of information, but there can be a lot of fear, a lot of these very sort of rigid mind concepts, again, about age groups and what we’re supposed to be, you know, worried about. And then to see someone like yourself embodying a radiant energy, which is not dimmed by, you know, going around the sun a couple more times. It is really,

It’s amazing.

Victoria Moran (05:01.443)
Well, and I think that’s one of the wonderful thing about the communities that grow up in the plant-based world, in the eclectic spirituality world. There’s a lot more acceptance of everybody at every phase. And I think it’s part of being human that we tend to get clicky and we tend to be tribal. And anybody who’s different from us in any way, we try to find ways for where we are.

Kimberly Snyder (05:15.598)
We’ll right

Kimberly Snyder (05:27.959)
Yes.

Victoria Moran (05:28.533)
my worldview, my generation, my, my, my is going to be better than somebody else’s. But when you really get it and when you come into community with people who are really looking for the higher light, and it doesn’t have to be the exact same thing, you know, we’re not clones of each other, but we can be so inspired and impressed and led by one another into our own truth, even if it looks a little different.

Kimberly Snyder (05:59.32)
So true, Victoria, I know if you’re looking for dust, if you’re looking for soot or dirt, you’ll find it, right? If we start to pick apart, it’s very mental. And for me, just going deeper into the heart and the heart work you and I were talking about earlier, there’s a simplifying in a way. Like you said, looking to the light in others and in ourselves. Yogananda talks about really focusing on the beauty so you can become more beautiful. And there’s this…

expansiveness, this energetic expansiveness. And also, like I said, it feels more simple. Like when we go to the heart, it’s like, you know, maybe they’re having a tough day or this part of them is really, you know, the wonderful part that I connect to. So it’s not so nitty gritty, which I think also dilutes our own energy and our well-being for sure.

Kimberly Snyder (06:54.508)
So, Victoria, I love this quote in your book. I wanted to pull it up because I love how you, you you talk about some really inspiring people and you were talking about Iris, this woman that you knew in the library. And you write, Iris was a beauty as she approached 80 because she had been relating to her inner being for so long that she remained young in all the ways that mattered. And then…

Victoria Moran (07:03.873)
Aww.

Kimberly Snyder (07:19.214)
I’ll skip ahead a little bit and then you write, everything about the way she came across expressed vitality and a youthful sense of wonder. This can happen for anyone who chooses to age like a yogi. So can you explain a little bit more about that, the inner being, the wonder, the vitality, what it is to age like a yogi?

Victoria Moran (07:34.681)
Sure.

Victoria Moran (07:39.649)
Right. Well, I think we’ve all seen it in people of any age who just have this incredible lightness about themselves. And very often it’s people who have been in some sort of spiritual tradition, on some spiritual path. And in the case of Iris, I was working at 20 and 21 at the headquarters of the Theosophical Society in America, outside Chicago. And in all honesty, the reason I was there

Kimberly Snyder (08:04.599)
One.

Victoria Moran (08:08.547)
was I was dealing at that time with a binge eating disorder. I’d had weight issues my whole childhood. My dad was a diet doctor, which I’m sure complicated things, but I had lost a lot of weight and a popular weight loss program. And then it just came back like a vengeance. I mean, I gained so much weight that in my hometown of Kansas City, I was walking on the other side of the street so nobody would see me. So I thought if I can get a job at the Theosophical Society, then

You can live and work there and they feed you wonderful vegetarian food and I will come back after a year and I will be transformed and you know, all will be well. Well, it didn’t exactly work out that way, but I learned so many things there because my job was as an assistant in the library. Now, Iris wasn’t a regular employee. She lived in the town, Wheaton, Illinois, but she had studied theosophy and all kinds of Eastern.

Kimberly Snyder (09:02.638)
you

Victoria Moran (09:02.849)
religions, Western mysticism for very long time and not just studied but really lived and practiced. So we would call her in whenever we needed extra help. And she had white hair around her head and braids and she had wrinkles and she was almost 80 and this was the 1970s. And yet she just lit up a room and I couldn’t figure it out.

It’s like, wait a minute, you know, what’s going on here? I’m supposed to have the bloom of youth and she’s the one that’s lighting up the room. And I remember once saying, I don’t know, complaining about something. And she said, the darling physical play. And I remember thinking, okay, this woman has something that I need. So I’m going to listen to her. I’m also going to stand closer to her and see if I can catch some of it.

Kimberly Snyder (09:35.182)
Mwah.

Kimberly Snyder (09:53.24)
Wow.

Victoria Moran (09:55.905)
And you know, Kimberly, what I have seen, not just from Iris, but from so many amazing women, and I’ve had great men spiritual teachers too, but for this lesson, the women have really been the ones who have carried this message that when you see what’s going on around you in the material world, you address it, you do the next indicated thing, you do what needs to be done. It’s not like ignoring the plane that we’re in now.

Kimberly Snyder (10:07.649)
Yes.

Victoria Moran (10:24.419)
But when you’re really living from more of a point of view of the real and the eternal and what’s real, to me, the divine is real. It’s this life in each of our hearts and the hearts of everybody listening, in the hearts of all people and animals and trees and others. And I know trees don’t have hearts, but it’s all this beautiful expression of the divine.

Kimberly Snyder (10:35.352)
Yes.

Victoria Moran (10:51.671)
And when we can see more of that in everybody, we get along better. And when we can see more of that in ourselves, we’re healthier and I think we age better.

Kimberly Snyder (11:02.094)
a hundred percent, because it’s that flow from source, that energy that goes through. But how would you say, or what would you say to someone, Victoria, because we are in this physical plane and sometimes it can feel quite, let’s say, heavy, confusing, information heavy, right? Because of the world of TikTok and just media all the time and all the messages that we hear. think this is where…

practice comes in and we’ll talk about in your book you have so many aspects of the lifestyle because if we don’t keep reinforcing that connection it can sound great theoretically but then living it we start to you know we have to really live it constantly

Victoria Moran (11:44.983)
Yeah. Well, we hear about self care and somebody wrote a book a few years ago about how self care can be its own kind of dragnet that we get caught in like, my gosh, I have to do this and this and this. But the reality is with the world being the way it is now, we do have to go, I think out of our way to, to find the light, to find the truth. I mean, I.

Kimberly Snyder (12:05.784)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria Moran (12:11.629)
went on a new social media platform yesterday. Somebody said, you have to go on this new one and leave this old one. So I thought, pardon? Blue Sky, which is supposed to be Twitter with heart. And evidently, it’s set up so that you can connect with people who have things in common with you more easily or something like that. And obviously, I’m not a digital native, but I always like to try new things.

Kimberly Snyder (12:18.914)
What’s it called? What’s the new one called? Okay.

Kimberly Snyder (12:27.982)
Thanks.

Victoria Moran (12:41.163)
And so I did. And the first thing that happened was I got this really creepy direct message. And it’s like, I’ve been here two minutes, two and a half minutes. And that’s as long as it took for some of that energy that I don’t want in my life to come through there. And it’s like we tell kids, talk to strangers. And yet we go online where every stranger in the world is hanging out.

So we have created a world full of incredible possibilities. I mean, what actually could happen when people can communicate with one another instead of dropping bombs on one another. It’s stunning. It’s splendid. We’ve done it, except we’ve done it in a way that is not necessarily being used well. So that’s where all the spiritual practice, the self-care, getting out in nature,

Kimberly Snyder (13:33.934)
Right.

Victoria Moran (13:40.907)
Even just getting out, I’m a very urban person and I just love getting out in New York city and, and, know, being where that energy is. I think we need to know ourselves really well. One of the wisest things anybody ever told me was you have to find places to recognize yourself. And I think if we do that every day, it just reinforces that yes, we’re all the great.

Kimberly Snyder (13:47.758)
Right.

Kimberly Snyder (14:02.381)
Hmm.

Victoria Moran (14:09.303)
wonderful energy of Brahman, no descriptions. And yet we’re also ourselves with our very nice descriptions. And to just honor that, and not just every once in a while, but really every day because there’s so much of the other stuff coming in.

Kimberly Snyder (14:14.444)
Yes.

Kimberly Snyder (14:27.722)
Yes, it’s true to have that balance and to have that connection through the day. know, my husband, Victoria, he goes from call to call and he doesn’t have his, you I have a morning practice, meditation and evening. And so I said to him, just take a couple pauses, you know, through the day to start, at least to keep connecting, even if it’s just two minutes in between some of your meetings and your calls. And then,

I can just see how much even these little changes, if someone’s starting from a very busy lifestyle, just to start to connect back in, and these little pauses can start to nurture that connection back online. And then we can go deeper into the lifestyle as well if we choose to.

Victoria Moran (15:16.429)
There is so much that can happen from so little. Just five minutes of meditation, five minutes when you get up in the morning of a couple of sun salutations. mean, it’s not necessarily that we have to be off at 10-day silent retreats four or five times a year. It’s just taking a little time and remembering that this life can be a wonderful adventure.

Kimberly Snyder (15:20.642)
Yes.

Kimberly Snyder (15:30.712)
Yeah.

Kimberly Snyder (15:35.767)
Hold up.

Victoria Moran (15:45.769)
And it’s also a great way to lift others up who maybe haven’t had much adventurous experience yet, but maybe can with, with some help and some influence and some guidance. So I think it’s, it’s a grand adventure that can be really, really difficult. And the older you get, the harder it can get because as every

Kimberly Snyder (15:56.611)
Right.

Kimberly Snyder (16:12.355)
Hmm.

Victoria Moran (16:14.745)
life form, you know, it’s born or hatched or grows up out of the ground and it grows, it matures, it has the opportunity to reproduce and then things start going downhill a bit and eventually, you know, we’re out and onto that next adventure. And yet actually being in that time of life when things, even for people who are very healthy and very positive and all that, things in the physical world

start to diminish and to be in a place of poise for allowing some of that to go. And then of course, having all the wonderful health habits. We talk a lot about Ayurveda, you know, for making many of the negative aspects of being older less or even not exist at all. But even with all that, it’s a fact.

Kimberly Snyder (17:05.687)
Yes.

Victoria Moran (17:10.669)
It’s like so many other things. It’s like the facts are here, we deal with them, and then there’s the truth with a capital T and we live that.

Kimberly Snyder (17:13.612)
The way of things.

Kimberly Snyder (17:19.086)
So at this phase in your life, Victoria, do you feel, and I know you have tools for coming back to center, but do you still feel longings for when you were younger physically or do you, I mean, are you really at a place where you said, wow, look at this journey and I would never wish to be 20 again?

Victoria Moran (17:37.291)
No, I would never wish to be 20 again. And I don’t think most people would. Would you? I mean, you’re young, but would you wish to be 20?

Kimberly Snyder (17:44.982)
No, and I also struggled with eating disorders when I was 16 in high school. And I think about how through this lifestyle, how easeful my relationship is now with food and just day to day. And I think, wow, like, thank gosh I’ve evolved because there’s a lot of challenges. I had a lot of challenges growing up, you know.

Victoria Moran (17:48.653)
Ha

Victoria Moran (17:55.778)
Yes.

Victoria Moran (18:00.728)
Yeah.

Victoria Moran (18:04.279)
Yeah, yeah. Well, I think all of life has challenges. It’s sort of like if you really want to change careers or if you really want to move to a different location and you figure out how to do that and the universe is not there saying, no, no, no, you have to stay where you are. I won’t let you move. The universe is like, fine, do whatever you want to do. But whatever you need to meet to learn and grow, you’re going to meet.

In this new place, you know, it’ll have different names, it’ll look different, but it’s the same lesson. And so that’s how I feel about being older. You know, the lessons that I’m learning now, the challenges I’m faced with now are different from the ones I was facing before, but I think it’s all on time, doing fine. That we’re up for what’s presented.

Kimberly Snyder (18:52.493)
Yes.

Victoria Moran (19:01.109)
And especially if we’ve been lucky enough to be introduced to some of these ideas early on.

Kimberly Snyder (19:09.782)
And so at this point in your life, we know the growth continues, the curiosity, the expansion, the evolution. It’s not this mental idea of, stagnation, because the physical plane is diminishing. But actually, think I read Eckhart Tolle wrote once when the form starts to, life starts to get less physical, actually more of the light can shine through. Has that been your experience?

Victoria Moran (19:34.777)
Well, it certainly has been in these role models that I’m talking about. I mean, these people that I have known over the years, they’re just like these light bulbs. And one of the ones that I talk about several times in Age Like a Yogi is my first yoga teacher. I discovered yoga when I was 17, when you had to discover it, because people didn’t know what it was except that it was foreign and maybe it was a fermented.

Kimberly Snyder (19:44.876)
Wow.

Victoria Moran (20:01.325)
dairy product. They just didn’t know. They got confused. Just stay away from anything that starts with yo. But of course, to me, that made it all the more enticing. So there were three books in the Kansas City, Missouri Public Library at that time. And I read them all over and over. And then I moved to London to ostensibly go to fashion school. But what happened instead was I discovered a beautiful little bookshop called Watkins.

Kimberly Snyder (20:03.841)
you

Kimberly Snyder (20:18.894)
Hmm

Victoria Moran (20:26.541)
which is a spiritual bookstore and a little alley street near Trafalgar Square called Cecil Court. And I mean, that was just like walking into the most magical place on earth because there were all these books about all these things that I was fascinated by. didn’t even know they existed. And there was a little sign hanging up about yoga classes in Manchester street. And I went and that was Stella Cherfus, my first teacher.

Kimberly Snyder (20:45.634)
Then.

Victoria Moran (20:56.387)
Well, she is now 99. She’ll turn 100 in May. She teaches a chair yoga class every week. She lives in a third floor walkup and she hosts a women’s salon every Sunday morning. And the only rule is no opinion is out of bounds. You can say whatever your truth is. So that’s Stella. And yes, she was fabulous in her 40s teaching me back.

Kimberly Snyder (20:59.447)
Wow.

Victoria Moran (21:26.221)
years and years ago, but who she is now. I mean, it’s, it’s night and day. So, we’re so lucky to, be able to access people, you know, in person and, and, know, even online. And then we’ve, were talking before the show about Florence Scovel Shin, whose most famous book was the game of life and how to play it. And every now and then.

Kimberly Snyder (21:33.186)
That’s what.

Kimberly Snyder (21:46.828)
Yeah.

Victoria Moran (21:52.441)
Nobody can speak to my condition like Florence and I have to pull out those books again. I’m going through a time like that now. And it’s just wonderful that we have all this access to all this wisdom.

Kimberly Snyder (21:58.156)
Yes.

Kimberly Snyder (22:04.536)
Yes.

Kimberly Snyder (22:08.109)
I think it is really powerful to connect, like you said, to these role models or to these way showers, know, for teachers, for me, Yogananda has been such a continual, I just have his books all over my house, a continual source of connecting back. Even if I read just a few lines every day, there’s a vibration in the words that I feel like, you know, helps my resonance come back to being more deeply attuned to source.

And what I also wanted to say when you were speaking about this, Victoria, it’s really beautiful, I think, to see that you’re so connected to self. And at the same time, you you can, you’re wearing a bit of makeup and maybe you colored your hair a bit because there’s these stereotypes sometimes like, the spiritual person like would never shave a hair on their body or is like completely natural. And yet, just because we are attuned to

the higher the true self, we are in the earth plane so we can also play with things that make us, you know, feel feminine and beautiful.

Victoria Moran (23:13.184)
Exactly.

Victoria Moran (23:18.635)
Yeah, and we can change. I was really looking forward to getting rid of the hair color that you mentioned, because I have been doing it a long time, and I got a VEDA, and it is less toxic and all that. I’m happy about that, cruelty-free. And yet I was looking at, you know what? This is spending time and money that at this phase of my life, I just don’t think I want to be involved in a whole lot longer.

And then the publisher came to me and said, we love your latest headshot. We want to put it on the book. And it’s like, okay. So I’ll keep coloring my hair for another year and go from there.

Kimberly Snyder (23:56.876)
Yeah. I love that you’re not attached to it. It’s like, this works for now. And if it goes, it goes. Because it’s that flexibility, it’s that fluidity again, that I feel like is so youth enhancing instead of rigid way.

Victoria Moran (24:13.057)
Yeah. And allowing people to do things their own way. So certainly allowing people to age in their own way. I mean, I don’t get fillers and Botox and things like that, but somebody who wants to, it’s not my business. It’s not to say, it’s like, you know, help yourself. It’s, you know, I think in that

Kimberly Snyder (24:32.064)
Any judgment?

Victoria Moran (24:39.457)
ease of allowing people to find their own way, then we kind of allow ourselves to find our own.

Kimberly Snyder (24:45.898)
Yes, yes, it’s back to that focusing on the light versus the nitpicking, which is so true. Like that fragmented energy, you can feel it when you judge or you’re picking on someone, it actually affects your energy fields.

Victoria Moran (24:52.153)
Exactly.

Kimberly Snyder (25:05.198)
So I loved how you talked about Ojas in the book. And we hear about Pranamo, we hear about life force energy. Can you speak a little bit about Ojas, the qualities, how we enhance it in our own

Victoria Moran (25:16.793)
And everything that I say in the book about Ayurveda is as a lay person. You know, I’m not a doctor. I’ve taken some courses, but I’m certainly not an expert. I’m just someone who has benefited from it so, so tremendously. So, Ojas is the inner essence of kapha dosha. And if you’re familiar at all with Ayurveda, you know, we’ve got vata pitta kapha dosha’s. And as we get older, regardless of what

Kimberly Snyder (25:29.228)
Yes, it’s it.

Victoria Moran (25:47.033)
Prakriti, what dosha makeup you were born with, which is always yours, you do after kind of mid fifties start to be more influenced by Vata. And many of the signs of aging are signs of excess Vata. So a little bit less plumpness in the tissues, seeing bones and veins in your hands, creakiness of joints.

Kimberly Snyder (26:04.654)
Mmm.

Victoria Moran (26:15.161)
some fear and anxiety, getting cold, some of these things. It’s excess vata. And we can, of course, work with that by pacifying the vata. But something that we can do kind of coming in from behind on is to enhance this inner essence of kapha, which is called ojas. And if you think of ojas, I’ve heard it described as a beautiful golden fluid.

which is a little bit misleading because it’s not in the physical body. You couldn’t go to a phlebotomist and say, okay, I want to see what my ojus is doing these days, because it’s not there. It’s an, yes. And so the ways that we increase this wonderful element, which is like the juiciness of life, the juiciness of youth, it’s kind of the quality that we see in people when they’re in love or when a woman is.

Kimberly Snyder (26:54.638)
with the next-door energy.

Victoria Moran (27:13.049)
pregnant or when somebody’s just back from a wonderful relaxing retreat or terrific vacation. There’s just this essence of delight about them that maybe wasn’t there before. So how we get this, number one, is to really look at our digestion because oediasis is developed when all of our datus, all of our tissues are well nourished.

And that’s not something like, okay, I ate clean today. Am I going to have more OJAS tomorrow? It’s going to take a while. You want to give yourself some time to really nourish yourself well and follow some of those Ayurvedic recommendations. For example, to eat three times a day because your digestive fire is looking for something three times a day. To have your biggest meal in the middle of the day if you possibly can. That’s when your digestive fire is hottest.

Kimberly Snyder (27:39.564)
Mm.

Victoria Moran (28:06.701)
to eat foods that work well for your body in quantities that your body can handle. And this is going to help with everything to digest well so that your body has the energy to produce OJOS. And then you can help a little bit with some special foods that are said to be especially OJOS enhancing and some of those in…

citrus fruits, mangoes, pineapples, those really juicy kinds of fruits. Also dates, and if you’re somewhere that you could get a hold of fresh dates, the wonderful medjool dates that are available to anybody, anywhere are great, but fresh dates, they sell them in London on the stick. Let me just pull it off the tree on the stick and you can buy the dates. it’s just, they’re so, so good.

Kimberly Snyder (28:54.274)
Really?

Victoria Moran (28:58.595)
barley, it’s not a gluten-free grain, but it is a grain that is said to promote ojas. So anything that’s really just, it gives you that sense of liveliness. And green juice, for instance. So a lot of times Vata people don’t do well eating a whole lot of leafy greens, as health promoting as they are.

Kimberly Snyder (29:12.643)
Mmm.

Victoria Moran (29:23.011)
but they can be a little bit taxing to digest. So a of people are people in a lot of time of life. If we want to get those greens in, we should probably be having them cooked, maybe cooked with some oil that makes them a little heavier and a little more grounding. But you can also have the juice and then you just get that juicy essence. It’s kind of like a transfusion of youthfulness and lifts up your ojas quotient.

Kimberly Snyder (29:41.132)
Mm.

Kimberly Snyder (29:51.552)
I love that. I noticed in your book because we’re similar in that way, being plant-based, having an Ayurvedic influence. But I’ve talked about this with my teacher, Vidya J as well, Victoria, how sometimes and some Ayurvedic practitioners are not as much into the raw fruit all year round and the freshness, like everything’s more cooked, cooked and kichiri and dal and all that.

And I do really well with green smoothies. And we’ve talked about our glowing green smoothie for years and having that balance. And when I do eat cooked food, I do use warming spices, the cumin and the turmeric and the cardamom and so on. But I love that you do talk about this freshness in the green juice. Because it sounds like your philosophy is a hybrid and it’s a mix. Back to that not being rigid. Some people may do really well with cooked food all the time.

I certainly like having a mix so everybody’s bodies can teach them a little bit more refinement in their actual diet.

Victoria Moran (30:56.447)
Exactly. And the seasons play a big role where we live and what’s going on emotionally. Sometimes if we’re really dealing with a lot of taxing things, then our digestive capability is just not what it was last week. And that’s when something like Kitcharee is just really nice. But yeah, I think we decide

Kimberly Snyder (31:02.808)
Sure.

Kimberly Snyder (31:17.933)
Yeah.

Kimberly Snyder (31:22.185)
yeah.

Victoria Moran (31:25.923)
kind of what our line in the sand is in terms of food choices, lifestyle choices. So for me, my big line is I don’t want to eat something that causes the suffering of somebody else if I can possibly help it. And obviously I don’t always know, you know, I can buy some nice organic vegetables and I don’t know who the people were that picked those. So sometimes it’s up for grabs, but the reason that

Kimberly Snyder (31:42.616)
Right?

Victoria Moran (31:55.297)
I choose to be vegan is that’s, you know, I can at least know that I’m not harming animals to the degree that I’m aware of it. And I understand that little creatures are killed in agriculture and life on earth. It’s kind of tough, but we make a choice and we do, you know, the best we can. And some people would maybe say, well, yeah, and I want to add on to that, you know, to be gluten free. Cause I just know I feel a lot better when I’m not having gluten, even though the Ayurvedic books say that.

Bhat has fine, you know, with wheat. So, you know, it’s in a way other than your doctor or your nutritionist, it’s nobody else’s business. You just live in alignment with your highest values and allow those to lift as your, your character deepens, as you do more meditation, as your, your soul elevates. And I think that what we eat,

It also has something to do with that and that we’re eating some of these beautiful, you know, nice, clear, unprocessed kinds of foods. And we need our consciousness to match the kinds of cells we’re building with this food. And if not, very often people will say, I did that for a while. It didn’t work for me. I just couldn’t do that. And then you look at, well, maybe the.

Kimberly Snyder (33:05.559)
Yeah.

Victoria Moran (33:16.363)
the difference between the food and some of the other aspects of life. just weren’t matching.

Kimberly Snyder (33:21.334)
Yes. Yes, it’s so powerful. This temple we go to in Hawaii where we spend part of our time, Victoria, one of the monks, I was talking to him with the children and we were talking about how we’re plant-based and the kids often, they ask questions and we talk about it very openly. he’s, one of the monks said to my kids, you know, everything wants to live. And that is something that was so

simple and profound, but that my kids could really take away with. And we spend a lot of time, we feed the goats there, everyday carrots, like our neighbors goats, and we live in the farmland. And I ask them to really look deeply into these animals’ eyes, like these sentient beings, and to foster that deep sense of compassion, and that really connects with them. And of course, from my standpoint, it’s also easier on the environment.

Victoria Moran (33:53.411)
Yeah.

Kimberly Snyder (34:18.058)
And there’s so much health. There’s so many, you know, the micronutrients, the nutrients are so dense. And of course I say, you know, it’s not all or nothing because some people in our community are plant-based and some people are omnivores and there’s the spectrum. My husband is an omnivore and he’s in the wellness world too, Victoria. And he has a lot of information. like, he’s very, he’s more linear. He’s like, well, this doctor and this doctor’s, know, carnivore MD, like all these things. And I say, you know, things shift and change.

And there’s all kinds of research out there and papers. And my friend, Dan Buechner has come on here many times to talk about the Blue Zone. So you could see these historically, these communities, which are incredibly healthy and have so much longevity that are largely plant-based. But what I say for me that resonates is that these great teachers like Yogananda, pretty much all the yogis have taught to be vegetarian because of the impact.

Victoria Moran (34:56.729)
It’s great.

Kimberly Snyder (35:17.42)
it will have on your consciousness and on your meditation. And I feel light. feel like, you my spiritual progress, I just keep feeling more and more peace. And at the same time, and having read your book as well, I know you agree, it is quite easy to get enough protein and some of these things that were told over and over again. So I love to see where you are in your life, Victoria, in your 70s, living this life for a long time, healthy.

vital, your bones are healthy. It’s great to see that your calcium and your protein, everything is on point and we need not worry, especially if we’re putting some thought into our diet.

Victoria Moran (35:59.961)
Yeah, I have been vegetarian since 1969 and vegan since 1983. And I’m very grateful that it’s only done good things for me. And I didn’t even think that it would, because as I told you, I’d always struggled with overweight and all that. And when I went fully vegan, I had this idea, well, you will probably gain lots and lots of weight because you’re going to be eating all those carbs.

Kimberly Snyder (36:12.973)
Mm-mm.

Victoria Moran (36:28.109)
Well, what happened instead was that the weight fell off. And I also, I was doing inner work, Overeaters Anonymous, that 12 step program was very helpful for me in that way. But it’s just, the food is not an issue, food is lovely, it’s good. So for me, my overall, my line in the sand is not about nutrition. It’s about

Kimberly Snyder (36:28.151)
Right.

Victoria Moran (36:53.657)
the life of this other being. And I love what the monks said to your children. It’s very much like my favorite quotation, which comes from the Jane Saint Mahavira. And he said to every creature, their own life is very dear. And I had heard that quote before, but when it finally got to me was, oh, I don’t know, 15 years ago or so, I looked in my trash can and there was a very large bug that

Kimberly Snyder (37:09.262)
Ugh.

Kimberly Snyder (37:18.766)
Mm.

Victoria Moran (37:24.503)
was not in the realm of beautiful the way I decided who’s beautiful and who isn’t, kind of scary. And yet I saw this bug running around in this trash can trying desperately to get out because to that creature, his or her own life was indeed very dear. so it just, means to me that that’s really, really important.

And some people say, but I just can’t do it. It just doesn’t work for me. It’s just not for me. Well, I can’t tell another person what works for them or what’s for them. I do have a friend that says, well, I’m so sorry that that’s the way it is for you. And I know that you don’t want to harm living beings. So since you have to eat the way that you have to eat, would you consider karma offsets? So what’s a karma offset?

that is that you donate to animal welfare, animal rights organizations, or a farm sanctuary, you know, some money every month to kind of make up for the fact that you wouldn’t eat these animals if you didn’t have to. But since you have to, you kind of want to make up for that. It’s just it’s a very different way of looking at that. I know a lot of

Kimberly Snyder (38:37.901)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria Moran (38:46.925)
My fellow vegans and certainly myself for many years was like, no, try this, try this, do it this way. Maybe you weren’t doing it right. And I don’t want to argue with people anymore. I just want to state, you know, this is my truth and God bless you in your truth. And I have a feeling we’re all going to come out okay.

Kimberly Snyder (38:56.8)
Right.

Kimberly Snyder (39:01.485)
Yes.

Kimberly Snyder (39:05.23)
Yes, that’s so beautiful. I don’t want to judge people and I used to also get in arguments about calcium and dairy and the research about the osteoporosis in the countries where they have a lot of dairy. And now it’s like, you know, why? Like if people are on their own journey and they are living the way that feels good to them, you know, what I’m here to say and what you say in your book is, hey, here is a way.

that I would like to share that feels really great and has these benefits and also being a living embodiment of it, you know.

Victoria Moran (39:40.473)
Right. And I think too, as we look at Ahimsa as the basic moral first precept of yoga, how close can we get to that? And so often people say, oh, you know, it just wasn’t right for me to go vegan. So now I’m carnivore. Okay. Do we have to go that far? You know, maybe this beautiful thing that I was taught early on was to do the most good.

Kimberly Snyder (39:52.79)
Yes.

Kimberly Snyder (40:01.176)
Right.

Victoria Moran (40:10.219)
and the least harm possible today. And then, you you have to take that into your own meditation for what that means to you.

Kimberly Snyder (40:21.022)
yeah. Well, I love how you talk about, besides diet, you go into the yamas and the nyamas, these ways of lifestyle, which were such a structural part of living our lifestyle as yogis. It’s not just, you know, what we’re eating, but you talk about astaya. Astaya, am I saying that right? Sometimes the Sanskrit, I say my own way, non-stealing. And I love how you break it down. It’s not, of course, it’s not literally, you know,

taking a sweater from a store, but sometimes in a conversation, right? This, we just did a podcast on radical listening. Like if you’re here to be there for someone, not stealing the energy or pointing the focus back on yourself, or you just had a really beautiful way of talking about that. Can you explain a little bit more about the depth that we can take non-stealing?

Victoria Moran (41:16.377)
Yeah, I think we look at some of these moral precepts and we’re like, okay, I check that one off. I don’t steal anything. And yet when you really, really think about it, and one of the things I think you’re talking about is this idea of stealing somebody’s thunder. know, that when I think, you know, it’s if we’re maybe not feeling so great about ourselves and we need to like insert something to make us look better or feel better.

Kimberly Snyder (41:24.205)
Right.

Kimberly Snyder (41:33.249)
Yes.

Victoria Moran (41:46.335)
somebody shares something good that happened to them. That might be the only good thing that happened to them this week or this month. And to follow that up with, like, that’s great. But look what happened to me. It’s exactly. And it’s not, it doesn’t, I don’t think come from any kind of evil. It just comes from, I hurt too. I need some attention too. But

Kimberly Snyder (41:54.679)
Yeah.

Kimberly Snyder (41:59.324)
Wait, what nothing?

Kimberly Snyder (42:13.143)
Yes.

Victoria Moran (42:13.611)
As yogis, as we mature in yoga or whatever spiritual practice we’re doing, we sometimes need to just sit that out. And it’s difficult at first, because if we’re used to operating in the world in a certain way, it’s kind of hard to shift sometimes, but it wouldn’t be a practice if it was easy. If it really was just checked off the list automatically, then we wouldn’t need it to be Ayama.

Kimberly Snyder (42:28.215)
Yeah.

Kimberly Snyder (42:44.504)
That’s right. And it is a practice and there is our heart’s intuition that sometimes tells us, you know, let this go. You don’t need to speak and the ego doesn’t like it. Like you said, it can be challenging because we have these patterns, but the more we open up to that light, that guidance, it can be easier to follow over time. So I love again, how you broke things into lifestyle.

constructs and this whole way of being because as we know in the West sometimes people think of yoga just as asanas and poses which you also talk about but there’s so many other aspects but before we keep going down that path I want to just circle back before I forget Victoria about the ojas for a second because for anyone listening we’ve talked about the elements before and you talk about it being kapha but this is different than let’s say just the kapha guna or just because there is an imbalance of kapha

that we can have as well, which can manifest as slothfulness. So where’s the line between having OJUS and excess kaffa? So we can clarify.

Victoria Moran (43:51.393)
Right. Well, I think we need to be looking at ourselves and just kind of notice what’s going on. Am I being hyper today? Am I being aggressive and pushy? Or am I just being like, it’s just not worth it. I’m taking off today. And then as you understand more about Ayurveda, you start to see, hmm, I think one of those gunas might be a little bit out of whack there.

Kimberly Snyder (44:17.1)
Yes.

Victoria Moran (44:17.154)
But in truth, Kimberly, and again, I’m speaking as an Ayurvedic layperson here, I learned about Ujas years before I ever knew that it had anything to do with Kapodosha. I went to a beautiful Ayurvedic retreat center in Iowa, the Raj. And in one of the lectures there, this woman shared about

Kimberly Snyder (44:37.955)
Yeah.

Victoria Moran (44:43.833)
OJOS is if she was letting us in on this wonderful secret, like, you want to really know how to have the sparkling eyes and the radiant skin and the glow of good health for your whole life. And everybody’s kind of leaning in like, yeah, we want that. We want that. OJOS. And so many of these things kind of connect with each other. So we talk about those OJOS containing foods.

But you also can increase your ojas by increasing your sattva. So it’s a whole other listing of things. know, doshas are the bodily humors that also affect nature. And then we’ve got the gunas that are the elements of matter in the world. But when you think about living a sattvic life, so you’re having some time in nature.

Kimberly Snyder (45:33.806)
Yes.

Victoria Moran (45:42.061)
You’re listening to beautiful music. You’re doing spiritual practice. You’re hanging out with people you absolutely adore. You’re doing service. You’re looking at negative things that come into your life as well. Welcome teacher. What do you have to teach me? We don’t have to hang out in this relationship for a really long time, but let’s just do it right and let it go. And all these ways that’s increasing our Sattva. And then it kind of juxtaposes.

Kimberly Snyder (45:51.533)
Yes.

Kimberly Snyder (46:04.206)
Sure.

Victoria Moran (46:10.847)
The sadhva that’s more spiritual, the ojas is a little more etheric hyphen physical, but altogether as we lead this life of uplift, these beautiful things can happen. And so I think sometimes people get so confused because especially in Eastern teachings, which for most of us are not the culture we grew up in, know, none of these.

Kimberly Snyder (46:26.691)
Yes.

Victoria Moran (46:35.865)
none of these ideas are something that most of us were taught as children. And so it’s kind of like, what, huh? But you know, if you just take something, if you just take an idea of, okay, I’m really going to, for example, take care of my digestion and I’m going to start sweetening stuff with dates instead of something else. Even if I wasn’t using refined sugar or something terrible, instead of this other good thing I was using, I’m going to switch to dates.

And just see what happens after a month. You know, if I have any more vitality, if I feel any more of this kind of, just glow.

Kimberly Snyder (47:15.33)
Beautiful. I think too, as you mentioned, all the different layers, it can get deeper and deeper. We just kind of dip our toe in the water and it expands naturally for us. Because I remember Victoria, when my teacher taught me about ojas a while ago, you know, it was a little bit nebulous. And then as you describe it with this kafa quality, what it feels like to me as well, that groundedness of kafa, that stabilization, it feels like that

stabilizing itself, which I think can be very much promoted by constantly attuning to love, right? Because it’s destabilizing to be in that comparison, the mind, the anxiety, you know, takes us up in vata. And there’s so much energy in just being more loving and being more compassionate, which we kind of reinforce in our lifestyle, in our food choices and our daily choices and our practice, right? So it’s like energies upon energies.

You know, it’s really interesting, Victoria, actually today I did a social media, like a post about the elements because it was so intense here when the fires came. And, you know, by the grace of God, our home was spared and our direct neighborhood, but our kids’ school burned and about 60 % of the families there lost their homes. And we saw, my little one who’s four saw the fire.

coming over the ridge and he said, no mama look, fire. And it was this sort of traumatic image when I saw this all consuming fire, like taking trees and it had this really intense energy moving very fast. And so how much I leaned on my Ayurvedic practice when we were in evacuation to have the kichri and the stews and the watery elements.

And then it wasn’t until we just took this trip to Hawaii where I was eating a lot of juicy fruit and we were in the waterfalls and in the ocean, I really felt the energy balance, right? Because it was the direct fire energy, seeing fire everywhere. And I think about how much in our modern life we tend to have that excess fire, not as dramatic as this, but there can be more, know, hurry energy, more frustration, more inflammation. We’re eating a lot of spicy foods.

Kimberly Snyder (49:32.886)
And it is important that our Ayurvedic knowledge will teach us how to balance that and cool that down before it starts to get too much because excess pitta, excess fire can also be aging and diminish our wellbeing.

Victoria Moran (49:49.815)
You got it. I find it fascinating trying to balance some of these things sometimes because in taking care of your skin, for example, you know, too much pitta is breakouts, it’s broken capillaries, it’s redness. Yeah. And yet too much vata is dryness and loss of collagen and wrinkles. And so it’s this lovely kind of balancing act, which

For somebody hearing about it for the first time, it’s like, my God, that’s so complicated. But one of the things I love about Ayurveda is like you said, you just dip a toe in. You just do one thing. So I tell people in my classes and retreats, maybe all you’ll do starting out is that you’ll scrape your tongue in the morning and you’ll get rid of some of that excess buildup of, of AMA, the metabolic debris takes about three seconds. And just, just do that.

Kimberly Snyder (50:25.934)
Yeah.

Kimberly Snyder (50:43.423)
Yes.

Victoria Moran (50:45.143)
And if that seems like it’s a good thing, then you can move on to having a lemon water in the morning and just adding a few little things can make such a difference. Even if you never become a complete kind of Ayurveda nerd, like I can tell you and I could have a really fun conversation, you know, getting into some of this stuff that is probably ridiculously detailed and yet so much benefit comes long before you get to the details.

Kimberly Snyder (50:55.042)
Yes.

Kimberly Snyder (51:15.798)
yeah, and also just bringing it back to the book for a moment. Your book, Age Like a Yogi, there are simple recipes and I really like these bulleted boxes so that we can do the practices. There’s takeaways and I love your Kitchari recipe. I’m a big Kitchari eater myself. And I’m just curious, know, if I read this book, Victoria, and I didn’t know where you lived and you talk about nature, you talk about balancing the elements.

I could picture you somewhere in like Montana or like in Hawaii, and yet you live in New York City. Can you share a little bit about, know, which is inspiring as well, because it shows we can live this very attuned, natural, you know, spiritual life anywhere in an urban center. So can you tell me, first of all, your attraction, your natural and the attraction to being in an urban center, how you balance crowds and, you know, maybe extra.

Victoria Moran (51:50.221)
Yeah.

Victoria Moran (52:08.013)
Yeah.

Kimberly Snyder (52:13.144)
pollution or just some of the excess pitta that comes from being in a big city.

Victoria Moran (52:17.879)
Yeah. Well, what an interesting question. I’ve always been really urban. I grew up in Kansas city, Missouri, which is not a huge city, but my dad was really urban. He was from Detroit and then came to Kansas city. And so I always thought that Kansas city was like Paris, you know, because that’s the way my dad presented it to me. And so we always went to whatever was going on and the professional sports games and concerts and

Kimberly Snyder (52:28.588)
Hmm.

Victoria Moran (52:46.499)
things like that. And if there was some famous person in town, we would try to go see them. And if they happened to be Italian, which we were half Italian, my dad always knew where they were going to be going after the concert. So we would go to this particular steakhouse to see Frank Sinatra, you know, at one in the morning and things like that. I had a really unusual and interesting childhood. I’m grateful for it. So

When I was a teenager, I’d been to London a couple of times, and that was just where I wanted to be. That was the era of swinging London and the Beatles and all that. And so that was the first really big city that I went to. I wasn’t able to stay because of immigration rules and such. But I’ve always been really a devotee of urban life. And even in many

Kimberly Snyder (53:26.339)
Hmm.

Victoria Moran (53:45.164)
adult years that I spent in Kansas city, it was always right in the middle of the city. And I had a car, but I was in a walkable kind of area. And then I came to New York in 2000 for reasons that would not be my reasons if I were looking to come now. So back then to do the kind of work that I do as an author and speaker and that sort of thing.

It was important to be in a center that had media and publishing. So I came because I needed to be here for that. My daughter was a young actor and she came for that. And it was absolutely perfect. And I still love it. I still love Manhattan Island. That’s so tiny. Somebody’s written a book. I was in Barnes and Noble yesterday and it was the subtitle I remember was

Kimberly Snyder (54:28.526)
Mm.

Victoria Moran (54:43.147)
the island at the center of the world. And that was really what I felt when I got here. know, it’s two miles across. You can walk across Manhattan Island. It’s so amazing. And all the energy, you know, going up in those tall buildings and everything. But it’s a very different world. So I came here a year before 9-11 and things changed after that. And then the most

Kimberly Snyder (54:51.213)
Yes.

Victoria Moran (55:10.549)
recent change in addition to, well, certainly the digital revolution and then the pandemic. So a lot of those great big buildings with offices inside are mostly empty. I don’t know what’s going to happen. There are a lot of empty storefronts because people are shopping on Amazon. And so the city is transitioning. And I think a little bit, Kimberly, that your geography

Kimberly Snyder (55:17.527)
Yes.

Kimberly Snyder (55:24.332)
Yeah. Yeah.

Victoria Moran (55:40.749)
can be part of your almost family circle, that it plays a role as you’ve talked about the terrible fires in Los Angeles. When things like that are going on, it’s not like, this is happening at City Hall or something. It doesn’t really affect me. It does. And I feel as an empathic kind of person that I can

Kimberly Snyder (56:01.015)
Right.

Victoria Moran (56:09.507)
feel a little bit about what the city goes through as I walk through different areas and see different challenges. So I think it’s almost like a relationship with a person. This city has given me so much energy because I am urban and I like that. You know, I could just walk out on the street and it’s like, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s this beautiful kind of uplift. And now

Kimberly Snyder (56:26.808)
Thank you.

Kimberly Snyder (56:33.453)
Yeah.

Victoria Moran (56:39.169)
that the city is kind of going through a downturn, maybe I can give a little bit of that back. So that’s sort of what I do with it. And then just also, you know, if something lifts you up, it lifts you up and to just accept that and take it and not judge it. And all that said, I don’t know that I’m going to be here forever. I don’t know that at all.

Kimberly Snyder (56:46.038)
Hmm

Kimberly Snyder (57:07.533)
Yeah.

Victoria Moran (57:08.831)
But I’m here today. After we talk, I’m going to take a lot of copies of It’s Like a Yogi that I have to send out to podcasts and that I’ll put them in a dog stroller and take them to the post office because I don’t have a car. It’s New York. And then I’ll go to a cafe and do some wonderful work and and just get some energy from there. So I hope that’s answered your question.

Kimberly Snyder (57:26.114)
Love it.

Kimberly Snyder (57:38.702)
Yeah, it’s beautiful just to see that you’re so in tune with how it makes you feel. And I mean, that’s, I mean, I don’t know if we can dive so deeply into that. It’s just the truth. Like you said, the reality. Um, I used to get a lot of energy from the city to Victoria. lived in the West Village before I had kids. I was there over six years and I loved it. And the time I thought I would never go, I envisioned like living there forever.

Victoria Moran (57:43.149)
Yeah.

Kimberly Snyder (58:06.188)
And then I got pulled to LA with clients at the time. And, you know, I really love, like we live in a very rural place here and even more rural. have a little 10 acre farm in Hawaii and, know, it’s just a different phase of my life. So it’s, you know, it’s so different for everyone and we can get different energy, like you said, in different phases.

Victoria Moran (58:27.981)
Yes, and we’re so lucky. mean, I think that we’re privileged, it’s difficult and, you know, overused perhaps. And yet, just the very idea that we’ve had opportunities to live in different fascinating places. I’m so sorry. my goodness, of all the things that I always do, and I didn’t turn that off, I’m so sorry.

Kimberly Snyder (58:47.214)
Okay, we’ll edit that out.

Kimberly Snyder (58:54.122)
sorry. I usually remind.

Victoria Moran (59:02.963)
it says span likely. I’m so sorry.

Kimberly Snyder (59:08.462)
Oh no, it’s okay. Yeah, I was just making a note for John. I don’t know if you’re on here, John, but I’ll make a note. No big deal. Yeah, so.

Victoria Moran (59:16.42)
Okay, I can’t remember what we were saying before, but whatever it was.

Kimberly Snyder (59:21.046)
Yeah, the little clap. we’ll edit that part out. then, yeah. So thank you so much, Victoria, for sharing so much of your beautiful heart and spirit and wisdom with us. As we close out, I just love to hear, you know, after 13 books, age like a yogi, what is the core or one of the core, it’s hard to put you the spot with one sentence, but the core message that really

Victoria Moran (59:23.233)
Okay, thank you. My apologies.

Kimberly Snyder (59:50.314)
inspired the birth of this book at this time and this period in life and the world and your life.

Victoria Moran (01:00:01.207)
Life is magical at every phase. And if you have a little bit of savvy about how to live on earth and a little bit of connection to the divine, it will be beyond your wildest dreams.

Kimberly Snyder (01:00:16.972)
Beautiful, beautiful. And thank you so much for embodying this energy, for teaching us these practices. It’s just inspiring. And it just makes me feel like, wow, you know, like the potential really is unlimited. So once again, everyone, Victoria’s book is Age Like a Yogi, A Heavenly Path to a Dazzling Third Act. Can you share with us where we can find your book, where we can find out more about your work as well?

Victoria Moran (01:00:46.249)
Thank you so much. Yes, Age Like a Yogi is wherever books are sold. It’s also in an audio edition, which I got to read, which was just the most fun. Looking up all the Sanskrit words to make sure that I almost did them justice was part of that. And you can find me at victoriamoran.com and on Instagram and Facebook, Victoria Moran, author.

Kimberly Snyder (01:00:51.95)
Ha

Kimberly Snyder (01:01:15.49)
Beautiful. Well, thank you again so much, We will link directly to Victoria’s website and her new book and our show notes at mysaluna.com where you’ll also find links to other articles, podcasts I think you would enjoy. Thank you so much for tuning in. We will be back here Thursday as always for our next Q &A show. Till then, take great care, enjoy Victoria’s book, and we’ll see you back here soon. Sending you much love.