We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Brett Engle & Penpa Dolma a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Brett Engle, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?
It’s Time for a Consciousness Shift
We are all living through a great zeitgeist shift on our planet, globally purging and releasing the behaviors which are driving our civilization off of a cliff, while simultaneously awakening to the interconnected nature of our reality.
As Innovative Yogis, we see a glorious opportunity to live a sustainable, abundant, vibrant, and joyful life on this planet, not just for the few, but for all, and we are deeply grateful to be here to help manifest it into being.
We recognize that our interconnected reality means we can no longer think of ourselves as isolated from nature or separate from people on the other side of the planet, or separate from those in our neighborhood, or from our relatives, our spouses, parents and children. If we don’t come together as one human family and take care of our home sustainably, then we’ll perish from our own greed and our attachment to the illusion of separation.
We are committed to the personal and social work necessary so that humanity can manifest new systems to replace the crumbling ones, building from the ground of a mystical perspective, the view that we are all one, and a scientific understanding of what that means.
We see the problems facing our planet, the abundant solutions available to us, the consciousness block holding us back, the awakening energy bubbling up demanding change, and we’re committed to changing ourselves so we can change the world!
Come join us on this adventure…
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
As Innovative Yogis is the two of us, we have two story’s to tell. Let’s start with Penpa’s first:
The ROOTS
When Penpa Dolma was four and half years old, her family fled their home-country of Tibet. Finding safety in India, they enrolled Penpa in a boarding school for children of Tibetan refugees. The school, founded by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama and his sisters, provided safe space and educational growth for Penpa over the next 14 years.
In her environment, education—both Western and Eastern styles—was a means of supporting the healing of both society and self. As such, her lessons and experiences were rooted in the nurturing of young people who would grow into globally responsible citizens. Their collective charge was to preserve Tibetan tradition,culture and language, and to use their academic knowledge and Buddhist foundation to better the world through uplifting work.
The TREE
Today, all of Penpa’s studies and soulwork have culminated in a training of how to alchemize our pain into wisdom by turning inward, learning to listen with compassion and openness to our deepest pains and dreams. She teaches mindfulness in every walk of our life, on and off the yoga mat into our relationships. She has passion for connecting dots, and generating ideas. She loves to cook and uses it as a vehicle for activism. Based in Arvada, Colorado, she continues to be a student and practitioner of the healing arts and social justice.
Penpa built upon her humble roots and earned her RYT 200 at the Pramanand Yoga Institute of Science and Research in Indore, India. Her certification training emphasized meditation, mindfulness, Ayurveda, and Yoga Therapy.
Prior to that, Penpa diligently pursued and successfully obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology with a minor in Biology. She has paired those studies with her own intuitive knowledge and her community efforts to facilitate growth and healing through humanitarian work.
On one particularly rewarding project, Penpa’s leadership skills were a critical component of a team effort that changed more than 300 lives for the better. She was part of a small team who worked in tandem with the Indian government and local citizens to build a pipeline that provided clean water to an impoverished village in northern India.
Penpa’s core goal is to facilitate a contemplative transformative practice of self-inquiry through yoga, meditation, and medicinal plant journeys. She believes the only sustainable way for harmony and peace in the world is through the silent revolution of individual awakening and collaboration.
The BRANCHES
These experiences only fueled Penpa’s desire to broaden the impact of her activist work by serving more people. She channeled her energies into the honing of her core skills and interest: Psychology, Yoga, Tibetan Buddhism, and Culinary Arts.
Yoga Training & Meditative Arts – Penpa credits Dharma, meditation and yoga practices for saving her from losing herself in the single story of a young refugee. Today, she serves communities, in person and online, by using yoga and meditation to create space for purification, awakening and movement of stagnant, blocked energy and the toxic results of unmanaged stress.
Collaborative Ventures – Penpa is open to partnering with other people and organizations who share her vision of doing work that will positively impact humanity. She is currently part of Innovative Yogis, a collaborative partnership that embodies the yogic principles of ancient traditions, coupled with human-centered use of technology to shift paradigms through a variety of mediums. She is passionate about creating and supporting an alternative system of all our institutions which values the interconnected existence of all sentient beings with nature and the cosmos. She is dedicated to dismantling all -isms especially the ones within herself. She plays a bridge between the privileged and the underprivileged world having gone through both experiences.
And Brett’s Story:
Journey of Transformation
I grew up in Boulder CO, playing every sport that my parents could sign me up for, finding myself on the starting roster and pulled into special training sessions on tracks and in gyms. At the same time, my family exposed me to meditation retreats, yoga, and service. As it was the 90’s, there was still plenty of “weirdo” stigma around those practices, and my young mind cared mostly about being cool, so despite the exposure I refused to add these habits into my life.
In high school I dislocated my shoulder multiple times playing football, and went for several surgeries. My sports career ended as the doctors couldn’t fix me, and my post high school years were spent travelling the world working for non-profit organizations, including the Mind and Life Institute, a group bringing together scientists and contemplatives (like the Dalai Lama) to bridge these two seemingly separate worlds, and the PeaceJam Foundation, which connects youth with Nobel Peace Prize Laureates for mentoring and service projects.
Spending time with accomplished practitioners, world class scientists, and grassroots change-makers inspired me to complete my bachelors degree in Psychology, the scientific field which studies human behavior and leads the research effort on yoga and meditation. Upon returning to school In 2011 I began a regular daily practice of yoga, and I completed my 200 hour teacher training in 2014.
I’ve taken a winding road to arrive here, and am filled with joy to have the opportunity to share everything I have learned about yoga, from the postures to the philosophy to the science behind why it all works, with every soul that is ready to receive it.
In order to live our true purpose and make our gifts available to the world, we created Innovative Yogis, where we believe that the real revolution is the evolution of consciousness and we bring modern tech together with ancient wisdom in order to usher in the revolution.
What is an Innovative Yogi?
Innovative – featuring new methods; advanced and original… introducing new ideas; original and creative in thinking
Yogi – a person who is proficient in yoga. Yoga literally means “union”… it is the neutralization of ego-directed feelings, because once these become stilled, the yogi realizes that he is, and that he has always been, one with the Infinite
An Innovative Yogi moves from a ground of yogic understanding, bringing ancient wisdom into the modern world, embracing the technology surrounding us and employing it for the work of healing all souls, merging ageless contemplative practices with our present day science in order to support all life on earth, dismantling systems of oppression as we collectively shift away from the current paradigm of greed, destruction, and disconnection, into one of abundance, love, connection, and generosity.
We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.
We first met in India, in the small town of Dharamsala, where the Tibetan exile community and the 14th Dalai Lama reside. A common friend set us up on a blind date, and we hit it off instantly when we finally met. At the time, we were both young and did not see a future together with the odds stacked so against us. But some things are meant to happen no matter how much resistance we put up.
A few years later, in 2006, we found ourselves single and decided to rekindle the relationship and see if there was depth to it. Brett moved to Delhi, India to live with Penpa and start their new life. Despite being from very different backgrounds, we found common passion in creating a just, sustainable, compassionate planet of collaboration and abundance. We worked well together, the love was real, and it was a new beginning for both of us. We were angry, passionate and excited.
We got engaged in Kathmandu, Nepal in front of Boudhanath Stupa in 2007. The Boudhanath Stupa is rich with history and is considered a wish-fulfilling stupa for all who offer hopes and prayers there. So far it’s working. A year later we got married in Colorado.
Making marriage beautiful demands a whole lot of courage, compassion and desire to grow. More than needing to change the other person to fit into our version of who they are or should be, we learned to accept each other with full aspiration to grow to our highest calling. It definitely isn’t without fights, heartbreaks, tears, anger (so much anger in our case), resentments, disappointments, guilt, shame, and loads of laziness.
But somehow we kept showing up, and we gained a renewed sense of inspiration from each of those fights.
We learn, we do our best to communicate clearly and we love. There is no other option; everything else leads us to complacency and suffering. Every day brings new challenges, and we are learning to take it day by day, enjoying the taste of life, being excited about the unfolding discoveries about ourselves, and how it all relates to our ability to perform our duties with integrity in the world.
We do our best to be honest with each other, to be accountable in an open and loving way while supporting each other to fulfill our own dreams. By being an honest, loving mirror for each other, we learn from our reflection much more quickly. There is a continual sense of gratitude that another being could love you and be willing to play with you so fully, and to dance endlessly together.
By committing totally to this process, we recognize the reward and the depth of such commitment. As we learn more about ourselves there is a dedication to expand our commitment and fulfill our duty to create a stronger, greener, more harmonious world for us and for future generations. We recognize the global shift happening through the works of many, many dedicated individuals and organizations, and we are inspired, motivated and excited to be messengers of this change.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Brett would like to share a poem to answer this question:
The first time I went to prison, I was three years old.
Visiting my dad.
Our Father / Son relationship
Was just another casualty of the drug war
By the time I was 5, those visits stopped,
After I convinced my mom to come along
Guilted her into it
Because papa had guilted me into it
And she refused to ever go again
We moved away soon after.
But it wouldn’t be my last time going to prison.
In the new kindergarten, in the new town
I first experienced shame in my name
I wanted to change it
I didn’t like what it was associated with
I wanted something new
At the time all that mattered was fitting in
I was the new kid, again
Making new friends, again
And being targeted by the bullies, again
And I didn’t need a name like Antonio
As ammunition
For the first time I felt a need to embrace my white half
In order to feel safe and accepted
And I wanted an english name
So I asked, what does Antonio translate to?
Anthony, they said
And my superficial child mind
Fearing bullies and wanting social acceptance
Pictured the only Anthony I knew
The one kid in school named Anthony
Screaming in my mind,
“NO, I DON’T WANT TO BE HIM”
Thinking that my name made me who I was
not knowing that my behavior does
I pictured Anthony
With his glasses and snotty nose
And weird smell and awkward energy
He was the one kid everyone disliked and stayed away from
He had the life I feared the most
So I hated my name even more
because it caused me trouble in Spanish and English both
So I chose a new one
By looking around at my class and identifying the most popular boy
The life I wanted
He was Brent
I became Brett
I thought I’d made it up, so I was surprised the first time I met another Brett
Which became a regular experience in my new white life
It was a good life in many ways
Food, shelter, video games and vacations
Privilege that protected me from racist attacks
Then I moved to Australia, and I was a different kind of white
My accent gave me away
Yet again, I was an “other”
Realizing that as humans
we always find a way to target someone who’s different
Violence worked for protection
And admittance to certain groups
So it became my survival tool
Till it landed me in prison
Like my father… I certainly didn’t disappoint the predicted cycle of trauma
That was all a long time ago now
Almost another life
It used to have such a strong hold on me
Now it’s grasp has softened
And I’m slipping free into the new me
One that isn’t identified by any name
One that just is
One that is a father
One that has a son
One that is ending the cycle of trauma
One that is showing up to his Dharma
And it’s scary and blissful, and worth every step
Contact Info:
- Website: https://innovativeyogis.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/innovativeyogis/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/InnovativeYogis
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/InnovativeYogis
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3Ys2V6j_Fd1pijQQJ2q9WQ
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/innovative-yogis-arvada