Age Like a Yogi with Victoria Moran: Veganism, Spirituality, and Animal Rights

Mariann Sullivan: I should say welcome back. One of my favorite guests. and you've been on more than once, and frequently when you're on, you have a new book because, because you have new books out a lot, but

this one is really on a new topic and not something I wasn't that aware you knew this much about.

Let's just start with the elevator version before we get into details about the title. What does it mean to age like a yogi?

Victoria Moran: Yeah. Well, it means to look at this process of growing older through a lens of spiritual teachings, through a lens of expectation, and through the idea that there is a purpose to whatever we're doing, whether you relate to Eastern spirituality or some other kind of spirituality or maybe something you don't even call spirituality but you know there's a little bit of something kind of buzzing over there at the side, that there's a purpose to being here at whatever age and we're gonna find it out and celebrate it.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, and you know, we live in a culture that, I think it's actually gotten better than it used to, but it still does not celebrate getting old. Yeah.

Victoria Moran: Well, I think because there's so many of us, I think the baby boomers tended to have changed society throughout the decades. So I think that we can be happy that we have a collective legacy of making ageism a little less. But it's still really bad. So in Age Like a Yogi, I've got 40 chapters, and at the end of each chapter, there is a little practices for the path. And one of them is end ageism. That just little things, like we have these prejudices against things that look elderly like hearing aids and canes. And you know, they're just things, they're just props, like in a play. And if they can play a role and be helpful, cool. But we just have this kind of fear and aversion. Yeah.

And, and

Mariann Sullivan: kind of love using a cane. I do occasionally because my knees are not the best and everybody's so nice to you when you use a cane, but I know they're nice to you because they think you're a little pathetic. So that's not good.

Victoria Moran: Well, I think it's the idea of pathetic means not using the cane if it means you have to stay home.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah,

Victoria Moran: I mean, pathetic is giving up on life. So aging like a yogi is we live brilliantly as long as we're here. And then we step valiantly into whatever comes next. And of course, part of it for me is that we also live with yoga's first moral precept, which is Ahimsa. We've got to get it. If we didn't get it when we were young, we have to get it when we're old, that we've got to stop harming others, all beings, all creatures, all times, all ways. And I've talked to so many amazing people who come to this in their 60s, their 70s, their 80s, and they say, Oh, I wish it were earlier.

Well, yeah, but it's not later.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, you know, I didn't, I didn't find out about animals or think about animals until I was in my 40s, and I wish it was earlier, but I'm glad I did when I did. But before we get into more of that, and of course, I want to really focus on that because it's such a hugely important piece of activism, that we're talking about yoga and forgive me if you are out there listening to this and you know fully about yoga philosophy.

But I think there are probably some people who really think of it as an exercise program. It's just a little confusing the way the language is used in the West. And, of course, yoga as exercise, Hatha yoga, is part of it, but it's only a small part of it, isn't it?

Victoria Moran: It's a small part, and it's a relatively new part. The classic text of yoga is the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, and we're never clear exactly on how old these things are, but we're thinking that's 3,000 to 4,000 years old, something in there, and certainly an oral tradition that goes back further. and He has eight limbs, these eight practices, eight parts of a yogic lifestyle. And one is asana, which means the position. But in the yoga sutras, it refers only to an easy, relaxed position. And You can even look at the eight limbs of yoga as things to build up to a satisfying meditation. So, all of this activity that we're doing nowadays came later.

There was a book in the Middle Ages called the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, that talked about the exercises. Because all these yogis, through all these generations, were trying to figure out more and better ways to help people go within. help people find their truth, which in yoga philosophy lives within each and every one of us. And it's great to have teachers and scriptures and all that, but it's really in here. You know, you can do it without any of that other stuff if you need to. And so that's one of the reasons that the yogis got so crazy about a vegetarian diet. Certainly, there's the Ahimsa aspect, we don't want to hurt the animals, but we also want to eat in a way that makes it easiest to sit quietly and get that inner connection. So when you don't have a lot of fear poisons from slaughtered animals coursing through your system, you're going to have better meditations as well as better lots of other things. And the exercises, all of these postures, these asanas that we think of as yoga are terrific. They have wonderful multiple uses. So, when you do yoga, yes, you're developing flexibility, you're developing strength, depending on the type you do and what postures we're talking about. And of course, when you strengthen your muscles and you're doing weight bearing exercise, you're also strengthening your bones, which is fabulous, especially as we get older. But the yoga asanas also work on what are called nadis in Chinese medicine, they call them meridians. And so this is to circulate the life force energy again, in China that's chi, in India, it's prana. And this is the subtle life force energy that flows through the system and is kind of the difference between vitality, glow of youth, get up and go, and all that. And, oh boy, same old, same old, another day, I'm not getting any younger, things aren't getting any better. So there's a difference, that's a prana deficit. So, so yoga is great for that, meaning the yoga asanas. But, that is the tiniest, teeniest little part of what yoga is, because it's a tremendous, beautiful lifestyle.

It's a way of building character, and it's a way of finding one's true self. And in fact, in Ayurveda, which is yoga's sister science that deals with physical health, they say that the real cause, the deepest, most underlying root cause of any illness is that we've forgotten who we are.

Mariann Sullivan: Can you talk about your particular concept of the true self because you go into that in the book and also how that relates to this relationship between what we eat, veganism, and our respect for animals and yoga. How does it all fit together for you?

Victoria Moran: You know, for me, it fits together so beautifully, Mariann, and I'm going to try to remember both of those questions after I start with a little prelude, that for me, this goes way back. So, I've been vegan since 1983, but vegetarian since 1969 because I discovered yoga in 1967. And when I say discovered, that was back in the days when you had to discover it because most people didn't know about it.

You couldn't take it at the health club or the Y or anything. It was just this foreign thing that people confused with yogurt and fascinating to me because I was a weird kid who was always fascinated by the bigger picture. So when yoga came into my life, it answered so many questions, one being that there was a way to be spiritual and bring your body along, because I always thought it was either or.

You could either be spiritual and be all holy and not worry about, you know, being pretty or stuff like the cheerleaders. Or you could be that, and you could strive for, you know, to be beautiful and fit and have people attracted to you and things like that. Yoga said, guess what? You are here to find out who you are, which is this great big spiritual picture. But as long as you're here, you've got a physical body. And according to yoga, you actually have several bodies, physical, etheric, astral, it all gets very cosmic and wonderful. But while you're here, you can't be spiritual worth a darn unless your body is cooperating. So that was the first connection for me. And then the next connection was that you're not all alone in this world. You are connected to everything and every being. What connects you? It's your essence and so when you said how do I see the the inner being and again, I'm not an enlightened being so I'm not going to give you the answer probably that an enlightened being would but as somebody on the road and trying to do the best I can what it is for me, it's light. And this is interesting too when the quantum physics talk about that, that everything comes down to light, which is all rather wonderful. And that this life, that inner light, that is what's shared by everybody. And we can look into the eyes of any creature on this earth, whether it's a fish or any kind of expression of life, you look at them and you connect. What's connecting? What do I have in common with a turtle? I have this in common with the turtle. That we're all expressing from what I think of as some kind of great beneficence. Don't know all the answers. Don't want to argue with anybody about, you know, if there's a God and whatnot, to me, there is a great beneficence and that's what this inner light is. is. And I believe we can uncover it more easily when we do certain things like practice Ahimsa, like be vegan, like do meditative practices, maybe journaling, whatever it is that kind of gets you closer to who you really are. And then hanging out with amazing people like Mariann Sullivan.

Mariann Sullivan: Mean, I have a very similar, not nearly as well developed, very similar kind of image, but I often think of it as not just, and this is a metaphor, it's not, you know, my metaphor for how I think of it is as a candle flame or a flame. And a flame, you can separate a flame into many different flames and they're all different flames and then you bring them together and they're only one flame.

And that for me is like the metaphor for this like idea, which is my only spiritual belief. That we're all connected in ways we don't understand. At least all conscious beings are connected in ways we don't understand. I don't take it any further than that. When you do take it further than that, and you speak about this in the book, of course, and you're very careful with it, when you do take it further than that, you're looking at a, you know, a philosophy that developed someplace else. How do you, particularly as a Westerner, deal with concerns of cultural appropriation or just taking over somebody else's religion and not really understanding it?

How do you get the good from it without treading on people's toes?

Victoria Moran: Well, I'd never heard of cultural appropriation until I wrote a book in 2015 called The Good Karma Diet. Now, as a student of yoga, I certainly understand about a little bit, at least, of karma as a religious precept, as a philosophical precept, but when I wrote The Good Karma Diet, that was just using good karma like how you do it.

I mean, it's just

Mariann Sullivan: Right. It's kind of a word that's been absorbed

Victoria Moran: It, Yeah. it's in the culture, it's on the tip jars. So, that surprised me. I was disinvited to a VegFest because of my book title. And so certainly I've thought about the concept and I realized that it is something that people do. However, we live in a very small world these days. I mean, we eat food from all over the world. We're using products from all over the world. We're communicating online with people from countries that 30 years ago I'd never heard of. And so we're gonna be doing some cultural appropriation. That's just the way it is. So for me, I discovered yoga as a 17 year old looking for God in the public library. I found three books on yoga and they changed my life. They were at the start of my going vegetarian and ultimately vegan. It's at the essence and the base of everything I've ever written, which includes now 14 books. So I believe that this gift came to earth from the heavens and a gift has to show up somewhere and it showed up in India and it was presented through these brilliant ancient teachers, the Rishis, and preserved by teachers going down through the centuries and in the 1600s when Britain started trading with India and ultimately colonized India. Bad thing colonization, but there was this cross pollination of ideas. So all the vegetarianism that was going on in the UK and in Europe among all of the people who could read English, This was an idea that came from India. And later, in the late 1800s, the Swamis started coming.

First Swami Vivekananda went to Chicago to speak for the Parliament of the World Religions. In the 1920s, we got Swami Yogananda, who wrote the incredible book, Autobiography of a Yogi. In the 1960s, we got a whole slew of Swamis bringing more different types of Hatha Yoga, different variations on the teachings. And it's here. It's here. And so I'm grateful to have discovered it as early as I did and grateful to feel that now, some 55 years later, I can start writing about it.

Mariann Sullivan: So why do you think that yoga, and I'm not just talking about people who, you know, take a yoga class and hatha yoga and don't really think about the philosophy, but even people who get more deeply into it, lead some people to vegetarianism and veganism and not others.

Victoria Moran: Such a great question, such a great question. Back in the day, it led just about everybody, at least to vegetarianism. We can talk about veganism in a minute, but yoga has been so staunchly vegetarian, almost for as long as it was yoga. Now back in the super ancient days of the Vedas, it wasn't like that.

They were even doing animal sacrifice in ancient India, around the same time that they were doing it in the Middle East. You know, it was something that humankind was evidently going through that was going on. But these teachers that were doing all this meditation, getting into their inner wisdom, they were looking at these things and they were getting the ideas of uh uh, This is not how it's supposed to be. Yes. It's tradition. Yes. It's ingrained. Yes. It's what people believe, but we've got to uplift that. And yoga has always been evolutionary, which is one of the things that I love about it. So what happened when it came to the West is that it was popularized along with Lululemon and sticky mats. I mean, when I started doing yoga, we didn't have sticky mats, which I know sounds like, and I walked to school 13 miles in the snow, but we didn't have sticky mats because the kind of yoga that came to the West first was classic Hatha yoga, which is largely done on the floor.

So you need nice padding, you need thick pads, thick blankets. Then a teacher named Iyengar became very popular and his style has a lot of standing poses where you're standing with your legs wide apart So you need those sticky mats so you don't slide. So all these things are evolutionary. So as Americans and other Westerners started understanding about yoga.

First, it came as a physical practice, period, end of story. And then we got lots of people training as yoga teachers. So when I started yoga in the late 1960s, I was given permission to teach beginners by my teacher Stella Churfess, who is now 99. She still teaches one class a week, chair yoga. She lives in a third floor walk up.

She's quite remarkable. But that was how it was back then. One teacher told one student, You can teach to this level. But then all the schools started and the certifications and all of that. And I finally figured at age 70, well, why don't I do that? So I did. I'm glad I did. It's wonderful. But as more and more people were able to become yoga teachers, most of those people were not vegetarian and almost none were vegan.

So they started saying to students, you don't need that anymore. Oh, that was something they talked about way back then, sacred cows and stuff. But you know, it's just different now. Or as one yoga teacher told me, probably my own instant karma for bragging. I had an essay on veganism in an anthology that happened to be in the bookshop of the yoga studio where I'd just taken a class. And I was saying to this teacher, Oh, I want to show you my essay in this book. And it was yoga and veganism. And she looked at it and she said, Oh, isn't it great that we don't have to be vegetarian anymore now humane agriculture?

Mariann Sullivan: Oh my god.

Victoria Moran: And that's the message because the message comes through the messenger. And if the messenger is not vegetarian, then that's not what they're going to teach. So that's what happened. However, and what's really interesting is it's changing. Like I said, yoga is evolutionary. And so for example, integral yoga was the first tradition that I found after I got back from England so long ago. And that came from a Swami named Satchitananda, very vocally vegetarian. And, and the kind of vegetarianism that yogis practice was vegan except for dairy. So no fish, no eggs, no leather, but there's the cultural connection in India with dairy. But later, toward the end of his life, Swami Satchidananda was saying, you don't need dairy. In fact, at this time in history, you really need to get away from it. And his classic book on diet was reprinted, rewritten about four years ago by some of his students, and it's now fully vegan. And then we have Yoga traditions such as Jiva Mukti Yoga that are vegan start to finish. And actually the co founder of Jiva Mukti Yoga, Sharon Gannon, wrote the foreword for Age Like a Yogi. So I'm very proud of that. And then we have lots of very prominent Yoga teachers who are becoming vegan because what happens, as one of my early teachers said, Don't bother to change your diet. Yoga will change your diet. Well, that certainly doesn't happen for everybody, but it happened for me, and it seems like it's happening for a lot of these other people. There's even a teacher that I heard about named Anna Forrest, huge following, big online following, and for a while she was very much into a paleo keto kind of philosophy. I believe she was even a hunter and then something happened and something changed and she became vegan and my understanding is this is what she now teaches to her followers. And yoga is all about spiritual awakening and to me going vegan is a kind of spiritual awakening even for people who are very secular and would never call it spiritual. It is this amazing inner awakening of oh my gosh, I'm in alignment with nature. I'm in alignment with my true self. Whatever this is, I want more. And that's happening for yogis as well as non yogis.

Mariann Sullivan: Fascinating. And you mentioned that in the early days, meditation probably played a role in coming up with the idea of vegetarianism. And for people listening now, I think we're all struggling a lot, not so much in whether we should care about animals, but more in that we care about animals so much that it's hard to let go of the horror.

Do you think meditation can play a role in helping people manage those kinds of emotions?

Victoria Moran: I do. And any kind of emotions. Because when we're distraught, and I'll just say I've been really distraught lately. My husband has had some serious health issues and anybody who's ever been involved in the medical system and the whole caregiving or lack of caregiving system in this country knows it's just it's tough. And so what I'm finding for myself is that the only thing that gets me through with my sanity intact is to spend time in my parasympathetic nervous system. So the sympathetic nervous system is fight or flight. We all know about that one. And then the parasympathetic has some other names like, uh, rest and repair or tend and befriend.

In other words, it's when you can just go ahhhhhhh. And meditation is one of the practices that does that. And it doesn't happen instantly. The Transcendental Meditation people, for example, say that 20 minutes is a good amount of time to meditate because even though it only takes an instant to transcend, it might take you 20 minutes to get there. Because we come into meditation, especially if you do a second meditation later in the day. We mostly wake up, not too bad, but by the end of the day we're kind of like, And so the first few minutes of that meditation is going to be just to kind of just soothe some of that out and you inhale and your monkey mind is telling you this is just ridiculous.

Why are you doing this thing? You could be getting something done and then you exhale and a little bitty tiny bit of that goes and with each inhale and exhale a little bit more of it goes and if you're lucky by the time you finish, you're in that beautiful parasympathetic state, and that's where healing happens. And that's, we talk about all of the wonderful physical responses that have been noted in research for the past 50 years from meditation. So a lowering of blood pressure, and even things like a lowering of cholesterol, fewer sick days, better BMI. It's like, wait a minute, how do you get a better BMI by sitting still?

Aren't you supposed to be out exercising? Well, yeah, you do that too. But the sitting is such a healing, healing thing to do. So yeah, I think we really, really need to do that. And especially as animal activists and animal advocates. We know about horrors that nobody should have to know about and certainly nobody should have to undergo. And we add that to the fact that everybody living on earth knows more about sorrow today than ever in history because you turn on your Facebook and you hear everybody's sorrow. And this is before we get to the wars and the famines and all that, just My mom went into the hospital, my dog is really sick, my cat needs surgery, here's my GoFundMe. And every single time it takes a little piece of your heart. And so we've got to refresh and restore ourselves. Meditation does that, Hatha Yoga does that, journaling, body work, time in nature, being with people you love. Comfort food, which is one of the things I love about Ayurveda. You know, we all grew up like, oh, don't, don't eat that.

It tastes too good. No, eat that. It tastes really good. And I'm not saying eat something terrible for you, but just the idea we've got to become connoisseurs of comfort, or we're not going to make it in the present era when there's just too much negativity that we're going to see every day unless we live in a cave.

Mariann Sullivan: Wow, that's really food for thought. I've always struggled with meditation, but you've inspired me to try it once again.

Victoria Moran: Oh, I struggle with it too. I mean, I've never been a natural meditator. Now, one thing that a lot of people think about meditation that's a misnomer, and we can get rid of that, maybe that'll help some people, is that meditation is making your mind a blank. It's impossible to make your mind a blank. Yeah.

Mariann Sullivan: Who made that up?

Victoria Moran: I don't know. I'm not, I'm not

Mariann Sullivan: I mean, maybe it's in the, in kind of the attempt to make your mind a blank that helps, but you have to know that that's not possible.

I mean, like, then it's okay. But if you're actually thinking, well, this is possible, then you just fail over and over and over.

Victoria Moran: Exactly. And, the process of meditation is focusing, you can focus on a mantra, which can be a lovely Sanskrit term, like Om Shanti, or it can be an English phrase, like all is on the inhale, and well on the exhale. I love that because it's a mantra and affirmation altogether. Or you can just focus on your breath.

It doesn't matter, candle flame, whatever, you focus on that. And then you're going to have thoughts. The process of meditation is bringing them back to the point of focus. It was Saint Francis who said that thoughts during meditation are like birds flying around your head. Perfectly fine that they're there.

You just don't want to invite them to build nests in your hair. And once you just see it, this has been my experience, at least, instead of looking at it as like, Oh, meditation, a thing I have to learn and master to just what the Buddhists call it, which is sitting. Can I sit for 5, 10, 15, 20 minutes, whatever time I set for myself? Can I just sit? Yeah, I can do that. And day after day after day after day, that's how the benefits

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, and even that is very hard. I mean, well, of late, since we're all living in difficult times of late, yours are very personally difficult, but we're all struggling. I find that I have to turn on something to listen to in order to go to sleep because I can't let go of the bad thoughts and, you know, practicing trying to let go of the thoughts that are haunting me is probably a good idea, though. It can be very, it's not easy. There's no way it's easy.

Another topic I wanted to talk to you about, and it kind of brings up a whole issue, it's reincarnation, because you have particular thoughts about reincarnation, and they kind of relates to your thoughts about animals. And I'm not sure how reincarnation relates to yoga, and that kind of brings up the question of how yoga relates to Hinduism, which they're not the same thing.

And you make very clear that you don't have to like give up your religion, religious practice, whatever it is in order to practice yoga. But all right, I just asked you like 12 questions all, all at once, but reincarnation, animals and is that Hindu, or is that yoga, or is it something in between? I

Victoria Moran: Okay, I have notes of that. Reincarnation, animals, Hinduism, and yoga. Okay, well, um, I've always been fascinated by religions and spirituality. My two passions in life are what you say at Our Hen House, changing the world for animals, and finding out why I'm here. So, I've devoted a lot of time to both of those things, and I've got a degree in comparative religion, so this kind of just, I'm like a, Spirit nerd.

So thank you for this great question. So reincarnation for me is easy just because of what I was handed as a child. So when I was a little bitty, I knew I'd been somewhere before this. I just knew. And I would hear people talk about life after death. And I would think, what's the big deal? There has to be life after death because there was life before birth.

Don't you guys remember? Well, no, they didn't remember because they weren't too, and I was. And so I also was, was raised with reincarnation. I was very, very, I'm very fortunate that I had a nanny. I know if my parents had known all the kind of spiritual stuff she was into, they would have probably never hired her. But she actually introduced me to both reincarnation and vegetarianism, interestingly enough. And so for me, it's easy. And for other people, most Westerners certainly are not raised to believe in reincarnation. And the cool thing about yoga is, yoga is a practice. You don't have to believe anything, but yoga tradition does come through this culture.

It's actually Vedic culture. And from the Vedic culture, these ancient religious texts, the Upanishads, you get Hinduism as a religion or Santana Dharma, which is, I think, the more modern and preferable term these days. And you get Vedanta. which is more of a practice. It's a little bit different. You get yoga and there are some other forms as well, kind of like denominations within Christianity. Yoga is a practice. And one of the first books that I read was called Christian Yoga by a Catholic French priest, uh, Father Deschenes. And that helped me a lot because I was raised Catholic and the idea of going against that was kind of scary for me. I remember the Hare Krishnas came to Kansas City when I was 17 and there was a big festival out in a park and we're all dancing around, you know, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna.

And while I'm doing Hare Krishna, inside I'm praying, God, if I'm doing something really blasphemous, I didn't know.

Mariann Sullivan: I was brought up Catholic in the exact same era because we are the exact same age and I know exactly what you mean. They scared you. They scared you a lot.

Victoria Moran: Yeah, and yet what you come to see is that inside, and this is how I see it, inside all the teachings, there's this mystical element. So within Catholicism, for instance, Christianity, but very solidified in Catholicism, is this mystical element. And you've got all the amazing Catholic mystics, St. Teresa of Avila, Hildegard of Bingen. I mean, these people were yogis. They may never heard of yoga, but they were yogis. Just like a great yogi is a mystic. And, and the Sufis are the mystical part of Islam. And you know, there's what people need just to get through life. And it's sometimes a little bit of superstition and it's a little bit of whatever, and that's in every tradition around the world. But inside that. There's this other layer, and yoga could be seen as that inner layer of Hinduism. Because Hinduism is a religion, and it's got gods and goddesses and all sorts of traditions and practices and rituals. That's not part of yoga. Now, if that's part of how you see the world, then absolutely I respect that. You can be anybody of any religion or an absolute atheist and get so much peace and health from doing yoga. It's kind of like being vegan. You know, some people say, well, why should I be vegan? I'm not an animal lover. And then somebody else that I admire a lot said, well, you don't have to love animals.

You only have to hate cruelty.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, exactly. All right. We didn't quite get to reincarnation.

Victoria Moran: Oh, we didn't? Well, okay. So the idea in yoga is. And not just yoga, lots of loved cultures have reincarnation, certainly Buddhism and others, that to find this essence takes a long time because you come into incarnation and it takes 20 years just to figure out how to be on this earth, maybe longer. And then you've got this body and it's all interesting.

And then sex comes along and then responsibilities of life come along. And so even though, according to the teachings, we came here to find the true self, to find the inner light, to find God that gets pushed aside because of all this other stuff. And so we're not devoting, for most of us, 70, 80 years every time we show up to finding God. And so, we get to do it again. Now, that doesn't mean you have to keep reincarnating. There's a beautiful phrase, it's called a Jivan Mukti, kind of like Jiva Mukti Yoga. A Jivan Mukti is someone who is enlightened while in the body. And they are around us. And some of them might be religious teachers, some of them might be yogis, some of them might be driving the bus. They are enlightened beings in the physical form. So you don't have to die and be reincarnated to become enlightened. But most people do, just because the focus and the emphasis on becoming enlightened isn't what most of us are doing. So we get to come back. Now, you talked about animals, so do we ever come back as a non human animal? Will our dog be our sister's kid?

Mariann Sullivan: I have to think about that for a minute.

Victoria Moran: That is above my pay grade, however, I can tell you what the teaching is, that all living beings, all living beings, even down at the atomic cellular level is evolving. And that as Teilhard de Chardin, he was a paleontologist and a French Catholic priest, said that this consciousness is sleeping in the mineral kingdom, awakening in the plants, fully awake in the animal, and capable of knowing itself in the human. Now that's a little bit speciesist to us as vegans, but it does give you a little bit of the sense that life is not something that we have any sort of exclusive hold on, that all creation comes from that one life. So, there are different teachings in terms of how it works in the animal kingdom and even in the plant kingdom.

There are some teachings that some trees, very old trees, develop an individual soul. That can reincarnate in the animal human world. I don't get too hung up on all of that kind of stuff because nobody really knows, it's interesting conjecture. I just know that when I look into the eyes of my dog, or when I stick out my finger and my rescue pigeon hops up on it, that I am in communion with somebody who has a soul, a spirit, whatever you want to call it. And I believe we're all on this path and I believe we are all truly beloved by the divine.

Mariann Sullivan: That's really beautifully said. And I tend to think that we think of the connection between yoga philosophy and animals is about vegetarianism or veganism, but it really extends to the animals themselves. So it relates to how we think of wildlife and companion animals as well.

Victoria Moran: Well, just the fact that the classic postures, are almost all animals that the yogis were looking at at the natural world and emulating. I mean something as common these days as downward dog. I see downward dog every morning when my dog does it. So it's, uh, it's a beautiful thing to know that we share the world with all. And then the vegetarian thing in yoga is just so beautiful because it comes from a few different points of view. There's Ahimsa, obviously, the non killing, and then there's this idea of being healthy so that you can live long enough to get enlightened. And so they were talking, these ancient yogis, it's really rather remarkable, about vegetables, fruits, grains, legumes, and nuts and seeds, way back.

We're talking thousands of years ago, and now, you know, the lifestyle medicine people say it, and we go, oh, wow, that, that's cool. And now the one difference is that the yogis did recommend dairy. And, you know, it was thousands of years ago. And I can't say how it was thousands of years ago in ancient India, when everybody had a cow and presumably honored the cow and they didn't kill the boys. Of course, they didn't kill the boys because they needed them to pull carts and chariots and things. So this world has never been heaven for animals, that's for sure, but I'm not gonna judge somebody who drank milk 3, 000 years ago. It's you know

Mariann Sullivan: Oh, I think it's so important in doing any of this for us to let go of history. What people did in the past, maybe that's what they had to do in the past. A lot of what people do right now in places other than where we are are things that maybe they have to do. That's not, like, judging that is not what this is about.

It's figuring out a way where we don't have to do it and feeling blessed that we live in a time and a place that we don't.

Victoria Moran: That is so true. And Ayurveda, which I talk about a lot in the book, because I absolutely love it. You know, it's interesting, I discovered yoga so long ago back in the 1960s, because yoga had been around for a while. It had been around since certainly the 1800s in the West. And Ayurveda kind of came maybe in the 80s, 90s.

Deepak Chopra wrote Perfect Health in 1990 and so many vegans say, well I don't want anything to do with Ayurveda because they're always talking about ghee, which is clarified butter. And it's like, you know, I come from a 12 step background. Take what you like and leave the rest. I love Ayurveda, and I think it's making a big difference in how I'm aging. Do I use ghee? Absolutely not. You know, just because, it's kind of like, you know, you go to your friend's house and they pass around the relish tray, you don't have to have the weird pickles. You know, just because it's there.

Mariann Sullivan: I love the weird pickles.

Victoria Moran: Well, then you can have my share.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, I actually, I'm glad you brought up Ayurveda, because we haven't talked about it enough, and you do talk about it a lot in the book. What would you say, just as couple of examples, are some of the best things we can take from Ayurveda? You've already mentioned something that maybe we should let go of in Ayurveda, and that's the use of ghee, but what are some of the things that we should embrace?

Victoria Moran: Lots and lots. The Daily Routine, The Personal Dosha, and the biggest secret about aging well in the universe. So, I'll be quick. The Daily Routine states that nature has its rhythms, nature has its cycles. So the day has its cycle, the year has its cycles, your life has its cycles. And if you can be in harmony with that, which night people won't like me, but it's getting up early, getting to bed early, having a nice breakfast, whether you're somebody who's really hungry or not very hungry, doesn't matter.

It doesn't have to be big, just some breakfast. Big meal in the middle of the day if you possibly can because that's when your digestive fire is hottest and a lighter meal in the evening like people used to talk about breakfast, dinner, supper and supper comes from the same root as supplement. So, you know, you don't want to go to bed with a lot of food in your stomach. You want to eat a 2 3 hours before going to bed, you want to finish that meal and let yourself digest it before you go to bed, that will help a lot with sleep, it will help a lot with sleeping through the night, which is something that a lot of older people have trouble with. So Dinacharya, that's daily routine in Ayurveda, really important, I go into detail about that in the book. The next thing is your personal dosha. And I have learned doing podcasts not to go much into those because there are three of them and it gets kind of complicated to talk about all of them, that you

Mariann Sullivan: And also they overlap and you not necessarily want it. it's, it's a little complicated. Yeah

Victoria Moran: But just take a quiz. I love Deepak Chopra's quiz. You can just do Dosha Quiz Chopra and find that.

There's also one on the website Banyan Botanicals. They're a store, but you don't have to buy anything to take the quiz, and you find out your body type. That was part of your DNA from the moment of conception. And the cool thing about it is it's perfect, whatever it is. And so, the three are called Vata, Pitta, and Kapha, and maybe you're 10 percent one, and 30 percent of the other, and 60 percent of the other, and you're like, Oh my God, I'm out of balance!

No, you're not. You're perfect. Because 10, 30, 60 is perfect for you. Your goal during your life is to stay you, to stay your perfect self. And to me, this is so cool. Coming from that era, Mariann, that we come from when everybody was supposed to be skinny and tall and ideally white and blonde. And then later we were supposed to have big boobs, but before that we were supposed to be flat chested. It's like, how can you keep up? And Ayurveda has been saying for all these thousands of years, uh uh. You are perfect. All you have to do is stay yourself. So that's the second one. And then the third one, and this is so exciting for Age Like a Yogi, that Ayurvedic doctors, they're called Vediyas, and some of them were also these same Rishis that were presenting yogic ideas. They learned that as we get older, it's kind of post menopausal, kind of post 55, certainly post 60, we become more vata. That's one of those three doshas. Now you can be super vata and be Any age, that can be your predominant dosha, but whatever your predominant dosha is, as you get to be older, you're going to be more vata.

So what does that mean? It means that your skin is going to get thinner and drier, and your nails maybe won't be as strong as they used to

Mariann Sullivan: Well, ain't that the truth?

Victoria Moran: creaky joints

Mariann Sullivan: All of these are really resonating with me.

Victoria Moran: And, you lose some of those nice fat pads on your cheeks. And, a lot of women will go get, you know, shots in their face to plump it up and whatnot. The joints may not be what they once were. Digestion may not be what it once was. And this is very troubling for a lot of vegans, that all of a sudden maybe beans or leafy greens, all these things that we know to be so full of nutrients that, you know, the tummy is saying, eh, not quite liking that. And so what Ayurveda says is what you want to do is pacify vata dosha, that is lower the amount of vata in your system. And what that in essence does is turn back the clock a little bit. There's no, obviously, you know, we're not going to wake up 17, but you can lessen some of these more negative aspects of growing older if you pacify your vata.

So how do you do that? Well, in beautiful, wonderful, yummy, comforting ways. So vata tends to be cold. This is why so many older people go to Florida and Arizona, who knew? And so, just have something warm to put on. If you're the only one in the room with a sweater, great, be comfortable. And just like in the evening, if you're going to watch TV or something, you might want to get on the floor and do some yogic stretches, that's really good. But if you're just sitting there, wrap yourself up in a blanket. Make yourself feel warm and comfortable and cozy. Hot beverages, oh my goodness. So something like a mushroom coffee or some kind of chai tea that you put a lot of oat milk or soy milk in, it just warms the soul because it's decreasing your Vata, and you also want to keep to that daily routine.

It's more important for people in the Vata time of life than it is for people earlier on. Remember, all nighters in college and that kind of thing, or, oh, I could get a cheaper ticket if I took the red eye. Well, that was fine for then. But that's not fine for now. If we want to stay balanced and if we want to age well, so you want to be really careful, get up at the same time, go to bed at the same time, have your meals at the same time. If you travel, give yourself extra time to recuperate. Because travel and different time zones kind of upsets vata. I mean it's wonderful to travel and see the world, but you just need to give yourself just a little more love and care around it than you did earlier. So again, I go into it a lot in Age Like a Yogi, but if you can even just take those few hacks that I've talked about here, I'll bet anything it will make a real difference.

Mariann Sullivan: Oh, absolutely. That's all really excellent advice. I think in particular the rhythm of eating it like I used to think that the early bird special was because people wanted to save money. No, it's because if you eat late at night as you get older, you can't sleep. Uh, that's so important to know.

Yeah. Such good advice and you know, even for people who haven't gotten there yet, I think, you know, aging is a process and we're all on our way and it's good to make these little hacks as they are needed in your life, rather than according to some schedule. Well, I'm this age, so I need to do this now.

But noticing what's changing and not feeling so bad about it. Because, you know, I really do think that, like, getting old has a lot of negatives. There's no doubt about it, like, physically, it's not fun. to have things hurt or whatever, but I think that in so many ways, I think it's the happiest time of life, unless something terrible is going wrong.

You know, of course that would affect you in any situation, but like when you're young, you're so crazy and you really, you really do appreciate things more as you get older. I think it's a general rule. So that's something to hold on to and you have so much good advice in there to hold on to. All right, so the book isn't out yet, I think and it won't even be out when this is released, so tell us when it will be available.

I mean, I assume people can get it wherever books are sold, but if there's s anything particular about getting it and and then I really want to ask you before I let you go about the other 25 things that you do.

Victoria Moran: Okay. Thank you. The pop date for Age Like a Yogi is January 14th, 2025, but in the book business these days, pre orders mean everything. It's so weird. I've been around books forever. My first book, did you know my first book may have been the first book on veganism to come from an actual publisher? 1985. 1985! Good

Mariann Sullivan: I read it, I read it back then.

Victoria Moran: And it was such a different world, but nowadays pre orders just make or break a book. So if you take a look at Age Like a Yogi, and it looks like something that you would like to purchase, number one, thank you very much. I appreciate that, and I have a gift for you, actually two, um, And that is if you send your receipt, whether you get it at an online bookstore or an actual bookstore, just send your receipt to assist@victoriamoran.com and then you will be invited to an exclusive day long zoom webinar with me on Age Like a Yogi, and how to use all of these principles in your life, and that'll be happening January 12th, and it's recorded if you're not available January 12th. In addition, you will get the Age Like a Yogi e cookbook, and it's not big.

You know, when people say e cookbooks and you think you're gonna get War and Peace, no, it's more like e cookbooklet. But anyway, it's lots of wonderful vata pacifying, Ayurvedically sound, vegan, easy, recipes. So a couple of things to just sweeten the pie if you want to pre order Age Like a Yogi and I thank you so much.

Mariann Sullivan: Oh, that's wonderful. Those are wonderful offers. But we also need to talk about all, as I said, all the other things you do. You're kind of like Jasmin, like the two of you, like have 25 things going on at the same time. But of course, tell us what's going on with the Main Street Vegan Podcast, because people are probably pretty familiar with your

Victoria Moran: Oh, you are so kind. Well, we just had complete blow up about the Main Street Vegan podcast.

So it's been going not as long as you guys, you were probably the first, but I think we were the fifth when we started back in 2012, the fifth vegan podcast. And so for all these years, The subscriber base was building and people were giving it stars and writing reviews and all these things and then I wanted to move into a more independent platform because I didn't like people having to listen to commercials. I mean, I'm happy to talk about products that I believe in but I just I don't know the commercials bothered me. And so we made the switch and something glitched. And we lost all those subscribers and all those rankings. And now I'm supposed to start over.

And talk about aging. You know, starting over when you're 30 is really different from starting over when you're 74. And then I do the math, you know, math is a terrible, terrible enemy of anybody getting older. So I'm thinking, well, I'm 74 and if it takes me 13 years, to get all of those followers back, then I'm going to be 87 or dead, and so, so here's the deal.

I

Mariann Sullivan: want cry. I'm laughing, but I want to cry.

Victoria Moran: Oh, it just, I mean, I still, it hasn't

Mariann Sullivan: I really hope you're not going to be 80, 87 by the time, by the time you get, I'm sure your listeners will flock back.

Victoria Moran: I hope so. So, if you've never listened to the Main Street Vegan podcast, please have a listen. We'll have a couple of the new ones, and now we didn't lose the archives, all the old ones are there. It's just, it looks like nobody's ever listened to one.

Mariann Sullivan: If somebody subscribes, they will be able, they will be able to access the archive?

Victoria Moran: Yes. And I think you can find them just, you know, on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and Audible and all those podcast places. But yeah, I would be so grateful if you'd subscribe, if you'd give it five stars, if you'd say something nice about it. Cause, cause yeah, cause better, better to get all that back before 87. Although, you know, maybe at 87, It'll be fun to have a party and say, I'm back.

Mariann Sullivan: I don't like, I can't even discuss what's going to be happening in the world. It's beyond me to think about the future. So let's talk about the present because the other thing that you do, which is huge, of course, is Main Street Vegan Academy.

Victoria Moran: Yeah.

Mariann Sullivan: What's going on.

Victoria Moran: Oh, bless your heart. So, Main Street Vegan Academy has been training and certifying vegan lifestyle coaches and educators since 2012 and among our esteemed faculty members are Mariann Sullivan and Jasmin Singer have been with us from the very, very beginning and It's a very, very special program.

We used to be in person in New York City and now we're on Zoom and it's incredible. It's something like 55 hours and it's live and it's real. So you get to talk to our wonderful instructors who really are the best and the brightest in the vegan and the plant based world. And. You get to be in there up close and personal, and a lot of them will give us their PowerPoints. They'll tell you how to contact them privately and personally. It's just the coolest thing. You know what it makes me feel like, Mariann? It's like I'm that guy at the club where there's the velvet rope out there and not everybody gets in, but everybody that gets into Main Street Vegan Academy, and you'll get in because you're friends of Jasmin and Mariann, it's like they get this little connection. There's just something very special and

Mariann Sullivan: Whenever I hear from somebody and they mention, Oh, I was at Main Street Vegan Academy in 2015 or something. I'm like, there is a real feeling of family.

Victoria Moran: There is that, and the training is superb and the follow-up is there. I mean we're not gonna stalk you. If you take the course and you like it and you go on your merry way, that's fine. But a great, many of our graduates like to stay connected. We have a private Facebook group, we have reunions and we're there for you. I mean, if I could tell you how many book blurbs, book forwards, job recommendations, grad school recommendations I do for graduates. I do a lot of those because I come to know them over the 55 hours. It's not like, oh, who's that vague person that wants a recommendation? No, I know how recommendable they are. So there are a lot of vegan programs out there now and some of them say that they're training vegan coaches and whatnot and they're probably all fabulous, but one thing I can say for Main Street Vegan Academy is you also get me. And I am there with you for the duration And it's really pretty special.

So take a look MainStreetVegan. com We'll do another one next summer late next summer.

Mariann Sullivan: And, I highly encourage people to do it. It really is a wonderful, just a wonderful feeling of family. And you get to hear from really some remarkable people every, every year you have just great, great speakers. So I think that's, um, That's probably all you're doing, Victoria, just like 12 things, that nobody else would be able to put all together, but I'm really glad that you took time out from it to write this book and that you joined us today on Our Hen House to share about it, because I don't think it's a topic we've ever covered before, and I'm really glad we did.

Victoria Moran: I'm so happy to be the one to cover it with you So, thank you so much and just love to you and and everybody involved with Our Hen House the things that you have done to make this world more compatible for all beings is absolutely stunning.

Mariann Sullivan: Aw, thank you.