One of the great things about making videos is that it forces you to learn about new things when you wouldn’t otherwise have the chance or motivation to do so. Case in point, a friend of mine also happens to be a yoga teacher. So we spent a day hiking up Bishop’s Peak and I took some video of him practicing yoga in the great outdoors. It was definitely an adventure going off-trail at the top and climbing rocks while avoiding poison oak.

I learned that yoga is a lot of different things to different people, but at its core it strikes me as similar to Qi Gong: it’s about improving your physical health by balancing your internal energy with the world around you. And for me there’s no better way to improve your awareness than by getting out in Nature and realizing that the walls people build between each other through the various dogmas of science, religion, or politics are artificial and inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. I think what matters is not what you believe, but how those beliefs relate to your actions and whether or not they are making you a healthier being in a physical, psychological, and spiritual sense.

Don’t forget to delight in the daily miracle of other lives as you find your own path, wherever it may lead. And philosophy aside, yoga and hiking are both time-tested ways to release your stress and reconnect with yourself. When the struggle of modern life gets you down, sometimes it’s nice to just get the Hell out of Dodge for a day.