How can you develop mindfulness beyond meditating on a mat? Are there ways to start to tap into your intuition? And how can these tools (along with critical thinking) help us navigate turbulent times?
Ora Nadrich is the author of “Live True: A Mindfulness Guide to Authenticity” and “Time to Awaken.” She is also the founder and president of the Institute for Transformational Thinking. Today, she offers insights on what we’ve been through in recent years and how to keep going and growing in the midst of the panic, fear, and uncertainty. She talks about how to develop discernment to distinguish the difference between illusions and reality and she offers ideas for cultivating calm when anxiety seems to be lurking around every corner.
Visit Ora’s website: oranadrich.com
Register for the Wise Traditions conference (or simply for the livestream: wisetraditions.org)
Check out our sponsors: Paleo Valley and Optimal Carnivore
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Episode Transcript
Within the below transcript the bolded text is Hilda
.How can we remain healthy and calm during unsettling times? How do we hone our intuition to be able to distinguish illusions from reality? This is Episode 443 and our guest is Ora Nadrich. Ora is the author of Live True: A Mindfulness Guide to Authenticity and Time to Awaken. She is also the Founder and President of the Institute for Transformational Thinking.
In this episode, Ora explains why it’s especially important to tap into our intuition and develop practices for mindfulness during tumultuous times, like those we’ve been experiencing since 2020. She covers how intuition and critical thinking skills can equip us to navigate the challenges we face and help us distinguish between illusions and reality. She also offers practical ideas for developing a more mindful spirit beyond meditating on a mat.
Before we get into the conversation, I want to invite you to the Wise Traditions Conference. It is from October 20th to the 22nd, 2023 in Kansas City, Missouri. There are tons of topics that we touch on there all related to good health from how to feed your family the Wise Traditions way to the way the weather is manipulated and science has been sold. Go to Wise Traditions to sign up and we’ll see you there. If you can’t make it, there is a backup plan. We will be live-streaming some of the talks. Go to Wise Traditions for information on this so that you can learn and participate in this way.
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Visit Ora’s website: Ora Nadrich
Register for the Wise Traditions conference
Check out our sponsors: Paleo Valley and Optimal Carnivore
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Welcome to the show, Ora.
Thank you for having me.
Your book grabbed my attention because it’s called Time to Awaken. I have had the growing sense as I’ve conducted numerous interviews with numerous experts over the past few years that they feel the same way. Why did you call your book Time to Awaken? What are we waking up to?
I called it Time to Awaken because the fundamental problem that we’ve faced over the last few years is that people weren’t fully awake to what was happening. As a mindfulness practitioner, my work is based on being in the present moment with total awareness. That means you’re awake and aware. Being awake means you’re very cognizant of what’s going on around you. You’re very aware of yourself, others, your environment, and what’s going on in the world.
I very much felt passionate about that I think it is the number one problem with what happens in the world. In many areas, people are not fully awake. In the book Time to Awaken, I do say, “I feel as if we’re living in a parallel universe, those that are awake and those that are asleep.” When I say that, I mean that there are millions of people who are very aware of what’s gone on in the last few years and we certainly can talk about that. There are those that I say do not connect the dots because they don’t even think there are any dots to connect.
What’s interesting to me about the awakening process is that we can’t force other people out of their slumber. Those of us who have seen what’s at stake, our health and our autonomy in the past couple of years, see things very differently from those who think we simply went through a health crisis worldwide. I want to ask you this first. What was the little bit that woke you up out of your slumber and made you start to connect some dots about the threats to our health and autonomy?
First of all, I’m a critical thinker and I’ve always been that. I asked questions. That’s inherent in my personality. For me, it started at the very beginning. It’s this whole idea that we’re in a very heightened state of fear. You have to look at how fear gets propagated. When you’re told something like, “A novel virus has hit the entire globe and you should be very afraid,” you can take all the steps that we saw unfold.
For me, it was like, “I get it. That’s frightening. Something very new has gripped the planet, the so-called novel virus.” I had a sense of fear but I know enough about, through my mindfulness work, not to be taken over by fear. Fear is when you’re in a fight or flight state. You’re in a very reactive state when you’re in that fear state. I watched things unfold. We were warned with great alarm that we should be afraid. It was this novel virus and then all these protocols that seemed extremely unnatural to me.
We needed to go into isolation and lockdown, which I called being locked up. We needed to do things like social distancing and wear a mask. There were so many things that were thrust upon us so quickly in rapid succession that when things come at me that fast, I pause, take a deep breath, and go, “What happened? Do you know?” What happened was that there were people who were in positions of authority who were telling us what to do.
There was never any talk about how to stay healthy, what to do as far as how to support your health, bodily autonomy, or the right to choose. We went into what was called EUA, Emergency Use Authorization. Everything was thrown at us and that’s exactly how it felt. We were being besieged with this fear-mongering. My a-ha moment was I went, “Something does not feel right to me.” I would say that that instinct kicked in very quickly.
You had the courage to ask the questions when most people were complying with the guidelines. What prevents most of us from asking those questions from bucking the status quo? In part, it’s a desire to want to belong to the herd.
It’s understandable. First of all, let’s take this tremendous announcement that was unprecedented and presented to the entire world. When in the history of our lifetime have we seen anything like that happen? You already have everybody’s attention. You’re putting people in a heightened state of fear. They go into fight or flight. When something like that happens, people are not going to default to, “I shouldn’t believe this. Why should they think that?”
They’re being told by the top health organizations, our government, and even by their presidents or prime ministers that they should comply. You can say, “That seems like very sheep-like behavior.” Let me say that I can understand the initial, maybe perhaps acceptance of this but then there were many things that happened thereafter that the critical thinking should have kicked in big time.
You gave an example in your book about offering someone some concoction or soup and you said, “Drink it.” The initial question which is perfectly rational that comes to mind is, “What’s in it?” If you don’t get the answer to that question, it’s also perfectly rational and appropriate for you to want to reject that drink.
In essence, we were all told to take a shot so that we could have a safer future and get back to normal. That didn’t play out at all but the idea of asking questions about what could be in that and what could be the consequences were put aside. Society didn’t want that to happen or at least the media, nor did the pharmaceutical companies or any other powers that be.
You’re being forced. Let’s be honest about it. You’re being mandated, threatened, and coerced. There are many people who have lost their jobs. When they started to coerce, people were giving them pizza, money, and Krispy Kreme Donuts. If logic didn’t prevail at that point where you’re thinking, “I’m being forced to do something against my will without informed consent,” they’re not even telling you what’s in the vaccines.
You ask me what is an a-ha moment that I had. It’s something called Operation Warp Speed. Let’s stay with that for a minute. What does that even mean? What that connotes is they had to rush very quickly to get a vaccine out to billions of people on the planet. How many clinical trials did they perform to even know if this was safe? What we see that’s held a little too late or a lot too late is that it did not stop transmission or stop you from getting COVID. We also know that the amount of injuries and deaths are tragic at this point from this Operation Warp Speed vaccine that you were forced to take.
We’ve done a lot of interviews with experts like Mark Skidmore, Larry Palevsky, and Leslie Manookian. They went into the fallout from this shot that is not publicized anywhere. It’s in the Pfizer documents but people aren’t reading those.
It is out. As you know, it’s available.
I want to talk to you a little bit about how we can facilitate renewing our minds with critical thinking or letting that intuition kick in when we’re being steered in a different direction. How can we put ourselves in a place with more awareness and with the possibility of awakening as individuals? It’s either on a spiritual level or emotional. Talk to us about how we can cultivate that intuition.
Awakening, for me, is very broad. As much as I plug that into being awake to confront what we have been through in the last few years, I use awakening in all areas of life and that goes back to my mindfulness work. Mindfulness is being in the present moment with total awareness unless we’re present. At the moment which we are in, there’s a lot that we can miss.
Mindfulness is being in the present moment with total awareness.
A study out of Harvard cites that our mind wanders over 50% of the time. We’re either anticipating the future, which isn’t here yet. We have anxiety about what might or could happen, or we’re lamenting the past. The past has come and gone. Where we have the hardest time is staying in the present moment. From an existential, even metaphysical point of view, we need to look at why it is so hard for us to be present.
You can say, “It’s a lot easier for us when we’re not fully present to do as we’re told to project onto people who are in positions of authority to lead the way for us.” Awareness and awakeness are taking responsibility for the thinking mind, being accountable for the thoughts that we hold, and being responsible human beings on the planet. It’s a lot of work and it’s the work of self-realization.
From a psychophysical point of view, it is about getting to know who we are on a deeper level. There are people that are on a spiritual journey and people that are not. There are people that want to know themselves better and people that don’t. It comes with that entire commitment to wanting to be more aware, awake, and enlightened human beings on the planet. I cover a lot of that in the book. I go into all these areas.
If we’re not awake and aware, we are not present with ourselves. There’s less potential for growth. When we have pain or discomfort, sometimes we choose to numb ourselves out by entertaining ourselves on our devices or the TV. We try to escape. That doesn’t do us or the world any good.
It doesn’t. We know that there are many hardships to life. As the Buddhist said, “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” Most people want to do what’s convenient and do what’s easy. If we take something like what happened in the last few years and how many people were desperate to get back to normal, what do we even think is normal when everything has been turned upside down?
That in itself shows you that people don’t want to be inconvenienced. They want to get back to a sense of normalcy, which I can understand but you cannot do that by denying what’s going on. You have to be willing to face the truth of what’s happening, as unpleasant as it may be. What this shows is that a lot of people don’t want to look at that, even with the health organizations coming out and telling people. They are saying, “The vaccines did not stop transmission or stop you from getting COVID.” There are still people that don’t even want to accept it. It boggles the mind.
They’d rather have what is almost living in an illusion than in awareness of reality.
Very well said and that’s exactly how I feel. It is an illusion. One of the things that I noticed with a lot of people is they would rather keep this illusion alive than question things that are unbearable for them. You ask me again about an a-ha moment or many a-ha moments that one can have. I spoke to some people who went along with this narrative and we had a conversation. I shared some of my perceptions around it that perhaps weren’t theirs.
They looked at me, horrified. One friend in particular looked as if I had burst her bubble. She said, “How in the world could the government mislead us?” It was out of the realm of possibilities for her. I wanted to say to her, “Do you believe in the tooth fairy?” It’s a very hard pill to swallow that health organizations, government, and people that you have trusted perhaps have deceived you and even lied to you. It’s very hard for most people to accept that.
What does that do? It brings the responsibility back onto us. We have to be the arbiters of finding the truth. We have to have agency over ourselves. We are sovereign beings. We can’t have people tell us what our destiny is, what our truth is, or what we should believe. We have to determine those things. If anything positive came out of this time, for me, this is a time of a great awakening. Get to know yourself better so that if or when something like this happens again, you are very aware of it. You are awake enough to know the difference whether you’re being told the truth or misled with lies.
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Coming up, Ora discusses how getting to know yourself better can also be a tool for navigating these times. Go to Paleo Valley to place your order.
Go to Amazon – Optimal Carnivore and use the code WESTON10 to save 10% on all their products.
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We have to take responsibility to get to know ourselves better. What are some tools you would recommend for us to take steps in that direction?
I feel that taking responsibility is showing up in the moments of your life, being very present, and asking yourself, “Who am I in this moment? What are my beliefs at this moment? What are my perceptions and judgments in the moment?” It’s pulling back the veils of illusion. To simplify that, it means being fully present in the moment so that you can ask very intelligent questions about whatever you’re being presented with, whether it’s something that has been called a pandemic.
It’s hard for me to say that word because I don’t believe in it. Whether you’re in a personal crisis or something is being presented to you that’s uncomfortable and painful. Be very mindful. Be aware of, do you want to escape this moment? Do you want to anesthetize yourself from this moment? Do you want to deny what is truly happening at this moment? It’s very important to be self-aware so that you can be honest with yourself. I encourage people to show up in a moment and be fully present and courageous in that moment to face the truth.
I read a book years ago by a monk called Brother Lawrence and it was called The Practice of the Presence of God. I bring it up at this moment because he talked a lot about awareness. He was seeking continual prayer or communion with God but the idea is he would constantly pull himself back into that spot where he wanted to be, whether he was washing dishes or weeding a garden.
He was trying to be very aware of where he was and who he was connected to. I feel like if anyone’s reading and they’re like, “I don’t know what she’s talking about or how to work on this,” it is a practice that can be developed over time by being in the moment and feeling pain. Letting yourself feel, whether it’s good, bad, or ugly, experiencing it, and then almost transcending it.
I want to bring up mindfulness again because I want people to understand that mindfulness is the informal practice of meditation. It means that when you are in meditation, you have made a date with yourself to sit in quietude. You are making an effort. You’re tuning out to the world and saying, “I’m going to spend these twenty minutes and try to quiet my mind.” It’s for those who practice meditation, whether you have a mantra-based meditation or mindfulness meditation.
Think about this. You spend X amount of time on your yoga mat or meditation pillow. You end the meditation and you’re back out in life. That is where we need to be in the mindfulness state the most. It’s very easy to put aside twenty minutes. It’s the hardest to be present and aware in all the other moments of our day.
That’s the beauty of mind the mindfulness practice. You’re right. It is a practice and that means that you start to show up in every moment of your life as a more present, aware, conscious, kind, compassionate, and self-loving human being. I know that sounds like a tall order but a little bit every day goes a long way. The mindfulness practice is beautiful.
Mindfulness is a practice. That means you start to show up in every moment of your life as a more present, aware, conscious, kind, compassionate, and self-loving human being.
I love that you said human beings in the last part of that phrase. You mention this in your book. There’s a not-so-subtle shift into transhumanism, AI, a reliance on digital communications, and data collecting. How is that maybe pulling us away from our true essence? What way is that teeing things up for a future fear-mongering?
It’s rare to have a conversation about spirituality and transhumanism in one conversation but this is the times that we’re in. That’s what’s quite extraordinary. For those of us who choose to live a more spiritual life, to even entertain the idea that there is such advanced technology, things like AI and transhumanism are very real.
I’ve had existential conversations with myself about that. I understand that we’re in the 21st century. Our technology is advanced exponentially and there is a tremendous movement towards AI, which is coming into all sectors of business, professional life and personal life. There’s this transhumanist movement, which is a movement to transcend our biology and prepare us to be more machine-like.
That sounds very science fiction but it’s incumbent upon everyone to get very educated about what’s going on the planet. There has been a tremendous shift on the planet, which is why I call it the Great Awakening. I’ve heard it called the Great Reveal. What’s important to know about the transhumanist movement is that it’s taking us away from our true nature.
It’s a movement that doesn’t acknowledge the spiritual nature of us, which means it connects us to our spiritual being. I love the quote by a French philosopher and mystic, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. “We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” It’s so beautiful to me because we don’t wake up and acknowledge often, “I’m a spiritual being. I’m about to have a bunch of human experiences.”
The transhumanist movement is so offensive to me. It’s such a violation of protecting our spiritual sovereignty. We need to be aware that it is moving very quickly and what is our participation in it going to be. Let me be specific for your readers. There are markets that are already requiring us to put our hands over something, your thumb on something, or whole food markets where you can’t get in unless you use a QR code. You’re already getting into digital recognition and surveillance. It’s very real.
Why I want to bring this up in relation to mindfulness is there are a lot of people who are doing this. They don’t even know what I’m talking about. They haven’t done the information. Maybe you want to do your marketing at a farmer’s market that doesn’t require that. Maybe you want to connect with your local farmers market and some organic farmers who can send food directly to you. We’re going to be pushed more toward this. Why it’s so important to be awake is to make concerted and wise decisions as to how we want to participate in this movement.
How will the choices that we make with our growth, awareness, and intentionality help the world? The subtitle of your book is Changing the World with Conscious Awareness.
I was mentored by a screenwriter. I was a screenwriter many years ago. He told me this quote which is anonymous but it has stayed with me for so long. I’ve added woman to it because it says, “One man,” and I add woman, “With courage makes a majority.” I feel that this is a time for us to stand up for what our truth is. If I’m somebody who will make a decision and say, “I’m not going to stand idly by,” be very mindful and aware of what is being imposed on you. What is being asked of you? What does it feel like you’re being pushed to do, maybe perhaps against your will?
For us to raise our awareness which invariably raises our consciousness, if you do it and I do it, and it starts to reverberate out into the world and more people decide how they want to live their life, which is not being told how to live it, then that, to me, is how it’s going to move the needle. If we go along and accept everything that’s being presented to us, then we are complying and living more like sheep.
Ora, what if those people are perfectly happy? In your book, you had a chapter that was called Ignorance Isn’t Bliss. They’re getting all the shots, doing everything they’ve been told to do, and they seem happy. What if that’s exactly the right path for them?
If that’s the right path for them, then they should go do it. I feel that when it came down to being told to get vaccinated versus those who believed in bodily autonomy, in their immunity, or to use the phrase, the right to choose, for those who wanted to go that route, they were vilified and scrutinized. Many health providers are fired from their jobs if they don’t comply.
I don’t think people who wanted to make those decisions didn’t force anything on those who chose to be vaccinated. They didn’t say, “Don’t get vaccinated.” I didn’t see that in the public arena. People should do whatever they want. We have a right. For those of us who don’t want to be forced to do something against our will, we shouldn’t have to endure that anymore.
I like that, giving everyone the freedom, because that’s autonomy, to make the choices they want to make and to respect that. No one should be forcing anyone to do anything else other than what their conscience is leading them to do. What do you say to those who suggest that you’re a conspiracy theorist going down a bunch of rabbit holes and overstating things? You mentioned Bill Gates in your book and how he’s buying out farmland. I’m sure you mentioned The World Economic Forum, the World Health Organization, and the powers that are pulling the strings and those groups. What do you say to those who say, “It’s like you’re going down every rabbit hole possible?”
The conspiracy theory term as we know was created by the CIA when people questioned John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Why is asking questions thought to be that you’re a conspiracy theorist? That’s where it started. You were not supposed to question authority or else you were called a conspiracy theorist. That phrase has been propagated, exaggerated, and a common dear. If you question anything about what we are being told what to do, you must be a conspiracy theorist.
I love that meme that went viral. You know what they say about conspiracy theories, they’ve all come true. I challenge that. I find that to be a very small thinking attack on those who are critical thinkers and do feel they have every right to question what is being presented to them. If I choose to question something and someone else doesn’t, that is their right but let me have my rights as well to question, decide what I feel is best for me and not, and believe in bodily autonomy, which I do.
They say that the difference between a conspiracy theorist and someone who’s making things up is five years. Wait around and you’ll see what comes true in five years. Is there something in the book that we haven’t covered yet that was one of those a-ha moments for you that you were like, “I wish people would flip to this section of my book and see this one fact?”
There’s so much in my book that took me a long time. It was very arduous for me to connect my dots. I’m laying that out for people and the reader to take that journey. All I’m asking them is to be a good dot connector. I did so much research because I wanted answers that I wasn’t getting. That was for my edification. I wanted the answers that I got by doing the research that I did and I’m sharing that with the world.
There isn’t one thing. There are so many things that come to mind. Read the book. See what makes sense to you and what doesn’t make sense to you. I’ll mention one thing in particular and that was ivermectin and how they tainted ivermectin to be a horse dewormer. There are a lot of healthy drugs and treatments that the animal world and the human world combined can share. Suddenly, that was unavailable to people.
To me, that is a crime against humanity. It’s when you take therapeutics off the table that can genuinely save people’s lives but you’re being forced which is what Fauci did. I’ll use that word not lightly because it all felt like it was being forced upon us. It’s to take a drug like remdesivir which has been known to cause kidney and liver failure and/or damage. There are a lot of things to question.
I saw a dear friend of mine and I asked him about why he chose to take the vaccine. He said, “I follow the science.” In my book, it’s ten questions and the very first question is, “If you’re somebody who followed the science, tell me what the science is. Explain the science to me.” It short-circuits people. They’re like, “That was what I heard to do and I believed them because they were health officials and our government. They told us to follow the science.” If the vaccine is the science, tell me what’s in the vaccine. These are logical questions to ask. Things like conspiracy theorists or following the science become pop terms, phrases, or sayings that people glom onto and then that becomes their truth.
Do you know what’s interesting to me too? You would think a conspiracy theorist would be like a super paranoid and fearful person lurking behind corners, wondering what they’re going to discover, and saying, “The government’s out to get you.” Instead, the people who are asking questions like you, to me, seem like the freest, happiest, and most peaceful people on earth.
That is so true. I was having this conversation with somebody. We got a good laugh out of this because we thought, “One of the first interesting conversations that I had about this was with my painter who paints my house. He knew everything that was going on like I knew what was going on. We were finishing each other sentences. Another person was my electrician.” You talked to someone who’s an MIT grad, a Harvard grad, or a doctor.
It’s a little mind-boggling how those are the people who are incredibly rigid in their belief systems because that’s what they’ve learned at these top-tiered schools that follow the science. The people that warrant that thinking, you’re right, we felt freer and more connected to our truth. We weren’t living by dogma, these doctrines, and belief systems that are being told to us that we have to believe.
To quote my very first book which is called Says Who?, I find myself using that expression a lot. “Says who? Who says I have to believe that just because an authority figure is telling me that I have to believe that?” I love what you’re saying about we’re happier and freer. Part of that is that because we know what true freedom is.
For whatever reason, I don’t have all the answers to this but it’s being threatened. Those who are in these powerful positions, you can call them the global elites, The World Economic Forum, puppet masters, or whatever you want to call them. It seemed like that was everything that was threatening to them. It is anathema to them.
A belief and divine presence, whether you call it God, or a belief in a spiritual order to the way the universe works, to the natural order of things, to nature, it seems like they are so against that. They want to rush us and usher in this brave new world or this very Orwellian type of dystopian reality that we know is not at all real. To your point, what happiness is in that? I’d like to know what happiness Mark Zuckerberg thinks there is in a metaverse. It’s so creepy to me.
I love your call to greater personal awareness and mindfulness because I do think of it one step at a time. Even the Bible says, “A little leaven leavens the whole loaf.” Little by little, we will have that ripple effect on the world and the people around us, even if they’re making different choices than we are. Hopefully, that happiness and peace will emanate from us and change the energy, even the direction of where we’re headed.
I wish we could talk longer, Ora, but we’re coming toward the close of our time. I wanted to ask you the question I loved to pose at the end of the show. If the reader could only do one thing to improve their health and it may be related to awakening or mindfulness, what would you recommend that they do?
I would recommend that they wake up in the morning and don’t jump out of bed. Take a couple of minutes to be grateful that you’re one more day alive. Feel that energy around you. Feel what it feels like. It’s such a beautiful energy to be in gratitude. Let that set the tone for the rest of your day so that you do things with more present-moment awareness.
That can mean that you eat with a mindful awareness. You engage with others, speak to loved ones, and encounter strangers with a mindful awareness. You are living your life in a type of beautiful conscious awareness that will not only enhance the beauty of your life but you will affect everyone that you come into contact with.
You are living your life in a beautiful conscious awareness that will not only enhance the beauty of your life but will also affect everyone you come into contact with.
Beautiful words to end on. Thank you so much for your time, Ora. It’s been a pleasure.
Thank you so much for having me.
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Our guest for this episode was author Ora Nadrich. You can visit her website to learn more. For a review from Apple Podcasts, “Great information and fun topics.” Jasmine Tan says, “I love tuning into each episode, such great topics that make you think. Each guest brings great information. I love to share it with family and friends.” Jasmine, thank you so much for this review. It means a lot. You too can leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and tell the world that the show is worth reading. Thank you for reading. Stay well. Remember to keep your feet on the ground and your face to the sun.
Important Links
- Ora Nadrich
- Live True: A Mindfulness Guide to Authenticity
- Time to Awaken
- Institute for Transformational Thinking
- Paleo Valley
- Amazon – Optimal Carnivore
- Mark Skidmore – Past Episode
- Larry Palevsky – Past Episode
- Leslie Manookian – Past Episode
- Practicing the Presence of God
- Says Who?
- Apple Podcasts – Wise Traditions
About Ora Nadrich
Ora Nadrich is a mindfulness expert, international keynote speaker, thought coach, expert contributor to DailyClout.io , and founder and president of the Institute for Transformational Thinking.
Her work has been featured in Women’s Health Magazine, Reader’s Digest, Conscious Lifestyle Magazine, Fast Company, NBC News, Success Magazine, Spirituality & Health, Elevated Existence, LA Yoga Magazine, Yahoo! Health and Dailyclout.io.
Ora’s most Recent Book is Time To Awaken: Changing The World With Conscious Awareness
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