Yoga & Qigong YOQI: Nurturing Body, Mind & Spirit

In this episode I chat with the fabulous Marisa Cranfil
Marisa chats about YOQI, the fusion of Yoga and Qi Gong she has created. She explains what Qi gong is, how she came to study it as well as giving us a fabulous insight of Vipassana meditation which she also teaches

Join us for a fabulous insight into her life, you'll be glad you did!
Love Liz x


Marisa is on instagram:  yoqi.yogaqigong
Facebook: yoqi.yogaqigong
YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/@yoqi
Her website is:  www.yoqi.com

You can contact me in the usual way:
email:  spirituallyspeaking222@gmail.com
Instagram:  spiritually_speaking_222

Visit my website for crystals, incense and more!  
www.karmaripon.co.uk

Transcript

Liz Hill: 0:05

Hi, this is Liz and welcome to my podcast, Spiritually Speaking with Liz. I've got another fabulous guest today. Before we start, just let me remind you to like and subscribe to the YouTube channel and click the little notification bell and on your podcast app, if you can share with your friends, if you like, or if you click the little three dots and that'll take you down to follow and then you'll get little notifications whenever I post anything new. Okay. Today, I'm not going to disappoint you. I've got a fabulous guest. I've been obsessed with this woman since I found, I think it was May, end of May, beginning of June. And I'm going to introduce you to Marisa. So Marisa Cranfell is the founder of Yochi and she received direct transmission from Qigong masters and healers. As well as studying various styles of yoga, yin yoga being the biggest yogic influence for Yochi, Marissa has directed and produced over 200, it'd be a lot more now I would imagine, qigong and yoga videos using an endless repertoire of movements and postures. And she shoots them in the most amazing. They've just got better and better. I think your backdrops, the Santorini one, I was like, Whoa, they are just amazing. So Marisa, hi and welcome. Thank you so much for joining me.

Marisa Cranfill: 1:29

Hi, Liz. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Liz Hill: 1:33

My absolute pleasure. So, Marissa's currently on a around the world trip, basically, aren't you? Filming everywhere. Are you doing classes as well while you're going around or is it just purely filming?

Marisa Cranfill: 1:45

Yeah, well, it started as the immersion in Greece. So I flew from Bangkok to Greece and then to Spain to teach and then from Spain to California because my family's here and I have some personal things to take care of. And then we'll go back to Thailand. So it was literally an around the world ticket. Yeah, must be

Liz Hill: 2:06

very

Marisa Cranfill: 2:06

tiring. The jet lag and, but the jet lag's okay. I have the skills with Qigong to, you know, to reset my energy and everything. It's mostly just the, the crowds, the delays, all, you know, all the baggage unpacking, packing, it's a lot of time that gets taken up and then acclimating to the new food and getting everything. So, yeah, that's. That's really what it is because after all that, that's work and you just want to rest, but then there's actual work to be done. So yeah, it piles up.

Liz Hill: 2:41

I can well imagine. So can you explain to us how you came up with Yochi? What, what made you put the two together?

Marisa Cranfill: 2:50

Yes. Well, I started I started with a really strong meditation practice. That was really what I was into back when I was like in my teens. I was more athletic. I liked to run. I like to swim. I like to like do gym stuff. So I felt like my body. practice was pretty taken care of. I was stretching, doing yoga classes and stuff. So meditation was my primary practice for spiritual, the spiritual side. And then when I went to China, I learned Qigong. That's another story we can get into. And so I started with the Qigong and I saw, okay, Qigong is a moving meditation. So it's, it's, was bringing everything together, the body and the mind and the breath and the spirit. And then when I moved to Thailand, there wasn't Really any Qigong teachers, um, and Qigong isn't that popular there. So I found a yoga school and my best friend was became was the owner. He became my best friend and I started training in yoga and became a certified yoga instructor. I got really into that. So what happened is now I had a meditation Vipassana practice. And I had a Qigong practice and I had a yoga practice and I wanted to put them all together for my practice. And when my meditation master asked me to teach mindful movement at our Qigong retreats or our meditation retreats, I played with this and I was like, okay, let's do a little Qigong. Let's do a little yoga stretches and it worked. And so that's really organically how Yochi came together. I. So I intuitively just thought, okay, I'm going to name this yo chi, like yoga and qigong because I really want to appeal to the yoga community. I think yoga community is ready for this. So I thought it was a name like that. Yogi's will identify in a way and say, okay, what's this style of yoga? Oh, it's more qigong. Okay, I can do that. You know, that's interesting. And it really is working because. I would say 70 to 80 percent of the people that come to train and certify as teachers of Yochi are already either doing yoga for over 20 years or are yoga teachers. So, yeah,

Liz Hill: 5:11

that makes sense. I mean, I've heard people talk about Qigong for years. Oh, answer this question for our viewers and listeners. What is the difference between Tai Chi and Qigong?

Marisa Cranfill: 5:24

Sure, um. So Qigong is the mother of Tai Chi, and Qigong is ancient. It goes all the way back thousands and thousands of years to the shamanic times of China, the early Taoist shamans, and they used movement and dance as a way to move energy and clear stagnation in the body. So movement was understood as health. If there's disease, that's because there's stagnation. And what you need to do is move to remove the stagnation and get the energy to flow. So Qigong was the original, it came before Tai Chi. As the years evolve, as Qigong evolved, it evolved into many different branches, you could say. So there's medical qigong, that's when Chinese medicine took qigong and said, okay, let's be more specific. How can we use movement to heal the liver? How can we use movement for the kidneys? And then they developed specific movements for those organs and for healing specific ailments. Now the martial artists, they said, how can we use movement and energy to fight. And they took qigong and they created what is today the powerful system of Chinese martial arts. Where they combine fighting skill with energy and Qigong and that developed into Tai chi. So Tai Chi wan is, Thai means the greatest. G means polarity and wan means fist or, so it's like the supreme, ultimate fist is the translation. And um, it's using the principles of yin and yang with fighting for health and balance. So when you learn Tai Chi, you're going to learn a set of movements, a specific set that are mostly based on fighting principles like punches, kicks, blocks, and strikes, and how to play with another opponent's energy. Um, it's. powerful, it's amazing. And it takes years and years to learn and master. Whereas Qigong, you can come into a class, not know anything and get it right away. And that's really why I chose to teach Qigong because I studied, I've studied Taiji Quan Chen style and Yang style, and I love it. And I still do it. But I found it was much easier to make a video or to help people through Qigong than Taiji. Yeah,

Liz Hill: 8:03

I understand that because I've, I've been to, um, Tai Chi classes a long time ago and exactly that you can't just dip in and out because it's, it's the progression of the form, isn't it? You're building each time, adding the movements on each time, which is what I love about the Qigong. Because as I said, I found you on YouTube, you just popped up one day and I was like, Oh, and it was the morning routine. So it was the start of summer. I was doing it barefoot out in the garden on the grass and it was just, I just loved it. And so every day I let YouTube choose and it would bring up one of your videos. It might be the same one. It might be a different one and some of the movements are the same, but it was, it's easier to follow. But I found it more Uh, personally more powerful. I think the, I think probably because I was, well, YouTube was picking for me, but it always seemed to be apt for what I would need for that day, you know, like, um, energy boost or, um, whatever. And the different, the different movements, um, I don't know, I just, I just really connected with it. And it was, we've had a terrible summer here, but the beginning. May June was really nice. So doing that outside every morning early morning Just I felt very connected to that very connected to the earth and I've had Frozen shoulders and so I can I'm a yoga teacher, but I've not been able to fully do yoga still because I've got issues with one particularly where I found with the qigong that It pushes me enough, but without causing any aches or pains, so it's, it's slowly been strengthening. Yeah,

Marisa Cranfill: 9:56

yeah, this is, this is one of the beauties of Qigong and yeah, it's very, uh, it's a healing practice and it's gentle enough, but because of the repetition, which yoga doesn't have as much of, uh, of course, Yoga Vinyasa, you do Surya Namaskars over and over. The Qigong, we do one flow and we just repeat the same movement. So if you're doing like separating the clouds like this and you're rotating that shoulder joint so softly and smoothly, it's actually healing and it gives you the opportunity if you have pain to modify and to not go to your maximum range of motion, but you can modify it and it down. Right. And breathe through it rather than. In yoga, where there's, it's just yoga is different. It's a lot more. Um, there's more for more weight bearing exercises, which are great for bones and building core strength. Um, but yeah, if you have an injury, putting your weight on the injury is not going to be helpful. So, yeah, that's why I believe they compliment each other. So, well, is. One, yoga has, is more yang, qigong is more yin. Yeah.

Liz Hill: 11:10

Yeah. And I agree. I think, I think they're a very good balance. So for you, which came first, qigong

Marisa Cranfill: 11:16

or yoga? Qigong came first. I mean, I was doing yoga, I'm from California. was born here. So I was already taking yoga classes. Um, when I was like 17, but I didn't really know what yoga was. I just would go to a class and do, do what the teacher said, you know, so it wasn't, it wasn't a practice that I would come home and do on my mat by myself. Qi Gong was, it was something I, I learned in China. I was practicing it at home. I didn't start doing yoga as a personal practice until. Later on. Yeah. So with the Qigong, um, I, I discovered it in China, actually, uh, because I was a student at the university. So I was at Zhejiang Dashui, which is in Hangzhou. It's so beautiful there. It's famous for their Lake Xihu, and they have botanical gardens. And I was studying comparative religion, and there's, and Chinese language. So I was taking a Chinese language class with students from all over the world, Africa, South America. It was amazing and we had to communicate in Chinese and they offered an elective Tai Chi course. Uh, after class that we, many of us joined, but one day nobody came to the class except for me. So the Taiji teacher, he said, well, nobody came today, so why don't we do Qigong instead? And I was like, okay, I'd heard of it, but I hadn't done it. I'd seen it in the books and he said, okay, let's go to the forest. And I was like, oh, okay, like with you alone in the forest, but because I was a runner, I ran that forest like often. So I knew the forest. So I was like, okay, we can go to this botanical forest. And we went and he had me stand with the tree in the zhan zhuang posture and face the tree. And he said, now breathe with the tree and connect to the tree. And just to find my posture, breathe in Dantian, he got me set up and then we just stood there for like 20 minutes together in the forest and that was it. It was amazing and that was, that was what really sold me because I was like, Oh my gosh, this is my meditation practice in nature, connecting to nature and strengthening my chi, my body. And I understood right then what the Tao was, and this path of the Tao. So that was really the initiation into Qigong and what, what inspired me to continue finding teachers everywhere. I continued training Tai Chi and in different parts of China. And everywhere I've, I lived, I would find a Qigong Taiji teacher to study with. And finally, um, because I wound up living in Thailand, most of my life, most of the time, Master Mantak Chia, he's in Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand. He's Thai Chinese, and he has a beautiful Dao garden center there. And so I wound up going there to get my Certification to teach. So he, his school has a lot of influence on my style of Qigong, but also it's from many different styles of teachers that I've learned with. And through this, I actually developed my own style. So, which is based on the Yochi method. Yeah. But all

Liz Hill: 14:42

that you've done, so I've read all about you and all the, you know, who you've studied with, where and everything. You should be a hundred for all that you've done. I don't know. I don't know how you've managed to do all this in a relatively short space of time. You must have been studying an awful lot.

Marisa Cranfill: 15:02

I've, yeah, that's all I've done. Like since I was 18, I knew that this is what I want to do. And, um, and of course I was working for my family in Thailand, but what, that gave me the opportunity, uh, to study with all these teachers and continue traveling around Asia and, um, much more easily.

Liz Hill: 15:24

Yeah. So that was the fashion business, wasn't it? Your mom's very well known for Thai silks. So it was... Yes. So there were, for you, there was no, you felt no pull to that. There was no. Drive

Marisa Cranfill: 15:38

there for you. No, it was never what I wanted to do. I knew it from a child. I did not wanna do that. Um, although I, I enjoyed it and I think it was really good for, for learning about business. For cultivating creativity and the skills to get, you know, to understand color to how to because I was doing a lot of was design and also production producing like styling the sets the photo shoots, working with models. And so when I started making the videos for Yochi, I already had a vision of how I wanted things to look. And of course I wanted them to be stylized and beautiful. And, um, So that the viewer would have this experience of beauty, because I believe that when things are harmonious, like in the Dow, they say it's when things are harmonious, we are, she also feels harmonious. So when they see something beautiful, it stimulates beauty within yourself. You've got some

Liz Hill: 16:38

absolutely amazing backdrops, haven't you?

Marisa Cranfill: 16:41

Yes, this is, finding backdrops is probably the hardest part of the work.

Liz Hill: 16:48

Yeah, I can imagine trying, you know, trying to find, I mean, obviously there's thousands of places in the world, but trying to find somewhere that would connect, somewhere with, fits with how you are and how, what you want to bring across to people. What's your favorite sort of place? What do you? What do you look for when you're looking for new venues? What's, what do you have in your

Marisa Cranfill: 17:10

mind? I look for a clean lines. So, um, yeah, you'll often hear me say when people are scouting with me and they point out like, what about that? I'd be like, too messy, too messy, too messy. If there's too much stuff, I like very clean. Um, and that's because I know that the viewer needs to see me and, and see my shapes and movements, but also they want to clear, clear their mind and have everything like feel balanced. So I also look for balance. So, if there's a rock on 1 side of me, there should be something on the other side to balance that rock. Uh, so, yeah, we're looking on. We were in Spain and we were scouting on the beach and the coast South of. Barcelona that coastline and it took all day just walking like every single beach to find like the perfect angle with the sun and then the people because the people show up at the beach. So you have to work with that. Yeah.

Liz Hill: 18:09

Yeah, that must be actually quite hard because people, for the lay person, you just think, oh, you know, Marisa's gone and found, she's gone to Spain, she's just found, oh, let's go on this beach, let's shoot the video. But I don't think I hadn't even thought about that either, taking all that into account.

Marisa Cranfill: 18:27

Yeah. And also the hiking in, in the Joshua tree, you have to hike sometimes to get to these parts and it's hot and dry and dehydrating. I mean, there was times where I didn't, I was completely sunburned, dehydrated so many times, ants biting all, all my feet while I'm shooting a video. I'm just being bitten by ants the whole time I'm doing the video. And yeah, it's, it's really a, a hardcore training sometimes to make the videos.

Liz Hill: 18:57

Yeah. Yeah. And, and, but yet to see you do them, they're just so peaceful.

Marisa Cranfill: 19:04

I love it. It's a, it's amazing. Like at the end of a video shooting day, I'm so energized from just doing Qigong and my videographer and like the people that are just exhausted. Cause they've just been standing in behind a camera, but I'm like, Hey, let's go.

Liz Hill: 19:21

Yeah. Do you ever get the crew to join

Marisa Cranfill: 19:23

in? Yeah, they actually, the videographer, he'll sometimes do the movements behind the camera, just with me. Mm hmm. Yeah, the ones he likes. Oh,

Liz Hill: 19:35

that's really nice though. So you've, you've trained in lots of types of meditation as well, haven't you? Mm

Marisa Cranfill: 19:43

hmm. This was... Oh, this was part of my education in university. And what's

Liz Hill: 19:50

for your daily practice? What would you, I always ask guests because I like to know this. What are your non negotiables for your self care that you have to do purely for Marisa, not for the viewers, not for Yochi, the website or YouTube? What is your non negotiable daily,

Marisa Cranfill: 20:09

would you say? Um, I do, I do self massage. A lot, so this is. It's really, really powerful for myself to get to clear out the emotions, especially when it's going to sound I'm a woman. So breast massage, breast massage is one of the most important things for a woman to do. And I do it with the six healing sounds. So I, I do the six healing sounds with. The massage this, and then, um, I do a lot of core, um, floor exercises first because to support as we age, uh, I'm, I'm approaching 46. So as we age, we really need to start building up more muscle and core. And, um, so I do those and then like every day, and then I have a basic floor stretch and yoga floor stretch routine. So then I work my way up to stand. And then I do, uh, Do my Qigong routine, basically, like I do a little hard Qigong, and then I end with the soft Qigong, but I really work with the seasons and I work with the six phases. So I have the basic things that I do, but I change it up. I change it up every season. And, um. Um, like in the spring, I'll do the aging, which is the muscle tendon changing practices and but only in the spring. So I don't do them like the rest of the year. It's become kind of like my rituals of seasonal rituals. And it makes me look forward to those seasons. It's fun. Right. And then you can get really deep into one practice. But yeah, I would say the self massage and the pasana meditation are like. Key, and those are both ways that I'm nourishing my chi because movement is important. I can go to the gym. I can do a go on the treadmill, anything just to get myself moving. But for balance, those are my go tos. And Vipassana is, is not Qigong, it's actually Buddhist meditation. And often I stand, which is more Qigong. Which is more of a Qigong thing to do actually. So I stand in the earth facing posture with my palms facing the earth. I'll do a little bit of tree, but mostly hands here, and I can stand for an hour like that a day. And it's, for me, it does everything. That's where I'm at now. That's

Liz Hill: 22:38

fabulous. Can you just explain for people that don't know what Vipassana meditation is?

Marisa Cranfill: 22:44

Yeah, um, Vipassana is means insight. So it's, it's seeing yourself clearly and seeing the, your consciousness clearly. So it's observing your mind and body and, but we use the breath as the anchor for at first in the beginning, cause you need to have something to focus your mind on. Otherwise it's just going to go all over the place. So you start by focusing your mind on the breath. And then once you. You become accustomed to that. You can start to use also the body or the space around the body to focus the mind as well, or points on the body. So it progresses as you progress your practice. And eventually you reach the point where you can, your, your thoughts will become less and less and less so that you can now start to observe the nature of mind. And that's really where you want to get in this next stage is where you can relax so much, but have enough energy to still be awake and not fall asleep to focus on the state of your mind. And, and when you get to that state, that's when lots of things start happening. Because the energy. From a Qigong view energy starts to transform. Yeah. So there's where magic happens and a transformation happens. So, for me, often because in daily life we carry a lot of stress or there's a lot of stress, and it. It's a huge clearing can happen in that point where, because the mind wants to shift into a higher state and the higher vibrations, they don't, there's no stress in those vibrations. So they're like, okay, we want to take you here, but you need to dump all this out first. And so often I'll have like a huge just cortisol dump or. Release. Um, and it's, it's such a beautiful, beautiful practice. And then from there, you can go into the next state, which is a peaceful feeling. And that peaceful state or blissful state is also only a state. There's more beyond that. But that's, that's the beauty of meditation, because that's where we find our calmness and inner peace. And we can Oh, We can program that feeling and, and know that that feeling is always there for us. No matter how crazy life gets and how crazy the world is, we have the power to go inside ourselves and to bring ourselves to that place. And that's, that is powerful. You don't need to take any drugs. You don't need to have anything. You just stand and you can do it.

Liz Hill: 25:27

It is an incredible And meditation, I think is an incredible thing and, and a much maligned thing. I think it's seen as hippie or, you know, it's not understood and I think it should be brought into schools, um, mainstream because I think it's so important to connect to yourself. So a lot of people go on, it's normally like 10 days, isn't it? Vipassana courses where it's total silence. Um, and you've been trained in there. So obviously we can't do that in. A few minutes, but could you, so for anybody that's thought, Oh, okay, I like the sound of that. Could you give like four or five tips of what somebody could do to get to that focus point? So they could either be stood like you do or sat straight with the back nice and tall. What would you, what could you suggest for people?

Marisa Cranfill: 26:19

So the method the way that I teach it is the first step is to tune into your physical body and structure. This is because you need to bring your, your mind in connect into the body and ground there. Then the mind can start to relax. So if you want us to control the mind or stop the thoughts, these are the way they say it, but to bring the thoughts down and become aware of awareness, then you need to start with the body. So awareness of the body. First, find your structure, um, whether it's standing or seated. So when standing, we have like specific Wuji posture alignment principles. Those are on my VOD library. There's a video that I take you through the five keys to set up your posture. And those five keys can be applied to sitting or standing. So the first is to relax the joints and You know, set up the structure. So if you're, you're seated, you would lift the pubic bone up, you would, and this can be done in a chair or in half lotus. Lift the pubic bone up, sink the tail down. So reduce the lumbar curve just a little bit, tuck the chin in so that you're lengthening the back of the neck and you feel that spine long, and then relax all the joints. So relax the shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees, ankles, everything relaxing. This is the first key. And then the second is to tune into your Taiji pull, which is the The line of energy that runs through the center of the crown of your head, down the center of your body, from the pelvic floor to the earth. So you tune into this line and you feel like this pole is holding you up, connecting you to heaven and earth. And this is important because we receive energy from heaven and earth. Those are the two greatest forces of chi. And if you are aligned with heaven and earth, Then they give you energy and support for the meditation. So you're not relying on your own energy. You're plugged in to these forces. And then the next key is to relax the chest and sink the breath into the dantian. So that's abdominal breathing. And most all meditation traditions, they will instruct that you do deep abdominal breathing because it's the natural and healthy way to breathe. And it also brings the mind into the body. And it gives your body energy. And then the fourth key is to use intent rather than force. So this is that we don't force anything in meditation. Um, but we do have an intention. The intention is, I intend to sit, you know, for 10 minutes or 15 minutes without distraction. I'm going to focus for 10 minutes. I'm going to be completely present. So it's bringing yourself into this complete present moment awareness. And then the fifth key is to smile. So we use the smiling energy to open the heart and again, not take ourselves seriously. And the smiling energy, it sends a message to the brain to relax and that you're safe. And it activates love, which is healing. So I've found that these five keys, which is what I teach, are so powerful. Um, once you set yourself up with these five keys. You're there. You're ready. And the meditation just you just slide right into whatever technique it is in Vipassana. We start you with the technique of watching the breath. So, um, you just focus your mind on the belly and you notice. Inhale, exhale, and that's it. And how long is my inhale? How long is the exhale? The nature of the breath. Is it shaky? Is it smooth? Is the inhale longer or shorter than the exhale? You just observe. But what usually happens is after 30 seconds, the mind starts to go somewhere else. So and here it hears a noise or it see it, something happens, you know, that takes your distraction or you have a pain in the body and the mind goes there. So that's when the meditation becomes interesting because now you've lost focus and you become aware of that. Okay. I heard that. But instead of attaching to the sound and starting to think something, you bring yourself back to the breath. And this can be really frustrating in the beginning because people might think I just can't do this, like, I just can't do this, it's so hard, my mind doesn't stop, but the more you do it and train, it's just reprogramming yourself and training your brain, the more you come back, the more you come back, those distractions will have less hold on you, so you will hear it and you won't even go there, you'll just know there was a sound, but you're still focused on the breath, And then lots of things can keep going like temples in Thailand are so loud and so distracting. They're not peaceful at all. People might think Buddhist temples are peaceful, but they're so loud. So it's like part of the training. They say, um, don't, what is this saying? It's like, don't disturb the temple, like with your, With your thoughts, right? So let it be there. And you learn how to just let all those thoughts, distractions just be there, but you stay in your breath. And this is just from training and practice. Yeah. So this is the basic. That's perfect.

Liz Hill: 32:15

Thank you for sharing that. I know that'll be a lot of use for a lot of people. Something else I wanted to ask you about, because I noticed, uh, when I was looking at your website and reading up about you, that you have another business called Tree Spirit, which is about, you've, so you've studied shamanism in Thailand. Now I've got. everybody seems to link through shamanism for me for some reason. I've just got a real interest in it. So could you explain to us what that is, what, what you studied, what a spirit house is? Because I think videos of it, I think it's just beautiful.

Marisa Cranfill: 32:57

Yes. Um, from the time I was When I was young and going to Thailand, I saw spirit houses everywhere and I, of course, when you're young, they look like dollhouses. And so they're so cute and pretty and magical. And I was like, I want to know what these are. And when I was studying Buddhism, even the Buddhist temples had a spirit house. But I noticed that, you know, the monks never touched them. They stayed away from the spirit houses. So I was like, why, why do they have these? They're, it's a Buddhist country. Um, but then it has Hinduism as well. And then it has these spirit houses. So I dove deeper and was asking questions. I, and I found out, okay, this is a shamanic tradition in Thailand that goes, it's animistic, it's pre Buddhist, it's pre Hindu, but it's also has layers of Hinduism and Buddhism that have. Come into the tradition as well, because in Asia, they're quite tolerant of mixing and blending. Different layers of religion and so I seek these shamans, which I found the way to find them through friends and then simply by going out and just I every city in Thailand has a san luck moon, which is a city pillar shrine, which they believe is the spirit of the whole city. And this is it. It's like a phallic. It's like, um, in Hindu they have these lingams, like a Shiva lingam. It looks like a phallic symbol with a lotus at the top. And this is the city pillar shrine. And so I would go to the city pillar shrine and I would ask, who is the priest that takes care of this shrine to the caretaker? And then they would usually give me the number. Or I would go to a spirit house, um, where they sell spirit houses. And I would ask, give me, do you have know any priests that Do the ceremony because if somebody goes shopping to buy a spirit house, they need to have a priest to install it on their land. So in Thailand, they believe that every piece of land has a spirit. And we are just guests on the land. And these spirits are there. They were here before us. They're ancient. And so you must give them a place to live on the land. Otherwise, they're going to come in your house and they're going to bother you and they can cause a lot of problems. But if you give them a place to live and you appease them and communicate with them, they can actually help you and protect you and take care of you. So this is the, um, the belief behind it. But later there's actually two spirit houses. There's the Sanjyoti, which is that one. And later when Hinduism came, they brought in a 2nd, 1, which is an angelic. So there's a house and there's a palace and the palace has the angel inside and he is connecting to the heavens and the other one is connecting to the earth. And so you can call upon him to protect you as well. And this angel, he, he's like a radio station. I always say, like, you can just dial in you. pay respect, you light the incense and candles, and it's like you're tuning your radio station on that spirit house to him. And he's like kind of there for everybody in the whole country. So everybody's tuning into him. But each house, when it comes to the land, they have their own particular spirits. So it can be very, um, different at every house. They can offer different things to the spirits because different spirits like to have different things. And so it was very fun to do all this research and go out and study with the shamans on how to do the ceremonies and the rituals. And, um, I was writing a book at the time, but then I switched to do Yochi. And then I. Couldn't finish it. So that's going to be maybe my retirement project. But the website is still there with all of the blog posts that I had done and pictures and videos. And it did influence my Qigong a lot. I mean, cause I have a understanding of, of, you know, how Asian culture connects to the land, to the ancestors and to the spirit world. I was

Liz Hill: 37:17

fascinated by it. I just thought it was the nicest thing, just, and it makes so much sense, doesn't it? It makes total sense to me. So do you, at your home in Bangkok, do you have

Marisa Cranfill: 37:29

one? Yeah, every condo, I live in a condo, so we have a beautiful teakwood spirit house. And the, when I moved in, cause I just moved. In January to a new place, the first day that I moved in, I went and I paid respect to the spirit house to say thank you. And I'm here and like, please bless me and welcome me to this place. And yeah. And so normally we, the it's the guards and the maids that usually pray every day or the staff, but the people that live there, we don't necessarily pray every day, but on holidays we do. So there's certain times of the year where it's important to pay respect. And those are usually astrological days.

Liz Hill: 38:12

And do you have your family home in the States?

Marisa Cranfill: 38:16

Do you have one? No, I don't because we live in a condo here too. But, um, I had imported a bunch and. What we wound up doing. So my cousin has one at his home that I did the whole ceremony with them. So that's really where the spirit house is. It's beautiful. And then the four seasons in LA has one of my spirit houses somehow, like it got there by through a Thai person. So, yeah.

Liz Hill: 38:47

Oh, that's really cute. I like that. I think it's such a lovely way. Of bringing all the culture together, bringing everybody together. And like you say that it ties in perfectly with you, with that connection of the earth, that connection with the heavens, with the energy, with the flow. I just think it's perfect.

Marisa Cranfill: 39:07

Yeah. And I think One thing I was trying to promote through it was also tourists to Thailand. When they come, they don't understand what they are. And also, they've everyone when you go to Thailand, you really should visit the sand lock among of Bangkok, the, the spirit of Bangkok, the center where. That spirit resides and pay respect and just say, thank you for blessing my trip, for welcoming me in this country. And, you know, you can make a wish and it's just a really nice thing to do. And the, they have a whole section of different angels that watch over Bangkok and the country, and it's quite powerful.

Liz Hill: 39:49

It sounds, I think it sounds a beautiful thing to go and visit and to pay your respects. Marissa, thank you so much for joining me. I've absolutely loved our time together and I love hearing all about these different aspects and how you brought them all together. And guys, I invite you to check out Marissa on YouTube so your, I'll put all the details below, but your channel is called, is it just called Yohi or is it Marissa Yohi?

Marisa Cranfill: 40:16

You can, you can Google Yohi, Y O Q I on YouTube and it will come up, but it's yoi.yoga and Chi Gong. It's the full, the full title. And then we also have a video on demand library. That's where there's over 200 more videos that aren't on YouTube. And that's just a monthly, a monthly fee and a payment. We have different payment plans as well. And then there's the online course. If you're interested in really going deep, you can even become an instructor or just take it for your own information. It's.

Liz Hill: 40:53

Yeah, that's brilliant. And, but I invite you guys to check her out on YouTube and on Instagram as well, because the pictures are just stunning. I think, and we do, you've got reels as well, haven't you? But then the pictures as well, but it's, it's a real feast for the eyes and it's just, it's an instant karma. I think now you just look at it and like. Relax and feel the flow of it. Thank you. Oh, no. Thank you again. Thank you for joining us. And guys, thank you so much for joining me and I'll be back again soon with another fabulous guest. Take care and I'll see you soon. Bye. Bye.