THE IMPERFECT SHOW NOTES

To help make this podcast more accessible to those who are hearing impaired or those who like to read rather than listen to podcasts, here are our show notes.

These show notes come via the Otter.ai service. The transcription is imperfect. But hopefully, it’s close enough – even with the errors – to give those who aren’t able or inclined to learn from audio interviews a way to participate.

Pier Paolo de Angelis  00:00

I was very unhappy and very miserable, but life is always full of magical coincidences. So I hired a business consultant, and this business consultant was a member of Kripalu. Was associated with Kripalu. He said to me, you seem like the kind of guy that could benefit from going to Kripalu. What the hell is Kripalu and and he said, guy said, you know, well, just come and have spend the weekend doing rest. This is called RNR rest and renewal. Just come for a weekend. I invite you, and then we’ll see.

Achim Nowak  00:38

Welcome to the my fourth act podcast, I’m your host, Achim Nova, and I have conversations with exceptional humans who have created bold and unexpected lives. If you like what you hear, please subscribe on any major podcast platform so you won’t miss a single one of my inspiring guests, and please consider posting an appreciative review. Let’s get started. I am just delighted to welcome Pierre Paolo De Angelis to the my fourth act podcast. Paolo was born in Milano, but he is very much a citizen of the world. He started exploring the world in his early 20s, traveling and working in Europe, the Middle East, North and South America, while serving as the chairman of Kripalu center in Lennox. Math in the mid 90s, he led the transition team that transformed the former ashram into the largest program center in North America. His vision of an institute devoted to personal and global transformation eventually took him to Hawaii. Here, he ended up partnering with Amara to help develop the path of azul, conscious movement practice as a path of personal transformation. He has since also created one dance tribe as a collaborative container for different expressions of conscious living. I am so happy to have you as a guest. Hello, Pablo.

Pier Paolo de Angelis  02:19

Hello Achim, thank you so much for your invitation. I have followed your podcast recently, and I find that it’s a really a great gift to our community. The sharings that happen during your interviews and in the presentations of your guests, they’re very inspiring. Thank you for including me. I hope to contribute to that.

Achim Nowak  02:44

Well, I appreciate your kind words. I’m sure our listeners, just when I read the introduction, get a sense that you’ve had, at least outwardly, a big life. It’s taking you to many places. I’m always curious. When you were you were born in Milano, and you know when mom and dad asked us, like, what do we want to do with our life when we grow up? What were you thinking about when you were a young boy or teenager?

Pier Paolo de Angelis  03:14

Like many others, unfortunately, I grew up in a dysfunctional family with an alcoholic mother, an emotionally unavailable father, who happened to have a total financial meltdown when I was 13, and I was also shy and insecure, as in order to compensate my mere reality at the Time, my dreams were grandiose, famous architect, polo player, Playboy leader. I don’t know I studied, but then, you know, the reality is that I started working part time. You know, at age 14, after high school, I would leave high school and start going to work selling all kind of products, door to door, working for polling agencies and selling furniture, until I moved out of my home after finishing high school and started exploring the world. Like you said, first London and Barcelona, several Middle Eastern countries, until I landed in New York at age 28 and studied my first business.

Achim Nowak  04:21

You and I are pretty close in age, and I also arrived in New York when I was 28 and New York was different than from the New York of today. We don’t want to talk that much about your first business, but I’m curious how what was the idea for your first business? How did you start it like how did that happen

Pier Paolo de Angelis  04:43

before I moved to New York in the three years prior to that, from age 25 to 28 I worked for a company. I was assistant to the president of a trading company in in Italy that was developing turnkey projects in Middle East. You. Know, this was a time where Middle East discovered the oil covered that they had something very valuable in their land, and all of a sudden they found themselves with a lot of money. But there were countries like Saudi Arabia, Iraq as an example, Lebanon. I went Syria. I went through all the travel throughout all these countries and did projects there. They had a lot of money, but they had no infrastructure. They had no roads, no airports, no hospitals, no factories. There was nothing. It was desert and camels and Mercedes. So my job was to go into different agencies and collect what they call tenders, the product, you know, for, okay, we need the pharmaceutical factory in Baghdad. Okay, so I had all the specifications, and I would come go back to Italy and research what would be the most qualified companies in order to develop this project, and then I would create a delegation of Italian entrepreneurs go back to meet the responsible agencies in the various countries and eventually negotiate the deals. And I became pretty good at that, and after three years of doing that as a young man, I was 2526 working was great, but I also wanted to have a life. You know, I had the opportunity to work on a project that was the designed by the US Corp of Engineers, a military city in Saudi Arabia called King Khalid, the military city, and all the negotiations happened in New York. I spent three months in New York negotiating these projects, and I discovered there’s like, okay, like a kid going to Disneyland. I said, this is, I’m not going to Middle East, you know, I want to have a business here. So I went back to my boss, who was the president of the company, and I said, we really need to open a branch in New York, because with all the connections we have with Italian companies, US is a rich market, we will do very well. And then he came back two days later and said, You know, I discussed your proposal with our board, and we decided it’s not in our strategic or strategic plans. And I said, well, thank you very much. It is in mine, and I left the company and I just moved and I went out.

Achim Nowak  07:30

Here’s what strikes me is we’re talking about very intentional, strategic business work and business decisions. But I have this sense that I could be wrong, so please enlighten me that at the same time you’re also starting some spiritual explorations. Or did that happen later?

Pier Paolo de Angelis  07:51

No, it happened later because I was very excited about being able imagine where I was coming from and frustration of as a teenager and this grandiose dreams, and then all of a sudden, finding myself in New York by myself being able to start a business and be successful. What I found that was most rewarding was first and foremost, was my freedom, the freedom to choose what I wanted to do and where and how, then the creativity one needs to use its imagination to constantly open new pathways. And is like my business was importing and distributing high end Italian design products, and everybody loved them in the US, but there was like a cultural gap, just the measurements in centimeters, inches, just the installation instruction. So I had to bridge that gap. It was a creative enterprise, last but not least, the financial reward that allowed me to enjoy a posh lifestyle. I rode that wave for several years, and in the process, I realized that as as I was moving forward, I could start feeling that I was very self centered at the time, and I was often insensitive or disrespectful to others. I started disconnecting. In a way, there was a part of me that started disconnecting from the pleasure of being an entrepreneur, and then when I was in my late 30s, you know, like I said, I moved to New York when I was 2810 years later, about I lost my business and financial security. I divorced my first wife, or she actually, she divorced me. We had a very young daughter. I felt like the word had collapsed on me. I’ve been in New York for about 10 years, when I can say I entered my midlife crisis, even though it was an early midlife crisis and I was very unhappy. P and very Minister boys, but life is always full of magical coincidences. So I hired a business consultant, and this business consultant was a member of Kripalu. Was was associated with Kripalu. He said to me, you seem like the kind of guy that could benefit from going to Kripalu. What the hell is Kripalu? And he said, guy said, you know, well, just come and have spend the weekend doing rest. This is called RNR restaurant renewal. Just come for a weekend. I invite you, and then we’ll see. And sure enough, in the following couple of years, I took every program that they offered and and I discovered like a whole new word for the first time in revelations about love, about spirit and about my true nature, and I became quite fascinated with that. That’s when something shifted for me, you know, basically, I hit bottom, and then I realized that there was something else I discovered, and I was blessed to have to be taken by the hand that over there and be guided. But this first experience with Kripalu and with their teachers is what really ignited the fire.

Achim Nowak  11:19

I’m so touched. And as I listened to you, and I remember again, that one person, in this case, your business consultant, by extending an invitation, they can open a door to a whole other world. To us, to your credit, you walk through that door, which is beautiful. And most of our listeners, I would assume, know Kripalu. It’s a celebrated I don’t want to just label yoga and wellness. It’s about more than that, but that’s part of the public brand center. The wealth of programming that’s offered there astounding. The nature is gorgeous in directing it to you as you went back into you ended up being the chairman of the board, I assume, and helping lead a transition into it becoming what it is today. I’m sure we could spend hours just talking about it, and we don’t have hours. But if you think about that moment in your life where you helped an ashram become what it is today. What stands out for you from that journey that you took Kripalu on?

Pier Paolo de Angelis  12:30

I have to just take it a step back to where I first started, going to Kripalu and attending programs, and being in this programs helped me become acquainted with the teachers there had been trained by the founder, Amrit Dazai, and with Amrita Zai himself, to the point that I organized the retreat for Kripalu in Italy in 1991 and I kept my connection when the scandal broke in 96 and Amrit was asked to resign and Kripalu went into chaos. Some of the elders asked me to step in and help. I ended up moving near Kripalu in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and working there for two years, donating my time basically to facilitate the transformational process that allowed an ashram to become a program center. It was an intense time, but it was a time where I felt totally dedicated to a mission, and there was a mission that was bigger than me, and that’s what made the difference of my entrepreneurial experience. Because, in a way, it was, I’m exaggerating by, you know what I mean, all about me and my company, and this was not about me at all. I was working as hard as I did in my businesses, and I was happy to donate my time, and I was happy to do it for the greater good. And I think when we do that, magic happens. Because the magic that happens to me is that during that time, not only we were able to settle all the lawsuits to find a reasonable structure for the for Kripalu to transform, but I also made lasting friendships that eventually developed over the years allowed me to one step in into my next business, because one of the board members was a renowned Hollywood event producer and I, and eventually we partnered and projects together and others became my friends and mentors. Actually, it was because of one of these friends, Mark David, the founder of the Institute of psychology of eating in. That I moved to Maui and then and when I had my other, my last life, or one before the last,

Achim Nowak  15:08

your transition from Paulo to Hawaii, and deeper question that always interests me and like for all of us, when do we know that one part of our life is done and we can let go and move on to something else. Like, how did you know that? Because it’s easy to become attached to her, Paulo, talk us through how Paulo knows that it’s time to move on to something else.

Pier Paolo de Angelis  15:35

I think that when we’re ready, we know, and if we don’t know, life is giving us a gentle push to let us know, because the same thing that happened to me at the end of my entrepreneurial experience in New York, when I lost my business, I to close my business. The same thing sort of happened with Kripalu, because after Kripalu stabilized, my entrepreneurial energy wanting to so. I had a project that I wanted to bring Kripalu all over the world. I wanted to open centers. I had a whole plan developed about bringing crypto to the world, because I thought Kripalu was the biggest gift that anybody could receive. I clashed with the conservative wing, let’s say of component of the board, as well as the community that thought that my ideas were too progressive, and I was simply dismissed the board meeting when I was traveling in Italy. And one day I got a call and they said, Well, I just want to let you know that we have a new board. And I said, What? Okay. And then I was in Italy. The moment I came back to Massachusetts, to my home, walk into my home in the bursaries, the phone rings is my friend Carl Bendix, who’s the producer from Hollywood, said, Pierpaolo, you’re going back to italy tomorrow. I said, No, no, I just came back from Italy. And he said, No, no, you’re going to Italy because we are producing an event for Paul Allen, who had the time, was co founder of Microsoft. Anyway, we produced a multi million dollar event in Venice. It was like an epic event, and we started a collaboration. So life is just full of surprises. I knew that I was done with the Kripalu when they told me I was and then I had this moment, you know, the couple of years of two, three years of being in this glamorous world of event productions, because I become more sensitive, I realized that I really did not like myself in that word. I was not the person that I was aspiring to be, especially after having my eyes opened in the experiences that I had at Kripalu, I dropped that and I really opened the space for the universe to come in and say, We want you to go there and do that. Because I did not. I landed on Maui totally accidentally, because my friend Mark David had moved there and he had met someone who’s studying was collaborating for a project of developing an international network consciousness TV called Millennium TV was about and because I had an experience also working with Italian television, I produced the TV show for three years before moving back, moving to Kripalu that started like my connection with Maui. I ended up having a relationship with this person that didn’t last very long, but they opened my door into a whole new world. Maui was, I can say, was a real major turning point, another major turning point in my life, because I found the most diverse spiritual community that I’d ever experienced before, from nating alliance to Sufis to Krishnas to Buddhist to, you know, Hindus. Everyone On Maui is represented, and they’re all friends, and they’re all working together, and they’re all worship the same God, which is, is like, Okay, this is very interesting. I don’t know if I totally answer your question, but I hope I did. You answer

Achim Nowak  19:32

beautifully the phrase that I really adored, and I want to repeat it. You said I opened the space for the universe to so do its thing. You didn’t say do its thing. That’s me americanizing it. But that phrase in my mind, when what happens can transcend our limited thinking, right when we open the door to something larger, which is what I heard you say, we do need to. Talk about Amara and path of azul. And I know I’m skipping through some other things that would be great to talk about. But what should we know about Amara, who you met and you created path of azul together. Walk through that door for me, please.

Pier Paolo de Angelis  20:16

I think it important to mention something here that is the surrender and the opening and the listening, you know, because I was called to go to Maui, and eventually I moved to Maui because I felt like, I said, Nicole. When I landed on Maui, I started weeping, and my friend who picked me up at the airport, said, Welcome home, kiddo. And I felt like, Oh, this is home. Why? Out of all places, I’m from Italy, you know, like and for the first year, I had no idea why I was there, until a friend approached me, a friend also that moved from Massachusetts, from crypto that I met at Kripalu, and said, there is this place called studio Maui. They’re having trouble. You know, you help Kripalu. Why don’t you? Can you please take a look and help and see if they you know? I said, Sure, why not? And I started like, same thing, going there, donating my time and just watching what was happening and trying to figure out what was the best course of action. Amara had been hired by the owners of studio Maui to run the conscious dance department. She was a five rhythm teacher at the time, and my first task was to negotiate our contract. We went out on a meeting to negotiate our contract. In the conversation, I mentioned that why I was there, and I said, you know, I realized that that my really my next step is to start an institute. Want to create an institute dedicated to consciousness, to the development of conscious communities. Eventually, I said to Amara, I know, and I would like you to be part of that, you know, maybe you could run the conscious Dance Department of that Institute. We studied that way. And Amara is a very passionate and intuitive woman. She said, I’m on board, kind of simultaneously, the the previous owners of studio Maui, decided to let go. There was too much pressure for them, financial and otherwise, and I decided to step in and take over. And I said, you know, the universe is bringing me this opportunity. Maybe I was thinking of an institute without walls, but here I am. I have this beautiful center that is like being offered to me, and maybe this is the headquarter of our institute. I took over the studio Maui with Amara. In addition to running the dance the conscious dance department, she also started working with me. In the course of three years, we had some of the best teachers, living teachers, you know, in all fields. It was a beautiful experience. And then we realized that running a center was taking a lot of energy, was costing us also a lot of money, because it was a big financial undertaking and was not getting us somehow closer to what we really wanted to do, and we eventually decided to let it go and bring our work into the world. There was a convergence of Amara coming from her having her movement experience, conscious movement experience, and having worked with Gabriel Roth and when many other teachers my journey would be in a different journey, but meeting sparked something new, And that’s how Azul was born. Azul was born as path of personal transformation, and I could also say purification from the limited and fearful vision of life that is created by our mind is a path of union to the unlimited and eternal truth of love. Azul is, in a way, is the reflection and the expression of amaras and my journey of self discovery we share with others the steps that we have learned to reach peace and joy in our lives and in our hearts. After a few years, we started also training people interested in becoming channels for this work in the world and this very rewarding journey. And I think that that is, I feel very fortunate that there was as a yin and yang encounter that turned into a union because we are experiencing in our own. Life.

Achim Nowak  25:01

You use this beautiful and I have a movement background, so the movement certainly resonates with me. But you use this wonderful phrase, embodied awakening to describe part of the journey of path of soul. So I’m curious, since you met, you met a movement person? How has the experience of movement sort of just impacted you and your journey in life?

Pier Paolo de Angelis  25:30

Yeah, thank you. First, let you mentioned like embodied awakening, which is the way we communicate about our work, and I’d like to say a couple of words about that, the awakening is really descriptive title for our work. It represents the union between the material and the spiritual aspects of our life. Like I said before the Yang, they bring the opposite into perfect harmony. We experience life through our bodies, most of us, especially in the contemporary world, experience life, mainly from the perspective of our rational mind being disconnected from our bodies and our hearts. Embodiment. We see embodiment as the process of rebalancing and reconnecting the left and right brain with the heart. It is also a process of understanding that every cell of our body, thinking, feeling, leaving, and the way we can experience that is by fully occupying our body, connecting every cell and every atom in harmony with the laws of the universe. This is embodiment. Awakening, in our words, is a simple realization of our spiritual nature and the interconnectedness of life in a unified field. So embodied awakening is like the holy marriage of our spirituality and our humanity. Is spirit having an experience of life through our body. So where does movement come in? Movement is the Vehicle for Exploration. Movement is what allows our bodies to have a direct experience at the cellular level. It facilitates the neural connections and helps to release stuck energy from early life wounding. What has happened to me in relation to movement is that movement has helped me reconnecting with my humanity as well as my divinity. It is like an exhilarating journey filled with joy and gratitude. It is like the azul spiral. That’s why we have a spiral as a symbol with love at the center, because we keep spiraling into new experiences in our lives, and the awareness that love is at the center is our compass that always shows us our way home.

Achim Nowak  28:04

I want to ask you to connect one more. Dot for me, because you are I have a sense of you as somebody who just has to keep doing new things. You know, when I mentioned one day in stride, which seems like another evolution and path was always part of it. What should we know about one dance tribe and how this pathways will relate to it?

Pier Paolo de Angelis  28:27

Thank you for the question. It’s a beautiful question that also illustrates how Amar and I came into this experience together in balance with each other’s experiences, in an imbalance with each other’s desires for exploration and self expression. I have always been, I cannot say, like a supporter, a spokesperson or a diversity. I think that diversity is the perfect expression of the oneness of the universe. When Amara, Amara had, before moving to Maui, she had her own studio, five rhythm studio in Olympia, Washington, and she has started an event, yearly event called tribal spirit, where she invited five rhythm teachers, four or five days to come to Olympia and offer like programs in a retreat environment. When we close studio Maui, we didn’t have a facility anymore. We talked about the possibilities and the projects. And Amara said, you know, one of the things that I miss is tribal spirit. And I said, How about if we create an event that is inspired by tribal spirit, but instead of being favorite on teachers, has a variety of teachers, like Soul motion. Teachers, and open for teachers and whatever other teachers. And also that is not limited to conscious movement, but we invite other teachers of psychology, spirituality, yoga, and we create an event that allows people from different backgrounds to come together and have an experience of unity, of oneness of we had the first event. We found a beautiful location on Maui called King Kenai. There was like a totally wild sacred land of Hawaii in the north of the island. We did our first event there. Our very first event was so successful that six months later, we did another one. And then the woman from Germany came to the event and said, We should bring this to Europe, and introduced us to a zonestral center, and there’s a beautiful facility in southern Germany, near Munich. So we started offering wonders tribe in Europe. Over the years, oneness tribe has developed that it really is a super powerful container where that all the teachers are happy to share their teachings there. And it’s a powerful container because somehow we are able to provide an experience of oneness from the moment you walk into the door. It’s a real, true, transformational experience for many people. It’s a very rich experience for all of us who organize, teach, attend, participate, yeah.

Achim Nowak  31:41

Beautiful. We’re recording this conversation at the beginning of 2025 so as you look to the future, what you desire, what you might like to do more of less of what if anything is emerging for you.

Pier Paolo de Angelis  32:01

2025 also. For me, it’s the year where I’m turning 73 and I have to say that turning 70 has been a major Maya marker for me, because experiencing changes in my body and experiencing a heart attack that showed me the fragility of life has kind of shifted my understanding in relation to life and to my life and to my work. I can say that I definitely live life with more reverence, gratitude and compassion that I have ever had. I have finally become aware that in order to live in alignment with my purpose, I don’t really have to start a new enterprise or write 10 books, you know, which I’m not saying that I will not, but I’m saying that I’m going to allow life to unfold and our work to unfold. You know, Amara is younger than me, and she is very committed to her teachings. Obviously, it’s a delight to keep supporting her in that trajectory. So that is a part of my focus that is dedicated to azul and Wanda tribe. We’re actually organized the next event, next journey in kislek As we speak, but I feel like part of my energy is also focused on honoring my body and balancing its needs with the energy that I share in the outer world. Is like I feel in peace. I feel like a sense of veilment and say, Okay, I have contributed. I’m still contributing, but my contribution now can slightly change, and I realize that if I doing my inner work and keep coming back to love, keep nurturing the spiral of love inside of me that alone has a transformational effect on the auto

Achim Nowak  34:09

final question, because you’ve been on an extraordinary journey, and you we started off with you talking about growing up in a dysfunctional home. If you had a chance to whisper some words of wisdom to young Paulo, what would you prefer in this year? Well,

Pier Paolo de Angelis  34:28

since I’m talking to my my young Paolo, I would say, work less, play more, and don’t worry so much, because all is well, you know, because the universe takes care of you, you know, like you’re never alone. Yeah, most of all, love yourself. I have definitely experienced lack of love at some times in my life for myself, and I would say, be grateful for everything in your. Life, you know, including what is unpleasant, because it’s only through friction that we learn and grow. And finally, I would say, be gentle with yourself, because it is by our own mistakes in earlier year that we grow in understanding and blossom later in life.

Achim Nowak  35:25

Beautiful for any listeners who want to learn more about path of azul or a one dance tribe. Where would you like to direct them? Where can they learn more?

Pier Paolo de Angelis  35:39

We have a beautiful website called Path of azul.com we also on Instagram as part of azul, on YouTube as part of azul. So there are multiple ways to connect with our work and explore what we offer.

Achim Nowak  35:58

Thank you, Paulo, and really, thank you for the gift of this conversation, the clarity and honesty. I really, really appreciate it.

Pier Paolo de Angelis  36:05

Thank you, Achim, it was a pleasure to be with you today.

Achim Nowak  36:13

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The my for the ACT podcast. If you like what you have heard, please like us and leave a review on your preferred podcast platform. And if you would like to engage more deeply in fourth act conversations, check out the mastermind page at Achim nowak.com it’s where fourth actors like you engage in riveting conversation with other fourth actors. See you there, and bye for now. Bye.