Fostering Community and Service with Anton Brandt

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Our first ever guest on the Compose Living podcast is Anton Brant. He's the founder of The Sacred Fig, a global platform for yoga education. In addition to his work with yoga, he also works with sacred medicines where he delves into the realms of consciousness, spirituality, and the interconnectedness of all beings. He believes that these experiences enrich his offerings, allowing him to approach his teachings with emotional depth.

Anton is passionate about guiding his students to explore their own places of strength as well as tenderness, ultimately aiming to create a space of compassion itself in query. Through his classes, he offers a profound space for exploration, inquiry, and growth. I've taken many yoga classes with Anton over the years, and I've also joined him on two retreats, and I can tell you, these experiences are filled with a warmth, joy, and curiosity that I've not experienced in that setting before.

Anton lives with his partner and their many animals at Cocoon Portugal. Cocoon is a 275 acre farm and yoga retreat center on the Atlantic coast of Portugal.

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EE: Hi, Anton. Thank you so much for being with me today.

AB: Thank you so much for having me. It's a real pleasure.

EE: I love the background of your video. I wish that we could be together in person, of course, but you are in Portugal at Cocoon, is that right?

AB: That's right. I'm at home at Cocoon, which is our farm on the coast in Portugal.

EE: So beautiful. Well, next time I'm out there, we'll have to do something in person. So for me, when I started Composed Living, it was never just about home organization. It was always about how can I share the tips and ways of living an organized life with people so that they can also find some space for simplicity or creating the lives that they wanted. I was so clear in choosing Composed Living as the name of the company because I really wanted to create this image of compose, I guess, has two meanings to me. One is the refinement of life, whereas the other one is more like a composition. I love that duality of you're specifically choosing pieces of things that you want to come into your life. That's what it means to me. I would love to hear when you hear this description, I guess, what Composed Living means to you or how have you built this into your life.

AB: It's actually really fun for me because I remember when you were building your brand however many years ago, and so I've had some years to consider what those words mean to me. I guess I have a slightly different way of understanding. When I think of living a composed life, I think about there's a sense of wholeness. When I hear composed, I think of something that's whole and so for me, it's about this small daily things that I would do in my day that would make a life that feels by some way whole.

EE: I love that. That resonates so much too.

AB: Yeah, specifically the small things for me. It's like the small daily mundane things that piece together to create this life that I would call whole.

EE: With that comes so much intention because it's very easy to let your day pass you by without doing these small things, whether that's coming home and lighting a candle or putting your shoes back where they go or scheduling a coffee with an old friend. It's so easy to watch the days pass by without those things taking place. I guess that is where organization really becomes this lifelong principle rather than a thing that you do to tidy your home. It's like the organization of your life so that you can experience the things that you want to be experiencing. I think.

AB: What you do, what you're saying about organization being somewhat more than organization, it's something that we share but it's definitely something that's really meaningful to me. To give you an example for Cocoon, which is my business, which is a yoga center and it's a farm and yoga center in Portugal, one of our values for the way that all the staff live at Cocoon, the first value is that we make our beds each morning. Because everything starts from there. I can't pull myself together and have some sense of clarity in my day if I haven't made my bed. Everything starts with it. It's the simplest task but again, it's like these small little mundane tasks but if we do a hundred of them throughout the day and they become part of our lives, that's the structure which creates a life which is ultimately full of meaning.

EE: Absolutely. I just laugh every time somebody's like, I never make my bed. It's like such a chore. You're just going to sleep in it again. There's such a different way of looking at that as I'm setting myself up for the day. I'm also doing myself this beautiful favor of giving myself a beautiful bed to come back to sleep into in the evening. For anyone who has to walk past that space, it looks like pulled together and nice. But yeah, Chad and I both make our beds. First thing we do and sometimes he wakes up before me to go for a run and he makes his half of the bed while I'm still sleeping in it. That's how ingrained it is into us. He's like, I can't leave this bedroom unless my pillow has been put back where it goes.

AB: Wow.

EE: And the sheets are, it always cracks me up when I wake up and I'm like, mmm, nicely done, yeah, that's nicely done. You said a word structure. Like it creates this structure. The structure creates this opportunity for us. And I was just listening to a podcast yesterday and they used the phrase “structure creates freedom.” And I thought it was so interesting and so beautiful. And I'm sure I've like had this awareness but to have language that was so succinct. I just loved and I immediately thought of you and I thought the timing was divine that I was like listening to this yesterday and today we're filming. But I think you have done a remarkable job of using structure, the structure of like, you know, how you organize your own life, your body, but also your businesses, all of these things, really your whole life to create what from an outside perspective looks like absolute freedom. You know, when I look at your life, it's like, oh, here's Anton traveling the world again, just like he's in Bali. He's doing yoga. He's at the beach. Like it's also free and wonderful. But I know that that comes from having, you know, so much structure to support that being your life.

AB: Hey, thank you. Yeah, one of my friends, she always makes fun when she's talking about me to other people. She says that Anton broke out of the matrix.

EE: Yes.

AB: But yeah, I mean, one of the ways that we talk about in my yoga community, that we talk about that is we talk about that paradise is a walled-in garden. And it's saying the same thing in different ways, which is that, yeah, there has to be an element of structure or boundary in order for us to thrive. And yeah, the older that I get, and especially in my work as a yoga teacher and as a husband and soon-to-be dad and all these things, it's I see that the more foundational structures that I create in my life, they serve for me and everyone in it to thrive. I mean, it's just one of the most important yoga class. Like, if I have the four walls and the yoga mats are clean and it smells nice and it's like those are like the basic foundational elements. It's like if everything, you know, like the more boundaries that I have within that space, then people can relax into it. But it all starts there.

EE: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I guess that's the same with what we at Composed Living are doing in people's homes. I always tell people the clients that I enjoy working with the most are the ones who truly want to learn how to keep these changes going forward on their own. It's one of the things Chad teases me about because he's like, well, how often should your clients be booking with you and rebooking? And I was like, never?

AB: Hopefully once.

EE: It's like, I mean, unless it's a new space in their house, you know, but that really is the goal. Like, I want to help people learn these foundational practices. And then the more you do them, the less you have to think about them as with most things in life. And it just becomes a habit that's so built in. But then you have this freedom of not constantly worrying, like, what if a guest comes over or my house isn't ready or my kids can't find their stuff, like all of these daily stresses that we really truly can do completely without just by creating that structure and maintaining it.

AB: How do you get the buy in from people so that it doesn't feel unattainable? Like I'm sure many people look at your life and they're, well, of course, everything is together. I mean, someone who doesn't have that.

EE: Which is funny because I work really hard on it. So that's such a good question. There are some people who I don't think are either they're not interested in learning about it, which is fine. Like it's not, it's just like one life philosophy not everybody needs to ascribe. And then most often this becomes very simple to get people to buy into when they realize that we're not organizing their home so that we feel good about it or so that it looks beautiful in an after photo, we're setting them up with systems that are going to be functional for their lives. So it's a very different system if you are living in a world where you have a live-in housekeeper and two helpers for childcare and somebody who's cooking all of your food and doing grocery shopping, that's such a different system for us to set up than a single mom with three kids under the age of five. And so we talk with them about what their individual struggles are and then we try to come up with a solution that's going to work with them. Also factoring in like, you know, all across the spectrum of what people's comfortability is with, is that even a word, comfortability? What their comfort level is with tidying up, you know, like one of the girls on my team, she like folds her socks into these beautiful little packets and like puts them away.

AB: Wow.

EE: And you know, I don't, I don't even fold my socks. I actually simplified it a step further and just bought all matching socks so that when I do laundry, all of the socks are a pair and I just put them in the sock drawer. Like there's no need to take this extra step. But you know, I know for Maddie, she really enjoys this process of like folding laundry and putting things away, but it's not for everyone. So you know, we just, we try to tailor. I think that's what gets them to buy into it because they realize that they are co-creating this foundation for their own lives. And it only works if, if they're a part of it or they have help who's going to be a part of it. Is there one word that you feel like you're focused on right now as either like a value or something you're trying to bring in more of or less of like something that's kind of your mental focus that's a part of your everyday these days?

AB: Yes. So every year, Tony, my partner and I, we sit down before, before the start of the year and we create a set of goals that are personal goals and I also goals that we want to work on together. And then we also vision far into the future, like 10 years into the future. So we do that all the time. And so the, there's actually two words that are landing with me this year. One is community and the other one is service. And it's fun for me because I've never, those have never come up. And this year they came up crystal clear, like every single thing that I put on my list of things that I wanted to explore this year was could be encapsulated by either the words community or service.

EE: Wow. Yeah. Where, well, first I think it's very interesting because these things do and should evolve, I think. And, you know, I do the values deck, which I think we've done together. You've done a different iteration of that same project where you sort of fine tune your core values. And I take a photo of it each time I do it and I do it maybe every six months. And it's always a little bit different, you know? And so I've kind of started learning like there are some things that you focus on in life because it's what your soul is craving in that moment or it's something that feels like it's missing or something that feels very important. And then once we sort of have that ingrained, we shift a little bit onto something that's a new direction for us. So I love these two words community and service. Have you already experienced like what this looks like in your life? Or is it something you're still sort of working to bring in more of?

AB: Yeah. So I can articulate more. So I don't know if you're familiar with the Joseph Campbell, the hero's journey. It's basically like an archetypal framework for any journey that someone goes on in someone's life. And so if when I look at my life over the past decade or so from, I mean, I'm 40 now. So from the time that I started teaching yoga, which was just over a decade ago, when I started, I was in Asia. And when I started teaching, no one would come to my classes. Zero people would come to my classes. I had to beg to get on the schedule anywhere. And when I ultimately wanted to move back to America, I didn't have enough money to buy a flight home. I had to borrow money. And I had to stay at friends houses. And it was really, really hard for me. And I struggled and worked and struggled and worked. And of course, over the years, my first business of doing yoga retreats and teacher trainings, which is the sacred fig, is that developed and became successful, that opened up many doors for me and ultimately to open up my own retreat center and stuff like that.

And there was something that happened for me where when I turned 40 this year, it was such a chance for me to reflect back. And my life has radically transformed over the past decade. And this practice, which means the world to me, this yoga practice, which has brought me to my husband, it's been incredibly generous for me to be able to live a life of my dreams and move through the world freely, it's given me so much. And that's not really, that's not at all the purpose or intention of yoga or my yoga. It happened and I'm really thankful for the abundance. But ultimately, that's not where the practice ends for me. And so now I'm at this point where I feel financially secure. I'm doing what I love. I love sharing my practice with students around the world. But I want to find a way to give back that does not funnel, that's not just about me making money. I mean, I love the trainings that I do and I'm really proud of them and I love posting retreats and I love my retreat center. It's an incredible life. And there's a piece of me that says, the ultimate, the return and the hero's journey, the hero must come back with gifts. That's how the hero's journey ends. It's not like they learn all this stuff and then they kept it to themselves. But the hero's journey ends when they return back with gifts. And so now I have to give my gifts. I'm a wonderful yoga teacher. I go around the world teaching. There are communities that I could serve in a way. And so there's this yearning for service which is coming out of me now. And I'm just now placing myself in the center of it. Like how do I want to work with this?

EE: Oh, that's so beautifully said. And I can see the excitement in your face as you talk about it. And what a great visual to have the hero returning with gifts. That's so nice. I actually pulled up my phone this morning. I have this new habit, which I'm going to do a mini podcast episode on to give people the whole scoop. But every day I pull up my photos as I'm having my coffee and I type in today's date and look at all the photos that I've taken on today's date over the years. And you popped up on my phone from today's date in 2017. And I had just been appointed as a court apointed special advocate, CASA, for foster youth. And you were there at my graduation dinner.

AB: Amazing.

EE: So cool. It's like, what fun timing. But yeah, as a side note, that's a great way to go through and delete all of your bad photos so that they don't just end up taking up all your time and it's not overwhelming. And it's fun to see everything that has happened. This time of year is so fun.

AB: For you, that's interesting talking about CASA and the work that you do because that has for many years played a huge role in your life.

EE: Yeah. It really has. And it's so funny. I always ask me why I've chosen foster youth to work with, like, what's the connection? Were you in foster care? Absolutely not. We had a wonderful childhood and two parents. And it was great. But I think I've always had such a soft spot in my heart for anyone really who doesn't have somebody to care for them or who feels vulnerable in that way. And I think a lot of times when we think about the foster youth in this country, we think that like they've done something wrong to end up there as opposed to something has gone wrong with the adults in their life that has resulted in them being in this situation. And it's a huge struggle for me personally. Like there's times where I get so overwhelmed by the amount of emotion that it takes to really advocate for the youth. And then there are times when you can, it's most of the time when you're looking back in hindsight, like, okay, we actually were able to do something significant to help this child and put them on a better path forward. So yeah, the case I have right now, I've been working with this child for two years. Yeah, service is not always easy. I think I'll say that. I think it always feels rewarding, but it doesn't always feel easy. And I'm so thankful that I have the energy and the stamina to continue doing that.

AB: You have to read Gable Maté's book, The Myth of Normal. I forget if I told you about it. You did.

EE: It arrived. Yeah, like two weeks ago.

AB: Okay, I'm a huge fan of his for many years. And then this book has really stepped up my appreciation for him. I love it so much that I just now have included it as required reading for our advanced trainings. And it's just like his work, what the way his approach to childhood trauma, childhood development, this myth of like a happy childhood, just so many, he just digs into our culture in a way that is really eye opening.

EE: I'm excited to read it. I love buying books. This is like my one weakness in life. It's collecting books. You were buying it because it's very thick. It's massive. Yeah. Do you not buy books in print? Do you read all books in print?

AB: I love a hardback and I'm with like a huge stack of books and everyone thinks I'm insane. But I like to know what I'm getting into. If I buy a digital book, whatever, it's like, I have no idea what is this. You know?

EE: It's funny. I've never been able to read on a digital platform. I got a, this is a side note, a little free library. Do you know what this is?

AB: I've never heard of it.

EE: This was my Christmas gift this year. They're tiny houses, imagine a giant bird house and you can design them yourself or you can buy a kit and you put it in your front yard and then you put books in it and whoever is walking by can take a book if they find one that they like or they can leave their books for other people to enjoy. And you register, there's a community online so you can find all the little free libraries in your community and then you can go drop off your books or take some books.

AB: It's a bird house. Is it elevated off of the...

EE Yeah. It’s the same concept of a bird house, you know, but like maybe two feet wide. It has a... Some has a... It has a... It has to look exactly like our house and it'll sit like in our side yard and our...

AB: No… That's cute. Will you stock it with books?

EE: Oh yeah, absolutely.

AB: What books would you stock it with? What if it was for adults what books would you stock it with?

EE: Well, it's tricky because most often you're not putting in there the books that you want to keep, right?

AB: Yeah.

EE: But I do find that I have duplicates of many books. I think I must see them at used bookstores and then the first thing that pops into my mind is like, oh, I love this book so much. I'm going to get this copy of it and then I come home and I'm like, oh, I'll file it next to the four other copies that I've already purchased of this. So all the duplicates are going in there, but for fiction, the Count of Monte Cristo is one of my favorite books.

AB: I don't think I've read it. I think I told you.

EE: It is such a fun adventure tale. And I love the classics. That one in the Picture of Dorian Gray, I think you can never go wrong with someone who's wanting to read classics. Both of those books are so much fun. I think, you know, everything by Brene Brown, I probably have everything that she's written at this point.

AB: Everything. I want her to write a childrens book or parenting book.

EE: Oh, yeah, well, there you go. Brene, we're going to tag you in this. Please write a children's book or a parenting book. When I look at your life over the last 10 years, I think the word that keeps coming up for me is bravery. And you've made some very bold, brave choices. I'm not sure if it feels that way for you, but that's how I see it. And just leaving college and then moving to Shanghai and then starting one business that was quite successful and you were so passionate about. And then another one with the Sacred Fig and now Cocoon. And now you're living in Portugal. All of these are very brave and bold choices. Do you feel like you've had to think about those in the moment? Like, did it feel scary making these decisions? Did it just feel completely natural? Like, and is this feeling of bravery or my concept of you making these brave choices? Does that even resonate with you? Or are you just like, no, of course that was like the most normal decision to make and I didn't feel scared. Or I don't know what the right word is that I'm looking for. Like if I make a decision, for example, I'm very like, I don't do anything until I know I have that spark and then I'm like 100% that is the decision. And sometimes that happens very fast for me and sometimes it doesn't. But I've never been afraid to make those decisions once I have that feeling. And when I look at you make these very big choices for your life that I think a lot of people wouldn't do because of the fear of newness or failure or any of these things. I've never seen you seem to like falter or second guess yourself. That's maybe a more succinct way of putting it. And I'm curious if that's what building this life has felt like for you or if it feels different.

AB: I think it's always funny to look back on one's life because it's so easy to think, oh, there's the arc of their life and it was like this. And I often will speak to people in these grand terms to simplify what happened because people don't want to hear the whole story. I think there were a couple interesting things at play which when I look back that strike me. One is that at the time that I was graduating from college as a gay man, the landscape, the landscape of what I was allowed to do was quite different than it is now. At that time there were no mentors or guides in my life including on television or media that I looked up to or that lived a life that I wanted to live. Nowadays there's musicians, there's actors, there's shows on Netflix which have gay characters that are happily married that aren't like in some weird thing going on, whatever. But at the time when I was 20 there was nothing. Glee hadn't come out yet. That was like the big thing. And so there was no mentor for me to look at as like they are living the life that I want to live and so I'm going to follow in their footsteps. And so I created my own path. Because I didn't see anyone for me to mirror, I just decided to do it on my own. And so I went as far away as I could. I literally went to the other side of the earth. And I just and I kept doing it and I kept, I kept recreating myself and recreating the new versions of myself trying things on to see what would stick. And so I think that I think that that propelled me to take big risks and big leaps.

And that was really, I think if I had the kind of security around comfort around my sexuality and the support from friends and family and community, I maybe wouldn't have gone so far. I mean, I lived in Shanghai, I lived in Bali, I lived in Spain, I moved to Greece. I was like going all over. And with that trying on new careers. But then the other thing, which is kind of like the counterbalance to that, is that I did have quite a bit of support like from our family, I do come from a place of privilege. I have an American passport, our family was an upper middle class family. They put me through college. I mean, we weren't crazy wealthy, but there was always enough. And so I, there was something deep down inside of me that I knew that if I fell, that they would catch me. And that I think the combination of the risk of having to go because of my sexuality in a culture which didn't really accept me at that time. And also the support, the kind of the support structure of family, those two really allowed me to go far.

EE: Wow.

AB: And it's like, it's interesting because it's like now when I, especially when I tell students about like, you can do it, you can become a yoga teacher, like an I'm cheerleading them like they look at me and they're like, well, how did you get there? It's like, how do I own a retreat center or whatever? And it's, I have to remind them, I'm like, when I was teaching in New York, I was working as a waiter. And like I was, I was hustling my butt off. Like I was working as a waiter five or six days a week trying to teach a class or two in New York, riding my bicycle, not taking the subway. So it's like, you know, in between all those risks was like an incredible amount of just like grunt work and hustle in order to, to get here.

EE: Yeah. That resonates a lot. And thank you for sharing that part of that sort of origin story. I think also like while you've been doing this for yourself, you have become one of these people that other young gay men can look to as a role model, you know, you're a business owner, you're married, you're starting a family, you're living a wonderful life of your own choosing. And I think that's so cool that you can now be, you know, somebody else's picture of success and their mentor, even if it's from a distance. I think, you know, I get that question a lot from, and you probably also get this from, well, yeah, people when I just set up their own yoga retreats and things, but I'll have young women come and ask me, how do I become a professional organizer? Like, how do I do this? You know, like they want you to sort of create a to-do list for them and just hand it over. And I just think it's, you know, people don't understand that it's not, if you want to have a successful business, it's a business, it's work. It's not Instagram, it's not perfection. Organizing is not just like styling a bookshelf. Sometimes it's a gross garage that has spiders and like snakes. And, you know, sometimes you're putting things up into an attic and I'm terrified of heights. I don't even enjoy standing on a step ladder, let alone like a large ladder carrying 50 pound boxes and shoving them into like this spider web filled thing. And then you leave in your car as full of trash, literal trash. So it's like, it's not glamorous. And that's the part that I try. And then on top of that, you come home and you're like, now I have to do accounting and you know, hiring and invoicing and all these things.

But it's fun. And I think once you find something that you enjoy doing, then you're happy to do all the parts of it. But you know, I think the one thing maybe that I struggled with really, I think in particular last year and I'm not quite sure why that was the timing, but I started feeling maybe like a little bit guilty of having this opportunity to really focus on creating my ideal life. Like who am I to have this time and this luxury to focus so heavily on like what's going to be my perfect life when seemingly so many other people don't and like maybe that's not true. But this was what was going through my mind. And it was probably the biggest challenge that I faced in the last 25 years, you know. It came in between me and my business. It came in between me and my husband. It was like this sort of cloud that fell over everything because I was pulled so heavily between wanting so badly to take this leap and really, truly enjoy my life every part of it and feeling like I'm not capable of doing that or I'm not like deserving of having just pure joy. And it was a very interesting and super freaking challenging year. And now I don't remember why I brought that up.

AB: Where did it go? Where did it land?

EE: I think I've landed with this feeling of like all humans deserve to experience joy and all humans are worthy period. There isn't like a qualification or something that you have to have endured or experienced or struggled through in order to deserve having your happiest life. And you know, I think it's probably easy for people to look at me now and just be like oh, right, what a beautiful everything so picture perfect. But I've struggled a lot over the years. I was a teenage mom. I struggled with depression quite heavily for 15 years at least. And it's still something that I have to make sure I'm maintaining my own levels of mental well-being and happiness. I don't know, I guess that kind of all of that came just really crashing back in the last year. And I had to find a way through that. And somehow I think creativity helped through that process like focusing on creativity and getting out of my own headspace and doing something completely new and different. And I don't think I've ever really thought of myself as like a typically I tend to associate the word creativity more with like artistic ability. Once I got that out of my head, then it became more like, okay, I can do this like I've been doing paint by numbers, you know, because it's like a painting, but I'm also following instructions and I'm good at both of those things. But it's been so I think creativity was probably my word for last year as a means toward sort of moving past this like huge emotional block that I was experiencing. On this path of like, I want to feel freedom, you know, I've built the structure and I'm ready to see that structure support a life of freedom in a way that feels free from these like self-imposed thoughts and beliefs that, you know, you have to do something or you have to struggle or it's not worthwhile. And I don't I don't believe that anymore, you know,

AB: good, good. If I can add another book to the reading list. The Creative Act.

EE: Which one? Okay, I'm going to write it down.

AB: Rick Ruben, The Creative Act.

EE: I wrote it down. I listened to a podcast with Julia Cameron, the author of The Artist Way.

AB: Yeah, this is like a modern Artist's Way.

EE: Yeah, oh, have fun. But that I mean, the thing that resonated the most with me just from listening to her speak about the artist's way was these like artists dates. And I don't know why I love being alone. I love the experience of being alone. But for some reason, like out in public, I've always felt more comfortable with like a wing person with me, you know. So this idea of an artist's date where I'm like, I'm going to go do exactly what I want to do, which is so appealing to me. Like no compromise. Nobody else is schedule. But you have to do it alone. And I'm like, oh, social anxiety, weird. And so that's something I've really been doing over the last year that has been fun and feels creative and inspiring. And you know, like now I go to museums by myself. I'll go for a hike by myself. I love driving alone when you can listen to music and just sort of belt out the lyrics to like terrible 90s pop songs. What do you, what's your favorite way to be creative or like use your creative outlet?

AB: I have been going crazy with it recently. I am dancing a lot by myself, singing full volume like every single day. I'm doing ceramics. I'm getting in the garden. It's like it's really becoming a big part of my life.

EE: Yeah. That's so fun. Yeah. I think it's such a, well, also, I mean the connection with nature and like your own spirit through singing and dance and gardening. It's just, it's so nourishing. I love that feeling. We haven't yet gotten to a place where I've started working in the garden. So I'm looking forward to that. I feel like it's also such a short window in Southern California or at least in Los Angeles where it's like, it's about to get real hot and you can't plant that much. But it is so fun.

Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me today and share a little part of your journey. It's nice speaking with you.

AB: Yeah, it's a real pleasure. Thank you for having me.

EE: Of course!

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I absolutely love being in conversation with Anton. I find him to be such a well-rounded and interesting person. And I hope you enjoyed listening to us chat. All of the recommendations for books that he gave as well as more information about The Sacred Fig and Cocoon Portugal can be found in the show's episode notes. Thanks for joining us.