#3 - Darius Bashar

Darius Bashar is a celebrated portrait photographer and has worked with international celebrities, best-selling authors and thought leaders such as Seth Godin, Liz Gilbert, Dr.Shafali, Jim Kwik, Danielle LaPorte, Lisa Nichols and Masai Ujiri.
His work has been featured in world-class publications such as TIME, Apple, USA TODAY, Oprah.com and others.

Darius’ most popular photography series, NoStrangers.Art documents short but powerful conversations Darius has had with countless strangers on the streets, as he is taking their photos.   

His signature photography experience, HEARTshots™ uses photography as a channel for inner exploration and self-love. His YouTube Channel gives an in depth explanation of these special experiences.

Darius is also the creator and founder of the Artist Morning, an online community providing space, support, and structure for anyone who wants to meditate and journal together. Inspiring kind, creative humans around the world is one of his favorite things!

Darius has also created and facilitated over 500 guided meditations for tens of thousands of people around the world. And, can be found on Insight Timer, which is the world’s largest meditation app.

Darius is the founder and CEO of DreamZoom Company where a team of experts build your dream Zoom studio to set you apart from others. DreamZoom team will create a customized gear list for you. This list will include every single component and part you will need. The DreamZoom team will set up a time to come to you and fully build, test and finesse your entire station so your Zoom background canvas tells a complete story to massively up-level your Zoom and video setup.

Links to find Darius:
Photography Website —> www.dariusbashar.com
Artist Morning Website —> www.artistmorning.com
Instagram —>

Made You Look Design
Podcast production and design services. We can help start your own podcast.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

0:10

This is Angela Grayson from Loving Life Fitness Podcast.. To help others in their fitness journey... All is possible! It's time to wake up... Here we go.. Hello, everyone. This is Angela Grayson coming at you from Loving Life Fitness. Today on our show, we have Darius Bashar, who is an amazing person that came into my life a couple years ago through Insight Timer, one of the biggest meditation apps out there in the world and on Insight Timer He is the founder of The Artist Morning, which is an international community of artists, creators and meditators who come together. And he has facilitated and led over 500 meditations internationally throughout the world. Darius is also a celebrated photographer and cinematographer, and he works with international celebrities, authors and also thought leaders throughout the world. He's been in publications such as Time, Apple, Forbes, USA Today, Oprah.com, and Many more. His signature photography experience are his HeartShots, which are absolutely beautiful. DreamZoom Company is another business that Darius has started, and he is the founder and CEO where he has a team of experts who will build your dream Zoom studio to set you apart from others. Hello, Darius, and welcome to Loving Life Fitness. Hi Angela. Thanks for having me. Yes, sir. Darius I’d love to go back to your beginnings to have you talk a little bit about where this all started when you discovered this creativity inside of yourself and wanted to pursue the dream, to bring you to where you are today, and also maybe talk about inspirations early on in your life, people that inspire you and helped you to find your way. Mentors. So go ahead, Darius. Take it away. So the first part of your question was where creativity started for me, probably at my birth, right? Being born is an ultimate act of creation, but for most of my life I didn't think being an artist was an actual thing. It was sort of like, we all know that there's billionaires in the world, but it seems like a far off concept to be a billionaire. That's what the concept of being an artist was like for me. For most of my life, I was on the periphery of art. You know, I was a producer in film related projects. I was a strategist in an ad agency. I was always right next to the creators and the artists, but it was never like, That's not me. I can't do that until one day I asked a really silly question to ten friends, five guys and five girls. And the question was, if you could send one tweet and 140 characters back to your child self when you were 14 years old, what message would you send? And the guys, almost all of them responded with buy Apple stock or by like it was all business related stuff. And the women all responded with emotional stuff like don't date so-and-so or, you know, don't go on that trip. And one of my friends, interestingly, in that was a photographer, only one of them responded back to me saying, What would your answer be to the question? And I was kind of like shocked that she asked me the question. And I thought for a couple of hours. And then I responded back to her saying, Go to film school. Art matters. And that message was like a bit of a shock to me because I was like, not anywhere in that space. I was actually like 28 years old at that time, and she just planted the seed of like, not too late. You can still do. I'm like, No, no, no. I have like bills, rent and all this stuff. And long story short, like I over the course of the next few weeks, almost like of out-of-body experience, unconsciously ended up registering for film school across continent and somehow miraculously got like a crazy scholarship and stopped that part of my life and started a new one and went to film school. And that was like a pivotal moment in my life. So that was, I think, the first part of your question, which I could probably spend 7 hours answering, but that's a little bit about how I got started as a creator and artist. Amazing story and the way you pose that question to ten different frowns. What a brilliant idea, because ten different friends are going to come back with ten different responses. But just one, just one made such a big, big difference in your life. And we're never too old to go back to school. No, definitely not. 28. It felt too old. You too. Way too old. But when I got to film school and I saw that there's a lot of people much younger than me, I just in my head was like, Oh, yeah, cause 28 is a relative. Because it's not like we all have 75 years. Nobody knows how many years you have. So it's like, you know, I can be 28 and that guy could be 15, but he's only going to live to be 30. So it's like, I just did that and that made me feel better. And then in my head I was like, I'm just going to in my head pretend I am 18 and see what happens. And I felt better doing that. But ultimately, it doesn't matter. From that experience I've discovered, I've started my life over many times, not over just like auditions. I'm like, Oh, I can make meditations. Whoa, I can do that. I was like, before I even thought about photography as a thing. So it's like now I'm realizing every couple of years a part of living a creative life is learning new skills and expanding who you thought you were. Yes. And helping others while doing all of that. Also, everything you do helps others to live their best life. Being the creative person, you are bringing out the creativity in your heart shots. People seeing themselves in ways that they never saw themselves before because you are able to capture that moment and they look at themselves differently, probably in a more positive light. Yeah, definitely happens. Or I'm just yeah, it's like you're right. A lot of what I do is based on service. It's a really important element in my life. Sometimes I'm just a bit weary of because I suffer from a very common disease, the disease to please me. And I just sort of try to check in for myself of like, am I doing this to please someone or am I doing this because it's actually like what I want to do, you know? And sometimes that line gets blurred and it's, you know, it's important for me to, like, make sure that this is actually something I want to do. And I'm not just doing it for the other person, but most of the things I do seem to always have a theme of community and service is definitely part of my story for sure. It comes around that way. That's what I see when I look at you and all the work you do. Maybe you don't always see it that time that way, but I see that when I look at you every time I listen to one of your meditation. Beautiful. The feelings that I feel inside, it's amazing. So let's let's go on to your meditations. What brought you into that area? Yeah, it's funny because that's probably the thing I've done that's created the most piece and calm and grounding in the world and the seeds of birth. The catalyst of it was panic. That's where it came from. It came from straight up panic. It was this second week of COVID, and everywhere I looked was panic. People were like, Oh my God, it's over. The world's done. And particularly in like artist communities, I was a part of everyone was like, Yeah, I guess I gotta go be a farmer or a factory worker. The world doesn't need art anymore. And of course we were being dramatic, but like it did feel like that for a lot of us. And so I had just started Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way. It's this beautiful book with accompanying journal every day, three pages called Your Morning Pages. And so I was meditating and then when journal every single day for like 14 days in a row, I keep getting the same clear message of like, you're in a panic. This is helping you. There's a lot of other humans that are in a panic too, and can use this. And in my journal I'd be like, So what do you want me to do? Like, I'm a photographer. I don't know what you'd like me to do. I don't know who else I can do. Maybe God made a universe. I was like, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do. I've never guided meditation. I have no formal training in this. I just love meditating for myself and like, Yeah, it's okay. Other people need this too. And so on day 16, 15 days after the first, like just clear message, I was like, Screw it. There's nothing to do. All my shoots have been, like, canceled or rescheduled. I'm just going to take one full day and just explore this topic and see what happens. By the end of the day, I had bought a domain, got hosting, made a logo, set up the entire website, made a video, made a guided meditation. And it was it was like all of that happened in less than 24 hours. And I well, I just happened. How did that what? But then again, for another two or three weeks, I didn't tell a single person like nobody in the world even knew about it because I was confused, like, how does this make sense? I'm a photographer. And then I listen to this podcast with Adam ROA and press and smiles and press and smiles was just vicious. He was just like so pointed and aggressive of like if you claim your spiritual, if you claim you care about people, and in the middle of this like pandemic, you're just sitting and meditating by yourself and you're not actually taking all that spiritual training you've been doing over the years and like bringing it into the world. Asked you like, what are you doing? And he's like, like that pointed. And I was like, Whoa. He's like, actually talking to me. And so I went home and just put a Facebook post and say, Hey, guys, I made this thing. And then people started signing up for it. I'm like, Oh my God, Now people are coming to the thing in like a week, What am I going to do? I called like my best friend in the whole world, Lillian and I told her about it and I'm like, Can you just come do like a test version of this with me? Because I don't know what I'm doing. And so the for the very first artist morning and for those people that know no artist morning is like community that meets on Fridays from all over the world and we meditate then we journal and then we connect as a group of kind, creative people and just supporting each other and celebrating each other and listening to each other. But she was the first person. It was just me and her. She was in Costa Rica, and my first plan was like, I'm going to do these five days a week and they're going to be 3 hours long. And I was like, What are you talking about? And so, yeah, that's that's where it started. And it was a rollercoaster ride because it was like I threw myself into the deep end of this thing. But people just kept showing up and showing up and showing up. And then the meditations got better and better and better because like, you know, you keep practicing at something, they get a lot better. And then inside Timer picked a bunch of them up and put them on their home page and featured them. And then that like kind of got a few thousand new people from around the world. And we've been continuing to do it for the last two and a half years now. Well, Darius, two and a half years ago is just about when I lost my husband, a 42 year marriage. You came to me. Wow. An insight timer. And you have been amazing at helping me on most every single morning. Listening to your meditations. I choose one. Whenever a new one pops up, I'm sure to get on that one. Audience you must go to INSIGHT Timer, download that app and listen to Darius Bashar as he has got together. No matter, what you are going through in life, even if you think you are not going through anything in life, it opens up your mind, it opens up your heart, makes things come to you that you didn't even know were there to help you deal with it. Brings emotions, good emotions, sad emotions, ecstasy emotions. Amazing. The breath work, the breath work that you do in your meditations. Let's talk a little bit about that. I don't know if that's something that you just started doing on your own or if it was taught to you. It's not a complicated piece of breathwork, but it works. Talk a little bit about Breathwork. Sure. So my partner is like incredibly brilliant breath work facilitator. So I have I have no formal training, but I get to spend time with her and hear about all of her workshops and stuff she does and she's brilliant. I'm on the topic, so it's anyone's interested. Jenn Mansell with two NN’s jennmansell.com www.jennmansell.com@jlmansell on Instagram she's got a lot of content around it. The extent of the breath work I usually do is probably I think what you're talking about is like box breathing. Is that where you're referring to? Yeah, it's a really simple but incredibly effective tool that a lot of people use. I heard a couple of stories about like just yesterday, professional like NFL quarterbacks at the highest level using box breathing to like just bring their presence back in. It's so simple. It's just like if you imagine a box has four sides and there's different ways of approaching it, but you just like your inhale is one side and you go for seconds, 1 to 3 for when you inhale, hold for 4 seconds is exhale for 4 seconds. Inhale, hold, exhale, hold. Yeah. And it's just like it makes a box. If you do that 4 to 8 times, don't do when you're driving, make sure you're seated or even sitting down like it's your just as usual. Your presence is just right there. I've actually done it with Jenn. Right. And a couple of other people. Right before a podcast, like before we were going to do a podcast, align our energies. Yeah, I've done it. I've done it at many men's workshops. It's just like a beautiful thing in groups as well to bring people's energies together because everyone's all scattered with it to do list and social media and all this stuff. And so yeah, that's usually the extent of the breath work that I do in my meditations. I am also a yoga instructor. Since I've been listening to your meditations, I try to incorporate much more meditation. At the beginning of my practice and at the end of my practice to help people get more into their zone, whatever that zone might be. And Breathwork is a big part of that, especially in the beginning to bring everybody together. Like you were saying a moment ago, get us all on the same page, in the same room in a little moment, if you will. And just to calm and be there together, but also trying to find the right words to send some kind of a message at the beginning of that practice so that it could be carried along in the whole hour class and then again, talking a little bit more in meditation, more about that same message that I'm trying to get across. I try to copy you, but you all. But I wish you were in the room with me. That's you know, how to get to the heart and soul of people. Let's talk about being open heart felt during meditation so that things can come to you and open up. I want you to talk about how when you've meditated, maybe through somebody else's guided meditation, how you feel the honesty time through, how you feel, the openness come through, and things come to you. Yeah, I think I'm a strong proponent of giving people permission to show up as they are, so I don't really or wouldn't say like I won't be open, you know, I'd be like, be as open as you feel you are able to today. You know, it's a different approach than other people. But and I found that people actually really resonate with that, that allowing them to just be themselves. Like, for me, meditation is an be as open as you're able to show up with. Whatever you do is honest and real and accessible. I, I love the quote. I forgot who said it is the guy who wrote the presence process. But it's for me, meditation isn't about feeling better. It's about getting better at sealing. Those are two different things, right? So is it the end of the meditation? You know, it was a grounding meditation as a calming meditation. It was a confidence meditation. If you don't end up there and instead you're angry and enraged and whatever, that's okay. You're allowed to do that. Every day is different. Every one of us is different. And so some days people can be more open than others. And I just try to make as much space and try to use language that gives permission. You know, it's at the more open feel better. It's just like if you're open to it, let's, you know, like let's ground our energy of you're open to it, let's whatever it might be. And so yeah so it's it's a slightly different approach. I just want to make space for all of the feelings and all of the colors and all of the emotions that we have access to as humans and that shines through in your photography also. It's a very similar approach. Yeah, it's it's not just smiley, happy photos. I know, because 2022 people don't trust someone that is always smiling and is always happy and doesn't show you a little bit of their shadow and their pain and their realness. And so I try to pursue that in photography. I try to pursue that in meditation, and I try to pursue that in my writing. You know, it's like what is true and accessible for me in this moment? Yes. Okay. So at the end of all your meditations, you invite everyone to journal. Yeah. Let's talk about journaling. So journaling a lot of people have difficulty doing. They say, I'm not a writer. I can sit down in front of a piece of art piece with a piece of paper and a pen, and nothing is coming to me. There's nothing to write. So journaling how what is the process of teaching yourself to journal? So buying Julia Cameron's book Artist Way and or listening to the audiobook is a really effective way of getting over that. Because that was me. That was me. It was like I heard about Artist Sway for years and years and years, and I hated the idea of full pages every day. Are you crazy or am I going to write? And literally the first day I did it, I haven't stopped since. It's been like two and a half years of like writing. I don't write necessarily every day, but like I'm on my like seventh book. They're like psych books. And I am guided by a lot of people through this. And people are shocked at how easy it is because again, I give people permission to be like, the meditation is intended to take you somewhere. Maybe it takes you there and maybe you are a creative, rebellious artist and you want to go somewhere completely different. You have permission to do that maybe a day, and you're like, You could start by saying, I have nothing to write. This is so stupid. Why is Diary is making us write? I hate this so much. Whoa. What else do I. Hey, whoa. Why? This is, you know, it's just like. So I tell people it's not your next social media post. It's not your next book. It's just this private, personal space for you to open up your creative channels and just start flowing what's accessible, what's real. Sometimes most times I give people a journaling prompt if they join us live in. The other thing about the live experience is like when you have 40 people on your Zoom screen and they're all just writing, it'll motivate you to write. There's something there. And so people keep showing up and there's so many stories of like sick books getting finished, people who were convinced they could never journal. It's been a it's been a joy. It's one of my favorite things in the world to look up on Fridays and just see all of these humans expressing themselves. Such a beautiful thing to witness. I have signed up for this Fridays class with you. Acting forward to it. Yeah. That's awesome. Yes. Okay. So what does journaling do for people? Seems like a silly question, but for those who have never done it before, what does journaling do for you? Oh, I can speak of what it's done for me. It's like the best terapia I've ever experienced. It's the best business consulting I've ever got. It's Austin, the birthplace of the best ideas, the most profitable ideas. It's my best friend. It's my connection to God. It's my connection to, like, little Darius. It's my connection to future Darius. If you look into it like, the most successful human beings on the planet have a meditation and journaling practice, I challenge you and your audience to find someone at that level who has been doing it for decades and doesn't have a meditation or journaling practice. Often both. And so that's what it's done for me. And I've heard a lot of that for other people as well. More getting those thoughts out of the brain and on paper makes us put everything in order because our monkey minds are all over the place, especially those of us who may have their own business families. On top of that, trying to juggle everything at one time. And when you get those thoughts down on paper, you can get everything separated to where in your mind it all starts to make sense. And then just like you said, getting past that, that's where you start coming up with these amazing ideas that you don't even know were in your brain that might propel your life in a completely different direction or lead you open to new relationships or giving yourself therapy. Maybe when you didn't even realize that you needed that therapy. Another way of phrasing We all have our own our own belief system, but different ways of getting that down and in front of you so that you can see exactly what's going on inside of these crazy brains of ours. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So Darius dreams Zoom company. Is this a brand new endeavor for you, or have you been doing this for a while? I've been doing this since COVID. It was just like every time I pop up my screen here, someone would message me in a Zoom room saying, How come your zoom looks so much better than everyone else's? And eventually one of those people in Florida convinced me to, you know, like, let me pay you. You teach me how to set up my own thing and tell me what things to buy. And we I did it for him. And then I've been doing it for people since, like, it's just like an offering I have that seems to have a lot of value. I probably been doing it less, mostly because I've been focusing back on to photography and I think people are a little like more excited about real life ends than they are about like building zooms. But I still do it. I'm working on a client right now that's in D.C., so I have been doing it remotely, but I also do it in person as well. Yes, yes. I see your background there. It's absolutely beautiful. There's a lot of depth to it. I see your art, I see your interests, I see your cameras and what do you see behind me, Darius? I see an infinite wall. I can use your help. And a lot of people could. Yeah, from for me. But it's the same thing. It's like it's this art. Like the way I go about all dream Zun projects is like. I just, like my favorite thing to tell people is like, it's a canvas, you know, from this corner to this corner. Like, it's just, this is my canvas. And every single thing you see on this canvas has been curated to tell a story so that even in situations where I don't unmute myself in a Zoom room, if someone is just looking at this painting, they know he's an artist, he's into photography as a relationship. He's, you know, like all of this is a storytelling device. Yeah. And it's it's also how I just believe life is like, you know, I called it Artist Morning and I referred to people as artists, but it's like for me, it's like everybody is an artist. Every day you have a chance to build something with your life, whether that's something beautiful or something angry or something romantic or something, you know, whether that's an omelet or a painting or a business or a baby or a conversation, these are all acts of creation. So I use the word artist loosely because I truly do believe all of us are artists. And I to your first question, you asked me, like I personally believe our souls chose to come here to this planet, to these humans, to have a creative expression through human, you know? So it's like that. Me being born was my first act of creation. That was a choice that my soul made to come here and yeah, and I'm going to continue being as we nee as possible and as expressed as possible to hopefully my last breaths. That's beautiful. We can all learn from you. We should all dig deep and and live from our souls and let it shine through because we all have these beautiful creative talents that we should share with the world. The world needs all this beauty and positivity and creative ness for sure. So where are you going forward from here? Darius? Bashar, what is your future? Hold? I am working on a new project that I am sort of in love with. It's just this idea. If you project maybe you've seen it, maybe you have it. It dovetails back into that question that changed my life that, you know, you could send a message to your younger self. Or would you say, I've been taking that question and asking complete strangers on the street and then doing like a 32nd to 62nd photoshoot with these strangers and putting both the photos and videos of how I approach them, what it was like taking photos of them, and then their answers to that question at the end. Ask them that question. And I call the project No strangers based off that Williams quote. There are no such thing as strangers, just friends we haven't yet met and it's still lovely. It's doing great. People have really supported and loved it. And we've had a couple of like viral videos. They got a lot of new people in a couple of videos. They got like half a million views and a couple that have like 100,000 views and 30,000 views. And it's just this showcase thing, sharing stories of these beautiful strangers and their incredible wisdom that they have to share with us. And then, of course, the photos that people love as well. So that's been that's been fun. There's been a lot of excitement and interest. And a publisher recently reached out to me. It's, ah, it's early, early conversations, but I'm going to continue doing that project. It's for anyone that's interested. It's just no strangers with an S dot art arty set of dot com. And you can see and read all these beautiful stories of these this eclectic group of strangers. Amazing. Yes. We never know who we're talking to and what their story is and what they might have to say a lot. And people when they're at the grocery store or riding on a bus or train or in an airplane, everybody seems to keep to themselves these days. They're on their cell phones doing their work or their entertainment or their social media. And so just trying to strike up a conversation with that person next to you. Yes. As a stranger now or now, you might walk away and that person can turn out to be a really good friend for life. You don't know what their story is, where they come from, what they do. Why not take the time to throw away that cell phone and talk to people? You're to hear those amazing stories. Yeah. So, Darius, if you were to leave some wise words at the end of our conversation here, for our audience to be able to live their best lives by not only meditating more, but by letting their feelings show and being more creative. What final words would you like to leave with our audience today to head towards a better life? Our lives are precious. Our lives are precious, and our time is finite. And nobody knows whether our last breath is 50 years away or a 15 away. I know it's it's scary for some people to think about that, but that was the thought that propelled me and drove me into photography, into meditation years ago that I personified Last breaths like a real human that was in a knock on your door very like, nonchalant and just be like, Hello, I'm last breath, I'm here for you to take and this fire lit up in me. That was like, I still have photos to take. I still have words to write, I still have people to meet. I need to move. I need to get going and I know it doesn't work the same for some people, for some people that thought paralyzes them. But there's some people out there, maybe someone in your audience that hears that and is like, I have more lies to give. There's more of me to express. I came here to create more, to be more a hug, more to love more. Whatever they're more is, you know. So maybe that thought will resonate in someone else's heart and consciousness is It certainly did for me. Okay, everybody. So please look up Darius Machar. I will have in the bottom of the shownotes all the information, said the troops, and look him up and look into all his different endeavors and go to Insight timer and listen to his meditations. You truly will not disappointed. Darius, thank you so much for coming on my show. I appreciate it. I know you have brought so much value to my listeners to help them live their life possible, and I hope they take it to heart and run with that. Thank you, Angela. Thank you for having me. Thank you for reaching out in that email and taking a little creative risk and asking for me to be a guest here. It was lovely chatting with you and thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Darius. Take care, listeners. Angela Grayson from the Redding Life Fitness podcast to help others in their fitness journey. See, you can do it for your mental.