Paola Di Florio

"Let's come to this place, Rishikesh, which is the birthplace of yoga, where the ancient rishis went to sit in caves and get the wisdom of how to live, and let's make it a three-day festival. The first day can just be a think tank for how to live in the world, let's bring all the thought leaders of the world. The second day, let's make it a pilgrimage. Let's walk to the place where the Beatles went. The third day is bringing global musicians from East and West on the same stage together. It's not just about the music and the pilgrimage. It's really literally the technology. We're in the world of information. How are we going to live with this information? The balance we need more of comes from ancient wisdom. Let's bring this together and come together to rethink how to be human, how to live optimally on the planet."

I just have to give credit to my husband and partner, Peter, because if it wasn't for Peter, I probably would not have made this film. Peter was like, I think there's something here, I think we really need to explore this, and he was right. Every time I showed up again, and Peter showed up again, and our company and our partners all showed up again, we showed up differently."

"Peter and I run a lab, a creativity lab called Source to Screen, and the whole purpose of it is to help bring people into alignment. What happens is that we take three days and break it down into spiritual lessons applied to creativity. Creation is getting out of your own way so that ideas can come and find you. Manifestation is taking those ideas and bringing them down into the physical world. Then there is transmission, am I reaching people. Each group that comes to do this is weirdly aligned with each other, and literally we start these WhatsApp groups and they cannot stop talking to each other. Some people have come to work with each other, and it is really exciting. It is exciting to see people trusting, finding their voice, reaching out, leaning in, and finding ways to actually express themselves in ways that bring them joy and give purpose to their lives."

We met with the organization Self Realization Fellowship that Yogananda founded, and I knew in that moment that something about the times needed this message. It hit home for me, and I knew in the room, I could feel the antenna going up, like something's trying to happen. So I followed that. I followed that voice. That is when I started having these downloads. When I started to move and lean in instead of feeling sorry for myself and shutting down, but courageously leaning in, the downloads started coming."

"We held up a flag and we said, let's shift the company's purpose. We have to make films that awaken the human spirit. We declared it. We started speaking on panels at Illuminate, then we were invited to other panels. Year after year, my husband and I would go back, and we just felt like this is the mission. How do we collaborate more? Who do we have to collaborate with? That seems to be what's constantly being asked of us."

"That is when I started having these downloads. When I started to move and lean in instead of feeling sorry for myself and shutting down, but courageously leaning in and saying, yes, doors are slamming, and I am going to sit here, I am going to sit in this, and I am just going to see. We held up a flag and we said, let's shift the company's purpose. We have to make films that awaken the human spirit. We declared it. We started speaking on panels at Illuminate, then we were invited to other panels, and we went to India. We started collecting people from around the world that were part of this movement. Owning it instead of denying it, owning it instead of running away from it because it was scary."

"I went back and started to put together what I thought were a series of really good projects. I was going to go get them funded, and all the people I normally would go to for funding just looked at me blankly. I felt crazy. I felt like I was speaking a foreign language. I had been nominated for an Academy Award and I had been nominated for an Emmy, and this was maybe two years after the Emmy nomination. I thought doors would open, but instead it was like, wait, who are you, no, we do not want any of that. It felt incredibly lonely. Those seven years of the unraveling of the ego and the ideas of who I thought I was, those were rough, plus I'm raising children, so it's so much learning. The lesson was just to keep showing up. Every time I showed up again, and Peter showed up again, and our company and our partners all showed up again, we showed up differently, and there was always a little bit of a shift, a little bit of a change, a lesson that we learned, a letting go of some previous idea that we were hanging and clinging on to."

"The question I always ask is, what's trying to happen. Peter and I run a creativity lab called Source to Screen, and the whole purpose of it is to help bring people into that alignment. The idea is that great ideas are trying to find us. It's not us finding great ideas. Carl Jung said great ideas come and they find you, and that is actually so true. They find us when we are actually living in alignment with ourselves, when we are loving ourselves, when we are accepting ourselves fully. The more we are accepting who we are, the uniqueness of who we are, when we are in that place, ideas come and find us because then we are a perfect vessel for that to execute. All the spiritual lessons were there to learn, for our own spiritual growth, and also because something else, and this is the big lesson always, I think, is the question I always ask: what's trying to happen? Flow comes in the most bizarre ways, so if we can just get out of our heads and not second guess it and just trust, that is ultimately what it comes down to."

Unique biopic about Yogananda, telling the story of his life and influence on yoga, religion and science, combining re-enactment, interviews, and verité.

"My soul's mission really goes hand in hand with an awakening that I had, that I wasn't looking for, that came into my life. It was after making a spiritual film about a yoga master named Paramahansa Yogananda called Awake, The Life of Yogananda. I had an idea, and in fact I just have to give credit to my husband and partner, Peter, because if it wasn't for Peter, I probably would not have made this film. We took the meeting, and in that first meeting I knew that something was happening. I knew that something about the times needed this message. I could feel the antenna going up, like something's trying to happen. So I followed that voice. What I didn't know is that at the end of a really long, laborious process of making this film, it took six years, that I would find myself in a very particular place in my life that I didn't recognize. Something was stirring within me. I had gone to India. I had had a physiological shift happening in my body. My consciousness was shifting in my being, and I didn't really know what to make of it. At the end of making that film, I went back to business as usual, and I took on a job working on a TV series, and I thought, something isn't feeling right. I knew that my direction was moving forward. I couldn't go back, and I couldn't go back to being the person I was before."