The Wisdom We Share Podcast

Seeking Wisdom & Living with Gratitude: A Conversation with Robin Wald

• Anjani • Season 1 • Episode 2

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Message us with your thoughts, burning questions, or reflections, we’d love to hear from you.

In this episode of The Wisdom We Share Podcast, co-host Anjani sits down with her cohost Robin Wald to learn more about Robin's story, passions and the wisdom she shares with the world.

Robin opens up about her early spiritual awareness, her lifelong journey of seeking wisdom through yoga, Buddhism, Kabbalah, and astrology, and how she weaves these paths into her work as a coach, teacher, and astrologer. She also shares her deep connection to nature, the influence of her childhood in Brooklyn by the ocean, and the importance of play, creativity, and curiosity across all stages of life.

The conversation takes us through Robin’s personal turning points including the challenges of divorce, rediscovering her true path, and creating a fulfilling career aligned with her purpose. She reflects on the power of astrology to validate our inner knowing, the role of parenting and relationships in her practice, and the importance of gratitude as a daily life-changing practice.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

  • Robin’s early spiritual experiences and wisdom-seeking journey
  • Growing up by the ocean and the lasting influence of nature
  • Why play and childlike fun are essential to our wellbeing
  • Overcoming life’s challenges and creating a new beginningThe gift of astrology as validation of one’s unique path
  • How a daily gratitude practice can transform your life

Learn more about Robin and her work at: https://robinwald.com

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I just love people I love learning people's stories I love learning about people's uniqueness and you know so to me every client that comes to me through coaching or astrology or yoga but especially all the teens I teach year after year after year and to watch them grow into their own sense of self and to take risks and to learn and to challenge ideas and to integrate complex you know world views and to be so thoughtful and to be on this mission of becoming that's a very big theme for me is like this process of becoming we're not like one and done we're not like I exist and this is who I am we're not stagnant beings and that's again part of the purpose of this podcast and these conversations we're having when we bring experts on to talk to us about science and technology and health and spirituality and all kind it's like it's because we are constantly evolving ourselves we're not done we're like you know like what other things might we consider to inspire us that can literally influence how we're evolving for ourselves in our own lives in our relationships but also how we're contributing to the planet to the society to the benefit and well being of others so to me that's just what excites me and turns me on I love to meet people because it's like oh what else can I learn here about this person and how might I shift something about me just because of something about them you know it's it's a beautiful dance welcome to the Wisdom We Share podcast where ancient truths and modern intelligence weave together to inspire ground and shape us for a wiser awakened life I'm Angie Amrit and I'm Robin Wald and together we bring you fascinating conversations from the worlds of spirituality science and human behavior so you can connect to your own inner wisdom joy and clarity elevating the way you actually live your life this is one of our first podcast recordings that we're making and um I'm very excited because what we're doing today is we're going to be interviewing Robin or I'm going to be interviewing Robin and I'm gonna be finding out more about her because quite frankly I don't know very much about Robin even though we're setting up this podcast together we don't really know each other and we live on the opposite sides of the planet from each other so first of all I wanna start out with saying thank you Robin for being willing to be interviewed and share all of your personal stories I don't know if I'm sharing all of my personal stories but I'm very happy to be here and be interviewed by you today thank you so tell me um a little bit about yourself like how did you get to be where you are today okay so um I think that as a child I always I wouldn't have used these words when I was a child but now looking backwards when I look over my life I think I always was wisdom seeking hmm so you know I was an ordinary child and playful and whatever but I always loved to learn and I always loved to learn deep spiritual things like I I guess that's weird for a child maybe I don't know but I loved thinking about god I loved learning prayers I loved wondering about my soul and what happens at night and I would have these dreams where I would be flying and I knew that I was outside of my body and I would just sense things and I trusted that um and then I would probably say that there was a period of time as a teenager and maybe where I stopped trusting that or Learned to trust other people outside of me more than I trusted myself you know maybe lost touch with that inner wisdom and always seeking outwardly for more wisdom more wisdom more wisdom which LED me to study yoga and LED me to study Buddhism and LED me to study Kabbalah LED me to study astrology and to study with the best yoga teachers on the planet and to go to conferences and always seeking wisdom um and for a long time seeking wisdom outside of myself and I think it took me really into late adulthood to come back and really say oh wow I have read enough and know enough not that that stops me I still always like read and learn and listen of other people's podcast definitely a lifelong learner and to also say but I have enough within when I just come back into my own home into my own heart into my soul into my own mind and all of what's stored there to really really you know have a deep connection to my own knowing um so I think that's been a big part of what I do then in the world so I teach I love to teach I teach children I teach teenagers I teach adults I teach elderly adults I like the whole spectrum and I'm a certified coach and I'm an astrologer and I'm a yoga teacher so I've very gratefully have found a way to integrate all of these paths and all of this learning I've done and all of what I'm passionate about and to bring it all together in kind of interesting unique ways for multiple different audiences as a way of being of service beautiful I love that it's so different to my story which we're not getting into but I love that you had that inner ability that inner awareness right from a very early age I know some people do but a lot actually don't and so I feel like you are really blessed you know when you growing up um to have that awareness now um I'm aware that you are residing in New York or thereabouts tell me a little bit about something about New York that you love that really supports you and what you do just one thing so where I grew up was a little place called Seagate which is part of Brooklyn I know Brooklyn's very hip and very big in the world now you see people wearing Brooklyn swag when they've never been in Brooklyn but I'm like real OG born and bred Brooklyn um but I lived at the very edge of Coney Island in this tiny little community called Sea Gate you've heard of Coney Island yes of course yes and all the movies yes OK I this is where I grew up this is my hometown um but I grew up by the ocean I lived across the street from the ocean and my whole childhood my friends and I would play at each other's houses play in the street all kinds of games but we would walk right to the beach and spent our childhood on the beach and the ocean you know like the energy of the ocean is something very mystical something very profound you know there's an energy that is really palpable and there's something very cosmic about it and womb like about it and I once LED a meditation I'm getting off topic for a second but I once LED a meditation in a yoga class which was about finding yourself at the end of your life and surrounding yourself with all the people that you want to thank and be grateful for and say goodbye to and come to completion with and at the end of the meditation we sat and we kind of talked about our experiences and every single person in that room and there were about 20 people there all found themselves by the ocean on a beach it was like very eye opening to me like that's not an accident that everybody somehow found themselves on a beach surrounded by their friends in the so anyway I grew up at the ocean and it's been a big part of who I am I remember my whole teenage life I would go to sit on the beach to study all times of year bundled up and I would just it there was something very rhythmic very um you know the prana the energy of it you know that kind of helped me to decompress let go of my stress come back into a sense of like there's something much bigger than me in this universe and that perspective of like feeling small but also being present in your life in something very grand is is magical so I'm very grateful for that um right now I live in Austin in New York which is in the Hudson River Valley and so I'm not by the ocean anymore but I'm right I'm across the road from the Hudson River and I have huts and river views and every morning I get up and I walk along the river and it's just also something about being near a natural body of water and the flow of that that energy is really special to me yeah I mean I living in in accordance with and in line with and in alignment with the natural flow of nature is something that I think a lot of us are very disconnected from you know when we live in cities and we've grown up in cities I did not grow up in Coney Island near a beach or anything like that and in fact I grew up near a railway and so that concretized conditioning that we often have can really disconnect us from nature and it's nature that brings us the profound I think and it sounds like you had such a profound upbringing and still connected so I I really I I agree with you you are blessed and I think it's beautiful and it's nice to hear that from someone cause it's usually the opposite of that and I wonder if Coney Island because my my knowledge of Coney Island comes from movies and you always see the fairground so how do you think that might have had an influence on the work that you do today because I know a big part of the work that you do is helping people bring fun and play and creativity into their lives to support them so do you think that influenced you somehow and how do you bring that flavour into the work that you do today that's such an interesting question I thought you were gonna go somewhere else with that so um so you know Coney Island what you see in the movies um it's interesting cause when I was growing up Coney Island was not necessarily a safe place um there was a lot of crime and violence and we didn't have free reign to like just go and spend time in Coney Island without supervision it didn't feel safe necessarily um and I was terrified of rides so my older brother and my younger sister loved roller coasters and they would go on the cyclone and they would go on these you know the crazy roller coasters and these they once convinced me to go on a ride they were like no you know you won't be scared this will be really fun I was terrified and so miserable I was like how could you do this to me so my idea of fun wasn't really about speed or throwing being thrown around or risk or anything like that but growing up in Seagate was like this little safe enclave where our friends we had open doors all day long we would be at someone's house this is before cell phones our parents just knew and trusted that other parents are looking out for us if they if we needed we would be in each other's homes we all grew up with like you know open door just spend time and you know from morning to night and we would be out in the street riding our bikes and playing games and taking walks and it was and being in the beach and back and there was a lot of freedom in that and maybe the answer to your question is that that freedom like gave space for a lot of creativity we would live in our imaginations and we would create games and we would just create like adventures for ourselves and there was this sense that we were safe to do that like it was safe to explore and play and that it was fun and we could problem solve and we could learn about ourselves and each others and role play and see things from other perspectives and that I never really thought of this I love that you're saying this I it you know I also grew up in a household of kids so there were five of us so there was like I have a lot of siblings and it was very noisy and very busy so there was a lot of just play in the family dynamic and then I also want to acknowledge another way I was blessed is that until I was 18 I had all four of my grandparents and they all lived in Brooklyn within 10 minutes of us so I saw my bro my my grandparents every week and we would play they were musical they would sing they would dance we would play cards they would teach us games we there was something about playfulness that was part of my childhood and that's something I love about being a teacher even when I teach teenagers I bring childish games into my teenage teaching because we're all children still you know and that part of us needs to be nurtured um right now my favorite way to play is Mario Kart with my son so he's 24 years old but the two of us we play Mario Kart and we have the most fun and we laugh and it's just play is so so precious like life is serious enough the world is serious enough and we'll attend to those things as adults we'll be responsible in our lives for all of those things and people and finances and our jobs and all those responsibilities are important and right and we don't have to lose connection to what brings us joy and what reminds us like that our spirit is alive on this planet and what a gift and like let's just have some fun with it too yeah so I love that question thank you for asking that my absolute pleasure um our lives are sounding very black and white right now I'm I'm just bathing in your play I'm like oh yeah this is good I'm really loving hearing it it just sounds like this magical and I know obviously you've had your UPS and downs and I think I'll ask a question about that next but I I love hearing that because for me that wasn't the case and it wasn't safe but there was no play either and and and I agree with you that play is so vital and having childlike fun which is what I like to call it childlike fun is something that is a huge missing ingredient and that allows us to really connect to ourselves our greater sense of wonder or joy like you said then our passion and our deeper purpose keeps us connected so um I I I love that you were raised that way I love that you bring that to your teachings and you're certainly gonna be bringing it to this podcast so I'm excited for that um me too not thank you not to be a Debbie Downer but um I'm interested to hear some about something that you had in your life some challenge that you had to overcome some difficulty that you got through and not just got through in gritting your teeth and holding your breath but got through and Learned something vital or that it took you into a place where you wouldn't ordinarily would have ventured and that ended up being a gift for you yeah so I think if you're human you have those experiences right and this is why we're the Open Tent podcast because everybody your different background than mine we're both here having these conversations and all of our listeners have different backgrounds and experiences and their UPS and downs and their challenges and the way they've risen to the occasion and met those challenges so um I think that that's a beautiful thing that we can learn from each other as well um for me I'll say I got married very young um to my first love um my you know high school sweetheart who I met when I was literally 12 was in love with him by 13 dated him through college we got married I was 22 years old we had three beautiful children and a business together and a home and a life and that all fell apart when I was 44 and you know for um a lot of reasons why marriages fail like that's very personal but um you know we made a decision that really we did not want to be together anymore in a marriage and having to dissolve that and go through a divorce which is very painful um emotionally for us as two adults but also as parents who love their children it's very painful to know that you're putting your children through that and that you can't protect them from whatever they're feeling and all of the pain of that and then there were a lot of financial considerations of we had a business together we worked together our finances were joint and now you're splitting into two households and there were a lot of um that was a moment for me of really having to reassess my entire life because you have this vision or imagination or commitment that your your life looks a certain way and it's gonna continue and there's a continuity and then all of a sudden that entire rug is swept out from under you which is exciting because it's a brand new start blank slate but very terrifying to start again so I had to reinvision my career path I had to reinvision what it looked like to live alone where I wanted that to be how what parts of myself I wanted to bring forth I had to reinvision intimate relationship do I wanna date who I wanna date what am I looking for um you know my relationship with my children so but the beauty and the gift of that was that I was only teaching part time I was teaching like 4 hours a week in a Jewish setting with teenagers which I loved spiritual teaching and I was teaching yoga another maybe 4 5 hours a week with private clients but the rest of my time was really managing his business and the household so I was like whoa okay now what and I had to really go through like what do I want to do and that's when I decided and I was doing astrology but more very small scale like for friends and for friends of friends who sent them to me and you know I didn't even charge it was like a gift because I loved it and I was always learning with the astrology so I was like yeah of course I'll read your chart let me but I was like wow okay this is my opportunity to actually create a career that is a true honest expression of what I love that I'm passionate about and how can I monetize that legitimately and earn an income and support myself so that was the impetus and the catalyst like the DIS you know the the dissolution of a 24 year marriage and a 28 year relationship Saturn cycle hello anybody who knows Saturn it was a 28 year Saturn cycle of my relationship with my partner and that was complete it was complete there needed a there was a lot of healing and things to get through to you know kind of start over but it was a new beginning and I have to say that you know wow like I really am in love with my life I'm in love with everything I've created I love the work I do I'm so grateful I got my my International Coaching Federation you know certified PCC coach that's a huge accomplishment like that was a huge accomplishment the education the hours the training the ethics the passing the exam the I mean I feel so proud of myself that I was able to design my life I still teach because I knew I love that I'm doing the astrology professionally I've gotten so good at it from going from maybe doing like you know 10 readings a year here and there to reading literally 10 readings a week and understanding like deeply deeply understanding and integrating the language and the archetype of that um you know and I've created this wonderful life you know for myself with my kids with my relationships so yeah so it blessings do happen and change is hard and it is about growth it is about really aligning more and more authentically with what my life path was leading me towards at that point I I think it takes a lot of courage to allow the dissolution often in our western cultures it's deemed as a midlife crisis and I like to call it a midlife catalyst because often it can be that opportunity for us to be liberated from the things that have been holding us back I mean look at what grew from that you know in your midlife retraining restudying and all of that establishing yourself as a as a woman a fully embodied in her power is what that change allowed you to do and so I do feel like anyone's listening who's going through that have patience um and understand that this is a catalyst for something greater in your life and it may not feel like it right now but it always is and um just to let listeners know that Robin and I will be working with the general public offering our services on the podcast and I'm super excited because Robin's going to be doing these astrology readings with the people who come on our podcast and it's ordinary people right it's not celebrities and you know whatever accolade wearing people it's scientists it's ordinary people that we are big part of what we're doing in the podcast is helping ordinary people really make change in their life and I've had a reading with Robin and it's one of the best readings I've ever had in my life you are absolutely amazing what is one just one thing that people should know about an astrology reading that they might not know that would help them understand why it's so vital or important to have in their life yeah I would say the thing I find most valuable about astrology readings for any individual different than going on a Co star app or going you know to a horoscope right that's first of all at the very base like listeners should know that that is not an actual astrology reading right an an astrology reading is very very detailed individualized complex for the person you know but to me I think the most amazing thing about an astrology reading is how validating it is of your own life experience it is not about me as the astrologer my role is to translate all of these symbols and signs and archetypes into some meaningful story that resonates with your own life experience but my job is also to listen to your life experience in response to that and say oh that is what this is how I grew up or this was my relationship or this is the pattern I've noticed and oh wow that explains why I've chosen this career and I'm so excited to hear that this is in my chart and that wow you're reading my sixth house and my 10th house and my north node and you're telling me it's all leading me to this at my highest and I've always felt that and pursued that and I never even knew why that was in me and why that called me and so the number one experience that people have from a really good astrology reading is feeling validated about what they already know this goes back to the thing about inner wisdom right that people have an inner knowing and wisdom but so much in our culture teaches us to doubt that and to question ourselves and to think we're not enough or we should be something else or we should value something other than what we value or that some aspects of our character or what we're interested in isn't acceptable or success you know according to the paradigm of what success looks like to other people and what I love about astrology it is all about you as an individual soul and your unique attunements your like yourself as an individual uniquely here for your own purpose mission and when people hear that it's like oh yes I have permission to just be me and accept all of the good and the challenging and the you know the quirks and the strengths and you know my superpowers don't have to be your superpowers onto me right and my struggles don't have to be your struggles what's easy for me might be very challenging for you and what I'm blessed at might not have looked like a blessing for you but vice versa right I have a lot to learn from everything that you're good at and that you've experienced and so I think that astrology gives people permission to really see themselves holistically and own all the parts of themselves and validate them and and create meaning around it I couldn't agree more because when when I had the reading from you I think we were about two minutes in and I lost the plot I was just bawling my eyes out because of the validation that was coming from you in terms of where I was at with my life what I was feeling like was coming down the pipe but didn't really you know had no other validation of it um and then for my whole life the things that I've been struggling with and I agree with you that that validation piece because I just realized listening to what you said that living life in a western society there is zero validation for us as individuals it's always the message is always primed to are you doing what everyone else is doing are you following the pack are you trendy are you know are you trending are you in with the latest fashions are you doing what success what we're telling you what success is and I think one of the vital pieces of information people need is that you about their uniqueness and what they came here to do their purpose which is always unique always very individual and I feel like that's really going to help a lot of people even just listening to someone getting a reading is um it's enlightening in so many ways and hearing other people be validated for who they really are also gives us permission so I think it's gonna be very exciting part of our podcast ha ha ha ha um that that we are gonna be sharing um more about that later but um let me ask you is there any one particular thing you wanted to share with our listeners today about you or about the work that you do before we wrap up today that maybe they might not know about you or they may think wow I would never have guessed that about Robin well I don't know what anybody would never have guessed about me I'm a pretty open book generally but um so a few things came up as you were saying that one is that I I am a mother I am a mother I have three children and that's been one of the most important things I've accomplished in my life I love my kids and I I have great relationships with each of them and so one thing that that's done for me being a mother is as an astrologer as a coach um I work with a lot of parents I work with a lot of parents and you know a parent's wish for their child is really for their child to be healthy and safe and to grow into their own you know into their own purpose in the world right to grow into their own spirit and I you know I know a lot of people who come to me for astrology readings for their children so that they could be better parents to their individually unique child that is an ex you know not just an extension or a replica of themselves like parents have challenges with their kids and they they want a good parent is like help me to understand my child help me to understand myself help me to understand our dynamic and what resources and strategies I might use so that we can be in better relationship um people also come to me for that with intimate relationships with business partnerships right how do I understand myself and do my own work so that and also create space where I can understand someone else and you know kind of show up in the very best versions of ourselves in a supportive way so um that is something that is a big part of my work and you know we talked about play we talked about that I teach I do love being around teenagers so I think most people do know this about me but I'll say it again anyway I just love people I love learning people's stories I love learning about people's uniqueness and you know so to me every client that comes to me through coaching or astrology or yoga but especially all the teens I teach year after year after year and to watch them grow into their own sense of self and to take risks and to learn and to challenge ideas and to integrate complex you know world views and to be so thoughtful and to be on this mission of becoming that's a very big theme for me is like this process of becoming we're not like one and done we're not like I exist and this is who I am we're not stagnant beings and that's again part of the purpose of this podcast and these conversations we're having when we bring experts on to talk to us about science and technology and health and spirituality and all kind it's like it's because we are constantly evolving ourselves we're not done we're like you know like what other things might we consider to inspire us that can literally influence how we're evolving for ourselves in our own lives in our relationships but also how we're contributing to the planet to the society to the benefit and well being of others so to me that's just what excites me and turns me on I love to meet people because it's like oh what else can I learn here about this person and how might I shift something about me just because of something about them you know it's it's a beautiful dance yes they they say that if we are eternally the student and the teacher that is the best way that we can be fully fledged in life and um I think it also keeps us very humble and it keeps us in gratitude and in able to understand and experience the profundity of life hmm I love that yeah thank you ha ha yeah so yes did you want to no no no I was gonna say like one other thing that I know we've talked that we're gonna share on this podcast is wisdom from a lot of different traditions that's also part of why we came up with this name the open tent because whatever your religious tradition whatever your spiritual tradition whatever your beliefs whatever your philosophies whatever your politics like this is a place where we can all just be introduced you know to wisdom teachings and each of us as an individual can say oh wow that really resonates to me you know with me or we could say you know I don't really quite that doesn't fit with my world view or with my values or with my ethic or with what I Learned you know back in you know Catholic school or whatever that's fine that's fine so actually when you were saying that you're teaching about the being the master and the teacher what was going through my mind was a quote from Lao Tzu and a quote from Pirkei Avot and like other ancient wisdom teachings that speak to this role of being the teacher being the student being humble being open and curious so as we go on and progress in these podcast episodes we'll have a chance to share a lot of that you know wisdom with people yeah it's very exciting and I I always will say be discerning rather than skeptical because if our mind is closed then it's closed to the beauty and the richness of life and so we can be very discerning yes um but let's drop skepticism because that leads us nowhere we can't grow from skepticism because we're closed to anything new and yes we'll be opening many doors and keeping the tent open for our listeners so thank you Robin just finally um can you share a practice that you have that's really influenced you or impacted you in a way that maybe our listeners can really get some benefit from it sure um well my favorite practice is gratitude I just think that it's the most transformational powerful practice that brings us back no matter how negative things are outside of us in the world no matter how stressed we're feeling no matter how much we're feeling victimized traumatized like uh you know I mean life is really challenging it's really hard I'm not minimizing or you know it's real like people come to me with real real challenges and when we take time to come back to a place of what I'm grateful for in this moment there are always 100 things right at your fingertips in any given moment that you could find to be grateful for and remembering as an actual practice I do this daily so I have a morning and a bedtime gratitude practice I wake up with gratitude for being alive for breathing for my warm cozy bed for my eyes opening for my body functioning for a brand new day that my eyes can see the sky that I'm hearing birds chirp I mean I can be grateful for 100 things in the first minute of being awake and I am and I am and before I go to bed I have a journal by my bed stand and I take time every night to write some of the things in this day in particular that I was especially grateful for and those things usually look like I'm grateful that I have the opportunity to do meaningful work with people I'm grateful that I spoke with my son today or that I met with this friend and we reconnected or that I had this great conversation with a 5th grader about you know something spiritual I'm grateful for like I took a walk and I saw this beautiful bird land in front of me I mean grateful for good food like anything that in this day stood out as like wow this made today a day that I was grateful for so to me that's been I've been doing this practice now for seven years um and like as like religiously I'll use that word loosely but you know what I mean like regular consistent daily gratitude practice and it's the happiest seven years of my life so I think that there's a correlation there right we can train ourselves to be grateful or we can train ourselves to be negative and cynical and angry and bitter and resentful and so I'm training myself to be grateful every single day love that training myself to be grateful I think that is a beautiful sentence on which we'll end ha ha today thank you so much Robin for being so open and sharing your wisdom with us and um we will be with you all very soon for our next episode thank you so much for tuning in to the wisdom We share podcast we hope today's episode sparks some new insight imagination and practical tools you can integrate into your daily life continue this journey with us by subscribing sharing and dropping us a review until next time stay wise

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Anjani Amriit

Host
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Robin Wald

Host