Hi. This is Paul Zalazar, and welcome to another episode of the Awareness podcast. On this show, we deep into wisdom from some of the world's leading social entrepreneurs. Our goal is to help you increase your positive impact, your profitability, and your quality of life. Before we get into today's topic, I have one request. If you could hit subscribe and do a review on your favorite podcast app, it helps more people learn how to have positive impact through value based business. Thank you so much. Today, I am thrilled to introduce you to Kayoko Mitsumatsu. And our topic today is igniting gratitude into social change. Kayoko is the founder and executive director of yoga Gibbsback, An organization which mobilizes yoga practitioners worldwide to channel their gratitude into empowering Indian women and children. To create sustainable lives. Kayoko, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me, Paul.

We were talking about before we had record, like, This is a pretty significant audience. Right? There's something like 300,000,000 yoga practitioners around the world. Is that right?

Yeah. That's what I hear at the latest number. Yes.

Yeah. So there's a lot of humans. And if we learn how to ignite communities like that, the impact is Amazing. So we're gonna get into that just a little bit. But before we do that, Kayoko, what would somebody who's listening to the show need to know or wanna know about who you are as the founder and executive director and the leader of this moment Tell us a little bit about your background. What were you doing before yoga gives back? And, like, what might have been some kind of inner precursors to this work that we're gonna unpack in just a little bit.

Yeah. Thanks for that question. So, I am Japanese I was born in Japan Tokyo in 1960th, and Japan was post war booming economy, and everybody's working really really, like, crazy, like, my father, workaholic, you know, generation. And, then I grew up there, but, I started going to overseas at the high school time. Like, I went to Australia for a year. Then I went to Brazil for 2 years because of my father's banking business. And then I also lived in England for 2 years, a culture as a chef for the embassy of Japan. And also, I worked for Japanese National Public Television as my carrier, 1st carrier, as a documentary film director and producer. Actually, I worked for them for 7 years, then I left, but I continued to work as an independent And I'm based in Los Angeles, but since 1990s, but, I basically worked for public television for almost 30 years before I started yoga, just back.

And one of the things you did if I understand correctly as a filmmaker is you made a film about social entrepreneur ship in Japan or social entrepreneurs in Japan. Is that right?