SPEAKER_00 1:45

Good afternoon, everybody. This is DJ M. Watt with the Hilltop Glove Podcast. I want everybody to know that we are live, and in fact, today at the Bradley Community Center here in beautiful Gastonia, North Carolina. We're hanging out with the Honeycomb Experience and our man Reasons Brown. He has us out here at this great school event and community event for adults and children to come out and enjoy themselves in their community out here trying to promote wellness for mind, body, and spirit. And today, uh, of course, there's a bunch of vendors and et cetera out here, all these cool folks, but we have the pleasure of speaking today with Miss Relly B. I'm gonna go ahead and let Rally B introduce herself to our audience. If you could just tell them what it is that you do and how did you get out here today?

SPEAKER_02 2:26

Yeah, so hi guys, what's up? It's Hero Relly B. So, what I do, I'm a yogi. I like teaching people breath work, meditation. I also am an artist and I make music. I produce and I rap and I write. That's really what I do. So I got invited here by Reasons Brown to be part of this event and to teach people breath work, teach people a little bit of yoga. And I'm also doing the unplugged event this evening where I'll be performing. So I'm excited. Hey, all right.

SPEAKER_00 2:53

I've been hearing about this all day. I'm gonna ask you about that shortly. But before we get into that, could you tell them what you did with us earlier before we went out there and tried to die in that exercise course?

SPEAKER_02 3:04

So I really just gave everybody an opportunity to breathe, ground down, connect to the earth, and connect to them, their own bodies, their own lungs just by breathing. So we did some cleansing breasts to start off, and then we did what we call alternate nostril breathing, or traditionally known as extremely not even. Yeah. So yeah, I don't know. It's cool. I just I like teaching people alternate nostril breathing because it's really just calming down the parasympathetic nervous system. It gives everybody an opportunity to reset almost because we don't do that very, you don't think to breathe out of one nostril at a time ever.

SPEAKER_00 3:38

No, no. So I was sitting there doing it, and then I was realizing, hey, you feel better right now. I was more aware. I could feel the sun. And they're like, what? This is not real. No, it was real. I actually was feeling better. By the time I got up, I was ready to go out there and die and see in the hunt in the sun. It is the heat wasn't bad anymore, actually. Cool. That was actually the perfect thing to do before that. And I know Reasons was telling us as we were walking over to you that this is something that he wants to incorporate into more of his events, specifically for black men, because we don't normally take the time to stop and breathe. And breath is so important to life. Could you expound on that for our audience a little bit? The importance of breath.

SPEAKER_02 4:22

Yeah. Breath is so important because there's like when you think of life, life has you know layers. There's the things that we can see, and then there's the things that we can't really see. And you can't really see your breath like usually, you know? Yeah. But when you get to to feel your breath and you get to the opportunity to really connect to it, you realize how much it actually does affect you, even though you can't see that. You know, so it's it's really like that layer that's almost right above the thought and and uh below the physical. And so when you get to to being able to control your breath, you're able to control your feelings, control your thoughts in a different way. You're able to calm down when it's time to calm down because you can breathe through any situation. Like once you learn to to breathe, you can learn to power through things physically and mentally and emotionally in in a way that without breath control, you really have a lot more challenges in, I think. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:16

That's some that's some truth like a son of a gun. Yes. I hope everybody pays attention to on our podcast. How important breath is for your everyday. Um just just building on that. Could you explain us how did you get into yoga as a practice?

SPEAKER_02 5:30

So honestly, for me, like I always have been an athlete. So I started off playing basketball since I was a kid. So I love basketball.

SPEAKER_00 5:38

And may I ask this top five, top five, basketball players all time. I know I caught you off guard with that.

SPEAKER_02 5:44

Hold on, I wasn't ready. The pressure. I feel like, you know, we gotta give it to Michael Jordan. You know, okay. I give you that. I ain't gonna fight that.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

I ain't fighting that. He's a big dog.

SPEAKER_02 5:53

We love we love Kobe. Yep, yeah, we love Kobe. R.I.P. Yes. Who else do I wanna say? I feel like I don't, it's kind of funny because I played basketball my whole life, but I never really like watched basketball. Oh like I just never like got to be able to like I know people, you know. We know Curry, like yeah, yeah, he put it in there, put Curry in it.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

He's gonna be a top five, he's gonna be a top ten all time. Yeah, I'll put him in a top five. Yeah, yeah, but that's the top, yeah. It's top five years. LeBron, it counts. It counts.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

And then like one more. I like KD, like KD, I ain't got no problems with that. Kevin tells you, my brother, my brother's getting to tell you, I was the biggest KD fan until they destroyed my team, the supersonics, and made them disappear. That was my guy. I'm supposed to still have KD. My fault. I'm gonna get off of that. But I got a sore spot about that. But back into what you were saying with with yoga, yeah. You were an athlete.

SPEAKER_02 6:43

Yeah, so I started off playing basketball. And for me, like, I was always like physically strong, but not really like flexible, not really as fluid, like more, I don't know, not understanding how my body would work. Right? So when I started practicing yoga, I learned like, oh, like this is actually how far my arm extends, and my body moves as far as it allowed me the opportunity to be more fluid as a basketball player. Okay, so and also to be able to connect to my breath better because you know when you're running and running and running, eventually, yeah, you get tired and you have to figure out how to click into a place and get that that athleticism.

SPEAKER_00 7:16

But uh breathing really helps with like because if you could control it, you could control your your emotion, your fatigue level. Exactly. Oh, that's so smart, yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:27

There's ways that you can reset, because if you if you're breathing short breaths, you're not giving your your body the opportunity to really reset, get the oxygen levels back so that you can focus on the game that you're trying to play. But if you can take a deep breath when you feel like making a short breath and you know that, then you can play for a lot longer and be able to focus for a lot longer and make sound decisions better.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

Would you figure that out again?

SPEAKER_00 7:50

Dang, you were at point because now they have athletes who are been doing it for 10 years and they find out near the end of the, oh, maybe I should have been stretching and breathing properly. That's what Tom Brady found out at the end of the career. That's what LeBron's finding out.

SPEAKER_02 8:03

That's when I found out, you know, see playing in college. I didn't know until I got to college, really. I was like, oh, well, shoot, I should have been doing this since about middle school. Say it. You know, no one told me. They were just like, just go.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

See, that's why we have a lot of youth, youth, youth athletes with bad injuries, over-exertion or overworking on certain body parts because they aren't doing anything but those repetitive motions. Yeah. Where did you go to college?

SPEAKER_02 8:25

So I went to Fisher College in Boston. I got my associate's degree out there. Boston in the house. Boston in the house, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

Where are you originally from?

SPEAKER_02 8:33

So I grew up in New Jersey. Okay. I moved in a few different places, you know, throughout my life. But yeah, I moved here back in 2020 from Boston, where I went and got my associates.

SPEAKER_00 8:43

So cool. Cool. What attracted you to this area and how did you run into reasons?

SPEAKER_02 8:48

So I've always like, I've always wanted to do music or like have been trying to figure out how to do music. And so my family, my dad's side of the family moved down here back in 2012, and I was like kind of with my mom, and then I went to college, and then after college, I was like, well, let me see if I could be closer to my dad's side. So I came out here and I was like, Well, I'm close to my family now, like, let me do the things that I want to do. So I started like performing and doing different shows, and we networked. I think we actually met at like a networking event, and then he invited me out to like different shows, saw each other at different shows, and he invited me to come be here today. So I was like, okay, cool.

SPEAKER_00 9:26

Wow, wow. All right, so I gotta ask you this because I know I've been hearing this all day. Could you give us a little breakdown of reasons and his energy and what and what is it that you like about working with him?

SPEAKER_02 9:39

I feel like he's really like positive. Like, I feel like he's just like a positive person that's really about like trying to bring people together, create community, and like be like someone that someone can people like people could look up to. So, like that's that's like what I like, and that's what I want to be around. So that's why I decided to show up, really. Like, I'm not like his best friend or anything, I just met him kind of networking. But I feel like from what I can gather, he has his own brand going, and that's something I can support too.

SPEAKER_00 10:09

So is that how you got out of here today?

SPEAKER_02 10:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:13

Excellent, excellent, excellent. Man, all right. Is there anything that you would like to share with our audience? Or do you have any upcoming events, activities, music, or anything coming out that you want people to know about?

SPEAKER_02 10:23

Yeah, so tonight, the unplugged event, I'm really excited about.

SPEAKER_01 10:27

Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo.

SPEAKER_02 10:28

So it's gonna be it's gonna be late. I'm already, I'm I'm super hype about that. Um, I also have a listening party on the way. I don't have a date yet, but I have a plan for it soon, probably in about a month from today. So once that like is available, I'll be posting it on my social media and letting people know that when I have my listening party. You better let us know so we can let folks know too. So definitely. So my social media is Scherizard. You can find me on Instagram. Spell it for him. S-H-U-R-I-Z-Z-A-R-D. So yeah, that's like my Instagram. And you can you can find updates there for when I will have in my listening party. But I have an EP that's already out. I dropped it like two months ago, so you can kind of get an idea of my sound. But this whole new sound that I'm dropping, I'm excited.

SPEAKER_00 11:11

It's totally different from what's already out there.

SPEAKER_02 11:13

Yeah. So hey, we like that. You're actually being creative, being versatile, being creative.

SPEAKER_00 11:18

Hey, beautiful, beautiful. Yeah. All right, so we're gonna go ahead and wrap up from here. But before we wrap up, is there anything that you would like to say for our audience or any lasting words about being out here today? Are you enjoying yourself today?

SPEAKER_02 11:31

Yeah, today's a great day. You know, I planted a seed today, and I made I made some kale. I love kale. Oh, you got to plant seeds. Yeah, I got to plant a seed over there. It's really cool.

SPEAKER_00 11:41

Yeah, I forgot they're planting seeds out here too, y'all.

SPEAKER_02 11:44

So always plant your seeds, you know what I'm saying? And and water them. That's what that's what matters, you know, a little bit every day. And thank you guys for having me out here and giving me the opportunity to be here. Talk and share.

SPEAKER_00 11:55

And I appreciate the breathing exercise earlier too. I needed those. I'm glad. Hey, so I must say just signing off with the Hilltop Glove podcast is DJ and what skip. Yep. And then, of course, excellent, excellent. Want to thank everybody for listening. We're out here at the Bradley Community Center and Park in beautiful Gastonia, North Carolina. Hilltop Glove signing off. Peace.