I started going to yoga, I lost friends.

I got good at yoga, I lost more friends.

I became an instructor, I lost more friends.

I thought yoga was the softest thing I ever heard of in my life, and it is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life.

-Las Vegas is solidly in my DNA, this incredible city that has so much potential for art and music.

I want to make my kids proud, so that became kind of like the rocket fuel behind everything that I'm doing is that I want them to see you can chase your dreams and accomplish the things that you really want.

[blank] ♪♪♪ [blank] ♪♪♪ -Hi.

I'm Dray Gardner.

I'm a yoga instructor, a self-love advocate, a musician, and DJ here in Las Vegas.

[blank] ♪♪♪ I was born in Orange, California, but I grew up in South Central Los Angeles.

That was an interesting but loving situation.

Me and my brother were latchkey kids, so we basically fended for ourselves from the beginning to the end of our day.

It was a community.

The neighborhood raised us.

It was definitely difficult.

It was different.

You know, we were raised different back then, and we had a lot more responsibilities.

And it was a beautiful thing to me.

I had never heard of yoga, meditation, or self-love.

My first experience with meditation was through the kung fu movies I used to love and watch so much.

♪♪♪ At a young age, I began to meditate just for the martial arts aspect of it, not knowing what they were doing.

I just sat with myself and figured out something was going to happen if I kept doing this.

Growing up, I flourished in contact sports-- football, wrestling, jujitsu.

I got into more fights on the streets than I did on the mats.

And as things progressed, that's when shooting began.

So I decided to move to Las Vegas and kind of become a peaceful person.

It was incredible.

Vegas was always on my radar.

I just got enough intestinal fortitude at 23 to make a change.

I always seemed to have like back issues-- motorcycle accidents, car accidents, BMX accidents, wrestling, jujitsu.

I always had a tight back.

Being on my feet made my back even worse.

They said they didn't know what was wrong.

So at 37, you know, they were more or less like, Hey, we got back surgery, exploratory back surgery for you.

We'll figure it out what's wrong.

I was like, No, we're not doing that.

I was like, I can't.

I can't do that.

I'm not willing to gamble that.

There has to be another way.

One of my really close friends, he just got diagnosed with hypertension, high blood pressure, and diabetes.

And the doctors told him if you do this hot yoga, you might be able to kick this stuff before it gets bad.

So when my back went out, I called him, and he picked me up.

He asked me to go.

I said absolutely.

I got nothing else to do.

So I walked in on a cane my first day, and I sat in the back of the class and cried.

I had allowed my body to get this broken, and I was hoping that some way this yoga would help me get it back.

And it wasn't gonna be easy.

Every day I went in, I did a little bit more, just a little bit.

I couldn't do the entire class, but I did a little bit more.

By day 17, my cane was gone.

I walked up the steps by myself.

I stood in the class by myself.

And that's when I was like, this really works.

That was my first aha moment where I was like, whoa.

Prior to me taking yoga and getting on that mat, I thought yoga was the softest thing I ever heard of in my life.

And it is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life.

Shortly thereafter, I realized I want to teach this and dedicate my life to it because people needed to know about it.

My first form of yoga was in Bikram in 2007.

I started going to yoga, I lost friends.

I got good at yoga, I lost more friends.

I became an instructor, I lost more friends.

But I connected with some people on my ride on this health and wellness journey with for a long time.

Yoga teaches you that self-love and self-care that we really forget about.

So much of our life is spent doing for others, we don't do for ourself.

When I finished training, I committed hard to Bikram.

I didn't know you couldn't add music.

I didn't know you couldn't step off this podium.

I didn't know all these small little nuances till after the fact.

So I got put on the blacklist in Las Vegas.

So I decided to leave Bikram and get certified in another form of yoga, and that's when I got booted out the community.

[laughter] [blank] When I first got into yoga, I seen this huge poster of this little character in all these different positions.

The guy almost looks like a hieroglyphic.

And I thought it was made up.

And it's actually Dharma Mittra.

It's a real person.

And once I found that out, I decided I wanted to seek him out.

Once I did that, took on his philosophies about yoga and "be yourself" and "have fun" and "it's not serious," everything changed for me.

I came back, and I was like, Okay, I'm ready to share yoga with the disenfranchised, the marginalized, the downtrodden.

Dharma Mittra told me yoga's not supposed to be serious, it's supposed to be fun, but keep the integrity of the yoga.

And I said, Okay, done deal.

And once he gave me the green light, that's when I took it and ran.

And that's when I started Silent Savasana shortly thereafter.

[blank] So I was able to acquire some headphones.

I invited 20 of my friends on my birthday, and we started doing yoga in a park.

And from there, those 20 went, and it just expanded like wildfire.

[blank] Silent Savasana touched every casino on the Strip and around this city, and it all started in a park with a thought.

It was an incredible run.

Things were happening that I couldn't believe.

I can't tell you what I got from yoga.

I could tell you what I lost.

I lost anxiety.

I lost doubt.

I lost worry.

I lost anger.

I learned let go.

And when COVID hit, a shift had to happen.

I had to sell my company.

One thing I've always believed in is that life is a transitory experience.

Nothing stays the same.

We're doing fun stuff again.

We're back in action.

People really focusing on healing.

Trust me when I tell you self-love and self-care will never let you down.

Love yourself enough to struggle.

Love yourself enough to do things you never done.

And our health, that's the true bag.

Our health is our wellness.

That's the ultimate flex.

I want to use yoga to help uplift humanity.

That's the footprint that I'm leaving on this planet.

I'm forever grateful for the support of the Las Vegas community and being open and receptive.

We did a lot of healing out there as a community, and a lot of people were inspired to really start taking care of theirselves and looking at, you know, their actions.

I just want to elevate every space I occupy.

I want to elevate every room I walk in.

I want to be an example of those I like to see.

They say lead by example?

Well, I'm trying to.

I'm doing my best every damn day.

And it ain't easy.

I feel like I've left an impression on Las Vegas.

That's my goal.

That's my message.

I want to continue to spread that message and continue to just expand yoga, healing, self-love, and meditation.

I will be doing yoga forever.

I've committed my life to it long ago.

Hello, y'all.

Namaste.

It's Dray Gardner here.

My yoga family, Calvin and Iris.

We're about to guide you through three postures from the beginning edition, intermediate, and maybe the advanced.

So have some fun, and I hope you follow with us.

Here we go.

Half moon pose.

Deepen our breath, arms up over your head.

Stretching.

We're going to bring the body down to the right.

Imagine bodies in between two panes of glass.

So you can't move forward or back.

You can only move to the right.

Push the hips out to the left and bring your body down to the right.

In 3...2... inhale coming up.

Left side.

Push the hips a little bit more to the right, bring your body down to the left for 3... for 2... and change.

Coming back up.

Now we're gonna do a backbend.

So you got three choices on the backbend.

You can have your hands just on your thighs, you could have your hands on your hips or your glutes, or you can keep your arms up.

Deepen our breath, lengthen up.

And now exhale.

You draw a line across the ceiling, across the sky, and you drop your head back.

If you want to while you're back there, you can cactus your arms to open up your heart some more.

Oh, boy.

Inhale coming back up.

Exhale.

Hands are center.

Then we're going to drop down into a deep squat known as Malasana.

Your hands are in between, prayer, elbows out.

So first thing we'll do is we'll take a crow.

We got low crow, high crow, and crane.

Three different levels.

And now on three, we all shoot back into a chaturanga.

For 1...2...shoot back.

Boop!

Upward dog.

Downward dog.

We'll jump our feet back outside our hands into our deep squat.

Boop!

And now we're gonna go crow into a handstand, crow, and chaturanga.

Here we go.

Everybody taking their crow.

Low, medium, high.

Then we come to the top of the head.

Feet go up, knees go up.

You can keep them together.

You can keep them low.

You can cross them up.

And now knees come back down.

We roll back into that crow, and we jump back if we can.

If not, we drop back into Malasana.

I want to thank my friends, Calvin, Iris.

Tommy, you look like you want to do some of this.

[blank] Tommy is the producer on this show.

Tommy?

Looks pretty easy?

[blank] It's time.

Brother, nice to have you, man.

We'll ground ourselves whether your feet are apart or ankle ball side by side and palms towards the front.

Heart open.

Close your eyes and breathe.

Bring your hands to your heart center.

You will sit down as low as possible without moving your feet.

Ooh, heard that pop, didn't you?

I heard it.

Kick higher on your toes, get higher on your toes.

Kick your heels up.

Right leg lift over the left.

Double cross.

-Oh, man.

-Okay.

Well, just single cross.

[blank] Ooh, Tommy!

Point the toes.

Yes!

Nice!

-Like am I done, done?

-No, no.

-Yeah?

-No, no.

♪♪♪ [blank] -Tommy bought that life.

Tommy-- [laughter] He's stuck.

Help!

-I'm literally stuck.

-Let's breathe a little, bro.

I gotta thank you for your time, man.

-Thank you.

-Yoga.

It's that medicine.

[blank] ♪♪♪ [blank] ♪♪♪ -Hello.

My name is Nathan Harper, and I am an archaeologist for the Southern Nevada Water Authority working here at the Springs Preserve and our other properties throughout Southern Nevada.

So this morning, we're standing at the location of a historic chimney.

This chimney dates to 1930.

And we know through our archival research and archaeological research out here on the ground that this chimney was built in 1930 and is associated with the construction of a Boy Scout cabin.

In 1930, they built a 14-by-16-foot cabin, and it lasted about two years.

Boy Scouts would come out here.

They'd camp out overnight.

They would take activities out here at the springs.

They'd swim in the springs.

They decorated this area in desert landscape.

Eventually, though, this cabin unfortunately burned down, and the Boy Scouts moved their camp back into the Las Vegas City Limits.

Historically, this place has always been a place of refuge for people coming out of the hot and dusty Las Vegas town site.

We have pictures of folks camping out here along the banks of the creek in their tents, making small little restaurants.

Some people even built bathhouses out here along the banks of the creeks.

The Springs Preserve has always been a place where people can get outside of the city, get away from the heat and the dust, and connect with nature.

One of the missions we have at the Springs Preserve is to teach people how to live sustainably in the Mojave Desert.

And we do that through our conservation programs, through the Las Vegas Valley Water District and Southern Nevada Water Authority conservation programs, plus we do quite a bit of teaching here on site at the Springs Preserve.

We have classes for students, we have classes for teachers, because it really is important to the future of the Las Vegas Valley that future generations understand why we're here, where we're going, and where our water comes from.

[blank] ♪♪♪ [blank] ♪♪♪ -Hey, I'm Hal Savar.

I am a singer-songwriter, recording artist from Las Vegas, Nevada.

I grew up all over the place.

I was born in Philadelphia.

My mom remarried a guy in the Air Force, so we ended up starting to move around every three or four years.

When we would go somewhere new, it always would start outfeeling a little bit lonely.

I noticed that for me, the thing that would make me feel most connected again to people was music.

I had this weird music education which, when I was a real little kid, I became obsessed with Elvis Presley, like to the point where it was almost detrimental.

My family was worried about me.

Like, Oh, is this how it happens?

This is how a kid becomes an Elvis impersonator?

But I was always really curious about rock and roll music, and I started to learn about kind of the things that inspired Elvis originally.

I taught myself how to play guitar when I was 17.

It was everything, like breathing, eating, sleeping, and playing music.

And ultimately, my family ended up in Las Vegas.

I had no idea what Las Vegas was going to be like.

And when we first moved to town, our house wasn't ready yet.

So we had to stay at the MGM.

And we pulled into town, and it was incredible.

The lights were like, ooh.

It looked sparkly.

And all these like pretty cocktail waitresses, I'd never seen anything like that in my entire life.

And I just remember feeling like, wow, This is where I want to be.

This is amazing.

Entertainment, it's so unique, and just like another world.

And I love it.

So I got sucked into this thing in Las Vegas of being like this cover band musician thing, which is-- it happens a lot, where you kind of start to make a living.

You feel like a rock star every night because you're playing songs that people love and they're familiar with.

And my art kind of was on a back burner.

And I did that for a long time.

Even though I continued to write songs, I didn't have a real chance to like, stop and take stock of like what I'd been doing.

It was great because I made a living playing music and I started a family, and all these things were going great.

But I didn't realize that I had kind of spent years ignoring my own music.

And I realized I wanted to see what was out there.

You know, I had kind of a general idea of, Oh, Nashville has a good music scene.

Austin has a good music scene.

But I didn't really know, because I don't know anything.

So I thought it'd be cool to go on the road and find out kind of what's going on in the music business.

How do you make it with original music and make it work with a family?

So we decided that it'd be really cool to document what we were doing, and the audience would learn along with me kind of how the music business works and what the music scenes were like in each city and if I kind of had what it takes to make it in the music business.

So we went on this incredible trip.

And we got on the road, and we went all across the country.

We met with like a lot of incredible people.

We met Jelly Roll.

Everybody loves Jelly Roll, so it was really cool and inspiring to get to sit down with somebody like Jelly Roll, who's now, you know, a huge success.

I have lists and lists of people that we met along the way that were incredibly inspiring and stuff to me.

Ultimately, what I found out when we were on our trip was that I got to road-test my music, and I realized that it was viable and it was pretty good stuff.

It helped me believe in myself.

And also, I want to make my kids proud, right?

So that became kind of like the rocket fuel behind everything that I'm doing is that I want them to see that you can chase your dreams and accomplish the things that you really want.

But obviously it takes hard work.

I realized that every music scene all across the country was thriving, and I kind of felt sad that we didn't have that in Vegas.

So I had a couple of goals when I came back.

I started doing Songwriter's Showcase.

We needed something more focused on original music, and hopefully it keeps growing.

We want people to be like, This is a listening room.

Let's go and listen to original music.

And they can come and find it.

And also the second thing, get into the recording studio and record my music and start putting that out there.

So for a whole year I just recorded all my stuff.

And then all of 2023, I just would release a new song every like seven weeks.

And I just released my first music video, which I'm super excited about.

It does highlight a lot of the stuff from the trip.

I'm super proud of it.

I'm really excited.

Yeah, so I am super hopeful for Las Vegas being the hub of original music and art.

This incredible city that has so much potential for art and music.

There is so much here.

You just have to find it.

If I can do anything for my city, that's what I want.

I want to be able to have other artists and myself to have a platform to showcase the things that we're creating.

I love Las Vegas.

Las Vegas is solidly in my DNA.

I think there's incredible entertainment here, and I'm raising my kids here.

I think it's an amazing place, and there's a lot of potential for incredible things to be bubbling up and created here.

So this is a new song I wrote.

I thought Vegas needed another anthem, so I wrote this song called "Vegas."

Years and years of playing these dive bars in these casinos in Las Vegas, and I noticed that the tourists, the people that come to Vegas, a good percentage of them, they come here for the fantasy.

They sort of forget themselves.

They pretend like, you know, they're somebody else, and then they enjoy themselves and go crazy.

And then they take the memory home with them.

They go back to reality.

And I thought that'd be interesting to write a song that was kind of about that vibe.

["Vegas" by Hal Savar] ♪Up all night♪ ♪Trying to make it right♪ ♪Maybe we drink too much♪ ♪Oh, we aren't in any rush♪ ♪If we could close our eyes♪ ♪Maybe we could stop time♪ ♪Say things we'd never say♪ ♪Maybe smile the night away♪ ♪So hold me tight and leave all our fears behind♪ ♪Feel free to lie to me♪ ♪Pretend you're only mine♪ ♪The pain is worth the chance♪ ♪See what the night could find♪ ♪And when tomorrow comes♪ ♪I'll keep you here with me on my mind♪ ♪So take me by the hand♪ ♪Don't need any other plans♪ ♪Get lost inside your eyes♪ ♪Get lost inside your lies♪ ♪I can't explain your heat♪ ♪Your body moves to the beat♪ ♪Let me breathe you in♪ ♪Then let's do it all again♪ ♪So hold me tight an d leave all our fears behind♪ ♪Feel free to lie to me♪ ♪Pretend you're only mine♪ ♪The pain is worth the chance♪ ♪See what the night could find♪ ♪And when tomorrow comes♪ ♪I'll keep you here with me on my mind♪♪ [vocalizing] ♪♪♪ [blank] -That's the show.

Watch more Vegas All In stories and moments whenever you want to.

Go online and search @vegasallinpbs, and we'll see you there.

-I'm all in.

-You know, we're talking about Las Vegas.

So yeah.

Yeah, I'm all in.

♪♪♪