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Maude Hirst on Trusting Intuition Over Logic
154 Plays2 days ago
In this dynamic dialogue, Scott Schwenk and guest Maude Hirst dive right into the heart of navigating through a series of major life changes with so many unpredictable elements at play.
Together they explore the courage and real life changes it takes to trust the quiet signals of the body over the loud arguments of the mind.
Maude pivoted from a life of performing and a familiar life as an actress on a hit TV show to training to help people grow through meditation and breath and within a short bit of time was married and gave birth to her first child.
Maude shares the deeply personal story of the moment breathwork and meditation first cracked something open inside her — a moment that revealed just how disconnected she had been from herself. What followed was a profound shift: from logic to intuition, from performing to presence, and from searching outward to listening inward for the way forward.
Maude Hirst is a Meditation Practitioner, Founder, Coach, Author, and Speaker, specialising in making meditation and its life changing benefits accessible to all.
Maude was an actor best known for playing Helga in the hit TV show Vikings before becoming a leading wellness practitioner and founder of the bespoke meditation company EnergyRise and co-founder of wellbeing consultancy Home of Connection.
She is based in London but teaches globally. She runs a virtual members club for the mind, corporate wellbeing events, private mentorships, a meditation app and wellness retreats. Her sessions deliver a transformational internal experience, encouraging people to find personal well-being through rediscovering their confidence and unique strengths. www.maudehirst.co.uk
https://www.instagram.com/maudehirst/
Scott Schwenk
Scott’s teachings, courses and master coaching guide leaders, seekers and creatives to explore the embodiment of their deepest selves in service of thriving on all levels of being, both individually and relationally.
You can receive a free guided meditation and explore Scott’s courses, workshops, retreats, training and master coaching at https://scottschwenk.com and can find him on Instagram @thescottschwenk.
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Transcript
Introduction and Purpose
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to The Choice to Grow. I'm Scott Schwenk. Through these dialogues, we'll explore fresh perspectives and discover practical tools for navigating a thriving life that adds value wherever we are.
00:00:14
Speaker
I'll introduce you to innovators and creators from across our world who embody what it means to cultivate growing as a way of life. Let's prepare together.
00:00:24
Speaker
Take a deep breath in.
00:00:28
Speaker
Hold the breath briefly as you soften your shoulders and soften the soles of your feet, palms of your hands. Then exhale like you're releasing tension and setting down a heavy burden from every cell.
00:00:43
Speaker
Now let's dive in.
Maude Hurst's Journey to Meditation
00:00:49
Speaker
Welcome back everybody to The Choice to Grow. I'm very excited to share with you another one of my friends over the years who's a wonderful teacher. a fairly new mom, and an extraordinary human being.
00:01:02
Speaker
Now, I don't know she would ah agree with that last statement, the extraordinary human being. And for me, that's part of what makes her extraordinary is the the sweetness and the humility. Maude Hurst is a meditation practitioner, teacher, founder, coach, author, and speaker.
00:01:18
Speaker
And she specializes in making meditation and its life-changing benefits accessible to all. In particular, when we were speaking before, she's got a commitment right now to make herself ah or to be a bridge between people who are called to something but don't yet know what and to be able to get started with practices and teachings that set a foundation for when they're ready to go deeper whether that ends up being with mod or with somebody else Some of you may know Maj, she was an actor best known for playing Helga in the hit TV show Vikings before becoming a leader, a leading wellness practitioner and founder of the bespoke meditation company, Energy Rise and co-founder of wellbeing consultancy, Home of Connection.
00:02:06
Speaker
want to find out about that. She's based in London, you'll hear that in her accent, but she does teach globally, and she runs a virtual members club for the mind, corporate wellbeing events, private mentorships, a meditation app, and wellness retreats.
00:02:20
Speaker
Her sessions deliver a transformational internal experience, thank goodness, encouraging people to find personal wellbeing through rediscovering their confidence and their unique strengths.
Breathwork and Personal Transformation
00:02:33
Speaker
So without further ado, Maud, welcome to The Choice to Grow. Thank you so much for having me. It's always such a pleasure to connect with you. You were one of my very first teachers. So I feel like it's always a whole big circle moment when I come back and connect with you. Thank you for having me.
00:02:51
Speaker
That first moment of engaging you coming to class, was that at Unplugged Meditation or at Wanderlust? I think it was Wanderlust, the first one. The big, big, big three-story building. Yeah.
00:03:02
Speaker
Yeah. And you ended up bringing a bunch of friends over time whenever you'd visit and Yeah. what was What do you remember about your first experience? That would have been probably breathwork or meditation?
00:03:13
Speaker
Breathwork. This was very much the very start of my journey. I'd just come out of filming Vikings and I was in a very um difficult place. I didn't really know kind of what what the next journey was going to be for me coming out of a breakup. And I kind of stumbled. I can't even remember who either. I'd heard somebody say, you've got to go check out this thing called breathwork. And i was like, really? Okay. And it was so profound, I would say, like one of the most still transformative classes I've ever been to. I had a very kind of out of body experience. I think at the end you came up to me and said something like, who did you say i forgive you to? And i was like, i didn't say anything. You're like, you you did say something in that session. And I was like, wow, I'm so disconnected to my body. um And it was really the first time i had realized my disconnection to myself and my kind of human experience. and
00:04:04
Speaker
Yeah, I just remember being so grateful that you had sparked something in me that, um yeah, I was disconnected to for my whole life, I think, until that point. Now, lots of people I've seen over 20 some odd years of leading breathwork in particular, but transformative practices, but breathwork, lots of people will come in, they have a first experience, it's a really big deal for them.
00:04:28
Speaker
And then they don't come back. And I don't mean to me, just like to the practice. It may be years. What is it that got you to come right back? Because you did.
00:04:39
Speaker
I came right back and I brought everybody. was like, everyone needs to come to this class. I think it just it sparked something in me. i I feel like ever since I found breathwork and meditation, and there was almost a calling from i don't know where that was like, you you need to explore this further. I felt it with my teaching. It was almost like I feel there was always, I was supposed to be connected to this work. I think we all are in some way. but um And i I was just, I don't know what called me back. It was like not it was the first time it was non-logical and it was physical, this kind of calling to wanting to come back. And the only time other time I've experienced that is actually with my relationship with my my now husband, where like it wasn't a logical...
00:05:22
Speaker
this feels right. It was a physical, I want to be around this person. and And I think it was the first time I really trusted my intuition rather than my logical mind, which maybe would have talked me out of an experience that felt, I guess at the time quite out there, but actually it felt so good in my physical body. i was like, I need to, i need to come back. want to trust it.
00:05:40
Speaker
I really want to bold and triple click under that. because it's something that I'm still working out how to teach, which is to point out and help people, the willing, to recognize the difference between cognizing something.
Intuition vs. Logic in Personal Growth
00:05:58
Speaker
And we can get so much information, especially with you know the AIs out there, they're just day by day gathering so much really esoteric information. We can know a lot of words about things.
00:06:10
Speaker
And we can think and extrapolate and go through logic processes, right? And go, well, reasons why, reasons why not, we'll go here. It's an entirely different matter to just know something, whether we can back it up with words or not.
00:06:24
Speaker
And for me, that's one of the most precious commodities in my own growth is to recognize that and to trust it and to follow it. Because i have parts like everybody else, you know, like i have parts that are young and nervous and scared and parts that try to protect and like that and the parts don't necessarily feel safe with something that's not been cognized.
00:06:52
Speaker
Yeah, what what does that spark for you? This, well, this is, I feel like this is my whole work at the moment. I actually wrote um a deck of Oracle cards called Intuitive Whispers. And this is exactly what like it is all about, like how to trust the and intuition rather than the rather than the mind. And I'm becoming a mother has has kind of landed this in my body so much more. But I always think that, when it's logical and when it's mind centered, it's always, there's always a question of like, is this right? And you can talk yourself in and out of something. For for me, when intuition speaks, it's like, ah it's such a clear yes or no. It's like there there's a, there's a part of you that is, it yeah, it's a clear answer rather than a questionable answer.
00:07:33
Speaker
um And I, yeah, I feel like it's, The embodiment of listening to yourself feels, and maybe I'm wrong in this, but it feels like the feminine but over the masculine. And it feels that this is like the the feminine in me is the one that just feels like it's a ah full embodied thing that I want to follow. and i don't know if that exactly answers your question, but that's just where I i feel right now that like listening into that feels powerful at the moment. Well, I'll remind our listeners and listeners, you are on the journey of creating our conversation. Like how you even though you think you you may think you're listening at a later now moment,
00:08:11
Speaker
But time is a construct. Physics has continued to dismantle the idea that time is a fixed thing. And so how you all are with us is actually actively generating the dialogue. And dialogue means to discover together.
00:08:26
Speaker
So Maud and I are dialoguing. We're not just here kind of pre-forma saying things we think you should hear or trying to pitch anything. We're really exposing the opportunity to be a part of a dialogue be in discovery of something. So masculine feminine, the way I hear that is from my tantric lens, as a student and a practitioner and teacher of tantra, not as male female, you know, like with certain gendered bodies, but more in the sense of like, how I understand masculine and the tantric senses, there's a basic awareness
00:09:07
Speaker
before anything. and throughout everything that's always aware. It's always conscious and it's got no circumference that's detectable and no discernible center anywhere. It's everywhere and we have access to it. It's the knowing aspect of awareness and often referred to as masculine.
00:09:37
Speaker
The feminine in this construct, tantra, is the creationary force. Not just creation, but the sustaining force of that creation. So if something gets created, like we build a garden, we need to take care of it.
00:09:52
Speaker
You get a dog, you need to feed it and walk it and water it and play with it. And then the dissolving also. She's responsible for the dissolution of these temporary forms back into the the whatever we want to call it, this pregnant void space that can make anything become anything and makes everything from its own self. And for me, it's very, very fascinating to be in a male body, but to be super connected to incredible women leaders and teachers. Most of my greatest teachers have been female teachers and gurus.
00:10:30
Speaker
There's something I'm learning and continuing to learn from the women in my life about what it is to be a person in a female gendered body with a womb and what that actually natively teaches a person who's available to it.
00:10:46
Speaker
You've just gone through the journey of birthing your first child, gestating and birthing a child.
Motherhood and Intuition
00:10:53
Speaker
And so many things have been revealed to you.
00:11:00
Speaker
right what What about this shift we're talking about from attachment and grasping to the logic mind to opening to some sort of a knowing that's not even personal but can move through the personal?
00:11:17
Speaker
Yeah. it's Motherhood is the... the biggest shift that I've ever experienced in in that. And just look at like, even in pregnancy, you go through that shift where all the time we're told, you know, we want to be We want to be equal to the masculine. And again, we're not, um maybe that sounded more gendered than energetic, but it's always if this thing is that you want your energies to be equal and balanced. And then all of a sudden something happens to you in you that is nothing about what you're doing.
00:11:47
Speaker
So when you start feeling this kind of growth, it's like, i'm not I'm not consciously doing any of this. I'm not knowing how to grow something in my womb. I don't know what's happening yet. It is happening to me and through me. and this And then the birth is like this other experience where it's again, it's like something's happening to my body. I'm aware of it and I'm part of it, but it is not me. And it is something that happens in bigger than me, but also part of me. And and it's it's the most incredible experience when you recognize that like logic can no longer get you anywhere. There is no rationalizing it. There's no thinking your way through it. You have to completely surrender to feeling, intuition, body.
00:12:30
Speaker
whatever that is. And and it's it's such a wild journey when you recognize that your mind is no longer the the force that you can say is the strongest force that you own or is the thing that we have to glamorize that society has for so long and recognize that the body is the kind of primal force that allows for the biggest growth to happen.
00:12:53
Speaker
It's amazing. It was mind-blowing to me and terrifying. This is such a fascinating exploration ah for me and it seems like it's fascinating for you. I'm curious, this is really tender to ask about, i feel Have you noticed yourself grieving previous identities as this identity of mothering is coming on what seems like a freight train? like it's just It's just here, it's foregrounding.
00:13:22
Speaker
you know It's not like um you know a dog where you can ask somebody else to take care of it for a while or go board it because you need a break. like This is your baby, this is your life.
00:13:33
Speaker
And so has there been any shedding of identities and and what's that if you're comfortable talking about, what's that process been like for you to have something that so fills you with more love than you've ever felt in your life at the same time as as feeling these maybe some challenging or difficult feelings?
00:13:51
Speaker
Yeah, it's ah it's a kind of daily juggle. At first, I was actually surprised that I didn't feel a shedding of a previous self. I felt just a growth of a a growth of that self that i had I had shifted and changed and was capable of of more, more pain, more love, more everything that you kind of experience in the early days of it. And I could hold more. And so I didn't feel that I'd lost. And it's now really eight months in that I've started to recognize that I, my brain doesn't work in the same way anymore. i'm kind of grieving the parts of me that, um that was, I guess the the opposite of what we're talking about now, the rational mind and the parts of me that could kind of switch into into, gear when I needed to. I just can't access that at the moment. I'm still very much in the, in, in the feeling, which means that things kind of drop off and I'm not as productive in work as I used to be. Or there's things that I, I, I miss the, um
00:14:49
Speaker
the speed in which I used to be able to get things done because everything takes longer. So I feel like there's this constant grieving and then celebration of what it looks like to to change along along the way. And it feels like every month of motherhood has been a different a different thing that I'm changing into or losing along the way. But it's difficult.
00:15:10
Speaker
What would you say from where you are at eight months to a woman who's approaching the birth? Like, would would there be any suggestions you might give for meeting this experience?
00:15:24
Speaker
I wish I had given myself more time. Everybody and every mother I had spoken to before had said, like, don't rush back into the life as you knew it. You just like, it's ah it's a a shattering of life as you know it. And if you give yourself more time to process that, it's ah it's a gentler experience. I know that not everybody can do that. And there's obviously obligations in life and things that come in the way and having to earn a living and all of that stuff. But i I kind of jumped back in a little too soon. And so for somebody approaching it, I would say, give yourself as much time and grace as you can
Integration and Time for Growth
00:16:00
Speaker
to get to know yourself in this new paradigm and who you want to be and how you want to mother you yourself as well as your baby. um And don't feel the pressure that society kind of gives us, which is like, it you go back to the same you quickly, just give it space.
00:16:20
Speaker
It touches a place in me of a deep spiritual practitioner, particularly like in the circumstance of being on retreat. And I've got the good fortune to have done solo retreats, you know, where it's just me, just the practice in silence, no devices, change of diet, and there's a state shift that happens.
00:16:44
Speaker
That's very strong, it may not be so noticeable until actually trying to reengage with the world. I remember being on a 10 day solo retreat supervised by my teacher over in in Europe and I went, was sent as part of my integration, was suggested that I go to one of the, maybe you've been to the one of the Reinhold Metzner museums. I haven't had to know. Seven castles, this dude, who's one of the the most famous climber in the world, like his summits and like he's just anyone who climbs will be like, oh, my God, climb Goldmester. Yeah. So two of these castles are filled with Buddhist artifacts.
00:17:23
Speaker
But just getting in the car to drive off the mountain to this town and, you know, where the castle was, was its own confrontation. And I'm thinking of a good friend of mine who's a teacher in my same lineage, who recently was on a ah longer solo retreat.
00:17:41
Speaker
And it had been a week already since she'd come out of the retreat. And I reached out, I tried to give her call and she texted me, she said, I'm not yet able to be on the phone. She goes, it's too soon for me.
00:17:57
Speaker
I notice if I engage with the phone, the state degrades really quickly. It's not yet fully integrated and I need more time. And I'm hearing that for any gendered body. It's like there are times when something is opening for us, especially people who are doing deep practices, where logic main mind might be like, what's in the Google calendar? Got to get it done. What's in the bank balance? Got to move.
00:18:27
Speaker
we forget what makes things happen. That coherency, like being established in coherency while it might seem like I'm taking time off of the clock to do so, is actually setting things up to have more precision and and flow.
00:18:45
Speaker
Yeah. And don't we know it from the practice that every time I have taken myself off grid, I come back and there's a a new opportunity just lying there that because I've taken myself away, that it's like maybe I'm seeing the world through a different lens, but somehow it's almost like the world...
00:19:02
Speaker
The world shifts as we take ourselves away from it and we can come back and and notice different things. And I did a 10 day Vipassana. And the same thing when I came out of it, I felt um there was the old self that was kind of being like, oh God, I've got to get back to everything. And because I had slowed down and I'd given myself permission to completely detach.
00:19:23
Speaker
so much more happened in my life. It was almost like you get into that manifesting, if that's even a state of being, when actually things things come from a different vibration or from the place of stillness. I think, I don't know what happened, but kind of more magic appeared in my life from disconnecting. And and I do slightly feel like that's maybe coming for me through motherhood. And and the more the more I surrender into it and stop trying to...
00:19:52
Speaker
get back into back onto the rat race of everything and and keep myself slow I do feel that there's something more magical about to arrive I just feel like i need to trust the slow the slow pace and be a bit more rebelliously slow than I may be allowing myself to be I can relate my teacher suggested I go into a particular practice for several weeks, and it needs to be a certain number of days and a certain number of repetitions of a certain set of Sanskrit mantras.
00:20:20
Speaker
It also involves being full vegetarian with no eggs during the period to be able to do it well and have the body be able to tolerate the energy.
00:20:30
Speaker
It's a very different pace. And there's a pull to this very different pace that's so compelling that I have to find the opposite is like, okay, have I done the things I've agreed to other people that I'm going to do that I know I need to do? And then where can I or will I or shall i speak up?
00:20:54
Speaker
and ask for something different or say, hey, you know what, I need to change that agreement and not have to feel bad or beat oneself up about it. And I'm i'm just curious about that because having dialogue with so many female practitioners, teachers, students of mine, as much as they may seem very outgoing, they they will say, speaking up about certain things is very uncomfortable sometimes.
00:21:23
Speaker
What would you say about about that? Like you notice something, it feels really true, and then to go engage with the world and say, i need to put this stake in the ground. And I may not be able to tell you why, it just has to be this way.
00:21:40
Speaker
Yeah, I find it really difficult to to to do to do that and to give myself full permission to follow something else that is like not expected of me or something that is just coming from me. But I think the more I've done it, the stronger I feel like how important it is to activate that voice and to be,
00:22:00
Speaker
do the thing The other thing I do is talk about how important it is to slow down and and what what it is that we need to allow the mind to rest. And then I find myself drifting from the practice and this kind of this guilt in taking time for myself and in taking the space that I need for that. And I think, I mean, I don't think it is just a female thing. I think it's a societal thing right now that we're all on this.
00:22:21
Speaker
The world feels about a thousand miles an hour and we all want to slow down and none of us know really how to to take the time for ourselves. But actually... When we take it, nobody cares. It's such a, we've got into this crazy mode where we kind of suddenly, we we feel like we can't give ourselves permission to do it, but actually we we can and we should. There's a rigor I think in it.
00:22:44
Speaker
i feel like for myself, there's a rigor in looking for that space, like noticing where it can be and being rigorous with myself about if I've fenced off that time to use it and not be like scrolling the phone.
00:23:00
Speaker
or looking the latest news like, oh I'll just look for a second and then pulled in like, yeah, again, it's like not gendered. It's like, am I using the time that's come to me? My um my first guru gives a message every year for the year, a contemplation, often like a sutra.
00:23:19
Speaker
And this year's is make your time worth your time.
00:23:25
Speaker
It's a huge contemplation. That really is. It's actually funny. Parenthood has allowed me to um take a lot more time without excusing it than I ever have before. I think there's a sense of...
00:23:41
Speaker
and because I have to in lots of to i like remove myself from from things and be present with my son and not and ah not in the place I used to be it's made me feel um yeah much more able to do that than I ever have before which is interesting because it's almost like having that it wasn't enough for me to do it for myself and suddenly there's this extra layer and I've allowed that to be the reason to do it which is interesting So the title of the podcast is The Choice to Grow.
00:24:13
Speaker
And we've been talking about a lot of things that to me sound like you choosing to grow, whether you constellated that way in your mind at the time or not. but like But what do you notice about your motivations and how it's shifted over time around the choice to grow really as a lifestyle?
00:24:37
Speaker
Repeat that question because I was thinking something and then as you spoke, it was like my mind is like... The choice
Challenges and Growth in Parenthood
00:24:42
Speaker
to grow. I mean, the choice to grow. Like there's all these little moments in in the day or in the life where it could be, oh I'll make the easy choice. Or I'll make the the the choice that feeds my my desire body, you know, my ego's thing. I'll just get cake or whatever.
00:25:00
Speaker
the choice to grow, like, what do you see about the choice to grow and how that choice the way you feel the choice, how it has been changing in the last, we'll say 1618 months,
00:25:15
Speaker
I think giving myself this, like, I've been, I guess choosing the growth of parenthood was I went through three rounds of IVF to get pregnant as well. So there's been a ah journey for like the last three years. Yeah, it's been a ah huge, huge journey and in giving myself this. and I think this is, again, my brain is so in this journey of of giving myself that choice to grow. And i think we're in a so and a time where like we all...
00:25:44
Speaker
There needs to be more growth. Sorry, i don't know what my mind, at Scott, has just gone completely like scrambled eggs. And I feel like I can't answer the question for some reason. I actually am finding you to be completely coherent and clear.
00:26:00
Speaker
I'm just curious, like, we're really everybody we're in real time together, like, we're really looking at the real small moments. And Sometimes I find that it can seem like scrambled eggs when I'm off topic of what really wants to be looked at.
00:26:18
Speaker
So why don't we just take a couple of slow breaths together and just use sense and lead the way rather than my rational male brain leading the way. Let's just sense where we want to go. So we're really looking at the choice to grow.
00:26:36
Speaker
Is it a choice?
00:26:47
Speaker
And while we're breathing and Maude's breathing everybody, just want to name it, even though it probably doesn't need naming. Can we give the people in our lives more space to not know and to have that be welcomed as a powerful creative capacity rather than forcing quickness, forcing words to come out that may end up making no difference?
00:27:16
Speaker
and to give people more space to contemplate rather than just spit out something.
00:27:24
Speaker
Thank you for giving me that permission. I just, that's such a ah a gift that you have to just like not, I don't know, I was in that kerfuffled state and I just feel like you've just given me such permission to breathe and to slow and to go in. So thank you for that.
00:27:43
Speaker
and And I think really what wants to come through me is that i I am in a huge state of growth, but I don't feel that often it's a choice. I don't feel that there's enough space to to have the choice to grow. I think growth has happened to me and is happening through me. And I don't feel that I've given myself conscious choice to grow. Yeah.
00:28:09
Speaker
for the last 18 months. I think it's just been a, I've been in a physical experience and there has been physical growth, obviously, and there's been mental growth, but I think it's an unconscious state that I've been in, and which in some ways is beautiful, but in other ways is different to how I've ever known and feeling slightly frustrated at times with that because there's no I can't choose my way of growth I can't take myself off to retreats I can't do a lot of my own kind of lengthy practices right now that I've always done to kind of get myself back into growth and so I think yeah I think maybe I the sense of confusion was that I haven't consciously been in that place for for a while
00:28:52
Speaker
Thank you for sharing that. I'm really touched. Like there's water in my eyes and my heart feels really tender in the center of my chest. I feel a lot of care and compassion for this experience, not just yours, but anybody who's having this experience.
00:29:10
Speaker
When we're passing through a liminal state, an in-between place between this and that, between day and night maybe, or between inhale and exhale, or between jobs, or between lovers, or between whatever, in between child care opera you know having childcare and not having childcare,
00:29:33
Speaker
The real of it is just for me it is coming together with people in a supportive way, like really investigating what it is to show up in a supportive way with the understanding that like, I don't have to do intricate crazy practices in order to grow or heal.
00:29:53
Speaker
When those go well, what they lead to is a state of presence in which the growing is natural. Like like you said, You didn't figure out how to grow a baby in your body.
00:30:04
Speaker
It just happened. Yeah. but that's and I think it's so beautiful what you were saying, like give permission to each other to do it because we we don't. There isn't space enough, I don't believe, in in society, and relationships in with ourselves. to It's the the permission to let the growth happen rather than force it. And I think...
00:30:26
Speaker
Again, sometimes even in the wellbeing space, there's a sense of like, what's the quickest modality to get me to healing on? What's the quickest way to get the transformation? Somebody even said that to me the other day, like what what one class would you recommend me go to, to kind of, you know, to speed up the process? And i was like...
00:30:42
Speaker
the the The practice that has got me there is meditation, but the hours of meditation that I have found any kind of real shifts. It's the it's the dedication to a singular practice over and over and over again where I've noticed the little changes.
00:30:56
Speaker
ah I can't tell you one teacher to go to that's going to give you the the change because it will be different for each of us. um So yeah, the permission to to take the time which feels, yeah, that there isn't the space.
00:31:10
Speaker
That person might have slapped me if I'd said what I really would be called to say to them. and Maybe not, depending on the mood and their openness. But at that moment, if I was in it right now, i'd be like, the quickest way for you to grow is to go find a tree that you're drawn to and go visit that tree every single day.
00:31:31
Speaker
and bring offerings and connect and sit with your back against it or hug it, get over any sort of phobia about being seen and really start to freshly discover what it is that lives life.
00:31:47
Speaker
And that's why you're the teacher that you are. don't know. lot of falling down on my knees and getting back up and and finding out what works. I mean there literally is a tree in front of my building that I'm doing this with.
00:32:00
Speaker
And I've been here for, i don't know, 20 some odd years, rent control, compelled to stay and watch this jacaranda start from this like freshly, seemingly freshly planted kind of sapling, forgot what that word was, into this huge tree that like, if I had the wherewithal, I'd climb up it and sit in its branches.
00:32:23
Speaker
And the amount of healing that I experience from those few minutes each day out there with that tree teach me more than the most profound scriptural texts I've read.
00:32:39
Speaker
Yeah, nature is so real. Nature just has that amazing ability to to to remember the slow pace of of what it is to to change and transform. Actually, it's like what it it's I teach it a lot in like the transition of seasons and how we have to kind of go, you know, what it what it is to go from summer when we're all out there into autumn and slow down. But actually,
00:33:02
Speaker
Yeah, it is when you watch it and you see how slow they are moving and transforming and growing. like What is it that we're not seeing and learning from that? What are we not observing?
00:33:13
Speaker
And to flip it into an an opportunity or an because sometimes when we hear what are we not? I don't know about you, but I had hypercritical parents that I internalized as a hypercritical inner voice. hmm.
00:33:26
Speaker
That led to being you know a perfectionist and high performance for praise and it never being enough. So for me, what's really helpful is like, what could I discover?
00:33:38
Speaker
like then that Then that wonder of a child comes back online and is appreciated as as gasoline for the process, like wonder.
00:33:49
Speaker
like Can we get back to wonder as opposed to okay, my body's letting me know I'm still treating this journey like a checklist. Yeah, and it's so beautiful watching...
00:34:03
Speaker
ah the world through a baby's eyes and that that level of wonder which is just there for every kind of micro anything and that's like the joy, the full body experience of every emotion it's like it the and it reminding me all the time to go on this journey of of wonder and as you say, the non-critical self, just the, like what, yeah, what could we learn if we were just present and looking out at this world in the the most kind of beautiful, raw way.
00:34:33
Speaker
my primary teacher at this point in the last number of years has from time to time disclosed how she practiced as a mother of three daughters and now a grandmother and she would do practices while she was feeding the babies she would be in like like she realized pretty quickly on that practice wasn't about necessarily looking like some sort of a formal thing, but it was like, how am I engaging with this moment and like the intimacy that opens up in just the feeding of the baby, tenderizing of the heart that could be entered into more deeply as it's happening. You know, like, I mean, my creative mind and i clearly I'm clearly, you know, I'm not a female with a kid.
00:35:25
Speaker
But what I make up is I can i imagine all these micro moments where if I can if i could just bring myself presently to what's happening with my child, that it's the most deep transformational spiritual growth that I could imagine, really. Yeah. Yeah.
00:35:44
Speaker
and that there's And there's different times for different practices. And that's what this journey is really teaching me, that it's not it's not a ah ah better or worse kind of practice, but it is a ah as deep as a very profound, long, lengthy practice for those like micro moments of full presence.
00:36:04
Speaker
And yeah, for moments when I'm feeding or in like the little micro moments where i I catch myself and I'm like, wow, that is as profound as being in a, yeah, a very deep meditative state.
00:36:17
Speaker
I don't know if you caught wind of this, but I shifted away from the the one breath technique of only breathing through the mouth several years back.
00:36:28
Speaker
um Really, as we were kind of getting towards quarantine, I actually taught the last class ever at Wanderlust Hollywood before lockdown. And it was ah a breathwork class, a Friday night breathwork class, and what I call ecstatic breathwork.
00:36:45
Speaker
i still include that breath. but What happened for me is I needed to take a break because I felt like people were using it like a drug in and not transforming the way that really is wanted and needed, but just coming in because you know you breathe fast and rhythmically through the mouth, you're going to get a prana high.
00:37:06
Speaker
You just are. peak state, kind of like hotels and holidays, you know? But is it changing me? And for some people, yeah. For some people, like they just naturally are open. It's like a psychedelic journey, really.
00:37:20
Speaker
And something can move. But I realized that at the risk of having less people be interested, I had to shift the work. And so most people I have breathing in a very simple fashion but really tuning into the area of the body that's being worked with and just staying.
00:37:41
Speaker
But not just staying in an ordinary way, staying the way I would if it was my child I was holding in my arms.
00:37:50
Speaker
How has that felt for you to shift from that teaching as as a as a teacher? And did, I guess, the fear of what you thought, which was like at the risk of kind of losing the incredible following that you have, like, did it shift loads of that? Or was it like a pleasant surprise of...
00:38:06
Speaker
you know I don't know if it how much it has or hasn't I mean even last week with with I have some part-time supporters for we discussed marketing and I even struggle to say that word without kind of wanting to spit it out a little bit um
00:38:23
Speaker
and they were like well what if you in December you gave an ecstatic breathwork class you know you're so known for that and I back to the body and getting quiet i was like I really hear you guys I honor where you're coming from and That's not a yes.
00:38:39
Speaker
That's not a yes. I've spoken publicly enough about why I made this shift and how important it is that people are able to meet what's arising without having to get into an extreme state of consciousness so that it can hold up in walking around life.
00:39:01
Speaker
So I've had people like there was somebody who's worked done tons of the ecstatic breath with me. And in the first time it was last year solstice that i rolled this out. She she called me up and she said, you know, i went deeper than I ever went with the mouth breath.
00:39:16
Speaker
And I stayed within through the nose and out through the mouth. And so much happened. And there was a lot of people that said that. So, you know, from a marketing capacity, like me calling it ecstatic breathwork and it had a brand and it had a name and it had a kind of a box and it kind of was a magnet, you know, and now I call it somatic healing workshops. It's not particularly sexy sounding, but the net result is profound. And it's what I practice all day long.
00:39:47
Speaker
So I don't know, man, like I know i could be doing stuff to get more people. But the other side of me goes, at what cost? And are those the right people?
00:40:00
Speaker
Yeah, I 100%. And I feel that's so strong. I mean, people... are attracted to your teaching because you're brilliant at what you do and also just because you are you and you know I'm so i wish I was closer so I could actually come back to to classes and be in that shift but it's also going back to what we were saying about the permission to grow in different ways and giving people permission in different ways to to grow in the way they need to rather than it always being one way fits all because that's not where we are right now in society as well
00:40:33
Speaker
let's see if we open this door, because there's probably a bunch of people that listen to this show this podcast who are in some place in the wellness world, or supporting people who are, let's talk a little bit about like, interfacing with the so called business of it.
00:40:51
Speaker
And maintaining the choice to grow in the face of uncertainty around the business, you know, when, when COVID happened, Prior to that, I had a really robust in person teaching scene happening here in l LA.
00:41:07
Speaker
And I wasn't teaching online. I had my first commune courses that were starting to go viral with the ecstatic breathwork course and abundant joy wasn't until the second course wasn't until COVID. And then I built out after my mom died, i built out a whole teaching site, I don't teach in person.
00:41:28
Speaker
I want to, i want to get back to that. And that's an entirely different shift to to like,
00:41:38
Speaker
what is the teaching? What are we teaching? What are we doing? And what's the what's the minimum viable structures around it so that it doesn't dilute the teachings or dilute the experience into, you know i don't know, something goofy. What are your thoughts about that? yeah And how do we stay on our path of what we intuitively are feeling is the right thing rather than feeling the expectation of what we should be doing? And when you you said, you know, when you speak to marketeers or you speak to other people that are kind of business led, I'm so bad. I'm intuitive in everything I do. And I know a lot of the time that goes completely against what it what I should be doing in terms of uh the business mind because it's just not the way that i that i can work um but i think you know if youre if we're not living through our intuition and we're not living what we think is the right kind of practice as you say like who are we really doing it for what are we actually teaching who are the people that maybe the people that want to find us wouldn't find us because we're not being true to ourselves but i i feel that again i'm in this real
00:42:51
Speaker
transitional time for that because what I was teaching felt so beautiful, so real, so intuitive to me before and now I have less physical time, less mind space and the stuff that i still feel really passionate and that I love, I don't actually always have the time to do and so how then do i does this new version of me come out and and I feel in my head the logical is saying it has to happen now and make it happen fast and And the intuitive me is saying it can't and it won't. And you have to give, you know, the next rendition of what's going to come out um the space to grow and to for that to come organically. So, yeah, I think it's ah it's such an interesting one because, what again, what the...
00:43:36
Speaker
The society of everything has to happen really quickly. Everyone's attention span is 15 seconds. um Therefore, how do you grab people's attention immediately? And that's the way to go. feels so against everything that my body and practice is is wanting to do Mine too.
00:43:53
Speaker
Mine too. I'll notice that pull too. like just We'll call it you know the pull to post on Instagram and whatnot and build engagement. But like...
00:44:05
Speaker
When I really look at it, how people come to the work may appear to be coming through social media or my email list or whatever, but like there's got to be a feeling on their end.
00:44:18
Speaker
There's always going to be a feeling. And that feeling is not limited by algorithms or time or space. So for me, this just comes back to my practice and how coherent is my nervous system And then for me, the next iteration, I've got this book that arrived this week. It's a whole series of incredible essays, um Leadership for Flourishing.
00:44:44
Speaker
Mm-hmm. heavily footnoted and whatnot, but I read the introduction and the editors, what they're bringing forth is this this idea of ecosystem-wide flourishing, not one person flourishing, the whole ecosystem.
00:44:59
Speaker
And i in my ear and in my heart, that's a feminine approach to meeting the world, like a garden. Yes. Like everything in the garden is interacting with everything in the garden. It's not just simply, I've got my spreadsheet and these are my deliverables and this is how much money this course needs to make and this is how we're going to push it out.
00:45:22
Speaker
No, like what is the ecosystem I'm interacting with? Whether I'm running a floral business, whether I'm running a wellness, so-called wellness, it's all wellness. I mean, what if everybody considered themselves in wellness and really cared about the entire ecosystem and everybody and everything involved in it?
Balancing Business with Intuitive Practices
00:45:42
Speaker
I feel like that opens up way more intuitive knowing than when I get like closed in on hitting a dollar amount or a number of registrations. Yeah, and it opens up to collaboration and this beautiful, that everything that my heart wants, which is community, collective like collective knowledge, knowing, learning from each other rather than it just being like, you know, one person has to be the lead version of this. It's like, how do we all come together to grow, to listen? And I don't know the solution, but I'm so with you that what's coming through me so clearly at the moment is,
00:46:18
Speaker
Am I doing the stuff that I'm wanting in society? Am i doing the practice that I'm teaching? Am I saying the things that, am I doing the things that are coming out of my mouth? And until I am, what is what am I actually doing? And how do and particularly at the moment, because I'm saying to everybody, slow down, world is too fast, yet my nervous system feels too fast. So I'm like, well, hang on, let's simplify this and let's regulate everything.
00:46:41
Speaker
myself to then spread out that message which is I'm not just saying this I'm doing it and you will hopefully feel that through the energy of the doing rather than me so posting on social media that I'm sitting and meditating I need to sit and meditate and forget it all for a minute and then share once I'm back in that regulated state Two things stand out about that. One, and I don't know if I've thought about it this way until I heard you just say it.
00:47:07
Speaker
So one of the things you know that we either learn well from our parents or don't is how to emotionally regulate, how to regulate our nervous system through co-regulation.
00:47:18
Speaker
Well, isn't that what what when it goes well, what a teacher is doing with the students? Regardless of the words being spoken, is we're actually we're actually enacting co-regulation, not codependence, co-regulation.
00:47:33
Speaker
That's just blowing my mind, by the way. i just said that It just feels like that is it. That's what we try and do healthily as as from a parent. But when we don't have that healthily, which most of us don't, that is it.
00:47:44
Speaker
And that, doesn't as you say, doesn't never have to be through any words. It's all about feeling. Yeah. Yeah. And I forgot what point two is, so it must not be relevant at the moment. That's one of the places I'm coming to. something's really important, it'll be here. It'll foreground itself. How do I work with my body, my nervous system, um to make space for this new way of engaging with the world, and particularly to be able to collaborate? Because if I can't regulate, how can I collaborate?
00:48:16
Speaker
Because I'm going to feel stuff with your nervous system and or mine, and then I'm going to get hijacked. And then either it's going to end the collaboration or make it difficult or it's not going to flow.
00:48:29
Speaker
So like at the beginning, in the middle, in the end of the day, I think we we really must come back to the basics of what we needed to learn and still can from childhood about healthy attachment. Mm-hmm.
00:48:44
Speaker
And co-regulation. that's I mean, i I see it really playing out, obviously, with baby. But when my when either me or my husband's energy is off and one of us holds the baby and at the beginning, my husband was like, it's crying, he's not coming down. i was like, he's not coming down because you're not calm. Take a breath. And he was like, this isn't a meditation session. i was like, I know, but just take a breath and see what happens. Yeah.
00:49:07
Speaker
And then he took a breath and he was like, oh my gosh, you're right. Like, this is right. It works. Like, there's a sense that if you breathe, the baby will breathe. And there's, because it can't be, it can't be logical and it can't be through words when they're that small. And it's actually the same for all of us, right? That's the adult in us is the same. what if We're not breathing when we say to breathe.
00:49:27
Speaker
People know it. People feel it. And marketers don't know what to do with that. If I want to lead with that and say, you know what? I don't have a whole lot of words for what I'm going to do, i i but I know I'm going to schedule this event and I just need to show up for it and I'll base it on the energy in the group.
00:49:47
Speaker
but we don't yet have a lot of language for that like people well what is the benefits i'm going to what are the benefits i'm going to get before i sign up i want to know what my deliverables are you know and like like it's a chinese menu like i'll get some lo mein and i'll get some chinese pancakes and i'll get some side sauce and the inner work really doesn't work like that
00:50:14
Speaker
yeah And people want complex. I want a complex. What's the most advanced mantra? What's the most complex you know special alchemy process? it's like
00:50:24
Speaker
I really see, and you are as a mom, life knows what to do when we create the conditions for it to be able to do so freely. The rose knows how to bloom. Nobody has to tell it
00:50:40
Speaker
And what if awakening as well as healthy growing up and cleaning up the shadow, what if those are natural byproducts of choosing to focus on forging a coherent nervous system and and have room for when it feels fragmented and not make it into a big problem or you know get into a huge retinue of self-criticism?
00:51:08
Speaker
And have places to go in those moments where you can be helped with somebody co-regulating with you again and bringing you back to that place where the space is not that we we can't all stay regulated all the time. That's not human. But like what if when we weren't regulated, which i but you know I'm in the process of in the moment because i life is wild in this first year of parenthood.
00:51:32
Speaker
And what if that's okay and that you can go to people and know that there's safe spaces there to go and co-regulate and that's the point and what if i could actually trust myself to ask even if it seems foreign to go can we just slow the conversation right now you know maybe at we're at dinner and can we just slow everything way down or just kind of pause the words for a moment i just i just need to catch up to my breath i just need to catch up to my experience and to ask for that feels like it gives other people permission to even though that's possible
00:52:05
Speaker
Well, it just happened on this podcast, right? I i went there in my in my crazy mind for a minute and then you gave me permission to come back. And yeah, it's, I don't know.
00:52:17
Speaker
it takes a lot of self-knowledge to ask for it, to know once that you are off, out of regulation, and then to ask for what you need. So I think it's a beautiful thing when we give permission to each other to do it.
00:52:32
Speaker
I think one of the things that might push those old behaviors to keep reenacting themselves in part could be, at least for people choosing to walk the path, some idea that there's a destination to get to and that I've got to get there as efficiently as possible. And I think there is definitely room for, is my practice skillful?
00:52:58
Speaker
But like from my observation of and I've been around quite a few pretty advanced practitioners and teachers over the decades.
00:53:08
Speaker
The destination is already here. No individual wakes up wakeful consciousness foregrounds. We can have awakenings, but it doesn't mean it's actually informed how we behave yet.
00:53:28
Speaker
I've met some really well branded, hugely known teachers who when they're leading a prayer session or a meditation, the energy is very thick in the room.
00:53:38
Speaker
And
Spiritual Realization vs. Actualization
00:53:39
Speaker
they are nasty as can be to their assistant in the back room, or to the recording people they're working with, or, you know, they're having they're acting out with money or sex or whatever. And it's like,
00:53:54
Speaker
actualization and realization are not the same thing and i have a lot of tenderness for anybody who's been confronted with where we haven't actualized what we've tasted in these big practices and how much more confronting can it be than having a child who you who you have to attend to as such a mirror for what's going on with yourself like talk about a profound spiritual teaching, you know, remembering brings me back to there's a great Indian teaching story I haven't told it in years, where think it's from the yoga vaseshta and this, this young aspirant has an enlightened father who's a king.
00:54:38
Speaker
I guess it did happen there were enlightened rulers once upon a time and it truly was actualized and realized but he he just realized like others that he couldn't be his his son's teacher just too close too familiar so he sent him to this famous king Janaka's kingdom to have king Janaka maybe take him on as as a student and as a as a ward so he goes and ah Janaka welcomes him into the big room and with great pomp and circumstance. Oh, welcome, welcome, welcome. And what is it you're here for? And he gives a letter from his father. He says, sir, I know I'm going to inherit the kingdom in one day and i wish to be the most enlightened ruler possible.
00:55:24
Speaker
He says, great. Well, before we get on to any of that, I want you to see my kingdom. And these guards are going to go show you around. And so the guards take him and they have this, they pull out this thing. They're fitting him with something to go over his head. It's going to hold a candle on top of his head.
00:55:45
Speaker
And they say, now the king has told us that if this flame goes out, we're to immediately chop your head off.
00:55:55
Speaker
It's extreme. So he they take him, you know, for three days around the whole kingdom everywhere to the red light district to the to the temples to the everything, everything.
00:56:06
Speaker
Bring him back in front of the king. Candle still lit. Thank goodness. And then the king says, So how did you like my kingdom? said, Sir, I don't remember anything. I was so focused on letting not letting that flame go out.
00:56:24
Speaker
And for me, that's that's what I imagine my friends who have newborns. This is what it is to have a child.
00:56:32
Speaker
Yeah, it is. that is the That is it. You are so one track to the first time ever. It's like this thing is the only thing that you can immerse yourself in.
00:56:47
Speaker
Well, if you translated that into meditation instructions, I wonder what would what kind of creative possibilities could come through to help people orient who also have undealt with stuff and busy nervous systems. like What might you...
00:57:04
Speaker
bring us into as an audience using that understanding? Like how, do where do we start, Maude? Where do we begin when we first physically sit down and we've got, okay, I've got, I've got a couple of minutes.
00:57:16
Speaker
What can I do?
00:57:20
Speaker
I don't know if I have the answer to it. Like, I think I'm, I'm, I'm in the lesson right now, which is just being present with what my body is leading me to and stop trying to get it right.
00:57:36
Speaker
Stop trying to do the thing that, you know, I think is going to get me to the next place and do, I think like the, the lesson that I'm in and and maybe it helps anybody else, but it's just that to, to let go of everything that I've known and everything that I've been taught and thought was going to be the answer. And just to that,
00:57:55
Speaker
that where I am and what I'm capable of right now is enough. And that will be will get me to the next the next breath, the next moment, the next part of my teaching. um Yeah, i've I've let go of of so much of what I used to do and planning things and just being with every breath, with every moment and and letting that teach me rather than trying to teach it, if that makes sense.
00:58:24
Speaker
It's fun to me to notice, especially with guests, that the wisdom that comes through that that the person may not realize that they're speaking because they haven't they haven't taken an outside reflection on it. Like you've mentioned numerous times the next breath or to your husband, maybe just take a breath.
00:58:50
Speaker
breath how's the breath so like what if it's that simple what if the what if the practice my walking around practice regardless of whether i have children or i don't is to keep checking in with how is my breath feel how is it moving and not to judge it but just to just to orient
00:59:13
Speaker
by feeling that breath and then what happens when I do? ah natural intuition starts to flow that goes, oh, I could actually soften my shoulders and then, oh, isn't that interesting? The breath is going a little deeper.
00:59:27
Speaker
I'm going into this coming weekend, I'm going into this advanced Mahamudra meditation re retreat for six days, six hours a day online with like one hour breaks between the sets. Amazing. Kind of rigorous. Mm-hmm.
00:59:40
Speaker
But what I keep coming back to in that that way of working, that way of meditating is new to me in this body. um It's open-eyed.
00:59:50
Speaker
When the instructions are being given, there's not quiet period to just sit. And the open-eyed is so you'll be more quickly integrating with the rest of life.
01:00:02
Speaker
But really it comes down to...
01:00:06
Speaker
noticing awakened awareness is already here it's not mine but i can't hold on to it or it's gone and it has no issue with anything but how do i get there how do i get to the noticing all these are the things that we call meditation instructions like settling the body softening the body following the breath
01:00:30
Speaker
so if love and all the basic essential energies of life are already here It seems like simple concentration practices that can be done in any activity are really a wonderful
Micro Practices and Daily Integration
01:00:45
Speaker
opportunity. and What simpler thing to focus on than the sensations of breath that's always with me as long as I'm alive.
01:00:51
Speaker
Yeah. And that you can do things in little nuggets, it like little tiny moments can be equally powerful. And especially at this time, what I'm most, yeah, like ah a 10 minute before I sleep practice can feel like a a three hour practice that I've maybe done in the past, because it's just that, you know, I'm, I have to do it in that time. There's something kind of, yeah, that happens. Things are moving faster for me because they have to.
01:01:17
Speaker
and there's a desire you know i don't know about you have you had periods of your life where you did long practices and and to the degree where you're like kind of the egos have like i don't know if i can keep sitting yeah and the opposite being like when i only have a little bit of time for me because i really know the benefit of practice you know feel it that i crave more and that that craving that longing is so valuable where somebody who's got all the time in the world may just be frittering it away and not really using it well. They may have their eyes closed, but their mind is all over the place. Yeah. So micro-practice. Yeah, and like doing that, they say, you know, give busy people things to do, they'll do it immediately. But not that I, again, it's that weird thing. You don't want to put those kind of sayings into a meditation practice. It's the opposite. I don't want it to be busy. I don't want to only have little moments and pockets of time. It's the reality that I'm that i'm in right now. And I kind of that that weekend can that you just described that you're going into, there's a part of me that's so longing for like, ah you know, that stillness and silence or not silence, but that awareness concentrated for that amount of time. um
01:02:31
Speaker
But also to recognize that sometimes the reality is you only do have these short moments and that longing does feel it's quite nice to long for the practice and and and to want to be in it so much. And that that feels like such a beautiful, sacred place for me to to have little moments to tap back into.
01:02:47
Speaker
when also It also strikes me that um the ways we divide up reality and artificially and then suffer accordingly, like this is practice and this is something else.
01:03:00
Speaker
But like if I look at what I'm actually doing when I say I'm doing practice, can I bring any of that yes to other activities like working out or warming the bottle or washing the dish or whatever it is or washing my own body? like I think we really have an opportunity, maybe this is maybe you and I will collaborate on something, explore collaboration like micro practices.
01:03:26
Speaker
Micro practices, not at the expense of longer practices or instead of, but like as a way to cultivate and bring stuff into the real moments of my walking around eyes open life.
01:03:41
Speaker
Yeah, I would love that. Definitely open to micro moments. And as you actually showers are one of those times where it's such a beautiful time to, as you say, like washing yourself. is something about like the, again, the physical, the physicalization of that, that is such a beautiful moment to take a breath, to realize how I'm feeling. And moms, I find have such a doorway.
01:04:06
Speaker
Did you have did you have I feel like the answer is yes, but it's fair to ask it like a question. Did you have a moment when you knew like, it was okay? your But the baby was safe, you were safe.
01:04:19
Speaker
And then there's the you connect maybe it's through the eyes of your child or whatnot. And that love that was far beyond any other love you'd ever felt. Did that happen to you? Yeah, it happened. it It was very strange because the end of my birth turned quite medical and quite scary. And I literally left my body. I felt this like I could i was like, I can't do this, screaming. And then all of a sudden the baby was there and it like happened like kind of instantly. So i went from out of body to then connecting with him and completely forgetting. everything It was like the world disappeared and all there was was just this like vortex of...
01:04:55
Speaker
I don't even know if it's love. It's something, oh maybe it is love, but something that i I wouldn't necessarily describe as I'd felt love to be. It was like a a connection, a oneness that is...
01:05:08
Speaker
more profound than anything else that I knew suddenly that this body was connected to me but separate. Yet I was seeing me through him, him through me. It was yeah it was incredible and terrifying. What happens for you now as you reflect on that experience and let it come forward?
01:05:26
Speaker
My heart opened. I just feel this sense of... I almost feel a sense of dissolving. i don't know if that makes sense. i feel What seems to dissolve? What seems to dissolve? Because something can still speak.
01:05:39
Speaker
So what do you notice if we just slow it way down and there's no rush to get anywhere? What seems to dissolve as you really be with that reflection, that memory in real time? The dissolving of, I guess, me as I know me or the dissolving of the physical body.
01:05:54
Speaker
There was something about like, it's like looking... through the eyes of something that looks really... I mean, you get it through, and and it's not just parents. It's when you really connect intimately with somebody in the eyes and you suddenly feel like that same dissolving that I've had a few times when you recognise that person's really seeing me. And for the first... In that moment when I first connected with him, he had these little, like, black eyes that then turned blue, but the moment at the first moment, all I just saw was, like, an eye.
01:06:23
Speaker
And it was almost like, yeah, the the depth of... me seeing you in the depth of I'm being seen in this moment just made Maud as I've always felt me to be the identification of that, not not real anymore.
01:06:39
Speaker
Yeah. I feel like that's a practice and I've i've encouraged as many moms as possible to remember and use that experience as an active doorway to practice.
01:06:52
Speaker
And I've been teaching mirror work for years and more so in the last year for one to get in the mirror, recall that experience, and share that in the eye gaze in the mirror as a as like a you know we gotta look in the mirror we gotta brush the teeth or the hair or the whatever you know it takes me hours to curl my hair every day those of you who are not watching or are not watching the video I have very short hair and have have very thin hair so that's a big joke um but to be in the mirror that way and to experience that the implications of that
01:07:26
Speaker
healing our attachment disturbances, you know, like any places where we are avoidant or insecure in our in our connections and our relationships, which most of us carry something, um let alone to go to go into meditation without having to push into meditation. Like it just naturally foregrounds, like such a huge imprint and infinite opportunity just by recollecting it and not trying to force it to become something.
01:07:57
Speaker
Yeah. And one of those things you can't force, there is no, there's no practice that can force that. It is a remembering of and of a feeling that I think we can all, i think maybe, I don't know, but was what I was saying, can can you recognize that in a practice that you've done? Do you recognize that in a feeling that you've had?
01:08:19
Speaker
I can. um I've also been leading that particular practice with moms, like encouraging it or giving it for years. So I've had time to cultivate it. I'm curious for the listeners, and you can let me know, maybe reach out in the comments.
01:08:34
Speaker
What's your doorway, especially those of you who haven't given birth to a child or don't have a body that's capable of giving birth to a child? What's your doorway? I mean, for me, Maude, years ago when I took my first Siddha Yoga meditation intensive,
01:08:50
Speaker
one of the teaching swamis said, I don't know if it was privately to me or to the whole to the whole meditation intensive, but that when you've had this particular experience that in our world was called Shaktipat back then, like this shift of awareness, this opening that doesn't go back, that you can, for many people, it's a recognizable memory And that we can use that memory as a doorway into meditation when we go to sit, if you're not grasping to try and reproduce it exactly. But just recalling the memory enough, it's a tantric technique, it turns out.
01:09:23
Speaker
I think it's mentioned the Vijnanabhairava. There's a way of just using a memory of feeling great spaciousness, grounding. it could be a sunrise, a sunset, you know the so the sound and smell of the ocean. Really, there's no right thing.
01:09:38
Speaker
But to get experimenting, get into the experimenting of, just touching enough of the memory while paying attention to the body as it starts to shift the nervous system.
01:09:50
Speaker
And then it starts to turn what was a peak state experience with practice into a permanent trait. Like I would love to love all beings, including the ones who are acting like assholes, as much as you experience that connection with your child all day long while still having skillful, healthy boundaries and whatnot.
01:10:11
Speaker
Wouldn't world be a beautiful place? I think so. And so why don't I keep doing my bit even when it seems really hard? Yeah. Well, there's a question I ask every guest and it's based on this quote that I love from Suzuki Roshi, who opened the Zen center of San Francisco in the 60s, very realized being who went through a very difficult early childhood life, very, very, very, very difficult, um beaten and shamed and while being expected to, you know, be training as a little boy to become a Zen priest.
01:10:46
Speaker
And he would say, death is certain. The time is not. What is the most important thing?
01:10:59
Speaker
Now, if we remove the the, so it's not so hard from what is the most important thing, but like, what is the most important thing to you when you recognize, okay, death is certain, the time is not.
01:11:10
Speaker
What's the most
Connection as Core Philosophy
01:11:11
Speaker
important thing for me today? Connection for me, connection to you. each other to nature, the feeling of being connected is definitely what I feel is the most important, the most healing. Yeah. What I crave, what I want to teach, what i want more from the world is connection. And it sounds like it's what you give.
01:11:40
Speaker
I hope so. I hope in whatever way I can, that's my, my, my dream.
01:11:49
Speaker
really touches me. As I just imagine, like all the plants and the trees and the birds and see how connected they already all are. Like, what if connection could be a lot easier than we've made it?
01:12:03
Speaker
Like, what if it's big piece of it is learning to relax open to the connection that's already alive in all of life?
01:12:14
Speaker
I think it's that that is it. It's it's a re-remembering that we are all connected and it's that how do we at the moment it's like I'm craving like just so much physical connection. I feel like we're so like disconnected physically but just like the the touch but it doesn't take much to just like we are yeah to feel that that reconnection with each other but as you say it's already there so everything's connected.
01:12:38
Speaker
We've just somehow disconnected. Hmm. It seems like we're coming to a a natural bookmark place for this conversation.
01:12:49
Speaker
And I'm just curious if we take a couple of moments, maybe a few breaths. What, if anything, is there for you to say or ask?
01:13:05
Speaker
Firstly, I I want to say thank you so much for, this is the first conversation I've had since, but in kind of a podcast setting since having the baby. And I feel that my...
01:13:18
Speaker
My brain is not where I would want it to be, which is kind of beautiful and it's unraveling. And thank you for one bringing me onto the podcast, but secondly, for just um ah allowing for the kind of vulnerable messiness of what this has this has felt like for me. My heart feels like it's pulsing at a different vibration. And I feel sometimes being in your presence allows me one to be more myself but secondly I feel like a nervous excited energy that your words change me in some way so I feel really grateful for this conversation and I think what I'm really taking from this is that feeling of co-regulation and that like how that's really what this is all
01:13:58
Speaker
about like it is about co-regulating each other and and finding a space where we can we can do that and be and create space for each other to grow through helping each other co-regulate so thank you as always for being you and for the brilliant teachings and words that you share because yeah you're changing you're changing people one one person one room at a time so thank you Thank you.
01:14:23
Speaker
I really appreciate this dialogue. And one of the things I noticed in taking with it is
01:14:34
Speaker
the deep, I keep re-recognizing that also the connection is already here. And that when I pay attention to this, maybe it seems really subtle at first, but the, just the already connection and trust
01:14:53
Speaker
That gives more than anything to the people who will watch or listen to the show that it's the energy that people are tuning in for. we can get concepts from chat GPT, plenty of concepts, but it does not yet know how to deliver presence and connection.
01:15:15
Speaker
And that's something that seems uniquely human.
01:15:20
Speaker
to be able to really, really connect and connect without expecting that it's supposed to look some sort of a way.
01:15:34
Speaker
And that connection can really be here even when somebody's feeling fragmented or lost. We can still experience connection and rest in it.
01:15:48
Speaker
And maybe that's really what we get to learn as we teach more and more and more and more. You know, they say that 80% the research 80% of the healing that happens in therapeutic relationships is because of the relationship, not because of the technique.
01:16:04
Speaker
So if if caring for the relational environment is first and foremost in any type of relationship, then it seems like nature takes over and knows what to do with the rest.
01:16:19
Speaker
And knowing when to move on. Yes, and that. They say motherhood clarifies what matters. It's easy to go, nope, not you. that Or not now.
01:16:37
Speaker
Well, again, thank you so much. We're going to, everybody, we're going to go into some stillness together like we did at the front of the show. If you listened to the intro where you took some deep breaths and Freshly like you're opening fists with your mind, softening the soles of the feet and the palms of the hands, maybe also the corners of the eyes and region of the ears and tongue, and pelvic floor.
01:16:57
Speaker
And we'll just be together in the stillness and just see what you notice. There's no right thing to notice. Maybe you'll notice a busy mind. Maybe you'll notice a fullness in your heart. Who knows?
01:17:10
Speaker
And then we'll see you in the next episode of The Choice to Grow. So we'll enter in the silence now.
01:17:30
Speaker
Loving the episode? Click to follow, like, and share it as widely as possible. Want to go deeper with the choice to grow? Explore the show notes.
01:17:41
Speaker
You'll find links there for going deeper with our guests, as well as how to work with me in the work of waking up, growing up, cleaning up, and showing up. Thanks for listening.
01:17:53
Speaker
Can't wait to join you in the next episode.