Have you ever tried to slow down, only to feel more restless, more anxious—like there’s a ticking clock inside you saying, ‘keep going, keep moving, there’s no time to stop?’ Maybe you want to be meditating but when it comes to the time to sit down and close your eyes a little voice says, ‘you don’t have enough time, just keep going, or you can do that later’. Or maybe you get through an entire day and the thought to meditate doesn’t even come leaving you feeling exhausted and overwhelmed. This is a common pattern we can find ourselves in that’s emerged from a culture that values and emphasises doing over being and rewards us for our productivity rather than quality of life. Imagine if we grew up in a world where true success wasn’t about how much money we made that day or how many hours of work we did but rather the state of our nervous system.

As I looked down at an allergic reaction on my body I caught myself saying, “I’m too bloody sensitive to the world.” It’s an old story, one that I don’t actually believe anymore but it showed itself in that moment of tenderness. The word sensitive or sensitivity has a connotation of weakness but even Google agrees that’s not true. With a quick search of ‘sensitive synonyms’ a totally different perspective emerges - instead of meaning weakness, sensitivity is ‘subtle, thoughtful, empathetic, compassionate, intuitive, alive to, conscious of, and responsive to.’ This offers a whole different perspective on a trait that may sometimes feel burdensome. Maybe we could reclaim the word sensitive, know the true gift of it as we proudly say, “I’m sensitive.” Another word I like is perceptive, so choose whatever might feel best for you.

If you’ve learnt Vedic meditation you would very likely have heard the word transcendence as we have all been taught an ‘effortless transcending’ technique. Even though this is what we are doing twice daily it can feel like an ineffable experience and I’ve witnessed students doubting their meditation. We can get a little caught up in right and wrong and be concerned that we aren’t fully ‘getting it’.

The practice of freeing yourself from past and future thinking

One of the many amazing benefits of multi-day retreats are the daily wisdom sessions and check-ins. I witness people really start to open up, be vulnerable, and have what they are feeling and discovering about themselves heard. We were about halfway through our recent rounding retreat in India when a student shared a really powerful realisation they were having. It was one fairly simple sentence but it was the catalyst for a really powerful conversation and a rich discovery for us all.

How we construct our entire reality from our mind-body

I recently had a funny experience where a series of small things I would think or say would come to immediate fruition. In one instance I made the comment ‘people might just jump out of bushes’ (in a completely unrelated conversation to bushes) and within two seconds right in front of us someone leaped out from the bush we were looking at. Of course we erupted into laughter as it was very odd timing! The next day we were driving home on a country road and I thought ‘I’m going to drive slow there can be lots of kangaroos on the road here’, within the next minute, four kangaroos jumped across the road in front of my car! Though kangaroos are in the bush, never in my five years of living here have four jumped past my car in the space of one minute. The following day it happened again, but this time I made a comment to my partner about how easeful things had felt recently and we hadn’t had any conflict or disagreements come up. Alas, that evening we found ourselves experiencing a situation very differently and it took some time, patience, and gentle communication to really understand each other’s perspective.

Getting to know the roots from where the fruits of your practice originate

We have just wrapped up our Navarātrī Rounding and Yajña Retreat here in Rishikesh in the foothills of the Himalayas. 10 days, 48 rounds, 36 hours of yajña, and 18+ hours of knowledge over the auspicious 9 nights of Navarātrī. It was BIG! We laughed, cried, celebrated life, supported each other, and created space for deep letting go.