171: Clarifying the Natural State: Direct Recognition & Embodied Living

In this episode I explore what it means to clarify the natural state — not as something to attain or construct, but as something already here, quietly present beneath the noise, the striving, and the constant movement of mind.

This is a conversation around direct recognition — the simple, often overlooked capacity to notice what is aware, rather than getting endlessly caught in what we are aware of.

We explore how easily the system gets pulled into patterns of seeking, fixing, improving… and how this, in itself, can obscure the very clarity we’re looking for.

There’s a gentle but honest look at the habits of mind that keep us looping — and how through awareness, breath, and embodied presence, something begins to soften.

Not through force.
Not through more effort.
But through seeing clearly.

This episode also touches on embodied living — what it means to bring this recognition into the body, into relationship, into daily life. Not as a concept, but as a felt, lived experience.

A return to simplicity.
A return to what’s real.

If you’ve been feeling caught in the “more, more, more” — more practice, more knowledge, more optimisation — this is an invitation to pause…

…and notice what’s already here.

If you’d like to listen to the full episode, come and join me over on Substack.

Continue the Journey

Substack (writings and videos):
https://yogaheartmind.substack.com

Upcoming immersive — May 2:
https://app.punchpass.com/org/6670/classes/19796254?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio

Upcoming retreats, including Sri Lanka 2026:
https://www.stuartwatkins.org/sri-lanka-retreat-2026

This Episode Is Supported By

These are brands I genuinely use and value in my own life:

Ajjaya — ceremonial clothing and sacred wear
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https://infraredi.com.au

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Aum Rudraksha — handcrafted mala beads from Bali
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Thank you for listening and for supporting the work.

Stuart

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Blessings everyone. Thank you so much for joining me and the crows. I'm here at one of my favorite spots to practice at in Cotesla in WA. And yep, it's not studio precision and noise reduction and all of that, but for me it's worth it. So I apologize for the ambient noises. I've got some workmen to my left doing some work. Got some cars driving by up there. But I think it's worth it. That's life. Having ambient noise is a part of life. So if you don't like that, you can switch off now and I will not be offended. But otherwise, pretend you're with me right here in this beautiful spot that I often come to come to to practice for myself. And I often bring students and clients here, and it's just exquisite. It's beautiful. So if you are watching this, Substack or YouTube, you can get a feel for the vibe. I've got plants around me. I'm sitting on grass. I've got, I'm in the shade, but I've got gentle sunlight coming through the tree. And I encourage that for you. If you're listening to this while you're driving, maybe wind down your windows and get a bit of that photonic energy coming through your car windows. If you are listening to this while working out, or something like that, I'm going to speak to that a little bit actually. I'm going to sound a little bit like a broken record to some of you, but these principles I'm going to talk about today, I think someone, well, I'm not the only one, actually. There's a bunch of us repeating this same thing again and again and again. Big shout out to Dr. Jack Cruz, Dr. Robert Becker, Justine Stenger, and these movers and shakers that are shining the light literally and metaphorically and figuratively shining the light on true health and wellness. And one thing I keep hearing from a lot of you, and I've been seeing this and hearing this since I was a personal trainer at Lord's Sports Club as a 18, 19, 20-year-old, seeing great intentions and great willpower of getting up early and going to the gym and getting healthy and fit. But being two steps ahead, two steps ahead of where the real gold is, so to speak, the real light. So just I'll paint a picture in your mind as to what is very, very common and where we often miss the mark. Okay. So it happens from waking up in the morning. Just imagine this, or maybe this is your current flow. Waking up in the morning to your phone alarm clock. The first blast of light is through from the phone, through your eyes, which is signaling to your mitochondria, to your brain, to your nervous system. It's signaling quote unquote junk light. Yeah. For me, that has become the equivalent, like just as shit as waking up and going straight to a bowl of cocoa pops. Junk, junk breakfast, junk breakfast. So the light coming from our phone is like junk light. The high flicker rate mixed with the blue light, even if you've got blue light blockers on and a blue light blocker on your screen, just the high flicker rate alone is very stressful on the body. So what I highly encourage, and I know I've been repeating this a lot lately, but I think it warrants some repeating. Keep your phone out of your bedroom. If you need it there, can you be disciplined and composed enough to not look at the screen as you go to sleep and as you wake up? But if you can, and we all can, keep the phone out of the bedroom and go back to an old school analog alarm clock. They're great. May every morning, even if it's a cloudy day, even if it gets to the winter months and it's still dark, when you get up at 6 a.m., 5 30 a.m. 5 a.m. May that first light be natural light. So even before the sun has come up, just that pre-sunrise glow, get that through your eyes. Okay? Get that through your eyes with your feet on the ground. Okay. Because what is very, very common, I'm hearing it all the time, getting to my 5:30 a.m. spin class or bike bar or crossfit or even a yoga class. Okay. But what's common is alarm clock off, first light, the phone. Then shoes on or crocs on or whatever, rubber of sold shoes on. Straight into the car. Straight to the class. Which seems innocent and it's fine, but if you're keen to dial everything in, you could do yourself some favors there. So go to your class, but first get some photonic energy through your body. That's the the signal, that's the light, that's the yes for an awesome day. Okay. Now, if we accumulate the opposite, it can actually be too stressful on the body. Okay, so again, waking up to the alarm clock off the phone, shitty blue light from the phone, high flicker rate from the phone, straight into the car, straight to a vigorous bikram yoga class or spin class or lesmiles or pumping it, it's good. But if we have not yet grounded, so naturally, when we've been in bed for however many hours, naturally there's this stagnation in the body. And yes, exercise will take care of that. But what takes care of it more thoroughly and deeply and comprehensively is uh tuning into the sun, tuning into light. Okay. Getting your feet on the earth within, apparently, within just a few seconds. But you know, give yourself a couple minutes at least. Maybe take your dog for a walk or just go for a little walk, maybe water the plants. Give yourself like at least a few minutes, feet on the ground. Bare feet on the ground, on the grass, on the dirt, doesn't matter. Maybe a little prayer giving thanks to the sun. Yeah. And this is one of the reasons I love Agni Hotra. Because it syncs up with the timing, the precise timing of sunrise and sunset. Then you've got the fire, you've got the photonic energy, the infrared light, and the photonic energy of the fire. You've got the concentrating of your mind, you've got the fire, then you've got the mantra and this symbiosis of grounding, circadian rhythm, fire, prayer, mantra. It's potent, it's so beautiful. Okay. So again, great intentions, great willpower, getting to that, getting to the gym, getting to the studio. But especially if you're indoors a lot, on computers a lot, on your phone a lot, etc. etc., you may be doing yourself some massive disfavors by missing out on that sunrise and sunset. And I've been seeing this again since I was an 18, 19, 20-year-old personal trainer in gym, seeing people get superficially healthy and fit, like getting shredded, getting ripped, getting toned, getting strong, but aging very quickly. Getting sick very easily, getting stressed out very easily. And what that's what's happening is our mitochondria again is starving of light. Okay. Our nervous system then is getting pulled tighter and tighter and tighter. We're highly strung, easily injured, easily triggered, feeling flat. But we've got all our metrics dialed in, I'm losing weight, and I'm getting my 10,000 steps, and that game, it's outdated, it's an old game, and we can do much better. So this is part of the whole thing of recalibrating, clarifying our natural state. Okay, we've got this beautiful light within. And I think there's another common trend I'm seeing a lot within the kind of new age spiritual scene, yoga included. A lot of people that have been doing it for a couple years, a few years, have burnt out the feeling like this is not working. And many people have gone back to classic religion, back to Christianity, back to Judaism, back to Islam, back to all kinds of classic traditional religions. And I get it, I get it. There's uh actual depth when it's done properly, when it's done spiritually, yeah, not dogmatically, but actually practiced. Yeah, there's light in it, there's beauty, there's community, there's connection, yeah, actual ritual. Yeah. But if we okay, so if we're starved of actual light, photonic energy from the sun, which again, many, many people are straight into the car, sunglasses straight on, straight to behind doors, behind glazed windows, literally cut off from sunlight, from sunrise to sunset. That is killing us quickly. It's killing us. If you combine that with also being cut off to spiritual light, okay. We feel pretty dead inside. We feel we we don't feel happy, we we feel depressed, we feel anxious, we feel disconnected. This is so common, it is spreading far and wide through the world, but not to be doom and gloom, also seeing people go deep, go deeper into true health and wellness, into true spirituality. Okay, so it's like a like a fork in the road. It's like a fork in the road we will meet again and again. Do we just keep doing what is new, what is exciting, what is most popular, yeah, and on to the next thing, onto what is most trendy and exciting. Yeah, that can be fun, that can be fun, and if you're enjoying that game, awesome, play that game as long as you like, but that can be like this metaphor of digging for water. Say you're digging for water, and you dig a little bit here, and you've been told all the water is right there, but you dig a little bit, get distracted, get bored. So we dig over there a little bit, get distracted, get bored, dig a little bit over there, and then a wise elder comes up and says, dude, just keep digging deeper, stay where you are, stay the course, play the long game, keep digging down, keep digging deeper. You will find it. It's right here, it is right here. Okay, this is where we start digging deep into the natural perfection, the way, the Tao. So I've got an upcoming offering on May 2nd where we are gonna be digging deeper into that actuality of our our natural perfection, our natural state. And we're gonna go about it through a few lenses from the Zhao Chen We with these very just exquisite direct pointings to your natural state, and it can be as simple as bringing your awareness to a big ha or ah AA or A H A. But again, so simple. Many of us haven't trained our awareness to feel what's actually going on with that ah. We we do one half-heartedly, and then we're on to the next thing. That didn't work, so let's do something else. No, keep doing it, yell it out, sing it out, scream it out, and then you can just feel into the ah, just do that right now. Ah, this breath. This is it, this moment. So, May 2nd, we're gonna be digging deep into that. I'm gonna have Matthew Hatch by my side laying down the same soundscape, and he's just so tuned in with this. It's gonna be it's gonna be perfect, it's gonna be beautiful. So, do come if you're keen on this work. We're gonna go about it through the Xiao Chan lens, through the Tantra lenses, and also from a cellular physiological circadian rhythm vantage point as well. Because again, we could be doing all of the great wisdom practices, but if our biology is thrown off, we're still going to be starved of light. So it's very holistic, and all these great traditions do look at it very holistically. Okay, this is why they've got the fire rituals, the walking meditation rituals, getting out in nature, getting feet on the earth, purifying the body, getting the body temple ready. Okay, we all know the body is the temple, okay? We all know that. We all we all hear it time and time again, but many of us aren't treating the body like a temple. We're feeding it the junk light from the phone too much, too much. We've got to draw the line somewhere and have healthy restraint with that. Then we're cutting ourselves off from the light, and I know I'm a broken record, but I'm gonna keep repeating it, okay? And then also the spiritual light. So we're gonna go about it through a multi-dimensional, multifaceted way. Okay. Now we're gonna go through a short practice in a moment. So for those of you just listening to the podcast, I'm gonna end it here. If you want to roll this conversation into the practice I'm about to do, go from this podcast into the next video, which will be on Substack. And yeah, just a short, small subscription fee to get the more premium, long format classes on there. And there are many, many hours of content from both me and Joe on there. So if you're you're digging these holistic, comprehensive practices, go and hop on there and join me. Much love, everyone!