The Yoga Heart Mind Podcast
The Yoga Heart Mind Podcast
#175 After the Peak
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
A shorter contemplation today on something I’ve been feeling into deeply since returning from retreat: integration.
Retreats, ceremonies, workshops and other peak experiences can be incredibly powerful. We step outside the usual machinery of life. There’s space to practise, breathe, sit around fires, spend time in nature, have meaningful conversations and remember something that can be very easy to forget.
And then we come home.
Back to work. Traffic. Dishes. Family. Phones. Responsibilities. The same relationships, habits and triggers patiently waiting for our return.
This is where the practice gets interesting.
Can some of that spaciousness survive a Tuesday afternoon in traffic?
Can the kindness and harmony we experience within a beautiful group find its way into a difficult conversation?
Can Yoga become less about chasing the next peak experience and more about how we inhabit ordinary life?
That’s what I’m exploring in this short episode.
If you’d like to dig a little deeper, come join us over on Yoga Heart Mind Substack, where I’ve shared the longer version of this contemplation along with a meditation on integration:
And if you’d like to dig deeper still, join me on Sunday 23 August at Sivananda Ashram in Beaconsfield for The Yoga of Ordinary Life — a three-hour long-form session exploring breath, body, attention, meditation and the quieter teachings and practices that help us bring Yoga home.
Not another experience to collect.
A chance to explore what happens when the experience begins to become part of how we actually live.
As always, I’m grateful you’re here and supporting the work that keeps all of this flowing. Below are some of the conscious brands I genuinely use and love — each of them adds something beautiful to my daily rhythm.
Ceremonial Clothing
Use StuartWatkins for a discount on their beautiful ceremonial clothing and sacred wear.
Red Light Therapy
For the best red light technology:
Use STUARTWATKINS for a discount.
Ayurvedic Bathing Rituals
Take your baths to the next level with STEEP Ayurveda — pure, intentional and deeply restorative.
Conscious Clothing
The comfiest, healthiest clothes on the planet:
Use STUART181 for 18% off.
Barefoot Freedom
For grounding, strength and connection to the Earth:
Use WATKINS6162 for 15% off.
Sacred Adornment
For the finest mala beads handcrafted in Bali:
Use WATKINS10 for 10% off.
Thank you for listening, for supporting conscious creation, and for walking this path together.
With love,
Stuart
Blessings everyone. I am here on the beach. Can hear the seagulls, can probably hear the water and a gentle breeze. It's a beautiful morning. And thought I would get out in nature again for a podcast. So once again, I'll open it up for a little bit of the public podcast that you can listen to on all the main platforms, and then that'll segue into a practice contemplation meditation, which will be on the Substack platform. So if you're wanting the longer format video, join us on Substack. To all of you that have been on there with us, thank you so much for your support. We do not take you and that platform for granted. So thank you, thank you, thank you. Keep tuning in on that. And also thank you to all of you that listen in on the podcast platforms. We're very well aware that there are seemingly countless podcasts available now. So for you to take your time and listen to me, listen to us. We're very grateful for that as well. But for sure, the Substack platform is where it is at for uncensored, full-length QA practice, and so forth. So that's a great platform for you to engage with us, ask questions, request certain things we will focus in on. It's a real community collaboration on there. Okay. But we'll start with the podcast and segue over to the substack practice very soon. But we've got a beautiful array of birds flying here. We've got a massive eagle that keeps hovering up. So for those of you watching, keep your eyes peeled for this epic big majestic eagle. What a blessing. So yeah, we just got back from our winter retreat. It was so powerful, and it's taken me a couple of days to bring everything together and assimilate, ground back down, recalibrate, and get back into day-to-day rhythm, the yoga of ordinary life, I love to call it, which I will talk more about a little later because in one more week I'll be offering a long format session themed the yoga of ordinary life. But a bit of reflecting on our retreat. It was our biggest one yet. Lots of people, beautiful people. I always love who gets drawn to this retreat. It's always so inspiring, so refreshing, and so authentic. One thing I love about these retreats is there's no pretentious spiritual materialism. You can come however, as you are. And what I love about it is the ordinariness of it. People just in their gym jams, in their comfy fleece, and winter gear, and on their sheepskins, and just something about the cold and something about the basic accommodation brings out this cute raw innocence in everyone. It's kind of like we're all on school camp again. It could be that it's at Nanga, which is an iconic place for school camp, but you know, it's also an iconic place for weddings and a whole bunch of adult parties and so forth. And that's where we've done each winter retreat. And we love it. It's intentionally done there for its kind of ashram style simplicity. Yeah. You gotta rug up, you gotta keep warm, you gotta look after yourself, huddle around the fire. But it seems to bring out the best in everyone. There tends to be a rhythm of moments of sunshine like this, but then moments of rain and discomfort that gets everyone a little more emotional, you know, feel and the feels, which you've all got to do. We gotta feel the feels. And most of us go on a bit of a journey from the highs to the lows, and then even just being unplugged, there's no 5G there. I most people have no phone connection. So having the phones away for a few consecutive days is medicine. We need that. We need that. If we are collectively going to stay sane and healthy and kind to one another, we gotta put the phone down for a good amount of time regularly. So if nothing else, just that is massive for people. It's massive for me. If you haven't done that in a while, I highly encourage it. And we've all got valid excuses. Work. We need our phone for our work, we need our phone for our kids, for our yes, all true. But pre mobile phone days, we did fine without it, didn't we? So we did fine without it. It's been incredible, quite overwhelming, actually, hearing from people's feedback. It was challenging for some people, yes. But the amount of feedback that was life-changing, a life-changing few days. I just keep hearing that, and that is incredible. Keep hearing beautiful feedback of like the highlight for people being just witnessing acts of kindness, just this reciprocal flow of people being kind to one another and helping out. Helping out, cleaning up, putting things away, acts of kindness that maybe they won't even get recognition for, didn't even get seen, stuff like that. Yeah. Not needing to broadcast that act of kindness on Instagram. Right? Nudge nudge, wink, wink. In this flow of reciprocity, of kindness, of collaboration. Oh, it was definitely a highlight for me. The practices, beautiful. The fire ceremonies, beautiful. The breath work and jumping in that cold river, big highlight. But I gotta say, the biggest highlight was seeing the beauty of humanity. From young to old, couples, singles, all kinds of different stages of life and different priorities. Oh people are good. This just magnified and amplified the inherent goodness in people. Truly. Quite overwhelming. Gets me emotional, gets to the gets the the tingles and the feels, just reflecting on the beauty of people. And we can easily forget that in the news cycle, yeah. And the algorithms that maybe get reinforced. Being inundated with all the terror and wars. Of course, we want to be informed, yes, but we gotta watch the problem-solving mind that will often get stuck in the negativity. So it's not an invitation to spiritually bypass, but an invitation to come back to joy again and again. And I saw that over the retreat. A lot of people were dealing with grief and sorrow. And we as a group worked on tantric ways to work with grief, work with sorrow. And when we feel the feels, and don't just ignore it, don't just bypass it, don't just pretend everything is okay, and don't just cloak it in love and light, and actually feel the feels. It always reveals bliss. Eventually, sometimes we gotta go on a journey, and sometimes that's a dark night of the soul journey, can be a very dark, gritty journey, if need be. But eventually, what is revealed is the core truth of Satchit Ananda, consciousness bliss. We are love, we are bliss. That's the ultimate truth. Which, yes, in our commonly part of the human experience, our day-to-day moment-to-moment experience, most of us have filters on. Think of them like camera filters, yeah. And for many of us, we've got multiple filters on, which is shading our perception of what is, and then add on top of that the phone, da da da da da da da da da da da da da da stimulants, etc. Depressants. You know the story. Filter after filter after filter, and we're not even seeing reality as it is. So moments like this in nature on retreat, even this moment, practicing with me, can be a moment of polishing our lenses of perception. Taking off those filters, coming back to clear perception, coming back to our natural state. We can do this. We can do this by getting out in nature like this, the purifying benefits of sun. So even the sun, we have turned into a negative because we had too much of a good thing. Because yes, too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. So even the sun, it's purifying, energizing, giving us literally vitamin D and lighting up our mitochondria. It's the health switch. So even the sun, we have collectively turned into a negative and we fear it. Bait out in the sun. By all means, get it get as much skin exposed to the sun. Not at 1 p.m. in peak summer if you've never had sun exposure before. No, no, no. This is right now, this is 9 a.m. Still pretty low-lying sun. This is medicine. Oh my goodness. So if you're with me right now, maybe walk outside, join me outside, get that photonic energy, get that nourishment. We need it. We need it. We're blocking ourselves off collectively. We are blocking ourselves off to this queen, king, nourishments. This is number one. Feel the feels, feel the feels, each breath out. Let go, let go. Empty the minds. Let go. Off the thinking mind. And let yourself just be. Each breath in, recharge, steer your direction in an enthusiastic direction. A faithful, hopeful direction, not blind optimism, true wisdom and clarity. Each breath in, we open the heart, we get upright. Each breath out, we clear the noise. So for those of you that missed out on the retreat, and I'm now hearing from a lot of people, wow, that looked amazing. Wish I went. Yeah, just come next time. Let's make it even bigger. We can handle a few more people. Not many more people, so get in there quick as soon as we open it up. Sign up, join us. It's the beauty is spreading. The beauty is spreading. This is this is life-changing stuff. It really is, and I'm so grateful. I'm so blown away. Keep your ears and eyes tuned, playing with the idea of another India retreat next year. We cancelled our Sri Lanka retreat for September this year, and that felt that felt right. Too much stress in the world right now, and too many financial uncertainties. So people kept pulling out of that, and we had to make the call. So we soaked up the winter retreat. Stay tuned for India next year. It's gonna be big, it's gonna be powerful. Don't know the details yet. I'm just playing with the idea of it for now. And next weekend, next Saturday, so this coming Saturday, I've got I've got a class at Centerspace. Please come. It'll be a nice, yeah, quietening, soothing, softening class. And then the following Saturday, August 23rd, I've got a long format session at the Beaconsfield Shivananda Ashram themed, the yoga of ordinary life. And I want to talk a little bit about that right now. I have been talking a lot about that, and I'm gonna continue. The man who inspired this theme, Robert Thurman, quite recently passed away. So it's a bit of a bit of a bit of a shout out and tribute to him. Please check out his work. He yeah, the late Bob Thurman, Robert Thurman, such such a great teacher, such a great man, such a wealth of knowledge, yet so humble, so legit. And he talked a lot about the yoga of ordinary life, which is Tantra 101. Commonly the Western, well not even the Western, actually, the world collective perception of Tantra is one that is exotic, romantic, glamorous, even glamorous, and a constant magic of fulfilling our desires, which is beautiful. I love that perspective of Tantra, it's just not the full picture. So, yes, it can be exotic and opulent and luxurious and beautiful and sexy, yes, for sure. Welcome that. Welcome a luxurious, sexy, exotic, abundant life. Welcome that. You can have whatever you want, for sure. But watch your tendency to push away the negative, push away the ordinary. Very common when we've had a taste of the extraordinary, the abundant, the sexy, the beautiful, we can then become overly precious and push away the beautiful ordinary moments of life. Like the laundry. So we, you know, we've got constant cleaners and people doing our laundry. That's fine. That is fine. But there's real magic in still, even if you've got more than enough money and you're abundant and you're rolling in, and you can have your faculty of staff doing all your work for you, all your dirty laundry. There is value in still getting our hands dirty. Clean your room. Do your laundry and do the dishes. And by bringing mindfulness and tantric awareness to it, those moments can actually be beautiful, can actually be yoga. So we are gonna dig deep into that. We're gonna dig deep into the formal practice on the mat, on the cushion, right? With Kriya work, with sound work, contemplative work, meditation, but we're also gonna apply that into how we can bring more of that beauty, that equanimity, clarity, and dharma into ordinary, everyday moments. And interestingly, paradoxically, it makes those ordinary moments extraordinary. Extraordinary. So soon we're gonna dive into a practice. Any other practical things they want to bring up before we segue it into a practice? I don't think so. I don't think so. Uh back into the rhythm of doing daily one-on-ones until the September school holidays, then we'll be heading up north with the family. So if you've been wanting to get one-on-ones happening, the term is gonna be over before we know it. Because time is a trip. Goes quick when you're having fun. Time flies when you're having fun. So reach out if you've been wanting to book in one-on-ones. Been loving also doing the occasional long format one-on-one where it's a full day with people, full day with people where we can do exactly this. We can install a kind of mini retreat, a day retreat, where you're not looking at your phone all day. You've committed to a whole day. We chat back and forth, chew into the Dharma. Any questions you've got, anything any curiosities, you can bring them forth, which will fuel where we take the practice. But it gives us time to dig into a practice and chat, go for walks together, sip tea together, have healthy food together, can live and breathe yoga with me for a whole day. It's not for everyone, but if you're feeling the call, commit, maybe you need a whole day, maybe an hour or 90 minutes or two hours, isn't gonna cut it right now. And you need a full day. That's something I'm offering now, and I'm loving it, loving it. So check that out. Alright, let's practice. So, for those of you that have just been listening on the podcast, if you're wanting to dig into a meditation and pranayam nada practice with me, hop on over, click the link below, join us over on Substack, and we'll continue now with the practice. So please take a seat.