How a Social Media Detox can reignite Connection - Meditation Leader Jacqui Lewis on tuning-out to tune-in...

Gorgeous listeners,

Welcome to a reflective and inspiring episode of Finding Your Way Home. Today’s guest is the brilliant Jacqui Lewis - meditation teacher, leader, and founder of The Broad Place. Jacqui’s work explores the delicate art of aligning mind, body, and spirit through her unique blend of ancient practices and modern neuroscience. Her grounded wisdom and effervescent joy offer a pathway to reconnect with our innate wisdom and clarity.

In this episode, Jacqui and I delve into the interplay of creation, maintenance, and destruction - a profound framework for understanding personal and collective evolution. Jacqui shares her courageous decision to shift her organisation away from social media, highlighting the challenges and creative opportunities that emerged as a result. This conversation is an invitation to explore how our patterns, beliefs, and environments influence the lives we create.

Here’s what you’ll find in this episode:

• How the framework of creation, maintenance, and destruction applies to all areas of life
• The courage required to let go of misaligned structures and embrace curiosity
• The interplay of neuroscience and spirituality in fostering transformation
• The importance of psychological safety and consent in personal growth
• How stepping away from social media opened Jacqui’s life to richer collaborations and creativity

This episode offers a heartfelt exploration of transformation and the freedom that comes with aligning with your truth. It’s a reminder to honor the processes of release, creation, and trust in your life’s unfolding.

For More on Jacqui

Visit Jacqui’s website at The Broad Place to learn about her programs, including leadership workshops, meditation teachings, and retreats. You can also check out her writing on Substack, where she shares deep insights on mindfulness, creativity, and aligned living.

Stay connected with the podcast
Follow me on Instagram @ab_embodiment or visit our website for updates, guest insights, and behind-the-scenes magic.

And to explore working together more deeply 

• Join our free newsletter for insights, events and self-healing resources. 
• Book a Clarity Call for the 2025 1:1 Container “Becoming”.
• Reserve your place in the 2025 Advanced Facilitator Training - Head to Heart.

Sending you love and an invitation to embrace curiosity, pleasure, and presence, wherever this finds you.

A x

Transcript

0:01

So I read the statistic, which the average adult spends six hours a day on their phone. And I was thinking like six hours a day, and then I went into my screen time and I clocked, you know, how much time, cause I do WhatsApp videos with students. So there is a lot of work time, but then there's also a lot of drivelling around that goes on. Now, six hours a day is the average, Horrifyingly, teenagers are spending more than adults, so that's also something to take into account. Um, but six hours a day, if you clock it over a calendar year, and you spend every single hour, minute, second of 24 hours, We would be on our phones nonstop for January, February, March. If you take into account sleeping. So we sleep eight hours a night. That's every waking second for January, February, March, and April that we're actually on our phones through to December. And I just thought, I don't want to be encouraging people to spend any more time on technology than they are. than there need to be. And the problem for me with social media is no one goes in and just checks one thing. They go in and they get caught. And one of my students said it really beautifully, she said, it's a platform that for me is too much and somehow also never enough. Welcome to Finding Your Way Home, the secrets to true alignment. I'm your host, Anthea Bell, movement teacher, mind body coach, and lifelong spiritual seeker. This is a podcast about the depth, weight, and profound healing power of connection between mind and body, spirit and soul, and from one human to another. Together with an incredible range of inspiring guests, we'll explore just what connection and alignment mean. How to get there in a world full of the temptation to conform, and how great challenge ultimately can lead to life changing transformation. Get ready for groundbreaking personal stories, conversational deep dives, and a toolkit of strategies to build not just your inner knowing, but your outer world. Let's dive in. Hello beautiful listeners and welcome to this week's podcast episode with the one, the only, Jackie Lewis. We are sitting down for a gorgeous connective conversation on coaching, on holding space, on the deep immersive practice of meditation, and We're going to touch a little bit, warning label team, on this question around technology and the impact that it has on our mind body vessels. Jackie has recently taken a very brave decision to lead her organisation, The Broad Place, into a less technologically heavy phase, less focus on social media. And, um, it's very fresh I'm going to ask her to take us through a touch of that. Before we do, Jackie, dear human, please give us a hello and let us know how you're landing into the space today. Well, we started the call and I felt very calm and regulated. Now I'm all excited. Um, I feel, oh, I just, the, the opportunity to, to talk and to share for me is always such a special one. So first of all, thank you for having me on and. Yeah, it's my nighttime in Australia and I've had a big day of teaching, which for me is always a way that I get really, really aligned, you know, so I'm feeling, I'm feeling really, I would say invigorated would be a good word. I wear quite different hats that all converge into one point. Um, the primary, one of the primary things I do is I teach people to meditate using a selection of different techniques, depending on that person's mind. The nervous system and also where they're at in this particular moment in their life. And a lot of people think meditation is just like sitting still and clearing the mind of thoughts, but it's like exercise. There's a lot of different ways in which we can tackle it. Um, so today, for example, I was teaching a student in London, um, a new mantra that they're going to be meditating with. Um, Actually, today's a really interesting one because I did, I sort of touched on all of my hats. I don't normally do it all in one day, but, um, I'm a writer and a published author. So I'm working on a new book. And also I was writing for, um, out what's new for me, a platform of Substack. And I did some mentoring with some students. So traditionally they're like an hour or 90 minutes sessions where we're pretty, pretty deep diving on the nervous system on psychology, neuroscience, but also taking spirituality and Eastern knowledge and wisdom and integrating that into day to day life. Um, I also, I run leadership programs predominantly for women. we're doing a beautiful program called the confident woman. And so we have women from all over the world plug into that, which is, Beautiful. We just deal with a particular theme, the tools, skills, and resources that they need to compliment that theme. And I also often work with businesses. Um, so helping their staff, but usually their leadership teams on how to. Be more aligned for me. Leadership is around self leadership first before you're leading outwards. Otherwise it can look a little bit too much like management as opposed to actual leadership. And I did some planning. I did, I was tweaking the schedule for our India retreat, which is in a month, which is always one of my favorite things. The curation of a container, like how to take people through a process and a transformation when you have them residentially, um, is a very different process. It's a, it's a different sequence and involves It's a backlog of experience on trying to, on how to alchemize that. And then also leaving enough spaciousness. So when people enter the room, uh, and into that space, how are they going to feel? So that's one of my getting that sequencing, right? I I'm such a big. It's such a creative process and I just love it so much. So that was also a bit of today. I love that because actually there's a, there's a dovetailing in everything that you're talking about, which is your ability to shepherd people through a quite immersive internal process, whether that's that they come into a retreat space and you're with them in person with that gorgeous sort of grounding polyvagal kind of feeling of body near body and movement practice and meditation and all of these things that I can't wait for. Um, but it's actually the same in my experience if you're mentoring a student and you're taking them through their evolution as a teacher, if you're mentoring A leader that is arriving at your door with, let's say, a good dose of that management strategy from the front of the brain. But they're more novice to deep, immersive, internal experiences. The quiet, the silence that bring forwards clarity, purpose, vision. You know, you're taking them on a journey as well. Um, and so it's interesting that your role is as a steward, a shepherd. I hadn't thought about it like that, but yeah, it is. And helping people to understand, for me, the underpinning of all the work is that we're not broken and we're not a problem to be fixed, a puzzle with lots of loose pieces, but getting them to actually really tap into that innate natural intelligence that we all have inside of us, what we might call gut or instinct or intuition. But for me, it's a melding of all three and enabling their, their mind that the thinking component to settle down into the system. And build that trust muscle that we, and our, and our, and our deepest part at our wisest part, we understand, we understand ourselves and we understand, um, not necessarily the world around us, but we can understand our place within it and where we may be of service and where we may need to also be of service to ourselves. And so there's this beautiful, it's, it's for me, it's where the cohesion starts to take place when there's not the separation of like, that's that, and that's that role. And that's that hat. But it's all converging into one thing and people really get to land inside of themselves. And so, yeah, whether it's a group program or the group works really interesting, actually, it's very different to just the one on one work, which I know, you know, because you have the mirror neurons firing where people can see other people going through their process and understanding themselves and it fires it up in them. So I really love the group work, which is funny because I never used to like to be a part of group work. I didn't. use to love being it. I loved one on one work, but then over the last decade, I've really seen the power of being with other people. And I think it works both ways. I love that you just referenced that it wasn't your norm before. Let's say it wasn't your comfort space to be in space with others. Because I think one of the things that people can end up being conditioned into is a discomfort with the other based on some of the experiences they've had of being interconnected in that way, you know, we're picking up on energetic resonance, we're picking up on a person's level of grounding on even a person's belief systems, we're picking up on those signals all the time, from a deeply embodied place, but also from a You know, social queuing perspective and the tendency to feel othered or to other other people within our culture is very common because we live in a much more individualistic way than other cultures would have previously or currently do. And so when you start to get this shift to, oh, I've had enough life experience and I regulated enough within myself. To enjoy, relish, being in space with others and potentially, as a practitioner, holding space for others with that elastic quality of inner leadership but also humility. I can feel that coming off you in waves. You're very self aware and self possessing, I would say, and you're deeply generous as a human being. I can feel that. Thank you. Um, I'm getting all self conscious. Um, but yeah, no, it's a, it's take, look, it's been like over 26 years of, of, of learning and understanding and integrating and then 11 years of teaching and sharing. Um, it wasn't my natural introduction into it. Um, but I think particularly the work on the semantics, learning to trust that it's a challenging thing if you're in the student role or if you're a teacher and you're with another teacher. Learning to trust your own experience and what safety looks and feels like. So the, like the, for me, the, the importance of the container, how it's structured, how it's created, what the intention is behind it. And then how everyone is shepherded or led through that process is such an intrinsic part of whether someone will actually be able to feel safe enough that transformation will take place. Um, reflecting on what you just said, I think earlier, Probably my, my reticence, or I would even, even use the word repulsion, to be honest, uh, around like being in a group and sharing or learning, um, was part of the fact that it just probably wasn't facilitated super well. And I think now we know so much more like the science is there. We understand. You know, the neuroscience and the physical body and what that's doing. And, you know, when the brainstem is activated and what the prefrontal cortex is doing and, um, the vagus nerve, there's much more knowledge now than there was even 15 years ago. So I think we're in such an interesting time in humanity where. There's this convergence of things that have been known for thousands and thousands of years in different lineages, meeting and intersecting with modern science and what we now have come to understand what the brain and body and mind are doing. It's just, it's such an exciting time. I just, it's a rough time for a lot of people at the moment being a human, but there's also it's ripe for opportunity and innovation and creativity and curiosity as well. I so agree with that, and I think the wonderful thing about a lot of this becoming scientifically online, that we really have a lot of the data that backs up globally some of the things that you're talking about, is that it means that when we start to talk about semantics or meditation or dropping into trance states, whatever modality we're referencing, It allows people that otherwise would have been blocked off from those forms to come in with us. Because otherwise what you would have been talking about previously, which is just as important, is the deep belly instinct that guides you to know, this is where I need to show up, this is the practice that I need to do, this is the lineage that I need to be a part of. And that's fine if you are someone that walks around the world not needing the scientific proof. I would argue that more and more, the more generations that we've worked our way through, the more scientific proofing, proving is the leaning. And so the fact that we have that now means that we can expand the reach of a lot of what people have been doing for, you know, centuries at a time. I would love it if you're willing, with your professorial hat on, to take us a little bit through some of the basic neuroscience. I'm not going to assume that the listeners have really any background in the neuroscience of what is happening when we drop below. the aspects of the brain that they are the most commonly using in day to day life. Can you give us a walkthrough? Yeah, I'd love to. So there's a lot of way, let me just think about the best way to distill this. Okay. I'm going to highlight the things that have really moved the needle for me that encouraged, I think, uh, what, what I call the mind body system, which I also want to note, we didn't choose. You know, we didn't choose our bodies. We didn't choose our conditioning. We didn't choose our personalities. Um, all the life experiences that have happened to us weren't necessarily a choice, particularly in the formative cognitive formative years of when we were little. And a lot of the way I think we move through the world is with a sense of like shame or guilt or frustration around like, why am I the way I am? So I always like to start with like, give yourself some space with the fact that we find ourselves here in this moment. With decades, usually of experience that led us to this point, not none of which we chose, you know, and so being able to then study ourselves from a place of curiosity of like, okay, it's almost an othering in particularly in Vedantic knowledge, they call it the witness, that which can observe. And it's a way in which we can go, okay, I'll just separate out. I'll zoom out and just identify, not just inside, but just there's that mind body system. What's it up to? And four fifths of our experience is actually in the body. It's only 20 percent that's cognitive in the mind. And so when we talk about, you know, we're feeling beings. And a lot of the time I feel as humans, we don't necessarily trust that experience. because the intellect is so highly revered, particularly in Western culture. Um, you don't often hear around a boardroom table, someone going, I can't explain it, but it's a culmination of my decades of experience. And this very felt sense that that's a no, and this is a yes. And I intuitively know that this will be the right path. And as we move through it, I'll be able to justify that. That's not what's heard. It's, I need to be right. I need to appear intelligent, um, and I need to really back that up. So, you know, and then we're, we're only using 20 percent of our human capacity. And so we've also got the, if you call it the, I call it the front straight stage, the prefrontal cortex, um, which only there's only like three or four actors that can fit on there at a time and they're rivaling and fighting for attention. We've got the brainstem, which is basically the part that you can think of it as like this huge intertwining. It's like vessels that move, um, all back through the head, through the skull, through the throat, through the neck, um, around the chest and the ribcage. And that's really, once that is activated, um, there, there can either be a lot of disconnect between the body and the mind, or a lot of connection, depending on what state we're in. Um, and then also it's not a neuroscience term, but it's something that we deal a lot with in spirituality, which is what we call the heart center. And so there's the emotional, physical body, the emotional body, and then there's this heart center. And it's hard to describe, but we know it when it's being touched. So I'll give an example. Um, on the weekend, I saw this Uh, little, little dog tied up and it was fretting for its owner. And this little old lady was walking by with her shopping trolley and she paused and she just so tenderly rubbed its little head and the dog just melted in. It was so soothed and comforted by her. Now I wasn't participating in this. But I felt so alive with the experience of this little tiny dog being tended to this openings deep heart experience that she was having, you know, rubbing the little, it's a little nose and, you know, holding its little mouth, little mouth and rubbing its little ears and just comforting it. And so that for me, it's like, you know, that your heart center is being activated and it doesn't. necessarily cognitively makes sense. Um, but it's, it's a felt experience. And so there's, there's a lot of science and it continues to come out about how much this heart center doesn't inform our whole human experience. But it's often in a little area that I think gets overlooked. And then also on a cognitive level, you know, the brain that fires together, wires together. So it doesn't actually take that many repetitions of an experience for our brain to go, well, that's the shortest circuit. So I'll just take that, even if it's not sustainable, even if it's not self serving. Even if it's not moving anywhere in the direction that we want to be facing. Um, the brain is so powerful in connecting the dots and the left hemisphere of the brain to me is really fascinating. I spent years as I was used to be, you know, working creative industries and the right hemisphere was what I was interested in. You know, the spatial lateral, um, more felt visual experience of the world, but I'm increasingly becoming fascinated. And obsessed with the mechanics of the left hemisphere, which is basically the part of the brain that connects the dots. And it's how I can be talking to you and I'm thirsty, have a quick sip of water. And I put the glass down without looking at it. Cause the left hemisphere is going, we know how to do that. We know how to pick up a glass. We know how to drink. And so there's an amazing automation that happens in the left hemisphere of the brain, but we've also got to keep in mind that it is. It's filling in the gaps. So in the same way that, you know, sometimes you read those things and it says like the first letter and the last letter and all the middle letters are jumbled, but we can read the copy, that's the left hemisphere going, I know enough here to figure this out based on past experience. And when we can really start to harness and understand that the left brain is doing a lot of positive maintenance. And it's also doing a lot of maintenance or creating a lot of patterns and behaviors based on old redundant information. Because the mind only knows from this second backwards. It doesn't, the left hemisphere doesn't. It can predict up to eight seconds in advance, but it really is using, okay, old based on all my old. Dirty, dusty, relevant, irrelevant, creative, curious experiences. I'm just going to plug in old data and create an experience based on that. And so that's why when people say, be present, be curious. The left hemisphere of the brain is literally fighting that at every second. So that's why sometimes I think self growth and transformation can feel challenging because we are, you know, there's neurological, uh, cognitive functioning that's happening. That's often fighting what the right brain wants to do, which is be like totally felt in the moment lateral connecting the dots. Whereas this is creating, it's kind of like a domino stack. And once the first dominoes fall and the rest click together, so that's where I'm really fascinated with the moment is how do we expand and open that, that left hemisphere more. I adore everything you're talking about, and I wonder if we could use a little example, one that's quite live, so the same as you, I teach a lot of teachers, and one of the things that I teach them is how to find true presence that, from the sounds of what you're describing, allows you to separate from the conditioning, separate a little bit from, let's say, the unpleasant side effects of a left brain orientation and actually be live enough and spacious enough in the moment to have a fluid, spontaneous, connective experience with their clients or with their class. And one of the things that we talk about significantly is the way that our belief systems are significant impactors on the way that we show up. in a studio space or the way that we show up in a coaching practice. I teach both people that work with the mind and people that work with the body. And in a really common example, the practitioner that has learnt a series of beliefs or thoughts that, um, they're not qualified enough or they're not good enough, or they have to teach in a very specific way in order for it to be correct. And therefore, in order for the client to have the outcome, getting them to believe that that is actually one of the biggest issues in how much ease and freedom and efficacy they find within their professional output. That's a jump for them, but it stacks completely with what you're describing. Pardon for my coughing. Um, so Can I talk to this a little bit more because I also, I teach teachers and the, the, this, the stack in which I like to take people through is the output that is usually something that they understand, right. Whereby they're ultimately it's that, you know, I want it to look like this, or it should look like that, or they should be having this experience, or I don't have enough experience. And there's a whole lot of like mind junk that kind of comes onto it. They're usually pretty familiar with that. That the parts inside of them that are having these narratives, they're all tracks that are like, you know, on the record player. But usually this, if we take it down, like what's below that, and I can get them into their heart, which is my intention is to be of service. And to help people. That's a beautiful thing. Right? So what we can often do is lose the, why am I here? Like what, what's the, what's the, my reason for being in this moment? And, and the intention needs to get really, really clear and clean. And then what's happening is it's usually starting to distort. From that place outwardly. And usually what happens is the ego structures are stepping in and they're starting to control. And I know, I mean, this was the first few years of my teaching. We're so filled with control, ego, uh, needing to be perceived in a particular way, so much spiritual bypass. Like it was, I was, I was like a. Oh my God, a pin up, um, goal for everything that could go wrong, you know, as a teacher and, and, and, you know, had a pretty, some pretty interesting experiences throughout that as well. But the idea of, um, the stickiness, the need to be right, the need to, you know, like, right, there's that beautiful intention. And then there's all this layer cake that comes in, which is, I want you to believe that this technique is the one or, or because I need you to justify that the one I've chosen to teach is the one. So it moves out of being service and validation, and it moves out of, um, being able to move through with curiosity and let's stay curious and open to what might this person be experiencing into. I need them to experience this. I need them to gain clarity. I want them to transform. I want them to move the needle. And, and when we get clear on that, why is that need there? And what me as a facilitator, a teacher, but also as a leader, um, when we're, when we're constantly trying to like pop it over the top and when we become really cognizant of what's, what's happening in that, what I call the distortion layer, it starts to get really interesting because, I mean, I was just, um, mentoring a teacher before about how, you know, how they charge. And I said, look, the value in what you do, isn't in what you give. And it's not even, it's, it's in what the person receives and you're not in charge of that. And that can feel terrifying, you know, that you don't get to curate clarity that they get or the insights that they get or the feeling that they have. But it's so important to, to reframe that in. It with a clean energy around. I can, there's only, it's a, I mean, everyone working with anybody, there's multiple things at play and of all the owners and the responsibilities on us, pushing all that burden onto the receiver to then receive something back, whatever that is for that person. Um, it's, it's becoming distorted along the way. It's moving too much into the ego structures and moving out of the heart. And to caveat that as well, it doesn't mean that the teacher, the facilitator, Can absolve themselves of no more responsibility either and just go with the bride. There's a fine line in there too, so. I think navigating that is, is challenging for anyone that's leading anyone. And I think almost that's the, that's the agreement that you make when you come into this profession. You might not know that you're making that agreement, but in order for it to be a purpose, a vocation, a meaning that lasts from when you started to however it then evolves toward the ends of your existence. For that sustainable pathway, um, you have to In my experience, you have to be willing to be curious also to what comes up in you. And I would say, and I know that this is probably the same for you, you know, supporting, guiding others is the most amazingly rich fostering learning bed for your own discovery. The same as having romantic partnership is the most amazing rich fostering learning bed. And it won't necessarily be easy. And I think it's to easy for practitioners to go into this quite solo. Um, and I, you know, one of the things that I think perhaps within a movement practitioner space or within, um, even a coaching space that is missed, and, and I would say this is to its detriment from models within psychotherapy, for example, is that in psychotherapy, you're working with supervisors all the time. And it's not that I necessarily think that the superiority or hierarchy quality of a supervisor is necessary. But to have people that are as experienced or more experienced than you in these realms to help to guide your progress if you're helping to guide others, that for me feels not just important, but a really beautiful gift to give yourself. For me, I'm in, I'm in mentorships all the time because For me to feel safe, for me to constantly be learning, for me to, um, drop into my body quite often, I need comparative moments where I'm not wearing a hat of responsibility or support or care. Oh, I couldn't agree more. I mean, the first question I ask if I'm taking on a mentor or a coach or a teacher for myself is who's your point of reference, because unless they're in there, you know, like the lady years of their life, like some of my mentors are. Um, but there's a, even when they're in that there's a real humility and an honoring of the things they learned from their teachers and mentors along the way. And these people are usually. Late seventies, you know, eighties, um, they've been with, they've been walking the path for 50, 60 years. Um, but aside from those people that are very limited in number, I'm always intrigued and interested. Um, who's your mentor, who's your teacher, who are you referencing? Because we need mirroring. It's how we, it's how we understand ourselves. And that's the beautiful thing about being mentored or coached, um, is having someone reflect back to you and reflect back to you from a really Clean space as well. And I think if anyone's listening and they are a student or they're being mentored or coached or something, though, they will have a felt sense of when there's suddenly they get, they can't quite put their finger on it, but they'll know it when they feel like they're getting it wrong, because there's an energy coming from the facilitator or teacher or therapist that it's like, I'm trying to push you into a direction you're not quite getting there, as opposed to I'm open to exploring what this might look like for you, and I will be direct when I need to be direct, but I'm also going to give you the space to figure this out on your own. Um, otherwise it's not, it would be like if you liken it to, I actually had an art teacher do this to me, when I was Doing an artwork and came over and grabbed my paintbrush and was like, let me tidy that up for you. And what I felt destroyed my artwork. Uh, I was in high school. I remember it so vividly, but also I just felt so undermined and betrayed by like, that's your idea of what this artwork needs to look like. And I think that's sort of the similar energy of like, you don't want to have someone grab your paintbrush and say, can't you see what I'm trying to paint when they're trying to learn how to paint. And this is such a tricky edge for people to learn, especially if they're in what we were describing earlier around the fear and the value association that they're placing on themselves as, as practitioners, is that that instinct to control from a place of fear can come up so quickly without you even knowing it. And especially in a movement modality, you know, often people are taught with, this is the correct way of doing it. And this is the correct way of doing it to avoid injury, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so the, the mythology of one right, one wrong, uh, continues. And you really just had me thinking, I harp on about how important ethic is to me, uh, a lot on this podcast and also with the people that I work with. And, um, I noticed actually, sometimes I give that such strength that I can do myself a disservice from the Perspective of personal brand or personal sort of accumulation of, of abundance when I was in real trouble about 10 years ago, I was offered so much for free. I was offered so much for free, um, from purely that ethos of, uh, giving so that the other may receive whatever they need from it. And. That carries into my work and uh, it's an, it's an evolutionary edge for me also to stand more into yeah, but also this is, we're cultivating something that's actually worthy of a degree of um, recognition and, and, and monetary representation and all of that jazz. Um, the thing you were also making me think about was the beauty of learning how to relate to others. and I suppose that might act as a segue to talking about your recent decision with, um, your organisation, which now is this beautiful, robust community, internationally, of, um, From what I can tell, leaders and enthusiasts and creatives and spiritual seekers. And you've recently made the decision to, uh, take, um, take yourselves off social media. Would you be happy to tell us a little bit more about where that came from? Also from a thematic perspective, where that felt important. Yeah, absolutely. So when I started the Brawl Place 11 years ago, Instagram was in its infancy. And, you know, having done photography and graphics and And styling and I like the visual platform of it. I just adored and also being able to put something out into the world and seeing how it was received. And it felt like a really collaborative, creative process when I first started that and also. You know, it was the advent of like a medium. Um, I've never really been on Facebook, so I didn't quite understand it. So, you know, Instagram was kind of like where I found my feet and, you know, we, we, the broad players did incredibly well, I think probably because we were early to the platform. Um, but, you know, we had to make a lot of ethical decisions along the way. And, um, One of my backgrounds was in, uh, marketing, public relations, and advertising, which is a complex space for me now. But, you know, we, and my husband as well. So, and I used to be a brand strategist and, you know, like we, I knew the lucrative nature that a platform like Instagram could be, but I was really, really clear. Like I'm not an influencer. So, you know, we never, We never advertised, we never took a dollar of advertising. We never, you know, were paid to say anything. Um, I had my doubts with that along the way. Like I got really tested as I watched some of my dear friends like, ride up through the ranks of Instagram and monetize the hell out of it. Right? I was like, wait, what? You are being paid$50,000 for a single post? Like, am I insane? You know? Um, but my husband, who's also, he was the co-founder of the Broad Place has been. He has no ego either. So he's been a really solid force and like, let's continue doing exactly the way we do it. And it's, it was, it was always a lot of work. I was the one that wrote, photographed, interviewed, did all the content. Um, and then the last, I would say four years, I started to have a challenge with the platform, basically understanding like really, Being in denial for many years, but watching it, it shift and move and realizing that this blood, sweat and tears that I was putting into this platform to monetize for other people. So for meta specifically, I said, I don't really know if like, this is where I want to be contributing. We got hacked twice. Um, the, I was very fortunate that we had, um, Instagram. So they were able to reinstate our account, but you know, for anyone, And then I became this. Like go to like she got her account back contact her because everyone like in the big hacking where everyone was getting hacked like four and three and two years ago So then there was just like, you know, this huge I started to really realize the weight of we don't own this thing We don't own the readers. We don't own the subscribers. We don't like you know, where there's no technical safety in this space. Um, and then also something started to happen in regards to like the pop psychology movement, where I started to see not distilled, but very watered down messaging be pushed out on massive platforms to people, which was designed. It, I'm imagining the intention was to empower people, but was actually creating what I saw as. quite arrogant ways of showing up, you know, like people setting boundaries. It's just like, we just cut somebody off. And that's not my concept of a boundary whatsoever. Um, and this idea of you just put someone's hand and, you know, you put your hand in someone's face and you say no. And kind of this role playing and, um, like acting around how, you know, short clips and videos, because it came with a very video heavy, um, sort of like dressing up of, of therapy and, um, also a big push. I started to see as well in meditation in that space, which was. If we really peel it back, you know, people saying like, this is the Maserati of meditation and, um, you know, claiming that their technique was the best technique, the premium, the creme de la creme. And, you know, embarrassingly, I, I did that in my early days of teaching. And the irony is why would somebody say that? Cause that's the one that they're selling in teaching. Um, and also a lot of, I got really frustrated with, um, the amount of virtue signaling that I was seeing, uh, a competition around this that was undermining what I felt should be. A heart centered experience and so there's been like years of it like niggling at me, I've paused, I've come back, I've paused, I've come back. Each time I paused I got punished. Um, by the algorithms. And then I was on a 10 day silent retreat and it just in July, and it became so evident to me that the way in which I teach was no longer fitting with this platform because I have my methodology. It's not short and quick. And. It's, you know, the whole, like, if you give someone to fish, if you give someone a fish, they'll be able to feed them for a day. If you teach them how to fish, they'll be able to feed themselves for a lifetime. And they teach them how to fish. And then also teach your community, how to fish, teach them. What you've learned is my methodology. And suddenly Instagram felt like I was just like sprinkling fish food out. Into not even into the water. It was just like, it was getting caught in the wind and I wasn't even able to understand where that was going, how that was being received. Was it even making any cut through? So when we made the decision to, you know, and for me energetically, it's always a hard one because you, you do have, and we do have a lot of support with a lot, like a big following of people that were really curious and creative and, you know, beautiful. You know, we, we didn't. I didn't have a bad experience with our community on Instagram whatsoever. Um, so pausing it, there was, I was nervous, you know, about how that be received. I also don't know if it'll work longterm. Um, but you know, every year we kind of do an audit of where we are at and how we're connecting with people less and less. It was on Instagram and my assistant, um, who's just absolutely divine. And three years ago, if I would go away, like if I was hosting a retreat and I was going off Instagram, I'd say to her, you know, can you just go in and answer the DMS if they come through, no, you don't need to post, but just, you know, keep, keep going. In touch. And she, uh, three years ago was like, I cannot be on this platform. I can't work in a business like this, like the broad place that stands for really encouraging higher grade mental health, emotional health, physical health, and be on a platform that's completely eroding that for me. And that was a big wake up call for me. And I said to her, okay, don't worry about it. Go off it. And I've watched her over three years, take up hiking, travel to Japan, travel, uh, you know, to the, around the Philippines and do all these amazing things and go on these incredible hikes and learn these new skills. And I've always been testing her, like, how did this come about? She said, cause I'm not on, I'm not on social media. I have so much more free space. Energetically and emotionally and intellectually. I'm not being polluted with all of that. So, you know, this is not very close to me that I work with, you know, 40 hours a week. So I was really intrigued to see what the response would be. And what's opened up from that, which I always think if you take the risk, if you, if you get clear on the intention, you can make, you take the risk. The support of the universe just comes in behind you. And it's opened up so many things for me, um, personally and also professionally. And. It's been, it's been incredible. Um, on, on so many, I was trying to describe it to a friend on Sunday about the nuanced ways in which this very, what feels like felt like a big move, but also it's also quite small, you know, like forcing the social media platform shouldn't be that big a deal, but it did, does consume so much of us or the other thing that occurred to me was. So I read the statistic, which the average adult spends six hours a day on their phone. And I was thinking like six hours a day, and then I went into my screen time and I clocked, you know, how much time, cause I do WhatsApp videos with students. So there is a lot of work time, but then there's also a lot of drivelling around that goes on. Now, six hours a day is the average, so some adults are spending more time than that. Some adults are spending less. Horrifyingly, teenagers are spending more than adults, so that's also something to take into account. Um, but six hours a day, if you clock it over a calendar year, and you spend every single hour, minute, second of 24 hours, We would be on our phones nonstop for January, February, March. If you take into account sleeping. So we sleep eight hours a night. That's every waking second for January, February, March, and April that we're actually on our phones through to December. And I just thought, I don't want to be encouraging people to spend any more time on technology than they are. than there need to be. And the problem for me with social media is no one goes in and just checks one thing. They go in and they get caught. And one of my students said it really beautifully, she said, it's a platform that for me is too much and somehow also never enough. It's exactly, I'm so sorry I jumped in very overly enthusiastically there. I love it. It's exactly that for me, you know, one of the areas that I have become very fascinated by in the past 10 years is addictive cycles. Both from a physical perspective, from a mental perspective, and also from a sort of soul, spiritual perspective. What is it that drives that need to be full? And to be filled by something outside of ourselves. The word that comes up a lot for me, especially when I'm supporting people that are going through this, or that are family members of people going through this, because I work a lot with family members, is um, the thirstiness. That thirsty quality of, it's so much, I'm overly stimulated, and it never hits the sides, because it's never quite the thing that I need, it's never intense enough, it's never fast enough, it's never deep enough, it's never lasting long enough. And it's exactly that with social media. And obviously from a neurology perspective, when they look at the neurotransmitter relationship that we have with using our phones and using social media, particularly, and the way that those apps have been designed to capitalize. on those peaks and troughs. you're setting up a situation where people with somewhat unstable balance, are really in a place of somewhat passive victimhood to these things. And the same as you, I've, I've had I've had exactly the same debate and it was, you really caught me when you were talking about the pop psychology thing because one of my big challenges is that I work in nuance. Um, very spacious individual experience, but also the respect of the volume of different learnings and modalities that exist, and the delicacy and the layers with which you can apply those to stimulate someone's deeper healing. And so when I am then presented with a, uh, A system where, in order to reach the maximum number of people, if that's your ethic, if that's what you're aiming to do, you have to create the shortest clip with the biggest, uh, caption puller. I find myself just recoiling so much so that actually the other day, uh, there was a big thing going around about the let them theory. Um, and Mel Robbins has been really outspoken about it, and I adore Mel Robbins, it's nothing critical against her as a speaker. But when we say something like that, let them, and then all that happens is a series of small paragraphs underneath, you are in no way capturing. The delicacy with which you have to apply, essentially finding a form of loving detachment that still allows you to be safe over here, them to behave in a way that's authentic for them, and you to sense into what are my boundaries? How do I affect them? You know, so I ended up recording a whole podcast episode on it because, and even that is a fleck of sand in this vast topic. So I'm, I'm sharing that because I just so relate to the debate that you've had, even though I've only been on social media for a year. and I so commend. what you're doing, because it is enormously brave for an organization that's reached the level of respect and reach that you have. I would be fascinated, and I think probably the listeners are too, because it was a bit the carrot in what you were describing, what have been some of the things that have poured in for you personally or professionally since allowing that decision to come into being. It sounds like the decision sort of was already made, but being in quiet allowed it to float up loud enough that you couldn't ignore it anymore. Yeah, this is exciting for me because, so each year I set a theme and there's a quote by Anusagardha Maharaj, who was an Indian teacher. I'll start with this, sorry, it's going to be, go off piste for a second, but um, So last year, my theme was to understand and embody this quote, because I found it so activating when I first heard it. So one of my mentors shared this with me and he said, Nisargadatta Maharaj always said in my world, nothing ever goes wrong. And I was so rocked by this, you know, and, and Ram Dass was one of my teachers and he spoke so beautifully about in my human heart, I can experience the angst and the, and the anger and the rage and the, you know, bewilderment of what goes on in the world between humans and animals. in my universal heart, I can understand that. It's, it's evolution moving, it's consciousness moving through each human, through each mind body system in a uniquely expressed way. And all of it is relevant and all of it has to happen. And so I, I, this is probably four years ago that I heard this quote. And then a year after I said to my mentor, um, I said to him, I was like, Oh, you know, but you know how Nisargadatta said. In my world, everything goes right. And he goes, whoa, whoa. He did not say that. And I was like, wait, what? And he goes, he didn't say everything goes right. He said, in my world. Nothing ever goes wrong. And so I started to see the huge gap in between these, these two statements and, and the, the, the difference, the polarity between how do I move through the world in a way that I'm saying that nothing is ever going wrong versus how do I insist that everything's going right? And. So last year, my theme was to explore that. And I mean, I tattooed it on my mom. So I was like really serious about my life work around understanding this, this on a, on a big picture scale, on a, on a, on the level of consciousness. And I got my ass handed to me on the plate. Like the universe just went, Oh yeah, that's cute. Um, let's grow. So I had like a really challenging off the back of a really challenging, um, two years. I was like, okay, I'm done with my challenges. And then The universe had a cosmic eagle and literally kicked my ass. So this year I was nervous about what my theme word was going to be. I was like, Ooh. Um, so I chose the word, which I thought would be so much more gentle and fun. And then nothing was sticking. I was talking to people. There was like all these incredible opportunities that would come in, like on a fish hook, dangle, juicy. I could like taste it. And then we just suddenly disappeared, just get ripped off, disappear off the face of the earth. And it was so repetitive that I was like, there's something inside of me. There's gotta be something, like a block, uh, uh, some sort of, something jammed up. Something, a way that I'm holding myself. Or maybe I didn't really even believe in this word. You know, but there's something inside of me that's meaning that this thing that I thought would be beautiful and curious and creative is just not happening. And from the moment that I made the decision, and You know, my, a couple of my mentors, my, uh, a couple of my friends who are business coaches, my husband, I sort of floated this by and everyone was like, whoa, that is a hugely risky move. So, you know, the, the doubt, like the clarity of being in this pristine, you know, in this meditation retreat. the one for me was the ability each retreat for me, bring something different. But on this one, I could see with crystal clarity, the, the structures, almost like cities upon cities, like the structures in the way my mind worked, my ego structures, the whole thing. And I just suddenly everything became really clear. And then of course you reenter the world from that state and, you know, arguing with my daughter about what tires she needs on a car. And, um, you know, like negotiating all these different things. And, you know, I'd seen your dogs in continental and all of a sudden, like. The, the way of like, you know, just day to day life. I started to, and then being reflected back all this doubt from everybody else. So like, that's an insane composition. I had a wobble, right? And then I was really, I was like, what is this platform? It's not collaborative for me anymore. And that's what it used to be. And I'm trying to work to this theme word. I either really got it wrong at the beginning of the year, but I knew it was right. Or something's blocking it for me. And from the day I paused it, the floodgates opened. And the, the most interesting thing for me. So a lot of people will come to me with an idea and then they're floating up by me or they want to workshop it. Um, and sometimes that's in a, like a friendly space or it's in a professional space. But the, what's something ignited in me and the places that we would riff to together around. Um, and suddenly I'm doing a lot of work in the music industry in that space. Um, next year I'm going to be hosting this incredible, um, leadership program, uh, for women called house of courage with another, with a dear friend of mine. And we'd been faffing about saying we should work together for years ill. Some were both like aligned professional booking in the sessions, working it out, And it was this, it was the true essence for me of collaboration. It wasn't one person leading the other. It was like, what about this and the other person going, Oh my God, yeah. And then also if we took that there, and then what if we extrapolated it here and we would go back forth, back forth, back forth, separate, roo, like ferment, it was like a, I felt like a cauldron and, and it's just kept taking place. It's only been a couple of weeks, but it's been about three weeks, but it's just kept taking place. This concept of Um, this initial idea suddenly seems to have taken hold. Now, I don't know, maybe it's timing. Maybe it just took six months to get off the ground, but I truly, the link between instantaneousness of going, making that statement and saying, I'm pausing this platform for these reasons, and then it felt like the universal, it was like a tsunami of opportunity, projects, creativity, and just joy and excitement. But in a grounded way, because I, I tend to get like peak hyper arousal, um, but this was, this feels really embodied and grounded and like the sequence of it just feels so exquisite. And it's almost like I just get to watch it going like, wow, you know, this is, this is, this is so beautiful and curious. So I kind of, I have to link it back to that decision because it literally the floodgates opened after that. There's so much in what you're sharing and, um, the thing that really strikes me in, in sensing also into you as you're talking about it is this web of freedom that comes when you no longer pour energy into something that fundamentally is quite misaligned with the truth of who you are as you know yourself to be at this point in time. The word you use so often is so apt, courage. is it does take exactly that. A lot of the time you are going against a trend or you are going against what seems in a rather short sighted way to be an immediate financial return or a status return. And I suppose if I was really playful and I was thinking back to, well, what's her lineage been, you know, she's come into meditative practice, she's come into, into Vedic philosophy. then that, alignment piece and that moving away from the attraction of ego consciousness is critical, right? You know, I think for anyone listening, it might be something worth considering if you were to just pause just now as we're connected all together and just notice, are there things doing within my life or relationships that I'm in or patterns of behavior that I can sense? are familiar and comforting and, um, left brain habit structure. Where even I might be comparing myself to other people that I'm witnessing and therefore continuing to perpetuate something that is appropriate for them, but perhaps not systemically healthful for me, not generative in my world. I really related, um, when you were talking, Jackie, about it starts and then it falls again, In my life, when I've noticed that happening, it has been oriented often to not only a fundamental misalignment for me, but a deep grain of comparison with others. I'll do it how they did it to get what they got. Even if we're moving from a place of, um, wanting to reach other people, even if that's the motive, uh, you can still get trapped in the scarcity mindset that says that there's a template that you should be following. I will also be pushed on. It's pushed onto us. There's so many templates. Like if I, if I get one more weed email or like DM, it's like, you know, it's basically multi level marketing, you know, that whole like. Um, you know, if you just follow my, you know, seven simple steps and you know, success will be yours, but no one's like, but they're only dealing with monetary success. It's not what are all the other facets of success. can I just loop back to what we were talking about before? Cause it's this beautiful. Um, It's from the Vedas. It's a Vedantic concept that I found to be a blueprint that you can literally place over any aspect of your life. And the more you ponder it and the more honest and sincere we are with ourselves, the more revealing it becomes. And that just keeps extrapolating. So in essence, there's three governing forces at play across everything. There's creation. There's maintenance and there's destruction. Now, sometimes, um, it can be destruction slash removal, but sometimes, um, that sounds a little scary for people. They're like, Oh, you know, the destruction or something, but it really means like the, it needs to go on to its next evolutionary step or journey. So, I eat an apple. And, you know, that's creation, and then there'll be some maintenance. Now, in maintenance, maintenance is the easy, is the, not the easy, um, is, is twofold. So that it'll maintain, there's maintenance of that which is relevant to evolution, and there's maintenance of that which is not relevant. So I eat an apple, my body will expel and let go of what it doesn't need, it'll retain what it does, right? And then we'll move back into creation, the next thing I eat. And so there's a secular, a secular energy. Now, a relationship, we go into creation, right? It feels, it's exciting, it's new, it's novel. Um, and then we fall naturally into maintaining that which is really healthy and needed, and the maintenance of that which is not. Now, the degree to which we maintain that which isn't, isn't relevant. That we hang on in maintenance mode when it's not needed is the direct degree to which the destruction will take place. So nature's doing this at all times, you know, when there's a bushfire, we as humans are like, that was a terrible thing. Um, nature's not concerned because the growth and regeneration that comes afterwards, uh, is part of the cycle. So when we extrapolate out over, like, you know, we look at our little tiny planet and how long we've been here and all the cycles that have gone on, you can say like, that was a creation phase, maintenance phase, a destruction phase, creation, removal, and, you know, on and on and on. But as a lens to place over, for example, The model of Instagram or that friendship or that role or that piece of my identity. Um, what we can do is we can say, okay, what is creative? What is moving me into an expanded curious way of being in the world? We absolutely need maintenance. We can't just be in creation all the time. We absolutely need maintenance. But what am I maintaining that's not relevant? And how do I get ahead of, rather than, you know, consciousness and universal energy coming in and removing it for me, the destruction? My last marriage, we hung on for too long. The destruction as a result, we really hung on for too long. Um, we, with the best intentions, you know, we had a little baby. Um, and so, but the, the destruction was indirect correlation to that. We maintained that, which was not working for either of us for too long. And so the destruction was probably far greater than it needed to be. So hindsight's beautiful. It's nice to work with this in a, So it's nice to go back to something that's familiar and well trodden. But then after the destruction, you know, then I met my current husband, um, he'll kill me if I say that, like it's going to be another one, you know, um, my, my, my husband, um, but. I'll have a laugh about that later. Um, but there's, um, you know, I wouldn't, you know, the, the terrible thing didn't happen, then I wouldn't have been able to move into a next creation phase of having a much more deeper, connected, sustainable relationship because I learned all the lessons the first time round. So creation, maintenance, removal is really cool. If you go back in hindsight, but to get really familiar with it, but that's a way we can start to track our patterns and behaviors. As the, in that little, that under maintenance, I do a little plus sign a little minus sign. You can mind map out, but it's a really lovely way to get clear on, I'm actively engaged in this. This isn't happening to me. It's happening for me. It's happening through me. So the outside world coming in at me. I am creating. The universe around me through my, this mind body system. So if I can get really clear and get some insight on that, which I'm maintaining, which isn't relevant suddenly. And like, this has been a, I mean, I didn't use email for six months, months. Like I'm, I'm a big experimenter. I like to see what are the boundaries of what I can push here. Um, but it means that you can start to go, okay, well, I'll try it for time and see what creativity and creation comes through. After I've removed it. And then if it doesn't come through and doesn't flow, maybe we got it wrong. It's cool to make mistakes. Um, but when you'll notice that when it does blossom and bloom, you're like, Oh, okay. And it takes, it does take courage. It really does. It's easy to sit in the maintenance. Yeah, that's a comfy place. I am, I'm a Taurus as far as astrology is concerned, and I'm often told that one of the traits of Taurians is that we love to stick our feet deep into the mud and not move. And I find that the periods of my life that are the most generative are the periods of time when I travel. The periods I want to go away. And I can feel, even as we've been talking, I've been picturing, ah, Australia and fascinating and because so much of me is oriented in the same way as you toward collaboration and connection and discovery. I think the, the beautiful thing that you're also implying in what you're describing is with that practice, which I'm definitely going to have a little play with this week, Again, that not self blame is there. You know, you referenced that much earlier on that we need to learn how to sit apart from the inheritance of shame or blame that in their own ways act as a kind of form of maintenance and they prevent the disruption. You know, we create inertia through those emotional loops and a lot of them are so trained by this point that we're much more likely as a population to feel shame and guilt than we are to feel anger or lust and desire. You know, there's been an orientation towards those, um, I think somewhere in the coding, there's this idea that we do change if we shame ourselves enough. And of course, it just makes you retreat inwards more. So I feel like in what you're talking about, this beautiful curiosity that you're describing is a key ingredient. And it means that you can step forward with courage because if it doesn't all go perfectly, To plan, or if you don't get the data output that you are anticipating, you still don't need to blame yourself for that. You were following a grain of intuition that said, okay, well, I'm, it feels, it feels right for me to, to follow this. Like, for me, that the podcast feels, it feels right, and having a life that's very mobile, not UK, feels right. Right, and it goes against all of the generations that have lived before me, except that actually, if I say that to you, the first thing that pops into my mind, and this relates to Goa, which I'm going to ask you to tell us about in a second, um, my grandmother was, was, I think I told you, born and brought up in Delhi, and I come from military stock, so they would have been here, there, and everywhere. In fact, my mother grew up in Turkey, Singapore, Germany, England, So even as I say the statement that everyone here is entrenched, gosh, I notice my own polar memory, Ooh, that's a fun little learning edge. I know, isn't that the coolest thing when you get those? It's, it, well, what happens is We're, we're so conditioned from when we're little, we're told narratives and stories. Like one of the big ones for me, cause my dad was a very successful chef and you know, like one of Australia's best one, everything you could possibly win. And, um, what happened was we had this narrative cause my dad had so much guilt and shame about like, I wasn't there around when you were little and you know, we really carried this narrative, the whole family about my dad working 110 hours a week and he was never around and he missed all of our birthdays and all this kind of stuff. And that was such a, like, I, I felt that, like, I knew it in my cellular structure. And when I was pregnant, when I was in my twenties, um, which for me was way too young, but that's how it went. And, but I went for some reason I became upset, you know, I was having a baby. So I wanted to see what I was like as a baby and going through the photo albums. And I'm like, there's my dad at my first birthday, second birthday, third birthday, fourth birthday, fifth birthday. Like there I am in my party hats. And with my, you know, Barbie cake, my, you know, truck cake. And, and dad was there for all of it. There's all the photos of us on family holidays. And it's just a stream of like visual memory of, but it was so confronting cause I felt like the photo albums were not real and I ended up sitting down with my mom and dad, my mom first. And I was like, what, what is this? She, she was even stunned. She was like, hang on a minute. I kind of remember you having that birthday and your dad was there. And we realized that we created this whole narrative that we all believe. Like if you'd asked me like 10 million a year wrong or right, I would have absolutely stuck to this narrative. And it taught me so much about belief systems and how that legacy gets handed down and how much we believe it. And. Embody it, I think is the most important thing. And it was such a discombobulating experience and so emotional for my dad to come to terms with the fact that he'd been carrying a narrative. That wasn't true at whatsoever, but the whole family had carried this on and you know, he was so, you know, like, you know, my parents were young when they had me, I was young when I had my daughter. So, you know, they were in their 40s when I had my baby, when I had my baby, but they were like, we're going to be so present. We're never going to make the same mistakes again. I'm like, what mistakes? You're talking about? And it reframed. Everything for us, but it took years to unpack that as a family, to understand what that legacy, what that narrative had done to all of us. And, you know, it wasn't anyone's singular responsibility. It was everyone collaborating together to keep reinforcing, reinforcing. And so when we realized, I mean, I know it's so confronting when we're like, hang on a second, that, that, what happened? And this is for me where, you know, the left brain is so fascinating because it just takes tiny little breadcrumbs and builds a loaf. And builds a baguette and builds, you know, it's just like, that's cool. We'll just take these tiny little tiny nuggets of information. And we're going to create a whole thing out of it. That's not even necessarily true. And it's a wild thing to unpack that stuff. Sometimes it's relevant. Sometimes it's not, but when the insight naturally comes, I always are so juicy, there's a, there's a mantra that we use in one of the techniques that I teach, and, Once you get a certain level of experience in this practice, you can start playing a little bit with your mental constructs. At the beginning, sometimes it's too challenging for the ego to go in with essentially everything that you've believed up until this point could not be true. It's too destabilizing for someone's emotional well being. So you just don't go there. So I apply these with real tenderness for the person involved. But I remember when I was being taught and it was when I was, I remember vividly, I was On a long resting in front of an LA beach, you know, in this city that is every contrast that you can think of. It's, it's grandeur and it's pomp and its circumstance and it's massive poverty people working four jobs and thinking that that's normal. So I was having this almost out of body experience the entire time that I was there anyway. You know, one minute I would meet a cab driver, who was literally riding the, the, the breadline, and the next minute I would be sitting in, uh, the bar in this beautiful hotel that I realized was right on the beachfront, I was lying on the, this chair and I had my headphones in and I was being taught this practice and the premise of the practice is no image and no story. And you use it right when you're in the thick of a moment of tension, right when you're activated. Okay, I'm gonna drop beneath. And I remember vividly the first time that I did it and the feeling of freedom and then the ripple effect of holy lord. I had been living under that for the longest time, and it's been encoded in my body. That was a very deep moment. And actually, I remember early in my experience, I used that statement when it felt very intuitive and it was too soon. And it was best learning for me of how delicate you have to be when you start to apply this stuff. I never want to assume a level of experience or readiness in the other person without really having consent checked, that it is exactly what they welcome in that moment. My neuroscience teacher, when I first started working with her, she would do the most irritating thing and you'd like, you know, share this experience or whatever. And then she would pause. And she would say, is it okay if I respond, or is it okay if I give feedback? And at first I was like, yes, of course it's okay. It's the only reason I'm here. You know, I didn't just spill my guts to just, you know, like be in an echo chamber of my own thoughts, feed me, you know? And, but she would do it every single time. And it just, and it riled me up so much because I was really clear on what I was there for. But she was like, I'm just constantly creating psychological safety. I need your buy in. I need you to pause and actually, and she said, and the process for me was to learn to not jump the gun because I'm like, yes, before no, and, and realize that actually sometimes, no, I needed some space. I've just come to something. I actually don't even know why I said it out loud. And now I need to pause. And circle back. So that was, I learned so much through that process, like after my initial irritation and then working out, ah, and now once I really understood the mechanics of it, and she always had this, you know, motto that she would say, which is slower is faster. And I was like, I kind of like faster is faster. which is ironic because you can't do that in meditation. There's no way to fast track your process through meditation. But when it came to other learnings, I was like, let's just go, let's just hit our straps, you know, push, push, push. And it leads me to, so there was a, um, a South Korean minute. What would I say? He was a Zen Buddhist teacher, but he taught meditation as well. Um, but he really, really, he took what we call beginner's mind and Buddhism to a whole new level he had a very Simplistic way of teaching. Also English was his second language. And when he first started teaching, he had to learn how to communicate clearly. His name is Song Sam And he said his confrontation of when he first went to teach in America it was have to know mind. I have to know that I have to be right. And he said, it's undermining anyone's capacity to learn and to be in the present moment, because he said at the time, this is the 1950s, um, going to America, he said, people would prefer to lie and not tell the truth, but to appear to be right. And like they know, and I found when I was, you know, so he said that the key to the teaching is to constantly move back into, I don't know mind. And that for me, when I was working with my teacher was really challenging because. I was like, no, I want to know, like, tell me the answers. And so I can move past this as opposed to how can I sit and don't know. And the uncomfortableness of don't know, have someone say, would you let me give feedback and actually say, I don't even know. I don't like, as opposed to just being like, yes, of course I do. Of course I want, that's why I'm here for. So I'm paying for, you know, it's an equitable exchange. Tell me the things. And I think that's a really beautiful, um, it's slower. Uh, But ultimately, in the long run, it is actually faster. It's slowing down the process and being in the don't know, it's wildly uncomfortable for me, but being in the don't know actually opens up all possibility and potential. I really relate to that. And I think that beginners mind thing is such a beautiful concept to live with because, I mean A, A lot of the people that I know or I work with have been brought up to believe that there is safety in the knowing and there is real lack of safety in the not knowing. And it's interesting for me because I spend time with a lot of knowers and a lot of people that are very successful in their careers through the knowing, through giving people data, through giving people really wonderful data that's really useful to know. And The learning, always, if they're people of real, um, curiosity, is how is it to begin to move into a space of not knowing. Um, what I love is that in talking to you, and hopefully listeners, you'll get a sense of this about Jackie, that in the not knowing, because she has practiced being in that space and allowing things to emerge, there's huge stability. This real presence and grounding and sturdiness in you as a being, one which a student would very easily drop into, you know, it's, it's very clear. And I can tell that that's by virtue of your, your courage to move into these spaces because like we were describing, you know, having that vitality and that enthusiasm and, and this just this effervescent joy and creative spark that comes off you, you know, it is a practice to get quiet. so much. I wonder if we could use this as perhaps a gateway to talking a touch about your retreats So the funny thing for me around the retreats was, so I think I've held. I held about 30 or 32, um, which is a lot. And I attend a lot as well. Um, and then I, two years ago through in the towel, I was like, you know what? I'm, I'm, I can't host retreats anymore. The irony is the last one I did in India was so incredible that I was like, Oh, again, I'm making this commitment and now I'm being super tested. But I paused for a solid year. And. Which, you know, when you hold between three and six a year is, you know, a lot, um, to drop that body of work, but I just haven't found another mechanism to really, really ground people in what they understand about themselves in a way that allows them to then unpack it, you know, In a transformative way. So there's something so deliciously discombobulating about taking someone out of their environment, away from their family, away from their phone, um, the, the support structures, the mechanisms that they, that they, the belief systems, everything that props them up. And taking them into a really safe space where they're then curated through a process and a sequence that integrates the body that integrates the mind that, you know, we start slowly, we move, you know, a little bit deeper as we move through. there's group work and there's also one on one work in a way that then they get to tune in and in an environment where there's no right or wrong. So there's a lot of things that we incorporate where every day everyone has to. They check in when they wake up. What do like the one in India, there's yoga asana, there's yoga pranayama, there's yoga nidra. We do a check in and a workshop, um, and two meditations a day. And that's the only thing everyone's expected to turn up to. Um, the meals are there, most amazing food. Um, but there's, and then there's the art shala, but really it's a, disconcerting for people when they're like, wait, I get to do whatever I want. There's enough structure that there's enough scaffolding for them, that they will move through this with, with grace. But there's also this, you know, women going, I don't have to cook for anybody. I don't have to prepare any meals. I don't have to get anyone to school. I don't have to answer any emails. I don't know what I want and coming to that place and then moving through it in a supportive way where they start to be able to tune in. So we work with a lot of different tools and skills so people get to understand their experience and, and also the blocks too. That's so odd how I just have no concept of what I even want right now. I don't know whether I want to move my body. I don't know whether I want to go for a jog on the beach. I don't want to know whether I want to swim in the pool. I don't know whether I want to make pottery. I don't know whether I want to just journal. I, you know, like, and, or just do nothing. So we have this structure where there's pockets of silence, um, where people can volunteer. They wear a little tiny, like a little sticker in silence, um, where they explore. What is it like to sit by myself to have lunch? What is it like to sit with other people? Where am I naturally introverted? Where am I naturally extroverted? Um, you know, for, you know, the, the, it's so interesting getting like women and men in the same space where it's so, the cohesion that starts to happen over the nine days becomes so evident and. The, the integration of all that's learned needs to be done in a really delicate way with a lot of support afterwards as well. But I just haven't, you know, I do a lot of like four and six months and 12 month programs, but there's just something incredible about getting people in that their mind and body completely immersed, completely connected in a very different environment and in a place like India, which is the, you know, the motherland of all spirituality. And. The, the heart for me of, of India, you know, the further North you get, the more formal it is. So people will, you know, they saw that and the further South you get, it's always like, it feels almost Italian. People will like tap their chest. So instead of like, you know, putting their hands for me together and that Indian way and bowing, they're kind of like, eh, and they're just like, instead of being like this, it goes to one hand and then it kind of just goes to this and then they kind of just tap their chest or, but there's always, that's how everyone greets each other, which is like, I see you. There's something about the way, particularly in Ayurveda, the training that goes into it when it's being done with a lot of authenticity. It's quite wild. Like, you know, I had a pang the last retreat and I was really missing my daughter just suddenly. I felt sick and I walked in. I had, you know, you have the same practitioner each time and she touched my arm and she paused and she said, you're sad. And she said, Oh, I feel it in your heart. And she got so emotional. And she's like, we will work on that in the treatment. And, you know, at the end of the treatment, she said, can I ask why you were sad? And I was like, I, I was missing my daughter, you know? And nothing needed to be said, but I was like, gosh, you picked up on that quick, you know, it's like they're trained in a way that is so felt so intuitive. So being in that kind of environment, I think allows particularly our Western mind body. That's always on the defense to unpack and unwind in a way that we don't, we don't, you don't get to experience often. I think that's the beauty of India. It's absolutely the beauty of India, and it is also the beauty, as you say, about going deep enough into a practice that has heart resonance at its center, that you open up those faculties to notice. It's actually, interestingly, one of the things that people say the most often about the sort of work that I practice now. They don't understand how I can sense things that they haven't told me. And it's just because I've been practicing it for a long time, and because I had to do it with myself. As you were talking about the retreat, I mean, I am unbelievably touched to be being included, so thank you so much. And the feeling of being in all of that, you know, it's, it's such a privilege to be in a space that's so deeply human. And I would say that maybe as a summary point for this conversation, it's such a privilege to be in a space that is so deeply human. ahead of our next recording, we're going to do a special recording, everyone on leadership, because that is Jackie's particular expertise and passion point. Although as you've gathered, she has many. But for now, I just want to thank you so much for taking out so much time to speak with us and share your wisdom. And we're going to share all of the links to make sure that people can reach out to you. But would you be open to that? Yeah, definitely. We will speak soon and team listening, I will connect with you again for another beautiful speaker in mere days time.

Anthea: 1:18:51

Gorgeous listeners. Thank you. So. So. much. For your ears. I hope. You enjoy today's. today's. episode. To find. More about our. Featured guests. Have a look in the show. Notes.