Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hi, I'm Tara Lee and welcome to Star Being, your cosmic journey to self discovery, higher consciousness and spiritual exploration. This podcast serves as a guiding light illuminating the path to wisdom, healing and conscious living. Let Star Being ignite your inner light as we transcend limitations and tap into the universal consciousness that unites and empowers all of us.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: Welcome to episode 19, Sacred Pause. Transform your life through Vedic meditation with Krista Sanderson.
This episode is really close to my heart because Krista is my personal Vedic meditation teacher. And the saying, the teacher appears when the student is ready really applies in this situation.
I, in corporate worked very closely with Krista's brother and even though I, I wasn't outwardly spiritual or, you know, connected in my corporate role, a lot of the time he would say to me, you need to speak to my sister. You are so similar.
And he said this to me a few times. And yeah, he gave me Chris's number and I just decided to randomly call her, which is very not like me. And yeah, from that initial conversation, we ended up speaking for over an hour and just that deep soul connection.
And yeah, so Krista is very dear to my heart.
I am so supportive of what she is doing and what she is putting out in the world. So I'm excited for you to listen to her wisdom. She has does some upcoming offerings in 2025, both locally and internationally, and I can't recommend it enough. I sort of mark out my year depending on Krista's retreats because she cultivates such transformational experiences, but also the people that the community that she attracts is just like nothing I've experienced before. So we also touch on rounding, which if you've been following me on my journey, that is something that has really transformed, has really opened my heart over the years. So I'm very excited for you to hear this episode and please let me know your takeaways and I will put in the show notes the upcoming dates for. For Krista's retreats. Enjoy.
[00:02:55] Speaker A: Welcome, Krista.
[00:02:57] Speaker C: So good to be here. So good to be here.
[00:03:00] Speaker A: Tara, I have so many questions for you. We have been wanting to get together for a while and divine timing, I feel this is you just coming back from India and I'd like to start.
[00:03:19] Speaker C: Off with.
[00:03:22] Speaker A: What has your journey been with Vedic meditation?
How did it find you and where is your practice at now?
[00:03:35] Speaker C: Well, okay, how long have we got?
Well, I suppose I'd start from about eight years ago and that's how I found this practice is I was in a really bad place. I Was doing fifo. So fly and fly out for a mining company working five, two, four, three. So five days on, five days on, two days off, four days on, three days off. Sounds great, but it's just a lot of movement.
I just experienced a quite traumatic relationship breakup and then my father was diagnosed with a brain tumor and I just wasn't coping with life at all. I wasn't doing the things that I really enjoyed.
Also finding that I wasn't at home and I was distracted and not doing all the things that I loved like being in nature, doing lots of sport, hanging out with friends, just wasn't doing any of those fun things at all. And it was starting to really impact my work life but also my relationships with friends and family.
And I became quite insular.
Just didn't want to see people because I knew I wasn't feeling that great. I started to drink more than I was used to and I could just feel myself spiraling in not a very good way.
And I tried lots of different things in my life, alternative aspects. I did yoga, I thought that was really spiritual for many years.
And I tried different types of meditation but nothing really stuck at all. I do, I could tendeva Parshana in my 20s and I left there after 10 days of not talking to anyone and I was like, okay, I'm done with that.
And nothing really stuck.
And then I, through a friend's recommendation, she said go and try Vedic meditation. And so at the time in 2017 there was only one teacher and she's the poster child for this technique. In her 80s and still rides a mountain bike, super active, sharp as attack and looks about 60.
And I went and saw her and did the four day course that this technique is how you teach, how you learn is through a four day course. And got my mantra and my life changed immediately as soon as I received that mantra. And it's through the practice, it's not a pill at all.
You have to receive the benefits, you have to do the practice and it's 20 minutes twice a day so morning and evening generally. And from that first meditation in that first day of the four day course, I could feel already something was different.
And I feel like I breathed for the first time in a really long time.
And it wasn't that long after that four day course that I really started to see the benefits and I felt myself again. I was starting to, yeah, be more social, do more sport, be in nature. I'd stopped swimming, which swimming was a huge part of my life, stopped playing tennis during that time which has been in my life since I've been a child.
Yeah, the drinking aspect, just the necessity or desire to dull my senses had diminished significantly. I just started to feel like I was me again.
And then my dad was getting more and more sick and I decided to go to India to see my teacher on a retreat. And I was there for only three weeks. And dad, he got progressively worse while I was away.
And he passed away not long after, like a month after I'd returned. But during that time, from my return from India to seeing he passed, he said, this is what you need to do. This is part of how you've always been. You need to pursue this. And I didn't really think about teaching, teaching people how to meditate, but I could see how much my life had changed in such a short period of time that once he passed in 2019, I really just realized everyone should have this technique because the benefits are so profound, beyond what I could ever have imagined or assumed, I suppose.
And it's through 2019 that I did all the prerequisites to then go to India at the end of 2020, end of 2019, to do my meditation teacher training through the start of COVID evidently.
But yeah, it was because I had such profound benefits that I was like, I need to teach this technique. I need to help people. And because I felt like I only found the technique when I was at the lowest point or one of the lowest points of my life, that I needed to change something because something wasn't working.
I teach and I'm really quite passionate about helping people find this technique so they don't. There isn't a low point for them that they can find this technique and have fulfillment of life. We are fulfilled that the Vedas, the Vedic world view, is that we are the fulfillment state. But then our mind gets involved and we think that we're not.
And as we know that, we've got a society full of stressed people.
But if I can support people in finding this technique to enable them to find their true selves, to feel that fulfillment, then that's what I'm. That's what my purpose is on this, on this earth, in this body. Life is to support people. Yeah. But it's through my own practice and through my own traumas and removal of stress and my own journey and growth that has enabled me to do that. And it's continuing, obviously, because life's a big journey, but it's through my own learning. That is why I do what I do, because I'm so passionate about the healing benefits of this technique. Yeah.
[00:10:41] Speaker A: And I'd love to those that know meditation because I feel it's becoming more mainstream now, which is beautiful and amazing. And I think there's a lot of illumination on brain health and what we can do to really maintain. And you come and it comes back to that stress element. And that's what I always think about with this meditation, it being this tool that we can use.
But I would love for you to explain more of the technical aspects because there is a difference from meditation and Vedic meditation. Can you just describe what the main difference is in that?
[00:11:26] Speaker C: Perfect. So there's three types of meditation generally. There's the concentration types, the contemplation types, and the transcending types of meditation. And the concentration types are generally, and got to admit, Covid's been amazing for bringing meditation to the masses with some amazing apps where you can do one minute meditation or you could do an hour long guided meditation with birdsong or whale sounds. And it's been amazing for people because it has been needed over the last four years, obviously before that. But they are the concentration types where you're either being guided, someone's telling you that you're in your happy place, lying on a hammock by the beach, etc. Or you're concentrating on a flame in front of you, or you're concentrating on your big toe or your breath.
The contemplation types are more around journaling and the more quote unquote mindfulness aspects. And then there's transcending types, which is where Vedic meditation comes in, where you're given a particular mantra. And in this technique we use bija mantras. And bija in Sanskrit means seed. Mantra in itself is mind. Vehicle is what mantra means. And so it's a seed that is enabling the mind to. To follow it, basically.
And these particular types of mantras have no intended meaning, which makes them so powerful. Because if you had a mantra that was pineapple, for example, really nice word, but you have a memory attached to that when you had it on a pizza when you were 15 at Domino's or something, or you have. You understand what it smells like, it tastes like, it feels like, you know, you don't like it in a pina colada, for example. So there's these sort of tactile aspects to that particular word in itself. With bija mantras, there is no meaning. It's a primordial sound that comes from nature. And with that it sort of allows the mind to go to those subtlest layers of awareness. It allows the mind to de. Excite because it doesn't have any meaning. And so it kind of bypasses the mind, bypasses the ego. Because as we know, we've got 60 to 80,000 thoughts that we have every single day. A lot of them repetitive and sometimes negative and not particularly evolutionary for us. And that can stem from what happened on the drive to work. It can stem from when we were five years old and we had an argument with our sibling, for example, and everything in between. And so our ego structure gets sort of cultivated through those younger years. And with that, the thoughts that get engulfed within those ego structures.
And so when we have a thought, they're generally within that ego.
So it could be, you know, I'm not going to get that job because I'm not smart enough, for example. That's just a very small example, but it just shows the thought pattern that happens within an ego.
But with these bija mantras, it's such a simple, easy, effective technique. It's so simple that we get given this personalized mantra that you repeat in your mind silently, that due to its meaninglessness, I suppose it is enabling the mind to gravitate towards its subtlest level of awareness. And through that aspect, the mind will come back to the surface layer of thoughts. Like if you imagine so many beautiful analogies of mind. But if you imagine the waves of an ocean being the surface layer of mind, and there's those 60, 80,000 thoughts that we have a day, a lot of them, like we just said, are negative or not so pleasant.
And we're saying our mantra in the most subtlest way within our mind. Our mind is gravitating towards like the middle of the ocean. And then where the mind's kind of diving towards that lower level of the ocean where the waves, the water is not moving very much.
But we come back to the surface layer as well through meditation. And then we just. Mantra, mantra, mantra. We're just subtly favoring the mantra. And what is so potent about this technique is that we don't worry about thoughts. Thoughts are our friends.
A lot of other meditation techniques using the power of the mind, the mind is so strong, so powerful, but just merely favoring this mantra that has no intended meaning really allows that mind to. To dive to it and to de. Excite. And then popping back up, we just don't worry. Popping back up to the surface layer of the thoughts about, okay, I need to get fuel and I must buy toothpaste. Yes, got to do that. And then, oh, mantra, mantra, mantra. And Your mind's diving back down to the bottom layers of the ocean where there's no mantra, no thought. And it seems kind of ridiculous where we live in this gotta, gotta, gotta lifestyle, 21st century life where we gotta do this, gotta be there, got to do that push society. And it's almost like a gold standard that you need to be. If you're not busy, then you're not really living.
Which, you know, we just said that we've got a society full of really stressed people and that's that push society where we've got to do things to feel like we're successful.
If we can just enable our mind to calm down. If we can have this beautiful technique that is subtly allowing our mind to de excite, yes, you're going to think about all of the thoughts, but to enable the thought to be a friend rather than a thought to be something that's considered negative. Or that concept of the monkey mind.
The monkey mind is a really fascinating concept because the mind's never going to stop. We wouldn't be existing as humans standing if our mind wasn't operating.
And so to have a technique that is using the power of the mind to de excite and allowing thoughts to proliferate in the most beautiful, meaningful way for us in that particular moment, for the thoughts to come, for the thoughts to go on their thought worm as they always do, even if it is about what fuel station am I going to get the fuel from? What's the price of the fuel, blah blah, blah, blah, blah blah blah. And then you're always right and meditating and subtly coming back to that mantra. And then the thoughts will go off and the thoughts will come back. But just to allow the thoughts to go on their own beautiful worm is profound.
And then the other aspect, so that's the inwards, we call it the inward stroke. That allowing the mind to dive in. That's one of the first benefits of this technique. And the, the second benefit really is or the second aspect of this technique is the outward stroke. And that's what we call the stress release or the stress removal aspect of it. Where the mind as it's. And that bottom layer of the ocean, using the analogy, and it's coming up and it's going down like coming up to the surface layer, having all those thoughts diving back down.
When we're in that aspect of no mantra, no thought, the body is feeling rested and safe. More importantly, the safety within the body that it starts to actually unwind some of the stresses that's contained within the Physiology. And that could be the drive to work. It could be something that happened five years ago or 10 years ago or 30 years ago. We're never going to fully understand. But the cells of our body hold on to things that sometimes we will never understand or have a full appreciation of. But the cells of the body holds on to stress.
And so we have a society full of really stressed and anxious people. Because the physiology, the cells of the physiology are stressed and they're not giving people are not giving themselves an opportunity to come into silence. Which is.
Doesn't really matter what technique of meditation you do. Just having an opportunity to get to the seated position, closing your eyes. And even if it is just acknowledging your breath for four or five minutes, or having, using headspace or Insight Timer or another beautiful application that gives you an opportunity to just listen to someone telling you that you're on a beach, sitting in a hammock, wherever it is, just to come to silence. It's so profound.
But this technique in its simplicity is through the repetition of the mantra, these particular types of mantras, allowing the mind to de excite and then allowing the body to gradually unwind stresses that are not relevant. And that's ultimately what we're here for as humans, is to learn and to evolve.
And with that evolution is letting go of things that are not relevant for us anymore. And with that is stressful aspects that we contain within ourselves that are just not relevant. And that society and people, when we're stressed, we're looking through a veneer or onion layers of aspects of self that just aren't relevant. And so the behaviors that we have towards each other, we've got many friends and family members, I'm sure we can all agree that have behaviors that are not ideal. Whether it's like being aggressive or moody or they just don't seem right. It's generally because they're stressed and there's no outlet for them to support themselves. And so it doesn't help that, like I said, that push, push society where we're getting up, going to the gym, going to work, spending six to 10 hours or more at work, driving home, then we've got domestic life, then we do it all over again and just people are not able to cope with that. And then we get to Friday and we're just absolutely exhausted, have a wine and watch Netflix and then have the weekend, try and relax as best as possible.
But if you've got young kids or you've got other obligations, you know, quickly the weekend gets chewed up with other things. That are amazing, but there's not enough time to recuperate and to rest. And so we're just doing that over and over and over again for years and decades.
And yeah, we've got a lot of stress in the collective right now because of that.
[00:23:12] Speaker A: Yes, that not coping aspect. And I have been thinking about this a lot lately, about when never giving the brain time to decompress.
I think about when I was younger and you would be bored.
Like I remember being so bored.
And then. But now with technology, social media, there is so much coming at us that we still have to. The brain still has to digest it. So even if we think we're taking a break, maybe going on social media, everything that we're seeing, we're needing to process. The brain's processing it. Everything that we're seeing, we're processing.
And so you can start to see in society now the ripples of that effect and what that's going to be in 10 years. Like we, we can guess.
And so this ancient technique, this tool that Vedic meditation is, it has that simplicity and yet it's so profound and.
[00:24:32] Speaker C: You can do it anywhere. You don't need to have your phone for this. You've got this mantra that is yours, your gift for the rest of your life that as long as your body is feeling safe, you're not operating heavy machinery, you're able to sit in silence and your body feeling is safe.
You can just close your eyes and pick up your mantra in the most effortless way.
No one's in your ears telling you something you don't need. Yeah, you don't need your phone, it's just you. Actually, I saw something really funny come through my feed a couple of days ago about this guy saying he just doesn't remember the last time he went to the toilet without the phone.
He remembers, you know, maybe like 10, at least 10 years ago. But that mindfulness is a really interesting concept and that is going to the toilet. Mindfulness, like for when we were kids or pre phones, even though it's a disgusting concept, taking your phone to the toilet, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone that doesn't do it at least once a week or more.
But can we just go and sit on the loo with nothing?
And is that mindfulness as well? Like having an opportunity even if you're sitting there for a minute to process your presentation that you've just done, or an argument you've just had with a sibling or a spouse or it doesn't really matter what it is but you couldn't open the can of tomatoes and you're really frustrated and then you go to the toilet and then, okay, you kind of do whatever processing you need and then go back out into the kitchen.
But we're so on. Like you just said on all the time. We've got information bombarding us all the time that we. There's no processing time. And then the boredom aspect as well. Like, can we just sit on the toilet and do what we need to do and then get up and go.
Some people are sitting there for significantly longer than they should and that's causing other bodily malalignment because they're scrolling Instagram. I mean, it's a hilarious concept, but it's so. It's true. But can we just be bored on the toilet?
[00:26:58] Speaker A: It's true. And so why do you think it has become so hard? Even the Vedic meditation technique, having the discipline logically, like a lot of high performers now are discovering Vedic meditation as, and using it as a tool to, you know, enhance their focus, their performance, their emotional, you know, stability, and all these incredible benefits of Vedi meditation.
The thing that when I speak to people about meditation, and so I'm sure you get this, is that it's just not for them and that they just can't not have the thoughts. And I just cannot explain that. It doesn't matter if you don't have the thoughts like you've gone into.
Just even if you're doing a meditation practice and thoughts are coming up, just you knowing that the thoughts are coming up is creating that awareness and creating more space between the thoughts even.
And so how would you say for someone to start to cultivate a practice? You have an incredible community that you've created, that you have online classes.
And I want to talk to you more about that. But how would you say to someone to start cultivating this in when. When we're. We are where we're at?
[00:28:33] Speaker C: Yeah, it's a tough one because it isn't a pill. This technique isn't a pill. Like, the benefits are through the practice.
It'd be great if we did have a pill. We could take it once and then our life would be solved. We weren't stressed and we were able to cope with life's demands in the most meaningful way. This technique's not going to reduce your demands at all. You're still going to have to, you know, take the kids to school. You're still going to have, you know, to do the washing up and clean and cook and drive to work and do all of these things that the 21st century life demands of us. But it's being able to deal with and cope with life's demands in the most relevant way and not through that onion layer or those veneers of stress that we've cultivated through years and decades of our lives. We're able to deal with what's happening to us and for us in every single moment rather than living in the future and rehearsing for the future, worrying about getting all the traffic lights to get your daughter to ballet or to get to that meeting that you really need to be on time for. But what about the parking and worrying all about all these things in the future? 99% of the time there never happens, but we rehearse all of these things. And so that's creating anxiety. So we have anxiety laden issues in society at the moment, or the opposite of that is reflecting on life and things the shoulder wouldas and coulders of life in the past and that's creating depression, depressive thoughts because you're. Most of the time we're worrying about the I shouldn't have done that or I should have done that. And so we're reflecting or rehearsing in life rather than having present moment awareness. And that's causing a lot of issues because cultivating present moment awareness takes time as well.
So for someone that either has a meditation practice or doesn't at all, if they don't have a meditation practice, I would just get used to getting to the seated position. And I say that a lot in my teaching anyway is one of the most difficult things is getting to the seated position because life is so busy and there's a lot of demands that are placed on us.
So to get to the seat where you, what you do in that seated position, whether it is just concentrating on or bringing your awareness to your breath, whether it's looking at a tree outside your window, whether it's like hugging your dog in that seated position, or it's cultivating a practice, meditation practice that you already have. Ideally Vedic meditation for sure.
But getting to the seated position is often the circuit breaker that is the hardest thing because it's often not a priority until it needs to be a priority. And that's where, you know, people come to find Vedic meditation when they're, they've hit a really low point and something needs to change.
But still they know the benefits of the technique. But it's still, it's really difficult to get to the seat.
[00:31:57] Speaker A: But once, yeah, it's the practical application of it it's, it's like, you know, this Vedic wisdom and knowledge that we can gain through incredible books, but it is actually in the doing, the experiencing of it that we're actually going to get the benefit.
[00:32:13] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:32:13] Speaker A: And that is why it's kind of like this.
You can't touch the, you know, like you say in your retreats, it's nothing tangible. You can't grasp it. You're not gonna instantly. If I do this meditation now, I'm gonna perform amazing in this meeting, you know, in the next meeting, you know, there's, there's not, yes, that might happen, but there's no concrete. If you do this, this is gonna happen. And so it's kind of like we're so used to having these metrics now, you know, and I think of like social media, like the algorithms. You do this, then this is the result, you know, like we're always going for these, this data.
And so this is where the magic of Vedic meditation comes in. And this is why I really like having these conversations because you can start to explore, well, how does this benefit me? Like what, how has your life actually changed?
[00:33:16] Speaker C: And this is not an, it's not an outcome based practice.
[00:33:18] Speaker A: Yes, either.
[00:33:19] Speaker C: Like I could say I'm going to get to the seated position. I want to get rid of this stress that I had when this, you know, this boy when I was 6 years old didn't want to play kiss chasey with me, which was a thing for me and a stress for me that I held for 30 years. And because the benign moment in time I decided that I wasn't good enough. And I was 6 years old and I held that in my cells. And the way I interacted with life for 30 something years seems ridiculous, but it would be great if I could get, sit down and go, today I'm going to let go of this and today I'm going to let go of that or this needs to be released. It'd be great if that was the case. But the body knows best. Getting to the seated position, closing the eyes, breathing, picking up your mantra, certainly for Vedic meditation, picking up your mantra in the most effortless way and allowing thoughts to be your friends, that's all we need to do. And the body knows best. The body knows exactly what it needs to do and what's relevant for you and your body, life in that particular second.
And that's what will happen. So whether or not you'll spend 20 minutes having lots of thoughts. Great. When we have lots of thoughts in meditation, the body is feeling Safe enough to unwind some of those stresses that aren't relevant anymore for our physiology. If we're feeling like we have almost no thoughts and our mind is sort of captivated by this, no mantra, no thought, bottom of the ocean aspect. Great. The body needs to rest.
[00:35:00] Speaker A: Hmm.
[00:35:01] Speaker C: So whatever. We could try and control things, but we control enough when our eyes are open out in the outside world. What if we could just let go? What if we could just allow the body to guide, and then whatever is relevant for you happens. And that's also a really hard part of learning this technique because it seems so counter to how we spend the rest of our lives or most of our lives. It's so controlled, like you said. It's so metrics based, based in KPI, ticked and lots of thoughts. And that if you're not having thoughts, then you can't be doing this right. And there's no good or bad meditations in this technique either. It's whatever is relevant. And your experiences in. If we sat and meditated now, your experiences will be completely different to mine because we've got different bodies. We've got. Had different body lives, We've got different stresses that are impacting, you know, how we exist at the moment. So our experiences in meditation are going to be different, but we're both, through this technique, connecting to that field of, you know, that universal field of opportunity, of diamondism, of infinite capability, infinite intelligence. We're both connecting to that point which makes this technique so profound is that that's the same point that we're connecting to that infinite opportunity, that. That field of existence that is just beyond our grasp.
[00:36:34] Speaker A: So meditation is bringing us back to our self, grounding us, connecting us to something greater than ourselves.
Is that how you would explain it? That that is. That's what it is essentially doing. Like, is that why we feel so grounded? Because we're coming back to ourself? It's giving us that awareness that we are a soul in a mood suit? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, you quickly did a meditation practice before, you know, with the team, before we started this podcast, and just everyone, like, you know, feeling grounded and like feeling in the room.
And so is that where you see the magic is? It's just us taking that pause to come back to ourself? Is that what the magic is?
[00:37:38] Speaker C: Yeah, it's part of it. Yeah. And it's the realization of who we are, is we're a consciousness, or the Vedas or the Vedic worldview is that we're a consciousness having a human Experience or coming back to the ocean analogy, we are the wave, the individualized Tara wave, the individualized crystal wave of this massive ocean. And that we are essentially connected. And we've all got beautiful experiences or examples of you're just thinking about a particular person and then they ring or they text message you.
Because we're all connected. We're energetically connected. We're energetic beings having a human experience. And we're here to evolve, here to learn, here to grow, here to realize our radical aliveness.
And the pathway is within. And I can't remember, and I apologize, but can't remember where it comes from. But this concept of the only way out, sorry, the only way out is in.
And so the only way to find ourselves is to go in and the realization, our self realization who we actually are. And we can still have the Tara and Krista waves, we can still have, feel that connectedness that we all have as, as individuals, as, as humans.
But ultimately it can only be us that solves our problems and it can be us that experiences what it means to be human. And we can go our whole lives without having any of this quote unquote spiritual practice. But that's also your life and that's amazing. And that's what you're here to learn and grow. Fantastic. And with love and grace, we accept everyone's journey.
And I think there's more like I think we're here to evolve as humans, as individuals and what that means for this body. Life can be very different.
But I want to have all of the human experiences, all of the emotions, all of the full spectrum of emotional experience that means to be human. And sometimes that means that we have experiences that aren't necessarily feel evolutionary but they're part of our growth. And as we have all experienced, it's in those moments of real depths of despair or sadness or grief where. Or anger even, where the next step we take, it's like, oh my God, thank God that happened. Or a relationship breakup. I use my own example, the relationship breakup eight years ago spearheaded me into completely different direction in life that I never knew existed.
But it took that relationship breakup to happen for me to realise that. And so we're really good friends now. And you know, with love and grace, I always say thank you because it took that breakup to happen for me to go in a different direction. And we've all in our lives got examples of that, where we've hit moments and then we've gone, there's a fork in the road and we've gone a Different direction. And it's often through the hardness of life that causes us to have that full flourishment of what it means in our evolution. And, you know, we move all the time. And remember, there's a beautiful analogy. I think it comes from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, my teacher's teacher, who said, he talked about the Ganga, the river Ganges in India.
It starts in the Himalay Himalayas and goes all the way down to the coastline. And he says that if the Ganges was long and straight, it'd be really boring. No one would come and visit the Ganges if it was like straight. What makes a river meander is the obstacles and like that in life. If we, if our lives were like long and straight, great, but it'd be kind of boring. What makes our life so beautifully, like evolutionary is the obstacles that we encounter that cause us to shift, that cause us to learn, cause us to grow, cause us to be enlivened in different ways. And there's no right or wrong direction. It's whatever is relevant. And, you know, we've probably got examples in our lives where, oh, I could have taken the left, but I took the right. But I learned all these things in the right that ultimately five years later took me back to taking that left. But if I'd taken the left at that time, then I wouldn't have learned all the things that I did that were relevant for me, which is why I left happened now and not five years ago. And so we just step into each moment and know that nature is guiding us. Nature is holding us in the most magical way, that everything we're experiencing in life is exactly as it needs to be and that it's all part of our evolution. And we could just trust that nature knows best how to organize.
Yeah, we would all be on this beautiful evolutionary journey.
[00:43:19] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think, as you say that, I think that is the spiritual life, like having that, having that faith and having that ability to be curious about the path and look at those obstacles or those challenges as the opportunity and the opportunity ultimately for that, that spiritual evolution, even if it is very challenging, I mean, you know, you finding this technique through your own struggles.
I found Ayurveda through hearing my mum's illness. Like, there's always something that is going to, in those depths of despair, is going to catapult us into something that can be beautiful. If we let it and look at it in that way, it's like, what gift did this hardship? Give me 100.
[00:44:18] Speaker C: And then, you know, the back to Your original question about self realization is that in those moments of hardship, what is, what does self mean? What is, what is our understanding of what we need in that particular moment? And it's different to now. What is realization of self in this particular moment and then in the next particular moment? In the next particular moment, it's understanding what you need, what it means to be you, what is bringing you happiness, what is evolutionary for you in this particular moment.
And I think looking at the contrast, what is not evolutionary for me. And that could mean things like the foods that we eat. And, you know, sometimes we'll eat a piece of bread or certainly for me, as an example, and I'll just not feel great because my tummy doesn't agree with it. So, okay, mental note, don't eat that particular bread. And we can make those mistakes over and over again. Nothing's ever really a mistake. In the Vedas, we say it's a mistake rather than a mistake. Nothing's ever wrong. It's all part of our evolution.
But things that are not enlivening our status, not part of our evolution or degrading our status. And that could be, yeah, the food that we eat, things that we put in our bodies, it's also the language that we use. It's also the people that we spend time with. It's doom scrolling for hours on end and should have gone to bed at 9, but it's now 10:30 because you just spent time on Instagram. So just acknowledging the things that we spend our life doing and what is enlivening us, what is making us feel great, what is degrading us in that same sense and seeing that contrast and doing, actually making meaningful steps to do things that are enlivening is really important. Yeah.
[00:46:18] Speaker A: I wanted to speak to you about your. Your rounding retreats.
I have been really fortunate to have gone on a few of those now, and each time it's profound.
And yeah, I wanted you to explain what the rounding technique is, but I also wanted to ask you when we're in this environment with other meditators, because I've experienced this even at like a ashram or something like that where there's, you know, a few people there meditating.
There was one particular experience where we were meditating and we. You weren't allowed to speak to others. It was just going there to meditate. And even though that you couldn't speak, the, the energy and the vibration and the sense of community that I felt from that was so nourishing and rippled like the ripples from that, like days after. And I was like, what is that? I can't explain that. What is that? And so you hear all these stories about, you know, people getting together on a large scale and meditating, and then the crime rate of that particular town goes down. Like. Like what is happening when people get together and they're doing this technique?
[00:47:52] Speaker C: It's called the Maharishi effect.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi had this plan, like, to get 1% of the population meditating. And it comes back to what I was talking about before, is that we're. We're individualized waves of this massive, beautiful ocean all wonderfully connected in the most meaningful way, connecting to that unified field of intelligence as we're meditating in this. With this transcendental technique. So if we can have 1% of a population meditating, enabling the mind to de. Excite, enabling the body to let go of stresses that are no longer relevant, then we. When people are interacting with life's demands that doing it in a relevant way rather than based on stress. And with that comes, you know, our interactions with life become, you know, there's. We're happier, we're more creative. The need to be in things like, you know, war environments or aggression or, you know, aggressive behaviors are not. It's just not relevant. And so you can see why a small percentage, you know, with a small percent of it, percentage of community meditating, where there's an energy that gets created. And, you know, we just talked about doing things that are enlivening our status. We're also the energy that we put out through meditation.
It's just like putting a rock in a stagnant pond. The ripple effect that gets created in a really positive, beautiful way happens as we meditate. You know, you would have experienced people just wanting to be around you while you meditate. Animals and children just want to gravitate to people, you know, parents that are meditating because you're giving off this wonderful energy that is. Feels good.
So you can start to see a populace that is meditating is giving off an energy that is people wanting to be around.
And then when you're communicating or. Yeah, being in the world with their eyes open only in a positive way, you can see people want to go, what's. What have you been doing? You look really great.
What's happened? Have you done something with your hair? Oh, no, I've just been meditating.
But coming back to your question about meditation retreats. So Vedic meditation retreats generally mostly incorporate Vedic rounding. And rounding is something that Mahesh Yogi cognized almost 100 years ago to support his teachers that he was teaching how to teach this technique and it is consists of four parts. So Vedic asana, which is generally the body movement and these particular asana or postures has been cognized in this particular way to get the body ready to meditate. So the postures are done in this sequence to stretch the body, but they're done in a really slow considered way.
There's no warrior twos, there's no like holding tree pose, there's no cardiovascular aspect to these postures. They're all getting the body ready to meditate. And then so that's the first facet of Vedic rounding. The second is pranayama or alternative nostril breathing, otherwise known as nadi shodhana. And again that is oxygenating the left and right hemispheres of the brain.
And again getting the body and getting the brain ready to meditate. And then this third phase is meditating for 20 minutes and then lying down in Shavasana for 10. And so those four aspects take about 45, 50 minutes to do. And then in a rounding setting or retreat setting, we would do that sequence over and over again.
In a weekend retreat we might do, you know, 13 to 15 rounds. Longer periods of time, like long weekends or week long retreats, we'd do obviously more. But just doing this rounding over and over again in a rounding setting really facilitates deep stress release and removal. But also, you know, if you can imagine doing meditating once an hour for five or six hours in a particular day is enabling that mind to de excite over and over and over again. But also allowing the body to let go of stress that's no longer relevant in the body or in the physiology that we can really start to like let go of things that are really not relevant beyond a twice daily practice.
And that's where the true benefit of coming to a rounding retreat is. And then you're also with like minded humans having the most, you know, beautiful conversations in between rounds, eating really nourishing ayurvedic foods, spending time in nature, getting off the phone, journaling.
You know, there's a lot of other mantras that we would use through a meditation retreat as well, whether it's through fire ceremony or like morning.
Morning practice generally incorporates the use of things like the Gayatri mantra, which is probably one of the oldest mantras ever, which is, you know, welcoming the day. So just being in and around an atmosphere that's been enlivened by mantra enlivened by devotion and sacredness. Even in the concept of a weekend, you can really start to see the benefits. And also when you're around people that were all meditating around the same time, the energy that gets created because you're both, you're all sort of tapping into that unified field all around the same time.
It's just a really profound setting. And even in a weekend you can feel like you've let go of a lot, but also just calmed the body in the most meaningful way. And it doesn't just end when you leave on a Sunday afternoon.
It really takes some time to integrate some of the things that either come up or some of the things that get released and the space with which you have to then what you want to cultivate to bring in. That's all kind of part of a rounding retreat, which you know, I just absolutely love facilitating one for my own practice to be able to meditate with other meditators, but also just to see people's changes in such a short period of time. And it's so subtle, like we're really rolling around on the ground and touching our face.
That's all we're really doing and doing it over and over again.
Drinking chai and eating really good food and having good conversations. But the subtlety of the practice is just, it's profound.
And you'll see benefits weeks and months afterwards after that particular weekend. And then yeah, week long retreats even more.
[00:55:44] Speaker A: So even just speaking about it. Just like my soul just like craves that. Like you know that when I've gone to come to this retreat, it's very hard for me to get away, get out of my life as it is a lot for a lot of people.
And then once I'm there and I'm in the practice and sometimes that's, you know, seven, eight rounds together so you know, effectively eight hours nearly. And the logical brain like doesn't want to entertain that.
But then I never want to leave because like the stress release that I feel and the connectedness is just incredible. And I've done a lot of, you know, spiritual things over my years. But the rounding retreats are just, yeah, I struggle to put into words and I just look forward to them. Like I think I said to you, like, sign me up every, every year when they are like every quarter, like sign me up.
[00:56:56] Speaker C: It's so beneficial and it's so hard to explain because it's so subtle and like I said, we're just really rolling around on the ground and yeah, doing pranayama and meditating for hours on, on end.
It just feels like, what, what are you doing?
[00:57:14] Speaker A: Yeah, and it just opens your brain up. And, you know, there's all this research that's coming out now so much on meditation, how, you know, actually changes the structure of your brain. It increases your capacity for memory recall, like, you know, all these things, how it's hoping menopausal women with, you know, you know, not having the use of antidepressants and, you know, all these incredible effects. And I remember, like, I think it was my first retreat that I went to and I was saying to you about, yeah, I don't know, like, what this is going to be about or. Yeah, what am I gonna get out of this? But yeah, it's just this incredible ability to reset and come back to yourself and giving yourself that, that time is, is the greatest thing.
[00:58:12] Speaker C: And the resistance was strong.
[00:58:14] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:58:16] Speaker C: Like, you mentioned something that for every single retreat, every single retreater that has ever come to any retreat of mine, and I'm not alone in facilitation, I know this is the same for many people.
It's called rashi. So the Vedic concept of a rashi is that when the soul consciousness knows there's going to be change, there's sometimes really a lot of digging the heels in, a lot of resistance. And that can look like having car issues to, you know, wherever you need to get to, being late because there's a meeting, illness, sickness, something happening with, you know, children as well. There's always some level of consciousness field resistance because it knows there's change, a thought and some letting go because sometimes we like to hold on to things that aren't relevant because that's how we have existed for so many years. So who are we without this cloud of that particular aspect of self that isn't relevant anymore. But who are we? Can we just allow that space to form to see what comes out of the field of, you know, nature's intelligence for us, for our evolution? But with that, it. Yeah, it can be crunchy to come.
[00:59:37] Speaker A: Yes. And that uncertainty, I would love to know, obviously, without giving away any confidentiality or anything like that, what are the, the things that your, your students are coming? Because, you know, there's so many beautiful stories that you have told me about, you know, your students and how much their life, their life changes what is like the common thread and, and you know, I guess this inspires you to keep practicing the technique and, you know, you really walk the walk. I see how you gracefully and you know, with Humor navigate, like challenges.
But what is it that keeps bringing you back to this and being inspired by it through your students, them, what they're saying to you?
[01:00:39] Speaker C: Most people come to find this technique because nothing else has worked. They've tried, like, no trivialization of anyone's experiences or anyone's.
Yeah. Trying talk therapy, for example, or even like different types of Cairo or physio. I've done those as well and continue to. To have body work done, somatic work as well.
But most people find Vedic meditation because they want. They're really stressed and they're not sleeping and they want to quiet the mind.
What they find, though, if they practice is so much more than they could ever have even dreamt up. And that is different for everyone. But it could mean having different creativity that they didn't know they had.
It.
Yeah. Makes people, they just feel happier for no apparent reason. So relationships either improve or they become no longer relevant. And that can mean in so many different facets of a relationship, but just. Yeah, relationships can change. And that's really beautiful because you're not communicating based on that veneer of stress. You're communicating on what is relevant for you in this moment. And so with that, there's truth. There's who am I and what is my truth in this moment? And your desire and capacity to speak truth with your nearest and dearest becomes more at the forefront rather than more existing. It's actually being more alive, enlivened and alive.
So with that, is it more creativity, Feeling happier for no apparent reason, but also, you know, letting go of things that like anger and frustration and sadness and grief, actually not holding, not suppressing. And we've, you know, all had childhoods in some way, shape or form, no matter how old we are, where we've had the emotions being suppressed. And so me as an 80s child being told, you know, don't laugh, go to your room, stop laughing, or like, stop crying, stop this. You know, don't show emotions. And so for many years didn't. Because I was told that my emotions are bad. You can't show emotions. And so there's. With some. So much suppression and repression. Sometimes you just want to laugh for no apparent reason because that's what was suppressed when we were young.
And so I've had many meditations where I just like burst out laughing for no apparent reason.
Great. Some where I've cried with for no apparent reason. Great. It's just sometimes we just need to show in our body to let go of, to feel something and so to actually have to feel, rather than feeling like we have to suppress feelings and emotions is. So it's life changing.
And then the monkey mind aspect, I just want to meditate. I want to meditate so I can just not have so many thoughts. But as I've explained, thoughts are our friends. It's just using the power of the mind. And through the concept of this, the bija mantra, the seed mantra, and labeling the mind to go to those subtlest layers through this sound that has no intended meaning, the realization that we'd never want to stop our thoughts. It's just becoming more friendly with our thoughts and that thoughts are there to support us. Thoughts are there for cognitions as well. So through this practice, heard so many stories of people just having these cognitions about, okay, myself included, I need to move down south.
I need to. Yeah, this is. Yeah, yeah, I need to buy this property or I need to get this job. I don't know why, but I do. Or I need to go to this particular cafe. And then through that, going to that particular cafe at that particular moment, meeting someone that they didn't know existed, and you know, having a relationship with that particular person.
[01:05:18] Speaker A: And it's the self trust that that builds. So it's that inward, you're starting to listen to yourself in that really subtle layer, like you said. And then when you do get that, you know, that whisper, oh, I should do this now, instead of like questioning it like that. I probably would have like years ago. Now I'm like, okay, well, this doesn't make sense right now, but this is what, this is what we're doing.
[01:05:41] Speaker C: Yeah. And we could have do the pros and cons list of why I shouldn't go to that particular cafe because, oh, it's raining, or it's a, it's a drive or whatever else. We do that in so many aspects of our life. Do a pros and cons list or should again to that shoulda, woulda, coulda. And then we miss that opportunity that nature is bringing to the forefront for us to engage with because it's part of our evolution. And whether it is just meeting someone in an aisle of coals, accidentally bumping into them. Is there an opportunity there? So there's so many moments in life where there's opportunities to learn and grow that.
Where not. Not actually interacting with that.
So through this practice of just all, all the practices is getting to the seated position, closing our eyes, picking up the mantra in the most effortless way, and allowing thoughts to be our friends.
There's so much More that comes with that and the benefits and you know, as we gradually unwind thousands of stresses that we've accumulated through our body life. And then when we open our eyes and we're interacting with life, we're interacting rather than reacting with what's happening. And that could be five years ago, if you bumped into that particular person, the Isle of Coals, there would have been anger or frustration or annoyance or, you know, a myriad of emotions that we could have had. But in that particular moment now, and I'm just, of course, this is just an example, you've bumped into that person in the Isle of Coals and you've had a meet cute that has then, you know, caused some other aspects to happen in life that you would never have thought were going to ever be part of your life. But this is, this is the beauty of life, is that can we interact with life in the most relevant way in this particular moment rather than reacting or just, you know, like a zombie walking towards a cliff, not interacting at all and just allowing life to just pass us by.
Which I want everyone to have the full spectrum of emotional experience, full spectrum of fulfillment, because we are the fulfillment state. We just get so captivated by all the shoulders and wouldas and couldas and the busyness and like the veneers of stress that stop us from interacting with life in the most relevant way. Yeah.
[01:08:08] Speaker A: And I think more than ever now with the social media and that becoming such a.
Yeah, like part of our, you know, daily, daily life is. This is more important than ever.
You have just recently come back from India. You took a group of students there and did a Ayurvedic Pachakama retreat.
Yeah. How? Like, what is your biggest takeaway from that? Can you explain your love for India? And do you have anything coming up in the future around that?
[01:08:51] Speaker C: Yes, well, only arrived last week and haven't really been home yet, haven't landed fully back.
There's just something about India that will just. It's captivating in the most beautiful way. And I think having an atmosphere that has been enlivened with mantra. And we talked about, you know, meditation retreats with just a small bunch of people meditating and what happens in the energy of the environment. Imagine thousands of years of the atmosphere being enlivened with mantra, with sacredness, with devotion. We were in Rishikesh for most of the retreat, so right by the Ganges, the Ganga river, just watching people devote to themselves. And with that, it's really hard to not be sort of swept away with the beauty of those moments and life just is so simple. And with that, the joy that comes with such simplicity and the subtleness with, with that.
Yeah, I just, I love India so much. So the retreat was a Panchakarma retreat, so Ayurvedic cleansing for two weeks. And then with that, all of the people that were on the retreat of Vedic meditators and students of mine or a colleague, and whilst we're having treatments every day, we're also going on excursions to like, really important places in the Vedic literature. So Vasistha's cave, which is just north of Rishikesh, where Vasishtha, who cognized the Vedas thousands of years ago, lived in a cave and just to go in and meditate right by the gunk on the Ganga, to meditate there for even a small period of time is just profound. The way in which the energy that's been in there for thousands of years with thousands of meditators over time, meditating in a cave is just a really profound experience. Then to just go down to the Ganga and watch people dip three times, which is really quite a sacred ritual. To go to Aati and ATI is like a fire ceremony that happens every, every day at 6 in the, in the evening across the Ganga to watch these beautiful Vedic pundits sing mantra with music and fire is just again, do you just get enlivened with this energy because of these rituals, listening to, you know, gurus speak about, about the Vedas, speak about the, the beauty of the Ganga. We were there just before Navratri, so the nine sacred nights of the divine feminine.
So just feeling the groundswell of, you know, the preparations for that there's, you know, Krishna and Shiva and Hanuman and Ganesha, these names that we've heard for many years, these life sized replicas of these amazing, essentially representations of self that we want to enliven within us to see them all over the place. It's just, just the most magnificent experience.
We did an Ayurvedic cooking course. We went up to a beautiful temple even further up the Himalayas because Rishikesh is on the foothills of the Himalaya.
And I did, yeah, puja. So morning ceremony, watching the sunrise and I got quite upset because just the realization that I'm in the Himalayas watching the sunrise over these beautiful mountains, there's monkeys everywhere and, you know, just we're drinking chai and I just got completely overwhelmed by this, you know, beautiful experience.
Yeah, it was phenomenal to just be back in India and to share the really important parts of the Vedic literature and the Vedic way of life and at the birthplace of the Vedas. And really yoga like itself, like the asana aspects, Rishikesh is a really potent place to be and it's hard not to feel it. Yeah. So I'll be going back next year. Already booked for next year. But to answer your question, yeah, I do retreats week long. Oh, sorry. Weekend long retreats down at my place in near Nanap at least twice a year, maybe three times. And then I have a yearly retreat in Bali in May and then I'll be doing hopefully annual retreat to in to India from now on. So September ish time.
Yeah, I love that.
You're welcome next year. I look forward to it.
[01:14:00] Speaker A: I, I need to. It's calling me, is calling, calling me. I was hoping that I was going to get there this year but it is, it's calling me.
[01:14:10] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. There's something about India that just, it's hard to leave. It's hard to. You know, we just talked about Rushies. Every single retreater that came to India was either sick or had car related issues or had something going on with work. In the lead up myself, I got sick the day before.
Yes, I remember.
[01:14:33] Speaker A: Yes, yes.
[01:14:34] Speaker C: So there's, you know, something.
[01:14:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:14:36] Speaker C: And then everything kind of clears as you get ready to go to the airport. It's just phenomenal that. Okay, this is nature. It's been supported by nature that I needed to clear that out or that needed to occur for me to then make space and make way from a consciousness perspective for whatever's going to occur. Yeah.
[01:14:58] Speaker A: Thank you so much, Krista. I'm going to put in the show notes all your upcoming retreats and you know, for international listeners there's that Bali opportunity obviously India next year and just connecting with Krista on social media as well and yeah, thank you for your time, Krista. And I think this is so important and I know you do a lot of, you know, speaking and giving back to the community and so I just really want to acknowledge you for all the work that you're doing and yeah, it's beautiful.
[01:15:35] Speaker C: Thanks. Thanks. Taraji Gooded Ev.
[01:15:40] Speaker A: Thanks for tuning in to Star Being. May the wisdom shared resonate in your soul. Until next time, stay connected and keep reaching for the stars. This is starving. Signing off.
