Melli and Mark podcast interview
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ā€‹[00:00:00] Make the love bigger than the fear, always connecting back to what these practices have done for you, what they can do for others and pat the shame or the fear on the back and say, thank you so much for trying to protect me. just connecting back with what matters to you deep in your heart and just keep moving towards it
hello. And welcome back to this episode of The Gentle Revolution Podcast. My name is Mark Purser. And I'm delighted on it that you've found us here. In this episode. I am really fortunate to take a deep dive into the meaning of things with my. Dear friends, Melli, Melissa O'Brien who is in my opinion and the opinion of many, many others, one of the leading teachers of mindfulness. Meditation in the world today. I've known Melli. For. [00:01:00] Quite a few years as we explore in the podcast and we initially studied together. Nearly two decades ago now. And have had. Somewhat parallel, but yet diverging experiences as teachers, as students. And this was a wonderful opportunity to come back and really check in where each of us were at comparing notes from our experiences along the trail.
I hope this is inspiring. This conversation really inspired me as Melli always seems to do. She has a way of reflecting and sharing and contextualizing the important bits. And one of the real takeaways from this conversation. And there were many. What are the main ones which I've named the podcast
it's about making the love greater than the fear, this idea of building. Love our capacity to love and to trust and to follow our [00:02:00] faith. I make that the biggest thing in our reality.
I hope you enjoy the podcast as always, this podcast is sponsored by the Yogic Meditation Institute. Which is. a learning academy for sharing the wisdom of yoga meditation. Yoga nidra breath work. We run multiple courses throughout the year. Uh, we've run. Uh, wonderful. Meditation and breath work, teacher training twice a year.
The next enrollment will be in September. Of 2025. We also have in July, we've just opened. The enrollment for Kundalini Tantra. Which will be. I feel one of the best courses we've ever done. It's going to be held in Bali over the space of seven days where we explored Kriya yoga. Advance Pranayama / breath work.
I'll be joined by a dear friend, Shivam Rath, who is an [00:03:00] amazing. Nada Yogi. A, Yogi of sound who works with classical. Indian music to provide a tapestry of understanding. It's a tantric expression. a tantric art form where literally , each of the notes within the scale. Attuned to each chakra within our systems.
So bringing together Kriya, yoga. Nada yoga. Creativity fun. Uh, and there'll be some higher learning. It is presented as a teacher training program. So there will be an academic component for those. Amongst you who are teachers and are wishing to expand your offerings. However for anyone, it will just be an amazing opportunity to experience these high practices that have a profound capacity to change if you are interested in that checkout, the yogic meditation.net website or the bambooyogabyron.com website. I would just reach out [00:04:00] via, however, you might find us Instagram, et cetera. Now for the podcast. Welcome to Melli. O'Brien.
So we're going to start with an exhale, exhale, let go of your breath, and gently rest your eyes, and then take a big deep inhale. And let's open our mouths, and with a sigh, we're just going to release that breath. Ah, exhaling completely, squeeze out the entire breath. And now we're going to inhale again, one more time, full deep body breath. Hold that breath for a moment, and then again we open our mouths, and ah, exhale, let it all out. One more time, [00:05:00] full deep breath in, and ah, letting go of tension, letting go of worry, letting go of anything that's grabbing a hold of us. I'm becoming steady, centered, present. Here we are. And hello, Melissa O'Brien.
Hello, old friend.
Welcome to the Gentle Revolution podcast. I am honored, delighted, and I'm excited. I'm really excited to get to know you better, to talk to you more. I've known you for rather a long time now, and I think I know you fairly well. You're an interesting human, Melli O'Brien, and I want to know [00:06:00] more.
It's lovely to be here. Yeah, it, it actually is a pretty, it's a pretty. It's a special thing to, to be doing this with you because yeah, as you said, we've, I don't even know how long we've known each other, but it's been, it's been a long time. We come from the same yoga meditation lineage and yeah, we've known each other for a long time, but conversations like these maybe allow us to get to know each other a bit better.
Yeah, it's interesting because you and I have walked a very similar path. I could date it. I think we've known each other for about 15 years. And although even then we were sort of, there was coherence in, in our journeys to get to that point. But we originally met through the Manly Yoga Center where we were both working and I was introduced to you.
I was actually working on marketing at the Manly Yoga Center and you were running. Some workshops there, and [00:07:00] I'm thinking a mindfulness morning tea, yes,
sounds like something I would be doing,
yes, it was a
I was running all kinds of interesting things at manly yoga. I had a lot of fun. Fun testing content and running classes and doing workshops there.
It was that sort of place, wasn't it? It was a very cool, eclectic mix of offerings, which everything there had a, a deep root in tradition, but there was a great spark, particularly when we were there. AndMelli sadly that yoga center has now closed, but it did bring us together and I have witnessed you continue your journey as you've been able to witness me.
And we have evolved over those 15 years and continued to study, continued to practice, expanding in our teachings and having many personal and professional adventures, which brought us to here, to this point today.
It's actually pretty cool when you [00:08:00] think about the whole history of all of that. It's, it's, it's actually really special that, you know, you're running this podcast onMelli yoga and meditation, the quiet revolution, which I absolutely love that name. Mellid I used that myself years ago when I was talking about when we were doing the mindfulness summit.
I really believe in that concept so deeply and just that our paths have kind of. Gone in these some similar but different paths and then we've kind of reconvening here. You're running this podcast and I'm just about to launch a book and came to get on podcasts and share and chat and so it's very cool.
it's when I was actually first introduced to you and I was given an introduction via Mukta Kiran, who was the, the manager of the Mandir Yoga Center. And she said, OhMelli Melissa's really onto it. Like she's a lot of yoga teachers. And we were right at that point [00:09:00] of being there when digital media was coming more and more into yoga and meditation space. We were at that point in our professional lives that, well, we're going to jump on this. I had actually had a background working in media and I had a degree in digital media communications. And I know you had existing skills, but again, we were both just learning. You actually introduced me to copy blogger. I don't know if you remember copy blogger, but it was quite revolutionary. The whole. Blogging world. And that really kicked me off into what has been a 15 year passion for writing blogsMelli about, and for you to write your content marketing and creating content about this fascinating space that we work in.
Tried.
I thinkMelli when I think about those times. Mukti [00:10:00] Kiran was, you know, maybe saying those things. What, what I think I perceived at that time isMelli our industry was being, if you call it an industry, it's funny to use those words, but like what was being disrupted. Melliso the way that people were coming to learn meditation and coming to learn about mindfulness and coming to learn about yoga, it was starting to change then.
And, MelliI was, you and I have both continuously adapted and adapted and adapted. And I think we're doing the best we can. That's not always easy, but it's, it's an adventure for me. It's a, it's an adventure to adapt and pivot and change and sharing in different modalities. So yeah. Yeah.
It's cool. It's great to have comrades, right? Because look, a lot of people, if you do a look around who was teaching at Manly Yoga then and who was teaching at Mangrove then, and we had some [00:11:00] amazing teachers who had written significant textbooks, who had been taught by the best and who had given the bulk of their life to studying and teaching yoga, a lot of them just Couldn't keep up.
And they're like, you know what I'm done because I didn't want to make that transition to teaching digitally. So we were at that point as well, we've got no choice and sort of, we're more at the beginning of the journey. So, Hey, let's give it a go. But the modalities that we're teaching, that we're using, it's changing.
All the time and continually the evolution of the podcast in the last few years is a great example of that, but thankfully for us, hey, we love to talk. So here we are, we're actually in the right place. I feel like I'm growing more and more, in fact, into what I am actually truly gifted to do. And I, you know, I sense that with you too, that you've got this innate skill for communication and delivering complex thoughts.
complex philosophies in elegant [00:12:00] ways that are digestible by the common folk that makes sense and are useful. ButMelli
what, as I think about this, like I, I would be lying if I said that. I just absolutely love continuously having things disrupted and having to adapt to podcasting and blogging and different mediums. So I think what keeps me going is it just like has its roots in my origin story, which is that I came to these teachings because I was desperate for help. Melliwas, you know, when I was 17 years old, I had depression undiagnosed, but oh my God, did I have depression? We didn't really have like, we weren't mental health aware like we are these days. I was
Through it. I had a pretty serious eating disorder and I, I just hit this point.
I think it was. Yeah, like around the age of 17 where I had a full dark night of the [00:13:00] soul where I was in so much pain that I saw two paths in front of me. One is I'm going to take my own life because I, I, I cannot. Live in, in that, that level of suffering is unsustainable. I was 17. I'm looking at the rest of my life going, I can't live like this.
It's just too much to bear. And so I was like that it's either that path or I have to figure out some way for this to change. And I'm like highly motivated because I'm in a lot of distress. And I actually, for the first discovered mindfulness. Because I went to my school library and I pulled out all these books on like anything about how to change your inner state somehow.
And I came across some books on, I think, Buddhism or something like that. And that was the first time I understood this concept of, Oh, you can actually train your mind to be different.
And the way that my mind [00:14:00] works is when I see a pattern, I'm a person who takes in lots of information. And then I like to see the patterns and condense those patterns down to something that makes sense to my, like it's, if I see a pattern, there's a probability that there's something very true there, and then I'm going to go and test that.
So that's how I saw this pattern in this comparative religion book. After I read the first book, the first book is like making a claim that you can happiness is like a skill. And then when I read this comparative religion book, I saw this. Actually, lots of these things, they're saying the same thing.
They're talking about this concept of like finding inner strength and wholeness.
Silence.
So I think that was the biggest, potentially the most life changing moment of my life. Cause I had this realization of like [00:15:00] happiness is a skill.
Resilience is a skill in a strength is a skill, which meant to me. That just like riding a bike or any other skill, if someone gives me the right tools, I practice them. Mellithen change is going to be somewhat inevitable and you just have to follow the right steps and do them repeatedly. Melliso long story short, I threw myself into, I found a mindfulness course at that time, learned the skills and I practiced my little heart out.
And I went through,
cut out.
I, I gave it, I threw myself into this a hundred percent. And what happened for me was a very, very rapid change. My eating disorder alleviated within six months. My depression alleviated within a year, neither came back. And so all of that is to say, that while I find it challenging sometimes to continually adapt, I'm, I'm very, very driven by a desire [00:16:00] to share these tools with as many people as possible because I think learning these skills is as important as learning to read or write.
I think it's absolutely crazy that we're not learning Skills to feel whole, and to feel, and to be wise in this world, yeah? Like, humans, when we don't have these skills, we do all kinds of things in the world, but lot of them lack wisdom, and, and come from an internal sense of lack, trying to prove ourselves, and like, a whole bunch of unskillful stuff happens.
And look, that's the whole theme of this podcast is I've often reflected on a desire to change the world and you don't have to look too far to see discord. Scary shit is going on in the world constantly, and it's being run by crazy people who don't have. [00:17:00] Those basic skills, what we talk about, Vairagya, just to be able to detach, mindfulness, being able to separate ourselves from our opinions and our burning desires to have more greed, this simple shit that you can do.
You can actually learn to transcend it economically. We could do so much for ourselves just by teaching people how to let go of that hunger to just have more and more all the time because they think that that's what they need to, in fact, to be happy. And through practice, we can learn to treasure simplicity and humans.
I do squarely believe and the teachings are very clear that we do have the capacity to be happy Without a lot, humanity as a whole needs to make that leap and we need to start young. I mean, you suggested we were given none of this and we were, I was the same, seven, 16, 17, and, and rapidly heading [00:18:00] towards the edge of a cliff.
And I got really close to the edge of that cliff. You know, it was a metaphorical cliff, but maybe it wasn't, you know, maybe there was a real cliff. I found myself standing on the edges of, of cliffs and you know, you and I both. I spent time in Manly in Sydney, I in fact grew up in Manly and I've got a few friends who've, you know, jumped off the cliffs there who didn't make it,
and I really consider myself to be lucky that. We just landed in a good place and that there was tooling and teaching available to, to furnish us with those skills that helped us navigate a clear path through the quandary, through the mess. And here we are, here we are. So you,
you, Matt? What happened? You know, I'm like, you know, I found the books in the library and then I was lucky. I mean, really lucky that there was a mindfulness course running where I was. What was it for you that you were able to find as a resource there?
well, [00:19:00] okay. You mentioned comparative religions that, that popped up. I was actually educated by Jesuits who for the most part were hard ass bastards, but the. were a few who were actually very well educated, and I had a subject on comparative religions with a Jesuit priest who, which really opened my mind.
And I was like, wow, wow.
I grew up in the Catholic church. I literally went to church every single Sunday of my life from pretty much the, the week I was born until the age of about 18, where I was just like, okay, I'm done. I can't do this anymore. And I walked away. Quite intentionally, consciously, but
and I had actually got a lot and I realized later I had received a lot. I loved the singing. I love that connection to, to presence. There was something there. I mean, like in all spiritual traditions, there's a lot of hypocrisy and particularly with the Catholic church, there's a lot of problems, but it definitely. It lit a candle within me. I [00:20:00] also spent a lot of time in nature growing up. I was really lucky to be able to spend a lot of time in the bush and, and connect to divinity through that natural space. And so there was this innate curiosity, but coupled with that was a lot of anxiety, uncertainty, emotional instability.
I mean, there was drugs, there was crazy drinking, there was really erratic behavior coming from me. And I got to about 18, 19, 20. And I was, my first sort of real teaching was through Chi Gung. I had a friend of mine and his auntie was a Chi Gung teacher. So I got introduced to Chi Gung the kindred practice of Tai Chi, Kung Fu, and it's Tantra, it's essentially Tantra and through that, I think And then I ended up, I was working in a newspaper actually, and a couple of ladies I worked with introduced me to yoga, and I was really into surfing as well, so I wanted to get physically better at surfing, and I went and practiced yoga in a bunch of different traditions, physical yoga, hatha yoga, vinyasa, [00:21:00] and ashtanga vinyasa particularly I threw myself in, and that From about the age of 21, I really threw myself into that, which was amazing and transformative on a lot of levels, but it didn't quite fix my emotional dysregulation and I was still very up and down.
And it wasn't until your significant relationship breakup, probably 10 years later that I ended up with a therapist, a psychologist by the name of Radha Nicholson,
I ended up. Being recommended to her as a psychologist and I didn't know anything about really about meditation at that point. I just got lucky and Been seeing her weekly for a couple of years and she had a beautiful house in Bangalow And she was just she just had an elegant still has an elegance about her nice to sit there She'd make me lovely tea beautiful cups of tea and I talk about all my problems and she's so patiently listen to all my problems and eventually we just kind of ran out of stuff to talk about and she just Like literally after seeing me for two years, I was like, have you thought about meditation, Mark?[00:22:00]
I brought it up. I think, I think I need something more. And I started asking her and the whole time, I didn't know who she was. I didn't know that she was one of Australia's leading meditation teachers and she'd never pushed that upon me. It just sort of came to the point. So I started studying with her, which I loved.
And, and also through the Goenka tradition, I studied Vipassana through the Goenka tradition, but then I found, I'd heard about Mangrove actually. There's a guy in Byron by the name of Eric Adams who had this very cool place called the Funky Forest where they did meditation fasting retreats. And I went and did a fasting retreat up there. And he mentioned that he'd been at mangrove for a. MelliChristmas or sort of New Year's celebration. I thought, oh, that place sounds cool. And a few months after that, I had a bit of a breakdown and I was like, you know what, I need, I need something more. And I ended up just jumping in my car, just calling Mangrove on the way.
And so can I come and stay? And they're like, you know, sure. Okay. You're not too crazy. Are [00:23:00] you? Yeah. I was able to remain functional for periods of time. And that was at about 2010. Melliso 15 years ago now, I ended up at Mangrove and did a couple of lengthy stints there, staying there as a resident, moved back to Sydney, back to Manly, where I was from originally, my parents were.
And I Started studying , the Diploma of Yogic Studies that they offered there and that just brought it all together for me, this love of asana, physical practice, Hatha Yoga, and the spiritual and intellectual inquiry that I have. I so need it. I so need it. I needed that. That needs to be part of my practice.
I realize that's not the same for everybody. Like a lot of people, a lot of Hatha yogis I know are just really happy to keep things simple, but it seems for people like you and I, we need answers, right?
Yeah, I guess I think for me, there is a, [00:24:00] there is a clarity about there has been a clarity of purpose in what I'm doing when I'm participating in spiritual practices. And if I would just put it into a nutshell, you knowMelli it's growing, growing inner strength, like, so you could talk about like that in terms of, you know, this, there's an awakening process that happensMelli through these practices.
But essentially for me, like, underneath that, there's this fundamental thing of, like, becoming, like, Realizing more of my potential, feeling more whole, being more connected to peace. Like, I kind of put all that under this of just like growing my inner strength.
Mm.
I mean, becoming more of who I really am, you know, it's sort of like the layers of.
Mental emotional guff,
Mm.
have plenty of, by the way, but you know, I just, I learned to relate [00:25:00] to all of that with much moreMelli love and acceptance and awareness and some, a little bit more skillfulness than in the past. Mellibut yeah, I'm, I'm pretty clear on that. That's what I'm up to. And that's what I'm really.
Up to when I share as well. I'm like really wanting to help people. Unlock their inner strength.
Mm. As I've heard it described, the evolution of the personality.
Mmm. Yeah, it's like sort of like an integration. Experientially, it feels like, you know, the mind and the body and the spirit, like the parts are becoming more integrated. The whole system, if I use that language a little bit, like the mind, body, spirit system is more integrated, it's operating more effectively and I'm enjoying life much more, I'm feeling much more whole and at peace and life is more meaningful and, also just like that I [00:26:00] come back to that concept of like living with wisdom as well I envisage a world in which we have a more sustainable and equal and peaceful and loving world, and I think that's worth moving towards you know it's a, it may be, it may be a lofty idea, but it shouldn't be, it shouldn't be.
It shouldn't
be a lofty idea and I'm wanting, I'm wanting to spend this life working towards that vision that's worthwhile.
I think it's probably a lofty idea if, if you say that's going to be for everybody, but it's definitely not a lofty idea for you and I, and look, it's possible as an individual to achieve it. I'm certain of it because I've done it and I've seen it in you. So absolutely it's certain to have the capacity for equanimity and contentment.
Which, for me, that's the holy grail, really, just to be able to live with each day and just acceptance and contentment and, and finding exquisite joy in the simple things. We can get there. I know we can get there because I've done it. And I have done it from [00:27:00] not from a position of already being happy, from being in a position of being fairly unhappy consistently over a long period of time, to being now in a position where I'm fairly happy most of the time.
Still, there's fluctuation, but it's not the massive up and down. Pendulum swings that it was. And this is where the, that's, this is what the practices have for us. This is what consistent application to the practices and the study of wellbeing can offer. And you and I are exhibit A and B, you know, perhaps it's lofty to think, Oh, the whole world's going to be like this.
Well, maybe not, but we can do it for ourselves. And we can also, I've also seen that in many students that I've supported along the journey and shared the practices and supported with the teachings. And I know that you've taught. Thousands, many thousands of people, and you've no doubt had close witness to others, right?
And you've seen people take that personal evolution. Mm.
And I mean like I say this with like, This part of the [00:28:00] conversation, I like throw a whole bunch of caveats in there about, I'm still just a messy human. I have problems and I still get caught up sometimes and all of that stuff. However, all of that stuff is now, first of all, There's a simplicity in just saying like, I suffer a whole lot less than I used to like, and that just keeps going down, down, down.
And what's, and, and much more just in touch with the ground of being. So there's just up through the ups and downs of life, there's still this background sense of, Much more of a sense of wholeness, much more of a sense of interconnectedness with life much more of a sense of peace and You know, I was saying before that I'm, I, I, what I really love to do watch patterns in people and also in literature.
Like most of my friends know, I'm usually reading [00:29:00] seven books at once, all of them on the same topic, basically from different voices. I've just been reading books on this topic since I was so young and my friends joke that I don't, I like someone was asking for a book recently that was sick. Had COVID and someone was like, Oh, you should get a book off Melli.
And she was like, no, no, no. She doesn't read fiction. She just reads books about, about this stuff. So. What I have seen in working with people over the years is like, when you talk to people, when you teach people, what I observe in myself and what I read in the literature is like, there's this, these common, I call in my work, I call them the seven strengths of the self.
I'm probably not going to remember all of them right now. But they're like. Qualities like that happen when you do a lot of this practice, when you do contemplative practice in whatever form it comes. Like things like sense of interconnection, [00:30:00] like a sense of connection with something larger than yourself, which might be interpreted very differently for different people, but that gives people a sense of belonging and a sense of reverence for life.
Things like calm, you know, just like touching down and it's like calm for no reason. There's just this part of our being that is, gives us this sense of wellbeing and peace. And there's, there is this wholeness. And even when you talk to people, you hear people talk about this. I've heard people say this so many times.
I'm curious about this with you. They say, Oh, I just suddenly realized that like, everything's fundamentally okay. Like this sense, like, and when they try to describe that, it's like, Oh, the deepest part of me is fundamentally always okay. And they can like somatically feel that sense.
yeah, [00:31:00] there's a, there's a beautiful practice that I, it's a big part of my personal sadhana of yoga nidra. And I practice yoga nidra at least a few times a week and have done for a long period of time. And I deal with. certain levels of anxiety fairly consistently, which I think is okay. It's not catastrophic.
And I do feel that during my days, which are busy, things start to wind up sometimes and I can get snappy or anxious or, you know, whatever it is. And I do find the yoga nidra practice, which is essentially it's doing a reset of the dopamine pathways. And it, I come out of that and because it's so sudden there's this experience of just deep, deep total relaxation.
I realize that that an anxious feeling where things are not okay. That's an illusion that's caused by this buildup of anxiety and, and the overclocked mind, which is just grabbing onto 10 million things at [00:32:00] once and trying to find solutions to all the problems. Then if I can let go of all that, which we can. I can have that reconnect to that space that you referred to where everything is okay. And I might not be able to live there all the time, but it's a touchstone. If I can go back there and visit that with some sort of regularity, that I just, I know that there is a space, my safe space where I can get to and remind myself which is actually the primordial truth that everything is okay, that everything is okay.
I really resonate with that. That's my experience too, in terms of like, I don't live in a constant state , bliss or like a total sense of, you know, I'm just always in touch with that state and I handle everything perfectly. It's, it's more like my access to that is fast. You know, when I catch myself, we all, and I think we all have like an Achilles heel, yours might be anxiety and mine's shame.
My conditioning is such that [00:33:00] I can feel bad about almost anything that can happen in this world. Like anything that happens, I can find my mind, my conditioning can find a way. Yes. I'm find a way that that's just like, I can. Do it. My mind is really good at doing like a, you're a bad self story out of almost anything.
That used to be totally debilitating and I would not have achieved much in life if I had have stayed stuck in that one, but I'm pretty quick at responding to it. What I think a lot of this path teaches you. And I'm curious if. This is kind of what your experience is to by the sounds of it is when I catch myself, I've got pretty quick access to the place inside of me that's bigger and stronger and more loving and wise than that part that's activated.
And that I can choose a skillful action to regulate that which is. What you can do through all these amazing practices that you're teaching people,
I love that, Melli.
Mm. like you've got such a great toolkit that you're teaching folks. So [00:34:00] yeah.
Yeah, look, a couple of things I want to pick up on then is you know, the first thing is that you're noticing it. So we've got our stories, you said yours is shame, mine's anxiety, probably other things too, but let's just frame it as those two. We
I got other things
yeah, yeah, me
That's just,
We all do. We all, and that's the, it's, hey, we do like, this isn't the process of, you know, Completely letting go of shame and anxiety.
I'm sorry, that's not what we've signed up for. What we have signed up for, and it seems like that's where you've got to, is this capacity to, hey, that is my thing, I know that's my thing, that's one of my things. And I know, I can see it, it's a familiarity because I've sat there with that, I haven't suppressed it, I haven't pushed it away, I've had the capacity to sit there with practice for periods of time and really look at what is.
Shame look like in my life. What does anxiety look like in my life? How does it show up? And I can see it as it rises. I can look at it, I can notice it, I can name it. And then what [00:35:00] do I do? What do I do when life gets for me? What? When life gets busy, when life gets complex, when anxiety starts to build, what do I do?
What are my patterns? My pattern used to be to drink, that's what I would do, I'd drink more, I would ignore things, I would ignore problems, I would go out and party or, you know, just suppress. Now, now my, my pattern is to practice more, to reach out for help, that's, and another pattern is to call people, really skillful people and go, hey, you know what, I need to talk this through and really
grateful to have people in my life who I can do that with, okay. I need to really up my level of practice. And that's for me, that they're the telling signs when, when you've got this, which is like, you're not going to transcend problems. That's just not what this practice is about.
But what you can do is change your responses. Yep.
There you go. That's the, that's the like a nutshell of it there's like such a thing as spiritual perfectionism. I think where you have this, and this is usually at [00:36:00] this, when we start the path, we have this idea that we're going to use these tools to escape all of the pain and messiness and perfect ourselves and everything's going to be okay.
And at some point of maturity on the path, you realize that. about finding peace in the middle of it all. It's, it's not about getting rid of parts of ourselves. some of them just naturally transform on the path, don't they? They just, you're not even trying and then you just wake up one day and you don't bite your nails anymore and you don't go for the bottle anymore and you haven't.
But it really is I feel like the language I've been using more and more is it's It's sort of like if you think about our system as a body, a mind, and awareness, or whatever you want to call that. It's like awareness is more in the lead there's this term reparenting that's used in psychology.
It's kind of like becoming the wise elder in your system. Then when your mind is out, your mind is going into anxiety. My mind is going into [00:37:00] shame and it's got this whole bad self narrative or we're going to. Go for the bottle or we're going to say something we didn't really want to say to our partner because we're feeling a bit triggered.
It's that ability to like ground ourselves in the place that's wiser and stronger and more centered and to choose a response to those patterns and choose a response to life. That's much more skillful.
I want to talk to you a little bit more about practice and I know that we've had a commonality in what we've studied. We both completed the Diploma of Yogic Studies in, which is essentially classical yoga and meditation taught through the Bihar School of Yoga, there's Satyananda yoga lineage.
But I've stuck fairly consistently to that path, I've diverged, but it's stayed fairly much under that umbrella of, of yogic meditation, which is what I focus on teaching now. But [00:38:00] again, there's a, that's a fairly, it can be a broad umbrella, but you've, you've had a huge journey in exploring mindfulness.
developingMelli the mindfulness summit, which is probably the world's biggest convention around the practice of mindfulness. And you've again, look to explore different niches in the application of practice. Tell me a bit about that journey. What inspired you to firstly take the journey into mindfulness?
I mean, I think we've touched a bit upon it, but let's talk about it more.
Yeah. In our lineage that we learned here and it was all mindfulness. We just weren't using that word because that word wasn't in vogue like it is now. So in a way, I, again, just like adapted to the common language that became the
language that everybody understood that was a bit more mainstream, but I did adapt. I teach a hybrid of the stuff that we learned. And I also [00:39:00] did two more traditional, mindfulness teacher trainings. I also went and learned a whole bunch of other bits and pieces acceptance and commitment therapy and compassion focused therapy.
And I think I was always doing the same thing really. But I started doing more mindfulness, less yoga, more teaching straight up meditation practices that were guided a bit more by what was.
Happening in, The modern world, like what, how, how they were approaching mindfulness in the mainstream. Then I really realized that when you're, when you're doing that, when I was watching how that field really works, it actually, what you're doing is it's, it's mental health education. You're teaching mindfulness, but it's always, if you're teaching mindfulness, you're always also teaching what is stopping you from being.
mindful. You're teaching a lot of the time about how to reduce stress, how to reduce anxiety. Why we get caught [00:40:00] up the way we do, how to relate your thoughts, how to regulate your emotions. I just began to branch more and more into that really. And, when I co founded Mindfullness.com my job was to kind of give short coachingMelli on some aspect of how our minds work or. How to have healthier relationships or how to handle stress better. And over time circling back to, I think what you said at the start here is that it more and more became my, my job to try to explain big concepts in small condensed ways with practical takeaways for people.
mm hmm,
over time, I think my work just evolved especially in the process with mindfulness. com, but even before I started running retreats and I think I was running something like 11 retreats a year, which is quite a lot. I was away from home a lot packing my bags and [00:41:00] going and teaching retreats.
And I also think it came from just. Being with folks in a room for a whole weekend, which is really unique, like talking to them in between sessions and learning that people come because they want to learn mindfulness, but that's not what they're really there for, right?
no,
That's never what they're really there for.
So you learn and you listen and adapt as you go. And you kind of realize, Oh, this, most of these people are here because they're trying to overcome an addiction or they having trouble handling difficult thoughts. So how can I make that easier and more approachable? And how can I give people the best outcome when they come to one of these retreats where it's, you do learn mindfulness and.
Let me also talk about what's going to get in your way when you go home. it's one thing to learn these practices, but there is, there's always that two sides, isn't [00:42:00] there? There's a practice and there's what gets in the way of
yeah, what's, what's getting in the way, what are the roadblocks, you know, we all want to be mindful. We all want to experience contentment and bliss. It's the innate human desire. And so we have to see what, what are the roadblocks? We talk about in yoga, the vrittis, these modifications of mind, the samskaras, and understanding that machination of mind that otherwise we'd all be just be glorious and happy, but
that's not the gig. That's not what it's about. It's in fact, leaning into having the courage and the comfort to be able to sit there and look at those roadblocks, look at those modifications of mind otherwise we'd all be enlightened. We'd all just be sitting here enlightened, right? And that's just not the case.
You know, we wouldn't be having this podcast. We'd be off doing something else when people wouldn't be listening to this podcast because yeah. We need it. We need to understand a, that other people are experiencing the same things and have explored the same things and then [00:43:00] finding that commonality of purpose, whatever it is, we all want the same things, but okay, what are the roadblocks?
And people who, for example, had eating disorders, they can congregate together and use the same concepts, the same techniques to support themselves. And I mean, this is the ancient practices which have been around for long periods of time. They're applied to whatever reality we find ourselves in.
Thankfully for us, they're infinitely adaptable. The practice haven't, practices haven't changed very much. I've noticed that the language changes, but the techniques stay pretty much the same.
And that's good news. Isn't it? That's such good news. Even when we're talking about, you know, when I'm talking about, maybe adapting the language to the modern times. And then when you, you kind of circle back and go, actually, yeah, no, this, the modifications, like this was all here in yoga.
I'm just kind of. Changing my language a little bit to suit the audience that I'm speaking [00:44:00] to. But I think that is such good news not have these. Modifications of mind, as you call them, not only have they been known forever,
They've been known, the blocks have been known for as long as I think written record has been around and the practices that help have been pretty much the same and not only through time, but cross cultures.
That's such good news. There's something that doesn't change here that we can rely on.
Yes.
And that is so beautiful. There's something about human nature that has never changed, that's always been the same.
comforting. And look, if you look at the yoga sutras, the Patanjali Yoga Sutras, which is the original text on yogic psychology. It's derived out of Sankyha philosophy, which is a study of mind. They're talking about vritti, the disturbances. They're talking about patterns of consciousness, patterns of thinking blockages, and they're the same.[00:45:00]
They're the same, it's attachment, it's fear, it's, it's aversion, it's lust and desire, the same things. And this, this is a two and a half thousand year old text, and it's relying on teachings which are older than that. The same stuff we look where we're having different influences, I think these days our mobile telephones are creating incredible disturbances for us, the intrusion of mind, and it's really affecting our abilities to concentrate.
So we need to like, okay, well, it's an age old problem, but this is the contemporary reality. How do we apply these teachings to people who are dealing with. Dopamine addictions because we're addicted to our phones, which is a startling percentage of the modern world, particularly among, I mean, you and I at least have some sort of memory of a time where we didn't have phones,
we grew up without them. Mellithese These
days.
That's just not the reality. There's a lot of kids who just don't know what it's like. They don't remember what it's like to live without [00:46:00] phones. And. We need to, the Dharana, the ability to focus concentrate our attention in a specific direction. Again, that's the core of meditation in the yoga tradition of just being able to create a singular focus on a particular thing.
People can't, we were talking about reading books before, people can't do it anymore. People are losing their skills because they're too busy. I, I think my capacity to, I used to read a lot of novels and I still read a lot of textbooks and that's, but that's a different thing that my ability to read novels has dissipated because I'm, I'm just too busy, or how I have been disturbed by scrolling Instagram reels as I talk with people or listen to, I'm doing my thumb scroll, which is the Instagram thumb scroll, which is a It'sMelli whatever, Instagram and Tik Tok and whatever else it is, just this constant influx of quick hits, quick hits of information.
And so we need to practice. Do those practices. Can I ask you, Melli, what does your personal practice look like now? What do you do? What, what [00:47:00] inspires you in your own personal journey as far as technique goes?
So my, I've been doing a similar structure to start my day for as long as I can actually remember. I don't even know how long I've had this habit, but my deal is that the first two hours of my day is for my mind and body mind always first. So I do some kind of meditation first, and then I do exercise.
I'm pretty, I'm pretty disciplined with it. I'm pretty consistent, but I allow myself a little bit creativity. So I don't do the exact same meditation practice. Sometimes it depends on my state. Most days I am doing some version of kind of like, I'll tell you my, my practice in almost like a mantra is whatever arises, love that. [00:48:00] So these days as I'm practicing mindfulness, I'm really practicing embodying a kind of loving awareness and really actively, it's not just an acceptance or presence with what's arising. It's. loving what is, like actively, also loving parts of myself. So if the inner critic pipes up or boredom or anxiety
I found that the last couple of years, that's kind of where my practice has naturally evolved and I try to do that in daily life as well, like whatever arises, if you can take a deep breath and meet that thing with, it's just like a kindliness as best I can. And when I can't, I try to meet that I can't with kindliness. That's a big part of my practice these days is just like a mindful, loving awareness.
Metta meditation. Yeah, it's interesting. I've, I [00:49:00] have seen that and I've had that journey myself and I've seen that. I know Swami Niranjan from the Bihar School of Yoga more recently. I've seen and heard he teaches a lot more of these heart space meditation. And we do a lot of work with our heads, right?
And in the tantric tradition, they, they say, focus there. To begin with, sort out Ajna Chakra, but the journey lands in the heart we're not going to intellectualize our way through these problems. You can change your intellectual relationship to things, and that's important to establish that capacity to witness, to detach, but just to love, to be able to linger in love and.
Yeah for me that's this, what they talk about in yoga, Hridayakash Dashan Heart Space Awareness, being able to just feel into that space of love towards whatever's happening. That's beautiful.
Yeah. I spoke to , a Swami once who said the spiritual journey is not very long. [00:50:00] It's actually just from here to here,
It's here.
but it's not very far. So I, I kind of actually like actively. think about that sometimes when I'm caught up like when I'm in a shame spiral or if I'm stressed or overwhelmed like of actually physically thinking about just moving here and sometimes I'll even put my hand on my heart and just take a breath and be like okay yeah I can't control what's happening, but I'm back
Mmm.
back here.
So I think that's kind of like the essence of the way I'm practicing now. And it's, it's good. It's really good. It's really, I'm really finding that the actual, like, instead of just sort of witnessing, there's something about actively choosing how I'm responding to the world. That's my choice of who I want to be in response to.
I think what it does for me is it really does bring a wiser, more grounded part of me online. It gives me a sense of [00:51:00] agency this is how I'm choosing. I'm choosing this to meet this in this way. So
e.
or thoughts or events might happen.
And what a lovely way to start the day as well, just set that as the tone of, I'm coming into today with love, whatever
in with love. Yeah.
love. Yeah, that's beautiful. I want to ask you a question, it's a little bit personal, I'll give it some context. Have you ever had challenges with an worthiness or unworthiness?
And, and this is just, let me give it some context. I know that. I have a lot of teachers, my students and other teachers who at varying stages in their own journeys who have listened to this podcast and I think most teachers have that. Experience of like, Oh, I'm not worthy. Who am I to particularly be teaching meditation that should be taught by, [00:52:00] by the sages or the saints.
And it's interesting with, with you, I've seen somebody who, and you mentioned before shame and that you've given so much of your life to becoming extraordinary. You know, you weren't just going to be an average teacher if you were going to do it. It was going to be a sense of, it needed to be the best it could possibly be.
And I wonder if any of that was underpinned by a feeling of unworthiness, of actually I'm not worthy to do this side, I really need to be really, really good.
Hmm, I love this question. I love this question also for any budding teachers, that could be listening as well. So yeah, like for me, like shame, when I say shame is like my, my thing that catches me the most, that is the feeling of unworthiness, by definition that is where my mind loves to go, loves to go there.
So It's interesting to ask that at this point in our [00:53:00] conversation as well though, because. I connect, when I spend time connecting to what to love and to what matters to me and to what I'm trying to do in the world and what I essentially do is I make that bigger than that voice in my head.
Yeah. Like when I hear that voice in my head and it's like, you can't do this, who the hell do you think you are writing a book? Who do you think you are teaching this stuff? You don't have it together. Like what, what kind of nerve do you have?
yeah,
And , I fear, I have always had this fear , from day one of doing this work, I noticed that a lot comes up for me around like fearing the things other people are going to project onto me.
I'm like, never going to live up to that stuff. You know what I I eat chocolate. I have a glass of wine. I drink coffee. I make mistakes. I'm a messy human. And I like, I worry about that. I'm like, ah, I don't want people's projections. So I have a lot of like junk around worthiness.
i
[00:54:00] And I will say there's probably an element of truth in that someone with that patterning, like, I went through stuff when I was younger that gave me a lot of that feeling of insecurity and shame.
And I think I was, what I understand now about myself is I was kind of collapsing under the weight of that. And then this other part of me came online that kind of protected me from that a little bit. And it was this part of me that I call the driver. That's just like, Oh, you are not going to take me down, like I'm going to like just grit and drive.
so I've had to, I've had a journey over the years at learning to do this work and learning to do like regulating that driver part of me a lot more. That part of me has been wonderful. It's given me a lot. It's protected me from collapsing in shame and it's really outgrown its usefulness a lot.
So [00:55:00] that. loving deeper awareness in me does it still to this day, a lot of work around recognizing the shame and recognizing the driver part of me that tries get me out of collapse.
Yeah.
And loving both of them into healing, but yeah, I find just in summary what I would say, just like knowing that there might be people listening to this who are budding teachers, especially because you do a lot of teacher training and you're really damn good at it.
Make the love bigger than the fear, always connecting back to what these practices have done for you, what they can do for others and pat the shame or the fear on the back and say, thank you so much for trying to protect me. just connecting back with what matters to you deep in your heart and just keep moving towards it because it's a life worth living sharing this stuff You're going to add so much to the world and even if it's yourself and the ripple effect that you have in your community and your family. [00:56:00] Beautiful. That's really valuable.
yeah, it can't be underestimated. And look, probably most of the people who taught us had those same experiences of anxiety and shame and whatever else. And the reason I sort of introduced it is an idea. It's just, I've seen you work so hard. So hard. And I've got this theory that it, these qualities have a flip side.
They're not bad or good. You know, this thing of shame. It's like, Oh, I've got, I experienced anxiety. Anxiety is not bad or good. It's just an experience of a fluctuation of the mind. And it just, it can actually, anxiety makes me good because I, I've got this thing of, I don't want to be caught out as a fraud.
I don't want to be caught out as, and that probably comes from an experience of not being liked and being caught out, maybe feeling like a bit of a fraud as a young person. So that childhood trauma has spurned me. I need to know everything. I need to study all, I need to become totally expert in this. And, and we realized, and you touched [00:57:00] upon that earlier in our chat, that We learn all this stuff, so many different techniques, so many different ways of exploring and expanding and extrapolating, but it comes back to this practice of real simplicity, of like, Oh, actually, you know what?
I'm just going to sit with an experience of contentment and love. my breath, notice the sounds upon the morning sky.
Yeah,
It's a big journey to get there
it's a big journey to get there and I think it's a more pleasant journey. It's like, I like working hard for, I, I really enjoy. I also haven't had kids, right? So I've got all this energy to pour into something that I love. And so.I think what's so interesting is if you can work hard, I also think it's not just your anxiety that makes you such a good teacher.
I think you really care about getting it right. And that's why you're so meticulous and well researched. And like the way that you do what you do you care [00:58:00] about it and that's why you do a good job about it. So it's like sometimes it's partially a little bit of anxiety. I think you can't run on that for too long because you just burn out.
It gives us a little trigger, it keeps me coming back to it. But look, the thing that burns stronger than anything, it's my Sankalpa, which is fueled by a deep love of practice because of my experience. Because I had this transformative experience as you had that transformative experience.
It's gratitude of like, wow, I was so fortunate, so lucky to stumble into this room and find this practice. I could have stumbled into so many other rooms, and as I mentioned before, I've got a lot of dead friends.
Hmm.
they didn't get that good fortune to stumble into the room that I stumbled into. And whatever it is, divine providence, luck, or maybe it was a little bit of calculation, I don't know, whatever it was, we, we found ourselves in a situation where we were able to [00:59:00] connect with practice, with lineage, have that transformative journey, and it's like, wow.
There's a gratitude there and there's good fortune. And then that I think sparks that desire. We, we have an obligation to pass it forward. There's a deep obligation.
the torch to each other. Really? Aren't we? Like someone, someone did a great service to us in giving us those tools at the right time in our life. And it's inspiring to be able to be the next person that in the relay race that does the best that they possibly can with care and it is important to pass them down with care, to make sure that thoughtful and authentic in the way and like really carefully passing that torch on to the next person so we can keep
Yeah. Yeah. Keep that light burning. Keep that fire burning. I love the relay analogy. Cause that's sort of what it is. It's like, Oh, someone's passing the torch. You know, a lot of our teachers retired pretty much at the time that we. Started [01:00:00] teaching. So I was like, Oh, okay. Well, I guess it's on us now. I remember what tier of their teachers talking to us.
All right, get out there. It's time. Oh, but, but I might, no, no, no, it's time you need to. And you know, there'll probably come a time where we start. And that's why with my, my teacher training students, I'm like, no, you get out there, you teach, you teach. And, and look, it could be so many different things. I remember what have.
My teacher's talking about just simple belly breathing as this wonderful tool to help us shift into parasympathetic. I think it was Swami Shankadev and he would just talk about the simple belly breath of just returning back to that. If we could teach one practice to the whole world, people are, you know, breathing up into their thorax and hyperventilating and cultivating and
Going into fight or flight all the
or flight and just that simple practice of bringing the breath down into the diaphragm, into the belly. It's incredibly transformative. Anyone can teach that to anyone. I can teach that to anyone in about five [01:01:00] minutes. And then they could teach that to somebody and go, Hey, let's just practice belly breathing together.
That's all it needs to be. And let's just bring ourself into regulation as a group and anyone can, maybe that's where your journey as a, as a teacher begins. It ends. And look, that's enough. If that's all it needs to be, if that's the ripple effect that goes out into the world, that's awesome. maybe some people out there are going to be writing books and running big courses and doing all the things, that's awesome too, that space needs good people in it too, there are so many ways forward.
But the world most definitely needs its teachers, it needs teachers of this stuff out there as the ambassadors for peace. As the ambassadors for Shanti.
Yeah. I love that. Yeah.
Yeah, together, together. So can I ask Melli, and look, we've got another podcast chat scheduled very soon. We're sort of coming towards the end of [01:02:00] this conversation and we are going to have another talk. You have, as you've pointed towards a book coming out. Very, very soon. So you and I are going to lean into that.
Can we just maybe just have a little nibble about what that book is about? Just a little taster for what is to come within the book and within our next podcast.
Yeah. The book name is Deep Resilience. the book kind of maps out this process that I I developed over the last I don't know how many years when I think about it, I don't know where it started or stopped, but the last five years I've definitely been working on this particular framework.
It's basically for staying present and wise. And loving when we're going through the hard times, because that's wherea for most of us, it gets hard to [01:03:00] stay present, to stay mindful, to stay grounded in what's deepest and truest and best in us when things go wrong, when life gets tough, when stress is high.
So I went through some really stressful times in the seven years. It's kind of like one of those one thing after another scenarios. I found myself sitting in my balcony one day feeling like having, I had this actual thought, you know, I think I'm a mental health educator and I feel like I'm on the brink of a breakdown.
And then I got curious about that. So this is kind of like the response. Like, like there's my, that's my shame stuff, right? It's like, Oh, you, you're a bad person. You know, you're not good enough. And then, but I responded to that with curiosity and was like, well, interesting, like, well, you are a mental health educator and this is happening.
So how did you get here? And how do other people get here? If you could deconstruct that, Tease that apart and find the path in. [01:04:00] Find the path out, practice it, develop it, look up the research. tested it and I've been like using it for, and lots of people now. So I've taken lots and lots of participants through this process called the deep resilience method.
it's good. I love it. I've fallen in love with the practice and deep resilience has sort of become more and more of a way of life. So I'm really, really happy to bring out
Oh, this is exciting. It's
it's. It's really cool stuff. I'm feeling like the best about my work and I've ever felt like the most excited and authentic and yeah,
Wonderful. I'm going to hit the pause button there because I don't want to give too much away because I really want to dive into this in our next conversation which won't be too far away. So if you're listening to this podcast, make sure you tune into the next podcast, which we'll be following very shortly after this one.
But for now, I think we can. Rest, I've taken in so much [01:05:00] good information. I can't wait to go back and listen to this podcast and edit this podcast and share it with people because you have such a wonderful way of explaining things and sharing the wisdom with humility and Inspiration, Melli.
That's what you are, an inspiring human being. You're coming from a good space. So please keep shining that light. I can't wait to talk to you again. Thankfully, that'll be very, very soon. And thank you so much for sharing your time with us today.
Such a, such a pleasure. This was like so, so enjoyable and like right back at you, you've doing great work for a real long time and continuing to train people in a wonderful, wonderful lineage of meditation and yoga that. It's getting rarer and rarer for that quality of training to be in the world.
So yeah, I really have a lot of respect for you and what you're doing. Yeah, look forward to the next [01:06:00] conversation.
Yeah, me too. Have a beautiful day and we'll see you soon. Hari Aum shanti.
Shanti
Shanti.
