Awakened Conscious Conversations
Healing the world one episode at a time by offering realistic solutions to the journey of life. Both self hosted ( By The Gentle Yoga Warrior) and guest episodes.
Many of our guests have overcome significant obstacles and transformed their lives.
Rich with deep talks and solo endeavours, often offering tips on living a more conscious life.
Many episodes include a bonus optional meditation!
Awakened Conscious Conversations
Transform Your Life with Vedic Meditation: The benefits of meditation and how it can contribute towards your personal development
What if dedicating just 20 minutes twice a day could transform your life! Discover the profound benefits of Vedic meditation with Jillian Lavender and Michael Miller, the founders of their meditation schools, based in London and New York. Hear Jillian’s and Michael’s inspiring stories of how meditation helped them. Together, they share their journey from high-pressure corporate careers to teaching life-changing meditation techniques.
Unlock the secrets of Vedic meditation, a practice that uses personalised/personalized mantras to provide rest deeper than regular sleep. Understand how this technique not only significantly reduces stress but also enhances mood, boosts the immune system, and slows aging. We also explore the effortless nature of Vedic meditation, contrasting it with other forms of meditation, and delve into how it promotes brain coherence, enhancing memory, clarity, and creativity.
Jillian and Michael highlight the importance of connecting with inner silence to achieve a stable consciousness, and the profound impact of proper technique and in-person guidance. Practical tips from Jillian's book, "Why Meditate? Because It Works," Tune in to find accessible methods for starting your meditation journey.
Their London Meditation centre: https://www.londonmeditationcentre.com
Their New York Meditation Centre: https://newyorkmeditationcenter.com/learn-to-meditate/
Jillian Lavender’s book is available on lots of platforms. Here are a few links
https://www.waterstones.com/book/why-meditate-because-it-works/jillian-lavender/9781529356915
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Meditate-Because-Works-Jillian-Lavender/dp/1529356911
https://www.amazon.com/Meditate-Because-Works-Jillian-Lavender-ebook/dp/B08MFSFL1L
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Hello everybody, I'm your host, the Gentle Yoga Warrior, and this is the finale of season 16. Can you believe that? And today is extra special because I'm not interviewing just one guest, but two guests, which is going to be a first for me I've never interviewed two people at once. Joining us very shortly is Gillian Lavender and Michael Miller, and these two have had an interesting life. They used to work in the corporate world, had high pressure jobs, stress, etc. But through their discovery and love of meditation, they founded not one but two meditation schools, one in London and one in New York, and they've helped thousands of people over the years to discover the wonders of meditation. And what makes their school different is that they do it in a way that is accessible for all, in the sense that they demystify meditation for those who find it difficult and offer some really amazing solutions.
Speaker 1:Gillian has published a book called why Meditate? Because it Works, and I find it really intriguing and enlightening to read and I always like to hear other people's opinions on different matters. I think I found it offered a way for meditation for those of you who are not from a yogic background, like myself, and find it difficult to meditate, and they've got some amazing solutions and how meditation can help us in such numerous ways. So if you listen to this and you struggle with meditation, their school might be the choice for you, and we'll learn a bit more about today as the interview unfolds. I'm very intrigued to do their four-day course as well, and, yeah, I think that's something I'm going to.
Speaker 1:I'm very intrigued to do their four-day course as well, and, yeah, I think that's something I'm going to put in my diary to do in the next few months. So today we will be talking about the benefits of meditation and how it can contribute towards your personal development. So, dear listeners, as promised, here is Gillian Lavender and Michael Miller joining us today. Welcome to the show both. Hi, nice to see you.
Speaker 1:Oh, thank you. Nice to meet you both too, so I thought who better to speak to us today about the subject of meditation than you both? And looking at your work, it seems that you've been doing these two amazing meditation centers for 17 years. Would you mind explaining to our listeners how this all started and your journey on that path too?
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, I'm showing my age here, but I started meditating over 25 years ago. I'm originally from New Zealand and I was living in Sydney and I had a corporate career that was kind of kicking off and I was working the classic thing, you know, long hours and different time zones and it was all a bit out of whack and a bit out of balance. And that's when I came across meditation and actually at a time when meditation was not as mainstream as what it is today, we didn't have apps, we didn't have even mindfulness was not such a big thing. So I found out about meditation through a friend, a colleague of mine. It was his father and he was somebody that I'd known for a long time and I knew that he'd been struggling with insomnia for much of his adult life and had not really found anything that had supported him with that. And then he learned to meditate and I was a bit thrown by that because I didn't associate him the sort of very successful retired businessman with meditation. I had some preconceived ideas about what meditation was all about and I didn't did not put the two together. But anyway, he learned and he started sleeping and that was attention getting.
Speaker 3:Um, I was sleeping okay, but I was. I was always feeling tired, um, and I was waking up feeling tired, dragging myself out of bed. I would kind of have that classic afternoon slump, you know, where I just sort of was powering through with another dose of caffeine or sugar, and so it's. It was clear to me that you know there's that was not sustainable. Um, so, on the back of that recommendation, that's when I went and found out about meditation and and then jumped in and took the course and started to notice some really quite significant changes very quickly. I had more energy, I was waking up before my alarm clock, I was feeling less anxious. I think that was a biggie.
Speaker 3:You know, I'd been feeling pretty overwhelmed, a little bit out of my depth, maybe you know feeling the effect of that, and that changed. I felt much calmer, much more grounded, and so I continued meditating and it's this thing. I mean we can talk a little bit more in a moment about what we actually do for the technique, but it's a twice a day practice of sitting down and closing the eyes, and I just got on with it because I could feel how good it was for me, how much it was changing things. And then I moved to Paris and then to London, and that's where we're based today. And then, you know, I took a time out of the corporate world and decided, you know, I wanted to do something that felt more meaningful and fulfilling in many ways, and that's when I decided to become a teacher of Vedic meditation that was quite a journey and then started teaching in 2003. So I've been teaching for 21 years now.
Speaker 1:That's amazing and I can't believe you've been doing it for 25 years, because you look so young and so healthy and so vibrant, so it's obviously working. Michael, would you mind explaining a bit about your journey into this?
Speaker 2:thanks, thanks, jane, it was. It was similar, except that I encountered meditation much earlier on. I was, I was at university and I had a professor who was, you know, he'd been a hippie in the 60s and 70s and had meditated a lot and he thought it was brilliant and thought we should be doing it. He gave us a little bit of time in class but didn't really give us any instruction. And so I sat down and did something that you know felt sort of meditative like. I crossed my legs and sat on the floor perfectly upright. I had a tennis ball in my bag, I pulled that out, I stared at that. I thought maybe I'll stare at something that'll help control my mind, and I struggled for the next 10 minutes furiously as my mind went everywhere. But there was something that happened. I can remember this so clearly. There was a little bit of settling down and I thought, well, that part that's interesting. How clearly there was a little bit of settling down and I thought, well, that part that's interesting, how do I, how do I get more of that bit? And so I went on a decade long search of doing different types of meditation and I did a lot of yoga. Before everybody was doing yoga and martial arts and all sorts of interesting stuff. Then I, you can hear, I'm American.
Speaker 2:I grew up in the Midwest and I moved to the West coast and started graduate school in Seattle and then moved into a, to a business career, and the whole meditation thing kind of kind of fell away at at some point. Then I had moved to Los Angeles and I was in a, in a corporate role that was very full on, very intense. I could feel that it was having an impact on me that I didn't like so much. And a friend learned Vedic meditation and really in just a couple of weeks I saw such changes in her. She was a lot calmer, she made this big life decision that she had been procrastinating on and she was attributing that clarity of thinking to her meditation practice. And it had not been on my radar at all. But I thought, well, that's interesting enough, I'll go along and hear a talk that this teacher is giving. And just right away I thought there is something here and I'm willing to give it a try. And I jumped in and started and it made such a difference for me.
Speaker 2:You know I'm not sure that to others I would have seemed that anxious, but I always had this vibration of nervousness inside in the background, and that started to fall away. I, like Jillian, was sleeping better. I was actually sleeping less, but feeling more rested I was. You know, I was even feeling a bit confident and that was a new experience for me, and so I got on with it. I was meditating twice a day, every day. I did that for about a year and then started my, my teacher training, and it was around that time that Jillian and I met actually in India on a retreat that our mutual teacher was was leading, and uh, and I ended up moving to to London. Jillian had already at that point become a teacher. I, you know, with sort of marketing skills, helped her out with that as I finished my teacher training and then we launched as London Meditation Centre together in 2008.
Speaker 1:Amazing. What a fantastic journey you both had. What are the benefits, would you say, of a proper meditation practice, and how does it contribute to a personal development?
Speaker 2:I think the question is really important because, as busy as people are, most people want to see an effect. We like to say what's the ROI, what's our return on investment? If I'm going to sit around and meditate for 20 minutes twice a day, that is taking some time and some energy. What am I going to be getting from that? That is taking some time, some energy. What am I going to be?
Speaker 3:getting from that, and that was a big part of why I wrote the book, because I think, you know, there's a lot of talk about meditation. There are many different things that people sort of put under that umbrella term and many of them I wouldn't possibly classify as meditation and other things that you, you know, involve different kinds of approaches and different practices and I I sort of wanted to clear that up and then particularly to talk about it from the lens of vedic meditation, because it's different and I think there are a number. You know the list of benefits is, you know, it's long, it it's all encompassing, I think. If you come back a step and you say, well, what is it doing? What's happening to the whole psychophysiology when you sit down for 20 minutes and close your eyes, whether that's on the train on your commute, or whether you're sitting up in bed with the pillows propped up behind you, or you're on the sofa meditating, comfortably sitting with your eyes closed. You're not chanting, you're not doing anything weird, you know, you're sitting there simply with your eyes closed.
Speaker 3:So when I was meditating we just came back from Cornwall I was sitting on the train meditating. Somebody looking at me would see somebody just sitting there resting their eyes. What was I doing? I was thinking a very specific sound, which which we call a mantra and every person who learns Vedic meditation is instructed in the right sound for them and it's a sound that you think silently, and it's a sound that has a profound effect, an immediate effect on the whole mind and body, because when you think it to, it starts to self-refine, and what that does is it pulls the mind into, very quickly and effortlessly, into quieter and quieter layers of cognition, and and the mind loves these quiet layers. They're really enticing, very fascinating for the mind. So, as a meditator, I'm doing anything. The mantra is sort of doing the work for me. The mantra gets very faint, the mind drops into this state of pure inner serene, contentedness, a reservoir of energy and organizing power, and you settle down into that, and because the mind is settled, then the body can settle, and so the research shows that within a few minutes, you're resting many times deeper than sleep.
Speaker 3:And that's important to note because everybody is tired, everybody that comes to learn. Actually, they don't often realize how tired they are. You know, it's that thing, that classic thing that you know you've been busy, busy, busy. You finally get to go on holiday and what happens? You know, you, that thing, that classic thing that you know you've been busy, busy, busy. You finally get to go on holiday and what happens, you know, you come down with a sore throat or you get a cold, or you know, because your body's getting a bit of a rest. And then the body thinks, oh, right now I can release all this stuff because you know, we've settled down a bit.
Speaker 3:Well, meditation is so much deeper, such deep, deep rest, the technique of Vedic meditation, the deepest rest you can get in 20 minutes, that's the thing that sets you up for all the benefits, because when you get that rest, then the body can clear out the fatigue so you sleep better. It can change the biochemistry of the body, so the cortisol levels are coming down and the norepinephrine is reducing, and so the body's not full of that stress chemistry. The body's activating serotonin and dopamine levels and normalizing all the bliss chemistry that the body knows how to produce. So we feel better because the body is better, and then the immune system isn't being compromised. So you know we are more resilient to, you know, things like viruses and we slow down the aging process. You know this is a big thing. You know, life is demanding, life is hectic. It's not slowing down and that takes its toll.
Speaker 3:And the research is really clear. You know, meditation, that mega dose of rest for 20 minutes twice a day, that allows the nervous system to reset and it takes away all of those activators of the aging process. Stress and premature aging go hand in hand. Being tired is going to wear you down. You're going to make more mistakes, you're not going to make your best decisions. So it's really important in that regard. And then I think the final thing I just want to say is what's going on with your brain when you meditate, and that's the thing that really differentiates Vedic meditation from mindfulness or from focused, concentration-based techniques. We see an optimized brain signature. We see that front part of the brain really engaged. We see a lot of coherence in the brainwaves and that points to all sorts of benefits emotionally and mentally improved memory, more clarity, learning ability going up, more creativity. So there's really not any part of the psychophysiology that's not impacted by getting that deep rest.
Speaker 1:That's so interesting. So your system of meditation? Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that instead of like fighting the brain, saying I must think of nothing, you know how people can tie themselves up in knots and then the meditation becomes a stress in itself because you're thinking what's wrong with me? Why am I not getting these results, whereas the system of meditation that you both teach it? It works with the mind but also clears out the stuff that's not supposed to be there. Is that correct assumption?
Speaker 2:it's. It's really beautifully, beautifully said, the. You know, if you take something like a concentration style, stare at the candle flame or just close your eyes and grit your teeth and don't think, don't think, don't think, oh, no, no, no, no, no, don't think, don't think oh, it's another thought, and stop thinking, you're caught in a catch-22 from the very beginning. We have a lot of people come to us and say you know, I don't think that I can meditate. You know, they'll say, am I undiagnosed ADD? Because my mind just will not stop. And it's sort of one of our missions to inform people that you know, it's not you If you can think.
Speaker 2:You can meditate in this technique because, exactly as you said, we're using the nature of the mind.
Speaker 2:Nature of the mind is to move towards what's interesting, to move towards what's charming, to move actually to move towards happiness.
Speaker 2:And the mantra chosen and personalized for you by the teacher, it holds that promise of happiness and so you offer it up to the mind and the mind just moves toward it so easily and so effortlessly and then, spontaneously, the mantra gets quiet and it slips away and it disappears and you're dropped into that least excited state of consciousness which is who you are at your baseline, this is your source and it's one of the other great benefits of meditation is that you start referencing that internal silence and and that, that source of bliss, instead of looking outside for self-definition.
Speaker 2:You know what's my postcode and how am I doing at work, and does my partner seem to like me this week, and what did my neighbor say about me behind my back? And am I ever going to be able to get a flat with more than two bedrooms? You know all that stuff that we kind of define ourself by. With meditation, you start stepping beyond all of that, really transcending the relative and connecting with something inside that is stable and unchanging and that makes you self-contained and self-referential and balanced and stable in a very, very different way amazing.
Speaker 1:I think it's going to help so many people this because there's so many people I hear that a lot they really struggle with with meditation. They've tried it many times. It's not working for them. And I hear people say, oh, I can't meditate because I can't sit still for a moment. Where it's from your system, you help teach them and I find that intriguing that you you find a the mantra that's right for that person and I'm sure if people come along to one of your talks you'll you can go into more detail with that and to know which which mantra is for which person.
Speaker 3:I find that fascinating it is a fascinating area because, you know, the power of sound is so, it's so fundamental. You know, it's the first sense that we experience. You know we have the five senses of perception, but when we come into the body, it's the first sense that we experience and it's the last sense that drops away when the body drops away. So it's it's a very subtle, uh and powerful way to move into the subtle, and so it's therefore really facilitates that and and getting that right. That's why, you know, we don't teach online, we teach in person. You know we are in the room with you. You need to be taught by somebody who knows what they're doing.
Speaker 3:And when you know how to do it, because it is natural, because we're working with the mind, it's easy. You know, and so then it does. You know, in some ways it might sound too good to be true, but actually, when you know how to do it, it's ridiculously easy and it's a great relief. It's a great relief for the mind and body to just have those pockets in the day where you stop and you let go of thinking and doing and planning and organizing and we settle down and we can come back to that baseline. So it's, it's a. It's a great, you know, relief and a big differentiator between how we spend the rest of our 23 hours in our day. You know a night. It's, uh, very important that we have that balance in life balance is really important.
Speaker 1:It feels like it's like a map to our inner self, whereas before we kind of can stumble through the world and and and trying to grasp things to kind of validate ourselves, whereas this helps us can kind of navigate our way through through life better with by finding a center through this meditation technique. Michael, I saw your talk on finding peace in the kitchen and the mind it was on. Is it pronounced M-A-D or MAD?
Speaker 2:MAD, yes, the MAD Foundation.
Speaker 1:You give people an experience of meditation there by demonstrating and things like that. One of the things that you said in the talk is that to find peace inside is to find peace in the world. Could you explain to our listeners how they can start to find inner peace today?
Speaker 2:There is always a background of silence. There is always a stillness underlying activity. And just to know that, you know it's so easy. If you think about an ocean and if you're living on the surface of the ocean and the wavy choppy surface and that is, and the wavy choppy surface, and that is all that you know and all you experience, then life is wavy and choppy. If you even just know that there is stillness underneath all of that, it starts to change the way you feel a little bit. If you can access that stillness, if you can dive down into it and have that feeling for a little while and then come back up, then you're really starting to feel different. You're experiencing the choppiness, but you know there's something else and that gives you a different kind of reference point, you a different kind of reference point, and then this is what meditation does over time, that stillness inside becomes your reference point and you know that the waves are really just little curvatures of still ocean and that my life is not about choppiness and waviness and the world is not about that.
Speaker 2:If we can settle our individual wave down, that has a spreading effect. You know, you go into a meeting and there's one person who shows up the meeting, who's grumpy and snippy, and it infects the entire entire environment and the the whole atmosphere is brought down. You also know that if you go out with a group of friends and somebody says, hey, do you know jackie's going to be here tonight, oh my gosh, the whole night is going to be great, not because she is a clown or is going to pay for it, just her presence. There are people who carry a presence into environments that that vibration warms everything up and draws everyone in, and we all have that capacity. We all have that capability. Meditation is a very active and specific way to access that place and just knowing and recognizing that and allowing yourself a little gap, just a little moment, before I dive into this meeting.
Speaker 2:I'm going to take a little breath and I'm going to walk in here with intention of not just living on the surface. That's going to change you. And it'm going to walk in here with intention of not just living on the surface.
Speaker 1:That's going to change you and it's going to change every environment you walk into and it will inspire other people to to to be more like that as well, because we can't necessarily change what's happening in the world, but we can.
Speaker 1:It does start with ourself. As cliche as it sounds, change does start with oneself and when we can find that inner peace it affects, like you said, if someone comes into a meeting and they're grumpy and you don't want to be with them, or sometimes it's energies Some people just feel like attracted when you're around them, where I guess this would help give you the mechanisms to be able to kind of just be at peace with yourself, regardless of waves, but equally not just let people walk all over you. Even, julian, I read your book why meditate, because it works and I think it's going to help so many people, because the way you present it, it's all grounded and down to earth, knowledgeable and um. One thing I really wanted to thank you about is when you reminded me to drink warm water. I've forgotten all about that. Obviously that's not the premise of the book, but one the part about when he said about drinking the warm water. But you have all these amazing tips.
Speaker 3:I have been wanting to write a book that seed of an idea had been bubbling away for about of an idea had been bubbling away for about eight, ten years and you know I think it wouldn't have been the right time. You know, I would have been not as experienced in my role as a teacher and I feel that I needed to have more sort of runs on the board, as it were, in order to be able to to write the book and also, interestingly, referencing what I said earlier, that you know the the landscape has changed so much. You know now you can go to your phone and you can download some app in in the hope that it's going to, you know, guide you to sort of some state of inner peace or whatever will get you to sleep or whatever. There's all these sort of meditation appy things on there and you know, guide you to sort of some state of inner peace or whatever will get you to sleep or whatever. There's all these sort of meditationy happy things on there and you know there's a. It's a very different even from when I started teaching Vedic meditation.
Speaker 3:The landscape has changed so much and actually what that did, is it informed what it was that I wanted to do with the book because I really wanted to clear up some of these misconceptions. And I start the book there, really talking about you know the amount of time someone will say to me oh you know, yeah, my running is my meditation. Or you know, gardening is my meditation, or you know. Or you know, I don't think that I can do it, or I don't think I've got time. You know, all these things that I was hearing from people when I go out and speak about meditation and I just sort of like I wanted to really address that head on and also to inspire people. You can do this when you know how to do this properly, when you know how to work with the nature of the mind.
Speaker 3:It is easy and not everything that is called meditation is meditation. We need to get really clear. They don't. You know, when somebody sits down and gets hooked up to an electroencephalogram to look at brainwave activity and they're practicing our technique of Vedic meditation, the readout from that experience is going to be very different to the person sitting next to them who's practicing some mindfulness program. There's going to be two different brain signatures. You know, let's actually get clear about that. Um, it's so.
Speaker 3:It was really you know about how do we get this message out to a wider audience. I want more people to know about this. I want more people to learn that this is doable and it's so needed and so profound in terms of the effects. And we talk a lot about meditation, like a walking meditation talk, but there's a limit to how many people I can talk to, you know. And so I thought, okay, well, the book, let's get this out to a wider audience. And that's when the publishers just sort of happened to kind of come my way. And then we had the pandemic and there was some enforced sort of time to sit in the cottage and write a book, you know, and that's what happened. So it all sort of came together that way. So, thank you, thank you for reading.
Speaker 1:It's a brilliant book and you can get it on most book things.
Speaker 3:I think it's pretty much available, yeah, everywhere, and, as you say, there's the Audible version as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the Audible version as well, and I love the way you narrated. You did it yourself, rob, and we get someone else and your voice is soothing. So, listeners, if you think, oh, oh, I haven't got time to read, then jillian's book is also on audible and other online platforms like that. One of my favorite quotes, which sums up meditation for me, is what you said in your book meditation is the technique to settle down your individual wave on the ocean of consciousness, and that that really got me to thinking, because, you know, sometimes you can wake up and you can feel anxiety sometimes and, um, I have feeling that however people think can affect uh sphere. So if we are a wave on this ocean of consciousness, um, how would you say that we can kind of still that way? Well, what would you do if you think your wave's been a bit choppy? I know it's a bit of an abstract question.
Speaker 3:There's really two directions that we can go. We really let's really kind of simplify this to make it really workable, and I'm thinking of somebody here who hasn't yet learned to practice the practice of Vedic meditation, who hasn't yet learned to practice the practice of Vedic meditation. And you know, we can move in a direction of more churn and more excitation, or we can move in a direction of settling down and less excitation. Those are the two really sort of different ways to go. And you know, we know that there are many things in our world. And you know number one. You know I'm holding up my phone here, but you know these devices are very, very good at keeping you in a state of activity and excitation. And then what is it? And there are other things. You know, certain types of foods and sugars and all sorts of things, even exercise in some ways can create excitation.
Speaker 3:We live in an excitory world. And then there's how do I move away, how do I settle down? And to use the analogy of the ocean, which you know Michael was referencing earlier, how do I get below all of that ocean, which you know michael was referencing earlier, how do I get below all of that surface? You know, to recognize that I'm not some separate, you know entity, I'm actually part of something bigger. Well, I have to de-excite and I think one of the ways and I talk about this in the book, you know you will remember when you know a grandmother or an auntie said well, you know, come to your senses. You know, see to come to your senses. And it's a really interesting point because whenever you are feeling churned up and in that excitory state, even mentally, even just sort of wound up and locked into a particular thought stream that you can't get out of the way, to break that and settle down is very we can do it very quickly, you know. We come back to our senses. So we take a little moment, just a few seconds.
Speaker 3:In that moment, what can I see? The light, the shifting of the shadow, what can I? I can hear that somebody is making a noise in the other room. I can taste the jasmine tea that I had a sip of just before I came on here. What can I feel? I can feel myself on this chair and my skirt and that fabric and my skirt and that fabric, and I can smell a little bit of the, the, this, the feeling in this room, here this we've had the windows open and I've just I've just come back to my senses.
Speaker 3:And when you do that and I can do that quickly what I've done is I've de-excited my whole nervous system and it's brought me back to the here and now, the present.
Speaker 3:And what that does is it allows that wave that's all turned up just to come back down a little bit, just a notch, and it brings you back to what's actually going on, and then my launching pad into whatever it is I need to do is very different and that will affect the results that come from that action. So there's a lot to be said. But coming back to your senses, because that's the gateway into the present moment, and what most people are doing when they're stressed and tired is they're getting pulled out of the present moment by either rehashing the past and beating themselves up about what they did or didn't do, or what somebody else did or didn't do, or, more commonly, they are speculating their way to a sense of feeling good, which is, you know, worrying and you know sort of future-proofing. And well, what if this happens? But what if that happens? And pulled into the imaginary future, and actually what that means is you're not present I feel soothed listening to your explanation.
Speaker 1:It's really kind of like calm. It's oh yeah, beautiful, beautiful michael, I wish, I wish that everyone knew that we're not separate beings that can find fulfillment by achieving or by acquiring.
Speaker 2:You know people think if I can get this or do this, then little old me is going to be happy. And you know I'm a fan of going out and doing stuff and I like things. I'm not some monk sitting on the mountaintop somewhere. Anything outside of you is going to bring lasting fulfillment is an elementary mistake in how we live the world. If we can experience ourselves and fulfillment inside, then what we do is deliver that fulfillment to a needy world around us, and the world is desperately in need of calm, creative, happy people. There's a lot of suffering in the world and suffering spreads, and if I'm suffering, the people around me suffer. If I can find that inner fulfillment, then that's not for me, it's not about me. It's about then delivering that to the place where it's needed in the world and lifting up others who haven't yet had the great good fortune to experience that themselves. Then life becomes one of service.
Speaker 1:Wow, fantastic. I'd just like to let that digest for a moment. So if I'm a listener and I'm listening in right now and I'm thinking, oh, I want to try this athletic meditation with with you both, and I live in the UK or the US, so it's. I know you've got centers in London and New York how can I take the first action steps to learn your system?
Speaker 3:um to an introductory talk. That that's the first step, um, because you know we need to find out, you need to see. Is this something that I'm interested in and that I want to dive in and take the course? And the first step, the prerequisite, is always to come to what we call an intro talk, and those are online so you can be anywhere in the world and you can dial into one of those, and they're all listed on our website. So on both of our websites we have LondonMeditationCentercom and we have NewYorkMeditationCentercom, and those are good places to go to get a bit of background information but, most importantly and most importantly, to sign up for one of those intro talks.
Speaker 3:It's not happening regularly. We just did one yesterday. They tend to be every week at different times so you can work out what fits for you and once you've done that, then you're informed and you're in a good place to then be able to make a decision about. Is this that I want to? To jump in and learn, and that's always in person. You know, I referenced that earlier. You know the course that in learning Vedic meditation is over four consecutive days. So Michael's teaching a course in London this at the moment and that started yesterday, so that was as Thursday, and it will finish on Sunday and it's only two hours each day, and then you've got that tool for life and that same structure in New York, and we teach in different places.
Speaker 2:And we have people flying from all over the world. You know the great advantage of those two cities are they're places people want to visit and so I think maybe the furthest we had someone come from South Africa and, you know, made a little family holiday of it and included meditation as a part of that. We do have a few colleagues scattered around the world grew up then. Then we can, we can sometimes connect them with someone so they can learn sooner rather than uh rather than later, and then we can connect with them at at another time. You know we have many people who then later on come along on our retreats we're about to do a retreat in india and we do retreats in in the uk and in in Portugal and really amazing things that once someone is practicing they can come and plug in, and that's always a wonderful experience to spend a few days of intensive practice with a group of experienced meditators.
Speaker 3:And I think also I wanted to just shout out to Michael's podcast. He has a great podcast called Speaking of Meditation. Shout out to Michael's podcast. He has a great podcast called Speaking of Meditation and that's a really fun way to get insights into real life people about why they came to meditation. So they are all meditators and it's what drew them to meditation. What did they notice? How did they fit it into their lives? You know real people with real stories and it's you know. It's a really great way to kind of get a sense of just how impactful and universal this is. You know so many people from all walks of life doing it, so that's a fun, fun thing to dip into.
Speaker 1:I'll put that details of that in the show notes as well, and I look forward to listening to it as well. Brilliant, brilliant, excellent. Is there anything that we wish? You wish we had covered in the show?
Speaker 2:well, I'll just pitch jillian's book again. Why meditate? Because it works, because the you know it was. It was written during, during lockdown, probably about the time that you were starting this, this podcast, and from that same impulse of offering something to people in a moment of need, and, uh, it reads. It reads so so easily and it is a really, really great way, great way to dip in.
Speaker 2:The other thing I'd like to say is there are many things out there. Now we live in fortunate times and you can download another app on on to your phone. Now you know we found what works for for us and you know we think, of course, we think this is, this is the best, and if it's now's the not top, not the time for you to make that level of commitment, or it's just not possible at the moment. You know, find another app, watch some YouTube videos, go to your local Buddhist center and sit in front of the golden statue with the incense burning. There are lots of ways to access some means of de-excitation, of quietening the system. And, and you know, our message would be if you are ready, do something, because if you've gotten to this point in in the podcast, you're ready for something and anything is better than than nothing at all. Take some first steps, get going and relax and enjoy, because that's what life is meant for perfect.
Speaker 1:Thank you, yes, um, it's a great service to everyone that's listening to this and it's been an absolute pleasure to speak to you both. I'm intrigued about doing a meditation course, so I'm going to check out one of your talks and, dear listeners, I will put details in the show notes, but thank you very much, gillian Lavender and Michael Miller, for joining us today, and thank you so much, wolf. Thank you, jane. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2:Thanks a lot, Jane.
