Anxiety, restlessness, depth psychology and yoga
Episode #1: a podcast with Hilary Brown and James Reeves
Can we learn to just BE?
We’re so thrilled to share the very first Podcast episode of Conversations Beyond the Mat. In this conversation, we invite you to dive into the topic of restlessness, Yoga Nidra, and slowly coming out of the pandemic and how to navigate to wholeness. James Reeves is one of Europe’s leading Yoga Nidra experts. He specializes in iRest (‘Integrative Restoration) Yoga Nidra. Hilary Brown is the creative director of Yoga Moves Training Programs in the Netherlands. Below the start text of the conversation…but listen for the deeper topics that emerge…
Excerpt from full transcript:
Hilary : I think I’d love to start with hearing a bit about what you’re up to? What’s on your plate right now? I’d really love to know what’s current for you
James: Well we’ve just been through quite a year! And haven’t we all in some way, we’re all getting back to life and it feels good. And you know, it’s been a change for all of us. I’m sure for you at the studio has suddenly, shifted from years of teaching public events, transitioning through firstly through “what are we going to do” and then moving to teach people on zoom. And it has been a really interesting experience.
I was resistant to it, to begin with. I saw plenty of other people just jump straight on that. And I was a bit more cautious, you know. Let’s see how this all pans out. And I’ve really enjoyed that teaching. It’s been really great to be with people via zoom, there are. I was just teaching a retreat back in April, with a group of 20 or so people. And the surprise for me is always how much what I’m going to call resonance or presence transmits across the airwaves. It doesn’t really matter whether we’re in the same room or not. There is something about being in a kind of shared field of presence. That’s been wonderful. So that’s been mostly what I’ve been up to over the year is sitting in the little studio that I’m talking from now.
Spending time with people via zoom, which is something I’ve done for years, actually in one-to-one, with the work that I do. Either teaching people about rest or giving people Yoga Nidra practice sessions, or exploring emotional and psychological content. now they’re kind of pockets of the work I do. More and more. We’ve been running events here under the banner of restful being. And yeah, just exploring that whole world of what it’s like to share virtually, but I got to be honest with you anyway, I’m excited to get back to being with people too, right. I’m sure you must feel the same.
Hilary: Yeah, it’s lovely. I mean, everybody is so appreciative who walks through the door, however not everybody’s back in not feeling comfortable yet. It’s you really feel like it’s been in some quiet classes. So what are we what have we just gone through what is this pandemic, man and I’m kind of curious – What do you experience? I feel like the pandemic has taught me a lot in a way about REST. Or about steady still. I can’t say it’s always been in the classical yoga sense. I’ve been super busy as a working person, but also, sometimes the rest doesn’t look like yoga rest looks like too. Too much TV or something and filling in time.
James: How many years have you been practicing yoga – three, four decades, something like that, you can probably sit with yourself. Right? And you know, you have enough skills to know how to relax your body. How to be with your emotional world or may challenge thoughts or worries. And I think there’s probably a divide where some people have had a lovely pandemic and other people have felt isolated, cut off, separated out.
I have been put in that position of needing to rest and not know how to do it, how to slow down. The good news about that is that, whether you know how to do it or not, ultimately, just resting becomes restful. But I wonder, certainly some of the people I’ve spoken to, I’ve met some real challenges along the way. Some of the work, that we’re about at Restful Being and what learning the practice of Yoga Nidra can do for us, is to help us learn how to settle and be with ourselves. That’s a broad brushstroke of what that kind of practice is. It’s not about doing something to get to a state, it’s much more about doing nothing to unravel all of the states.
I wonder how it is out there. Because, obviously, I walk in the yoga world, as you do. But I wonder how many people out there have enjoyed the relief of not having to do anything, but then suddenly go, you know, well, what do I do with this? Right?
Hilary: You know, that’s very true. It’s, yeah, you just remind me of what I forget as a yoga teacher, I forget it as a yoga practitioner – the beginner’s mind. As a teacher trainer is what I’m teaching teachers. That’s the thing that I always add as the mantra, I’m repeating to them. And you remind me again, because it’s kind of almost like a memory, what it was like, there’s a memory of what it was to be a beginner, or what was it like when you first realized awareness in a certain area of your life? Because once you have that awareness, you never have that awareness moment again, because you have awareness. It’s a funny thing. It’s cumulative.
It’s not about doing something to get to a state,
it’s much more about doing nothing to unravel all of the states.
James: It’s curious. Many of us fantasize about rest and being able to stop and then when it comes, it can be a bit confronting, if you’re not ready. And I think that, learning some skills and some tools to help navigate that restlessness that we all feel. That’s the heart of the work that we do you hear and I constantly meet it. And people have that sense of “I don’t know how to stop”. I have to, you know, pull myself back and remind myself, I was just having coffee with a local friend who’s doing some photography for us. And we were talking, and supposing what it must be like, for lots of people who have just had all of this time and space. It’s, you know, we fantasize about having space and time when we’re busy. And then when we stopped, we fantasize about having something to do to fill it. All right. So how do we BE? It’s a really interesting kind of conundrum for many people.