The Meditation Revolution

Changing the way we see the world through the power of digital well being.

This year, travel has changed for many of us. We have spent more time at home than ever before, sometimes scrolling through our Instagram travel feed, eating ice cream on the couch and wondering when it will all go back to normal again. But being homebound doesn’t mean that we can’t still get that retreat experience and personal growth from the comfort of our lounge chair.

No one knows this better than Sarah Rollins, Director of Meditation at Samyama Life, an online retreat centre for Meditation and Mindful Living. We spoke to Sarah to understand how to cultivate the calm, clarity and perspective that most of us get by travelling, from the couch instead.

“I love retreats! I have hosted in Bali many times and understand the blissful saturation that comes with a fresh, beautiful environment and deep relaxation. I originally developed Samyama Life’s beautiful meditation Journeys for hotels to offer their guests to use whilst on vacation so that they could have the benefits of a meditation retreat from any hotel. But the demand for this retreat experience from home has been huge due to C19.

Interestingly, what I am seeing in my guests now is that they are building so much resilience, strength and acceptance into their character by home-based retreating. They may not be escaping to an exotic location, but they are showing up in a way that is having a profound and lasting impact on the quality of their daily lives. It is so inspiring to see them shift from feeling scattered, exhausted, unable to get to sleep and putting themselves last, to feeling in control of what they give to the world and themselves – it’s very empowering!

At Samyama Life, we tailor everything around creating calm, clarity and confidence through meditation and mindful living. This comes as a surprise to many who think that meditation is only for clearing your mind or thinking about nothing.

We can create very specific impacts on our lives through the right practices, and learn how to forgive, how to let go, how to feel love, how to break negative habits and so much more. And this is not just for yogis and hippies, you will find everyone from CEOs to school teachers doing this as basic self-care. It’s honestly as necessary to modern life as brushing your teeth is. I am going out on a limb here and going to say MEDITATION IS DOWNRIGHT SEXY!”

RETREAT: How can we stay fresh and feeling inspired at home?

SARAH: That’s a question that I get asked a lot at the moment! Firstly, acknowledging that it is a challenging time and many of us have experienced disruption to our daily life. What tends to happen when we impact the momentum of our lives, is that our ‘stuff’ floats up to the surface. Kind of like a river being dammed, you would see the contents of that river start to pool.

This can bring up all sorts of things that we have not felt before or just been unaware of in the flow of our daily life. So when we are challenged like this, we need to use tools and techniques which we may not have in our well being toolkit – and of course, I am going to name meditation and mindfulness practices as invaluable! We need to acknowledge things have changed, then take time to notice what comes up because of the change, and make the adjustments to your routine that will help you today – rather than sticking to the routines you did yesterday.

When we zoom out on the context of our lives and look at the macro rather than micro, it can help us have patience and acceptance for the here and now. Things will normalise over time, and it is a helpful perspective to be reminded of – you can stay healthy and feeling fresh, just the how you do it might look a little different for the next few months. That’s ok too!

RETREAT: Can you talk a little more to meditation and mindfulness, how do those practices help?

SARAH: Referring back to the river analogy from the previous question, when we meditate, we purposefully disrupt the momentum of our lives and we deal with what comes up daily rather than letting it go unnoticed. If we follow a methodical process, as we work through our ‘stuff’, our self-knowledge, clarity, psychological flexibility and acceptance … which makes life much easier!

I work with so many people who are exhausted, often boarding on burned out and have a history of putting themselves last, in fact, I used to be one of them! But with the right meditation and mindfulness techniques, we can realign our priorities with who we are, prioritise our wellbeing and cultivate calm, clarity and confidence in our daily life. It’s just about knowing how to do it. It is very inspiring to see clients find that the momentum of their lives begin to shift, aligning with who they are, as they develop the clarity of self-knowledge and the confidence to act on it. I love helping them achieve this!

RETREAT: What is the difference between meditation and mindfulness?

SARAH: Based on my experience and how I use the two, mindfulness can provide a lovely sense of present moment awareness and an appreciation of the here and now. Our mindful living techniques are often quite short but powerful, helping to bring about shifts in perspective. At Samyama Life, we delve into mindful values … How does my typical behaviour and responses to people line up with what I value in life? Once we understand that, we can be more mindful of how we interact with ourselves and others, using values as our rudder.

We use an active form of meditation known as kriya meditation. In kriya meditation, we cultivate specific and deliberate change to our energetic body, not just the mental or physical body. I love it because I see how powerful it can be to create deep and lasting change for people to areas of their lives that need it.

For example, if someone is having the same troubles again and again in life, we would stimulate the navel centre through the kriya, which is a place associated with assimilation of life’s experiences into wisdom, not just digestion of food!

RETREAT: How can I get started and where should I
start a meditation practice?

SARAH: With a Samyama Life retreat! In my tradition, there is a specific pathway around a student’s progression in meditation. We would start by strengthening and purifying the mind and body, then move to cultivate calm and stability from our practice. These steps are really important to do before seeking any kind of expansion or illumination from meditation as they provide the right foundation to build upon.

If you built a house on a shaky foundation, you wouldn’t expect it to last for long, and we can say the same about meditation. If you go all-in for a practice that is energising and uplifting right away, and you don’t have the foundation of calm and stability in place, you can make yourself very unbalanced. When I work one on one with guests, I look at what they are wishing to achieve, their lifestyle, diet, their existing habits and routines, their state of mind and physical constitution. All of these considerations will play a part in how I would design their home practice.

RETREAT: How can we learn more about Samyama Life?

SARAH: You can access this incredible content via www.samyamalife.com. All the info you need on our mini-retreats and longer journeys is there too. I would love to gift all Retreat Mag readers with a 30% off coupon too. Enter RetreatMagReader at the checkout for your discount!

But if you want to do something right now, you can put your feet up and drop into effortless deep relaxation with free audio designed for balancing the bodies energy pathways and deep deep rest.

Access it here! http://retreats.samyamalife.com/retreat-reader

Sarah Rollins, Director of Meditation at Samyama Life

Looking to offer meditation and mindful living to your hotel guests? Samyama Life has you covered.
Contact our team at [email protected] to see how we can empower your hotel’s wellbeing program.