Ep 13 - Whose Path are You on, with Leigh Blashki
In our latest episode of Breaking Free, Coming Back to Me, we dive into a transformative conversation with Leigh—a pioneer in yoga therapy and a lifelong seeker on the path to authenticity. This episode is a heartfelt exploration of what it means to let go of rigid structures, listen to your body’s wisdom, and step into a life defined by stillness and self-discovery.
Embracing Authenticity Over Control
Leigh’s journey is a powerful reminder that life isn’t about controlling every moment. From his early days in the vibrant 70s yoga scene to his evolution as one of Australia’s leading voices in yoga therapy, he shares how letting go of outdated rules opened up a world of authenticity. He challenges us to question the stories and structures that no longer serve us and to trust our inner guide instead.
“Life is about peeling away the layers of what’s been imposed on you, and revealing your true self,” Leigh reflects.
The Transformative Power of Stillness
Central to Leigh’s philosophy is the idea of stillness—not just as a practice on the yoga mat, but as a way of being. In a world that often celebrates constant doing, Leigh advocates for moments of quiet reflection. He explains that it’s in those moments of pause that we can truly hear our body’s messages and reconnect with our essence.
Whether it’s through yoga, meditation, or simply taking time to sit with your thoughts, embracing stillness can be the key to unlocking deeper insights and healing. This quiet space becomes a sanctuary where you can discern what is truly important in life.
Balancing Structure with Experimentation
A recurring theme in the conversation is the delicate balance between having a framework and allowing room for experimentation. For Leigh, structure provides a safe space—a scaffold from which he can explore and try new approaches. Yet, he also emphasizes the importance of knowing when to let go of that structure to allow personal growth to flourish.
Leigh’s experience of experimenting with different styles of yoga, therapies, and self-care practices has taught him that while rules can offer guidance, they should never become a cage that limits the authentic self. It’s all about finding the balance that works for you.
Listening to Your Body’s Wisdom
One of the most profound insights from this episode is the emphasis on listening to your body. Leigh shares how the subtle signals from our muscles—what he calls the “muscle body”—can offer guidance far beyond what our busy minds can articulate. This awareness, he suggests, is critical in navigating life’s twists and turns.
By tuning into these physical cues, you can better understand when you’re in alignment with your true path and when you’re being pulled away by external expectations. It’s a practice of self-awareness that can lead to profound healing and clarity.
Navigating Life Transitions and Rediscovering Self
Transitioning from a life of constant doing to one of simply being is a theme that resonates deeply in this episode. Leigh reflects on his own journey, from his early days as an experimental yoga teacher to a more contemplative phase where he allows himself to just be. This shift wasn’t just about retiring from the hustle; it was about reconnecting with his inner wisdom and redefining what success means.
He reminds us that life is a continuous process of self-discovery. By shedding the need to conform to external expectations and focusing instead on what truly nourishes the soul, you open up to a more fulfilling and authentic way of living.
Final Reflections
Leigh’s story is an invitation to all of us to question the status quo, embrace the art of stillness, and honor our unique paths. His insights offer a roadmap for anyone looking to break free from the constraints of a control-based mindset and to rediscover the joy of simply being.
If you’re ready to explore a deeper connection with yourself and transform the way you live, tune into this episode and let Leigh’s wisdom guide you toward a life of authentic presence and inner peace.
Transcript for this episode which aired 24 March, 2025
Hey everyone. Welcome to this episode with Leigh Blashki. Leigh is not only a dear friend of mine, but he is a pioneer in the field of yoga therapy and yoga here in Australia and internationally. In his seven decade journey of self discovery, he has traveled a path that has seen him play a leadership role, as I mentioned, in the field of yoga therapy, and meditation.
And he has been passionate about the importance of reputable standards for yoga teachers and yoga therapists.
Since retiring into the vanaprastha stage of life in 2021, Leigh has been able to spend more time and reflection and contemplation, helping him understand and realize who's life he is living. So in this chat, we are talking about the rules that we impose upon ourselves And how we can unshackle ourselves from those rules, how we can enjoy experimenting with life and
how we can shift from a doing phase into a being phase to experience more clarity and peace.
He is such a wise soul and I look forward to sharing this conversation with you.
my beautiful friend, Leigh Blashki, it is such a pleasure to invite you into the podcast chat today. How are you? And really, firstly, thank you for inviting me this really inspired podcast series.
Only a couple of days ago, I was listening to your beautiful podcast with our mutual dear friend, Amy Wheeler, and thinking to myself, this is such a wonderful opportunity is this forum you've created and this platform and the fact that you sent ahead of time, this blueprint of life that you've been working on recently.
And I was. I'm one of these people who's very open to all sorts of things and having grown up in the late 60s and early 70s, of course, the early age of Aquarius, so to speak. Yeah, we were full of all these things. Astrological charts and ascendants and crystals and all that. So I'm not unfamiliar with some of these things, but quite a few of the things are quite new to me.
And as I said to you just a moment ago, as we were preparing, it's quite amazing and interesting how much really points to where we're at. and how our life is being lived and ought to be lived, which is interesting because that's sort of part of the theme of what we're calling this particular podcast, whose life are we living and whose path are we traveling.
So I want to encourage your listeners to take a leap, do one of these blueprints. It's quite fascinating. And look, it might be just giving a few little hints as to what is the life we ought to be living. We can live more in accord with things, not that this is the be all and end all, but I think these little things can be helpful.
So you asked I see now I waffled on and forgot the original question. I was just welcoming and saying hello and how are you today? Thank you. Look, we're such good friends. I hope we are. I love you as and. So just chatting with you is such a wonderful way to, to spend some time and in fact, the few others can eave drop into this.
That's okay too. Absolutely. Yeah. It's lovely to be here and I'm looking forward to unfolding these next little while together. Absolutely. Absolutely. So for the listeners out there who haven't come across Leigh. He was considered or is considered one of the fathers of yoga therapy here in Australia.
And it was certainly the way that I became aware of you, Leigh, that when I was looking at how to support yoga teachers to. Take their knowledge and put it more directly in the hands of their clients. I made a connection into yoga therapy. You at the time were the president of Yoga Australia and friendship was struck and you ended up becoming a mentor of mine and very much a lifelong friend.
But for those who don't know you I will have shared your bio, but what would you say who is Leigh and what's Leigh's soul here to do in this world? Thank you. And that's one of those big questions that one needs to contemplate every so often. And I guess, as I go on, and, now, into my eighth decade.
It's scary, isn't it? That more of the answer to that is and I heard Amy's words too, just being, and I can't go beyond that as the ideal thing to say, because it's really more and more about just being the authentic self with whatever the tools that I've learned over the years, and as part of being that authentic self.
knowing whose path I'm traveling on, is to have accepted that I've learned some things from all that I've been taught and all the stories that have been told me, and to paraphrase some words that you're viewed recently, both in public and on other, in other ways, that I've learned. Learning to tease out what are the lies I've been taught and I know that's a harsh word, but maybe I could use the word the stories that I've been given or told and have formed who I'm meant to be.
And so I guess it's a matter of unpacking and finding out which, if any of that story, those stories are really part of my true essence. And to gradually unpeel those that are no longer serving me well. And it's not that some of those things haven't served well, and most of them being given in good intention.
But I guess that's where I find myself now, in a place that I try not to say what is how I would describe my path? What is my type of yoga? What is my this? What is my that? It's just. This, just this, just now. Now I don't say I'm particularly good at that sometimes. I am a person who jumps all over the place.
And the other answer to that question is, the original question is I've learnt to try and tease out what rules are valuable and helpful, and which rules have been holding me back. And some of your listeners may have heard of me, some may or not, but most wouldn't know that not too long ago I was assessed with autism.
And that made a lot of sense for me based on a lot of my behaviors and experiences in life. But as part of the feature of autism and particularly how it expresses within me is rules. Rules and patterns and certainties in organization is very important for a lot of people. With this particular neurodiversity.
And I'm learning that I can question those rules. And that even goes to the core of, and this is in fact how I came to this idea of this topic. I was asked a question recently by a very dear friend in the states about what's my yoga like nowadays? And I thought to myself, that's an interesting question because for yoga for me was really a whole other set of rules for many years.
It is a rule based practice in many respects. We have our various texts and we follow them, but there's the rules of Your teacher says this, and therefore you do this way. And I've learned that for me, unpacking that and finding what is the essence behind the rules is more important. In a way, I'm starting to become a rule breaker for a person who is so bound by rules.
And there's still that pull. That's that, whether it's some neurodiversity or just me as a person in other ways. There is still a pull towards structure and rules, but living life, read from the stories a lot more, read from the rules, knowing they've all been useful and informative, that is what I'm finding to be what life is about at the moment.
And I'm not sure whether, at last, I'm starting to find a little maturity, perhaps. Lord help us. Because that's what it feels like that, all these structures and things, they're great in many respects, and they are so important at a certain stage. But once you get to a stage certainly for me anyway, I can only talk from my own perspective, those things are no longer necessary.
At some stage, the scaffold has to come down. And we could admire the structure for what it is and have faith and trust that it will serve us well. So beautifully said. And I'm smiling because I'm looking at your life's work, Jinki, which is the gift of restraint and what your particular soul has brought into this life is a it says a tendency towards rigidity or over control which can emerge when fear of disruption takes hold.
And that your goal is to be working towards embracing restraint and learning the art of stillness and measured action to ultimately through that experientially experiential learning have the capacity to hold space and leave with all authority. So hearing you, talk about the rules and how yoga helped to impart.
additional rules which felt safe, which felt contained and measured to be able to embrace this art of stillness and also knowingness of yourself and know when you can allow those rules and that rigidity to release so that you can move into, a calmer authority for yourself.
Beautiful. Thank you. Absolutely beautiful. And yes, when I read that in the blueprint, I thought, yeah, that's me to a T. In fact, I've done quite a bit of work on this whole area of control because some of it is not particularly helpful. And I do some work with a psychologist. I do some work on a 12 step program called Emotions Anonymous where there's support for helping to let go of some control sometimes.
So these things can be quite helpful, but even with all of that, they are still. scaffolds. And at times I feel that beyond them, going beyond them is actually very productive as well. And if I could segue that a little bit into this idea of whose life am I living, whose path am I traveling?
And let me say this in advance that I have so much admiration for you in how you've come to this coming home to this direction within your life recently. I know I've said it to you recently as well. And it's just, it's inspirational just to see you doing it at a time, Much earlier age than I am, obviously a much faster learner than I am, but if there was implicit in a question how do I come to know whose life I'm living and how do I know what my path is for me, for many years, it was go off and learn a whole lot of things, a whole lot of new tricks, a whole lot of new methods.
And what I've learned. And I guess I did hear this probably 30, 40 years ago from a meditation teacher, and I've taught to countless students, this idea of If we want to drill down into the earth to get some richness, some nourishment, whether that be the water that's down or in a time when we were more interested in fossil fuels, we drill down to get the black coals, the oil.
We don't do it by scratching around doing lots of little holes. We drill down a deep hole and we don't just rush down. We do it and we take it, we rest and we still for a while. We assess. Okay, there's that layer, there's that, okay, we can go a little further. We go down, we stop, we assess. Is this still worth going this direction?
It seems so. What we know, these are the layers we, and we keep going down. If we get to a stage where, you know what, this is not going to be fruitful. We can up the drill and find another spot and go down deeper. But for me, much of my life, like a lot of people I see in our dear beloved field of yoga and another.
Areas of contemplative, complimentary health. This is jumping from one thing to the next for a lot of people and they say I'm certainly guilty of this and try the next thing and the next thing. And so I spent probably decades doing that. Yoga was the foundation all along, but there was all these add ons and I realized, you know what, simplify, peel back all that stuff.
And what do I, what does my body say it needs for this? And I kept on getting the answer, stillness and quietness. And so for me, my primary yoga practice now is, whenever I can, stillness and quietness. There are the various things I do, of course, my breath work and a little bit of limbering asana and all the stuff that's helpful for my Annamaya Kosha, my physical self.
So that to me is the key that I need, I have needed, and I suspect others will need enough time of stillness. And withdrawal. Now, history is full of wise people telling us those times of sojourn. You've had one recently and a couple recently. You'd know the benefit of this. And now the other question, and I'll come back to your questions after this, but I really wanted to mention this idea of Who's, on whose path am I traveling?
How do we know? And I keep coming back to a song that I first heard in 1978 by Dan Fogelberg. Not everyone's heard of him, but he's very well known of People of Mayuk, an era, and it's from a song, Netherlands. Once in a vision I came on some woods and stood in a fork in the road. My choices were clear, but I froze with a fear of not knowing which way to go.
One road was simple acceptance of life, the other offered sweet peace. When I made my decision, my vision became my release. And I sat with that for years, and gradually it started to sink in. If I go down the road, simple acceptance of life, how is that different from sweet peace? It doesn't matter which road I took.
Lots of wise people have quoted the saying, when you get to a fork in the road, Take it. Don't turn back. Take it. And there'll be another fork. Whichever way we take there'll be another fork and another fork. And when I do that and know that I'm just allowing myself to flow with the path rather than trying to dig a path and fighting for a path, then I'm more likely to be able to be confident that I am on the path that is my path that I'm meant to be living.
No guarantees, but it'll feel right. And the new unfoldings will just come from it as you've been discovering and of course, hopefully, just about everybody will at some stage, you are a three five and people who are threes specifically are choosing a life of experimentation and trial and error.
And that. That's your journey. That's your very conscious journey of trying things and being okay with saying, okay I've tried this and it's either brought me and I'm using air quotes here, success or not, whatever that looks like and whatever you determine success to be.
And then, okay, now I'm going to try something, but it's very much experimental and not everyone has that, that drive to, try things. So it's quite interesting to have the. The paradox of rules and rigidity with your life's purpose, your life's work with the trial and experimentation phase.
I would imagine that has created a bit of consternation for you in your journey over time. Can you speak at all to any challenges you've seen for your life as you trialed and experimented and gone different directions and come to those forks in the road? Oh, absolutely. And as you say that they seem like they're paradoxical.
But the, as I haven't thought of this before, but so thank you for raising it, dear white woman. As I've experimented, let's call it that, It's the fact that I've always had this sense of framework and structure and that actually has enabled me to feel safe enough that, you can step out, try it, but you can always come back to your structure and your framework.
That structure, Allowed me to try things and look, even the major part of my life's work in, developing some trainings in yoga and helping establish standards that I like. A lot of that was actually experimental. It came about as a pure experiment. I decided to have, to develop and offer a nationally government accredited training for yoga teachers.
There's nothing, it's never heard of. There was nowhere in the world that offered that, that stage. And it it was just an experiment and what we'll just do. And of course it set a whole lot of things off. Yoga teachers running around Australia say, Oh my God, what's this about? We better circle the wagons.
We, we're going to be pushed out of our profession. Who is this guy? What's he doing? And, I addressed many meetings saying, don't be afraid. This is about just some quality assurance in the training. Makes no difference to the profession itself. So why don't we start an association?
And that'd be the, the thing that holds it all together. But it was an experiment. But there was always the framework of, you know what? If that doesn't work, I can fall back to just. Teaching yoga the way I was taught by my teachers at that time and their structure and so stepping out, stepping back, stepping out, stepping back, but eventually what was happening was greater distance between structure and the safe place.
And the things that can be tried to this stage now it feels like they're just almost remote and there's just this something which is a blend of the two in the middle.
You are, we talked about the line right so we said the three, this experimenting and the five is. The leader, and in your instance, it's the impact creator. Having these practical and solution focused nature that offers transformational change and challenges and opportunities for growth.
To reflect on what you've just shared about, taking yoga, which has such a depth and breadth of different styles and different offerings and whatnot, and in different ways to experiment with and use with for yourself and, but to say, okay we're going to create some structure around this for the quality assurance to ensure.
I, it just feels like such a beautiful blend of your experimental experimentation and trial and error with setting rules, and then being a leader in that space to help others, to create more change for others through some processes.
Can you share a little bit about how you came what brought you to yoga and self care through yoga? What brought you into this space? Okay, I'll come back to that question. But let me just one add on to what you just said, though, there that yoga in itself, particularly, let's call it Patanjali based yoga, the Patanjali Yogadarshan, the yoga sutras and yoga based around his teaching, and a lot of Hatha yoga, was experimental.
That was what it was all about. Practitioners were experimenting. We try this. Oh, something happened. Okay. Let's try it again. Oh, okay. It's happened again. So maybe we've got something. It was experiment. It's pure science. As well as art, we experiment, we get some result, we test it again, and then we can eventually be, have some assurance.
Okay, so how did I come to this?
I guess as I look back and in, with the insight of some of the information in that wonderful blueprint, is that I was, probably the number three was life in my life, in the late teens and early twenties. And that was the era I fortunately wasn't. Didn't take two drugs too well, which is great.
I, I, whether it be smokable or anything else I, they did me no good and, tiny experiment, but hardly any because it made me very unwell and that was great. So I left that alone, but a lot of other experimenting with things and just getting out and doing stuff with food and nutrition and vitamin therapy and all this sort of stuff I was played around with in the early days.
But all on top of the fact that I had some health issues, I was born with some, fairly serious heart conditions that were, one was operated on in 1959, which was literally pioneering. I was the 40th person in Australia to have open heart surgery. So it was very new stuff.
Behind the scenes, there was this, you need to keep concerned about your health. And we might say, based on some of these other information you've also mentioned, perhaps I need to get control of my health. And so all these things informed my search for what is it that is de rigueur, is part of the times, that will that's seen to be something to try at the time.
Yoga was it. It was the early stages of yoga. We're talking the early seventies. And, it was just under pop, its head up. TM had just found its way here. And so okay. I started getting involved in that at the same time, doing all the usual things that young people do. And it seemed to be a good fit.
But with all of that I had a sense from the word though. I discussed this with my teacher ag Mo in India in the 90, early nineties, but. I've always felt from my very first yoga class, 1971 in St Kilda that there's something beyond just doing the yoga.
there's something deeper, more quintessential. And it was years later that I started to learn about what the depth of yoga is all about. Because in those first times, I, someone mentioned the word yoga sutra, if you said to me, I would have had no idea what that was about in those days.
That I need to settle the mind to really be clear about what the real nature of me is underneath it all. So I had this belief all along. And so that when I eventually decided to start teaching yoga, my first class was in 1978 or nine. In Sydney, where I was living at the time, and I taught a few classes and it didn't feel right.
So I started drilling down and addressing things individually. I was giving individual attention to people, which is a little bit unheard of. And at that stage, I was not aligned to any particular tradition or anything like that. When I came back to Melbourne, shortly after, I started seeing people privately for yoga.
And I was also excited. Done some study in massage, and I started doing some massage, and I started studying nutrition, doing all these various courses, digging a lot of little holes, but the deep hole of yoga was being established. And so I just started seeing people privately for these yoga sessions.
I'd never heard of the word yoga therapy, and it wasn't until 1991, I think it was, When Mohenji, when I sit with him, he said this is yoga chikitsa, yoga therapy. I was like, I've never heard of that. What's this about? So that's when, I suppose I'd started calling myself a yoga therapist. But let me just ask you, I saw people privately, I did a few classes here and there because that's what you do occasionally.
But I started teaching meditation classes. That was really my enjoyment of just sitting with people in a small group. Had a lovely room in my home and had four or five classes a week and that was it. And helping some people in a gymnasium with some stuff because I had some training in, in, in working with weights and stuff.
Yeah, it's the whole combination of those things. And it just evolved. And it was very much the times when people who were doing yoga did all sorts of things. There was a big cohort of people who did weight training and bodybuilding in yoga. There's the people who originally started power yoga in the States, they were bodybuilders.
So yoga as we know it today, I'm talking about the physical yoga, Hatha yoga, and some of Potentialist yoga was quite different in those days. It was a mixture of a range of things. A yoga teacher was the polymath. In some respects, and the experiment and the gopher digging lots of holes.
So as you think about the theme of whose life are you living and on whose path are you traveling. How has Your path through yoga which has changed as you, you indicated that, over time, the rigidity and expectations that you've held for yourself with yoga have lessened. And now you're really sitting with this stillness and this quietness, how has yoga helped you come back to yourself?
And if expanding beyond that, are there other, Things beyond yoga that you would say have been a big part of that path.
I think my yoga practice, and this is in the broadest sense, whether it be sitting quietly, whether it's doing the yoga practice I'm doing right this moment, which is talking to you, or anything else, helps me see the not self. As the old saying, neti, not this, in, in one of the forms of Advaita Vedanta.
And so it's the peeling away, it's not the adding to, it's the reducing, the peeling away, which I like that concept because I had a great interest for years in Ayurveda, did a little study in it, and in Ayurveda it's very much about not adding things, it's reducing the things that are in excess within us.
That's its main therapeutic approach. And the same thing with yoga, it's the peeling away the layers of the, what's not there. And, the sutras refer to this in many respects, this, that we're, we are taking away the covering, uncovering the light that's naturally there.
So the less I did, the more I felt self. Whereas early days, I was doing a lot, thinking I was finding self. But never quite doing it because it was very hard to see. When you're hunting, running around, looking for something, I do a lot of what's called sense foraging, using my senses to look for things, particularly bird life.
I'm becoming a bit of a bird watcher. And it's very hard to do when I'm moving around. I've got to be still. I can only do it from a still place. Same thing with coming to myself. It's, it has to happen in a certain stillness. Now, doesn't mean I'm always physically still, but there's a, an overall stillness.
There might be a little physical movement, but it's, there's a stillness and an integrity and wholeness with that movement. As a person who's prone to this air energy, we call it in Ayurveda, I do need the physical stillness as well. And the quiet, the silence, because the sound can be aggravating.
And again, that's fairly typical with my neurodiversity, but those are the things. That have helped me come back to me and when I come back to me, I realize this is my life. I don't have to keep looking to discover, am I living a life that somebody would have expected, that I expected? I don't even ask the question anymore.
It's not relevant for me. I'm living my life and I'm on my path. Some people might point to it and say, that's not the path we would have expected for you.
It doesn't matter. Oh, does it matter at all? It doesn't matter at all. At the moment. And you get to a certain age, as well, you say it's I might be turning around the home straight to use a horse race in parlance, but it's, there's not so much time to, to waste in not self. These latter years with hopefully growing wisdom, hopefully, need to come from just being self and letting go even more of the not self. And there's still more to go, I'm still a work in progress.
You have stepped out of the working role of life into a yogic term called raa. Can you pronounce Va Vanta? . Vanta. Can you share what that change has been like for you from going from this? working stage of life and this doing to a more allowing more being and have there been any surprises or delights in that process?
Thank you for using the word allowing as part of this stage of life. That's nice. That fits really well. And for me, it's accepting as well which of course fits with a 12 step person. At first, and it was a bit clunky at first and you were there for much of this and you've seen us and it was a bit clunky at first and a lot of it was promulgated on something that happened externally.
There was some harassment that and I'd been stalked and trolled and there's a range of things that, that sort of. Gave me a kickstart to back away. Unfortunately, an unwell person was was stalking. Anyway, so that sort of said to me, okay, maybe it's time to to back away. I'd been thinking about it anyway, and I'd in a business sense, in terms of lays in according to the Australian tax office sense, yeah, I had retired a little before this, but I was still doing the work and, using it as a hobby, basically, and choosing not to charge people for my services, but was, it was hard to not say okay, here's the new phase of life.
I had discussed it with some senior colleagues particularly in the United States, people who had gone there and were part of it. And I kept on saying what do I fill the time with next?
And yet I had this, I probably had this discussion for over a year on and off with my psychologist about, why are you looking for something? Oh, it feels like I need to do something. When you're retired, you don't want to sit there. You'll rot away. And we know it's good for our physical and mental health to be occupied and all that sort of stuff.
That's me trying to keep myself safe. That's the illusion of safety. But I always had this vision of my father, who was fortunate enough to retire fairly young, and he had this joy of sitting in his little sunroom in his house. He'd sit there at the table with his cup of tea and his cookies there and reading his newspaper.
For the younger people in the audience, this is this big bit of paper we used to read to get the news. And he'd sit there for hours, gazing out, and there'd be some birds in the bird feeder. He'd be as happy as he could be, and I'd just see the contentment and joy in his face. I've got a lovely veranda and I can look out to a big garden.
I've got a bird feeder. I've got beautiful birds of all manner and it's quiet and nothing's a And just sit here and do this. I'll do that. When I first started it, I'd sit there quietly, stillness, quiet, but then now I should be doing, now ha, here comes the should be's again. So it didn't take me long, only about 18 months, before I realized, you know what are you looking for?
Does it feel right to just sit there? When it stops feeling right to sit there, Don't sit there, do what the next thing is to feel like whether it's to make a cup of chai, whether it's doing something in the garden, whether it's to being a dear friend and just share love. It's as whatever is there.
I understand that it's not easy for some people to do that. I accept, and I am fairly grateful for the fact that I am in a life circumstance where I can do that. When I have been able to retire, that I've been able to retire where I don't have to worry every moment about, is it going to be right financially?
We're never 100 percent certain, but if the greater probability is I should be okay for the rest of my life. So not everybody can do that way when they retire, they need, still need to do other things. Some people still need to do, because that's part of their nature. They still might need to be drilling a little further down that hole, but some people, when they retire, that's when they start drilling the hole.
And I understand that I drilled my hole a little earlier because it was part of my practice as part of my life's journey and I made my tarmac. So I'm probably a bit off track with that, but There is no track. Thank you. Said. Yeah, no, that's beautiful. I think it's great to point out that Everyone's life, everyone's journey, everyone's experience.
There is no right way to do it. It's whatever is right for you. And the more we give ourselves permission to. allow that to be to strip away these expectations and these rigid rules that we set for ourselves that no one else has in the same way that our mind has constructed them, right? So when we are able to peel those away and say, Is this true for me and does it serve me?
And whether that's allowing in the retirement and air quotes, the retirement age of life to sit and enjoy a cup of chai or say, actually, no, I do want to dig a new hole and I want to go deep into something now or to say, I've dug my holes and now is the time for me genuinely just to Enjoy and allow and to be in this moment.
And if and when that changes, I flow with that. Absolutely. And if you're, and I'm also mindful of the time. So I'm going to do this as a, almost a bit of a preempting a windup question, is to how do I know, or how does somebody know when they are on, that they're living their own life, that they're on the path, that is truly theirs.
And I've learned over the years, but graduates thinking even more recent times, the mind is not the best tool for, or the best spokesperson to make that decision. My body is. Yes. And I, there's a lovely phrase that. One of my new dear friends, a lady called Amanda Penelva, people can look her up on Insight Timer.
She has some beautiful meditations and the most recent one she speaks about the muscle body. And what is your muscle body telling you? And just to be with the muscle body and when is the muscle body got a tension, a contraction and taking you away from the comfortable, the right, and when is the muscle body saying, ah, this is the right way.
That's how I've been able to do this in recent times in the last couple of years or so too. What's the body telling me about the mind has got all sorts of. stories and well worn neural pathways that, habits that are not going to change easily. The body knows, what Bessel van der Kolk's wonderful quote, that body keeps score.
The body knows these things and it will just tell you particularly the muscle body. And what I mean by that is the, not so much the organs, but the muscle body, because they're the ones that will, Tense them up quickly and we can relate to them easily and they can get that sense of contraction or release.
But yeah, there are other bodies, organ body, bone body, et cetera. That's, for me, that is what I would be recommending that somebody, when they sit in a quietness, if that's their thing, listen, feel into the body, the muscle body, and just feel it. Only if necessary, let words come in.
I love that. I love that. One of the one of the things that Leigh would know very well, and I've mentioned before in the podcast. Yeah. With the Koshik bodies being aware of the different layers of our being. And for me, I did the, I rest yoga Nidra, I've been in the yoga therapy world.
I've always understood quite intellectually the different layers of our being. And I've had some experiential dropping in through the yoga Nidras, but it wasn't until I learned. Yeah. A specific meditation through the Hoffman process, their quadrinity check, which I can't recall if I've shared with you before, Leigh, but they have you not only check into the physical self, but then to also check in with, okay, yes, acknowledging again, what's the intellect saying, which we're usually all quite very closely aware of, but checking in with the emotional self, and then also dropping into the higher self or intuitive self and doing that particular meditation in the way that they taught it.
Which I've actually gone on to repurpose for myself has helped me get clearer messages, wisdom, and understanding beyond the intellect in a way that Nothing in the previous 15 years has landed for me in that way. So whether, as Leigh suggests, you just drop into the physical and you feel into what can the body tell you in this moment, because it stores so much wisdom, It stores so much emotion and the more that we can drop out of the intellect that is the loud, the very loud voice that's constantly going and to feel into all the answers are there.
We're entering a new era where the somatic. Aspects of all forms of therapy will be the main game. Yeah. I think you're right on that. Leigh, I ask everyone the name of this podcast is breaking free, coming back to me. What does that mean most to you today in this moment? So breaking free, coming back to me is, it's acknowledging and accepting that there's a I don't have to push, shove, control, manage, fix anything to just be me.
So I break free of all that trying and the less I try, the more I am.
It gives me chills. I love it. Less I try, the more I am.
And if you had one piece of advice that you could have given to your 17 year old self, or to a 17 year old self that's traveling through life now, what would that be?
I could be very direct in some respects. And say to tell everybody else to, what to do with it. My 17 year old self probably would have then gone and done that. So that wouldn't be good. It would be
take time for yourself. There is no hurry. You'll find yourself beyond the hurry. Say that one more time. You'll find yourself beyond the hurry. On the hurry. Find yourself beyond the hurry. Beautiful. We. It is always such a pleasure to spend time with you, to sit in your wisdom, your curiosity.
Your heart. And I am just so grateful that the word yoga therapy dropped in for me out of the ether while I was doing my, my, my child's sLeighp training and that you happen to be at the helm of Yoga Australia, which is, of course, my home at the moment. And. That friendship blossomed from there. So thank you for coming and sharing your time with us today.
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Li today. Here are my top takeaways from this episode. One, the power of letting go. When we learn how to release rigid rules and expectations, we are freed up to live authentically and trust our journey and discover the true meaning of ease and simply being.
Two, stillness is transformative. When we embrace stillness in our yoga practice or our daily life, it guides us back to our true essence. It's in those quiet moments that we will find our most powerful insights. 3. Trust your body's wisdom. The body holds so many answers. By tuning in to the physical sensations of the body, we can gain clarity on life's decisions and recognize when something feels right.
And also when something doesn't feel right. 4. Experimentation leads to growth. Life is an experiment. Allow the space for trial and error as you discover what works for you fear of failure. Every choice helps refine your unique path, and there is no one way to do life. 5. Balancing structure with flexibility.
While structure helps ground us, flexibility allows for growth and self expression. Learn the balance between rules and freedom to create a life aligned with who you really are. 6. Stillness and surrender. Finding a practice of stillness is so important and this can extend beyond yoga. When we sit in stillness and we allow for life and its uncertainties, it offers us a deeper understanding the ability to surrender into what's unfolding and trusting the
Speaking of which, that leads me to my own personal decision to come back into stillness to recognize that even though conceptually and strategically I had intentions to be launching a new program, coming off the back of my Align Your Life Challenge now isn't actually the time. Now is the time for stillness.
Now is the time for me to pause. Now is the time for me to be. And so I'm going into a little bit of a quieter phase. I've got plenty of podcasts coming for you, but on the work front and launching new programs, things are gonna be a little bit quiet until after I move house later this year. So you'll see me here on the podcast.
And other than that, I'll be speaking to you again in quarter three of this year.