Welcome to Season Two - Join me on retreat!

Daring to be HAPPY with Lila B

Ep 30: Welcome to season two! Join me for a week-long luxury retreat in Bali this October and learn to meditate amidst the beauty and spirit of Bali - go to lilab.life/baliretreat to learn more! ............ Thank you for your patience in allowing me this break from the pod-is-sphere. It did last longer than I intended so I thought I should first update you on what I’ve been up to.

• I’ve officially moved to Auckland and I’ve got a new day job. I’m back in the foodie industry, promoting awesome, fresh, whole food based meals and catering events
• I’ve taught quite a lot of meditation throughout NZ since last on air, teaching some of the biggest courses I’ve ever taught and I've loved the energy, openness, dedication of the beautiful humans I’ve gotten to spend time with.

So what’s coming up this season?

• Last season I interviewed a lot of meditation teachers. Guests who have really dedicated their lives to living in the present moment and who make it a priority to meditate at least a couple of hours every day.
• And that’s been amazing. But I don’t want it to seem like that this kind of commitment is the only way to live a happier, more peaceful life. So this season, I plan to also talk to some regular everyday people who enjoy profound effects from meditation without having become a monk to do so.
• So guests are going to include Jane, who has used meditation as a well of weaning herself off medication used to manage ADHD. There’s also Andy a business coach who has meditated for over 500 days in a row, simply using an App on his phone. And Dave will be joining us from the UK sharing his experience of how music gave him his first experience of the total awe of the present moment and how that lead him to pursue a career in music as a professional guitarist.
• And we’ll be checking in with a few of last seasons guests who have had some pretty cool developments in life since we last heard from them.

…….. Rajita Ishaya is a yogi, writer and meditation teacher from the UK. We met recently on a meditation retreat in New Zealand and she is here today to recite a poem she wrote during an anxiety attack while on a train. For a full transcript of her poem go to: https://thebendywitch.com/2014/06/21/dancing-in-between-the-is/ This poem was the result of the usual moment when creatively can strike - for Rajita this was during an anxiety attack. The writing process enabled her to get out of the way, focus on the words and move her focus away from the anxiety. Rajita shares how she notices that her anxiety is made worse by the thoughts and feelings she has around the anxiety. But what helps is listening in to something bigger than the little anxiety voice in her head and instead, to observe and discover what lies beyond all that. Rajita shares how meditation has impacted her anxiety:

• Meditation helps you to see with more clarity and what to give your attention to and not to give it to the little voice but to give it the bigger more loving presence which is always there and in all of us. We often don’t give that voice a chance to show up and be heard.

“If my practice slips the anxiety creeps in and if I increase my practice everything seems to get calmer. That’s the key, find something that works and make it important. And carry it through everything, you take the peace with you.”

Resources mentioned: Dr Robert Holden