Ashley Zuberi: How to Create a Spiritual Practice (Episode 237)

Productive Flourishing

Ashley Zuberi, yoga teacher, author, and former teammate of Team Productive Flourishing, joins Charlie on the show to discuss how we can reframe yoga, spiritual practices, and mindfulness so that we can integrate them into our days and make them work for us. Spiritual practices and philosophy are best suited to help us live our actual lives more fully rather than trying to create an ideal version of ourselves. Charlie and Ashley discuss how spirituality shows up in our day-to-day life and why it will always be a work in progress.

Key Takeaways:

[2:40] For many people, doing yoga, and cultivating a meditation or mindfulness practice are on their to-do list. Yet, people struggle with actually starting and maintaining these practices. Ashley addresses why people can get stuck before beginning.

[5:29] Creating a meditation or yoga or spiritual practice is hard, and it's because it requires experimentation where people are looking for someone to tell them what to do.

[7:03] One way to approach these practices is by integrating these practices into our lives in a more practical way. Ashley outlines how this plays out in her own life.

[8:34] Charlie reflects on how his relationship with yoga has changed since 2020. Yoga is much more than just practicing poses. In its original form, yoga was a meditation practice!

[12:58] It can be just as, if not more, helpful to do shorter periods of yoga more frequently rather than longer sessions at larger intervals. What has happened is the assimilation and co-opting of other traditions into a Western paradigm.

[15:40] A lot of what drives our actions is being more efficient and doing things more as efficiently as possible. However, that's not the goal in a spiritual practice.

[17:54] Even hugs can be a part of your yoga practice if you are tuning into the present moment and practicing presence.

[21:46] Spirituality is what happens in the moment and not just what happens in the special containers we create for them.

[23:12] Charlie and Ashley discuss what it means to truly be able to show up as your full self at work, particularly now with COVID-19 and working from home.

[25:29] COVID-19 has had some negative impacts on this generation of children, but looking beyond the arbitrary constructs and structures, we can see some other benefits like children seeing their parents at work, and parents being able to spend more time with their kids.

[26:28] Charlie explains more about different types of reality, the objective, subjective, and interest objective, and how this ties into spiritual practices.

[30:01] Our understanding of what yoga is evolves and changes with time. Charlie and Ashley share what it means for each of them and how it influences how they show up in the world.

[34:33] What are some steps we can take to move forward from this conversation and start our spiritual practice?

[43:55] Each of us has our own challenges and struggles with our spiritual practice. What is Ashley feeling most challenged by now?

[48:50] Ashley invites you to try something today that helps you find more peace.

Mentioned in This Episode:

Productive Flourishing

Start Finishing: How to Go from Idea to Done, by Charlie Gilkey

Ashley Zuberi

Eight Dates: Essential Conversations for a Lifetime of Love, by John M. Gottman, Doug Abrams, Julie Gottman, Rachel Carlton Abrams

The Mom Project

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari

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