 So, welcome everybody to another deep adaptation Q&A and this month I'm very pleased that we have Amisha Gardiali joining me and this is interesting for me because, in particular, because Amisha is the first person who interviewed me about deep adaptation after my deep adaptation paper came out and it was, yeah, I didn't really know how to talk about it. I was really quite reticent about talking about it. I was still in my own processing shock, grief, reworking what should I really be doing now? How should I be living? And so Amisha was amazing in the way that she held me in that moment for her podcast, which is The Future is Beautiful. And I wondered how our interview would actually go given the fact the nature of her podcast and the title of it. And yet we explored things which I think were really helpful for me, just that interview, helping me really connect with what I still believe in, what's still beautiful for me. So it's really super to reconnect. What is it? Almost 18 months on, Amisha. Thank you for joining. It's absolutely my pleasure. And I was re-listening to the interview last night and, yeah, feeling what a journey because as we were talking about it, it was very much you were saying that when we'd gone to the green school, that was the third group of people that you talked about it. And then here we are 18 months later and there's an entire movement. There's been so many events and many, many, many people around the world know what deep adaptation is. And it's been one of the most popular episodes of the podcast as well. Yeah. So, I mean, your podcast is incredible. For those of you who don't know, Amisha, it's over 80 interviews now you've done, isn't it? Really interesting thinkers, some of them are well known and some people that I've never heard of before, they featured on your pod. And really going deep into people's worldviews and motivations in ways that you don't often hear. So yeah, I recommend it. Future is beautiful. I suppose you just go to iTunes and type in future is beautiful. Yeah, you can find it iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or we have a website, thefuturistbeautiful.co. Yeah. And I think actually seeing, I can't remember what happened, someone sent me the YouTube video of our audio and it had it had thousands of views. And there was another indication that this was beginning to take off and become the kind of movement that it now clearly is. So yeah, so thank you for joining. So, Amisha, you've given, this was your decision, some two, three years ago now to really explore people's ideas about outside of the matrix, what can the future, what does the future look and feel like and where we can see those seeds now. So you've been having amazing conversations now with many people from around the world. So I'm, and I'm really interested in how there's this, in many of them you touch on this question of inner and outer, this sort of, these people are actually engaged in trying to do good in the world, but also very clear that that own personal journey, their own spiritual practices are important, that often comes up. So I was thinking, is this, is this, is this a reflection of yourself and what's important to you? And what is it that I think is really, that you think is really important for us to know about you in the work that you do? Yeah, thank you for the question. I started this and it started in a slightly different framing but actually still very relevant where we had an election year in the UK and I was feeling like the times of trusting a politician in a political party to create the vision of the future that we choose was no longer the way that the system worked. And so how important it was for each one of us to connect deeper to our values. So not like individualism, like, but more, we are all important, we're all part of the unfolding story and whatever it is that we spend our time, our money, our energy on is creating the future, whether we understand that or not and that was the origins of the project and so I had all these fun ways of getting people to engage with that question, what is the future you choose? And interestingly, it turned out to be a question that many people found very difficult to answer which led me into much deeper processes around it and we had a book and a few years ago I started the podcast because I felt like quite often our world is very siloed and we present certain parts of ourselves which means that our understanding of people and what drives people gets quite warped. So, for example, I mean, maybe I can use you as an example, Gem, but for years you were sharing about sustainability and you show a professional side of yourself so a lot of people that you come into contact with will only know that side of yourself and that's the same for everyone in whatever kind of professions that they're in and so we're often getting these very siloed understandings of people and I feel that that then in turn makes us more siloed because we feel like there isn't permission for all of these other parts of ourselves and actually how holistic and integrated we really are as human beings but also not just as human beings but as communities, as networks, as society and for me one of the things that felt really important was to offer a space that allowed people to be as big and dynamic and whole as they are and share the inner world as well as what they're doing in the world and why they're doing it and really make those connections because I think that that's the part that we can often all really connect with. Sometimes it's hard to connect with a theory or an idea of something that we should do but when you hear someone talking about, you know, those really deep moments that influence them or what keeps them up late at night and you realise it's the same things that keep you up late at night it's easier then to make behaviour changes and take more responsibility or give yourself permission to be more of who you are. Yeah I mean I really appreciated that as someone you interviewed that you really tuned into the personal journey and as I've spent more time on this deep adaptation topic I think that's become so clear that we do self-censor in a culture of mutual censorship of a myriad of emotions, uncertainties and yeah it's that professional face wanting to appear clever in control, have the answers, fear of being vulnerable about in front of others and it then it kind of then means that we don't have an enquiring culture. We have really stupid pronouncements for example on the most recent concern affecting humanity right now with the coronavirus you can see that there's just this so thin veneer of confidence which just doesn't really help. So I'm wondering to what extent do you think that inner suppression, that inner alienation is involved in causing our environmental predicament amongst other problems in society? I just don't think we can separate the two things at all like I really feel that if we were allowed to, if it was culturally normal to bring our whole selves into the workplace, into our decision-making we'd just live in a very different world. If people showed up to work as a father, as a brother, as a friend, as all of those that aspects of how they might be in other parts of their lives rather than as like an employee that makes decisions based on a certain set of criteria, if we were allowed to bring those things together we'd just make different decisions because we'd see each other as humans rather than whatever the the you know the set of data is that we're working to in our in our workplaces and I think that living in a world that is so so siloed and so confusing it creates an extraordinary level of distortion where our values are like true human values and our behaviour are so different and that hurts like every single individual for themselves it's a painful thing to live with but then when it comes to like the wider way in which society runs if we feel disconnected to how that is because it doesn't really give space for who we are and for what's really important to us then we all become so disconnected and numb and you know and we see that in the in the mental health statistics that we have in how lonely and isolated people are feeling in the rise of many diseases you know diabetes these kind of things which are often from not having those kind of self-care and community care tools like readily available to us. So this is this is a big part of your your own personal work as a yogi as a coach and so forth it's that tuning into that inner world and helping people connect with that and and and be more comfortable in exploring and expressing that is that right and then you can you tell us about how how well maybe even in your own in your own personal story your own journey with that and how that's influencing your choices in being active engaged and changing things in in society. Yeah for sure so Gem I feel like when we first met I was I was working in sustainable fashion and I I've always been very like ambitiously like driven to like make the world a better place and I did it in a way where partly also because of the the kind of organizations that I started to work for were very underfunded and so there was just I kind of I learned in my early 20s how to burn myself out through my like care of the world and in my life journey I had turned to I guess I turned to my kind of spirituality only in moments of real crisis rather than in an everyday kind of sense so as I've always been very kind of spiritually connected but was also quite embarrassed about it for a number of years because it wasn't kind of culturally accepted it wasn't I didn't grow up with a community around my spirituality and actually I grew up with the kinds of like friends and people around me that looked down on spirituality and so there were a few moments where it it really really supported me like when I was 21 I was driven over by a four-wheel drive pickup truck and I had some obviously some damage to my legs I had one tire go over my hair and the other one go over my thighs and I had quite a healing process after that which interestingly a lot of it was around the trauma rather than around the physical trauma it was kind of around the emotional trauma and at that time I really turned to my yoga and I went to different kind of healers that were able to help me to work with the pain in the way that the physio wasn't and again a few years later one of my closest friends she got hit by a car and killed in front of me whilst I'd gone to visit her for the weekend and that was obviously a huge a huge life-changing moment for me and again it really connected me to my spirituality and I stopped drinking I stopped like you know doing a lot of the things that culturally people around me in the worlds that I was living in and working in did and I really turned inwards and I went to teachers you know I wanted to understand like what does death mean why did this happen you know where's she gone why was I there is this my fault you know and all of these questions that I had and I went to many different teachers I started to read many different books about death I really changed my lifestyle and and I came to peace with it and and not only peace I came to see like okay what was the gift in this and you know I kind of understood that her soul was free in in that and and and was able to kind of find my way through this this horrible tragedy and and then of course what happened was I got back into London and I was working for the ethical fashion forum I was working for the impact hub I was doing the future is beautiful and it's early carnations I didn't have enough money because none of these roles were paying me properly I was out all the time I started to like socially drink wine with everyone that I worked with because there was a lot of that and I started to feel myself burning out again and and then I had a moment where I actually got ganja la fever which is not something that people in their 20s normally get and it and the funny thing is I didn't really know I had gone to the fever and I was lying on the floor before doing a TEDx talk on the future we choose which was the the book version of the podcast and it was and I had no energy in my body because I had gone to the fever I didn't know I had gone to the fever at this point I just knew that I kept getting sick and I kept pushing through being sick and and I remember I was lying on the floor and the people that were hosting the TEDx talk were terrified that I was going to mess up the event and I was like no no I'm just saving energy and then and then I got up and I did the talk and the talk was fine it's not perfect but it was okay and and then I realized after that I had ganja la fever and I realized how I pushed myself so much even though I'd had ganja la fever all from this motivation of wanting to make the world a better place and that was ridiculous and completely unnecessary and and you know and I you know I was I was doing similar things to what the people five years older than me 10 years older than me that I was working around with doing and it wasn't it wasn't completely bonkers the way that I was living but it wasn't good for my body or my soul and I wasn't doing my best work and that led me to just making this very clear decision that I would make my spirituality the core of my life and that everything else would come from that and for me spirituality it doesn't have to mean like a set of practices and dogma and and any of that it's just that the sort of recognition that we're all connected it's a recognition that there is a sacred element to being here to being in this body it's a remembrance to connect with the earth and the sky it's a remembrance to to find like the the the greater parts of ourself I want to say like the the parts of ourselves that is beyond the ego and the part of ourself that that knows what to do you know and I feel like that's really key at this time that we're all more connected to ourselves as souls so that we understand why we're here and we're able to listen to our intuition so that we know what to do because it doesn't look like a time that we've ever known before and we know that the authorities that we've been giving our power away to in different ways don't have the answers and so for me spirituality was was that and it and and taking care of myself as well and creating a relationship with myself and and actually in the height of in the height of my kind of workaholic isms and and kind of burnout period that the ideas they just come so fast and there was such urgency and I didn't have the capacity to sit with anything to digest anything and to to make like clear and concise steps forward I didn't know how to be with myself and even before in those moments of crisis I'd found spirituality but it had been about leaning on others that were understanding and compassionate and could could open up and like and you know receive me in my grief which I was finding that that my friends or the people around me didn't know how to do and and so for me a big part of that that spiritual journey is being able to sit with yourself being able to sit with all of your thoughts being able to sit in in in the quietness being able to really kind of enjoy on a very very deep sense like who you are and why you're here and when you cultivate a relationship with yourself that's that strong then so much becomes possible what you're able to hold for other people just by being yourself I think is world changing and I yeah I thank you and then I got into this work and I never intended to do this for work but of course you know there's that kind of saying that when the students ready the teachers appear and then of course sure enough I met this incredible mystic that that basically just kind of gave me a nudge like quite a harsh nudge that opened up things that were sitting there that had been there they'd been on the surface sometimes they'd crept out of this into the world a lot of the times I'd been terrified of them they'd been hidden and he just helped me to open up a lot of things in myself and and then I you know I'd been practicing yoga but I started to really practice yoga and meditation and then I did a lot of different trainings and I started to hold space and and my my intention was actually to take these practices back into the world of social change and changemaking and social entrepreneurship but then I found that everyone was too busy and they said they didn't have time to come to yoga or learn to meditate and then sort of through the podcast I found a space where I could draw the the connection between these things together and another aspect of my work is that I I work with clients one-on-one in helping to set up practices that really work for their lifestyle and where they're at and what they need but also working on the subconscious patterning that is actually what we what what it takes our our thoughts and how we live and there's some really interesting work in the field of epigenetics which shows that you know around 95 percent of our thoughts are coming from our subconscious which is mostly formed between the third month that we're the third trimester that we're in the uterus and the age of seven and the so we have our conscious mind which we're cultivating through our intellect and through what we learn and through who we think we are but that's actually not as strong as what was already formed and so so many of our thoughts and emotions are coming from that space and a lot of it is often limiting and self-sabotaging so it's really interesting when you think that everyone that we know is running these programs and you know there are certain politicians for example that we see a lot of on the tv and you can actually see the seven-year-old in them quite strongly but we're all doing that no matter how good we are at disguising it so i started to work a lot with clients on how we actually shift those patterns and for me that's a pathway into greater sovereignty which is how we are able to to move forward as humanity thank you that was really really wonderful to hear your journey and how it all sort of clicks into place um i'm thinking the kind of spirituality you've talked about is is one that i now know is has the longest heritage and has incredible wisdom teachings and practitioners and related to it but is still fairly marginal in in when people think about spirituality it's like it's because you've described one which is very much looking inward it's self-acceptance it's it's being with the inner difficulties rather than just having some kind of quick fix through believing in something so it's that it's that contemplative tradition i think that you're drawing upon there and i'm wondering um i i feel that this is and also that you've connected there to some of the latest science as well and i feel that this is hugely needed right now as uh people around the world are going to be facing ever more troubling changes in their lives and news about about threats and and feeling that vulnerability and and we've seen it yeah you mentioned it i mean it's not just happening at the level of donald trump just seeming to like a consciously or unconsciously operate from fear in terms of let's just have a simplistic answer something i can say that's bold and actually isn't super intelligent in in where the real risk is but but we see that i mean i've seen that in organizations as well people just wanting to look like they're in control rather than exploring things deeply so how how some people call this um sort of cultivating personal or emotional self-regulation how how do we is it possible to do something to bring this uh rapidly into societies to scale up the contemplative path uh to help people be with that emotional difficulty so that they can as you mentioned they find their sovereignty act from their own and also as you mentioned tune into that intuition in them about um as well rather than all that shutting down that we've been doing yeah for sure i mean it it goes back to to school you know if we were able to teach our kids this stuff which actually a lot of them they naturally do and then we kind of teach them how not to do it and we learn all this stuff that then when you get to this place as an adult you've got to sort of unlearn everything that you learned and and then naturally learn okay how do i how how do i actually show up in in my relationships whether it's with my colleagues or with my with my romantic partners or with my family and and so i feel like the education part is a huge part of this and um how we can actually bring this into schools and then of course into work places um but in terms of like the mechanics of it it's quite simple like i um so i have an online platform called Presence Collective where we we do different we have different themes every month that we explore it's very practice based for me it's like it's the it's the integration part of everything we talk about on the podcast which is lots of different different people's ideas and stories and and kind of ways of looking at the world and then for me it's important that we take things away from philosophy into actually embodying them and and kind of and and being that which we value in the world and and so that's what we're doing with Presence Collective and and you know and i've been on that platform very like careful not to just keep for the sake of it making a new meditation you know actually being like let's just do the one that we were already doing because that that's all we need like it some of it's so simple like learning how to breathe and being able to slow down our breathing is it makes such an incredible difference to the quality of our life from our health perspective our emotional health our kind of levels of anxiety our ability to see clearly and make decisions and and that's as simple as taking a breath that's in for four and out for four at any moment that that you're feeling you know a little bit like before you do anything you know and and and then of course it can go into like much more elaborate practices but but for me it's the the the simplicity of it is the is the part that ideally on a on a bigger scale we want more and more people to be open to for me it's like you know if you choose like the path of a yogi that's like that's a whole different thing and you choose to like kind of be in a certain set of set of practices and traditions and all and all of this but that kind of understanding that we are able to shift our consciousness that you know we don't have to be who we've always been like that a lot of that is our patterns a lot of that is because of our trauma a lot of that is because she did this to me and they did that to me and this didn't you know and I didn't get this and now I'm like this and it's your fault you know how do we shift from that into yeah like things are things in life are always tough like and things are always changing and there are always things that are unknown and we can't control everything but the bits that we can control are what we put into our body you know from like a health perspective like it's very simple stuff like are we drinking enough water most of us don't drink enough water and that really affects the way that we think the way that we feel the way that our organs function to how do we breathe uh to how how does it feel to sit quietly to just spending like 10 15 minutes a day with our feet on the ground doesn't even have to put their foot but just outside it's like a lot of it's so simple sorry Jeff I've become aware of all this in so I I knew all this in theory as I was doing the deep adaptation stuff but the the fear around coronavirus over the last month I realized that I have quite a long way to go myself in how to be okay with my to spot my own emotions and not act to fix them just to notice them they're there and I realized that that yeah I've still got quite a lot of work to do in whether it's going to be using a meditative practice or or other practices to be able to have that equanimity because I'm not directly affected by coronavirus just yet but there's that sense of of vulnerability and so it's really it's really helping bring it home to me that there's that you know that that personal development or spiritual work that I need to do to be able to better be with with these these difficulties of which coronavirus is one but there are going to be many many more to come and then and then also to find somehow some joy in the way I can be in relation to those difficulties and how and and and sort of noticing the fear response and the simplistic answer and but actually then going to a different place which is much more loving and caring and supportive and collaborative and inviting people also to become more conscious about how they respond um yeah how are you feeling about rona yeah I mean so I wanted to say one thing about emotions because a pure emotion only lasts 90 seconds which is fascinating because if you see me after a breakup it definitely doesn't feel like it's 90 seconds but the the actual emotion that passes through your body is 90 seconds and then the rest of it is the story and the history and the way that it kind of connects to a deeper sense of everything so when we really learn to work with our emotions we're we're able to to just to be with them and to move them through and to come back into a place of equanimity and I talk a lot about resilience and courage for this time and for me resilience is slightly different to the the deep adaptation um definition but but not not too dissimilar but it's it's that kind of get you know picking yourself back up again it's like now there's coronavirus and then there's going to be more and more things and still we're alive you know still our hearts are beating still still we're here and so how do we how are we able to integrate and move through and like re-show up every single time um and and the courage to the courage required to to be in the heart to live in the heart in amongst all of this fear and you know I think with coronavirus it's I mean it we had a call from Presence Collective and of course the question in the calls is always what's present and then everyone's like uh coronavirus and we had we had a kind of a deep conversation about it and where I've got to with it um is that there is an invitation here to take better care of ourselves and so all of the things that you are talking about from drinking more water to washing our hands to being more aware of how we how our energy but actually how our physical body impacts other peoples um to you know take take the right vitamins to eat well there's there's a there's a conversation about our immune systems in in a very very real way and that's that's that's a wonderful side effect of coronavirus because if that empowers us all to take better care of ourselves um then then that's then that's something that can come out of this that that is really positive and equips us better for for the present and for the future um and and also that with that with the with the panic I think people are turning okay well meditation or breathing or kind of how can I how can I sit with this um it's it's interesting because I'm at my parents house at the moment and they have generally a tv on like all the time so I went to bed last night actually I was in the bath and there was corona I could hear coronavirus news that was louder than my mattress that I was listening to in the bath and um and then I when I when I woke up as soon as I left my room I heard more more deaths and more this of coronavirus and it's it's a lot to to stay centered in amongst that and and I and I do feel like you know we need to to to you know to take the invitations as they come okay so there's an invitation to slow down there's an invitation to to take more time for ourselves um obviously there's a whole notion of what what people can afford to do because there's something that's sort of inherent in the whole self-isolation thing that if you can afford to not have your income or if you if you work for yourself or if you're a freelancer you know you're much more affected by these kinds of things but the fact that all these events are being cancelled and whatnot means that there aren't so many places to go and so and so even if you're still going to work you're you're there's more time for for oneself and so there's a real invitation for self-reflection in that as well as how we do things for me the thing that scares me the most about it is the the racism and the fear of other people that that can arise for something like this and I think in many forms already yeah and I internal emails in organizations which just yeah that's maybe some hidden latent racism there Amisha sorry I want to stop you because we've got some people on on the call yeah and I want to just uh actually go to go to them and see see see what questions they have for you is that okay yeah of course sorry I can talk about this for a long time so um those of you on the call who haven't sent uh Matthew a question yet um uh please do and we're going to go straight to Tamara uh Alfrov and uh yes over to you Tamara oh gosh I've almost forgotten my first question it was um it was to do with thank you um I noticed when in January even the the British press was was posting coronavirus on on the front page for solidly for two weeks and my um my response was I'm not afraid I will not panic I do not experience fear around this um but I and I started to post up on my Facebook threads which in which I was saying I'm not you know I'm not buying into this as a panic situation and I got quite attacked for that um but I'm wondering so you know what is it that you said earlier Amisha that you sometimes lose touch with that inner wisdom with your center with your core so my question was when you do notice how do you notice when you have lost your center because I started getting overexcited and responding and posting and you know got hooked into all of the I wasn't afraid but I was like engaging with all of this stuff that was happening and against my better judgment and I got quite attacked for being grounded and solid and you know unflappable thank you yeah how do we how do you catch yourself Amisha yeah thank you well yeah I mean I think you can feel right when you've come out of center and um and I have noticed a lot of that too that for anyone that's saying because there is a mind I mean viruses are viruses but the stronger your immune system is which a big part of that is your kind of self-belief and you know your um the the more fear there is in your body the easier it is for a virus to come in and so that's that kind of cultivating that that love and strength and compassion and um that that is one of our greatest protections and it is interesting how triggering that is for lots of people um I've noticed a lot of that that um you know there's a balance of course of of um of not putting other people in danger because you don't believe in coronavirus but to say to yourself like that this isn't I'm you know I'm not going to get this like I my system is strong and healthy and you know it is really powerful and and for me I think that the if you have a daily practice it's it's it really helps in not getting off center but we are always going to get off center because we live in a in a world that's not centered and so no matter so I feel like if you're still in relationship with the world which I I I personally want to be in like I could become like a kind of spiritual ninja that's like so kind of hardcore to to the world but I really want to be part of this living breathing organism and like and to feel with everyone but then of course that sometimes means that I will come out of myself and then I have to return to my practice and kind of come back in and and also just just picking our battles because there's there's something about sharing wisdom but then there's also a place where having to just argue with people like having people argue with you just because you've shared something is really tiring and I'm very lucky in the podcast that the episodes are so long that people can't really be bothered to like argue with them okay super oh thank you that's fun Christopher you have a question for Amisha if you unmute and and share your question actually also say where you are in the world it'd be nice to hear shall I unmute you or Matthew unmute you I've I've clicked on mute and you're there you go hi it's three we don't hear anything in the morning here in bulk I can't hear me it's just what you said okay um yes three ish am in the morning here in Boulder Colorado I'm glad to be here didn't expect to be up though so um one of my questions for you is you know we're trained to be consumers of everything you know people workshops stuff so how do you deal with the people come to you who want like what can you give me what do I get from this uh and it seems like myself include I you know for years I wanted a special experience or you know something to you know have a lot of energy to it and it's taken years to want to have something be a letting go or you know a non-experience almost is just as valuable but how do you uh relate or share with people who want just want something from you yeah you're talking about the commodification of spirituality as a way of adding on to one's experience of life and making oneself have more fun than or or I think I've heard the phrase spiritual bypass as well so rather than actually working on one shit um escape that's right yeah yeah how are you in yeah important stuff yeah that yeah it's definitely part of of the world that we're in and yeah there's sort of spiritual bypassing or spiritual materialism where um everyone needs like the crystal and they need to go and do this and they need to do this experience and that experience and I try and really ground people into like the simplicity of it rather than right like so anyone that's sort of within like um my world like with Presence Collective or doing one-on-one sessions I really try and make it like that you don't have to like just go and do all these things to try it like it's it's more about committing something than it is about um having all these big experiences and the actually that that thing that we're committing to can be very very simple as many of the things that I've said today are very simple things that anyone can do no matter what they believe in and one of the things that I sort of stopped doing retreats for a while because I started to notice that they had become part of like top-up culture that was propping up the existing system so people would come to me uh really worn out and then we'd have this amazing week and then they'd go back and then they'd come back again next year and be like oh you're my lifesaver and then I was just thinking I'm literally just helping you to go back and live exactly the same way um so I've sort of shifted my offerings into more um online and one-on-one programs maybe visioning that coronavirus was going to mean that we were going to stop hanging out together but um but but actually the reason I did that was more because I wanted to focus on offerings that are simple that you can do at home and because it's it's the integration it's what you do that makes the difference and and I know because I've also been to many teachers and tried this and that and had this met God in multiple different ways and I just found it really tiring by the end of it I mean it's super exciting but it was like but then it's like hang on this isn't having the grounded impact and actually my values are about connecting to a simplicity and and connecting more to the earth and connecting to my heart and I I don't need all of that in in order to do that so I don't know how you shift it in the whole system but for me what I found is that what I'm able to shift in myself or at least have full awareness of because you know we're human and so even when we have awareness it doesn't something doesn't always completely shift because of the we're in cultural conditioning and cultural patterns right as well but I find that the things that I'm paying attention to myself dramatically does shift who who's around me and who signs up for my programs and wants to to share practices and do sessions with me and so that's something that I've been trying to really offer in the container of what I'm holding yeah it's um I think this is this is key as well but something you said earlier about in when you were in your early 20s there wasn't really a community to connect to to explore and support you in your your own spirituality and and that's still the case for many people and so yeah this question of integration or abiding with this consciousness in over time and so yeah these these we're trying to we're trying to promote that as well with the deep adaptation forum in a non-commodified way um we're trying to make sure that that every well we we intend to make sure everything that we offer is is is free because also otherwise we're going to see people saying are you sort of somehow commodifying people's anxieties around climate chaos um yeah and we really want to we our mission is to reduce harm and therefore we want to just try and find ways of getting out all these kind of practices and helping people find community online or in person that yeah so that's uh it feels it feels massive as a thing I want I'm going to ask you a question before going back to the the question from the group um when I first met you Amisha you were wearing a bracelet so um we've known of each other for a while but we actually were face to face you were wearing a a bracelet of skulls around your wrist and I said what's that you know I didn't really know I thought you were goth or into heavy metal it says oh it's carly and that was it and then I I didn't really understand what that meant and I now know a bit more about what that means now and and from what you were saying earlier in our conversation about your approach to spirituality which is very conscious of emotions it's very grounded it's quite earthy you talk about earth and sky you um uh intuition personal sovereignty I'm I'm one and also talking about taking pause uh and letting come I'm wondering if the notion of sacred feminine uh is is important for you and in what way and why it matters right now in the face of a pilot tragedy well so the tradition that I'm the most connected to um in in terms of my yogic path is a goddess tradition so it the the the kind of understanding is that the shakti the feminine is like all of the energy like everything that's moving and the shiva the masculine is kind of the the unseen that's sort of holding everything and it's kind of it's different to the the sense of the the masculine the feminine is the yin and the yang um where that in that kind of model the feminine is seen as like the the sort of listening like slowness nurturing side and the masculine's like the more the action um in the in the tantric worldview it's it's kind of um actually the the masculine is more that which is holding and the feminine is all of the energy and um for me it's been very powerful to actually to study in and it's one of the things that I I do actually share quite a lot is the mythology of the hindu goddesses and well not just hindu because also tyra and who's buddhist but in in the tantric world it's kind of before before the goddesses were claimed by religions when they just were um and each of these different goddesses have for for me what they are able to offer is some of the this it's the awakening of certain parts of ourselves so for example durga who is the the warrior goddess who rides on the lion or the tiger and she has all the arms and she has all the weapons she for me represents the power of love to win any battle and it's it's the power of love over the love of power and um and and real courage and a sense of right timing as well like in the stories she doesn't just like rush into every battle she actually like cultivates like herself and that she knows that she can you know win the battle at any moment but what's really important for her is that she takes action at a point where it can be received and fully understood so that the karma shifts for the future so durga is my kind of sacred activist goddess and and then carly is uh is a is a favorite as well i mean i don't know you know how can you have favorite goddesses but um but carly asked you this question right at the end yeah because i it is hard to uh when are you doing when are you doing satsang so just really tell her go to amisha.co.uk maybe and get get get a satsang about i i've never heard durga explained in that way before yeah sounds wow brilliant i'm serious i i i mean i'm fairly new to all this but i've never heard it so i do i do share the myths a lot in presents collective but also there's a gift section on my website and there's a it's like free you can listen to me sharing the story of durga and carly for navaratri and kind of what what they mean and i think also lakshmi i explain not as material abundance but as soul radiance the abundant nature of the soul um so so i for me these deities they they offer a way of waking up parts of ourselves that we need to wake up um through story and and of course that they they have their their power i'm gonna i'm gonna go and listen to you talk about those things that's brilliant and share with other people i know who are inquiring into this as well um last question amisha it's coming from michael if you could unmute and tell us where you're joining from hi yeah hi hi misha i'm from hollywood in northern island um and uh i i started listening to your podcast only about three weeks ago just as they were winding up i think um and i listened to a few in fact one of them was you describing a myth of i think it was carly who is chosen picked selected by the gods to um uh effectively kill a king who who gets a bit uh para crazed and uh yeah it's still sort of reverberating in me a bit but um the the question i've got is about the series itself um and presumably when you started it you gave it the title uh the future is beautiful possibly i mean tell me if you differently um without as it were the context of deep adaptations uh attitude uh an approach to the climate crisis and the climate breakdown and um i just um so so what was it i i think it's quite lovely how there is that i've i've said tension in in the text i've put but actually that um um direct challenge to the fact that there is a climate inevitable climate breakdown and yet uh use you call it the future is beautiful thank you michael it's like that question i think i think the question is where is the beauty yeah no it's not quite in an outer material cosmic um yeah where should we just go for that kind of conscious of time as well so can okay sorry it's not that question but but is it is it on a personal level or is it on a a society level yeah okay so i the this title the future is beautiful um is from 2016 and in four years the world has shifted in ways that we can't understand um and it does feel like a bold um title to be holding at this time and that has been an interesting journey for me i didn't know that i was walking myself into that one and um and i stand by this that no matter what happens in the world no matter what shit hits what fans i want to be a purveyor of beauty i want to have a beautiful experience and that and for me beauty isn't like nice it's it's it's really being connected you know and beauty has depth and it's about enjoying on some level like who i am and and the life that we have and seeing amongst whatever chaos the the beauty that exists and there is always some and that's what's so incredible about being alive and i i really feel like i refuse to live the rest of my life in like a anxious lockdown crisis and that no matter what happens i will seek to um to share the beauty in myself in in whatever scenarios we find ourselves in and and i'm happy to be supporting that as a as an idea that no matter what happens we can find beauty and there is beauty and we can share beauty and we can bring meaning and love to the future super absolutely and sometimes then when people say to me jam it sounds like you're giving up i say we're not giving up we're opening up to a wider deeper agenda reduce harm find meaning create joy no matter what uh yeah it's certainly uh it's certainly a not a turning away or withdrawing it's a leaning into these things um and so amisha we come to the end and uh for those of you who weren't on gallery view and those of you who just see the video then you don't see all the beautiful faces i get to enjoy so the beauty of these calls are often just seeing the beaming faces so i just want to say hello samira and stef i've just really enjoyed your beaming smiles throughout call i might just in to unmute you so you just say hello hello okay hi yeah it's really all right i just think it's just the the the the the look of joy on your face as you hear things and nodding it's very lovely to see so i just wanted to say thank you it's a beautiful rich conversation that uh really is enlivening and uh beneficial i feel the ripples and really appreciate the space that it's creating thank you very much and thank you everyone else for joining and thank you amisha for joining and did i get your website right amisha amisha dot co dot uk amisha dot co dot uk and thank you so much this has been a really lovely it's just really lovely to spend this time with all of you and thank you for these questions okay super and uh i'll see uh other people all of you and people watching next month when we have sister jmt joining bye