The early days
Ashiyana Retreat Centre opened her bridge entrance to the world in December 2006. I had pretty humble intentions back then, which amounted to building a house that was to be my home, plus construct a beautiful, wooden yoga shala next door. I imagined running classes and perhaps a few retreats, but keeping it all very shanti. Little did I know!
Together with a friend, I had been running several classes a week throughout the 2005/2006 season on a rooftop overlooking the Arabian Sea (yes, that’s it’s official name). I had left the UK in October 2004 on my quest for a slower pace of life in the tropical paradise that is North Goa. Thankfully, Ashiyana took on a life of her own and attracted guests and retreat leaders from all over Europe, North America, and the rest of the world. She became quite a hit actually, and we struggled to keep pace with the demand, growing as fast as we were able to.
During those early seasons, I vividly remember chatting with our guests around the huge wooden dining table at the centre of Ashiyana’s restaurant. I was always fascinated to hear why guests had come all the way to Goa. Inevitably I would then hear a little, and sometimes a lot, about their lives back in LA, New York, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Vienna, Brussels, Paris, London, Delhi, Bombay, Sydney, Buenos Aires, or wherever else they were from. Our guests were typically 30-50 years old, female, time-crunched, city dwellers, with busy jobs and lives. It was very clear that Ashiyana was offering a much-needed ‘respite from the storm’ of peoples’ lives. However, as the seasons passed by and I realised that many of our guests were returning year after year for their annual dose of rejuvenation, I was also realising something else that was more troubling.
The hot bath effect
As I was getting to know quite a few of our guests I was sensing that for a lot of them their annual yoga holiday or retreat at Ashiyana had become a vital element of their lives. They would arrive utterly frazzled, and then once in our warm embrace, they would rest, relax, and completely unwind. It was as though they were coming home – not outwardly, but rather inwardly, to themselves. They would explain that this sense of inner ease and equanimity sadly only lasted a few days once they returned home, since the stressors of their lives, the tricky relationships, the job, the bills, and so on were quickly upon them. Ashiyana was actually only a brief period of tranquility amidst the unrelenting turbulence of human existence. I call this the hot bath effect – where you get in and feel wonderfully warm, nurtured, and free from trouble, but when you step out, you cool down and fairly soon are right back where you started.
This sent me on a journey of deep investigation and then creative writing that began fourteen years ago and continues to this day. No matter how wonderful and rejuvenatory Ashiyana might be, was she merely an oasis punctuating the vast, endless desert of yet another year? As I think we can all agree, life is tough. Apparently it is designed this way. But certainly over the last couple of hundred years or so, since we came out of the fields with the promise of so much more in the vast collectives of people that we call cities, our health and happiness have likely diminished significantly. We may not be facing seasonal worries about our harvest, but chronic disease has burgeoned, and we lack the support of our multi-generational, nuclear families. We consume food and water that is denatured and full of chemicals; the air that we breathe is polluted, often dangerously so; and we are destroying our biosphere with wanton disregard. For most in the cities, life is neither easy nor healthy.
So what else could I do to support our guests once they returned home? I was fortunate in that I had been clear about wanting to leave city life behind. I had acknowledged that the benefits of the London rat race were simply not worth the price I was paying. This led to me writing extensively, and eventually publishing my first book – ‘Wake up & Soar’, Watkins 2016 (https://amzn.to/3wjMv2G).
During the writing of my book, I had cause to consider innumerable forms of wellbeing, from the most obvious such as eating healthfully and getting a good night’s sleep, to the far more esoteric, such as energy healing and plant medicines. The more I explored, the more I realised that there was almost nothing out there that was anything more than a ‘hot bath’, at best. Plenty of so-called well-being offers didn’t even achieve that status. Nothing seemed to offer longevity of support, and therefore any real integrity.
By definition, anything that is a hot bath is not sustainable, and I was passionate about creating some kind of support system that was truly sustainable. This is, in many ways, the golden chalice – sustainable change. If you think about it, our entire day is primarily a composite of innumerable habits that have become hardwired into our subconscious mind. Habits gain momentum over time, in much the same way that a heavily laden ship or lorry does. New behaviours are often quite hard to adopt, but once they are, they begin to take on a life of their own. The challenge for us living at this moment in human history is that we have multiple, unhealthy habits that are driving us towards inevitable outcomes. During COVID, the trends that were already extremely problematic like obesity, poor diet, loneliness, and inadequate movement and exercise burgeoned. The real pandemic is chronic disease and compromised immune systems.
So how am I proposing to take on this gargantuan task of creating a revolution in wellbeing with any real chance of success?
What you need is close at hand
Perhaps you’ve read The Alchemist, arguably Paolo Coelho’s greatest book. Without wishing to spoil it for those of you who haven’t, I would simply say that we have almost all that we need right in our midst. This seems to be the law of life – when you’re stung by stinging nettles, look around you and you will surely find dock leaves close by, providing their instant relief.
Unfortunately, if you’re anything like me, you will often neglect to remember this great truth when it is most needed. I considered just about every form of well-being support that I could imagine before finally realising, years and considerable amounts of expenditure later, that I simply needed to offer Ashiyana as it was with a tech-enabling layer.
Well, that all sounds very easy, which it most certainly is not, but at least I now had the formula. So what would this app/platform look like in terms of functionality?
The element of our spa and treatment centre offer that I loved the most is what we call HYT – Holistic yoga therapy. This is a coaching-based system that considers the entire lifestyle of the guest and then offers a personalised program for them to begin whilst with us at the centre, and then take away with them. This of course offers some degree of support once they have left us, but falls well short of being a comprehensive, ongoing program of support. However, it has the ingredients for what is required – an in-depth assessment that looks at the life history, any symptoms, and specific goals of the guest and is then translated into their personal well-being program.
This ‘personalised wellbeing program’ is the essence of what I believe to be necessary for optimising our health and happiness. Our HYT offer had precisely the right ingredients, it’s just that our guests weren’t able to take the rest of the hot bath home with them. Allow me therefore to clarify what I see as the vital ingredients for long-term optimisation of our health, fulfilment, and longevity.
The vital ingredients
The coach –
The coach is vital – having a person there who is full of empathy and compassion, is a great listener, and can create and hold a loving space for each guest. On top of that, they need to have a broad knowledge about the fundamental pillars of well-being – sleep, nutrition, movement and exercise, calm mind, positive mindset, loving relationships, a sense of ease in the body, and so on.
Digital element –
The whole digital realm is a double-edged sword for sure, but the possibility for tech-enabled well-being support is beyond doubt. It’s about using it judiciously to enhance the human, expert element, rather than it becoming the epicentre of a customer’s well-being journey. The ideal is to have an app that is delivering support and yet simultaneously inviting and encouraging clients off their devices, and out into nature – the greatest healer.
Personalisation –
The coach understands deeply that no two people are the same, and as Hippocrates himself said – ‘It’s more important to understand the person that has the symptoms than to understand the symptoms that the person has.’ Yet we live in a world that is increasingly bereft of personalisation. One-size-fits-all solutions abound, whether it be airline socks, dietary advice, or pharmaceutical drugs. Reductionist thinking has reached the point where, not least of all because of the promise of cutting-edge hi-tech, we are encouraged to believe that a bot-based app will solve all of our problems. It won’t. It can’t. We are magnificently bio-individual, and what we each require on our journey toward optimal well-being needs to be tailored specifically for us. Not only does it need to be bespoke to our uniquenesses, but it also needs to evolve dynamically with us. After all, nothing in Life sits still.
I’m a massive believer in the immense capabilities of tech, but its ability to replace humans in matters of coaching and guidance is a long way off. How do you replicate ‘bedside manner’? How do you imitate intuitive thinking? How do you teach AI to be compassionate in a nuanced, authentic way? You can’t. Not yet at least.
A truly holistic approach –
Yoga in its original form, thousands of years ago, was truly holistic. It understood, and taught, that one level of our being could not be separated from another – body, emotions, mind, psyche, and spirit are all inextricably interwoven. What affects one layer of our being inevitably affects the others. I shall quote from my book, Wake Up & Soar –
‘So the ancient healing arts realised that for the mastery of health and happiness, a person was required to be deeply attentive to their whole being (with all of its layers). This means consideration of all aspects of our lifestyle – thoughts, attitudes, emotions, food, sleep, exercise, our actions, and so on. For health and happiness to be optimised, everything has to be considered. It is the overall impact of the component parts of our being which determines our overall wellbeing. Whilst they knew that quality of mind was the ultimate controlling force, ancient sages also recognised that the whole of the human lifestyle affected the total picture of wellbeing.’
If someone wishes to lose a few kilograms, then achieving this may well bring some temporary and superficial pleasure. But this blip of happiness and indeed maintaining the weight loss will be short-lived unless they address the underlying mental and emotional root issues. Unless we are very overweight or health-impaired due to obesity, which in any case almost certainly has underlying mental and emotional aspects, then losing weight
is most often a reaction to wanting to improve our self-esteem. In other words, everything begins in the mind and the emotional body, and if a program of change doesn’t address this then it has very short legs. Considering the whole of the human being is crucial if you intend to empower sustainable change.
Community, on and offline –
Loneliness is raging out of control and is perhaps the single biggest wellbeing challenge that we face globally today. For several decades the nuclear family has been disintegrating and we no longer live in multigenerational enclaves, let alone small villages. We have been driven away from our gregarious ways of old by financial imperative, social media, and technology in general. This is the ‘age of loneliness’ as George Monbiot coined it.
Any solution that seeks to empower us towards a healthier, happier version of ourselves absolutely needs to embrace our fundamental need for feeling part of a tribe – a tribe of people like us.
If I summarise the above points, they are these –
- Human coach
- Tech enabled
- Personalised
- Holistic
- Community
My proposed solution
So, with these key ingredients in mind, what is my proposed well-being support system?
In many ways, the presence of an excellent lifestyle coach ensures points three and four are also taken care of. But how would it be if the coach were also able to recommend little, daily practices which over time gain momentum and have a compounding effect? This is in fact the basis of behavioural change science today – that we need to take regular, baby steps that take us in a positive direction.
And what if these daily ‘rituals’ included classes, workshops, and podcasts created by experts in their field? Not just our Ashiyana teachers and
practitioners, but also other experts from far and wide that cover the full gamut of wellbeing.
I have spent well over ten years considering and tackling this challenge. I believe that I now know what is required to enable sustainable change for millions. BEST ME Journey is a human and digital wellbeing support system with four key elements –
- Transformational retreat experience
- Online, holistic coaching with BEST ME Coach
- Personal well-being program in an app
- Community support
- Ongoing ecosystem of retreats & trainings
I would perhaps add a final element – ‘Metrics’, for those who want to track their progress to validate the effort. Measurable results in a meaningful timeframe are little ‘wins’ which release dopamine and give us a sense of achievement through moving towards our goals.
Remember that this is a game of sustainable behavioural change. It’s less about the goals themselves, and far more about strengthening the little micro-muscles that we’re activating through our small, daily rituals. And, if you can do it with small changes to your diet for example, then you can slowly build up your program of daily rituals across other areas of your lifestyle to accelerate your journey towards optimal wellbeing.
Becoming the best possible version of yourself is a magnificent and worthy intention. Surely that’s what we’re really all here for? To confront those sharp edges of our being through pushing against the walls of our daily experiences. In so doing, we grow. I believe that we are all able to live a fulfilling life, but to do so we have to transcend the mental and emotional blocks which are holding us back. We begin to realise that whilst it might seem important to flatten our belly, underneath this superficial desire, there is actually a much deeper calling – to feel fulfilled at a deep level.
As I said before, having a six-pack in itself creates only a superficial blip of happiness, but the by-product is that this eases our troubled minds. This is the elixir that we are truly questing for. Deep down all of us are desperate for
a little more calmness of mind. Unknowingly, almost all the little decisions that we make throughout the day are to avoid pain or to gain pleasure, so that our minds are momentarily quiet and we sense the deep space of stillness at the core of our being.
At this moment in human history, we are crying out for salvation. Salvation not from a pandemic or anything out there, but a resolution to our dis-eased bodies and our troubled minds. This is not a quick-fix possibility though, and what we require is a personalised program that addresses our state of mind, and the whole of our lifestyle, and which empowers us to journey gently but consistently towards the best version of ourselves.
