Hello my love!
I’ve had a ridiculous amount of resistance to recording this episode. There was so much excitement around changing the name of the podcast, and then I headed into my Ashtanga Vinyasa YTT in Goa and wanted to give my full attention to that, so I took a break from social media for a while and then it ended up feeling so good that it’s been surprisingly challenging to get back into it.
But if I’m truly honest with myself (and with you!), it’s because I’m secretly terrified of what the podcast name change means for me. It means getting far more vulnerable and sharing far more of myself than I’ve ever shared before. It means sharing things that are very real and very precious for me, that I’ve discovered and explored on my own journey but that I don’t necessarily have the “proof” or scientific reasoning for.
To give some background context, I grew up in a very strict non-denominational Christian religion. I have always been completely fascinated with knowing the reason behind things, I started reading very big books from a very young age (we didn’t have a TV growing up so I spent a lot of time reading and exploring outside). I was a very, very sensitive, curious and intuitive child, always told that I was ‘far older and wiser than my age’, and I was endlessly reading encyclopaedias and books about space, animals, nature, weather, planets and other natural phenomenons. The older I got, the more this developed into a deep obsession with philosophy and spirituality, and slowly over the course of my teenage years there became a real disconnect between what I was reading about (and what I felt very deep inside myself) and the very distant, vengeful, patriarchal God that I grew up hearing of.
It goes without saying that I was very obviously different to the other children in school (the rules of the religion meant that I had to dress differently to the other children and there were a lot of activities I wasn’t allowed to participate in), so I was fairly relentlessly bullied in lots of different ways from when I started school in grade prep all the way up until year 9 - and of course this is the underlying cause of a lot of the discomfort I’ve felt about recording this episode! The fact of being visible talking about ‘spiritual’ things and being different to other people was only ever a cause of a lot of suffering in the past, and it definitely feels uncomfortable now. But if I’ve learned anything these last few years, extraordinary things happen when I listen to the nudges from Life and take action on them (especially when they’re uncomfortable!).
SO having said all of that - what IS the evolution of Elite Vitality???
The realm of physical vitality is a very comfortable, fun realm for me - I’m very familiar with human physiology, the body and the mind. And of course I love talking about these things, I’m endlessly curious about optimising my own physical health and I love supporting my clients with their own transformations. But very slowly, I started to have a sense of agitation in the background, a feeling of restlessness.
And when I let myself explore that feeling more, it became very obvious that it is an impulse to start sharing the more precious, delicate things I’ve been exploring over the last few years. The things that felt ‘too “woowoo” and whacky’ to share. Because obviously the physical vitality piece is VITAL (it was actually my spring board into the magical journey of the last few years), but discovering and developing my connection to Life, to Divinity, to the unfathomably vast and unfathomably loving rhythm of Existence has been the most extraordinarily transformational thing in my entire life.
I get asked a lot of the same questions all of the time, by people on my social media, people I meet travelling, friends and family:
How do you live your life the way that you do?
Why are you so happy all the time? Are you ACTUALLY that happy all the time, or is it fake?
How do you trust that everything will work out?
How did you decide to just leave and not know what your plans are?
Don’t you feel pressure from society to settle down and have children?
Where do you get all of your energy from?
And truthfully, cultivating an elite level of physical vitality is an ENORMOUS part of being ‘this’ happy and living ‘this’ freely. Increased vitality means increased freedom and increased joy. But the other part of it is having a profound sense of connectedness to something much, much larger, wiser and more loving than myself, and a continuous sense of absolute delight at the gift of being alive.
There is an endless paradox that we are all living in - that we are human beings and that we are also divine. That we are living in a physical body and that we are also a deeply spiritual being. That we are part of a physical, human realm and part of a vast, limitless spiritual realm. That we are Life itself, having an experience of Life!
One of the teachers on the yoga teacher training I did recently gave the most precious example of this. She was explaining the concept that in Yoga, Atman refers to the individual soul or self, while Brahman represents the ultimate reality, the cosmic spirit, or the universal consciousness, and she said that we can imagine Brahman as the entire ocean. Our own individuated self (Atman) is like taking a bucket of water from the ocean, for it to live its life as this specific, contained ‘being’. And we can do hundreds of different things with a bucket of water, just as there are completely limitless ways for each of us to live our own individual human lives in this human body we have! And then eventually, the bucket of water evaporates and returns back to the ocean again.
So how do we find our own rhythm in the much larger rhythm of Life? How do we have a meaningful, delightful experience as our own bucket of water while also never losing sight of the fact that we ARE exactly also the ocean? How do we learn to stay connected to the pulse of Life, the pulse of Divinity?
I have spent my entire life contemplating this in different ways. How do I reconcile the idea that there is a God that demands very specific things from me and punishes me when I don’t comply? Is everything pre-ordained? And if that isn’t it, am I truly just alone in a meaningless Universe? And if I am alone, what about the endless horrifying loneliness and the task of having to guide myself and figure out life for myself? And how to I manage the choking tension that this creates in my body, the distrust, the closing-in, the doubt and uncertainty, the constriction, the selfishness, the isolation? And if this is clearly not at all how I want to experience my life, what then?!!
How do we live in a state of as much love as possible? How do we develop as much trust in Life as possible? Live with as much freedom as possible? How do we feel deeply, deeply connected to the Divine for as much of our daily life as possible? How do we keep the essence and wholeness of the ocean within our bucket?
How do we get back into a state of relaxation and trust and joy and breathing deeply? How can we create enough spaciousness within our bodies, so that we can stop running around in circles in our mind and have a safe, familiar place deep within our body to drop into and rest? How can we get still enough and calm enough to listen to Life herself, Her gentle nudges, Her very, very loving voice?
As we unravel the patterns of tension, distrust, stress, and the endless panic of being alone in a harsh world having to figure everything out - we get to expand into the spaciousness of our own Being. We get to experience more ease, more freedom, more softness, more sensitivity, more pleasure and much, much more delight! We get to feel a sense of wholeness, the feeling of the entire ocean within ourself. The feeling of being far, FAR more than just an isolated physical being found solely within the boundaries of our physical skin.
Life wants to express Herself freely, without resistance! Life wants us as free as we can be, so that we can love even more thoroughly and unconditionally than we ever imagined possible on our own. Life wants to have an EXTRAORDINARY experience of Herself as your own special, unique bucket of water! Life wanted a much more fascinating experience of Herself through me than living in a big city, working in a dull office and sitting in traffic for the majority of my life (trust me, I tried!), and the more sensitive I get to her guidance and nudges, the more incredible life gets.
The past few years have been a beautiful exploration of this within my own self - with Life very elegantly bringing me the people, experiences, places and opportunities that I needed to be able to learn and grow. And although this sounds like a delightfully passive experience of magical things falling out of the sky and into my lap, this is probably the perfect moment to clear up this point - it’s not passive at all (and the experiences and lessons are not always pleasant in the moment), but it does get to be a very beautiful collaboration with Life to grow and evolve and to become more and more free and more and more loving! I get to be so creative about the life I want to live and the experiences I want to have, and I get to take focused, aligned action towards things! I get to apply a lot of energy and effort into my movement practices, my meditations, the connections I make, the types of food I prepare for myself, the level of health and vitality I am creating within myself. And I also get to practice a lot of non-attachment and flexibility when Life gently (and also sometimes not-so-gently haha) brings me experiences that I couldn’t possible have even conceived of in my limited mind!
Looking back now, there was a very clear moment where things started to shift dramatically for me - I’d left Melbourne again and was living in a cute little surf town called Hiriketiya in Sri Lanka, in a beautiful community of wonderful women and meeting so many interesting people all of the time! One of my gorgeous friends had created a space for people to share their gifts in an ocean-front shala, and I went to a Tibetan sound bowl journey there which was hosted by another gorgeous girl who became a good friend. I looooooooved the feeling during that session, the deep, deep relaxation and sense of spaciousness it gave me inside my mind and my body. I had another few 1:1 sessions with her and relaxed more and more deeply each time, created more and more of a sense of spaciousness between all of my cells and a profound sense of floating far, far beyond my body (actually now that I’m writing this, I’m suddenly wondering if that was the first time in my life that I’d allowed my body to relax to that level, and to start to unwind some of the constrictions and tensions and armour that I had developed against the world as a very sensitive child in a bafflingly harsh world).
These sessions were the catalyst for a feeling that I have constantly now, the feeling of my Being extending far outside of my physical skin barrier. The sense of being something far, far more than just my physical body. To think about this pictorially, imagine lighting a candle in front of you right now, and looking at the flame. There is very clearly a centre of the flame (this is your physical body - and it is very important that this physical part of your being is as strong and full of vitality and health as possible), but it is much more difficult to distinguish where exactly the flame ends. In fact, does it even end? Does it extend out to the edges of space and time?
What would it mean for you to experience yourself as a candle flame that extends out to the edges of space and time? What would it mean to be more permeable to Life, more sensitive, more connected, and a thousand times more trusting. How would it feel to be completely held in the arms of Life, in the spaciousness and peace of Her natural rhythm?
I’ve struggled the last few years with the fact that this all feels to ‘woowoo’ to say out loud and in public, but these aren’t especially new or unique ideas! They exist in many, many different spiritual texts with different ways of describing them, and I especially loved recently exploring the concept of the koshas in Yoga philosophy (dating back to 6th century BC) and Isvara Pranidhana in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras.
The word ‘radical’ comes from a Latin word meaning “root”, and the more rooted and grounded I become to my body and in my connection to Life, the more extraordinary freedom opens up to me. I learned verryyyy slowly for myself that it’s not about sitting up in the head and paying special attention to a part of your body. It’s about creating enough spaciousness and relaxation within the body to be able to listen to the world through the body (and finding the right practices to be able to explore this in different ways every single day). I learned very very veryyyyyy slowly that it’s not about going up and out to find heaven, it is about finding the sense of heaven DEEPLY within our own Being, into our body! And about tuning in to the larger rhythm of life with the vibrational frequency of how our being feels.
The more spaciousness and safety and rootedness and peace I intentionally create and find in my own body (through meditation, through yoga, through kalaripayattu, through the way I breathe, through what I eat, through the people I spend time with, through feeling the sunshine on my skin, through a thousand different ways!), the more radiance I feel within my Being.
We are porous beings, and there is no real distinction between where we end and Life begins - no clear distinction between the ocean and our own bucket of water. The light and warmth and nourishment and love from Life completely infuses every layer of our being extending both inwards to our innermost being and also outwards into the entirety of existence, and when we explore this deeply we discover that we are Life itself, and our inner soul is the most radiant, glorious sun. This soul of ours is warm, it is unconditional love and endless luminosity.
What an extraordinary delight to be alive!
What a privilege to have this body, this vessel of Divinity.
What a gift to discover that Life loves us so much, to live in a such a state of love, to open our hearts and explore our true nature of joyousness and freedom!
Welcome to the era of Radical Radiance
I’m so grateful to have you here 🌞✨
Rae xx
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