The penny drops's podcast

In this episode, I had the privilege of being interviewed by Aneta Idczak, a Trauma-informed Somatic Teacher and Coach, for her exciting new podcast: "Through a Trauma-informed Lens – Exploring Soma, Psyche, and Soul."

Several years ago, I delved into the world of trauma-informed approaches with Aneta, and our collaboration has since flourished. I've been honoured to participate in her annual virtual summit: "Through a Trauma-informed Lens: Yoga, Embodied Resilience, and Business." Mark your calendars, as the next summit is scheduled for February 2024.

During our engaging conversation, we explored the profound influence of breath and the significance of somatic practices, particularly when confronting mental health challenges such as stress, anxiety, and trauma. (Please be forewarned – you might catch a few candid rants along the way! LOL)

Our dialogue also delved into how we both provide our respective training and the invaluable lessons we aspire to impart to our trainees.

Now, sit back, relax, and immerse yourself in this episode. If you're keen to discover more about Aneta's work, visit her website at www.anetai.co.ukAnd for those interested in exploring upcoming Breathwork and Pranayama for Health professional training, click on this link:https://yogalaurent.com/yoga-teacher-training-uk

In this episode, Laurent speaks about the benefits of shifting away from our ingrained habits of thinking frontally all the time, which can burden our bodies and minds.

Instead, he invites us to develop an awareness of the back of our body, which enhances the mind-body connection. By focusing on this area, you cultivate a deeper relationship between your physical sensations and mental state. Paying attention to the back of our body automatically brings us into the present moment and consequently promotes relaxation, which can be very calming.

In the episode, Laurent beautifully illustrates the shift of our awareness through a meditation that starts at minute 16'20".

In this episode, I had the privilege of being interviewed by Lilly Balch from the Morning Ritual Podcast, a dedicated meditation podcast that provides listeners with reflections and techniques for inner peace.

During our collaboration, we discussed embracing a slower pace in yoga, movement, breathing, meditation, and daily life. By consciously letting go and doing less, we explored how it can lead to being more present with ourselves.

The conversation was inspired by my blog post titled "Seven Tips to Do Less and Receive More", which I published in March 2023.

Throughout our discussion, we explored the challenges of adopting a mindset of doing less and shared various techniques and tips based on those seven tips.

Towards the end of the episode, I offered a guided meditation based on the tips mentioned in the blog and our conversation. If you want to skip to the meditation, go straight to minute 39:08.

Sit back, relax, and enjoy listening to this episode. And if you're interested, you can also listen to Lilly Balch's podcast directly using this link: https://www.lillybalch.com/podcast or subscribe to 'The Morning Ritual' on your favourite podcast platforms.

Pranayama and meditation are deeply rooted in the yoga tradition.

Together, and with other tools, they contribute to progressively more profound levels of meditative experiences. These tools are described in Pantajali’s Eight Limbs of Yoga.

It is interesting to see where pranayama is positioned on this list.

It is placed after the physical yogic experience (asanas) and before the subtler practices of internalisation (pratyahara), concentration (dharana), and meditation (dhyana).

Patanjali tells us that breath is the only open the door to meditation and enlightenment (samadhi).

According to Yoga, meditation is about finding inner stillness, liberation, and spiritual enlightenment where the self, the mind, and the object of meditation merge into one.

To achieve this, we must patiently go through different stages and techniques where the breath is omnipresent.

A well-designed plan of numerous methods is required to experience a profoundly satisfying meditation day after day.

This plan has five stages, and we will experience them together in a 22-min meditation starting at 10':10".

In this episode, Laurent explains the difference between external respiration (normal breathing) and internal respiration (cellular breathing).

Although each of those different ways to breathe has specific roles in keeping us healthy, they are inseparable and feed each other.

The meditation in this episode shows us the way toward a deep place within ourselves and connects us to cellular breathing.

A place where our consciousness expands and connects us to the oneness of our infinite-celled landscape.
Cellular breathing generates life and energy and brings greater awareness of our true selves. Let's experience this calming and silent cellular breathing together.

The meditation starts at 12'25''.

If you are interested in learning Breathwork and Pranayama with Laurent, please click here for more information ›

In this episode, Laurent offers a short meditation to connect with our vital force, the breath.

This calming and explorative breathing technique can give us a sense of presence and a deeper awareness of how we feel in this moment.

It helps us to gain a feeling of ease and makes us more acutely attuned to our body and being.

Laurent understands the importance of teaching how to connect with the breath before we enterprise any other breathwork or meditation to stay safe and benefit significantly from our practice.

This meditation can be practised solely as a peaceful way to be with ourselves and experience some well-deserved calm.

The meditation starts at 00:05:36

If you are interested in learning Breathwork and Pranayama with Laurent, please click here for more information: https://yogalaurent.com/yoga-teacher-training-uk/pranayama-and-breathwork-teacher-training/

This episode is the first of a series of three talks about the practical and classic steps to learn in Yogic meditation.

In this recording, Laurent explains the importance of learning how to internalise and rest our senses before we start exploring the deepest stages of meditation.

After speaking about the essential art of Pratyahara (the withdrawal of the senses), you will experience a relaxing and soothing 40 mins meditation called: ‘Resting your senses meditation’ to help you detach yourself from the external distractions, noises, negative impressions etc.

This practical, straightforward, informative episode will help you start or refine your meditation practice.

Skip to minute 16:02 to jump directly into the practice.

In this Episode, Laurent helps and gives tips to achieve a balanced and relaxed posture to experience a pleasant meditation. With his years of practice and teaching breathwork and meditation classes and courses, he collected the most common questions and issues encountered by himself and his student in this podcast. He is sharing his tips and 20 minutes of practice at the end of the recording.

This practical and straightforward informative episode will help you start or refine your meditation practice.

In this Episode, Laurent helps and gives tips to achieve a balanced and relaxed posture to experience a pleasant meditation. With his years of practice and teaching breathwork and meditation classes and courses, he collected the most common questions and issues encountered by himself and his student in this podcast. He is sharing his tips and 20 minutes of practice at the end of the recording.

This practical and straightforward informative episode will help you start or refine your meditation practice.

In this episode, Laurent offers a 30-min simple deep relaxation yoga Nidra (conscious sleep meditation), which intends to rest the body and the mind for rejuvenation and building gentle energy. Laurent’s simple guidelines and practices suggest bringing peace and calm into the most profound part of our being to encourage growth, recovery and strength.

This practice is designed to be accessible to all levels.

This yoga Nidra was recorded during Laurent’s one day retreat at St Mary Church, Wimbledon Village, London – Winter 2022.

Have you ever heard the beautiful sound of chanting in Sanskrit?

Sanskrit is an ancient Indo-European language of India used in Hindu scriptures and classical Indian epic poems. The beauty of its sound has the power of enchanting and calming the mind and the soul!

In this fun episode, Laurent meets Elena Jessup, a native New Yorker who has been teaching Sanskrit to children and adults for over twenty-five years in the UK.

She is an author, a scholar and the founder of Modern Sanskrit Collective, which aims to promote Sanskrit in the wider community.
They speak about the origins, history, structure, uses of this language, but the highlight of this episode is Laurent’s attempt to learn the Sanskrit’s alphabet – worth a listen!

Learn more about Elena’s work, teaching and events on www.modernsanskritcollective.org

In this episode, Laurent speaks to two guts and digestive health specialists: Beth Jeffries, a registered and nutritional therapist and health coach and Samantha Koch, a gut health and wholefood advocate.

Together, they speak about the importance of keeping our gut healthy and its relationship with mental health and give some tips to improve wellbeing and be happy in life.

Beth Jeffries
blossomwithbetsy.com Instagram - @blossomwithbetsy

Samantha Koch
Instagram- @healthyhappy.biz
Upcoming retreat - mandali.org/retreats/healthyhappy

In this new episode on The Penny Drops, Joey and Laurent discuss equanimity, compassion and mindfulness joyfully and with humour to bring fresh insights and understanding to those self-explorative and meditative techniques. Expect some Aha moments!

Dr Joey Weber is a lecturer at the University of Bolton. He researches and studies equanimity to improve mental health, and he spent many years in a residential centre for Tibetan Buddhist studies.

Have you ever told yourself I am too old to do this? Or I can’t move that way because my body is stiff or hurts?

In this episode, Laurent speaks to movement and fascia specialist Caz Hitchcock who doesn’t believe that we need to stop moving or being mobile and flexible because we passed fifty or sixty or seventy years old. As she says it herself, ‘it is totally rubbish!’ and she explains why.

She also speaks about her love for fascia anatomy, yoga therapy, and keeping the body young and healthy.

Caz Hitchcock is the creator of a movement method called ‘the Gravity Technique’.

In this episode, Laurent had the privilege to meet one of the grand dames of British yoga, Senior yoga teacher Ruth White. She shares her memories of her long practice with her teacher B.K.S Iyengar and gives her insights into how yoga must be felt and understood. Ruth has been teaching a quiet and precise physical, breathing and meditative practice for over twenty-five years in the UK and Internationally. She embeds the non-dualistic Advaita philosophy in her teachings and invites her students and trainees to embrace their practice in an explorative and peaceful way.

She is the creator of 500-hour Karuna Yoga Teacher Training and the author of the book "Presence- The Truth of Yoga".

www.yogawithruthwhite.com

This 45-minute extended meditation was recorded during Laurent’s Early Morning Meditation class.

In this episode, we are travelling through the body and our sensory world. This explorative meditation allows us to open and free our senses to reconnect and experience life and the world around us afresh.

In this episode, Laurent meets Daniel Simpson, the author of the famous history yoga book “The Truth of Yoga”. Daniel is a scholar from the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and SOAS in London.
The conversation was about yoga as an ancient tradition and how it is perceived and shared in the context of modern yoga.
Most importantly, Daniel and Laurent speak about the origins of Pranayama, its purposes according to different methods and its evolution through the centuries until our modern time.
Daniel offers courses and workshops about yoga history and philosophy. To take part in his events or buy his book, visit truthofyoga.com

In this episode, we connect to the beautiful and subtle fluidity and primal movement of the backbone in our body, the spine. 

During this meditation, we are discovering that the spine is like a living and energising creature constantly moving and undulating under the influence of the breath and other movements and pulsations coming from our being. These intimate and embodying sensory reflections and experiences are energising and vitalising.

This Mindfulness meditation offers parents, children and families an opportunity to share and focus on the benefit of expressing gratitude for the things in life.

This technique has the benefits to make us feel happier and increase psychological well-being, enhance our positive emotions and self-esteem.