The Regenerative Journey | Ep 18 | Nico Plowman

Nicho articulately draws together the many parallels between meditation and regenerative agriculture in this long-awaited interview with Charlie's cousin and co-founder of the world's most used digital meditation platform Insight Timer (20million users). The connections with ones health, sense of purpose and the place from where one observes the film of our own lives in the ' conscious cinema of our mind' are highlighted, and the benefits of meditation as an antidote to the treadmill of life.

Transcript

There's something about understanding biodynamics or regenerative farming that is not just about being a farmer or living in the city,

It's your entire existence.

And so when I heard,

When I was there with you and Hamish Mackay,

I wasn't just coming from the city and sitting,

You know,

Sitting in the country,

I was literally felt like,

I mean,

I was engaging with my entire reason to be.

That was Nico Plowman and you're listening to The Regenerative Journey.

We acknowledge the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and internationally and their continuing connection to culture,

Community,

Land,

Sea and sky.

And we pay our respects to elders past,

Present and future.

G'day,

I'm your host,

Charlie Arnott.

And in this podcast series,

I'll be uncovering the world of regenerative agriculture,

Its people practices and principles and empowering you to apply their learnings and experience to your business and life.

I'm an eighth generation Australian farmer who transitioned my family farm from industrial methods to holistic regenerative practices.

Join me as I dive deep into the regenerative journeys of other farmers,

Chefs,

Health practitioners and anyone else who's up for yarn and find out why and how they transition to a more regenerative way of life.

Welcome to The Regenerative Journey with Charlie Arnott.

G'day,

My next guest is Nico Plowman,

A cousin of mine,

A meditator,

A lovely guy.

We had such a wonderful conversation.

We talked about biodynamics,

The connection between it and meditation and soil of all things.

The power of meditation and I guess it's in simplicity and also the parallels between meditation and that practice and the practice of regenerative farming in the landscape of our minds.

So I hope that's enough to get you excited.

This was a cracking good interview that Nico and I have been lining up for some time.

So I was really thrilled to actually get to sit with him and talk and lots of cool ideas.

We're brewing in the interview and have brewed since,

So expect a lot more stuff from Nico Plowman.

Enjoy the interview.

Thanks Charlie.

Nico Plowman is my next guest.

I'm sitting next to Nico and mate,

Welcome.

Welcome to the show.

Welcome to this room that we're borrowing.

Isn't it nice in Paddington in Sydney?

Can you tell us where we are and why we're here?

We are in a meditation centre where I learned to meditate.

Maybe you learned to meditate here.

I have been here but I didn't learn here.

I learned to meditate here nearly 10 years ago with a guy called Tim Brown,

Who is probably the most experienced meditation teacher in Sydney,

Vedic meditation teacher.

So it's somewhere that I know well and it's nice to be talking to you here today,

Given the connection that we've made again Charlie in the last year or two.

So I'm not sure how much I would have said in the intro for this interview,

But to give you a little bit of context was Nico and I are cousins and we went to school together,

A little prep school for some years and then different schools went away.

It was actually a few decades went by and we sort of used to see each other at parties in the street or queuing up outside nightclubs.

And then we reconnected a couple of years ago,

A few sort of more frequent run-ins and then yeah,

We just really connected and there were so many common themes and ideas and intentions for ourselves and the world really,

Wasn't it?

Was that how you explained it?

I think that's a good summary.

Well I just think the coming together of your journey to where you are through regenerative ag and then some of the things that I,

Well it started when I came down to a course that you were running with Hamish Mackay around bio-dynamic farming.

And at the same time I ran a meditation course down at Orua with some of the local community and it became clear to both of us and also to the people who were regenerative farmers and we're also learning to meditate that we could see crossover in terms of the biome and the biodiversity of soil and the structures that exist inside that and then as that sort of expands into the canopy of life.

And so you come at things from a conscious perspective and then a sort of regenerative approach to how we live our lives and it's just they were just these layers weren't there that we sort of went,

Oh well we should keep talking about this.

And we did.

We did.

We did.

And we sort of lots of scheming and conniving and sort of thinking and I think the stage is set for some of those things to sort of happen now.

Not that they weren't before but I guess you've had lots going on in your life and there was COVID and there's all sorts of things that we could lean on as excuses.

We're talking about it now,

Nico,

So we're putting it out like seven billion people are going to listen to this within a week.

So we'll have no,

We can't hide anymore.

It's going viral.

As we speak.

I'm watching the camera go up on lips here.

It's just going.

So let's get to obviously regenerative journey.

You know,

I guess I've been following your journey for many years from afar and I'm keen to sort of dive into it,

You know,

From,

Do you want to give us a bit of a context for your early days,

Your connection with farming?

Let's just start there.

Okay.

I was born in Sydney,

Not far from here,

Jersey Road,

So maybe 300 metres away.

When I was young,

We moved to a property down in the Southern Highlands,

Which was really hobby farming.

And I went to school down there with you.

So I was boarding at a young age and my father and mother had left the city to sort of start afresh in some ways.

So farming was,

I would say that's a light word for it.

But at the same time,

There was cows and this and that and bikes and rifles and all the things that young boys can have,

Whether they're on 500 acres or 5000 acres.

And a lot of the people that were at our school were,

You know,

I would call from sort of proper farming stock.

So my holidays were often spent particularly down around,

You know,

Your neck of the woods,

Sort of down at Adelong,

Wagga,

Yass,

Young.

So there was all that.

And yeah,

That was it.

It was whether we were at school or holidays,

I found myself spending a lot of time sort of on tractors and horses and that sort of things.

That was pretty much it until I was 16.

And by that stage,

I was boarding in the city.

And so weekends became weekends and holidays and more about sort of the city life.

But I think if I was to move this along in terms of what regeneration looks like,

And it's interesting that we're talking about it today because I've been reflecting on a bit of that.

I think if I could fast forward to sort of almost a 20 year cycle from being 17 or 18 to being 37 or 38,

Which was really 20 years from that moment where I think I took my foot off the accelerator in terms of my potential.

And then I learned to meditate 20 years later with Tim Brown just here in this building.

And that was almost 10 years ago.

And for me,

It's almost as if those two bookends are,

And whilst there's a lot of wonderful things that happened between,

It feels like that was a period where I was essentially lost.

And I can look on that now.

And at the time it was still a big life,

But it was the life of,

It was a fast life.

And they were beautiful.

I've got my beautiful teenage daughters as part of that.

That was towards the end of that cycle.

And of course,

Great marriage and living and having a very good life.

But to me,

There was this 20 year window where I needed to maybe run research or experiments in a part of my life that wasn't as good as it could be in terms of health,

Happiness,

The things that we might do consciously,

If I could use that word,

And we'll come back to the word consciousness.

And so in terms of regeneration,

If we could come back to that theme,

The last 10 years has been regenerative in a whole range of areas.

And the kickoff point for that was that I learnt Vedic meditation.

And so since then,

There's been a lot of change and a lot of regeneration of things that weren't necessarily new,

But were actually just about finding those seeds of our potentiality,

If you'd like to call it,

That was sort of always there.

And I just needed to be,

Yeah,

I was going about the farming of that in the wrong way,

In some ways.

That's a great analogy.

And that does actually come up.

We'll dig deeper into that.

But that is one I had a chat with Tommy Herschel the other day,

And interview and he referenced a similar thing,

He's saying,

He used alcohol as almost like a farmer uses chemical and weeds to sort of douse the weeds.

And so he was using alcohol to douse the symptoms of other things,

Which I thought was a really good way to put it.

And obviously drew in his amazing story into the world of farming as well.

But before we get to meditation,

Nico,

I just want to,

Without going into all the detail,

What were some of the,

I guess,

What were some of the gaps that you now are looking back on in that 20 years and go,

Wow,

That was,

You know,

I guess,

Not so much what weren't you doing,

But what were some of the,

What were the some of the,

Let's start with some of the learnings of that 20 years,

You know,

What were some of the things that you can reflect on now and go,

You know,

Maybe I'm glad it happened,

But shit,

That was tough,

You know,

And I learned something from that.

Well,

In actual fact,

All of it was great because of the,

We all,

You know,

It was good because it made me know what I don't wish to go back to.

It also allows me to have conversations with people,

Whether particularly given what I now do,

Where I can say,

Hey,

I've been there,

I have done,

I have drunk alcohol,

Plenty of it,

I have done recreational drugs,

I have,

You know,

Been through a whole range of things which were just reflections of a less conscious way to live.

So for me,

All of that story and that those challenges mean that now I can have conversations with people and reflect on my own experiences in order to create a relationship with them and then relate and then have conversations whereby it's as if I'm not sort of saying,

Oh,

Well,

I think I know what you're talking about,

But actually I really know what you're talking about and,

You know,

And refer to very particular circumstances.

So it's taken a while for me to own or at least be comfortable with a lot of that,

But now I can see the value in it as it relates to what I do.

I think if I had learned to meditate when I was 18 and become a meditation teacher when I was 20,

It would be an entirely different conversation.

I would have an entirely different group of people that I spend time with because it wouldn't be that ability to sort of reflect and sometimes have a bit of a laugh about things.

We need to sometimes be a bit lighthearted about where we've been.

But Charlie,

If I was going to write the sort of first line of a book,

It would be 10 years ago I was standing on a Flemmeting race track at the Melbourne Carp in a suit,

Probably high.

I thought you were going to say nude.

Probably nude.

When I say high,

Having drunk something,

Whatever it might've been.

And that was almost,

I think,

A low point because I was miserable.

I didn't want to be on that race track.

I was working.

I built a company in the technology space that was doing things in Australian sports and wagering.

And I just never,

I don't think I enjoyed one day of it.

I was probably into the cut and thrust of it and I could raise money and do all these sorts of things.

I was pretty good at a lot of it.

But the actual,

Was there any purpose to it?

Absolutely not.

There wasn't.

That's almost the snapshot to now where I'm having a conversation with you almost 10 years later.

Here I am sitting here talking about consciousness and regenerative and all these things which are so relevant.

I wasn't in a relevant place 10 years ago.

And then because I stepped into meditation and other things,

All of that stuff just got washed away so fast.

It just all sort of crumbled.

The business got restructured.

It got sold off.

At the time I wasn't really aware what was going on,

But in actual fact I was getting quite well looked after.

I was stepping into a wonderful new place which was to start the journey to become a meditation teacher.

I then founded with my brother,

Christopher,

A meditation platform called Insight Timer.

So there's been things that have come from that step off into a more conscious way to live that have been hugely rewarding.

And it is that contrast between something that I look on back now and I don't regret,

But there are times when I can see how sort of far down the conscious cliff face I was,

Really.

And there were a lot of wonderful things about my life at that stage.

You know,

Marriage,

Two beautiful daughters.

There were a lot of great things going on.

It was still a good life,

But inside,

If that life had continued that way,

Then I question just what the longevity of that would have been from a health perspective.

All sorts of things I think would have come of that.

And I feel fortunate that for whatever reasons I didn't just learn to meditate.

I decided to go 180 and full throttle towards being a teacher and towards my commitment to,

I think,

Getting as many people as possible to have a conscious experience,

Whether they learned Vedic meditation with me or Tim Brown or any other teacher,

Whether they learned any type of meditation,

Whether they use an app.

I don't really particularly care at some point if they can just have a little experience of their own conscious state or something deeper,

Then it'll start them on a journey somewhere,

Possibly start them on a journey somewhere new.

And if we think that there's things going on in the world at the moment that do look so challenging,

It's going to take people shifting their behavior to be able to come into alignment with,

Let's call it nature's plan.

It's a bit esoteric,

But it's the same thing that you're trying to do.

It's like,

Okay,

Let's look at how we go about producing food.

How do we go about farming food?

But as you know,

The person who is also then,

Who's at the front line of farming,

It also takes a huge amount in terms of people in knowledge,

Education,

Change in behavior so people can start to adopt best practices in terms of regenerative agriculture.

So we're all wanting to find that place whereby we feel purposeful and then sharing something that might help others and then being able though to relate to people in order that they can turn around and change their behavior to come along.

Because I think that's what it fundamentally boils down to.

When people get up in the morning,

Where's their motivation?

You said a word there before,

Nico,

Relevance.

And I think that's brilliant.

And as you said,

A couple of things that I can relate directly back to farming in terms of experience.

Where you had been and where you are now are very different places and the same for me and a lot of farmers who have changed what they're doing.

They were spraying chemical,

They were growing commodities and there was a very different,

Well,

Probably not even an intention,

But more of just a job,

A chore.

That's what they did as a farmer.

And so- Paying the bills and- That's it.

Going through the motions.

And so having been there,

It's sort of a similar situation.

That's my reference point.

And also the idea of relevance.

I feel,

Me personally,

That I have much more relevance now.

And relevance isn't just about internally and how relevant am I to the alignment of my purpose,

Which I feel is much more purposeful now,

But it's a relevance in the world.

Relevance,

What is our contribution to the world?

How are we going to be not necessarily significant in our relevance,

But more in context of and in working with the world and working with it,

Which is something you've already highlighted,

But you're making a big change in the world with your relevance.

It just sort of,

Just as you were talking,

I was thinking about that saying,

When we were young,

The parents would say,

Do as I say,

Not as I do.

Put a bottle of rum in their hand.

Well,

In my case,

That was possibly a bit of it.

Or we can maybe come around to that at some point around fathers.

But now,

In fact,

It's actually to say,

Hey,

I'm not going to sit here and say anything.

I'm going to do this and I want to come and do it with you because I've been there.

And it's a little bit to say,

And this is an analogy,

But the idea that maybe you get to a place where you can see the new,

You've climbed the mountain and you can see what's in front of you.

It's not just saying,

Hey,

Come up here.

It's like,

Hey,

I'm prepared to come back down where I started and walk back up with you and show you the view.

I'll hold your hand.

I won't just tell you the view's great because that just creates a big gap.

And whether it's what you do,

Anybody who maybe has said,

Listen,

I started somewhere,

I've ended up somewhere else and the view is good,

But I want to come back down and do it with you.

I can turn around and roll the sleeves up.

I know what it's like to get up in the morning,

Know what it's like to turn around and say,

Okay,

Do I use this chemical?

Am I really going to go and do this to this paddock this week?

Because geez,

I tell you what,

That's going to hit my cashflow.

It's just so,

There's so many grinding aspects.

And the same thing is with time I spend with people,

It's like,

Okay,

If you continue to meditate,

Then things will change in your life.

You will end up having to make decisions about maybe certain experiences or maybe not going to do this or do that.

It will create some tension and it's change.

And I can relate to that and we can come and have a cup of tea with me if it means not going to go into an environment where you might have a drink.

So we need to be able to get back down there and really roll our sleeves up with people.

And so it's just about connecting where people have fear or misunderstanding and whether that's basically around what you do and what your purpose is,

It's also the broader understanding about where people have differences,

Even if it's in ideology,

The whole thing.

We need to find a common point of interest and work from there.

That's all there is to it.

It's the only way you're going to get people to come around is if you can turn around and kind of go shoulder to shoulder.

It's when I often start a talk or presentation or something,

I say,

Put your hand up if you eat food,

You get them all in one unless there's some breatharians in the crowd.

So that's our common point for a lot of our existence in a way.

It doesn't matter if we're a plumber or a doctor or a farmer or whatever,

We all eat food and we all,

I suggest it might be a good idea if we knew where it was from and that it was actually contributing to our health and not.

Now talking about contributing to our health,

Nico,

Let's jump into the meditation that you do.

Can you take our listeners and viewers through,

I guess,

For some,

Introduce them to the concept?

And particularly,

You don't have to initially just use farming words and sound like a farmer when you say.

But I'm conscious that a lot of our listeners are farmers and it's something that I'd love more farmers to pick up without beating them over the head with it.

How would you take us through a bit of an intro?

Yeah,

Good.

So Vedic meditation,

V-E-D-I-C,

It's a technique that we practice for 20 minutes twice a day,

No more,

No less.

What I think we see a lot of in the world at the moment is there's a whole thing around meditation.

It's called mostly called mindfulness.

And probably where people may have found their experiences with meditation to be frustrating is that in this mindfulness moment,

There's very much a focus on techniques that come from the more monastic background.

So a lot of the meditation techniques probably originated thousands of years ago from people who were sitting in monasteries,

They were able to live that sort of life,

Shaved head,

All that sort of thing.

So a very safe environment to meditate a lot.

Now over the course of time,

Some of those techniques have been modernized.

And I think then what we see is that we see people who are living modern lives running around in cities and all sorts of things and quite busy trying to take a technique that was traditionally quite monastic and applying it to their daily life.

And so I certainly,

Through my 30s,

Tried quite a few monastic techniques that were dressed up for the modern lifestyle and it didn't work.

So I didn't think I was very good at meditation for a long time until I met Tim Brown here in this building.

And what I understood about Vedic meditation is that it is also a traditional technique that dates back thousands of years,

But it is actually designed for householders.

So it is a technique whereby we can get up in the morning and attend to our family and meditate or meditate at sunrise for 20 minutes,

Go into our day,

Whether we have a profession or whatever it is,

And then summer in the afternoon and evening we can meditate again before we come into our family life or our social life.

And so for me grafting that into a day became really pretty straightforward.

And it's also a technique,

We have a sounder or mantra that we think,

So we're able to rest quite deeply,

Quite quickly,

And we can release stress.

And so we get a lot done in 20 minutes.

So for a modern lifestyle,

Which has demands on it,

Then we can actually get this done quite well.

So that worked for me.

So what I had done is I tried a lot of the other stuff.

All of a sudden I was doing Vedic meditation.

I've still been doing it twice a day for almost 10 years.

The quick analogy on that though,

Whether it's Vedic meditation or anything else,

Is that life is a movie and we are in the conscious cinema of it.

If we are watching that movie from the front row,

Or even in fact if our face was up against the screen,

Which is what will happen if we are stressed,

We are tired,

We are anxious,

Is that our movie will be overwhelming because we are just in the front row.

It's all color,

It's all sound,

And our nervous system,

Our physiology is reacting to the whole experience.

So we are in a constant state of fright or flight.

So here we are ticking,

Ticking,

Ticking the whole time.

Whether we look at social media,

What's going on in the news,

We run around cities,

That's a pretty intense place to be in the front row of your conscious cinema all the time.

If we stay there,

Then over time that stress and tension builds into inflammation and inflammation turn into disease.

At some point if we don't do something about it,

Then the doctor is going to say,

Okay,

I'm going to cut that out or give you this or whatever,

Or we'll leave our conscious cinema altogether,

Which we'd like to avoid for as long as possible.

When we start meditating,

We can move back in our conscious cinema pretty quickly to begin with,

But what will happen is all of a sudden we're in row A,

Row B,

Row C,

And this overwhelming movie of life becomes a good movie.

In fact,

There are people in that movie theater who we kind of like,

And there's relationships and family,

And all of a sudden that experience becomes broader.

If we continue our meditation journey,

At some point the movie becomes a $300 million blockbuster.

It's just a huge life.

All we're doing twice a day is just letting our physiology remove stress and tension from it.

We feel rested and we go about our day and our evenings in a more balanced way.

It's very simple.

When you consider how we approach those things in our movies and coming back to that,

It's whether we go into our day,

Whatever we do,

What our purpose is,

What our profession is,

What our relationships are,

They all come back to really where they exist inside that movie of ours.

We can engage with all of those demands,

All those things that we find enjoyable from a place that is more balanced.

Instead of overreacting to what people are going to say to us or how we're feeling,

If we're actually better slept or better rested on those types of things,

We're just going to engage well and have more time to contemplate how certain things may be serving us.

As we meditate more and more,

There may be things that have to go.

There'll be things that we can also add to the mix.

What will happen is we're going to rest better.

All of our relationships will be based on things that are good for us,

Not bad for us.

If we're in the front row of the conscious cinema,

We will medicate,

Self-medicate.

We will have a drink,

Which brings us back a bit,

And then the next morning,

It'll smack us back into the front row again.

We might smoke.

We might have medication.

We might take sleeping pills.

We might work ourselves into a.

.

.

That's the workaholic,

The alcoholic.

All those little words are what comes of being in the front row of the conscious cinema.

Don't be fooled by the person who says,

I work so hard.

That's just another form.

Sorry.

Working hard as opposed to working all the time at the expense of other things in your life.

That's still front row conscious cinema.

We just want to get back.

It's how we're actually designed to be.

Physiology is designed to be in a place where it's balanced and engaging purposefully.

What does our body go.

.

.

Whilst one is in that state for 20 minutes,

What are some of the things that actually our body is doing in response to that that it wouldn't be doing if we were just getting on that day and doing our stuff?

Our body,

When it is able to rest,

If you consider the extraordinary three trillion things that are going on at any one second right now,

Our body left its own devices free of our intellect to try and fix it is extraordinary organism.

It will repair and heal and do so many wonderful things that we just get out of its way.

We haven't been able to map everything that's going on.

There is no treatment in the world that we might find externally that can actually do a better job than letting us treat ourselves.

The simple answer to your question is our body,

When we close our eyes,

Is repairing and releasing stress and releasing fatigue.

It is lovely,

Like the secretion of endorphins and serotonin,

Which are going back into our body.

As we rest more deeply,

We're going to start respiring gently.

There's just all of these things happening,

Which they should just be doing anyway.

What we've done is we've overloaded these nervous systems in quite a short period of time,

Probably in the last couple of hundred years or less.

We've actually gone from just walking,

Or sorry,

Riding a horse to then jumping on airplanes.

There's been a dramatic increase in movement,

In our exposure to technology.

There's a whole lot of things going on.

This modern day nervous system is having to adjust really fast.

It's not doing a very good job.

What we've done is we're going into the earth to rip out resources to extend life.

That's a simple version,

Which we know.

We've tried to cut corners in terms of food production and all these sorts of things.

Then we're going to go and turn around and bring an entire medical infrastructure into prolonging life.

That's pretty much the idea because we're not prolonging life ourselves.

We're not sitting here twice a day meditating and letting our body do the trick.

We're turning around and running as hard as we can.

Then we'll enter into that system.

That system will turn around and go,

Okay,

We're going to fill you full of this and that and that and that because we want to get you to 85.

That is exactly the same as our industrial farming system.

This is it.

We are talking about,

This is the great crossover of our conversations,

Which is like,

Okay,

I'm going to meditate twice a day and not go to a doctor.

Maybe just this conversation might remind me to have a checkup.

You look a bit green.

It's just like,

Okay,

That wasn't my old life.

Whether it was here,

Whether it was Valiums or this or that or anti-inflammatory,

But it was consistent.

I can't even remember the last time I went to a doctor now.

It's amazing.

The thing about it is that my body left its own resources when I just does the trick because at the same time,

The way that we live our lives now means we do eat well.

All the medicines in the world exist in the food that we eat if we're eating good food.

We know that.

We don't eat too much.

Sugar is less part of the mix.

There's a bunch of things.

Still love a coffee,

Love a Messina chocolate ice cream.

That's fine.

We're still going to enjoy.

We'll put Messina on the show.

I see.

Exactly.

Pots and buy.

The thing about it is that there's this all of a sudden,

If we actually need to take back control,

Otherwise you become part of that complex.

It's fundamentally the most empowering thing we do,

Which is to say,

As long as I live and breathe,

I don't want to end up in that system.

We can talk about this wonderful people.

I know you've met Zach Bush.

There's a world of this big question mark around modern medicine and then the ties that of course we see between Big Pharma and Big Ag.

It's extraordinary.

It's a huge oppressive force.

I tell you what,

Let's just look over there and see where that's going on and we can be concerned.

The one thing we can do each day is get our bodies to release stress,

Tension,

Fatigue so we rest well,

Get our chemical makeup back in balance,

And then make our own decisions about food.

That is going to change the power of each of those by virtue of our own choices.

If I choose to eat that and then the next person comes along who's all of a sudden meditating and learning about ag farming starts to eat that,

The consumer ultimately decides.

That's really where this journey goes because we can make as much noise as we like,

But if the consumer doesn't turn around and say,

There's my local organic farmer who wants that educated and wants that kept going,

Then I think we'll see change and it's happening.

But I think we feel it's got to happen faster.

I love the parallels.

It's just the same thing because we are part of nature,

But nature as we as farmers develop our skills and we understand and create a relationship with nature,

Just as you've highlighted about the human body,

Nature has every tool,

Principle,

Method required to heal itself.

We just have to bear witness to that basically and it's the same with ourselves.

We just have to give our chance,

Whether it's 20 minutes a day,

40 minutes a day of meditation,

The food we eat,

The thoughts we have,

That allows our bodies to heal in a way.

We just have to actually in some ways stop doing a lot of stuff as farmers and as individuals.

What is it?

So do the microcosm,

So do the macrocosm.

This planet and our bodies are essentially the whole one thing,

But a similar entity.

We know that there are entities as complex as our bodies and the planet right down to a cellular level.

I mean,

Right down into the level of bacteria.

I mean,

We're talking about vastly complex organisms,

But look at the sky,

Charlie.

Here we are.

It's this blue sky day.

Well,

Okay,

Cars have started getting going last because there's no planes still.

The city,

We can almost see what the effect of leaving it alone has been.

I mean,

It's clear and it's been clear like this for a few months and LA is clear and New York people can see the stars.

I mean,

What's happened?

We just stopped.

So just as we've stopped,

Just as the earth has been given a reprieve,

So does our body 20 minutes twice a day.

It's like,

Get out of the way,

Let it stop,

Let it clear itself out.

It's just the same thing.

Just stop moving,

Stop pouring all your rubbish into it and it'll be fine,

Thanks.

And so we can see that the less is more,

That beautiful simplicity to how we look after an organism,

Whether it's ours,

The one that we walk around in and enjoy,

Or the one which is our own body,

Or the one that we also then start to have to live in relationship with,

Which is this planet.

Same thing.

So let's just let it all be for a while and see the results.

And it's not a city in the world that hasn't been transformed in the last three months.

Why?

It's stopped tearing around on it.

So you can do the same thing with our physiology.

I'm sure the earth is in a state of relief,

But at the same time it doesn't stop,

Does it?

Like it's just going,

Right,

There's a window.

Let's just make some stuff happen here.

I'm talking about stuff happening.

Nico,

You referenced before that you came to one of our courses,

The two day introduction to biodynamics that we hold,

And the one you came to was at Hanaminawa,

Burrua.

And we were talking before you came along and my sense was you could feel some similarities between what you'd been experiencing,

Biodynamics,

And you'd dipped your toe in the water already.

What were some of the things that you took away or you really got your teeth into during that course without giving us a two day dissertation of the whole thing,

Which I would welcome by the way,

But we might do that in series three.

But what were the ahas?

I came over my soil preparation that I then donated to the Queen Street gardening effort and all the trees are looking amazing down Queen Street now.

On ground action.

On ground action.

Look,

As you know,

Charlie,

I sort of started that day one and just I think there were light bulbs going off from the minute Amy started to speak.

And I felt so drawn to the principles of,

And I think if we have to,

It's hard for this audience.

I don't want to say too much,

But where Steiner came from,

Where biodynamics came from,

Where even Zach Bush goes around microbiome and the living entity of the soil.

And then that we can sort of extrapolate those organisms and those sentient beings in the soil,

Beyond the soil,

Into that what's above the soil.

And then of course,

What's in the atmosphere and then what's in the universe.

I mean,

In actual fact,

We sort of end up with these behaviors and layers of consciousness and interplay that actually just run through all layers of life.

And soil is life.

We talked about soil and soul and we had these lovely things like,

Hang on,

Inside the soil is a,

Not a representation,

Is actually the encapsulation of life itself.

Because there is a world under there,

Which is under our feet,

That is just reflective of all of it.

It's as complex and as vital as our heart and our lungs and our brains.

It's as complex and vital as what's going on through the atmosphere and what goes on into the sort of planetary world.

And I was just struck by how what we sort of end up doing is we,

Our frame of reference is just one plane.

It's this plane that we feel like we are part of in our day to day,

Whether it's walking through Sydney or whatever it might be.

But those planes are all existing and coexisting,

Whether it's below our feet under the ground and then going further up into the atmosphere.

And what we,

As we start to understand the way that that all relates,

Any time that we go and affect one part of it,

We're actually just causing an enormous ripple effect.

I mean,

It's just,

And then of course,

We see the great big dramatic moves that are made in the environment.

I read something about the wall that they're building in Mexico and what they will do to curtail the flow of animals and migration between the US and the Mexico border.

I mean,

It's mind boggling,

Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of kilometres of,

And what they do is they just stop it.

And by the way,

We can do the same thing.

We can drive through the Waker's Parkway in Sydney and they put up big fences on either side of the parkway.

And we know that they have just stopped the natural flow of wildlife from one complex ecosystem to another.

Now,

Of course,

A few of them might get hit by the car,

But they've actually stopped the flow.

And so it's not to say that what something's happening in America is any worse than here,

But I'm trying to explain,

For me,

I was struck by just how complex and diverse this system is and what we need to do or we can do by understanding how it all hangs together.

And that was what I experienced in that two days.

It was just like this absolute walking into a world of things that didn't appear to be complex at all,

Just incredibly logical.

It was just,

I mean,

You know how it was just like,

Okay,

How do we then start to come at this from this conscious perspective?

And we ended up teaching a wonderful group of people to meditate who are part of your community.

And even during that course,

We had people who were doing the Biodynamic course of you and then having a chat to me and we're all sitting there going,

Hey,

Look at these,

Look at the crossover.

So what did I bring away?

Just like it was sort of like a new universe.

And hugely inspiring,

Hugely inspiring.

Because a lot of our listeners aren't farmers and it's a bit of an emphasis on farming or a bit of a whiff of farming along the way.

What I'm conscious that a lot of them aren't farmers.

Where do you see the relevance of biodynamics,

Which on the outside,

It's like how to grow a bit of carrot.

How do you see the relevance,

What's the relevance of biodynamics to someone in a townhouse in Paddington?

And that was what we said.

I think I might have said to you,

Charlie,

How do we get the people in the cities to understand how vital and how vital their role is in this exchange?

Like for them to turn up to talk to the person at the local farmers market down the road and appreciate what it means for them to make that decision,

To buy that carrot.

And the effect that that has on the entire mechanics of food production.

Right.

So it's education.

And so this was just it.

I think there was something that you might have done by video.

I think we did a little interview,

But I was like,

You don't have to be a farmer or anything to appreciate the incredible.

There's something about understanding biodynamics or regenerative farming that is not just about being a farmer or living in the city.

It's your entire existence.

And so when I heard when I was there with you and Hamish McKay,

I wasn't just coming from the city and sitting in the country.

I was literally felt like I was engaging with my entire reason to be.

And when people feel that,

Then I think all of a sudden they're just it's inspiring and it's not as if someone might not be inspired by a beautiful piece of art or whatever it is that gets them going.

But when they all of a sudden see into that world of biodynamics,

It's just so glorious.

And I think that's the way you inspire people,

Because inspiration will lead to change and that leads to change of behaviours.

And when people all of a sudden can be led on this little into that world of biodynamics,

I think it's just becomes.

It becomes,

You know,

Becomes instinctive.

So that was that was what my experience was.

And I think a lot of people,

As they start to understand how relevant that their relationship to food is,

Then they'll be inspired.

As I just to jump to,

I guess it's relevant,

Your role as a father.

What are some of the I guess the motivations for you to be the father,

The best father?

Well,

Not the word best,

I don't necessarily like that,

But be the most appropriate father you can be.

And what are some of the what are some of your experiences?

What are some of the motivations?

It comes back to the opposite of do as I say,

Not as I do.

It's like,

Just we as parents,

We do and we do in a way that we consider to be true to ourselves and of our children learn to do that.

And that regardless of maybe some of the way life move that you could say at a certain stage in life that you were able to impart on them the belief or the knowledge or the confidence to just do themselves to their utmost potential and ability.

I think that's everything because at some point,

Children are going to find their own way.

I think change is a important part of everything.

If we don't change the way that we're going about things in the world,

Then the world's going to be in a tough place.

So whether it's change for good or change for all those things is important.

As we might see our children struggle at certain things in life and some may have an easier path than others and whatever it is,

But everybody on this planet is born with unlimited potentiality.

That moment of creation given the incredible complexity and just the miracle of that,

Encapsulated in that moment of conception is all of universe's potentiality really.

And then there's a journey into the world and those types of things.

That sort of point,

Well then,

Parents start to have a role.

And then of course,

Through survival instincts,

We become as children and then we become peer group and we actually start to shape our potentiality based on what we think the world wants from us,

Not what we actually made deep down potentially have to be.

I think I started out that way and coming back full circle to the way the conversation started,

At some point,

Maybe we dim our light.

Maybe we just sort of go into cruise mode.

And then I think if we saw our children and like I think most people might do that,

Which is they go to a place where they have to sort of work things out themselves.

But as parents,

If we could show them that at whatever stage in life it is that you might turn around and decide to do things differently and decide to really strive for your potential or purpose,

If your children can look at you,

Whether they're 10 or 15 or 30 and go,

Geez,

You know what,

I'm looking at a person who played a key role in my life as my father or my mother and geez,

That might be a way I can go because it's quite possible to change.

It's quite possible to not be anxious or to not feel terrible,

Not to do this.

And all of a sudden it's like,

Well,

Hang on,

There's actually a way to live because my father or my mother or whatever,

They obviously changed their life and at the time it looked like a pretty big change.

But actual fact,

It's okay to change.

In fact,

Look at the results because I think anyone who does change and decide to do things differently,

There will be,

To me,

I don't believe that you're going to end up in a worse place,

Not at all because change is vital to evolution.

And in fact,

It's on us to change.

And if you don't change,

Well,

I think at some point it's like,

Well,

What's your contribution and nature might turn around and have a view on that too.

But so,

Well,

It's true.

I had a father who was an alcoholic who lived a certain way and he was a fantastic guy.

You might remember him,

But by the end of his life,

He was living in a pretty tough place and he ended up dying at the age of 67.

But it was no surprise because dad's contribution was quite limited by that stage.

And I think we look around and go,

Okay,

Well,

Kind of makes sense.

Read the packet,

Don't smoke.

Well,

If you're going to keep smoking,

Then you might die of lung cancer.

So we're going to,

There's plenty of signs that are really quite obvious,

But coming back to it as a father,

If my now three daughters were to say,

At some point in life,

And I may not even be here when I work that out,

That somewhere in there,

They saw that there was a way for us to change on the basis that we might reach a place of more potential and purpose,

That would feel like a life where it lives.

That's all we can expect.

Sorry,

That's all that we might hope.

Because if people strive for their potential,

Then this world will change.

Because if we're just going to turn around in navel gaze and think it's too hard or actually feel from our conscious place in the cinema that we are too tired or we can't be bothered or we're in that place of like,

Oh,

Can't be bothered.

That's pretty much the words.

I can't be bothered.

It's too hard or I'm too scared.

If all of a sudden everybody turned around and realised that there was actually a place of potentiality,

Then this place would change overnight.

There's something to be said for,

Again,

I'm referencing back to farming,

But it's just life and also it's a current medical condition or paradigm generally is to get by,

We treat the symptoms,

Which will get us maybe one day further down the track or one year or one to our next doctor checkup or something.

So treating the symptoms,

Whether it's like a weed or a soak of weed in the paddock as a farmer or pop another pill because I've got some headache or something as a non-farmer,

That's what it feels like,

Isn't it?

You're just ploking along and not digging deep to the core of it.

It's problem on the level of the problem.

And that is a proven failed strategy.

We know that.

Well,

That's what I think was Einstein,

Proven failed strategy.

And then it's about,

And we're looking at the content,

Not the context.

So all of a sudden it's like,

Hang on,

Here we are trying to sort of just,

Because from a limited place,

You're just going to turn around and play whack-a-mole.

That's the way you're going to live your life.

I was like,

I'll fix that,

Chop,

Take that out,

Take the pill,

Do this,

Do that.

It's all just,

You're going to kind of,

You're just going to keep batting,

Playing the same game of tennis.

You need to get off,

You need to go and play in another tennis court.

And that's pretty much all that is going on.

He said,

She said,

They said,

They said.

That's what we're looking at in terms of the brutal partisanship,

The brutal sort of conflict of ideology.

And it's just,

All it is is that two sides continually upping the ante,

Upping the ante.

Now because whether we are individually in the front row of conscious cinema or whether we are at the front row of our conscious cinema as states,

And I mean by countries,

And then of course,

In terms of humanity,

It feels like humanity is in a great big,

The whole of humanity has got its face up against the screen.

It's a problem if you think about it,

Because otherwise,

Like our environment wouldn't be where it was going if it wasn't.

Because if we were all,

Like if humanity was broadly conscious,

And humanity has been broadly conscious at times gone by,

But it feels like as the sort of the pressure's building,

Front row,

Front row,

Front row,

Well,

The only thing that possibly starts to do is you kind of almost have to reach in and one by one drag people back out.

You can just see this great big wall of humanity and you want to go,

Okay,

Come back,

You come.

That's why I sort of think about it.

If I get up each day and sort of someone go,

Hey,

Do you want to just come back out of that front row?

Call them backwards.

Great.

Yeah.

And you,

You know,

You're,

You know,

You're,

You know,

We're doing the same thing.

It's like,

Okay,

I've got,

You know,

I can relate to people who have a key role in what the future environmental health of this country,

Of this planet looks like.

And you can do the same thing.

Hey,

Have you thought about this?

I've got another way.

This is where I've got to.

This is how you go about it and let me help you.

Great.

Pull them back.

Fantastic.

What do they do?

They start adopting different ways to farm.

And it is literally,

You know,

That's the whole thing.

If you can,

You know,

You know,

Attend to this,

Which is our own individual experience.

And then also by doing that,

Change the shape of the familial experience or those closest to home.

And then by doing so,

Your community starts to shift a bit.

Eventually maybe you might be able to say,

Okay,

Well,

We'll change the world,

But you're never going to be able to do that over there if you haven't been able to also really live it and do as I do.

Do the stuff.

We can do as I say until we're blue in the face,

Nothing's going to change out there.

And by the way,

We're not all going to do this the whole time.

Of course,

We're human.

There are stresses and we've got challenges,

But the further you are back in that conscious cinema,

The easier it is to respond to demands.

It doesn't mean you won't get stressed or a bit pissed off here or have a tired few nights with a young child.

There's all these things are going to happen.

We're only human.

So if you are meditating regularly or you're eating well or you're engaged in that part of your life,

You're going to,

You might respond to a demand,

Which is very normal because we're designed to do that,

But you're going to bounce back much more quickly too.

You won't sit around for three days feeling terrible about something you said.

You'd be like,

Next time,

I forgot about that.

Because your physiology and the way that you live and the things that you're engaged with are inspiring.

So I think,

Charlie,

If we're really going to get this show on the road,

Then I think it's like,

How do people just turn around and find that little switch that they then know is purpose-driven and they start to feel a reconnection and a remembering of their potentiality because it's in all of us.

We can all sit here and remember a time in our life,

Like picture you were eight and what you look like.

You're smiling and there's some joy,

Frivolous joy about you.

We can all do it.

Close your eyes.

And it's like,

Hey,

Find that person.

And that's a journey which we all are able to be part of in this lifetime,

But not everyone's going to do that.

Of course,

We may just decide that that's challenging.

But if we do that,

Then all of a sudden it gives permission for other people to do it too.

And that's contributing and it's leading and it's purpose-driven.

It's all sorts of wonderful things.

Find that potentiality in us.

You're setting an example,

Isn't it?

It's just like,

As you say,

It's not about bashing someone over the head with it and not doing it yourself.

You're going,

I'm just going to do it.

You can take it or leave it.

I'll drop little things on the table every now and again.

You can pick them up if you're interested.

Back to the analogy of the screen and the film of your life and watching it up close.

I've often,

A similar sort of scenario is that you imagine running along.

You're running a jogging and you've got a cap on and you put the lid right down and you look just two feet in front of you and try,

I've done it.

Try running and looking just at the ground two feet in front of you.

It's a bloody horror story because you don't know where you're going and you literally trip over yourself because that's all you're looking at.

You're looking at the immediate thing to deal with,

Which is that bit of bitumen or gravel,

Two feet in front of you.

But if you can lift the cap up and you lift your head up,

Which is a bit like you've got better posture,

You're looking ahead and you can see in front of you and you've got the choice of going mid-ground,

Far away,

Up close and you've got a greater range of view of your journey ahead.

You can anticipate the potholes and the tree and the tracks going over there.

Well,

I can choose to go there or I can just jump off the track,

But I've got time to make that decision instead of just going,

Shit,

Actually I've hit the tree now because I couldn't see it.

That's it.

So those analogies exist all around us.

I've just turned up to this interview with you on a motorbike that's 24 hours old.

But where I look is where the bike goes.

That's what I know and I've only been out,

I haven't stopped for 24 hours.

But of course it's just like,

Look there,

I'll go there.

If I'm going to have my head down and worrying about everything,

I'm going to end up in trouble.

And it's the same thing whether you're jogging or we're on a bike,

It's just the analogy of life is the same.

You look up and you'll go there where your attention is,

We will move towards.

And that's the same for the negative things in life.

We want to go and put enough attention on something no good in our life,

It'll happen.

But that is also where we're going to become too focused or obsessive about things.

That's because we're in the front row and our physiology is just humming on something,

Which is tick,

Tick,

Tick,

Tick,

Tick,

And you can't get away from that.

So you've got to get back.

And then once you've got your attention in a broader place,

And of course that's the way your life will be,

And it's exactly the same thing.

As you say,

Look up.

If there is things to attend to,

You can look,

You can drop your eyes.

Oh great,

Okay,

Break there.

Okay,

Yeah,

I'm just going to run around the pothole so I don't spray my ankle.

But yeah,

With a much broader perspective,

When you're head looking towards our eyes and then you've got a strategic view.

And so then all your decisions are based on getting there,

Not short-term decisions on just attending to small problems,

Because they are small.

They look huge though when all you can do is look down at the pothole.

If you'd seen it from 20 metres off,

You don't even see the pothole.

That's exactly it.

You don't want to go that way,

You're headed off to that way because it was just a nice little track.

And so that's it.

And look,

We can put a whole bunch of little lenses around this,

But there is a.

.

.

The word happy gets thrown around a bit,

And I sometimes struggle with it a bit because it feels.

.

.

I'm not sure about it,

But there is a place of happiness,

Which I don't think is just because we feel happy and we run around smiling.

It's actually that we're feeling good about what we are doing.

That's happiness.

It's like purpose-driven and you feel like you've just lined up with something that.

.

.

We're all different and we've all got things,

But if there's a place of purpose there and you feel like you're doing it to your potential,

You will be happy.

And conversely,

If you're not and you're wasting your time,

Then you're going to be making that negative contribution is also actually.

.

.

Well,

Too much of that and too many people feeling that way,

And we do end up with society struggling.

More people feeling purposeful than whatever,

You'll just work out in the street and see more smiles.

But if you're going to walk out onto the street and people are walking around feeling pretty negative,

Then it's actually there is going to be a collective weight to our conscious experience and it feels that way at the moment.

It feels like a collective weight of whether it's been isolation or what's going on.

It just doesn't seem like there's much.

.

.

Because of the way we consume with it and engage with it,

It doesn't feel like there's much of a let up.

Do you think there's more.

.

.

Whether it's from a media point of view or just the general attitude in the community and the world,

Are we being exposed to enough.

.

.

I'm going to say solutions.

Solutions don't solve things necessarily because I always say that if there's a problem,

You've got to look at the needs of the people involved that aren't getting met and then a solution will drop out of that.

But do you think that there's not enough positivity or solution-based thinking around this and that we are 10,

Whether it's human nature or just where we're up to,

We just sort of wallow in,

Oh shit,

Is that a thing?

It's a thing.

I mean,

Come back to it,

Problem on the level of problem,

Context not content.

We're actually deciding somewhat to engage with the content.

We all have the ability just to turn off our phones.

We could do it,

But we're all kind of just.

.

.

There is a place in our consciousness where we're not going to turn around and just go down the rabbit hole on Twitter because it just doesn't feel good.

It's like,

I might try to be down running like it's sunrise because a physiology that is in harmony and feeling good is just not going to even find that.

It won't even relate.

It's like,

Oh my God,

It's gone because I'm actually down at the beach or I'm swimming in the ocean.

Wherever we are,

There is a place where our consciousness and what will not be drawn to things that are good for us,

They'll only be drawn to things that are better for us.

That's just happening on such a broad perspective.

If you could just expand that whole idea is that there is creative solutions and thinking out there,

But where our attention is at the moment,

We're just sucking up the stuff that's negative.

We just have to shift that.

It's not going to happen by telling everybody about it.

We need to get in and start to lead by example.

We need to bring people around to a different way of thinking.

Behavior doesn't change in terms of what I do unless consciousness changes.

You can tell someone until they're blue in the face that they could sleep better and feel better and do all sorts of wonderful things if they were just to close their eyes for 20 minutes.

You can tell them that.

You can put a great big ad up.

You can put an ad up in every newspaper.

It's free.

You can put a.

.

.

It's free.

Any time of the day.

Any time of the day.

Any time of the day.

People wouldn't turn up.

Because in some ways- They go,

Why is that simple?

In actual fact,

We're all still doing our research.

We still need to go where I've been.

You need to go there.

You need to go into the dark to sometimes.

.

.

To really to appreciate the light.

You do.

You need to.

.

.

Maybe humanity's just having a great big soul search.

Maybe humanity's just doing a fair bit of stumbling around in the dark.

Maybe it's going to have to get worse before it gets better.

That's okay too.

We've got big cycles.

We've got cycles that we can see the actual cycle of life as one of birth,

Let's call it life and then death.

We've got that cycle going on.

Maybe just maybe we're seeing a part of the cycle that we've all just got to hold tight for for a bit longer.

It could be that it's going to have to get to the point where people are like,

Okay,

I really need to change the way I act and live and think and behave because the survival of humanity depends on it.

That'd be okay too.

It's amazing time.

It's just amazing time.

It is.

It's exciting.

Hamish Mackay talks about the stage that we're up to in our humanity is sort of.

.

.

We're youths.

We're sort of not juveniles.

I'm actually sure what age range officially a juvenile sort of sits in,

But certainly more you're in our exuberant youth.

We're making mistakes.

We're having fun,

Generally at the expense of others.

As you say,

We sort of almost have to go through this as part of our journey to get to where we're old enough as individuals,

But as a species to have had the experience,

But young enough to still be able to do something with that experience.

The species may have to take an enormous.

.

.

The population might take a haircut or maybe the species.

.

.

Maybe we are the teenage kid who gets on a motorbike.

Who knows?

Maybe that's the sort of- It's clear you don't have to be a teenager to get on a motorbike.

Well,

Yes.

That's true.

But maybe,

As we all know,

The earth.

.

.

We can see that in the last three months when we just all take our foot off the throttle,

Literally,

The earth just recovers so quickly.

It's amazing.

The whole thing,

It just bounces back so fast.

Someone sent me a photo of the Ganges from Rishikesh in India.

They've been up there.

There's a man who lives there,

And there's no one,

Obviously,

Really traveling through India.

The whole thing's shut down.

The Ganges up there is relatively clean at the top of the Himalayas,

But it's also.

.

.

You still look at it and think,

Oh,

I'm going to swim in this.

The photo that came back is a crystal clear Ganges river.

He's never seen it in his lifetime.

You can see six feet just down at the bottom where all the rocks are.

It's crystal clear,

And no one would have ever seen the Ganges with clear water in it.

This man's probably 40.

It bounces back in a month or two.

It's incredible.

People I know in Bali are just saying that Bali feels like the whole place has just been reborn because there's no tourism.

There's no.

.

.

It's just extraordinary.

We have that experience.

The thing is,

We know God.

We know she's okay.

Earth will be fine.

You can just shake us off one day if we really take this relationship too far.

You're gone.

If we really consider the extraordinary.

.

.

We can't even fathom time.

Billions,

Billions,

Billions of years.

Maybe for the tiny little snapshot of humanity's crack this time around,

Well,

At some point there's going to have to be a real reckoning.

It's good.

It's very similar to bringing it back to a smaller scale,

Like a farm that has taken the foot off the accelerator,

Has just let that farm,

Given the window of opportunity to heal.

In a global sense,

Where it's not that air pollution,

Where it's not the activity and the transport and so on on a farm,

It's a very similar thing.

We're not polluting.

We stop polluting it with a number of different things.

We're standing back and just letting it.

.

.

It has everything it needs to heal.

I'm listening to David Marsh.

Interviewed him there some time ago.

His journey was,

At one point he thought he was the healer.

That was his job.

He was to heal a landscape.

At some point he actually realised that,

No,

I've just got to let it heal itself.

My responsibility is to step back and observe and adapt and respond,

Having been guided by the signals and the triggers of nature,

Which again gets back to our bodies.

It's like,

Stop putting that shit into myself.

Get the good sleep.

Do some simple things that save time,

Money,

Whatever,

And look at our bodies,

Respond,

And just going,

Thank you for that.

It's the same.

.

.

We apply the same principle.

They say regular meditators will slow their aging process.

It's just a fact.

You look at people who've been meditating- When you look 25,

Yeah.

It's just whining about the clock.

Benjamin Button.

Benjamin Button.

It is true though.

I know people who are regular meditators and have been for some time,

And they're just not looking like the same person at the same age who hasn't decided to live a different life.

I mean,

You can line it up.

The same stands for our physiology as it would for a farm or the earth.

You let it move into its natural experience.

One of those is to come to a place of rest if our eyes are closed and we're meditating.

That's the most natural experience we have.

We've actually forgotten about that.

You remember that.

You let your body remind itself that we're not just all of these individual ideas and all of these expectations and things that our parents told us.

There's an entire framework there.

We can get into all sorts of stuff,

But there's a new framework there about what we think.

If you meditate,

Regardless of most practices,

You just get a little reminder of what you truly are,

Which is you are universal.

Do that enough,

Your body just starts to respond in a way.

It's like,

Okay,

I don't have all of these individual ideas and expectations.

I'm actually more of a universal entity than an individual one.

That's lovely because the qualities of the universe are,

Let's call them,

Supportive,

But they are compassionate and loving and all these lovely things.

We could go a long way further in that conversation,

But I think that's it.

There is a.

.

.

The foundation to the human experience is not just all of this individual external validation.

The underlying part of where we came from is our universal experience as it relates to the moment we were created.

It's incredible that we just.

.

.

We came out of a universal experience.

It just was like,

Snap,

There we are.

We're the product of,

And that's where we're going to go back to.

Got to go back there.

That's not a hard thing to do.

We can,

Through a practice or whatever it might be,

Find that connection.

I think even to come back full circle is that that was the way I felt when I was down at Burrua with you that weekend and with Hamish McIleas.

I was like,

Oh,

This is a reconnection with my universal nature.

That's cool.

Yeah.

What I've.

.

.

Just in our discussion here,

Nico,

Sitting here in Paddington,

Which I've had a fair bit to do with this part of the world over the years,

Used to work at the Dudley,

Lord Dudley,

Just up the road.

Best pub,

Sydney,

Jamie Koo Show.

I gave you a rap yesterday on an interview getting a bit of air time,

Governor.

My point was just sitting here reflecting and speaking with you,

Nico,

And talking about biodynamics in this context,

Because I'm usually rabbiting on about it on a farm and thinking about building compost and growing grass and stuff.

I've been inspired to really consider,

And we have done them in Sydney before,

Like a one-day intro to biodynamics in the context of a backyard in suburban Sydney.

I think that is definitely something that I will not just consider I'll do.

It's just in terms of timing and location,

Probably.

There are so many people already who.

.

.

I'm having this conversation.

I had it yesterday with someone just around exactly that.

How do we bring the knowledge of what's beyond the outskirts of this city here?

I think there's built-up demand for people to learn about that.

It'd be a great place to start,

Because that was where you and I came to.

It's like,

Okay,

How do we get this?

How do we get this to the cities?

How do we spread the word?

Because of the connection that people find with it so quickly,

I think,

Once again,

It is inspiring.

It's not just some course that people go,

Oh,

That would be interesting,

Or it's another string to the bow.

It's like,

No,

This is about how I live.

Some years ago,

Nico,

Hamish and I ran a one-day course at Bronte in the backyard there.

Leading up to that,

I'd been in touch with,

Via our selling beef,

Boxed beef into Sydney,

A counsellor on Waverley Council at the time.

We got talking about biodynamics.

I can't remember whether she actually came to the course.

Maybe she did,

But anyway,

She was really interested.

As a result of this,

Hamish and I did a gorilla BD spray on Bronte Park and Marks Park and Tamarama.

It was a classic.

We had the flow form set up there.

We had a guy,

Shane Martin,

Who came down with his beaten up old Land Cruiser,

His tank,

And his spray gear.

We sat there for an hour,

Stirring,

And he was going,

What is that contraption?

We'd chat away.

Then Shane,

He's a classic,

He's burning around spraying the crap out of everybody.

He's probably on his own spraying the crap,

As in it's a soil preparation.

You can drink this stuff.

Everybody was just going,

What is going on here?

It was a classic.

He burned over to Tamarama and then he's up on Marks Park.

No one gets to drive at Marks Park.

No one gets to drive around there.

It's incredible.

He's just driving around Marks Park.

Well,

Look,

It works.

As we know,

The potency of that,

And I've come back to the Queen Street,

Lauren,

But I've got this small little two metre by three metre patch along on the main street.

Before I put my preparation on it,

It wasn't so good.

Now it's people walk past and comment and all the trees down Queen Street.

Once again,

It's just stuff that people can get their hands into.

You can get that into it.

I think once people get into that world,

They are making subconscious,

Instinctive connections with just the very makeup of their body.

It's sort of,

Interestingly,

They don't need to meditate or do a bunch of other things to feel something very,

Very deeply.

That's what I still love about what you're doing and Hamish is doing and the way you're going about it because people might not realise why they're so drawn to it.

That's kind of wonderful.

It's like a nourishment.

There's a food substance nourishment facet of it,

Obviously,

Because you're putting something in your mouth,

Potentially.

There's also a spiritual and mental nourishment just by the subject matter,

The topic,

The discussion,

The concept of biodynamics.

The physical nourishment helps you head anyway.

It's from a physiological point of view.

I can just sense in you,

I wouldn't say the change,

But certainly what's been lit in you as a result of being in that course.

It's a resonance.

There's literally,

When you vibe with something,

It's because,

Hence the word,

It's like you're in that.

It just fits.

It just feels good.

Something like this conversation or some understanding of that,

I think could mean for people is that,

In actual fact,

They can turn around and be part of that cycle of food preparation or sourcing in quite a natural way.

You can have your little box in the backyard with your soil preps and your thing and you don't,

In actual fact,

Need to.

.

.

There's just a naturalism,

But you can actually just let it do what it needs to do and you can learn something along the way and you're not having to go to the hardware store and get your roundup or whatever it's going to be.

Just fertilize.

Your fertilizers and all this rubbish that we do,

It's like,

Actually,

Hang on a second,

I've got that little bit out there.

There's a natural way to gravitate to that as opposed to feeling a natural way to grow food,

Which is,

As you say,

Get your fertilizer and do that and stick it out and get your little seeds.

It actually gives people a lower and less challenging entry point because they're coming back to something which feels very natural in them.

It's an easier sell.

It's about having ownership of not just your food supply,

But actually ownership of the process and the ritual of doing that.

I'd love it if.

.

.

We do have people that get in our courses and we make soil preparations and so on,

But they actually have people from Paddington turn up,

Help us make some of this stuff.

Three months later,

I turn up with their little portion that they've actually made,

The cow shit that they've put in the ground and the horns they've stuffed and go,

This is yours.

This was yours three months ago.

You're now bringing your intention that's been sitting in my paddock for three months making into your back garden now.

Now you're responsible for where it goes and the food that you're going to grow and feed your children and the trees.

I can't remember what sort of trees are up your street.

They're not leopard woods,

Are they?

Whatever they are.

I can't think what they are either.

Just doing that,

You don't even have to have a backyard.

You can go and put it out on the curb out the front.

Talking about trees,

I was on the whole street.

Yeah,

And they're just talking about trees.

I was in Byron the other day,

Byron Bay,

And Janine Price,

Who looks after the Harvest restaurant,

The beautiful garden there.

We'd put some preparations out there two months ago and I went back to have a chat and it's totally unprompted.

She said,

Oh,

This lemon tree here.

She poured some of the stuff two months ago.

She poured what was left over around the thing and on the tree.

And she said,

This lemon tree.

She was thinking about pulling it out.

She said it had this leaf curl stuff going on.

The fruit was ordinary and the tree had this very droopy posture.

And she thought it was,

And it's not a young tree.

I don't know,

Maybe it's 10 years old.

It's got a bit of height to it,

Probably two or three metres high.

And she was just going,

I don't know what to do.

Anyway,

Put this stuff on just as a matter of course through the spreading of this stuff.

And she's right on point.

She's really into this stuff.

Not that you have to be,

But and she said,

You know what?

It's really funny.

And you're looking at this fresh shoot,

These beautiful green lemons.

And she's going,

This tree just looks better.

I know it is better because of the leaf and the fruit and it's lifted.

And I was totally unprompted.

I was just going,

That is wonderful to hear.

It's like,

So don't think if you're not growing food,

You can't actually have a,

You know,

Contribute to this and use biodynamics.

It's on your lawn,

In the trees at the front.

You know,

There's all the paperbarks where we are and they could do with a bit of a hit of love.

And you know what Charlie,

That lemon tree is also,

You know,

All of us.

You might be sitting there looking at,

You know,

A person or a physiology and they're flat and whatever,

And their skin's not,

You know,

Maybe they're looking not so vibrant and they're just a bit,

They're walking along the road with their head down and,

You know,

You could just tell that they're just not part of that environment.

You know,

Like we,

This physiology,

We are no different to that tree,

Crossroad and that lemon tree.

We are,

You know,

We have a relationship with nature that if it's in harmony,

Nature supports us.

It is everything we need.

If we turn around and don't interact with it as well as we can,

Then it's going to be,

You know,

We'll struggle.

And,

You know,

We're the lemon tree.

And so if we turn around and,

Hey,

All it got was a little bit of its,

Like it got back a bit of its kind of,

It got back a bit of its original source.

Essence.

It got back its essence.

And when we turn around and close our eyes,

We get back our essence.

And you look at someone who's been meditating three or four months,

They're all of a sudden,

You'll just bump into them and be like,

What are you doing?

I don't know.

I'm not quite sure.

Be like,

You know,

I don't know.

Was that,

Was it the preparation?

Was it the meditation?

It's actually the same thing.

I don't know.

I'm doing this thing twice a day.

It's like,

Now of course,

After you've been doing it for a few months or whatever it is,

It's undeniable to me that what I do to close my eyes and come to my universal nature means that I don't know,

I feel better,

I sleep better,

I look better and you can turn around.

And then of course it becomes a bit of external validation for someone.

You look great.

What do you mean doing?

I've been meditating.

We'll keep going.

But that's the same thing as you're talking about the lemon tree.

I'm thinking about every human who at a certain point in time may feel that they're just a bit half baked.

They're just not quite there.

Well,

Turn around and add the preparation,

Close your eyes.

Cause it's as simple as it's the most preparation for the soul.

It's preparation for the soul.

Soil and soul.

That's it.

It comes back to that.

We've just stumbled on it again.

Is it soil to soul?

Soil to soul.

We better patent,

Not patent,

What do you do?

Domain.

I think I have got that.

You've got the domain.

Soil and soul.

Com.

Mate,

We have been banging on for an hour and 20 minutes now.

We better go.

We'll do it again sometime.

We've got a hot lunch date.

I'll double you off on my bike.

No,

Give me a dink.

I'm not allowed to.

It's illegal.

No,

That's fine.

I've got my machine over the road.

I've got my chariot over there.

Mate,

Let's,

That is,

I've so enjoyed that.

I hope that that sort of resonated with our listeners.

I'm sure it has.

And let's,

Let's talk to Tim Brown about some staff.

When the time's right.

Good idea.

Because he's on the case.

And I trust that sort of people have at least sort of drawn from this,

The connections between,

You know,

Food,

Meditation,

Mental health,

Biodynamics,

You know,

And the lovely thing is it's all the same thing.

It is all the same thing.

And it's,

I guess we all can feel it.

We like to connect dots,

But sometimes it doesn't,

You know,

It does take time.

It does take us to expand our ideas of things.

And sometimes we not,

You know,

Sometimes,

You know,

We might have questions and I guess we'd like people to reach out to you or I about that.

Cause I'm sure some of these podcasts and these conversations do pose questions and people like to maybe clarify things.

So I think both you and I are always available or at least want to have these conversations.

It's just what,

It's like what this whole thing's about.

Sharing,

Answering questions,

You know,

Getting feedback about ways that we can make this whole conversation one that people can more simply,

You know,

Enjoy and appreciate because it is one thing and that's often not the easiest thing to get our heads around.

But once it starts to connect,

The beautiful thing about what I think we both do is that it's not something that this is not foreign to our existence.

It's actually just us remembering who we are.

Now talking about remembering,

We better remember for good reason,

A mutual friend of ours who actually,

You facilitated the connection with Sarah Wilson.

Yes.

And you were talking just before about,

I guess,

The,

You know,

The solutions versus the sort of state of just going in circles and state of worry.

You know,

She's writing,

Written a book that'll be out soon.

Yep.

That sort of addresses some of those things,

Isn't it?

We're all pretty keen to read that one.

We're always very keen to sort of,

You know,

Read and enjoy what Sarah is able to bring to the world.

You know,

She's,

I don't know anyone who can,

You know,

Consider such a range of information and different perspectives,

Whether it was,

You know,

Where she started out sort of really around food and sugar and those things.

And then you're obviously moving through anxiety and that sort of stuff.

And I think where Sarah is now moving to around,

You know,

The environment,

Climate,

Those sorts of things,

But just a whole general idea of waking up to what a fundamental human condition is.

But I mean,

No one pulls down as much information and then can communicate it as well as Sarah.

It's an extraordinary,

She's extraordinary at it.

So yeah,

I think it'd be wonderful to see what her next book looks like.

But you know,

That's the wonderful thing about even this,

For those people that are listening,

When you start on these conversations and start,

You know,

Exploring different,

You know,

Different people that are part of this sort of community of thinkers or whatever it might be,

It just opens the world up of people who I consider to be,

You know,

Really approachable and active and engaged within their own communities.

You know,

And that's what you do.

And I think that's a nice thing about this.

This is,

You know,

It's a real sort of hands on deck.

Let's get in this together.

Let's roll our sleeves up and make soil preparations and let's talk about anxiety or where we're going or let's learn to meditate.

It's just this whole,

It's just a whole down to earth thing.

Talking about learning to meditate,

I have to give you a plug.

I know you didn't,

You weren't,

That wasn't what your intention was,

But it's certainly my intention.

So Nico,

With his experience and understanding and his resonance with Vedic meditation,

He is a practitioner and a teacher of that.

So you can,

Where can people find that on your website?

I have a landing page,

Nico Plowman,

N-I-C-H-O,

Plowman,

P-L-O-W,

M-A-N,

Nicoplowman.

Com.

That's about it.

I have a landing page now.

I don't have social media any longer,

But people can find me there and send me a little email and just express their level of interest.

And then we have a conversation and a catch up.

And yeah,

Look,

I run courses in Sydney and we'll do another one in Burruva for sure.

I definitely do run them now that we can all get going again,

I'll be back down that way.

So I've just obviously loved people being in touch with me and we get on the phone or have a coffee and it's a pretty simple process.

But yeah,

I'm now,

You know,

Far,

You know,

Sort of getting back into it now that we're all able to.

So thank you Charlie.

And Insight Timer,

Can we throw that out there?

Yeah,

Insight Timer is a meditation platform which my brother Christopher and I,

We bought five years ago now.

And that is a really great tool for people who wish to sort of explore different types of meditation.

I think we have nearly 17 million users now.

It's true.

So it's a great platform.

There's probably eight or nine thousand teachers on it,

I expect.

So there's a whole,

There's just a whole world of stuff that people can,

You know,

Can enjoy and try out and all that sort of thing.

So it's sort of a bit of both is what I would call that sort of broader offering for people who are learning to learn more.

And then of course,

If people want to learn a more traditional technique,

They can get in touch with me or there's plenty of Vedic meditation teachers in,

All over the world.

And they're very easy to find and very accessible and they're a great group of people.

Mate,

We better wrap it up.

We should.

We should.

Can we talk all day?

But no one wants to listen to us anymore,

Even though it'll go viral.

Mate,

Thank you so much.

I've so enjoyed,

You know,

Our reconnection and our,

I guess,

Our mutual,

The desire to reconnect so many other people to the source.

Yes.

Thanks,

Charlie.

It's been great.

It's good fun.

Thanks,

Mate.

Well,

There you go.

Nico Plowman,

One of my favourite people in the world,

To be honest,

Not just not just because he's a cousin and I've known him a long time.

I love the way Nico could bring together the worlds of meditation,

Health and biodynamics,

Which when you think about it and you dive into it and not actually very far apart.

I love his interpretation and his perspective on all that.

And talking about a cool perspective,

Next week's episode is with Mick Wettenhall,

Farmer from Trangie in central New South Wales.

I've known Mick for some time now.

He's a director at Soil SeaQuest and we talk about all sorts of cool stuff,

Mainly relating to food and more importantly,

Because that's where it's all from,

The soil and some really cool stuff he's been developing for some years now under the banner of Soil SeaQuest.

I'm really excited about this one.

We had to break it up into two parts,

Actually,

Sitting on the brandy there at his property at Trangie.

And we just,

Yeah,

We just rambled on for long enough to have to bust it in half into two episodes.

So I'm busting to get that one out next week.

I hope you enjoy next week's episode with Mick Wettenhall.

This episode was brought to you by nature because she wants you to connect and be inspired.

So pay her a visit to meditate,

Breathe your biome and have a lovely day.

This podcast is produced by Rhys Jones at Jager Media.

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