Manish will join us in 2025 for our Conscious Living Retreat from 2 – 6 January and is a modern mindfulness expert with a 2,500-year family lineage in Buddhist meditation and yoga. On this retreat, Manish seeks to guide you on a transformative journey to connect with your inner peace and cultivate a more purposeful, balanced life.
Q1: Manish, welcome to Gwinganna. What excites you most about being part of the Conscious Living Retreat?
A) Thank you. I’m excited to take advantage of Gwinganna’s extraordinary setting – nature, community, food, comfort – and use it to help support the deep work we will do to rewire and change our minds. These deeper levels where transformation happens can be tricky to access in our busy and routine day-to-day lives. This retreat will be a chance to let go of all that and be supported to focus on what is most important…You!
Q2: How can mindfulness help us look inwards and achieve balance in today’s fast-paced world?
A) The answer is in the question. Mindfulness, a practice of ‘looking inwards’, is the balance we need in today’s busy world. We get lost in the outside world – in the never-ending ‘doing’ – which will never lead to lasting peace of mind (or else it would have worked by now). All the resources we need to feel, live and do better are inside our minds, and focusing on this brings us into balance.
Q3: You will be sharing the 4-part Brain framework in the upcoming retreat. How can it help create more harmony in daily life?
A) The framework – You, Thinking, Emotions, Body – simplifies how we understand and navigate our experiences. By recognising how these elements work together, especially in difficult moments, it becomes easier to respond with clarity, calm and balance.
Q4: What is one piece of wisdom you hope guests will take away?
A) You can do this! You can find peace of mind, within yourself, in spite of whatever is going on in your life that might make it feel impossible. And once you learn how, you will see that it’s really quite simple…though not always easy!
Q5: What can guests expect to gain from the Conscious Living Retreat?
A) Guests will gain a real, first-hand taste/experience of peace of mind…in themselves, in each other, in the natural surroundings, in myself and in the whole team.
Once you have tasted something for yourself (as opposed to just knowing about it or wanting it), you are connected to it in a very deep way, and you will be able to find, strengthen and sustain your own peace of mind in your day-to-day life.
