Aware Relaxed Connected

#007 - Ramon Castellanos - Of Wolf and Man

In this episode I interview my buddy and fellow cultivator Ramon Castellanos. Ramon has a colourful history, from being raised in a family with an ancient animist lineage to working in a wolf sanctuary, and throughout this time he has engaged in practices of magic, devotion, rewilding, natural movement, human domestication, internal and external martial arts, and deep meditations.
We talk about the dynamics of practice, the balancing agents between internal and external, how he dealt with a sudden energetic awakening that kind of wrecked his life for a little while, and much more.
Ramon has written a fantastic book called The Ancestral Now, and is almost done with his second book (title tbc). You can find the first one right here, I highly recommend you grab a copy:
https://www.booktopia.com.au/the-ancestral-now-ramon-f-castellanos/book/9798218052621.html
I always have fun connecting with Ramon, and if the stars align we will hopefully be doing some stuff in person very soon too, stay tuned.
As always, if you'd like to support the podcast, please consider becoming a member of my patreon. Members get early access to podcast episodes, as well as a whole host of other benefits such as weekly classes.
https://www.patreon.com/c/AwareRelaxedConnected
 

#006 - Getting to Know the Mind

Want to support the podcast? Join my patreon right here:
https://www.patreon.com/c/AwareRelaxedConnected
In this episode I dive into my approach to understanding the mind. It's a tricky beast, and it's worth spending time getting to know the tricks, how they work, and the various ways they might appear.
Beyond this, I also discuss an approach to gathering the mind and how the orientation towards how this is done is rather important - instead of violently cutting ourselves away from distractions to return to the task at hand, we want to release the energy bound within the distraction back into what we are doing. In the moment of noticing distraction it's also possible to begin to reestablish a better relationship between the conscious and unconscious parts of the mind, and I talk a fair bit about the dynamics involved here.
Overall, a pretty fundamental episode for my approach, as everything discussed here will apply any time you have a task that you should be paying attention to and how to gather the attention to a single point in a healthy way.
The gathering attention follow along practice mentioned in the episode can be found right here:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/123492257

#005 - Soisci Porchetta - Integrative Life Practices

Want to support the podcast? Join my patreon right here:
https://www.patreon.com/c/AwareRelaxedConnected
In this episode I interview my good friend Soisci Porchetta. Soisci has a wealth of experience, she's a former women's world champion Thai kickboxer, trained in the inner circle with Ido Portal, learnt traditional Indian meditation and Yoga, and has dived deep into the philosophies and practices of Fighting Monkey. Like me, Soisci has also moved from a performance based athletic practice to one more focused on internal cultivation and this has given her quite a unique vision and approach to personal practice.
She now is now more interested in what she calls integrative life practices, and you'll find plenty of insight into what that's all about in the episode.
If you want to learn more about Soisci, you can head on over to her page:
https://www.soisci.com
In the podcast, we talk about a particular clip of her world championship fight. You can find that clip right here:
https://www.instagram.com/p/C9nOzV_xzZW/
Enjoy!

#004 - The Heart of My Approach

In this episode I dive into some of the aspects of the 2 main qualities which form the heart of my approach: opening and releasing. But what do I mean by these words? What dynamics do each of the concepts point to, and how are these dynamics realized in different ways depending on the context?
The next question is why...why train in this way, why go to all the effort? I explore how this process can actually aid many different parts of life, and how its transferable quality can make it possible to both continually develop and deepen one thing, at the same time as always finding new contexts and angles to experience this thing.
If you'd like to join my patreon, you can find me at www.patreon.com/AwareRelaxedConnected
If you're interested in a guided training with me, I offer a mentorship program where I will guide you one on one in the creation and refinement of this process, and how to apply it to the things you love to do. More details at www.craigmallett.com/mentorship

#003 - Joe Fairligh: Coming Back to Center From the Extremes

I have a Patreon now! If you'd like to support the podcast, head on over to https://patreon.com/AwareRelaxedConnected
In this episode, I interview my good friend Joe Fairleigh. Joe is one of those guys who is both masterful at his arts, and super humble and down to earth. He has been a cornerstone for many other people I know, helping them find stability and meaning in their lives. I'm super stoked to have Joe on as my first guest, and this episode was so much fun to record. We got into topics of martial arts, meditation and more, but mostly talked about how diving into any skillset comes with the big risk of becoming crazy and evangelical about it.
If you'd like to connect with Joe, you can find him over on his website right here:
https://www.joefairleigh.com/

#002 - Orientations and Motivations

In this episode I take a bit of a deep dive into the topic of orientation and motivation. Why do we train what we train, what do we believe we are going to get from it? Often people will use terms like "to get well/healthy/fit" but these terms mean such different things to different people that it's worth clarifying for yourself and understanding the lens you're looking through.
This is all tied together with a short exploration of the unconscious perfectionists that tends to disconnect us from natures perfection by looking for perfection where it can't exist: within the relative world.
If you'd like to support my work, head on over to my Patreon and subscribe: https://patreon.com/AwareRelaxedConnected
I also have plenty of other information on my website, www.craigmallett.com
Enjoy

#001 - The First Step

In this inaugural episode of the podcast, I introduce the tone of my approach to self cultivation and the basic pillars that make up my current curriculum:
Physical Cultivation
Internal Cultivation
Cultivation of the Mind
Cultivation of Relationship to Reality as a whole
I also take a quick tour of my history to see the main influences on this approach and hopefully set the context for everything to come in the podcast.