How Our Virtual Retreat Can Benefit You | Coronavirus Challenge |

Well, hello and a warm, warm welcome to our Facebook Live today. My name is Ashok Gupta and I'm the founder of the Gupta Program and also the Coronavirus Challenge. And I know that many of you have been very excited for our Facebook Live today because we're going to be meeting some of the presenters who are going to be presenting at our three day retreat. Now, as many of you know, our three day retreat is from the 24th to the 26th of April. So next weekend, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and it's the first time that we'll be doing a live online retreat. We were going to have some face to face, but obviously the current circumstances mean we can't. And we'd love for you to join us on that retreat. And the title of the retreat is From Anxiety to Inner Peace. And for many of us, with what's going on in the media and obviously what's going on around us, the people that we know, it's a very challenging time. Many of us are experiencing anxiety, grief, potentially sadness, and a whole host of other emotions that we're experiencing. And the purpose of this retreat is to really help us overcome that isolation, realizing that we're not alone in going through this. So during our retreat together, we will be engaging in some very deep and powerful meditations to allow us to let go of some of these stresses, these anxieties that we're experiencing. We'll also be having some workshops on understanding why is this a challenging time for people right now. What emotions are we experiencing? How can we move past them? Or perhaps someone's not ready to move past them. Perhaps just being with their emotions right now and understanding what that means is part of the process. We'll also be having some entertainment as well, so opportunities to smile and laugh together. And we'll be talking more about that with our presenters as we go along today. And we'll also have the opportunity for us to meet fellow participants so once again, it can feel like we're on our own, especially we're isolating by ourselves. And on this retreat, there will be opportunities to see other people and to work in what we call our campfire sessions, which are optional, where people will be able to get together in small groups and discuss their experiences as well. So we're so excited to launch this retreat and really hope that you can join us. It's open to everybody, so you can invite your family and friends. And it will be something that I think can help us all get through this very challenging time. And it's not just about the experience. We'll also be giving you tools and techniques to leave the retreat ready to face whatever challenges will come over the coming months. Now, before we say hello to some of our presenters who will be presenting on the retreat, a couple of people who couldn't make it today. So one of our key guests at the retreat will be Naomi Harris. Now, many of you may know her, she's an actress since a young age. She has an OBE and has had an illustrious career in both film and tv. She starred in the critically acclaimed film moonlight and she was nominated for a Golden Globe, a BAFTA and an Oscar for that. And she currently plays Miss Moneypenny in the current suite of Bond films alongside Daniel Craig. So we've got a very powerful interview with her about her background, her experiences, and I think it was something. A very well rounded interview that I'm sure you'll enjoy. And also we'll be having one of our guest speakers, Ione Butler. Now, Ayeni Butler is a British actress. She's a host, voiceover artist, she's a speaker and entrepreneur, and she's the founder of Uplifting Content, which is a digital media platform with over 1.4 million people around the world. And she's based in Los Angeles. She's got a whole wealth of experiences in terms of interviewing key people in the area of wellness and self development. And she's a wonderful person. She'll be joining us well on the retreat. So today we have with us a few of the presenters that are going to be presenting. And if we start with Prash. So, Prash, I'll give you a little bit of a bio put together. So, Prash is a really good friend of mine. He's the founder of Mantra Therapy and Urban Spirituality. Now, you know, he's an incredible singer, musician, speaker and coach. And through his various ventures, he's created an environment where people from different backgrounds and belief systems can come together to collectively raise their own consciousness and to rediscover what's important to them. And thousands of people have benefited from his Mantra Therapy events. And, you know, I can't really describe in words what it's like to experience Prash, and, you know, the way he presents, the way that he, you know, uplifts the crowd with his beautiful voice is incredible. So, Prash, a warm, warm welcome to you. How are you?

Very well, thank you, Ashok. A pleasure to be here with such esteemed givers, talented individuals bringing their own craft. And thank you for having me be a part of this experience and, and sharing alongside such wonderful people at such a Timely. Such a timely event and need in our history at the moment. And I do feel very humbled by what you said, Ashok. It's been a real journey. Obviously we're good friends and I've always admired what you did. For those of you who didn't know, he was an expert DJ as well, at one stage was this gentleman over here.

So maybe that because some of the entertainment that I could do on one of the evenings.

There are hidden skills that this man has and when he's not on a beach doing beautiful talks, he has other hidden skills. But I won't say too much about that. I'm sure you'll come to hear those. But it's been a pleasure and I guess my part in this wonderful gathering, this wonderful summit will be to bring a little bit of the areas of well being, integrated well being, sciences that I've had the pleasure of being on a journey myself. As you as Ashok knows, I've been a corporate warrior for many years, 27 years. And alongside that I kind of led a double life as somebody on the spiritual path and the personal development path. And that led me on a journey of well being. And obviously these days now I spend a lot of time running these organizations. Mantra therapy, also known as urban spirituality. There's a beautiful podcast. Obviously Ashok knows, he's been a guest on the show, had the pleasure of having people from all around the world, Gaia TV and the Game Changers movie, various people guest on our show and bring their wisdom and bring their life lessons to life, which of course is going to be in this beautiful forum right here. And on the corporate side, I wear the hat of stress to success and bringing that corporate wisdom and wellbeing wisdom to individuals. So for me, it's my heartfelt desire to bring an element of practical, usable well being tactics for us to use, for workforces, for leaders, for individuals to use whilst they're in this lockdown state. But combine that with something a little bit different and that's where the mantra therapy comes in, where we'll be weaving together elements of music. You may experience a little gospel or a little soul, or a little blues, or a bit of Sanskrit, ancient Beatles, hippie Indian stuff, and it's going to be that unique mix that's going to come together and, and we really look to get people joined up wherever you are in the world, as Ashok very rightly pointed out, to have a collective experience and an individual experience that transcends time, space and distance and allows us to go deep within ourselves to nourish us and bring out that true light that we all have, regardless of race, religion or culture. It just needs fanning and it just needs the right amount of special care to bring that out. And that's what we'll hopefully do as my contribution. Thank you.

Wonderful pressure. That's exactly right. That, you know, sometimes when I hear your music, it just gives me goosebumps. Yeah. And it's, that's, that's really the feeling. It's realizing that we're more than just this mortal body that we experience in front of ourselves. We're deeper, we're more powerful. It's soul music that, that you'll be sharing with us and it's gonna be a wonderful experience to have you on our retreats and I can't wait to see what people's reactions are going to be. And I'm sure you'll, you'll have a couple of surprises thrown in there as well. Perhaps I haven't. That I haven't seen before. So. So yeah, really looking forward to. Thank you Ashok on the retreat. So thank you, Prash.

Welcome.

And secondly, I'd like to introduce Melissa, Melissa Noel. So Melissa is an incredible consultant, speaker and coach and she is my fellow co producer on the Meaning of Life experiment and the Gupta program. So I'm very pleased to finally introduce you all to her. She's the inventor of nrm which is a non clinical approach to supporting and catalyzing our natural reassociation process. It's really powerful process at healing trauma. And she's a gifted speaker and consultant with a special interest in. In self compassion. So Melissa, it's wonderful to have you on the show. I believe you're tuning in from sunny Mexico, is that right?

That's right.

Fantastic, Fantastic. So you'll be joining us on the retreat. So you want to share with our viewers the kind of things that you might be sharing with us?

Sure. Well, you know, firstly, I feel really privileged to be here and to meet some of your other colleagues and people who have been so influential and supportive in your work in other areas. And I'm sitting here listening, thinking, wow. I just want to be a participant.

You want to be off work, right? You want to be off work?

Yeah. So for me, compassion is a huge piece of a core driver in what I do and recognizing that really self compassion has been an absent form and experience in Western culture. When we say compassion, we usually are focusing on the other person and not on what we need to do for ourselves, which really actually brings out that authentic compassion for others. When we can presence ourselves first, it gets us out of roles like rescuer, persecutor, victim, that drama triangle thing that maybe some people have been introduced to and moves us forward into more possibility of solutions. Something that some people call the third option, which is neither the black or the white, either the or. But something more transformational, magical, miraculous can occur when we deepen that path of compassion. So for me that started honestly during a crisis point when I was very little, about 18 months old. And I had the good, blessed and fortune of being rescued in that experience by being taken out of my body by a very powerful spiritual experience of being taken out of my body and sitting with a group of masters, including one that I would describe as being in Christ, of consciousness, of being in and out of physical form and omniscient presence. And I was shown parts of my life at that point, but I was also had the very direct experience of unconditional love. Lateral consciousness is another word that I that goes with that experience. And of course tremendous compassion. And that was a huge motivator in my life. That was something that I could go back to that experience to ask questions and to learn more about what love is at this moment. So years later I had another experience somewhat in alignment. Obviously the two were meant to go together and it was a near death experience. And in that what I saw was the suffering of the souls. Actually it's touching to say this of the souls I was leaving behind and I couldn't leave. I really wanted to come back and be present and be a part of helping lift that suffering. And that was a time that was right around my 10th birthday when I began my conscious spiritual journey and really looking for and exploring, which you and I have talked about a bit. Ashik, you have some similarities of that conscious passion at a very young age to look for better solutions. Yeah, and so yeah, I really, I started studying Gandhi, King Jesus. I didn't know about other options at that point, like Kuan Yin and much of the Eastern that came later. But I really would put myself in my mind and my imagination, my meditations and my visualizations. What is a better way, you know, if there's a violent situation or tension or stress between groups and cultures. So I really became a student of that myself. And then by my teen years I was starting to work with energy more and particularly energy and groups and with collective consciousness. And I was able to bring hone that gift of that direct connection that started 18 months, bring that in also with that near death experience into groups and facilitating Groups and bringing more peaceful third option solutions to situations. So at that time, dating myself, but at that time, that was the crisis of the Persian Gulf War, and they were looking at opening the draft again in the United States and so helping a group of teenagers who wanted to express how they were feeling, moving it from a protest and something that was a divisive experience to unifying one of a moment of silence that was regional and segmented by Peter Jennings and that kind of thing. And that led to more work, also being nominated to public office at that age. So that was my passion and I have been exploring that ever since. Both the energetics and the collective consciousness. Working with people and facilitation and also with individuals, helping them explore, stepping fully into themselves and compassion being a key piece of that for sure. And also applying it to my own journey. It's been a tremendous healing journey for me. It's a spiritual and healing journey of exploring the difference between spiritual bypassing, new age spirituality that can be sometimes the flip side of the religious coin, to just dropping to that authentic, deep, personal self and true transformation that the world is starving for today of connection, of overcoming separation, of love, of unity. And I would say just to finish the silver lining, that there are a few silver linings in what we're going through. One is to have this opportunity together, this group of us together, to expand and grow and deepen our roots in these times. But among that also is that this, fortunately, is a unifying thing, bringing people together and not a divisive thing. The world is coming together and that is profound. I know that there's some stress and struggle and challenges, but overall, that is what I'm seeing.

Fantastic, Melissa. Absolutely. I resonate with a lot of your words. And I think, you know, even though we're starting off with this retreat, the wonderful gifted people that we've got here, I'm sure there are things that we can do together to really enact and support this transformation that the planners is going through. You know, the current crisis, the current challenge is just a. Just. It's a happenstance that has come at a, you know, a time where this transformation can occur. Even if this didn't happen, this transformation would occur anyway. So it's just about facilitating that. So wonderful to have you on our retreatment list. So we're looking forward to what you're going to be sharing with our participants.

Thank you. My hope is that the time that we spend together when I'm there is just. It's a healing facilitation and that we'll tune into, you know, really what's going on with the retreat and people there to bring that about. And I trust Prash has that as well as Mike. And your name isn't up, Francis.

Which leads me naturally onto our next guest is Frances Goodall. She's one of our lead trainers here at the Gupta program and just to bring up her bio here. So Frances, a therapist, coach, trainer and speaker. She's a mother and author. I don't know how she has time to do all of those things. She's the author of a book called you'd Can Heal Chronic Illness. And over five years she went from being housebound with chronic fatigue syndrome or me to running half marathons. And she spent the last decade dedicating her life to supporting hundreds of women recovery from chronic illness. And she's going to be presenting on the. Well, actually, rather than me sharing what she's going to be presenting on. Let me let Frances take that. So, Francis, welcome to the show today. Do you want to. How are you?

I'm great, thanks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've just got Scott back from an afternoon with my son and just. Yeah. Only found out about this a bit ago, but I'm glad to be here.

Good. So do you want to share with our viewers what you'll be sharing with them on the, on the retreat? I know a lot of people have already told me they're looking forward to what you're going to be sharing.

Great.

So yeah, I'll be talking a little bit about the energetics of wellness, of creating wellness and being in a vibrant state of being and exploring tools like some energy medicine techniques and also emotional freedom technique to help work through any stresses or strains anyone's going through at the moment. And really I'm quite like it to be an interactive session, so if any participants want to bring any words you want to put into the tapping, we'll will flow with it and be quite experiential with it.

So, yeah, fantastic. And for those people who are kind of new to what they, what might describe as energy medicine, obviously we at the Gupta program talk a lot about how there are obviously brain retraining experiences that people focus on which seem more cerebral but actually underlying it, we are changing the energetic frequencies of our bodies. We're raising the vibration, describe medicine to people.

Yeah. So that we all, whether we all have this life force energy within us, we, you know, we have meridians, we have, I believe we also have chakras as well and that through different practices we can support a Healthy, energetic flow through our systems. And some of those practices are our energy medicine practices that I use EFT Emotional Freedom Technique. And it's in different ways of working on the energetic system to create more balance and flow and health and wellness on all levels.

So, yeah, and for those people who are going on the retreat, it's a session not to miss, because I know we get regular feedback from many clients of Francis, and they just describe the healing processes and journeys that they go through as being incredible. So it's really a session not to miss. So thank you, Francis. We're really looking forward to having you at the retreat.

It's great to be a part of it. Thank you for having me here.

Thank you. And I know that if you need. I know that you may need to pop off, so if you need to. That's absolutely.

Yeah. My son's in the background. He's quite happy right now. So.

Yeah.

Last but not least, I'd like to introduce you all to Mike Robson. So Mike is the founder of Harmonies of the Heart. And to be honest, that's all you need to know. The words speak for themselves, which is all about the joy of singing. Embracing that, this philosophy of singing that actually it's for all of us to be able to sing. And he believes that singing is everyone's birthright, regardless of musical experience or ability. And, Mike, I'm definitely with you on that because I'm a big fan, as Prash knows, of karaoke. I regularly have karaoke parties at my house and people initially say, oh, I'm not going to sing. No, no, no, I'm embarrassed five minutes later. You can't throw people off it. They're obsessed with it. So singing, you know, they've actually done some recent research that singing is actually part of who we are as human beings. We are designed to sing, just like birds are designed to sing. We, as human beings specifically have the organs within our throat that mean we're supposed to sing. And yet it's a forgotten art in our modern world. In the evenings, we'd be sitting around the campfire singing, but now we sit in front of a square box and watch moving, flickering images. Three hours, four hours. So wonderful to have you on the show, Mike. How are you?

Thanks for having me, Ashok. It's great to be here. I'm great. Yeah. So as. As you said, I run community choirs in London and Rickmansworth. They're called Harmonies of the Heart. And, yeah, it's. It's just an amazing process, you know, listening to. Listening to you and, and. And hearing the words like prash and this incredible musician. Musician. Well, you know, I was brought up being told that I can't sing, so I just never sang. And then, you know, going through that process from 2012 onwards and finding that, oh, actually I can sing, but, you know, feeling all the fear around it and stuff like that, and then, you know, connecting to so many amazing natural voice practitioners in the. In what's called the Natural Voice Network, and realizing that they've got so much to share, so much beauty to share, and that I want to share that beauty with people because it's just, it's. It's filling me up and I had to share it somehow. So although I don't have any musical training, I don't. Can't read music. I don't know anything about music. The only thing I have is this little tootler here, which sort of starts me off. I have this ability in me, and I didn't know I had it, to create these amazing harmonies for people, you know, realizing that our body is an instrument, it's a vehicle for relationship, for community, for love, for healing and for song. And it's just. It's such an important part of our lives. And as you said, as I said, it's like our birthright to sing, to sing our hearts out. And what I like to do on our sessions, it's interesting because, you know, I've only ever run choir sessions in real life for people. And over the last few weeks, because of the lockdown, I've been running these sessions online and thinking, oh, this is never going to work. How could it possibly work online? It works. I can't believe it. People are saying, this is incredible. We can sing together online. And it works in a different way because instead of all of us singing together and you can hear everyone. Actually, you can't. Everyone is muted except me. And all of the harmonies that I bring into the session. And it creates a very different space. So it actually creates a very safe space. Space to experience your own voice. You're not put off by other people singing around you, although I will be adding that to put you off a little bit. And it creates a very safe space for you to experience your own voice. So what I'm planning to do next week is we're going to be singing some really simple songs. Some of them are wordless, some of them have different words from different languages, different traditions from all around the world. Be teaching the parts and we'll be working on, can we hold our own part in the Midst of all of the harmonies that are coming up. And also we'll be sinking into it because really it doesn't matter whether you can hold apart yourself or not. With all of the different sounds going on, we'll be just sinking into the music and really anything goes. There you are, you're in your room, you're singing with me. And you can see lots of other people on the screen experiencing that for themselves. So it gives a really different experience. And hopefully, you know, you're going to give yourself goosebumps from your own voice, from singing and from doing whatever comes. And it's, you know, it's all about connecting to yourself, to your heart, feeling the love, the joy, feeling sadness, feeling lost, feeling the potential for healing through song. So that's what I'm hoping to share with you guys.

Wow. I've got goosebumps even before the singing. That's incredible, Mike. I'm really. I'm really looking forward to it. So you wanted to add something. Mind blown. I think that is the icon for minds blown.

I got goosebumps and I'm feeling happy. And everybody here is gonna feel the strength inside their soul. You got Melissa bringing her therapy. You got Francis teaching people how to heal. You got Mike bringing him down and you got Mr. Gupta adding the flavor. There you go.

There we go. You know, with Mike, actually, I first was introduced to Mike last summer in September. So we were teaching and training many coaches here in London. And as part of our retreat after the training, Mike came along and was invited by Francis to hold some singing workshops with us. We did it outdoors in my garden and it was just absolutely incredible. It was such an experience for everyone. And when we talk about the retreat back with our coaches now, the that's the one thing that they remember. Forget all the training that I did with them. It's the singing, which is like the number one most remembered experience that they. That they had. So it's something that'll be a real joy for I'm sure our attendees at the retreat.

Looking forward to it.

Yeah, absolutely. So for those of you who don't know about a retreat, once Again, it's from the 24th to the 26th of April this coming weekend and you can sign up at the coronavirus challenge.com retreat and it's going to be 9 o' clock till 5 o' clock eastern time. So that's New York time. But hopefully even if you're on the west coast and even if you're in UK or Europe, the time still work and you can still attend, obviously, the retreat. And we know that many of you are busy with family and whatever. So if sometimes you just want to dip in and dip out from the retreat, that's absolutely fine as well. It can flexibly fit around your lifestyle. But obviously, ideally, what we'd love for you to do is really immerse yourself in the retreat, if you can, during those times. We're having lots of deep healing meditations as well, which is really what we all need right now, is with all the chaos that's going on around us, the opportunity to go inwards, Go into that deep, silent space that we've been talking about, which, facilitated by singing, by dancing, by being together, all of that is facilitating the opportunity for us to connect with that deep wellspring of stillness within us. We have that peace. We have that joy. We have that love within us. And during this difficult time, I want all of us to connect with that and feel better. So, once again, wonderful to have all of you here on the show with us today. Perhaps you want to leave us with a. With a few words. Anyone want to share anything? Yeah, Presh.

I was waiting for the others.

Okay.

Yeah, just. Bye, everyone. Just excited to see you all next weekend and be in retreat together. Yeah, Fantastic.

All right, we'll see you soon. Looking forward to it.

Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you, Mike.

This is amazing. It's amazing. I'm grateful. Thank you. And humble. Feel very humble just to be here.

I think it's opportune time for people to come together. And what I would say is, for anybody who's on the fence, and if you're tuned in or watching this on the replay, Just think about the amount of time that some of us end up deliberately or inadvertently dissipating in worry, anxiety, repeating the old habit patterns that we have and the old behaviors that we have. And if you just add up, even just in a week, the amount of time that's dissipated unproductively and unhelpfully in negative thoughts, then to sacrifice a little bit of time over one concentrated weekend could be the tipping point between more of the same versus your next level of greatness. And not just yours, for your family, too. And that is the promise, and that is the opportunity I think that is here for all of us. And thanks to everybody who's making this possible.

Thank you to you all. Thank you fresh. And once again, we hope to see you on our coronavirus challenge retreat Friday to Sunday, 24th to 26th of April. And we look forward to seeing you then. Thank you, everyone. And goodbye.