It Can All Shift in a Moment — The Power of True Embodiment | Guy Lawrence

Please note, this is an automated transcript so it is not 100% accurate.

Guy:
Have you ever wondered if you just completely surrendered to life, that you trusted that there’s something far greater binding the entire universe together than that we could ever, our little minds could conceive? And what would happen if we just leaned into that on a daily basis? You ever wonder what would happen? Well, let’s dive into it in today’s podcast, and here’s my take on it. Let’s do this.

Guy:
Beautiful. Surrender, it’s an interesting word, isn’t it? It, um, for me, it’s, it’s been a massive part of my life and, and how do we get to the point when it comes to surrender where it’s not an intel- intellectual word or process, but it’s a true embodiment? And I feel that’s what we lack in, in, in a lot of today, especially in Western cultures, is this, this understanding of wisdom and embodiment as opposed to just information and processing without it being implied so it’s in every single cell of our body. It’s in the essence and being of who we are. And, uh, you know, I even, here I am recording this today, and you might see I’m not in my podcast office ’cause literally in another 90 minutes we’re about to start our Live and Flow five-day retreat, and we’re here in the beautiful rainforest.

That this is actually the octagon behind me, that we, all the beautiful souls are coming in. Uh, and this whole week will be about getting out of the mind and getting into the bodies and true embodiment and letting the body inform the mind. And for me, a big part of the life, my life has been placing myself in experiences and understanding, so that, that learning has come from the experiments and the embodiment, not from a book or the mind. So for surrender, w- there’s a couple of things. One, the first thing is I’ll, I’ll share a little bit about what surrender means to me and why it’s such a big deal because there was a moment in my time, uh, back in 2013, I believe it was, where, uh, I had to surrender and, and my body felt like it was gonna die.

It was that intense, and the only way out was through. That was it. And what it was, it was a shamanic journey that I did, and I decided, and I’ve only ever done this once, which was an ayahuasca journey. But rewinding back even further in my life, the, as a kid, I was hanging out with the wrong kids in the valleys of Wales. And we ended up, um, I can’t remember the age. I, I embellish it every single time I share the story, but I might have been 13, 14, 15 years old. Anyway, I wasn’t an adult, and I was hanging out with kids that were like three, four years older than me. And, uh, magic mushrooms just grew like poppies, like daisies on the hill.

And the, the kids had gone and picked a bunch of them, and we all decided that we were gonna take these magic mushrooms one night, uh, after school. And I remember being amongst it, and they would roll them up in a ball and drink it with Pepsi Cola. I forget this. And, uh, there were, there were 40 mushrooms to a ball. That’s all I remember. And I, I took the ball, and I drank the Coca-Cola or Pepsi Cola, whatever it was at the time, and I was waiting and waiting and waiting for this thing to kick in. Other kids were going, you know, we were out in a park down at the, um, near our village. And then nothing was happening. But what I didn’t realize was I had a massive meal for dinner when I got home from school, and then I went down.

Didn’t want to tell my mom at the time, obviously, what I was up to, just being a, a kid. And then I, uh, one of the kids suggested maybe you should take another one. So I took another ball of these things about 30 minutes later. And then we all went and back to one of the, the guy’s house or s- something And I remember being in their bedroom and there was about 10 of us, and all of a sudden this thing kicked in and I was like, ” Oh my God.” And I was just starting to panic. And I asked a kid, “How long does this last?” And he said, “Oh, about a week.” And, but he, l- it turns out later, I, he misunderstood what I’d actually said. He thought I asked a different question. He wasn’t trying to scare the bejesus out of me. But I went white, terrified, and I thought, “I’m gonna be stuck like this for a week?”

And now you can imagine this as a 14-year-old kid or whatever, and I ran out of that house. I freaked out. It felt like all the walls were closing in on me, and it was just awful. And I ran outside on the street. It was still daylight. I can still remember it. And one of my mates came to follow me, “Are you okay, guy?” I was like, “No, this is not right.” And I ran, and I didn’t know where to go or what to do because obviously I didn’t wanna go home and tell my mom what I’d, what I’d just gone and done. Knowing my mom would’ve been amazing, obviously, and been a support for me. But as a kid, I just internalized it. And I remember there was an abandoned house, and I can even place myself in the energy of this abandoned house.

It was not nice. It was a dark place. And I hid, and I broke into the cellar of this abandoned house and hid in the cellar that sat under the house so I could just hide from the world, waiting for this thing to wear off. And of course, I had in my mind that it might be a week. So I, I laid on the floor and just curled up in a ball and just rode this thing out. I remember staring at the floor and just constantly just doing everything it took to be present, and there was no way out but through. And I, I really feel in that moment something shifted within me that opened maybe even something up in me at that point as well, and I surren- and I had to surrender to it as a kid and just rode it out.

And I remember, uh, that whole experience just sh- like didn’t really know what to do with it. So then as months went by and, and years went by, i- in, in a way it made me, um… There was a big, the rave scene was big at the time and, and back in the ’90s in Wales and all this kinda thing and ecstasy, and I just did not want a bar of anything, anything to do with any of it. Like, in that way it did me a, it was a gift in some ways, but at the time as a kid it was just horrendous. So when it came to do, and the reason why I’m sharing this with you, because for me that was, you know, a, a, a trauma in some ways and, or something opening and not being able to handle the dynamics of that at the time.

But obviously I did at some capacity. And then when it came to doing the ayahuasca ceremony, which is then a, the most powerful psychedelic in the world, it actually started to bring all this unresolved wounds that had obviously happened from that experience, but obviously a lot of other unhealed, um, trauma within myself as well. So it almost felt like I’d signed up for an execution of my own death in some ways, which it was to a degree, an ego death. But, so when it came to doing the, the ayahuasca ceremony, on the day of going there, like as each week came by, the moment I’d agreed to do it, my life started changing in, in mysterious ways.

I mean, even with the retreat, we’ll, we, we see it with people all the time. The moment they book in and have declared yes to the universe, they declared yes to themselves, then the, everything external with, around your life starts to reorganize itself to mirror that, that aspect of you that’s actually changing, that you’ve already declared to do. So really the best thing to do is, when that starts happening, is to surrender, to let go of the mind, not to question it, just to be observant. The, as like David Clemen said on my podcast, I love his phrase of being the, the peaceful observer of this. But of course, we don’t. We bring the mind into it. We bring past experiences.

We wanna control the outcomes. We pu- we have to put meaning to things, and we then fill the void of what just is to have to have this, the intellect, which is, you know, which is getting us, I believe, in trouble period. -Which is not the way of the heart, right? So what then, when it came to drinking the, the ayahuasca, I’ll never forget going to see the sham- the shaman. You know, he’d spend 10 minutes with you. You’d go in, in a room with him on his own before, during the ceremony, and he could see me. I mean, I was white as a sheet. I had, I had to fast. I hadn’t eaten in nearly two days. I had flown for, to the other side of the world. I’d just got off the plane. I was jet lagged.

I hadn’t eaten, and I was falling apart. I was decimated. Um, and, and when I spoke to him, he c- clearly saw this, and he just said to me, ” Just remember that this is just like getting on a boat. You leave the shore. The w- it might get, you know, you might, storms come in, the waves might go up and down and, and everything, but know that then the boat will return, and you just step off.” But he’s like, “The, the best thing you can do is trust. Just trust and surrender. Trust and surrender.” Now, when your whole body is screaming no, because it’s just gone into a fear trauma response, surrendering is fricking not easy. And I, and I, and I get it, and I empathize with anyone that’s had incidences, and then every time they lean into something, that body flares up in a certain way.

So I understand. I get it. And by the time I went up to drink the ayahuasca, I was at the point where I was, had to be carried up. I was, like, so weak, and I was literally fainting. God, it was pr- like coming back, I’m like, “Oh, my God. This big Welshman.” Anyway, and there was 21 in the circle. Now, my intention, honestly, was just to surrender. I had no concept of why I was even doing this. I was just drawn to it. It was calling me, and I knew it was time to overcome this aspect of myself. For whatever reason, I was listening to my heart and my soul and not my brain. And I was, and I was in a space where I was strong enough to allow myself to really lean in and listen to that and trust in the people that I had around me and the environment that I was in, knowing that deep down in my heart, I knew I’d be okay.

But my, my mind thought I was gonna die, and my body some- in some ways felt like it was, it was going to die. So when I drank the, the cup of ayahuasca, I remember going, “Okay.” That’s it. There’s no going back now. I can resist this for the next three, four, five hours, but that’s not gonna be pleasant, or I can just let go. So what I did, I went back down to, uh, the mat. I laid on the mat and I went into Shavasana, and I remember opening the palms of my hands. I remember saying the words, “I trust. I trust you.” And I started leaning, and I started going into that mantra of just that repeating, “I trust you, I trust you, I trust you.”

So through that, I started to let go. And it was in that moment, on reflection, where it was the, the, the biggest lesson of all this, because that’s when I fully surrendered. I just let go. And the moment I let go, the moment, it was like whoosh, everything started to shift. And then the, the power of the Ayahuasca kicked in, the psychedelic, and I had a experience that actually no one e- I don’t think anyone else in the room actually had. Everyone was there for all sorts of reasons. There was people with some heavy depression and trauma and sadness to, you know, hippies trying to get a, get a, get a reaching for the stars kind of experience. And all, all I wanted to do was surrender and just ride this thing out and see what happened. And I had the most profound evening on that where I, I got…

I, I don’t like going into too much detail, because I don’t want my experience to be your experience. But I met Mother Ayahuasca. I, I got taken through the universe. I, I dissolved. I got shown different emotions and different reasoning behind it. Like, it was, like, from a much different perspective, and I came out of that just like, wow, something, something fundamentally shifted. And that embodiment, that lesson- S- has changed my life. It changed my life. Now, but the thing is, I don’t want you to get caught up on that it was the ayahuasca. It wasn’t. It was the awareness and the intent that I brought to the table to surrender into that moment with such reverence, and sacredness, and complete 100% trust.

That was the magic that allowed it to happen, and it’s no different whether you come to our retreat where we just, you know, use different tools of meditation, and breathing, and movement, and that are all instigate, bringing us into these moments where we allow that magic to happen. So that is where I think a lot of this work gets lost along the way, that we get so attached to the tools, we’re, we’re forgetting the reverence that is brought to the moments where the true wisdom really lies. Does that make sense? So that is in itself surrender When I came out of that, looking back in that reflection, I started to then honor those moments more and more as my daily life started to shift and change and moments come up where the, that fear comes in and actually bring in that essence in that moment of what I had from that, uh, ceremony into daily life.

And through that, I’ve got to this space, which is what I do today, and live a, a, a life that I’m so blessed for, so grateful for, and I’m so grateful for all the experiences that have come my way. As painful as some of them are, has allowed me to become deeper and deeper into its own embodiment and wisdom from that. And just on, on this note of surrender, what… ‘Cause there were three of us, three mates, we all used to live together at one point, that did this journey and, uh, but I’d flown back from Australia to do it ’cause I wasn’t living with them anymore. This was, you know, many years later. But, uh, the day after the ceremony, I still had a week up my sleeves before I had to fly back to Australia, and what we, what w- we said, “Let’s go and take a week holiday somewhere.

Let’s just let this integrate and let it land.” Which was a Sunday then, and we looked at where’s the warmest place in Europe, and it was Dubrovnik, okay? And we said, “Let’s go to Dubrovnik. Are there any flights there? Look at that, there’s a flight leaving tonight. Let’s just book a flight.” We booked a flight. We packed our bag. We, we got on a train to Stansted Airport, and from London, and got on the plane to Dubrovnik. And then w- we arrived, I think it was the morning flight, I can’t remember. But w- when we arrived, now we’re in peak season Dubrovnik. Now, apparently, when the ferries rock up, there’s, like, 40,000 people visit Dubrovnik a day at the ta- tail end of Croatia.

The ferries pull up, thousands of people come off. They all go to see the, you know, where the Game of Thrones was filmed and everything and, and it’s just, it’s just manic there when you get there. Now, we hadn’t booked accommodation. We hadn’t done anything, right? So from that point We hadn’t booked any accommodation and so it’s just people walking past. Um, we continued to surrender into the moment ’cause we were in such a, a open-hearted, heart-space moment. And there was a kayak tour, people selling kayak tours. And what we did when we arrived in Dubrovnik, I mean, there’s people everywhere. We started talking to this, uh, girl that was selling the kayak tours.

And we’re like, “Oh, where can we stay?” And she was like, “What? You haven’t booked anywhere to stay? You crazy? You’ve just come to the peak of Dubrovnik.” She’s like, “Oh my God, what are you gonna…” And she said, “What is it you suggest we do? How are we gonna get a place?” And, but we were so honestly, we did not care. We were just so open and, and she said, “Give me a moment.” And she gets out a radio, and then she gets on the radio, and she said, “Oh, uh, I’ll speak to Mamas,” whatever her name was. And she said, “Well, just wait here.” And then about 10 minutes later, this kind of larger Croatian woman comes down. She must’ve been in her 70s.

And she’s like, “You, y- you, you’re looking for accommodation?” And she said, “I, I’ve got you a place.” And she said, “I can do it for this u- uh, US dollars per day.” And, uh, we’re like, “Okay, that’s amazing. Thank you.” And she said, “I can’t believe it, that this is never available. And then the people did, they canceled it today and, and you can have it.” So we go in and we end up in the Old Town, which is, like, the most sought-after place to stay in Dubrovnik. Elevated, overlooking the whole Old Town, amazing views, this beautiful old stoned apartment. And she said, “What are you gonna do for food?” And we’re like, “We, we don’t know. We’ve just got here.” She said, “Let me, let me sort you out.

Do you like fish?” And we’re like, “Sure.” And the next thing you know, she said, “I will sort you out. See, then, uh, y- I’ll look after you boys.” And then a few hours later, she comes back. She’s got all this beautiful fish, vegetables. She brings some red wine. And the next thing you know, we’re, we’re feasting in this apartment in Dubrovnik, being fed. And we were just like, “Oh, this just keeps getting better.” And the person that arranged the kayak tour, um, then became our chaperone for the week when we stayed in Dubrovnik. And then she called her friends, and she said, “Oh, you wanna be doing this. You wanna go into this part of the town and do this.” So the, the next thing we knew, we had this full experience of five or six days in Dubrovnik that was phenomenal.

And not once did we question anything. Like, we just leant into that openness of surrender. And those moments in my life that I’ve placed myself in have been an embodiment. So when the, as things continue to arise and continue to challenge us, I’ve leant into and felt into that and know it’s gonna be okay And then just trust and lean in. So that’s my kind of 20-minute, there you go, 20-minute podcast on, on surrender just before a retreat. Um, let me know what you think. Did this help you? Have you surrendered? Have there been moments in your life where you’ve truly let go? Do you continue to let go or do you struggle with it? Is it, is it a challenge for you?

I’m, I’m interested to know, especially if you’re lo- on YouTube. And, you know, one way you can help me is if you enjoy these podcasts, please, uh, share them with loved ones and friends. Uh, these are certainly nice ways to support people that might be wanting to hear this right now and, uh, knowing in their hearts and hearts they have what it takes to, to move through whatever’s presenting themselves to it. So yeah, that’s it from me. I’m gonna jump into the retreat. There is still whispers that I’m coming to the USA, uh, for a, a few days. It’ll be an intimate gathering, uh, probably outside of Las Vegas. I’ll let you know as well. Um, there’ll be links below for o- our offering, so keep an eye out anyway, and I’ll be opening up space to, to be doing s- small group healing works online as well, if that interests you. Anyway, uh, I’ll catch you soon. Much love from me, and yeah, look forward to the next one.

I’m standing here right now in Lake Taupo in a beautiful retreat space, and there’s a vast difference between an intellectual experience and passive listening to a fully embodied lived experience, ’cause that’s what retreats can do. They can help you land, start to truly reconnect to yourself, to others, to nature, and to spirit as well. There’s so much in it. That’s why we created Live in Flow, and that’s why we are so passionate about getting this work out there and bringing people together. If you wanna find out more when our next retreat or event is coming up, just check out the link below.