#29 Mindful Movement, Practicing Awareness and Prioritising Joy with Max and Tom of District Vision

In this guest episode I'm joined with Max Vallot and Tom Daly, co-founders of District Vision. District Vision is an activewear brand specialising in responsibly-made apparel and accessories, and hosting community events and retreats to help athletes (and aspiring ones) to develop a more mindful approach to movement and activity. Alongside these events, they offer mindfulness tools (in the form of online and in-person classes) that can help not only deepen ones daily movement practices and bring a new dimension to ones experiences, but also to enhance them. Max and Tom have a really refreshing approach to moving and working out, and their mission is to offer inspiration, tools and functional apparel to help people to get more out of their movement. For them, it's not about inflicting constant pressure on yourself to reach goals or beat records, unless that's what brings you joy. Instead, they want to encourage a more sustainable approach and thinking towards moving the body, and one that just so happens to benefit the mind too.  In this episode we talk about how the missing piece in most people's routines is joy, and how working out or being active is something we often do for a reason, and not necessarily the right one. We want the most challenging workouts in order to feel we've achieved something, and we want accountability and quantifiable evidence that we're doing well and always getting better. Of course, that's part of it, but it's not the only part. We talk about the importance of being more present and having treated awareness, and how this can supplement and support us in progressing, both in fitness and in day-to-day life. We talk about prioritising joy, and not adding to our stresses by making something like exercising as demanding and draining as another job.  We talk a bit about start up life, and the journey of paving a new and slightly different path built on foundations of passion and meaning. We talk about the beauty in sometimes just letting things unfold naturally, and not always limiting our potential with goals and grand plans.  We talk about mindfulness and mediation, and how different this can look from one person to the next. We talk about the importance of stillness and also not creating rigid routines but learning more to go with the flow of life's inevitable ebbs and flows. We talk about some of their favourite alternative therapies and methodologies, and we also talk about the importance of integrating the things we learn, fully, rather than doing them as part of a checklist and not really absorbing them into part of our life or part of our journey. SHOW NOTES: www.districtvision.com www.ramdass.org www.fantasticfungi.com The Ten Keys to Reality book: https://amzn.to/36vha1d