WILL WILLIAMS LAUNCHES SHAVASANA DISCO
Shavasana Disco – David Bowie’s 70th Birthday Celebration
8th January 2017
Olympic Studios, Barnes, London, SW13 9HL
9:30am – 12:00pm
Will Williams, founder of Will Williams Meditation, has recently announced Shavasana Disco, a brand new series of music events aimed at providing a unique auditory experience through guided meditation and classic album listening parties. And what’s so special about these events, is they will be hosted at the same recording studios where the music was originally recorded.
David Bowie fans, this is not to be missed!
The first in the series is an exclusive listening party of Davie Bowie’s 1974 masterpiece LP Diamond Dogs on 8th January 2017. The 8th of Jan being the day he was born and it would have been his 70th birthday. Taking place at West London’s iconic Olympic Studios, yes you’ll be in the very studios, that Bowie made magic!
The event is free with 50 pairs of tickets to be announced before Christmas, to apply click this link: www.shavasanadisco.com
We interviewed Will Williams, the man behind Shavasana Disco and The Gathering.
1. What inspired you to take your journey in meditation?
I’d been experiencing quite a bad case of insomnia for about 7 years. I tried everything I could think of, including acupuncture, reflexology, yoga, hypnotherapy, and various other things to sort it out. Nothing even got close. On a night out in Shoreditch in 2008, I got chatting to a friend of a friend and they convinced me that vedic meditation had sorted the sleep out of lads of their fiends and so I went along and learned. Little did I realise that it would sort all my stress and make me so much more creative, productive and inspired by everyday life! Its like my life went from being black and white to technicolour.
2. Recently, we have seen schools using meditation in the place of detention, do you think this is an indication for the future? What do you attribute this shift in the belief in the benefits of meditation to?
Its a combination of things. Firstly, the pace of modern life, the incessant testing, and the chronic levels of screen time that kids are faced with has caused a pandemic of anxiety and attention deficit disorder. With that kind of growing need, schools need to find innovative solutions to facilitate the education process. And happily, there is more and more scientific research to validate the benefits of meditation and mindfulness, and so its easy for key decision makers and for parents to embrace it as a valid solution.
3. It’s a constant of symptom of London life to be over-stressed with very little time to engage in de-stressing activities. Many Londoners might try to claim they do not have time for meditation. What is your response to them? And do you have any tips for bringing mindfulness into a hectic life?
The technique we teach significantly enhances your sleep quality and it means you tend to wake up a bit earlier feeling bright as a button, so that makes room for your morning one. You can also do it on the commute to work which is usually pretty dead time. And when you start the day in this way, you feel so much calmer, so much clearer, you become much more decisive, the quality of your decision making vastly improves, you are much more creative and solution oriented rather than being stuck on problems. You don’t tend to get an afternoon slump, and you feel energised throughout the whole day. Your interpersonal skills are greatly enhanced, you find yourself better able to handle the dynamics at work and the quality of your personal relationships significantly improves. All these factors mean your day is so much smoother and you find yourself prioritising and executing all your tasks with ease and efficiency. This means there is always room for a quick meditation later in the day, which is a great way of creating sepertion between your working day and your personal life.
4. What do you think of using apps and podcast to help practice meditation? Are there any you can suggest?
They’re a great way to dip your toe into the waters of meditation, to feel it out as it were, but after that they’re pretty limited. Teaching meditation face to face, personalising the technique, and getting feedback from the individual so that you can optimise they’re practise is essential to being able to get the most out of meditation. It also means they can be completely self sufficient so that they don’t need to plug in digitally for something that feels so much better when analogue!
5. When is your next event and what will it entail? If you can give a brief overview and reasons for why our readers should come down we’ll spread the word.
We have two really cool events coming up. We have Shavasana Disco in January to celebrate Bowie’s 70th Birthday. We’ve hired Olympic studios where he recorded and there’ll be 150 of us meditating and then listening to his music with the heightened sensory perception that comes from the meditation. And then in April we’ll be hosting another Gathering event, with some really exciting names to entertain peeps and give them a great night out that doesn’t involve a hangover…
Interview by Jordan Crowley
