How does one become the CEO of a multi-media, spiritual wisdom, publishing company?
If you are Tami Simon of
SoundsTrue, you certainly don’t take the beaten path. You drop out of college, meditate in India and Sri Lanka and marinate in “existential questioning.” You try to figure out how to serve the
transformational awakening of others while also paying the rent.
SoundsTrue is Tami’s baby and it produces, publishes and distributes the work of spiritual teachers with “beauty, intelligence and integrity.” Tami calls this work a form of “exercising the soul.”
If anyone has found a way to balance the call of the text message with the call of the higher self, it’s Tami Simon. Normally a conversation has a few nuggets of interest, but Tami speaks in extremely efficient language that is often tremendously wise. We did our best to distil the information, all while keeping the heart of her message:
1. Grounded-ness is extremely effective in business.
If we are rushing here and rushing there and pushing ourselves constantly, we can’t think clearly. Tami says that it’s “good business to have perspective with distance. This helps us to see what needs to happen.” Rather than thinking of your spacious self and your business self as two entirely different people, think of them as harmonious complements.
2. You can meditate in a way that can translate into a busy life.
Tami doesn’t believe that formal meditation practice is the only way to go. Through her teacher, Reggie Ray, she learned the art of meditating with the body. Within our interview, she asked us to become aware of the part of our body that was grounded. She says if you feel your “tush on the chair, start there, then feel tension dropping through your spine.” You can do this when you feel your body gripping,
even (or perhaps especially) at work. We were feeling pretty awesome within seconds.
3. Clenching can tell you how you really feel.
When Tami is in a meeting, she will sometimes tune into her hands and feet. If they are clenched, she recognizes that she is not comfortable with a decision or a concept. She then tries to “find a way to express concern that is calm.” The body can speak before your mind is able to.
4. Ask lots of questions.
Both in work and life. Tami suggests looking at
what matters most. How we can be vessels of love. How we can infuse ourselves with kindness. How we can get a sense of confidence, both about our life and about our death. She admits that these can fall underneath the umbrella of spirituality, a word that is amorphous, but she believes that it still works because “we are pointing to something that cannot be literalized.”
5. Every workday deserves a pause.
SoundsTrue has implemented a “good minute” which is one minute of silence at the beginning of a meeting. People are not guided; they can meditate or pray or do nothing. But it allows for space. It allows people to stop. And Tami believes that just stopping is very important. If you don’t have an office that is open to a good minute, Tami suggests “going to the bathroom: a great way to stop.” She also insists that we must
pause without our phones, which can encourage the “continual spin of the thinking mind.”
6. What’s the rush?
You hurry to work. You tap your foot in frustration when the line for coffee is snaking out the door. Tami encourages us to question: “
What are we so anxious about? Towards which false sense of security are we rushing?” With a more deliberate sense of movement, as opposed to momentum, we may be able to find what Tami poetically describes as a “blue sky in thoughts.”
Tami praised
tuja’s meditation challenge as she thinks that people need to see many different avenues in order to see what works for them.
“Find your doorway,” she says. “We have to love it. When we find something we love, there becomes a motivation.”
Courtney Sunday from Toronto, Ontario
Courtney Sunday is a writer, yoga teacher, Pilates instructor and Thai massage practitioner. She teaches corporations in Toronto the fine art of breathing deeply, and travels too much for her own good. She likes to cook meals from scratch using ingredients from her garden, and would mill her own flour and make her own butter if she had more hours in the day. You can find out more about her at www.courtneysunday.com.
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