The Power of the Whisper: Following Your Inner Guidance (Robert Mulhall) - Episode 228

What if the quiet nudges you’ve been feeling… aren’t random at all?

In this episode, we’re joined by Robert Mulhall—leader, spiritual practitioner, and former CEO of Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health. He has spent his life learning how to listen to those subtle inner whispers…and actually follow them.

Robert’s journey doesn’t fit neatly into one box (and honestly, we love that). From global development and public health to executive coaching and spiritual practice, including training in mindfulness meditation, Reiki, Akashic Records, the Enneagram, and even Celtic Irish shamanism. He’s walked the line between the corporate world and deep inner work, proving that you don’t have to choose one or the other.

What really stands out is his willingness to trust the unknown, even when it didn’t make logical sense.

We talk about what it really means to listen to your inner guidance, how to recognize when life is asking you to pivot, and why transformation isn’t something to chase—it’s something to allow.

If you’ve been feeling a pull toward “something more” but can’t quite explain it… this one’s for you.

WHAT WE TALK ABOUT

• What “life’s whispers” actually feel like—and how to recognize them
• Why your next step won’t always make logical sense (and why that’s okay)
• The power of presence + attention (hint: it’s everything)
• How Robert’s unconventional upbringing shaped his view of wholeness and purpose
• The intersection of leadership, spirituality, and service
• Insights from practices like mindfulness, Reiki, the Enneagram, and Celtic Irish shamanism—and how they each support transformation
• Lessons from some of the world’s most respected spiritual teachers
• How to build trust with your inner voice (even if it’s been quiet for a while)
• Why transformation is less about doing… and more about remembering who you already are
• A must-do exercise that may change your every day

So many of us are standing at a crossroads, trying to figure out what’s next. And while the world is loud with advice, Robert reminds us that the answers we’re looking for are often much quieter… and already within us.

This conversation is your reminder to slow down, tune in, and trust what you’re hearing—even if it feels unfamiliar.

MORE FROM ROBERT MULHALL
Visit robertmulhall.com to explore more about Robert and his work.

Visit seekingcentercommunity.com for more with Robyn + Karen and many of the guides on Seeking Center: The Podcast. You'll get access to live weekly sessions, intuitive guidance, daily inspiration, and a space to share your journey with like-minded people who just get it.

You can also follow Seeking Center on Instagram @theseekingcenter.

Transcript

Robyn: [00:00:00] I'm Robyn Miller Brecker and I'm Karen Loenser. Welcome to Seeking Center, the podcast. Join us each week as we have the conversations and we, through the spiritual and holistic clutter for you, we'll boil it down to what you need to know now, we're all about total wellness, which to us needs building a healthy life.

Karen: On a physical, mental, and spiritual level, we'll talk to the trailblazers who'll introduce you to the practices, products, and experiences that may be just what you need to hear about to transform your life. If you're listening to this, it's no accident. Think of this as your seeking center and your place to seek your center.

Robyn: And for the best wellness and spiritual practitioners, experts, products, experiences, and inspo, visit theseekingcenter. com. Today's guest is someone who truly embodies the idea of listening to life's whispers and having the courage to follow them. Robert Mulhall has spent his career the intersection of leadership, spirituality, and service. Over the past two [00:01:00] decades, he has moved fluidly between the worlds that don't always talk to each other, business, public health, global development, leadership, coaching, and spiritual practice.

 He's worked with organizations like PricewaterhouseCoopers, co-founded a social enterprise, led global innovation programs with partners like unicef, and most recently served as the CEO uh, of the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, one of the most respected spiritual and wellness retreat centers in the world.

 along the way, he's trained as an executive coach, Enneagram practitioner, Reiki practitioner, mindfulness meditation teacher, and even in Celtic Irish shamanism. But perhaps the thread that runs through it all is Robert's deep curiosity about transformation, how people change, how organizations evolve, and how we learn to listen to the quiet inner guidance that nudges us towards the next chapter.

 And interestingly enough, Robert has followed those nudges many times in his life, even when they didn't make logical [00:02:00] sense at the time. So today we're going to talk about what it really means to listen to those whispers, the lessons he's learned from some of the most renowned spiritual teachers in the world, and how we can all get better at recognizing when life is asking us to move.

 Hi, Robert. 

Robert: Hey. Good to be with you both. 

Karen: Oh, we're so glad to have you here. as robyn was saying in the intro, I think the thing that we always are fascinated by are those people who have that courage to listen to the whispers. And I know we're gonna get into that more in this conversation, but we'd love to just start with where you grew up.

For those who can hear you, they'll notice that little Irish accent in your voice. And you grew up in kind of a unconventional environment. Tell us a little bit about that and how that shaped you as a person and your journey moving forward. 

Robert: Yeah. my parents, mostly my father, but both my parents really inspired by Eastern spirituality.

And when they started to have kids, they were like, look, we want to have our kids have some sort of foundation in [00:03:00] this. And so they co-founded a school in Ireland that looked like a room in a building with four students and one parent who became the teacher. And they just said, we're just gonna experiment.

And that then became like an elementary and high school, still going today very strong. And but at the core of that education were some really profound principles. And they included every human being in its essence is whole and complete already. So this idea that society tells us that we're somehow missing something, that if we just got the next degree or the next title or more money, or we bought the next thing, we'd feel complete, that if we just turned towards ourselves, we would remember that completeness.

And so while we were learning about history and. Science and French and whatever else in school, we were also learning about these things. and that was interwoven [00:04:00] with meditation practices. And already at that time in the eighties, they knew that society was gonna be trying to steal our attention.

 So they wanted us to be able to attend. ' cause they said, if you can attend to the present moment, you'll be able to remember your true essence. ' cause everything you need is in the present moment. So we would spend hours just drawing, like, let's say we'd spend an hour drawing a line down a page or trying to draw the perfect circle.

And that would be it. That's all you do for the hour. Just try and draw a perfect circle, but not like methodically draw it with sort of effort was, could you let that circle flow through the movement of your wrist? And they were like, if we can help young people. Develop that capacity to attend, then think about what that's gonna do for them when they're in a meeting, how they're gonna be able to listen, how they're gonna be able to track information, and then synthesize it in ways that other people just won't be able to because of how their attention has been stolen.

 Grew up with all of these things, and that meant going [00:05:00] on retreats. I remember being pretty young and the grownups were going away on retreats, and I was like, what? why can't the kids do this? And they were like, well, you know, we don't have anything for you. And I asked for a meeting who, whoever was in charge, I think I was 10.

 And I said, I'd like to meet the decision maker and have a conversation. So we did. And, pretty soon after that, we were getting invited on these retreats with grownups And we were like, why do all these people complain about what's a mortgage and why are they complaining about it?

Like all these things. And then they were like, we need to create something that's a little bit more focused just for the young people, which they did. And that was, yeah, that was an incredible foundation. 

Robyn: When would you say then that you first started meditating? 

Robert: four or five years old?

Karen: that still blows, my mind. And yet it seems so logical because children at that age are just so open to and to receiving that and, and are present and just thinking about, you know, watching a [00:06:00] little one even with their pen for the first time and how they are so present In when they're doing it versus us now as we scribble thinking six thoughts ahead of ourselves.

So yeah, the wonderful foundation to have. As a child and, and to grow up with, 

Robyn: I thought your parents should be doing this for many other people around the world. 

Robert: yeah, they wanted to do something different in Ireland. They wanted to offer, a more expanded education opportunity for young people in Ireland that was beyond the government or the sort of pretty much the Catholic church education system.

And, they had not gotten the answers that they were seeking in their own lives from those institutions. So they were like, well, let's not just send our kids down the same path. Like, let's take a risk and see what happens. And they did. And for better or for worse, I'm one of the outputs of that risky experiment.

Robyn: Wow. I think even for those listening right now or watching, you can feel your energy you have such a calming. Grounding energy, and you can [00:07:00] feel that even in the way that you speak, there's a frequency to that. And so I feel like maybe part of that innate, but the other part of that comes from, I would think all of this practice that you've had.

Robert: Yeah. They, um, used to talk about it in the school in Sanskrit one of the words is satwa and it's just kind of, there's a lot to it, but in a simple way of speaking about it, it's like a, an internal quality that can move through you, but we all have it, but these contemplative practices like meditation and mindfulness, et cetera, they cultivate more of it.

So a lot of what they were trying to help us do was cultivate more of this. in ourselves, in our presence. But they also built it into the rhythm of the day. So I didn't know this until much later, or you know, when you saw it on tv, but most schools begin and end a subject or a class with the ringing of a bell.

And everybody knows that's when you change. We didn't do that. We didn't have a bell. the teachers tracked the time and then they would say, okay, let's fall [00:08:00] into silence. And so we would begin and end every class with some sort of like contemplative, mindfulness piece. And that was just like, can we start this class from a great place?

No matter what has happened in this class, can we end it in a still place? And you were just moving through that, in that rhythm the whole time. And then that's kind of what I got formally. But then I also had this deep blessing of growing up on the side of a mountain near the Irish Sea and being like a very.

 Sort of true nature. Boy, I was just in that all the time. My mom used to say, if in doubt get outside. I think she was delighted when I would go outside as well young boy with a lot of energy. But I just spent a lot of time in that natural world that completely, informed me as a human being as well.

Karen: can we talk about the nudges, one of our biggest things to talk about? how did you define that those whispers that, that we've been just talking about in the introduction and how did you learn to pay [00:09:00] attention and follow that inner guidance?

Robert: One thing about the Irish is that we like to come at things sort of sideways. We're not like as direct, which makes a lot of people like us, it's kind of a cute way of being in the world. And so even the invitation to define something, I'm like, oh, I don't want to define it because it feels really mysterious, but the way I talk about it from the edges would be my experience of that nudge.

Sometimes it feels really external. And sometimes it literally feels like, something is moving me towards something like a magnetic sort of pull, push experience. Other times it feels like an internal sort of rising, something is just rising inside of me and it's just like it becomes a certainty or it becomes a compulsion that has to be followed.

 And whenever I follow them, everyone's like, that's a huge risk. How can you do this? Da da da. And they never feel like risks. they just feel like absolutely what [00:10:00] has to be done. And therefore my mind can get caught in like anxiety of will it work out, et cetera.

But the more I followed them, the quieter that's gotten. And 'cause I look back at my life and I go, it's just like, yes, I've worked hard. Yes, I've shown up for a lot of things and I'm in a, body that has a lot of privilege, right in a cisgender, straight white male body in Turtle Island, north America.

I get a lot of privilege with that. and there's a lot of grace happening in my life. So a combination of those things helps me have less anxiety about taking what, following these nudges, which often to other people look like these big sort of life pivots. And they take me on these incredible journeys and explorations.

And looking back, somebody once asked me, what's been your approach to your career? I had never thought about it. I said, I've treated it like a jungle gym to explore rather than a ladder to climb. And that's allowed me to have a lot of variety [00:11:00] and a lot of nourishment, but also allowed me to not feel gripped by, I have to keep going in this direction.

 When that direction no longer feels like it's meant for me. 

Karen: Wow. That's a really powerful thought, that I think most of us don't always follow. So thank you for that. The Jungle gym to explore rather than a ladder to climb. 

Robert: I think the if we can go slow enough, we will always see that there's a choice. It might have really hard ramifications in our life, but there's always a choice. There's always a choice to walk away from something that, again, might have really hard ripples in it. And I've experienced that in my life many times.

But I think a lot of the time people forget that there's a choice. And when we feel that we don't have choice, then we feel like we don't have power. 

 most folks are then moving through life in a very powerless place. And then the victim mentality can kind of creep in. And then it's, when you get calcified [00:12:00] there, it gets very hard.

 our listening for the whispers and the nudges gets really closed down. because our story about what life is, is that it's kinda happening to us rather than for us or through us. And then you kind of just look at people who are moving through life that are maybe following these whispers and nudges.

And there's either a, just a total confusion about this human being or like a sort of an attacking of them. when we feel disempowered, we don't often, like when other people are moving through life with, more flow and ease. But we have to be willing, we always have to be willing to let go of something to make that choice.

 And, a lot of the time we don't have the support systems to do that well, We don't have community. We might have people in our lives, but that real sense of community, like, are all of these people really gonna show up for me if I say I'm gonna step out of this career path, or I'm gonna step out of this relationship and I don't know what the next step is.

Will you, my community [00:13:00] actually hold me? Will you feed me? Will you house me? Like, will you do all these things? Sometimes it's hard just to try and get a Lyft to the airport these days. And people be faster to pay for your Uber than to drive you to the airport. 

 and so I hold a lot of compassion as well for folks that feel like they can't follow these nudges.

'cause we as a society are continuing to sort of weaken this sense of deep community that we're actually all supposed to be doing this together, healing together, growing together grieving together. We're all doing it in these little tiny silos, which is just not what any of our ancestors did. 

Robyn: Hmm. And I would say even more and more in these last few years, because there's even less people, let's say, going to.

Work together. Right. They're working from home by themselves and feeling probably even more isolated, even though we have access to virtual meetings Yeah. And things like that. 

there's so much [00:14:00] in what you just said in terms of people feeling powerless 

Robert: And alone. Like there is a statistical loneliness epidemic in the westernized world.

And I run these conscious leadership programs, they're week long programs that really go into looking at the existing paradigm around leadership and saying, we're leaving that at the door. We're gonna go into something very different than you. But that means you are going to have to be willing to let go of a lot of how you think you need to be as a leader.

And so it's a sort of a pretty deep transformational experience. And as part of that, yeah, there's all of this letting go, there's a reckoning that, you know, when you're in a position of leadership, there are moments of deep aloneness. You can't turn to the other human beings with you.

Maybe it's a legal reason you can't turn to them. You and whoever know this legal thing and you can't tell anybody else about that thing with the employee, but it's causing you an immense amount of stress or whatever. It's the first thing you wake up and think about. Or [00:15:00] maybe the other human being that you work with never with you two of course, but is causing the challenge for you so you can't turn to the other human being or whatever It's, and you go, so where do you go?

 Where do you go where you can actually feel really understood, because you can turn to your friend, but they're like, they don't get all the context. They don't know anything. 

Robyn: Like you're speaking to like something that I haven't really ever articulated or thought about. And you're right, not with Karen, but in other parts of my professional life.

Robert: Yeah. 

Robyn: I've totally felt that. 

Robert: And you can't turn and you go, okay, so the humans aren't the place. 

It's great when they can be, but they're not always there. So then if we're not supposed to do this alone, where do we go? And this is also part of my upbringing is this and the richness of the Irish tradition is that you turn to your ancestors.

And so what does it look like to develop a practice where you open up a relationship with your ancestors in like the subtle world, And then. You introduce [00:16:00] yourself to them and then you might bring questions to them and ask for advice and guidance. Like your ancestors can become your advisors, your council, they talk a lot about, now, we don't want certain people leading things.

Well, I want the Council of grandmothers, leading the world, a council of grandmothers looking after the world. 'cause you know, they're gonna look after the children. They're gonna look after the important things. But we have these councils of our ancestors who are, and this is going back, not that many generations before.

This is what they were doing all the time. They would turn to the ancestors who had gone before us and we would take our questions to them and seek advice. but we wouldn't just limit our ancestors to our human bloodline. We would see and understand that our ancestors were also the trees.

 And they were the stones. And they were the elements of fire and wind and water, et cetera. And so what is it like to go sit with your back against an oak tree and tell it how terrified you are that you are so gripped by fear or anxiety and ask it to help you [00:17:00] and support you? What is it like to go in a sort of a guided journey or meditation and find yourself around a fire with some sort of presence or being that you may have no familiarity with?

And then you just ask it, what do I need to know now? And be blown away by how precise and accurate for your life this presence is in what it shares with you. That when the humans can't show up, that's available to us. But a lot of our practices, even in the spiritual world are not about that. They're very much still about just you with you.

 and so I'm a big fan of how do we expand our sense of relationship and our access to information, wisdom, power, and love. That's way beyond anything that I can just conjure up myself. 

Karen: Wow. I've never thought of actually doing that. The way that you just described it, I think we've thought of the practice of Yes.

Channel my grandmother. She's a powerful soul, and I, channel her all the time, but I've never thought about calling in the [00:18:00] wisdom of ancestors, beyond her, let alone pulling in the nature elements as well into that conversation in a way. but again, the way you describe it, Robert, I can it and I can see how powerful that could be.

Robert: Yeah. And important to do it. Well, like in this reciprocity where if we go to nature to seek support or we go to our ancestors, that we bring them something, maybe we bring them an offering. In Ireland, you would bring an offering of oats. You just leave dried oats or hot on berries or something like this.

maybe it's a song or a poem. but you always give, before this sort of asking of receiving. And then with just in case folks that are listening, they're like, okay, I'm gonna sit down and talk to my ancestors. always asking only the ancestors who are well mm-hmm. The ancestors who are healthy and well.

'cause there's a lot of ancestors that have not done the work in the other world and have not quite settled things down. It's like just with the ancestors who are Well, 

Robyn: Well, I'm also thinking too, when you were talking [00:19:00] about as a. Child that child running around in nature, I feel like you were already dialoguing without 

Robert: Yeah.

Robyn: Maybe even realizing I don't know, maybe you did realize, but I feel like you were playing with Yeah. Element then. 

Robert: Yeah. All the time. And there were farmers nearby and they used to go out and hunt and I grew up vegetarian in my family 'cause my parents were inspired and so one of four vegetarian families in all of Ireland.

And I would follow the farmers who would go out and hunt and then I would hide somewhere. out of the line of the gunshot, but I would hide in the bushes or the long grass, and I would be trying to talk to the rabbits. I'd be trying to talk to the rabbits to tell them what was coming and where to go.

 and then in Ireland, one of the fields there was a, what's known as a fairy ring. So there's a lot of stone structures in Ireland. there's hundreds, to thousands of them, that are these sacred monuments that are used for different [00:20:00] ceremonial practices.

but there were also these literally rings of, looked like a different shade of grass. In the field, but it was just like in a circle. Now, I am sure there is some botanical reason for the shading of the grass that way. but in Ireland as a kid, you understood that this was where the fairies lived.

This is the we folk, the good people, the on Dini shi we would say in Irish. And you knew that if your soccer, football, or rugby ball went in there, you it just stayed there. 

Robyn: Wow.

Robert: It's, it stayed there until the elements moved it out. Wow. Because this was their sacred place. And so, I wasn't, doing deep practice work with these we folk, but there was just a deep appreciation of it.

Same with I mentioned the Hawthorne berries. The Hawthorne tree is one of the very sacred trees in Ireland. And to this day, you can go to any farmer in Ireland and say. Do you believe in ferries? And some of them will say yes, but even the ones that say, no, I don't believe in any of that nonsense.

You say, [00:21:00] great, go cut down that Hawthorne tree. And they will absolutely not. They won't touch them because that's one of the portals or, belonging places for these folks. And so even if the tree falls over in the wind, it won't be removed. It will just be allowed to decay in its place.

Because if they disturb it, it upsets the balance of the relationship and the nature and you don't want to bring that on. So that's where a lot of our ideas around superstition come from. It's like, it'll bring you bad luck. it's about, because we've upset the balance of things. And so there's a lot of, old beliefs and traditions that try to maintain the balance of things that we just don't understand with our minds.

Robyn: Respect too. 

Robert: Respect for what we don't know and we don't understand and the mystery of it. 

Robyn: Yes. 

Robert: Yes. 

Robyn: I have a question for those. You know, when we talk about sitting down and channeling and or just having that conversation and receiving messages from these ancestors, for someone who's never done that 

 how would you suggest [00:22:00] someone start? 

Robert: Well, I'd always say is don't change your life based on what you hear. If you're just starting out don't leave the marriage, don't quit the job. Yeah. After five minutes of trying to practice. 

Robyn: Good advice. 

Robert: Yeah. It's a good rule for like any retreat that you ever go on, wait three months, you think you've fallen in love with somebody new.

You think you've fallen outta love, you think whatever. You're now supposed to be a retreat leader yourself. Wait three months and see how you feel. 'Cause if it's really meant to be, and you should be able to wait three months. But for a lot of the practice, there's an encouragement to sort of open and go up.

there's a lot of like, encouragement towards the light, stay away from the dark. For me that's beautiful and that sort of sense of openness, really what I'll call it like at the top half of the body. But I'm very interested in, and they call that like waking up, right?

I'm very interested in waking down. What does it mean to go down into the human experience? not [00:23:00] out and away from the human experience, not away from the hard parts of human, but down into the human experience, down into the lower part of the body, even physically into the lower part of the body, which is so often we don't talk about these things, right?

whether it's the joys and pleasure of sex or so many of my female friends have shared that how much they feel they carry in their wombs and how that's so little of the spiritual practices seen to encourage people to go down into the body, and really tend and see what's there.

But when we go down, we're moving down towards the earth mother and down into our deeper relationship with her. And, so for people that are starting out, I encourage them to be going down. Rather than going up. And that down takes you down into a very grounded place. because channeling or whatever it is intuitive sort of feelings can be ungrounding in our lives.

 It can be ungrounding and unsettling and quite disturbing to receive a lot if you open up in [00:24:00] that way and it can, you know, you walk through New York City and things are open, you feel very sensitive. 

so what is the grounding practice like? And that's why I think so many of these traditions that have come from all over the world, but particularly the ones that the west has sort of exposed itself to, from the east The teachings of yoga and the teachings from Buddhism and medi and the meditation practices and all of that. They're saying, please do these. Silent sitting practices because the western world and our culture is so like up and bubbly and what's new and shiny and chase and move. there's very little sitting.

 And at some point you've maybe been to somewhere in Mediterranean Europe and you walk around a plaza and the kids might be running around, but the older people are just sitting around the plaza on a bench almost doing nothing. And that's, they know that they have won in life when they're sitting on a bench in the evening doing almost nothing in America, that's like, you failed.

 [00:25:00] We say, how are you? I'm busy. As if that's an emotion. And then people say, oh, that's a good thing. And you go, is it? 

And so slowing down. Grounding and building a practice around that so that when you then wanna open up, prepare yourself to open up basically.

And then it's gonna be much easier to be in those kind of experiences and conversations. think it's the same with the psychedelic world. Many, many people jumping in and medicine is deeply powerful. 

 There's a lot of people jumping in with no established practice beforehand and no practice afterwards.

So it's peak experiences over a weekend or over a week. with no way to really integrate, no community to integrate these things with, and no practices to actually integrate them into their lives. Then it's just more peak experience chasing and then people are like, why isn't my life feeling different?

It's because nothing has changed. Right. And we're not supporting ourselves in this change process. 

Karen: Yeah, I think so many people have that desire to do something. It's that they [00:26:00] feel that nudge, they feel the, the draw to learn more about themselves, to be more spiritual, you know, to connect more.

 so many are, but they don't know exactly how to do that. And you're right, there's not always the resources and support at The other end. I wanna go back to what you were saying earlier about, if you go on a retreat, wait three months before you make a, a big decision, one of the themes that we've gotten from your life is you've made so many different choices in your life, in your careers, in your life.

 if you were to describe it to somebody and, somebody's feeling like that nudge that something is done and it's time to move on. Yeah. But everybody would say, oh my gosh, , you're outta your mind. Why would you do that? Yeah.

How do you work with that? How do you recognize it? how do you have the courage to act upon it, particularly if it means maybe even completely reversing direction. That starting completely over. 

Robert: A few things. Because sometimes you you're not even necessarily aware of a nudge or a whisper, You're just [00:27:00] like, I don't think this is working. 

But that's like a very mental thought, right? It's not like some other sort of sense of, Ooh, I'm getting guidance from somewhere else. It's just like, this is hard. I'm not enjoying myself anymore. Relationship work, whatever. 

 And there's a really simple framework.

It's actually from a guy called Seth Godden a marketing business guy. And his book The Dip, it's tiny, it's like 40, 50 pages long. You'll read it literally in an hour. And, uh, lots to it. But the simplified way that I explain it is, he does multiple scenarios. But the two that pop out for me when I'm making these decisions or encouraging others to look at it is you have this over time.

You start something and the graph goes up, right? It starts to go up. You get this sort of sense of, oh, this is good. This is feeling good. I'm getting some wins. Things are feeling great. Maybe you've experienced this with the podcast, Yes. We're getting traction, we're getting more viewers, we're getting more likes, we're getting more clicks.

And then it sort of seems to hit a plateau and then it starts to [00:28:00] dip down and you're like, oh, this isn't feeling as fun as it was. This feels a little bit more like a grind. How do we take it to the next level? We don't know. And you feel like you're in this dip. says in the dip, what often happens is people quit ' cause it's hard.

Because we dunno how to deal with hard, right? So we quit the dip, he says, it's okay to quit something, but don't quit a dip. Quit a dead end. He says, you have to sit with yourself and only you will truly know is this going to change or does this have the high probability of change, not the like dating for potential.

Oh, I hope they'll be different. But the true reckoning with do I actually think this will change? And if it feel like it'll change, you're just in a dip. That means just find a way to resource yourself through the dip and then ride the up swing again. And then there'll be many of those. If it's a dead end, you've gotta quit as fast as you possibly can.

 And that's been a helpful framework for myself, and it's been a helpful framework for [00:29:00] other people. But this idea that winners never quit. He says, winners quit all the time. They just quit at the right time. They don't quit the dip, they quit the dead end. And it's the same with, you know, he talks about it with the stock market and all of these kind of things.

 And so That's a helpful way of looking at it when you don't have those very strong sort of urges moving through and insights. and then, my dad he's passed on, his name's Shane his career advice was get really clear on what it is that you deeply love and then get really good at it.

He says, because you can love something and if you're not good at it, most likely the world's not gonna like doing to match those things up for you. They're not gonna help you make a career out of it. But if you're really good at it and you deeply love it, then there's a greater chance that it could actually be a paid career for you as well.

 But there's a lot of people that feel like they're jumping into things without it really Coming from the deepest place inside of them. almost like a I just don't want to be a part of that, so I'm gonna go do this opposite thing, as [00:30:00] opposed to actually just coming from themselves.

it's like a reaction. I didn't like the way my mom parented me. My mom was great. If she ever listens to this, my mom's amazing. But you know, I don't wanna be like my mom, so I'm gonna be the opposite to my mom. The problem is we're still not just being ourselves and we're not listening to that internal feeling of, there's a lot of talk around purpose.

 Purpose is not something that you do. It's something that you are, and in that way, then you can bring your purpose forward in anything you do. so people are also sometimes get caught in this, well, I'm deeply passionate about being an artist, so my career has to be as an artist, drop below, passion drop below career into purpose.

For me, my purpose is really simple. It's just to serve with love. That's why I'm here for as long as I'm here. It's to serve with love and then I can do that when I'm going to buy milk. I can do that when I'm in a board meeting. I can do that when I'm one-on-one with my son. I can do that when I'm with my friends.

I can do that in any moment. I can do that now. and therefore I can live my purpose [00:31:00] in any moment regardless of what I'm doing. I'd also suggest to people try to unhook this, like perfect structure around how we're living our lives and drop below anything that feels like a binary and just go below that and from that place come back out and, and move into your life.

Robyn: Well, and you've been able to do that in so many. Different ways. And as you said, you're doing this in every day, in all ways But when people look at that from even the professional standpoint, you've worked in all these different industries and to navigate that with that underlying purpose Is very different than I would say, probably most people that you were around. 

Robert: I don't know about them. But for me, i'm lying on my deathbed. I'm gonna be looking back. It's gonna be about what was the quality of my love and my presence. That'll be my sort of evaluation question. 

.

Robyn: And then when you started out, even from a professional standpoint, did you have that knowing that the [00:32:00] underlying purpose was to serve with love?

Because I feel like most people don't understand that the real reason we are here, our real purpose may be to serve with love, may to learn compassion, may be to live with empathy, It's these much larger concepts. 

 Did you know that then? 

Robert: My upbringing. Definitely was pointing me towards many things like this.

but I didn't have that clarity. But when I was 22, a mentor asked me what was my purpose and I didn't know. 

And he said, you should not leave this room until, you know, so it was a small group of us and we basically spent the day deeply going into our hearts, like our soul's hearts and going, why am I here?

Robyn: Wow.

Robert: And we didn't leave. And then, so from I'm 45 now from 22, I've had that guidance, that deep clarity. and having that then it has made decision making very easy. 

Robyn: yeah. I mean, I feel like I've been on, my [00:33:00] own spiritual journey for quite some time, and I'm now 50, but it wasn't really even until my early forties that I understood.

 Really why I'm here. 

Karen: Well, to even ask the question, like to ask the question with that much depth. we all can say it almost in passing, or we'll ask our kids, they're getting ready for college, you know, to go there. But that's such a deep question and to have that opportunity at that age to ask it and then answer it, that's so unusual.

Robert: And, like so much fortune and blessing in my life around these things. And then the other thing that I grew up with was, all of this blessing, so you are like, what are you gonna do with that? 

 My dad at 13 giving me books about Dr. King and Gandhi and saying, these are people you should understand.

 And something about how my dad, feel tender every time I bring him in. Just he understood me in a very deep way. And so [00:34:00] he knew that giving me those books at that age it was perfectly designed. And he knew the ways to connect with what was already moving inside of me.

And so my life it's just dedicated to service and spirit. And in that way it makes it very simple. And so when I was leaving PricewaterhouseCoopers, I was doing an amazing job that I deeply loved in an organization that I felt a lot of, respect for, and it was really supportive to me.

And, then I did get a very strong whisper one day at a laptop working away, and I co-founded this social enterprise with friends and we were doing beautiful work, but all very like small scale volunteers. And then this internal external nudge just said, it's time to leave and go run that full time.

 And I was mid email typing. I went, I'm not ignoring that. And then I told a friend, they said, oh, I just heard about this grant that you could apply for, it's due in two weeks. I basically spent the next two weeks writing a [00:35:00] business plan for this grant. Applied for it. It said you could either win 5,000 euro or 70,000 euro and you'd get an award with this grant.

And so I applied, heard a few weeks later and they said. Come in for the interviews and it was like a shark tank sort of pitch, was unbelievable. I had never done anything like that before. But basically the top Irish business people were there and they were just like trying to find the holes, like the shark tank.

It was brilliant. And I walked outta there. I had no idea if I had won or anything like that. I just went straight back, wrote up my resignation letter, handed it to my my boss, and I said, I'm giving you three months. I have to go do this thing without knowing if we'd gotten any money.

 at that time, as a social enterprise, we were a, a nonprofit. we didn't have pennies to rub together. And it was also 2007, the world economy was crashing. I had bought two houses in Ireland, massive negative equity on them because the housing market had collapsed. Like you could not have picked a worst [00:36:00] time.

To do any of these things. And went back, gave my resignation worked out my three months of price Coopers. And in that time I found out that we had won an award, but the 5,000 euro, not the 70,000 euro. And I was just like, okay. And then you just figure out the next piece. And so I spoke to somebody, I said, will you make a donation that will give me a very small salary for the next four months and then we'll turn that I just need four months of runway and then four months.

And I created another four months in those four months and then another four months in those months. And 

Robyn: And here you are. 

Robert: And the next year we won the 70,000 and it was great. 

Robyn: Wow. 

 It's following the nudge. and for you it was absolute no matter what.

Robert: Yeah. It was like, I have to do this. Just very, very clear inside of me. for me in the life that I live like truly the worst, apart from somebody dying or getting very, very sick, the worst thing that happens to me [00:37:00] when I take one of these risks because of the safety net that I have in my life is that I'm now in North America, so it feels different.

The safety net in Ireland feels bigger for me, but here, the worst that happens is I take a big leap. It doesn't work out in quotes, and I end up like. Sleeping in someone's house with my son for a while, for a few months until I figure out the next thing. But it's not like my whole life doesn't unravel and very quickly I'm just sort of out on the streets now.

other people are way closer to that sort of financial insecurity. I'm not. so everybody has to assess where they're at in this whole process, and I try to own where I'm at and not make it just sound like, oh, well you can just, live your life like this and just jump around and do whatever you want.

 it's within the context of my life, but because of that, blessed context, my heart just feels so committed to That service. And for the upliftment of all beings. 

Karen: Can you talk a [00:38:00] moment about kripalu and what that experience was like for you, working with all of those spiritual teachers and then what happened then?

What Whisper came to you then to take you to the next part of your journey? Yeah. 

Robert: So I joined Kripalu a little bit before COVID. And then during COVID took over as CEO, 

Karen: And Can you talk about what Kripalu is 

Robert: So Kripalu, it means compassionate.

In Sanskrit, it's the largest spiritual wellbeing center in North America, if not the world. It's kind of hard to measure all these things, but it's definitely the largest. North America serves about 50,000 people a year, 500 different types of retreats happening at any time. And a whole thing online as well.

 a nonprofit, it's been going for over 50 years. It started as an ashram intentional community. And then over time when the guru, was asked to leave the community for lots of reasons, which you can read about on the website. It then became an educational nonprofit and started to offer what it was offering much more publicly.

 [00:39:00] And so yeah, I came in, I took over November, 2020, depths of COVID hell, and rough spot there wasn't like a, deep plan. The money was moving out the, door very quickly. Its whole business model is around people coming through the doors. That was not possible. It was illegal in Massachusetts, you know, you couldn't gather in large numbers.

At that point, there was no sense of any light at the end of the tunnel for anything to be different. And so I took over in that context. We had over 400 staff and we had gone down to 30.

So there was just this tiny team trying to keep the lights on and the community connected and trying to serve people that were having very challenging times through COVID. yeah, spent the next five years living into that role as CEO and we got to do some really beautiful things.

A big part of it was that we wanted to take down the barriers to access that some of these centers and institutions have. The [00:40:00] geographical barriers we were able to take down with putting things online, cultural barriers meant that we as an organization had to go in and start to really look at ourselves and our culture.

We felt like we were a place of welcoming and belonging. but then when we spoke to other folks , people from the global majority black, indigenous Bipoc folks they were saying they were having a different experience. So we went in and did a lot of deep reckoning around that, and started to find amazing people to partner with that allowed more of those barriers to diminish.

And we looked at the financial barriers because it costs something to go to these places and it's not always accessible for folks. And pre pandemic, the organization was doing about 250 scholarships, give or take, and we just said, . We have to change this story, we have to change this reality. And we just stuck with it. And there was a lot of people saying, this is impossible. We're gonna break the bank. There's no money. You're gonna have to raise $10 million extra a year. We can never do that.

Da da, da. And in the last three years we did 25,000 scholarships. 

Robyn: Wow. 

Robert: and a [00:41:00] lot of that was just about not accepting the answer. No. And just saying, if we wanna be in, in our integrity, then these wisdom traditions have been widely available and accessible throughout millennia. And we as an organization.

 Should be as best we can, creating as much accessibility to this ' cause if we wanna see a consciousness shift and a culture change in our world, then the more people that have access to this, the more we're living into our mission. and so we did that and, then that allowed us to then partner with amazing organizations .

We're looking at like some of the peace challenges in the world and people that mothers that had lost children to gun violence in the United States would come. And we brought artists and leaders from nonprofits to come and resource themselves so they could go back into their societies and serve from a more balanced place.

And we got to do a lot of rich work. when I started the board always said how long do you wanna stay for? And I said, that's not my decision. Ultimately Spirit's gonna decide that and. They were like that's not a typical answer.

And I [00:42:00] understand that, but that's the only answer I got for you. And last year I went to the woods for a quest, a solo quest to be with my relations of the trees and the river and and my ancestors and the stars. And, uh, I wanted to ask some big questions. And I got this visitation from the presence of a grandmother.

Spider wasn't an actual spider, just the sort of sense of grandmother spider. she said, it was time. I said, okay. 

Karen: Good thing you're not afraid of spiders. 

Robert: good thing I'm not afraid of spiders. That's 

Robyn: true. It's 

Robert: true. 

And then it was time. I'll trust that.

And then moved through the transition and then I've been spending the last. three or four months now took some time just to rest and travel. And that's been fantastic. And now stepping into this kind of new chapter of bringing forward all of what I've been gifted and shared around the Irish Celtic Shamanic work and offering those healings and retreats around that, but then also doing the work with [00:43:00] organizations that want to really transform.

They wanna live and operate in a different way. And so it's fun to start to explore that and pick that work up again. 

Robyn: Well, when you talk about the Celtic Irish shamanism, can you explain for sure that for those who don't know what that is.

Robert: Yeah, and I use the word shamanism, like there's no Irish word for shamanism, but it's a relatively well understood word. there's a lot to it. The ancestral work can certainly be a part of it, but it's, really about a way of being and living. It's a way of understanding the world that there is no separation between us.

It looks, we all look and feel and sound different, but at some inherent level there is a togetherness of oneness and inter being like Han would say. And if we can see that, then you, Robyn, when we're having some sort of conflict, if I can really hold that there's no separation between us when we're in conflict, how is that gonna change the way I'm in conflict with you?

How is that gonna change how I show up [00:44:00] and speak with you as I speak to myself, as I understand that your pain. Is my pain. How does that shift the way I make decisions as a leader of an organization or a leader of a government as a nation, that if I truly understand there's no separation between me and the trees and the earth, then what I do to them I do to myself.

 And then if I understand that there are people oppressed in the world, then I am not free no matter how much freedom I have in my life to go and do nice things there's a part of me that's not free if these other people are not free. And so to understand that, but not just as a human being, but to understand it in a deeply sort of, relational way with the natural world.

And then to start to look at our lives and we talk about the wheel and the spiral in the Celtic traditions that, the whole year is a wheel and that there's a rhythm to it. And am I. As best I can in attunement with that rhythm. So the, Celtic New Year starts [00:45:00] at Soen or Halloween and it starts at the time when darkness starts because to this point of waking down and in, as opposed to up and out, the Celtic tradition is actually winter is where the seeds grow.

 It looks like nothing's happening and the people really struggle with the winters of their lives when things aren't productive. Maybe they're trying to be in a relationship and it's not happening, but that's the time when actually great things are happening unseen underneath the soil. so I always tell people, don't rush through whatever winter you're in.

Give it the time it needs because if you get to spring too soon, the snow thaws and you get there too quickly, then They haven't had enough time in the womb before they're birthed into spring. And so at Kripalu we used to ask people to build these annual plans, but they weren't allowed to start anything new in winter.

They had to wait to the energetic time of the beginning of February, which is known as Imbolc in the Irish [00:46:00] tradition. And so that's when energetic spring happens. So that's naturally when things would have an energy to them you feel that as well. this New Year's January 1st thing, we're all trying to push into something that is not real.

 That's like a false thing. We're supposed to be hibernating with the bears at this point. Uh, but we're all trying to like set goals and da, but if you wait till. Around this time a few weeks ago, you start to feel a little bit more pep in your step, right? You're like, oh, I got some energy for something.

and then an organization has energy for something. So then can you actually start to launch new initiatives and projects then? so it's about understanding these natural rhythms and flows and the deep relationship and the inseparability of these things. And then how do you use all of that, combining it with these contemplative practices, ceremonies to bring forward what feels really mysterious but the more you sort of play in that space, it actually feels deeply pragmatic and practical.

 I'll give you just a really quick [00:47:00] one. So at Kripalu, I had a dream. One night in January, two years ago, and in that dream two things happened. One, I was mopping a floor and I was told March 22nd, that was it. The whole of the dream. I was like, oh, a pretty unusual and sparse dream.

But okay. The next day at nighttime, a pipe burst at Kripalu and flooded. It's a four story building. Sleeps 700 people. It's a very, very large retreat center, but three floors flooded ' cause a pipe burst at like midnight in completely subzero temperatures, et cetera. So it flooded the building and it shut us down for three months.

 So my dream was about me mopping a floor the night beforehand. I was like, okay, paying attention. And then it said March 22nd, and we were trying to decide when we were gonna reopen. And so we used March 22nd. As the no time before, we wouldn't open before March 22nd. And then we gave ourselves an additional week of [00:48:00] buffer on that and we reopened on March 29th.

But if we allow ourselves, and if we step into this work, then we can get wisdom. That is very hard to just like create yourself, but you can tap into that is deeply, deeply practical and helpful. 

Robyn: That is such a good example. And wow. Oh my goodness. 

Karen: I never have a dream that's.

So direct. Yeah. So tell us, Robert, now where you are. What is your feeling? Do you have any sense of what is next for you and how are you bringing that in to your experience now?

Robert: Yeah. I wanted to be in winter myself. I wanted to not start something new before that February 1st. And so as best I could, I honored that. And traveling is a deep, is a way for me to be sort of deeply resourced. So I was able to do that. I'm very grateful and, the very strong whispers that I'm getting are to go and serve organizations, leaders and [00:49:00] organizations that want to lead differently.

That know that the current paradigms just do not serve us. They're not working. Our world is not moving in the right direction. And so if any of what we're doing is just the same old, same old, then we're just heading in that same direction. And the organization's, businesses, nonprofits that want to be around for lasting change or impact are gonna have to transform.

And that's gonna take deep courage. It's gonna take a lot of deep listening and accessing, I believe, accessing that we're not gonna be able to conjure up with some flip charts and are heads stuck in a board meeting room so it's gonna ask us to become more multidimensional as leaders because the times are deeply uncertain.

The complexity is rising. so how do you lead in those times? What is it like to be resourced very deeply and what is it like to lead from love and give ourselves permission to be organizations that are love centered? Not [00:50:00] some word that we have to be worried about. ' cause it's, it's a word that HR is concerned about.

So it's like, let's define what it means to, be an organization that centers love and then see how the world starts to respond to that. And so that work feels really and nourishing for me and deeply aligned with how I serve really well. As in trained in the Celtic, Irish sort of shamanic ways, both as a healing practitioner for one-on-one work with people that just feel stuck or they want to move to another place in their life.

And Accessing the akashic records is another aspect of that to really help bring in insights for people in that healing work. but then also, you know, I deeply believe here in, the United States that it's got such a hard history that it's really hard for this country to reckon with. just hard for it to admit what's true.

And all of the very important and powerful work that people are doing around diversity, equity, inclusion, to try to [00:51:00] understand our biases that, we have just been conditioned into us to understand how, systems and structures oppress people in this country. That's all really great and powerful.

 But my concern is, that people that have European ancestry have nowhere to turn after that. they don't know. What is a beautiful place that I can go back to and I want people with European ancestry to go back and reclaim their ancestral ways to fall in love with their old songs, whether they're Gaelic or Sicilian or whatever it is.

To know those things, to know the herbalism of their land, if they can, to go put their bodies on those lands. to know the ceremonies of those places to go to those sacred sites and then bring their spirituality forward from that place rather than going to spirituality of other cultures. Yes to do that as well in partnership and as a compliment, but to come from the place that our ancestors came from and, I think [00:52:00] that will help European ancestry people return to a beauty that they've lost.

That has been cut off that often happens with pain based immigration. But now where there's no real place for them to turn to a place of, deep resourcing and wisdom I'm like, okay let's help folks reclaim that. And so whatever I can do through the, trainings that I wanna offer and the retreats I wanna offer around the Irish Celtic Way.

'cause I think the Irish is a, a lot of people just connect with that and there's some sort of gateway for people in that, even if they really wanna, they might go through that towards the Sicilian path later. But somehow the Irish seems to be a soft way in for people. 

Robyn: Yeah. And I think most people have never thought of it that way.

 That they could actually reclaim that part of themselves by 

 Looking into that aspect. I think that in itself, that's a light bulb for some people. 

Robert: Yeah. Yeah. there's people all over this land right now that are going to beautiful sweats.

Sweat lodge. You're so 

Robyn: right. You're so [00:53:00] right. I mean 

Robert: The Irish were doing sweat ceremonies for thousands of years too. Wow. there's people in Ireland that are researching it and recreating these sweat ceremonies, but that have got this European ancestral core to it.

So then we don't feel like we need to like, take from somebody else's culture. We could actually bring our culture to meet their culture and then we're gonna sit down and go, oh my God, look how similar 

Robyn: Yeah, exactly. I mean, I love that. 

Robert: And our spirituality then won't be extractive.

 we'll actually be bringing something to the table as opposed to taking something from somebody else's culture. 

Karen: That's, it's so interesting too, because I feel like with everybody wanting to know, like going to ancestry.com, Yeah. Just to kind of wanna see where I've come from and all of different cultures that are within me.

I think a lot of people just stop there. You know, they have that curiosity About it, but they don't realize part of what they're searching is really their history, their ancestry. Yeah. Yeah. And I love what you're saying because it just invites people to go [00:54:00] that one step further to learn, and that's where 

So much of their soul and spirit and lives inherently. So that makes so much sense. That's inspiring. I love that idea. 

Robert: And I've heard it reflected back to me from some of the people folks of color, from the global majority that I've been in, say, ceremony with or, and that I'll sing a song in Irish.

In the ceremony and they'll just reflect back that they haven't heard, white people be able to contribute in that way in ceremony. 

and that they are sometimes surprised that there's somebody that's so willing to like, lean into their culture. 

 but that somehow I'm sure it's not universal at all, but these folks have said that there's a healing thing for them as well.

That there's like, oh, it's almost like on retreats I've led where men do deep vulnerable work together. And some of the women have said, just watching those men do that, even, these are not men I'm related to in any way, but just watching these men [00:55:00] do that, heal something inside of me. I think us doing this work will have this ripple healing effect for others as well.

Robyn: Oh, I can see that. I wanna just end with. If there's someone listening today, is there a question or a simple practice that they could start today? to start to find more clarity 

 Themselves of where they're going? 

Robert: I'll say two things and very simple. Our bodies are talking to us all the time, so if there's any discomfort in my body, and I have a moment, I did this this morning 'cause I woke up with a lot of discomfort in my body.

 not physical, like emotional discomfort. I had a lot of energy just in my chest that it couldn't name it. And I just sat with it and I was like, okay. So the first thing is, hand on my chest. Bring myself to my body. Not just think about my body, but my body to my body. And then I will try to name what I'm feeling.

So I'm feeling could be just like energy or I'm like, oh, I'm [00:56:00] anxious. Or I'll say, oh, I'm afraid. I'm afraid and I'll just repeat it a few times. I'm afraid. I'm afraid. And then I'll just say, it's okay, sweetheart.

 And then usually when I say that a few times, it's okay sweetheart. And then I ask, what else is here? And then I'll notice courage is here. So I'll notice that fear is here and courage is here. And then I'll notice maybe some excitement is here and then actually I'm hungry. And then just the slowing down, getting really honest with the most vulnerable piece, giving that some love.

 Then allows all of the rest of the parts of us to come to the party. And then I realize I've got all this fear, but look at all this courage I've got. I've got all this fear, but look at all this strength I've got. ' cause sometimes when it feels like such a grip, it feels like it's the only thing that's there.

But it's never the only thing, it's the loudest thing until we name it, we love it, and then other things get louder. And when we do that, then we are wired to be multidimensional. It's not necessarily a thing that we have to learn. We [00:57:00] can be trained in it to help us give lots of structure and to like fine tune.

But like you said, Karen, like babies, kids come in very attuned and sensitive and intuitive it's only because we've clouded that over. 'cause a parent said, don't be weird, don't do that. don't say that. Whatever it is. Or a teacher or. the friend group or whatever it is, something dimmed that it's still there.

It's naturally part of how we are wired to be. And so it's just about slowing down and giving some space to the noise, inside some comfort, to the noise inside, and then allowing us to be just in that softer place. And when that happens, then you're like, oh, look that's what I can do.

 It just comes through. 

 and it's free. 

Robyn: I feel that, and that's so true. resonate with that. thank you for sharing that. 

 I know I'll be practicing.

Karen: Great practice. 

Robyn: Oh my goodness. I think we could talk to you for days, Really, thank you for your courage and thank you [00:58:00] for.

Living your truth and your purpose and sharing it with us. I think that you came here to be a teacher for so many of us, you are living it and you are teaching it, and I'm so grateful to be connected to you and for being able to help amplify your teachings with so many people and hope to do more of that.

Karen: And reminding us all to listen to those little nudges that come our way. I think so often we're just so caught up in what we're doing and everything that you've been talking about, about the presence and, and even this little exercise just to remind us how to get back to that, And thanks, to your mom and dad too, by the way. Yeah. Thank you to 

Robyn: them. 

Karen: I love how you always name your father. you told us, I think in a prior conversation that's something that you learned. you name those who have gone before. shame.

Robyn: I could feel shame today. 

Karen: that Irish powerful strength that you feel just taught us so many things. Robert, thank you so much. 

Robert: Oh, it's such a pleasure. And, thanks for having me. I'm deeply [00:59:00] grateful, to all of my teachers my parents, and everybody that continues to sha 

Robyn: Thank you. And you can find out more about working with robert@robertmillhall.com. We'll have that in our show notes as well. Thank you.