Our guest for this podcast is a guy with a very curious mind and heart. Meet Joachim Saflund, or Joe to his friends.
This curiosity has caused him a lot of things– mostly trouble, then and now, and he hopes it continues to do so. But this same curiosity and trouble is what also brought him happiness. But the way he lived his life has been an inspiration, seeing through what to be and not to be until the being he created of himself has helped him become.
For Joe, as he humbly shares here, he is a person past middle age, someone people can say successful in his career as an artist, not without talent, drive and focus, but has not followed through with what people would call a solid career or path. He wondered if this was a good thing until he realized how he’s held himself has also a purpose and place in this world for others to benefit from.
A few weeks ago, he met a young man, the son of a good friend. He had started working on his friend’s garden when the son came around to ask him out of the blue for some advice on life. In this meaningful conversation, Joe summed up to say: You got to find a way, your own way. And even it is pondering over a cup of tea and enjoy life and understand that we are all wondrous beings and wonderful even if we don’t express it in a particular way right now. We need to settle on what it is we want to do.
The son said it’s the best advice he got in his life – turning 30 years old now.
That moment made Joe realize that it’s the work he has been meant to do.
Why he is here.
Joe takes us on his thought journey of how he came to make sense of things– finding happiness and contentment, in everything he does. Joe is very tenacious, able to sit still and plough through things, and tolerate discomfort or pain. But he learned when and how to stop clawing to the pain that’s damaging him. This is one of the many places where his curiosity has not gone well. But he kneaded his way through, with artful practice and learning from people and things that have become his teacher all throughout.
Come and let’s join him in this conversation…
Links mention in the podcast
- Joakim’s website
- Balance Yoga Sydney
- Watch video of the podcast
- Schedule free Ayurvedic consultation
- Check out our Free Meditation Challenge with Alexandra
Podcast Highlights
- To tell anybody that doing nothing is the best you can do is wrong. Because to do nothing, there needs to be an embodiment of great openness and emptiness and clarity to be doing nothing. – Joachim Saflund
- Everything should be a teacher. If you sit down and stay at that moment, you can see what you’re feeling, feel what your body is telling you and understand what you need to do. But not everyone will know that and are going to take that advice. Having a teacher, whoever and however they are, you’ve got to practice loving them. – Joachim Saflund
- If you haven’t learned the right connection in inner journeying and outer seeing, you need a teacher in life, and you have to acknowledge that there is a relationship between the two of you. But teachers are not only humans; they can be pets, things… – Alexandra Kreis
- Life is about breathing–in and out, expansion and contraction, inspiration and letting go, renewing, happiness and so on– all cyclical. But I’ve always been interested in exploring the gaps between the breaths. – Joachim Saflund
- Depression is sometimes like cocooning, not always a black hole. Happiness is like a spark in the distance, it’s still right there, stay close to that. – Joachim Saflund
Guest BIO:
Joakim Säflund is an artist working primarily but not exclusively with painting. Born in 1963 in Sweden.
He is currently living and working in Sydney. He began his formal art education at Virginska Skolan, Örebro, Sweden.
Then went on to take an M.F.A. at the ‘Bauhaus inspired’ HDK, University of Göteborg, specializing in graphic design.
One year of which was spent at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Dundee, Scotland.
After graduating from HDK he spent time apprenticed to Swedish sculptor Pål Svenson. His subject matter is wide-ranging.