Self Meditated
What is consciousness? What is the mind? What is the self? Why do we suffer — and is there a way through it that doesn't require pretending everything is fine? These are the questions this podcast begins with. Hosted by Nicky Grimsdale - Vedic educator, yoga teacher and practitioner with over 20 years of study in Indian philosophy including time living and practising in India. This series moves through the great schools of Vedic and Indian spiritual traditions with special emphasis on Advaita Vedanta and Yoga along the way. Nicky approaches contemplative thought with clarity, depth, relatability and a genuine respect for the intelligence of the listener. Alongside solo episodes, the podcast features conversations with teachers, thinkers, and practitioners from across the traditions and other complementary schools of thought. The approach is both personal and rigorous. This isn't wellness content. It isn't spirituality made palatable. It is a genuine investigation — informed by years of practice, study, and a deep engagement with the lineages of Indian philosophy. What you'll find here: Indian philosophy that holds up academically and lands in the body. Ancient teachings explained with honesty, humour, and the occasional analogy that makes a thousand-year-old idea feel like something you already knew but couldn’t find the words. For the yoga student who suspects there's more to the tradition than postures. For the meditator who wants to understand the philosophical framework underneath the practice. For the curious mind who finds consciousness and the exploration of the Self genuinely interesting.
Episodes
Why do we struggle to sustain the practices we know are good for us?
In this episode, we explore one of Patañjali's most important teachings: abhyāsa and vairāgya — consistent practice and non-attachment.
Patañjali presents these two principles as the means by which the fluctuations of the mind can be brought to stillness. Bu...
Have you ever just known something without being able to explain how you knew it? A person walks into a room and you immediately sense something is off. You have a feeling about a decision before you've consciously worked it out. An answer suddenly appears when you've stopped trying to find it. We call this intuition.
But what act...
What is time?
We all experience it, organise our lives around it, and watch it pass, but what exactly is it? In this episode, I explore the strange and surprisingly slippery nature of time through the lens of philosophy, yoga and modern physics.
Beginning with a simple film-reel analogy, we look at Jiddu Krishnamurti’s provoc...
In this conversation with my friend and fellow yoga teacher Gianni, we explore one of the biggest - and perhaps most impossible - questions: God.
Rather than trying to arrive at a fixed definition, we approach the subject personally and openly, sharing our own experiences, questions and perspectives. We explore how different Vedi...
The Kalās — Why the Arts Are Vital
What if creativity isn't something separate from spiritual practice, but one of the ways we become more fully human?
In this episode of the Self Meditated Podcast, we explore the kalās — the traditional sixty-four arts of classical India — and what this fascinating list reveals a...
What does it actually mean to live according to your dharma?
In this episode of the Self Meditated Podcast, we explore one of the most important and often misunderstood concepts in the Indian philosophical tradition. Dharma is frequently reduced to “purpose” or “life path”, but its meaning is far richer: fr...
What Is Consciousness?
There is something more familiar to you than your own face — something present in absolutely every experience you've ever had — and you've probably never once looked directly at it.
This is the most accessible episode in the entire series, built specifically for anyone who's never considered this ...
Nicky and Gianni sit down and talk about Patanjali's 5 afflictions of the mind: the ways in which the mind deludes itself away from realising its true identity. This is a fascinating conversation that delves in the many ways we can work psychologically with ourselves to increase a self-knowledge and how to interact with the worl...
Pain and suffering are not the same thing. Understanding the difference between them might be the single most useful distinction on this entire path.
This episode moves through what suffering actually is, where it lives, and how the great traditions propose meeting it - starting with Patanjali's precise five-part map of affliction...
Yoga begins when pranayama becomes consistent.
This episode is personal testimony first, education second. It traces pranayama from its earliest roots in the Vedas and Upanishads, through the Bhagavad Gita, Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, and the Hatha Yoga tradition, into the tantric understanding of prana as Shakti itself - the dynamic...
In this episode of the Self Meditated podcast , Nicky sits down with his friend and fellow yoga teacher Gianni to explore the three Gunas - Sattva, Rajas and Tamas - and how they influence our thoughts, behaviour, energy and experience of daily life.
Together, they unpack this foundational concept from Sāṃkhya and yoga philosophy...
"Do We Have Free Will?"
Did you actually choose the last thing you ate? Or did a system you didn't design produce the outcome — and hand you the feeling of having chosen it a fraction of a second later?
This episode takes one of philosophy's oldest questions and moves through it briskly: hard determinism, compatibilism, liber...
"What Is the Mind? What Are Thoughts? What Is Meditation?"
What is your mind, actually? Not what it contains - the thing itself. Where does it begin, where does it end, and is it even the same thing as your brain?
This episode takes one of the most familiar and least examined parts of your entire existence and looks at it from fou...
The waking, dreaming, and deep sleep states and the fourth that underlies them all
Every night, without exception, you disappear completely and come back. What actually happens in between?
This episode takes the most ordinary thing you do every single day and turns it into one of the most precise philosophical investigations availa...
Episode 1 and 2 gave us the map of Indian philosophy. Now - what do you actually do with it?
This is the final episode in The Ground Tone, and the one where philosophy finally lands in the body.
Across the first two episodes, Nicky built the full philosophical architecture - the six schools of Indian philosophy, the difference betw...
The witness is not the destination. It's the doorway - and Advaita Vedanta shows you what's on the other side.
This episode is the philosophical heart of the 3 part series, and the most personal.
Picking up from Part 1, Nicky goes deep into the distinction that changed everything in her own practice: the difference between dualist ...
The Ground Tone — Part 1 of 3
You've may have heard the Vedic teachings. But do you know where they come from and what they actually mean?
This episode is the map that changes everything.
In yoga studios, on social media, in wellness spaces - fragments of some of the most sophisticated philosophical thought in human history fl...
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