Meditation & Nonduality with Shamil Chandaria

“liberation and human flourishing should be happening along your path, not just a prize at the end of 20 years”

What does it actually feel like to live from awakened awareness — and how do you stay grounded in it when the world keeps pulling you back into its noise?

These are the questions we explored in this rare session with Shamil, a teacher whose approach is as somatic as it is non-dual, as practically grounded as it is cosmically far-reaching. Drawing on tantra, Advaita, and the emerging neuroscience of brain criticality, Shamil offers a distinctive map for the territory that opens after the first glimpses of open awareness — a map many practitioners find they urgently need.

We began with embodied movement and pranayama to awaken the energy body, then moved into a guided meditation that took us from somatic aliveness down through the stillness beneath all movement — the silent, luminous ground that Shamil identifies as our natural state. From there, a wide-ranging conversation unfolded: why positive resonance isn't spiritual bypassing but a genuine skill for navigating the world with an open system; how archetypal energies (the three kayas) can be consciously worked with in daily life; and why awakening itself may be less about effort than about learning to stop gripping.

The Q&A ranged from brain criticality and the neuroscience of relaxed wakefulness, to reincarnation seen through a non-dual lens, to the paradox of an ego that can't will its own release.

If you've been sitting with open awareness for a while and want a rigorous, warm, and genuinely surprising conversation about what comes next — this one is for you.

Shamil Chandaria

Shamil is a meditation researcher and thought leader in consciousness studies at both Oxford, Cambridge, Google's Deep Mind and Imperial College London. 

Drawing on the most recent scientific perspectives on how our minds construct experience, Shamil offers a clear framework that demystifies spiritual awakenings and a path towards greater human flourishing. His approach reveals how you can harness practices like meditation to systematically reshape your brain’s predictive processes, reduce suffering, and reconstruct a whole new experience of reality. 

Shamil offers an empowering synthesis of disciplines ranging from computational neuroscience and predictive processing to the nondual traditions of Buddhism, Vedanta and Kashmiri Shaivism. Shamil draws on 38 years of meditation and academic experience, having collaborated with some of the world's leading scientists in Bayesian brain theory, perception, artificial intelligence and psychedelic research. He is sought after by institutions such as the Centre for Eudaemonia and Human Flourishing at Oxford University and Google's DeepMind.

You can sample Shamil's work in the recent paper ‘A Beautiful Loop,’ or in podcast conversations with Sam Harris and FitMind.

• Senior research fellow at the centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing, University of Oxford.
• Research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy, London University, where he focuses on philosophical issues in neuroscience and well-being
• Research fellow at Imperial College in the neuroscience of psychedelics
• Bye-fellow at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge University.

“weaves together the latest ideas emerging in computational neuroscience, active inference, predictive processing, and the free energy principle into a compelling narrative of how our minds construct reality and indeed our ‘selves'.”

Constructing Self and World: A Conversation with Shamil Chandaria (Episode #320)

Wellbeing & Participation Guidance 

• This session is educational and contemplative; it is not therapy or medical care.
• Participation is voluntary. You may pause, skip any practice, or sit out.
• Body-centred practice can surface strong emotions, memories, dissociation, dizziness or anxiety. If this happens, please tell a facilitator; simple grounding options will be offered.
• Suitability: If you are experiencing psychosis, mania, severe dissociation, active self-harm, or have been psychiatrically hospitalised in the past 3 months, please do not attend this format. If you live with PTSD/complex trauma or eating disorders, or trauma that is exacerbated by placing your attention on the body, we recommend working first with a trauma-informed clinician and attend only if stable and well-resourced.
• If symptoms worsen during or after the retreat, stop the practices and contact your GP/mental-health team.
• Please let us know about relevant physical/mental-health conditions, current medications, pregnancy, or recent surgery so we can offer adaptations.
• Age 18+. Please arrive sober; alcohol or non-prescribed substances aren’t compatible with this work.
• By attending, you confirm you understand the above and take responsibility for your own wellbeing. No specific outcomes are guaranteed.

REFUNDS: Please note that we do not arrange refunds or exchanges. We welcome swapping or reselling your tickets with people you know.