Here’s what a week at a yoga retreat in Bali taught me: the calm, quiet, sit-with-your-breath playbook doesn’t work for everybody, and forcing it was costing me more energy than it gave back. I’m a movement guy. My clarity shows up on a run, under a barbell, or halfway through a hard set, not on a mat with my eyes closed.
That sounds obvious written out. It wasn’t obvious to me going in. I signed up for the retreat thinking this would be the week I finally got the meditation thing to click. Everyone online says it’s the answer. Sober people say it. Founders say it. Half the self-help shelf says it.
By day four I was sitting cross-legged in a room full of people breathing slowly, and my brain was running laps around yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Not once did it settle. And instead of feeling peaceful I mostly felt like I was failing a test I didn’t even want to take.
Why can’t some people focus during yoga or meditation?
I’ve been sober for a while now, traveled to 20+ countries, and I train twice a day most days. I know what a clear head feels like. A clear head feels like mile 6 of a run when the noise finally burns off. A clear head does not feel like 60 minutes on a mat trying to “observe my thoughts without judgment” while my thoughts throw a party.
At the retreat I noticed something that took me back to every job I’ve ever had. At work people used to tell me, “Erk, you’re too hype.” I heard some version of that my whole life. Too loud, too much energy, calm down. At the retreat nobody said it out loud, but I felt it. The whole vibe was built around slowing down, and I’m a guy who has to speed up to find his center.
Some people really are wired for stillness. They sit down, breathe, and their nervous system drops into neutral. That’s great for them. For a high-energy person, though, forced stillness can feel like holding a beach ball underwater. You can do it, but all your effort goes into the holding, and the second you let go it shoots straight up.
On Saturday there was a sound healing session. Bowls, gongs, lying on the floor. I gave it a real shot. My honest review: it did nothing for me. Zero. Meanwhile, the best moment of my whole week was a trip out to a local village where we visited a school, and a bunch of kids went absolutely nuts arguing Messi versus Ronaldo. Pure loud energy. I felt more alive in that ten minutes than in every quiet session combined.
That’s not a knock on yoga. It’s information about me.
What happens when you stop forcing a habit that doesn’t fit you?
Here’s the part I almost missed. The lesson isn’t “meditation is BS, skip it.” The lesson is that I’d been treating one tool as the only tool, and when it didn’t work, I felt broken.
When I quit drinking, the same thing happened. People told me the answer was meetings, or a specific book, or a specific program. Some of that helped. What actually rewired me was the gym. Every time I wanted a drink I went and moved. The urge turned into a workout. I didn’t beat alcohol with stillness, I beat it with motion.
So on Sunday, the last day of the retreat week, I tried something different. I didn’t try to be a yoga guy. I just did the things that already fit me, and a little bit of the thing that didn’t:
- I deleted a couple of apps that made me feel gross every time I opened them
- I went for a run I’d been debating all morning and ended up going 9.6 miles
- I recorded the first video of a daily video series I’d been putting off for months
- And then I meditated, for the first time in forever, for a few minutes, after the run
That last one matters. The meditation worked on Sunday because it came after the movement, not instead of it. My body was tired, the noise was already burned off, and for once I could sit still without fighting it. Same tool, different order.
I was annoyed I didn’t hit 10 miles. 9.6 is so close it’s almost insulting. But I wrote in my journal that night that I didn’t get a ton done, and I was still happy with the day because it was headed in the right direction. That’s a sentence I couldn’t have written a few years ago. Back then a day was a win or a loss, and anything short of perfect was a loss.
How do you find people who match your energy?
The other thing the retreat made painfully clear: I wasn’t going to find my people there. On Wednesday I literally wrote, “Of course I won’t find anyone like me here, I’ll find that in the gym.”
There’s nothing wrong with the people at the retreat. They just came for something different than I did. They wanted to slow down. I wanted to sharpen up. Neither one is wrong, but if you spend all your time in rooms built for someone else’s energy, you’ll start thinking something is wrong with yours.
This matters way more than people think, especially if you’re sober and building something online. When I stopped drinking, my circle got way smaller. The people who were just around for the hangovers disappeared. That left a gap, and the easy move is to fill that gap with whatever room is closest. A retreat. A coworking space. A group chat. A Discord full of people who talk about building but never ship.
The better move is to go where your energy already lives. For me that’s the gym, where people show up whether they feel like it or not. It’s other founders who are actually building, not just talking about it. It’s anyone who doesn’t flinch when I’m a little too hype.
Living on under $1,500 a month while traveling means I’m constantly in new places with new people. That’s a gift, but it also means I get to choose my rooms on purpose every single time I land somewhere. This week reminded me to choose better.
Your clarity tool doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s
If you’ve ever felt like you’re doing self-improvement wrong because the popular stuff doesn’t work for you, here’s my honest take after this week.
You’re probably not broken. You’re probably just running someone else’s playbook. Some people get clarity sitting still. Some people get it moving. Some people get it writing, talking, lifting, or walking ten miles. The goal was never to master yoga. The goal was a clear head and a calm nervous system so you can actually do your work.
Find the tool that gets you there. Use the other tools after it, not instead of it. And stop hanging out in rooms that make you feel like your energy is a problem.
I’m not a stillness guy. I’m a movement guy who can be still once I’ve earned it. Took a week in Bali and a 9.6-mile run to figure that out, and honestly, that’s a pretty cheap lesson.
Now I’m going to go get my 10 miles.