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In this heart-centered conversation, we sit down with Sasha, co-founder of Hridaya Family Retreat Center, a small, family-run sanctuary tucked into the pine-covered mountains of southern Mexico. Far from the noise of modern retreat culture, Hridaya Family offers something increasingly rare — genuine presence, deep listening, and a space where each person is truly seen.

Sasha shares the spirit behind their work: creating an intimate environment where spiritual practice is not performance, but lived experience. We explore what it means to hold retreat space as a family, how warmth and attention become forms of teaching, and why small, human-scaled communities may be essential for authentic inner transformation.

This episode is a gentle reminder that awakening doesn’t always happen in grand halls or large gatherings — sometimes it unfolds quietly, in the mountains, in stillness, in the presence of those who care enough to truly be there.

Whether you’re a long-time seeker or simply curious about heart-based spiritual practice, this conversation invites you into a softer, more personal path home to yourself.

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Hridaya Family is a small, family-run retreat center nestled in the pine-covered mountains of southern Mexico, offering an intimate, caring environment where people are met with real attention, warmth, and presence.

Our work is rooted in non-dual Shaiva Tantra and informed by Buddhism, Sufism, early Christianity, and modern psychotherapy.

Slogans:

1)Come back home... into the Heart

2)Waking up, all the way down to earth.

https://www.hridaya-family.com/

Our main offerings are:

• Silent meditation retreats focused on awakening, embodiment, and integration (https://www.hridaya-family.com/10-day-hridaya-meditation-retreat-mexico)

• Individual solitary and dark room retreats (https://www.hridaya-family.com/dark-room-retreat-hridaya-family-mexico)

As well as:

• Workshops on emotional digestion, trauma, and the release of chronic contraction

• Programs on conscious relationship and intimacy

• Somatic meditation and embodiment practices for inhabiting the body and relating to the world

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Nancy D. Bennett is a psychotherapist and writer whose work and book explore identity, perception, and true nature. She holds a BA in psychology from the University of Oregon and a master’s in counseling from Seattle University and practiced as an individual and family therapist with a focus on addictions. She also trained for many years in body-based and experiential therapeutic approaches. Her spiritual inquiry began in her early twenties through Gurdjieff Work groups and later deepened through constellation systems work and direct investigation into nondual awareness. After decades of searching, questioning, and unraveling assumptions about self and reality, she found herself wanting to articulate what had become clear through lived experience rather than theory. Her book grew out of that impulse — not to teach, but to intimately describe a shift in perception that has transformed how she relates to mind, identity, and reality. She lives in the Pacific Northwest.

Nancy’s website: https://nancydbennett.com

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Paul Samuel Dolman founded the South Beach Entertainment Company in Nashville connecting major artists, writers, labels, and producers with quality material and helping to develop talent with great success. The company branched out into publishing while expanding into the television and film markets of Los Angeles and New York.

While spending a summer in Martha's Vineyard, Paul was picked up hitchhiking by the famous comedian, television star and creator of Seinfeld, Larry David. The two hit it off and had a series of magical encounters which Paul then turned into the bestselling book, 'Hitchhiking With Larry David.' The book is currently under an option for a feature film. Paul followed that with four other books including Martha's Vineyard Miracles and Beverly Hills Hobo.

After an extensive, multi-year book tour, Paul settled in Beverly Hills and began working in the film industry with stars such as Meg Ryan, Tom Hanks, Mickey Rourke, and Matthew Modine as well as talent agencies and directors putting together projects and packages.

Feeling led to do something substantial and with a deeper purpose, Paul created the What Matters Most Podcast in 2015. To date he has recorded close to 1200 episodes. The show features a variety of world leaders across a vast spectrum of interests like: Her Holiness Sai Maa, Holy Father Richard Rohr, Nobel Peace Prize nominee Ervin Laszlo, legendary peace activist Arum Gandhi, Mexican President Vincente Fox, Dutch humanitarian Fred Matser, Congressman Tim Ryan, Chief Arvol Looking Horse of the Dakota Sioux, South Africa’s Ndaba Mandela, Marianne Williamson, Climate scientists Dr. Michael Mann & Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, NASA's Peter Kalmus, Grammy-winner Patti Austin, Pulitzer Prize winning author-historian David McCullough, as well as countless others.

Paul has traveled the world cultivating a vast array of deep wisdom and given talks on how to connect to the Inner Source of the Divine that dwells in all beings while staying grounded in the linear third dimensional realm.

Here is the home page: https://www.paulsamueldolman.com/

My show on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-matters-most/id1021501145

And Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0NADuRuXlIp3TKklJFVidi