Remembering The Power Of Presence: My Satvatove Experience with David Wolfe

David Wolfe walks in wearing an 80’s style grey suit, a thick striped tie, round spectacles and black socks. He certainly doesn’t fit with the modern idea of a personal development teacher, who nowadays tend to be strangely young, trendy and with fantastic Instagram profiles, David doesn’t even own a smartphone. The advertising in advance was somewhat dated and also vague, so as I begin this 4-day workshop (each day 9am to 8pm) I begin to wonder… what have I let myself in for? Then David begins to talk and he doesn’t stop for about 2 hours!

IRRITATION TO INSPIRATION
I’ve done a lot of ‘personal development’ workshops and so I’ve cultivated a kind of ‘BS detector’ and perhaps even some snobbishness towards facilitators. Unless they show me that they walk their talk and deliver with a degree of skill and vulnerability / genuineness then I get irritated or I switch off. I also hate when facilitators begin a workshop with ‘talking at’ participants for a long time. 2 hours was, for me, an insane amount of time… but it worked… I didn’t switch off… Instead I became intensely present. David began the seminar by talking about his understanding of spirituality through the use of metaphor and story. Things I’ve heard before but I enjoyed the reminders. Also the resonance in David’s voice that rang true. 

“We are spiritual beings having a human experience. You are the driver of the car, not the car.”

100% RESPONSIBLE - IT'S ALL A CHOICE, IF WE REVEAL OUR RACKETS AND WITHOLDS
I’ve made an agreement to not share the specifics of the exercises, but I will say they are clever, skilful, revealing and wonderful. I really appreciated on day one the space to receive feedback about how we listened and explore what comes up for us as we do empathy practices. I appreciated, on day 2,  exploring our victim mindsets and the ‘rackets’ we run in our lives. I enjoyed, on day 3, learning how to ‘pull the weeds’ and communicate our rackets and make a solid commitment to living in total responsibility of our choices and in full presence. Ultimately it's realising that we are creating our experience, through often unconscious choices. When we make them more conscious we can change the choices and the experience. 

PULLING THE WEEDS EXAMPLE
For example I shared with someone: "I'm noticing that when I'm wanting you to be quieter I'm not saying anything to you and just disengaging. I'm realising you remind me of my brother in these instances. The pay off for me is avoiding potential conflict and upholding an image that I'm OK, when in fact I'm holding resentment and harming our relationship. I value our friendship and so I care enough to let you know and I commit to being upfront and sharing if I have an issue." This was an incredible experience of enriching the relationship and mutual healing. If I chose to do this more often I think life would be easier, richer and more connected. 

TIREDNESS CAN HELP
Each day of the seminar I got more and more tired, and I had a cold, and in a way this helped me drop my defences. On day one I was the class clown and by day three I was opening up more vulnerably and noticing how I use the clown to deflect seriousness. By the end of the seminar I was feeling deeply spiritually connected to myself and others, and to my mission. 

BE-DO-HAVE
I came away from the seminar with a wonderful goal of cultivating love and appreciation in my life. I’ve been tracking this daily and rating it out of 10. It’s now a week since the course and I’m averaging 9 out of 10. I’ve learned to speak my goal as if it is complete and get into the feeling of having it:
“It’s 14th January 2026 and as I look back over my records and I see I have an average of 8/10 in my loving and appreciation scores for 80 percent of my year”.
We did a wonderful piece around how to overcome the obstacles to the goals, personified by people in the group and now I have some wonderful visual images in my mind, linked to the goal; of one person playing the role of cynicism “This is BS!”, another as images of sexy women “Ohhh look at me Neil!”, and the final one as my smartphone “beep!”. These images and hilarious times will stay with me and help me achieve my goals. 

EXCITED ABOUT LIFE
I’m really excited about doing the advanced seminar in the future. Seeing David himself in the UK is rare, so I'm not surprised that some of my colleagues stayed on to do the advanced seminar (7 days) straight away. Full on! Personally, I was full. I took the sovereign choice to come away and return home to rest and digest and to be with my partner. She and I have just finished some brilliant DIY teamwork with my partner and we also worked through some of our relationship challenges by using the communication skills I’ve learned on the course, resulting in some wonderful crying and connection.

DIAMONDS IN THE ROUGH DESERVE FULL PRESENCE
I am writing this blog now as some of my friends finish the advanced course. I attended their graduation. They each shine, as diamonds, sharing their hearts and experiences. In fact the fundamental premise of the course is that we are all diamonds, simply obscured by some dirt. The process of clearing the dirt and the weeds is a process of presence. When anyone gets up to talk and share David says the same thing “Let’s give (person’s name) our full presence, our full presence.” This simple genius is to keep repeating the practice of presence, which reinforces that we are all so worthy of this full attention and it is so powerful to give and receive it. 

As I move forward I will be taking this away and commit to using my full presence in my life and shining as the diamond that I am and helping others to connect to and express their inner diamond, or ‘true self’.

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