What is Radical Undoing? (Interview with Garrett)
What is “Radical Undoing?” How is it a form of Yoga?
Garrett Daun (GD): Radical Undoing is a transformative form of bodywork, breathing and meditation that delivers profound results, even in a single session. It cuts through mental chatter and emotional stress to give you deep awareness of your body. This experience is pleasurable and powerful for most people, especially since our culture keeps us overwhelmed in thoughts and emotions 99% of the time.
In the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Yoga Citta Vritta Nirodah is the first and most important dictate. It means “yoga is the nullification of the modifications of the mind.” In that sense, to undo means to remove the modifications of the mind: to break free from cultural conditioning and return to a more natural state of centeredness, groundedness and perpetual body awareness.
Radical Undoing is a more pure form of yoga than most of what you can find in the transformation marketplace. While people spend year after year hoping to experience some kind of breakthrough, Radical Undoing destroys that hope and replaces it with a direct transcendent experience. The endless search of the seeker finally ceases and the enjoyment of a new reality begins.
This new reality is characterized by a state of existential enjoyment of the basic fact of being alive, of simply having a body and a life to live. It’s a sad fact that the simple enjoyment of existence gets overlooked so often. Most people spend their entire adult lives completely forgetting the joys they felt at play as children. Radical Undoing aims to undo this problem by removing the filters of illusion and getting people back into their bodies where true joy awaits rediscovery.
What is the goal of Undoing?
GD: The goal of Undoing is to break apart chronic tensions and cease inner conflict. This liberates the massive amounts of energy tied up in maintaining the tension and allows the undone person to use it to create a deeply fulfilling and satisfying life.
Finding Radical Undoing
How did you first become interested in Undoing?
GD: I spent many years as an amateur and then professional seeker. I studied yoga with multiple teachers, including a rather famous one on the big island of Hawaii. I trained in martial arts, various forms of meditation, rock climbing, Western esoteric studies and Eastern mysticism.
I enjoyed this quest, but I found all of the systems lacking for one reason or another. It was during this quest that I came upon the works of Dr. Christopher Hyatt. After devouring his books and DVD courses on Radical Undoing, I went to the last two workshops he conducted before his untimely death. I also assisted him in completing the DVD series and filmed two more DVDs on Undoing with the publisher of his works.
The first time I ever did an undoing session for myself, I was blown away. I experienced in my body all of the promises of wholeness and transcendence that had been lacking from everything else I had explored. From that moment forward, I knew that I would be the person to carry on the work, to bring it to a wider audience, and to make it a part of my own life’s work.
Tell us a bit about the founder of your school, Christopher Hyatt.
GD: He was a fiercely compassionate man with a hardcore temper balanced by a very kind heart. He could be gentle one moment and ferocious the next. I learned something about myself from every interaction I had with the man. He deserves great respect for bringing the Radical Undoing (NeoReichian) work forth and putting it into a context for people to experience.
Undoing as a Form of Yoga
What does Undoing accomplish?
GD: It works directly on the body and nervous system to produce, very quickly, the results most other systems of yoga fail to deliver.
How can someone new to yoga get started?
One way you can get started right now is by stretching all of the muscles in your face very slowly. While you do this, take deep, rhythmic breaths. Do it for at least five minutes. When you finish, pay attention to the new sensations in your face and the rest of your body.
One of the biggest influences on Dr. Hyatt was Sufism. Can you speak a bit about how Sufism and Radical Undoing are related?
GD: The basic goal of Sufism — no matter what any books or New Age seekers tell you — is to break free from your destiny and to accomplish something creative. To understand this, you must understand what destiny means. It is not a predetermined path outlined by a bureaucratic deity. Instead, destiny refers to the life most people end up living. Your destiny is the life you will live as directed by your habits and patterned behavior. Your conditioning and the structure of the human brain determine your habits and behavior. To do something outside of your destiny means to undo your conditioning, break your habits and change your behavior by deliberately changing and utilizing the way your brain works.
Undoing Yourself
Garrett Daun and Command Z hold classes online and in person for those in Croatia and at a yearly summer workshop in the Forest of Dean in Southwest England. The best way to get a feel for what undoing is and how it works is to study it directly.
