046: Going DEEP with Matt Griggs & Taylor Knox
SHOW NOTES
Are your surf trips fun—but still leave you feeling unfulfilled or frustrated afterward?
In this special episode, recorded during a profound surf retreat in Nicaragua, we explore what happens when you combine high-level surf coaching with Kelee meditation, emotional awareness, and conscious living. Taylor Knox and Matt Griggs share how this integrative approach is changing the way surfers improve—not just on the board, but in life.
Discover how letting go of control improves both your surfing and inner peace.
Learn the true meaning of meditation—and why you may be doing it wrong.
Hear personal reflections on how self-awareness can heal frustration and elevate performance.
Play this episode to learn how the real breakthrough in your surfing might come from within, not just your next bottom turn.
Taylor Knox & Matt Griggs share some wisdom around surfing, performance and Kelee meditation. Learn what their Nature of Success surf trips are all about.
Vid:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RdxWUuce1rY&feature=youtu.be
Book a trip with Matt & Taylor:
https://thenatureofsuccess.com.au
Resort in Nicaragua:
https://malibupopoyo.com
Details and Tickets for the Surfing & Meditation Workshop with Taylor Knox and I here:
http://surfmastery.com/workshops/surfing-meditation
Trip hosted by:
Vid made by:
https://www.palmer-inc.com/
Key Points
Happiness is described as an appreciation of being alive, and individuals are in charge of their own happiness.
Conscious awareness is emphasized as a practice to become more aware of one's actions and improve efficiency.
Another surfing workshop is being organized in San Diego on November 3rd, with Taylor Knox presenting on Kili meditation and Michael on surfing posture and technique.
The recent surf trip in Nicaragua with Taylor Knox and Matt Griggs was a profound experience, focusing on self-awareness, self-development, and learning about oneself beyond just surfing technique.
The surf trips are designed to be more than just surf trips, incorporating personal development sessions, Kili meditation, and learning about physical health and performance.
The importance of conscious awareness and being aware of one's surroundings and emotions is highlighted, emphasizing the benefits of Kili meditation in reducing stress and increasing self-awareness.
The practice of Kili meditation is practical and accessible, requiring only a few minutes a day, and it helps individuals become more aware, less stressed, and more harmonious.
The meditation practice allows individuals to make decisions from their heart rather than their head, leading to fewer regrets and a more fulfilling experience.
Outline
Surf Mastery Podcast Update
Michael welcomes listeners back to the Surf Mastery Podcast and thanks attendees of the recent surfing workshop in Santa Monica with Clayton Nienaber.
An upcoming surfing workshop in San Diego on November 3rd is announced, featuring Taylor Knox presenting on Kili meditation principles and their relation to performance, and Michael presenting on surfing posture and technique.
Michael recently returned from a surf trip to Nicaragua at Malibu Papua Resort with Taylor Knox and Matt Griggs.
A guest named Dave created a video to capture the experience, and the audio for this episode comes from Dave Palmer of Palmer Productions.
Dave interviewed Taylor, Matt, and Michael about their coaching, trips, and the Kili meditation practice.
Michael's Experience at the Nicaragua Surf Trip
The trip focused on improving surfing skills through inspiration, visual technique, and coaching from Taylor and Matt.
Beyond surfing technique, the trip provided profound lessons in self-awareness and personal development.
Participants learned more about themselves, their feelings about life and others, and how to approach personal challenges differently.
The group of surfers on the trip were described as open-minded, willing to share their stories and experiences, which created a supportive and inspiring environment.
Previous meditation practice was realized not to be true meditation, as it involved focusing on a second point like breathing or a mantra, rather than finding a single point of stillness within.
Struggles to fully articulate the transformative nature of the experience are emphasized, noting that it must be felt and experienced firsthand.
The trip is strongly recommended to others, calling it the best investment one can make for both surfing and life.
Matt Griggs on the Nature of Their Surf Retreats
The aim was to create an experience that goes beyond a typical surf trip, combining surfing with personal development.
The retreats focus on learning about oneself, the mind through Kili meditation, and physical health and performance.
Daily sessions include one to two hours of personal development, combining Kili meditation, understanding the mind, and learning about physical health and performance.
The luxury of time provided during the retreat allows participants to ponder important life questions and reset.
The retreat helps people become more self-aware and provides tools to live better lives.
Taylor Knox on Surf Instruction and Personal Development
Teaching surfing techniques to participants of all skill levels is enjoyed, noting the significant improvement people can make in just 6-7 days.
The retreat is described as more than a surf trip, focusing on learning about oneself and unlocking inner answers through Kili meditation.
Happiness is emphasized as not being dependent on others and that everyone is in charge of their own happiness.
Matt Griggs on Consciousness and Kili Meditation
Consciousness in Kili refers to conscious awareness, which is trained through their practice.
Happiness is defined as an appreciation of being alive and fully living and enjoying life.
Various negative emotions are discussed as being rooted in fear, suggesting questioning what one fears when triggered.
The importance of not living by fears and instead living from awareness of what one truly wants in life is emphasized.
Self-control and current actions are noted as the only things one can control, not external events or the future.
Kili meditation is described as a way to empty the vessel of unwanted material, leading to less stress, more awareness, and greater wisdom.
Taylor Knox on Personal Growth and Meditation
The journey of self-discovery is shared, prompted by noticing differences in how people reacted to surfing experiences.
Kili meditation is found to be practical and compatible with their lifestyle, not requiring drastic lifestyle changes.
The importance of making decisions from the heart rather than the head to avoid regrets is emphasized.
Matt Griggs on the Retreat Experience
The value of vulnerability and emotional openness during the retreat is highlighted.
The retreat is described as a balanced experience of surfing instruction and personal development discussions.
Benefits of bringing together diverse, intelligent individuals who can support each other through shared experiences are noted.
Satisfaction is expressed in witnessing the personal growth of participants over the course of a week.
Transcription
Matt Griggs
I would say happiness is really just an appreciation of being alive.
Taylor Knox
Your happiness isn't dependent on someone else. Everyone's in charge of their own happiness.
Matt Griggs
With this practice, you train yourself to be more consciously aware. That means you know what you're doing while you're doing it.
Michael Frampton
Welcome back to the Surf Mastery Podcast. Big thanks to those who attended the surfing workshop in Santa Monica with Clayton Nienaber. Great turnout and it was very well received. I will be organizing another one in the LA area soon. So keep an ear on the podcast and an eye on the Instagram for that. I have already organized another surfing workshop in San Diego this coming Sunday, November the 3rd. And that's with myself and Taylor Knox. Taylor will be presenting on the basic principles of Kili meditation and how they relate to performance. And I will be presenting on surfing posture and technique that will be relevant for all styles of surfing. There's a link to the details and tickets in the show notes in your app and on Instagram. You can always email me mike at surf mastery dot com as well. Recently got back from a surf trip down in Nicaragua at Malibu Papua Resort with Taylor Knox and Matt Griggs and what an incredible experience that was. One of the guests Dave was inspired to create a little video to try and portray some of the magic that went down that week. And the audio in today's episode is all from Dave Palmer from Palmer Productions. There is a link to his work in the show notes as well. A link to the video he made around this trip as well. So Dave interviewed Taylor and Matt about the trips they do, the coaching they do and the Kili meditation practice. So there's a lot of wisdom in today's show. He interviewed me about my experience during this week. And that's how this episode begins with me sort of just outlying my experience. And then we'll go into some audio from Taylor Knox and Matt Griggs.
Michael Frampton
We come here to improve your surfing. Taylor and Matt both rep. So you've got inspiration and visual technique. And then Matt is so good with the technique side of it and coaching. So the you know what you're learning about surfing technique and how to read the wave. That's a huge part of what we're doing here. But on a deeper level and a more exciting and profound level is just learning about self-awareness and learning about yourself and self-development. And that's been the biggest. I've got more out of that side of it than I have out of the surfing. Like I've done I've had a lot of surf coaches in my time like I'm a surf coach. So I'm always wanting to learn more about surf coaching and improve my surfing and technique and stuff. And I've learned more this week about that than anywhere else. But that's but on a grander scale I've learned more about myself and who I am and how I feel about life and others. And it's just it's been profound. It's almost indescribable what this week has given me as a person not just as a surfer. It's like Matt and Taylor just attract a different type of surfer. I've always thought sometimes surfing brings out the worst in people. But not this group. Surfing has brought out the best in people with this group. This particular group of surfers. Yeah they're just very open-minded and they're not afraid to talk about themselves and their feelings and to share their stories and what they've been through. How they've overcome certain challenges in their lives. It's helped me to look at my challenges in a different way and just inspiring I guess. Yeah it's comforting too. And it's nice to be able to talk to other people about my situation. So I've been meditating for a couple of years now on and off pretty consistently over the past few months sort of leading up to this as well. But I quickly learned that I wasn't really meditating. I was actually focusing on something on a second point whether that be breathing or a mantra. And that's not really meditation. Meditation is about finding a single point of stillness within. So that was profound. And just the way that Matt and Taylor explain what meditation is something I've never had it framed that way before. It's just been life-changing. Yeah it really has. It never really clicked until after a couple of days of everyone just sort of questioning Matt and Taylor and Matt explaining it. I can't explain it. Words can't describe it. It's something you do have to experience yourself.
Taylor Knox
For.
Michael Frampton
You have to get on one of these trips. I'm lost for words on that one actually. It's a feeling isn't it? It's a feeling. You've got to feel it and experience it yourself. So I think if someone feels attracted and inspired to come on one of these trips just go with that. Don't second guess it. Don't question it. Just go with your feeling. It's the best investment you'll ever make I think. Not just for your surfing but for your life.
Matt Griggs
We just wanted to create an experience where we get to go to a good place in the world you know where there's plenty of nature and we can experience one of our favorite things to do which is surfing but make it more than a surf trip. You know like not just about riding waves but learning about yourself, learning about your mind via Kili meditation, learning more about the body and physical health and performance as well whether it's not just on the surfboard but just in life and whatever people's craft is. That was the idea and yeah it's been very well received. People are, you know, it's great that they're learning about surfing but I think it's even better that they're learning more about themselves and becoming more harmonious people in the world. We call it the nature of success too. Nature meaning your intrinsic value. Success from the Latin to go on well. Yeah you could call it a surf retreat in a way but every single person always says it's so much more than a surf trip. I think at our age and most of us here have done a lot of surf trips and we're looking for probably more than that so we try to give them more than that. What we do is every day we spend an hour or two doing some personal development sessions and that's a combination of Kili meditation and understanding the mind, learning meditation and learning how to troubleshoot the mind of inefficiencies, dysfunction, stress and becoming wiser, becoming more aware. And then we learn about physical health and we learn about performance and I think one of the main ingredients here too like any holiday if people choose to use it is you have the greatest luxury in the world which is time. Just time to ponder on your life and time to ask some important questions and reset in a way so when you go home not only do you feel better, you're more self-aware with who you are as a person and how you want to live.
Taylor Knox
We have people from all different skill levels come here. It's nice to teach people that they want to get better so bad. They're looking to improve like a cutback or a bottom turn and it's for us and being surfing as long as I have and that's something I really enjoy to kind of give out freely is just teaching them like hey this will really help you, these small tips and they just never got that kind of instruction. So it feels good to see people improve so much in just like six, seven days. It's amazing. I would describe it as more than a surf trip. Obviously we are surfing a lot and we're talking about surf technique but we are talking about learning about your keelie and getting people to kind of look within for their own answers and in essence it's just more about learning about yourself. The answers I believe are all within you just have to unlock them.
Matt Griggs
Yeah, consciousness, the term in Kili, is your conscious awareness. Conscious awareness is just a term to describe how aware somebody is. Wherever you direct your attention is where your conscious awareness will be, so with this practice, you train yourself to be more consciously aware. That means you know what you're doing while you're doing it. It's a good thing for humanity. I would say happiness is really just an appreciation of being alive. You know, we have a life, and are we really living it, and are we appreciating it, smiling more and enjoying our life and learning, but you know, enjoying it at the same time. There's many emotions that become dysfunctional ways of being, you know—anger, stress, impatience, ego, depression, etc.—but it's all rooted in fear. So if you're ever triggered in life, and we all get triggered from time to time, a really good question you could ask yourself is, what is it I fear here? For example, if it's depression, it's a fear of not being enough or not being good enough, or if it's anxiety, it's a fear of not having control. So it's an easy way, or a much easier way, to get to the root problem, and this becomes part of the pathway for all of humanity—to evolve out of being a fearful creature into a more loving one, a more harmonious one. Do not live by your fears. Imagine how much fear has held you back in life. This is not about that. This is about living from your awareness of what it is that you really want to do in life, the personal experience you want to have, and not letting fear get in the way. Yeah, the control thing, because people fear they don't have it, but you don't. The only thing you have is self-control. You know, you can't control what comes at you, only how you deal with it. So too often, just a common mistake is placing your attention on things you can't control, and of course that leads to frustration or leads to anxiety, etc. If you're a controlling person, I would ask, how is that going for you? Usually it leads to a lot of angst, a lot of anxiety, and a lot of frustration. So ultimately, it's something you have to give up. The only thing you can control is what's in your hands right now, and that's it. So my mentor says he tries not to let his attention go further away than what he can actually touch. That is the only thing you can have an effect on. If you let your thoughts go towards things you can't have an effect on, you become ineffective. So with this practice, you become so much more effective. You become so consciously aware that by knowing what you're doing while you're doing it, you don't waste time, you don't waste energy. You can get to the point very quickly. You don't waste time on thoughts you don't need to have. Very efficient way to not only understand your mind but to troubleshoot it of any disharmony and just make your life better and evolve.
Taylor Knox
The answers, I believe, are all within. You just have to unlock them. We're not here to tough it up or suck it up. I think being tough and being strong are two different things. Being strong is being sensitive and being aware of your surroundings and aware of others. And having foresight is a lot better than having hindsight. I mean, hindsight's good, but it probably means you've already suffered and you're looking back on an experience that didn't work out. Foresight is not even getting into that situation in the first place. And so I think for a lot of these guys, they're looking like, wow, there's some stuff here to be learned about avoiding sticky situations or adversarial situations. And just more about learning about yourself and knowing that your happiness isn't dependent on someone else. Everyone's in charge of their own happiness. Period. Full stop.
Matt Griggs
The Kili has been around forever, but in terms of our understanding, a few thousand years, and its original meaning is in Sanskrit, and it means vessel or receptacle. Everyone has one, and throughout life, we can tend to accumulate stresses and emotional buttons and issues and trauma and even brain shatter in the shallow end of the pool. So Kili meditation is just a way to empty the vessel of unwanted material. And via one-pointed stillness, we learn detachment. So the mind becomes stronger, the mind becomes more aware and less stressed and less affected by whatever's happened in one's life. It's very practical because it's only a five-minute practice, but you're taught stillness, because that's what meditation is about. It's an inactive being process where the mind is still. And then you're taught to contemplate. So a lot of the benefits initially include less brain shatter. They include more self-awareness, a relaxing of the nervous system, so you're calmer. And generally, when we're calmer, we do better. The byproduct really is more awareness and less stress. Things that used to affect you won't affect you anymore, and you'll become more wise and more harmonious.
Taylor Knox
I was always curious about how I could get out of the water frustrated about a surf, and the guy next to me got out of the water on cloud nine. I figured, well, then there's something going on with me, because that's probably how I should feel too. So I just started looking deeper into myself, and I just thought, well, there's nothing more important in the world than understanding your own thoughts. This meditation practice is me. It's really practical. I don't have to sit in lotus position for four hours a day. I don't have to shave my head or wear a red robe or become a vegan. Nothing wrong with any of those things, but it just didn't resonate with me. Those things don't resonate with me, and it's not my culture. I grew up in Southern California. Whether I like it or not, that's where I grew up. I needed something that didn't take an excessive amount of time and that I could still get things done, do things during the day. And so when he taught me the practice and it was doing it ten minutes twice a day, I was like, I can do this. I started doing it. It was a struggle in the beginning for me to get out of my head and into my mind, which is i.e., heart, I guess you would say. Because you don't make regrets when you make decisions from your heart. I've made plenty of regrets when I made decisions from my head.
Matt Griggs
We get closed because maybe we sense that it's a lack of strength if we are vulnerable or if we talk about emotion, but it's amazing to have that full range in this experience where we go surfing and we learn about reentries and cutbacks, and then we come in here and we meditate and we talk about life and we talk about, dare I say it, emotion and our fears and our awarenesses and our realizations, and it's awesome to watch all these bright developed minds then kind of hang out with each other. There's all these sideline conversations because there's some elite people in this group, very bright minds, and when they get together, no matter what problem someone's going through, there's probably someone in the group that's been through it. So it's been awesome for Taylor and I to watch the growth of people in one week. It's amazing how much they grow and their support of each other, and it's just a great experience, you know. I'm so happy to be a part of it.
46 Going Deep with Matt Griggs & Taylor Knox
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