“Ultimately, Dr Sam in this course, teaches you how to paint the picture of what a 10 out of 10 life looks like for yourself, and then build the steps to reach that life. “
Why I decided to do it
Anyone who knows me, also knows that I’m a perpetual student. I can’t get enough of training and learning. It must be the way I was brought up. I belong to the continuously tested and exam’ed generation. Even at this adult age, I still feel more motivated when there is an exam to pass as a target at the end.
Over the years, my interests have changed significantly, and I found myself joining courses increasingly in the health and self-development area. Yes of course it’s huge business and no doubt I have contributed to the size of that economy substantially over decades! Nevertheless, I have learned a lot and continue to learn a lot. The day I stop learning will probably be the last day I’m on this earth (and I’m not planning for that day to come any time soon)
Anyway, most of my readers will know that I’m a Trustee and Volunteer Researcher at the UK Integrative Cancer Care charity Yes to Life. Dr Sam Watts is one of the key supporters of the charity and someone I have been following for many years through conferences, podcasts and webinars. When Dr Sam was about to publish his first book, The Ayurvedic Approach to Cancer, he offered a promotion for the pre-orders, which was a free seat in his annual The Brilliant Life Blueprint training course.
It all sounded a bit too American to me at that point. It reminded me those super-excitable seminars with promises to change your life at the end, become a millionaire overnight or find out that you are a genius by the end of the course… However, knowing Dr Sam, I knew there would be more to it than that, and heck it was free and it was January and I had nothing better to do in the dark winter days of the UK, so I joined the free 5-day taster course.
It was less about the content and the information shared during those 5 mornings, and more about Dr Sam’s character, enthusiasm and genuine care that came through in those sessions which made me sign up for the full 6-month course. I’m not too difficult to sell things to me generally, but I tend to have a good nose for bullshitters which usually comes out pretty quickly in the taster sessions. Dr Sam was not like that.
The Experience
First of all, he’s an actual scientist with decades of research under his belt, and at NHS no less. Secondly, he has deeply researched into the area of Ayurveda and the ancient wisdoms in healing and wellbeing, and combined this with his scientific knowledge really brilliantly. Third, and probably most importantly, he really is a super nice guy and genuinely cares about the people he’s speaking to.
Now let me talk a little bit about the course itself. It begins with an “Eastern Life Audit” which is a thorough self-audit of the “8 Pillars of Health” consisting of Health, Finance, Service to Others, Family, Jobs, Passions, Mastery, and connection to the bigger picture. He goes through what each of these mean in substantial detail and a method to do a gap analysis of where you are with each and where you want to be.
The broader philosophy is influenced by the idea that health is not only the absence of disease but the presence of stability, resilience, adaptability and alignment across different aspects of life. The course is not a traditional treatment program but more an integrated lifestyle and wellbeing framework. Rather than focusing narrowly on disease management or isolated therapies, the philosophy behind it attempts to address health through multiple interconnected areas simultaneously.
Once you’ve done the life audit, the next step is to go through each pillar and deep dive into the science and research, as well as the ancient wisdoms. He teaches with incredible examples and anecdotes over one-hour live video calls. I have written many gems in my special notepad for this course, and some of them are printed and now hanging on my walls.
“A brilliant life is an accumulation of many brilliant days” I don’t know the number of times I repeated this quote to others around me.
“Ageing is your body’s reduced ability to repair” why did I never think of it that way?
“There’s no order of difficulty in transformation” this reminds me of the old “The Secret” manifestation. There’s no big or small ask for the universe.
“The body eavesdrops to your thoughts” that’s massively profound, even for me…
“Whenever a thought is released, a chemical is released to go with it” it makes such perfect sense…
“You can’t fix a problem with the same mindset that created it” the perfect quote from Einstein in the most perfect context…
Ultimately, Dr Sam in this course, teaches you how to paint the picture of what a 10 out of 10 life looks like for yourself, and then build the steps to reach that life. Ideation, visualisation, mediation, embryonic growth, brahma mutra morning routine, the weekly engineering plan, living through the eyes of a child are vital routines in my daily life now. I wouldn’t dream of living without these tools guiding me to my goals now.
The key difference and impact here is building the complete picture, the blueprint. After all, we all know a lot about health. Every magazine, newspaper, blogger, influencer, thinks they know about perfect health. We know what we should probably eat, we know we should probably move more, and we take some vitamins and supplements, we reduce ultra processed foods. But we all get bits of information at different times. What this course does, is that it puts it into one big picture where all aspects of life, and all elements of health, physical or mental, are holistically combined. You can’t be healthy if you’re not happy, you can’t be happy if you don’t have enough money, you can’t have enough money if you don’t like what you do, it’s all connected, one doesn’t come without the other.
Health can’t be separated into isolated categories. Sleep affects metabolism. Stress affects digestion. Trauma affects immunity. Movement affects mood. Relationships affect nervous system regulation. Sunlight affects circadian rhythm. Purpose affects resilience. Loneliness affects inflammatory signalling. The body and mind are continuously interacting.
At some point in the world of integrative health, you begin noticing that most people are not really searching for information anymore. Information is everywhere. Podcasts, books, conferences, YouTube channels, practitioners, health influencers, supplement companies, functional medicine doctors, biohackers, wellness retreats, longevity clinics, meditation teachers and nutrition experts all compete continuously for attention. Everyone has a partial explanation for why we chronically feel exhausted, inflamed, anxious, overstimulated, disconnected and physically depleted.
How do all these ideas fit together into a real life that still feels human? How do you improve health without turning your entire existence into a full-time optimisation project? How do you create routines that support energy, resilience, recovery, and emotional stability without becoming obsessive, fearful, or overwhelmed?
Unlike highly specific interventions focused on a single therapy or treatment, this course is an attempt to create a broader framework for living. Nutrition, mindset, stress regulation, routine, movement, emotional wellbeing, sleep, environment, relationships, and purpose are all interconnected within the philosophy behind the program. It provides structure without rigidity and awareness without obsession. This type of holistic health framework genuinely helped me create a healthier life without becoming another layer of pressure disguised as self-improvement.
The other important strength of Dr Sam’s teachings is that he combines western science and ancient eastern wisdom perfectly. Practitioners in the integrative health world tend to be either very scientific, or very much spiritual. It’s rare to find a combination, with science as the common denominator. Dr Sam often integrates modern wellness language with Ayurvedic and integrative medicine concepts. He focusses heavily on restoration, slowing down, digestion, emotional wellbeing, stress physiology and creating conditions where the body can recover more effectively.
What I learned
Earlier in my younger life, I used to focus on parts of my health, parts of biology; liver detox, muscle build, better digestion, anger management, mood swings… In the last 5 years or so, my mindset shifted, my focus changed to overall wellbeing and the connectedness of the body parts when it comes to health. One of the interesting aspects of programs like this is that they recognise an important reality modern healthcare often struggles to address. Many people are not dealing with isolated medical symptoms. They are dealing with cumulative lifestyle dysregulation. Exhaustion. Burnout. Sleep disruption. Emotional overload. Decision fatigue. Lack of meaning. Poor recovery. Digital overstimulation. Sedentary habits. Nutritional inconsistency.
Dr Sam’s program combines elements of lifestyle medicine, Ayurvedic philosophy, stress regulation, nutrition, movement, mindfulness, emotional wellbeing, routine creation, environmental awareness, habit formation, community support, personal reflection.
At first the program felt almost deceptively simple. Sleep routines. Morning practices. Breathing. Food awareness. Reflection exercises. Movement. Stress reduction. Gratitude. Slowing down. None of these concepts individually felt revolutionary because most people have heard variations of them repeatedly. The interesting part became obvious when I started noticing the cumulative effect of consistency and structure. The program created more awareness for me around how my daily patterns quietly shaped my physical and emotional state. It’s not the kind of thing you would do once a year for a few days and see benefits. It’s about visiting it once a week, catching up with your notes and learnings, assessing your achievements. Consistency is the key word here.
If this program was offered in the USA, it would probably include the promise of a lottery win in 90 days. Your magic life won’t be in the form of a lottery win in this program. I didn’t win any lottery. I didn’t find a pile of cash in my back garden. I didn’t get an unexpected massive payrise. That’s not the magic to expect. But looking back at my last 2 years, somehow, the magic did happen, and my life did change, in fact quite unrecognisably. During my life audits, I came to realise how unhappy I was in my job and career choices, although I wasn’t planning to quite. I ended up leaving my job and moving to a completely different industry. I would have never had this courage before. I was living in a tiny flat in South London with no plans to ever have a nicer home. Somehow I managed to put together the funds to buy a small London house with a little garden. My dream was to have a cup of tea in my garden at the end of a busy day. I didn’t think it was ever going to be possible. And yet, I’m doing that right now. I don’t know how I managed to achieve that but I did it, and no I didn’t win any lottery.
So this program is not the spiritual kind of magic blueprint where you ask the universe to give you money and it pours it over you. But it does give you a perspective on where your life is, where the gaps are relative to your dreams, and build a path to achieve your dreams, one day at a time. This is how you build a brilliant life, by creating many brilliant days…
How it changed my daily health routines
Since I completed the program (twice), a few elements are well established into my daily routines now. I plan my days and weeks to the smallest detail. Even though I don’t achieve all of them all the time, it gives me focus to know what’s important and what’s not. I regularly repeat the life audit. I keep a journal, not exactly a formal dear-diary type but I have my notepads where I make notes, write my plans, sometimes “yell and scream” about my frustrations.
People often enter wellness programs hoping to become completely different versions of themselves. In reality, meaningful change usually looks far less dramatic. Better sleep consistency, slightly calmer reactions, improved awareness around food, more emotional regulation, reduced overstimulation, more intentional daily rhythms. Those changes sound small individually but become significant cumulatively. This is exactly what happened to me. Health is rarely built through one dramatic intervention. It is usually shaped quietly through repeated daily patterns that either support resilience or gradually erode it over time.
My thoughts and conclusion
So far I’ve done this course twice. Once you join the course, you own the recordings and materials for life, so you can watch and learn again and again. Frankly, each time you notice and learn something new. It is in fact in my diary, every January, to do the course and I’m planning to continue for as long as possible. Once the Christmas rush is over and New Year celebrations are done, instead of wasting my time on new year resolutions, which seem to be guaranteed to fail anyway, I go and do this course. It gives me a perspective for the new year ahead, a good grounding of where I am and where I want to be, in each pillar of my life.
Why I decided to do it
Anyone who knows me, also knows that I’m a perpetual student. I can’t get enough of training and learning. It must be the way I was brought up. I belong to the continuously tested and exam’ed generation. Even at this adult age, I still feel more motivated when there is an exam to pass as a target at the end.
Over the years, my interests have changed significantly, and I found myself joining courses increasingly in the health and self-development area. Yes of course it’s huge business and no doubt I have contributed to the size of that economy substantially over decades! Nevertheless, I have learned a lot and continue to learn a lot. The day I stop learning will probably be the last day I’m on this earth (and I’m not planning for that day to come any time soon)
Anyway, most of my readers will know that I’m a Trustee and Volunteer Researcher at the UK Integrative Cancer Care charity Yes to Life. Dr Sam Watts is one of the key supporters of the charity and someone I have been following for many years through conferences, podcasts and webinars. When Dr Sam was about to publish his first book, The Ayurvedic Approach to Cancer, he offered a promotion for the pre-orders, which was a free seat in his annual The Brilliant Life Blueprint training course.
It all sounded a bit too American to me at that point. It reminded me those super-excitable seminars with promises to change your life at the end, become a millionaire overnight or find out that you are a genius by the end of the course… However, knowing Dr Sam, I knew there would be more to it than that, and heck it was free and it was January and I had nothing better to do in the dark winter days of the UK, so I joined the free 5-day taster course.
It was less about the content and the information shared during those 5 mornings, and more about Dr Sam’s character, enthusiasm and genuine care that came through in those sessions which made me sign up for the full 6-month course. I’m not too difficult to sell things to me generally, but I tend to have a good nose for bullshitters which usually comes out pretty quickly in the taster sessions. Dr Sam was not like that.
The Experience
First of all, he’s an actual scientist with decades of research under his belt, and at NHS no less. Secondly, he has deeply researched into the area of Ayurveda and the ancient wisdoms in healing and wellbeing, and combined this with his scientific knowledge really brilliantly. Third, and probably most importantly, he really is a super nice guy and genuinely cares about the people he’s speaking to.
Now let me talk a little bit about the course itself. It begins with an “Eastern Life Audit” which is a thorough self-audit of the “8 Pillars of Health” consisting of Health, Finance, Service to Others, Family, Jobs, Passions, Mastery, and connection to the bigger picture. He goes through what each of these mean in substantial detail and a method to do a gap analysis of where you are with each and where you want to be.
The broader philosophy is influenced by the idea that health is not only the absence of disease but the presence of stability, resilience, adaptability and alignment across different aspects of life. The course is not a traditional treatment program but more an integrated lifestyle and wellbeing framework. Rather than focusing narrowly on disease management or isolated therapies, the philosophy behind it attempts to address health through multiple interconnected areas simultaneously.
Once you’ve done the life audit, the next step is to go through each pillar and deep dive into the science and research, as well as the ancient wisdoms. He teaches with incredible examples and anecdotes over one-hour live video calls. I have written many gems in my special notepad for this course, and some of them are printed and now hanging on my walls.
“A brilliant life is an accumulation of many brilliant days” I don’t know the number of times I repeated this quote to others around me.
“Ageing is your body’s reduced ability to repair” why did I never think of it that way?
“There’s no order of difficulty in transformation” this reminds me of the old “The Secret” manifestation. There’s no big or small ask for the universe.
“The body eavesdrops to your thoughts” that’s massively profound, even for me…
“Whenever a thought is released, a chemical is released to go with it” it makes such perfect sense…
“You can’t fix a problem with the same mindset that created it” the perfect quote from Einstein in the most perfect context…
Ultimately, Dr Sam in this course, teaches you how to paint the picture of what a 10 out of 10 life looks like for yourself, and then build the steps to reach that life. Ideation, visualisation, mediation, embryonic growth, brahma mutra morning routine, the weekly engineering plan, living through the eyes of a child are vital routines in my daily life now. I wouldn’t dream of living without these tools guiding me to my goals now.
The key difference and impact here is building the complete picture, the blueprint. After all, we all know a lot about health. Every magazine, newspaper, blogger, influencer, thinks they know about perfect health. We know what we should probably eat, we know we should probably move more, and we take some vitamins and supplements, we reduce ultra processed foods. But we all get bits of information at different times. What this course does, is that it puts it into one big picture where all aspects of life, and all elements of health, physical or mental, are holistically combined. You can’t be healthy if you’re not happy, you can’t be happy if you don’t have enough money, you can’t have enough money if you don’t like what you do, it’s all connected, one doesn’t come without the other.
Health can’t be separated into isolated categories. Sleep affects metabolism. Stress affects digestion. Trauma affects immunity. Movement affects mood. Relationships affect nervous system regulation. Sunlight affects circadian rhythm. Purpose affects resilience. Loneliness affects inflammatory signalling. The body and mind are continuously interacting.
At some point in the world of integrative health, you begin noticing that most people are not really searching for information anymore. Information is everywhere. Podcasts, books, conferences, YouTube channels, practitioners, health influencers, supplement companies, functional medicine doctors, biohackers, wellness retreats, longevity clinics, meditation teachers and nutrition experts all compete continuously for attention. Everyone has a partial explanation for why we chronically feel exhausted, inflamed, anxious, overstimulated, disconnected and physically depleted.
How do all these ideas fit together into a real life that still feels human? How do you improve health without turning your entire existence into a full-time optimisation project? How do you create routines that support energy, resilience, recovery, and emotional stability without becoming obsessive, fearful, or overwhelmed?
Unlike highly specific interventions focused on a single therapy or treatment, this course is an attempt to create a broader framework for living. Nutrition, mindset, stress regulation, routine, movement, emotional wellbeing, sleep, environment, relationships, and purpose are all interconnected within the philosophy behind the program. It provides structure without rigidity and awareness without obsession. This type of holistic health framework genuinely helped me create a healthier life without becoming another layer of pressure disguised as self-improvement.
The other important strength of Dr Sam’s teachings is that he combines western science and ancient eastern wisdom perfectly. Practitioners in the integrative health world tend to be either very scientific, or very much spiritual. It’s rare to find a combination, with science as the common denominator. Dr Sam often integrates modern wellness language with Ayurvedic and integrative medicine concepts. He focusses heavily on restoration, slowing down, digestion, emotional wellbeing, stress physiology and creating conditions where the body can recover more effectively.
What I learned
Earlier in my younger life, I used to focus on parts of my health, parts of biology; liver detox, muscle build, better digestion, anger management, mood swings… In the last 5 years or so, my mindset shifted, my focus changed to overall wellbeing and the connectedness of the body parts when it comes to health. One of the interesting aspects of programs like this is that they recognise an important reality modern healthcare often struggles to address. Many people are not dealing with isolated medical symptoms. They are dealing with cumulative lifestyle dysregulation. Exhaustion. Burnout. Sleep disruption. Emotional overload. Decision fatigue. Lack of meaning. Poor recovery. Digital overstimulation. Sedentary habits. Nutritional inconsistency.
Dr Sam’s program combines elements of lifestyle medicine, Ayurvedic philosophy, stress regulation, nutrition, movement, mindfulness, emotional wellbeing, routine creation, environmental awareness, habit formation, community support, personal reflection.
At first the program felt almost deceptively simple. Sleep routines. Morning practices. Breathing. Food awareness. Reflection exercises. Movement. Stress reduction. Gratitude. Slowing down. None of these concepts individually felt revolutionary because most people have heard variations of them repeatedly. The interesting part became obvious when I started noticing the cumulative effect of consistency and structure. The program created more awareness for me around how my daily patterns quietly shaped my physical and emotional state. It’s not the kind of thing you would do once a year for a few days and see benefits. It’s about visiting it once a week, catching up with your notes and learnings, assessing your achievements. Consistency is the key word here.
If this program was offered in the USA, it would probably include the promise of a lottery win in 90 days. Your magic life won’t be in the form of a lottery win in this program. I didn’t win any lottery. I didn’t find a pile of cash in my back garden. I didn’t get an unexpected massive payrise. That’s not the magic to expect. But looking back at my last 2 years, somehow, the magic did happen, and my life did change, in fact quite unrecognisably. During my life audits, I came to realise how unhappy I was in my job and career choices, although I wasn’t planning to quite. I ended up leaving my job and moving to a completely different industry. I would have never had this courage before. I was living in a tiny flat in South London with no plans to ever have a nicer home. Somehow I managed to put together the funds to buy a small London house with a little garden. My dream was to have a cup of tea in my garden at the end of a busy day. I didn’t think it was ever going to be possible. And yet, I’m doing that right now. I don’t know how I managed to achieve that but I did it, and no I didn’t win any lottery.
So this program is not the spiritual kind of magic blueprint where you ask the universe to give you money and it pours it over you. But it does give you a perspective on where your life is, where the gaps are relative to your dreams, and build a path to achieve your dreams, one day at a time. This is how you build a brilliant life, by creating many brilliant days…
How it changed my daily health routines
Since I completed the program (twice), a few elements are well established into my daily routines now. I plan my days and weeks to the smallest detail. Even though I don’t achieve all of them all the time, it gives me focus to know what’s important and what’s not. I regularly repeat the life audit. I keep a journal, not exactly a formal dear-diary type but I have my notepads where I make notes, write my plans, sometimes “yell and scream” about my frustrations.
People often enter wellness programs hoping to become completely different versions of themselves. In reality, meaningful change usually looks far less dramatic. Better sleep consistency, slightly calmer reactions, improved awareness around food, more emotional regulation, reduced overstimulation, more intentional daily rhythms. Those changes sound small individually but become significant cumulatively. This is exactly what happened to me. Health is rarely built through one dramatic intervention. It is usually shaped quietly through repeated daily patterns that either support resilience or gradually erode it over time.
My thoughts and conclusion
So far I’ve done this course twice. Once you join the course, you own the recordings and materials for life, so you can watch and learn again and again. Frankly, each time you notice and learn something new. It is in fact in my diary, every January, to do the course and I’m planning to continue for as long as possible. Once the Christmas rush is over and New Year celebrations are done, instead of wasting my time on new year resolutions, which seem to be guaranteed to fail anyway, I go and do this course. It gives me a perspective for the new year ahead, a good grounding of where I am and where I want to be, in each pillar of my life.
No affiliate links or any financial compensation has been received in return for this article. Some of my articles involve a form of compensation but I explicitly state it when this is the case.