Meet The Founders
“If an app with content that shallow can reach a million people, imagine what something with real depth could do. How would you like to put your work into an app?”
– Cate Zoltan, co-founder
It started with a magazine article
In 2016, Matthew and Cate were living in Bali. One afternoon, Cate found a short piece in a magazine about a meditation app that had passed a million downloads. She downloaded it and went through the content. Then she went back and looked at the numbers again.
Matthew had been in clinic since 1987 and running silent retreats since 1994. His work helped the people who came to him, but most people would never get to a clinic or a retreat. An app could reach anyone. They reasoned that if someone understood even one percent of what happens on a retreat, it would take them further than any other meditation app on the market.
Matthew wasn’t convinced. His work had always been done face to face, reading what a person’s body was expressing as they spoke. He didn’t think it would be as effective in an app.
He wrote it anyway. It took a year, because nothing he taught in clinic or on retreat had ever been written down. He pinned down what he’d seen missing the most in how people understood themselves and their lives, and that became the 14 Core Chapters. His understanding of how body and mind connect as one went in too, along with 57 meditations for specific parts of the body, for recovery from chronic pain, illness and injury.
The first version came out in 2019, and it was far too deep for most people. All the teachings were there, but there was nowhere to start. It was like the deep end of the pool, with no ladder in. So they spent 18 months building the way in, left the core teachings untouched, and released the version that runs now in July 2022.
Matthew was wrong about the teachings being less effective in an app, and they see it at every retreat. People who’ve used the app go deeper, faster, and are more open to the work than people who haven’t. Afterwards, the app supports further embodiment of their understanding from retreats and integration into daily life.
“Music in meditation is a distraction to the body. It changes how you feel and disconnects you. People use it to escape uncomfortable feelings. We want them to be in contact with all feelings, not numb them out.”
– Matthew Zoltan, co-founder
What we would not do
Matthew wrote every word in Undo. Nobody else has written a line of it, and nobody ever will. It’s what one man has seen in clinic and on retreat since 1987, written down once.
There’s no music, no sleep content and nothing to entertain you. Undo keeps you in contact with your feelings instead, because feeling them is how old hurts are resolved.
When the rewrite was finished in 2022, they decided the content was complete, and they’ve barely changed a word since. For a long time, Cate thought that was the wrong call. Most people want distraction and entertainment, so refusing to sell it cost Undo a much bigger market. They’d make the same choice again. The people who stay with Undo want to understand and heal themselves, not escape themselves.
Who built it
Matthew Zoltan
Discovered Natural Meditation, author of Undo
Matthew became a monk at 19 and meditated the traditional way he’d been taught: hours of mental and spiritual practice, every day, for seven years. The more he trained his mind, the further he detached from his body.
During his own long sits, instead of doing what the tradition had taught him, he dropped the techniques and felt into the life of his body. In one sit, pain built up in his right knee. He stayed with it until it released, and a memory from his teens came back, of a moment with his father. It kept happening in other areas of pain in his body, and soon physical and mental patterns – effects from his life – ended.
He had accidentally discovered the body’s natural way of healing itself. That formed the theme of his life’s work and the start of Natural Meditation, the only truly body-based meditation without technique or directed thought. He’d experienced the powers of beliefs and spiritual practice and come out with something that asks you to believe nothing, only to feel what’s in your body until it resolves.
He opened his clinic in Perth in 1987 and has worked with tens of thousands of clients since. Which reenforced and expanded his discoveries on the connection between body and mind that Natural Meditation is built on. Working with clients, he found that pressure on any particular muscle activated emotional and behavioural responses uniquely related to that muscle. That discovery became the Body Tension Translator now in the Undo app.
He published his first book from his discoveries on this, The Nature of the Mind, in 1989, founded Quiet Retreats in 1994, and has run more than 200 silent retreats since.
Cate Zoltan
Co-founder
Cate first heard of Matthew in 1998 and was a client for three years before anything else. She’d already tried psychotherapy, antidepressants, Buddhist meditation and most alternatives on offer at the time, but none of it gave her relief from her own mental pain.
On her first retreat, all the questions she’d had about life and the loops her mind kept getting caught in started to make sense and resolve. She’s been meditating daily ever since. What Matthew taught was a simple, clear explanation of how a person actually functions and heals biologically, and since 1998 she’s worked to get his work in front of more people.
A professional chef, she joined Matthew running retreats in 2001 and cooked for them in the early years. She has since co-facilitated more than 70 silent retreats, built Matthew Zoltan, Undo and Quiet Retreats into natural meditation ecosystem, and runs them today. She’s also an award-winning chef and longevity wellness consultant to forward thinking boutique hotels, spas and private residences.