Stillness in the Storms
Stillness in the Storms is a mindfulness podcast hosted by Steven Webb, who shares his journey of finding peace after a severe diving accident left him paralyzed. The show blends Zen Buddhism, Stoic philosophy, and personal stories to help listeners transform adversity into growth. It offers practical tools for building resilience, managing stress, and cultivating gratitude, making mindfulness accessible to those facing life's challenges.
Episodes
Why Is Everyone So Tired Right Now? How Awe Shrinks Worry
Why is everyone so tired right now? Not sleepy, world tired. Too much is changing too fast, our minds never come with an off switch, and we stay busy so we don't have to feel it.Support me with a coffee and join my Weekly Calm every Sunday: stevenwebb.ukAsk almost anyone how they are this week and listen to the first word. Tired. More than seven in ten American adults feel very tired or exhausted
Overwhelmed by the News: Caring Without Drowning
How do you care about what's happening in the world without it dragging you under? Practice first, news second. Then do one small thing and put it down.Support me with a coffee and join my Weekly Calm every Sunday: stevenwebb.ukThe night I broke my neck, I only had to get through the next breath. My family were stood in the corridor with nothing to do, not knowing if I'd see the morning. That's th
We're All Terrible Meditators: The Art of Doing Nothing on Purpose
Are you bad at meditating? So is everyone. The mind wanders because that is its job. Meditation is not quieting it, it is noticing you have gone and coming back.Support me with a coffee and join my Weekly Calm every Sunday: stevenwebb.ukWhen I started, I thought meditation was sit down, be quiet, no thoughts, pure bliss. It lasted about 30 seconds. Then a teacher gave me the only instruction that
What Will I Miss? My Story for World Suicide Prevention Day
What would you miss? This episode is about suicide, my granddad's and my own, and the one question that kept me here. If you need help right now, the numbers are just below.If you need help right nowUK and Ireland: Samaritans, call 116 123. Free, any hour, any day.UK only, if you cannot talk: text SHOUT to 85258. Free, 24 hours.US: call or text 988.Australia: Lifeline, 13 11 14.I was 12 when my gr
Gates, Not Thorns: Are Your Boundaries a Prison?
Support Steven's work. Treat him to a coffee stevenwebb.ukAre your boundaries keeping you safe, or keeping you stuck? I have never liked the word. This week a reader called Katherine gave me a better one: gates, not thorns.I have carers in my life 24 hours a day, so I could not build walls even if I wanted to. I had to grow the strength to let the world in instead, and that is where I stand on bou
There Is No Steven in Here: What I Learned at the Bottom of a Swimming Pool
Who are you, really, behind all the roles? Sit properly with that question and no answer comes. That is the answer.Open me up and there is no Steven in there. In deep sleep there is no Steven either. We wake up and we come online and we boot the roles: dad, councillor, host, meditator. Each one needs a different set of skills, and you can only run one at a time. So who is watching the breath when
If This Were My Last Podcast
If this were my last podcast, what would I want to leave you with? Let everything happen to you. No feeling is final.That is Rilke, and it is where this one started. No script, just a cup of coffee. You cannot change the present moment. You cannot grow your hair, lose weight, get younger or stop the rain in this second, and yet we spend enormous energy arguing with what has already arrived. Imagin
Happily Never After
What if the thing you keep chasing is the exact reason you cannot catch it? There is no happily ever after, and that is good news.Picture the ox with a carrot on a stick fixed above its own head. Every step forward moves the carrot forward. That is happiness as most of us run it. And it is not a design fault, it is evolutionary genius, because if you settled the moment you got something you would
Part of You Doesn't Want the Pain to Stop: Here's Why
Why does part of you not want the pain to stop? Pain is inevitable. Suffering is the second arrow, and you fire that one.The first arrow lands and it hurts. Then we load the bow ourselves. Every replay in your head, every post, every phone call to a friend, is another arrow into the same wound. And here is the uncomfortable bit. The suffering loop feeds us, because it makes us the hero of our own
What Your Anger Is Really Saying
What is your anger actually saying? My teacher Jun Po told me he has never known an angry person who did not care.Sit with that one. Anger is the bodyguard. It steps in to put something right, to stop it happening again, to defend what matters. Throw the hammer away and you have thrown away an emotion that evolution spent a very long time building. A child is furious about a red T-shirt when they
The Mind That Will Not Be Quiet
Why does your mind pick 3am? You have thirty to forty thoughts a minute and you asked for none of them. The mistake is deciding the goal is a blank, silent mind.Set that as the target and the trains keep coming and you feel like you are failing at it. You are not. Here is the whole thing in one sentence. You are not the thought, you are the one listening to it. Because if you can hear it, you cann
Giving Space: Love Without Taking Over
What is the hardest kind of love? Giving somebody space. Not walking away, not going cold, not pretending you do not care. Space that still says I am here.We argue with family most because we are trying to prove we have changed. See me, I am here. Real space is not silent punishment and it is not neglect. Before you step in, ask honestly whether you are helping them or reducing your own discomfort
The First 30 Seconds: Why Every Feeling Is a Gift
Where does a feeling actually come from, and what happens in the first thirty seconds of it?The amygdala flags something before you know it. A second or two later the adrenaline is in, the heart is up, the blood is heading for the big muscles. That is not your body malfunctioning. That is your body being brilliant. Picture a campfire and somebody says, what was that. You want the person who feels
Waking Up to Body Betrayal: How to Find Peace in the Pain
Is your body letting you down, or have you been sold that story? Mine is not the enemy. It has always told me exactly what it needed, and I did not always listen.Every morning is like this for me at the moment, so I do feel it. But we have been handed a story where the body is the opposition. It is not. It is the mind, the body, the toes, the fingers, the knees, all in it together. We ignore the s
"I'm Fine": When It's Armour, When It's Honest, and How to Tell
When you say I'm fine, is it armour or is it honest? Both, depending on the day. And sometimes fine is genuinely the right answer, because not every conversation is one you want.Every carer, every encounter, however small. I take notice about one time in twenty. There is nothing wrong with the armour. My nan had a way of dealing with people who came in moaning. And there is the master whose final
8 Billion Minds. Why Meditation Doesn't Work for Everyone (And What You Can Do About It)
Why does meditation work for some people and not others? Eight billion minds. You can only write the book from the altitude you are actually standing at.My chair broke and I could not do anything. That is a lifeline gone, and a friend had to come and push me out to the van. In the weeks after I read a hundred and twenty year old book by James Allen saying you are not your thoughts. Sometimes I nee
Demystifying Meditation: What You Need to Know
Does meditation actually help in real life, off the cushion? That is the only place it counts. In the car, in the queue, and the second before you snap at somebody.You cannot switch off a taste you dislike, so expecting to switch off a thought is the wrong ask. You choose which train to drive rather than stopping the trains. Little and often beats forty minutes on a Saturday. You do not need a lot
The Dignity of Being Tired: Give Yourself a Break
Why is it so hard to say I am tired? Tiredness is not a weakness. It is your body telling you something honest, and ignoring it was never a strategy.When I was Mayor of Truro there were days I had nothing left at all. I cannot feel anything from the chest down and I have autonomic dysreflexia, so my body signals things differently to yours. I took a couple of days and genuinely stopped. That beats
What Rises When You Stop Pushing
What rises when you finally stop pushing? Something usually does, and it is rarely the thing you were forcing.Easter, and all this talk of new life can land as pressure when you are still in the ground. Not all trees bloom at the same time. Drive down any road and most daffodils are out and one on the end is only just arriving, and nobody thinks that one has failed. The tide does not come in clean
Finding Inner Peace: Do You Need to Be a Buddhist?
Do you need to be a Buddhist to find inner peace? I am not one, and I do not think you need to be either.I am recording this three days after an operation and on painkillers, so bear with me. I collected the statues and the pictures and the apps and books I never read. What I was after was for the calm to rub off. But the practices do not need the beliefs. Meditation, awareness, compassion for you
"Is This All There Is?" Answering the Quiet Question in Your Heart
Is this all there is? If that question keeps visiting you, it is not a fault. It might be the most important one you have asked.I was young, flat on my back, with four TV channels I could see in a little mirror and nothing else to do but think. Two questions arrived and they have never fully left. Life looks fine from outside, so you feel guilty for asking, and you tell yourself you are being ungr
When Letting Go Feels Impossible, Try This Instead
What if letting go is the wrong instruction? Every time somebody says it, your mind grips the thing tighter.In 1992 I sat with a manual wheelchair I could barely move, triceps paralysed, hands paralysed, and I spent days trying to prove I was not disabled. The moment I accepted it, everything changed. Telling your body to forget something it built to protect you is a losing argument. It is quicksa
Who Are You When No One Needs Anything?
Who are you when nobody needs anything from you? One day you are wanted everywhere, and then almost overnight you are not.The role becomes the identity. The one who holds the family together, keeps the plates spinning, gets the three in the morning call. Then it stops. Redundancy, a divorce, the youngest leaving, the year ending. Everyone tells you that you should be grateful, and you are, and gra
Apricity and the Calm After the Storm
How do you stay calm through the strongest winds Cornwall has ever had? You watch the news enough to know what is happening, and then you stop watching it.Officially we did not break a hundred, which I am glad about. I check in on the news every four and a half seconds because you never know what is coming next, and that is exactly the habit worth breaking. The world is noisy. My word this year is
Forget Resolutions: Why One Word Is All You Need This Year
What would your one word for the year be? Forget resolutions. One word does more work than a list you will have abandoned by February.Mine came out of simplifying. Take away what you do not need and it goes right down to the complicated things. If you love something you accept it rather than trying to change it. Embrace the anxiety, because it is the seven year old saying watch out, last time this
When Jesus and the Buddha Sit at the Same Table
Do Jesus and the Buddha actually disagree? I do not think they do. You write the book for the audience in front of you, and that explains most of the difference.Most religions come down to something similar underneath. Buddhism differs in asking you to believe in yourself, and that the hard times are not as solid as they look. I am not aware all the time. My depth is nowhere near what people assum
The Truth About Inner Peace: 5 Myths Debunked
What does inner peace actually mean? It is what is left when you are not suffering. It is already there, and mostly we just forget it is.I did not need somebody to fix anything. I needed somebody to sit there. Inner peace is always present, the way a drink is already on the table as you get older and realise you can just reach for it. Thoughts arrive as trains and you choose which to board. Happin
In a Hard World, Your Softest Skills Are Your Strongest Asset
What cards were you actually dealt? I never finished school, I was kicked out of sixth form, and I have never passed an exam beyond GCSEs. You play the hand.You cannot change the cards, only how you play them. The powerful hold hard power, military or influence, and it looks unbeatable from underneath. The good hands are the ones you work for, with time and courage and honesty and self awareness i
How to Be Your Own Loving Parent
Who is parenting you? Most of us need somebody to say put your shoes on and get out of there, and there is nobody doing it, so it has to be us.Short videos are junk food for the brain and I keep thinking the next one will help. What a good parent would say is not get a grip. It is be a bit kinder to yourself in the journal tonight. There will never be one episode that sorts your storms out for goo
Empathy vs. Compassion: What's the Real Difference?
What is the actual difference between empathy and compassion? Alan Watts called compassion the cosmic wink that says I see you, fellow player. That is the whole of it.Judgement is when we look up and decide she is lazy or he is attention seeking. Then somebody lists everything wrong with their day and we cannot stand it, usually because we do not like seeing our own mirror. When you let compassion
Attachment Isn’t the Enemy. The Struggle to Let Go Is
Is attachment really the enemy? No. It is the struggling to let go that hurts.I smoked for the best part of thirty years. I am attached to pleasure, to hope, to feeling well. The Western version of this is that you must give everything up, and that is not it. Try pushing a bird off your hand and telling it to go. It leaves and it comes back. My council put a new kitchen in and I hated going in the
Forgiveness Begins When the Heart Breaks Open
How do you forgive somebody who cheated on you? Not by understanding it. Something stopped me asking the questions, and that turned out to be the whole gift.I wanted to know how, and who with, and how long for. I did not ask. It took me a long time to work out that I was not grieving her. I was grieving the life, the freedom, the joys. Name what they did silently, as an object, and do not go down
Overthinking Is Not Your Fault (But Here's How to Stop)
Whose thoughts are they, actually? Mostly your parents', your grandparents', your teachers'. Overthinking is not your fault, which is the good news and the bad news at once.At 40 I was single, out of money, on benefits, and my chair had broken. I would sleep ninety minutes and wake to thoughts that would not stop, and that went on for weeks. I was a terrible meditator and still am. You cannot turn
The Truth About Anxiety & Imposter Syndrome
Do anxiety and imposter syndrome ever go away? No. Mine did not. What changed is that I stopped treating them as the problem and started treating them as voices.I sat there thinking people vote for me because they feel sorry for me, or because I am in a wheelchair. Then another voice comes in and says hang on, thank you for putting your nose in, but it was fine last time. That is the argument, and
Self Acceptance – The Zen Way
What are you going to complain about once everything is fixed? If you sorted the entire world out tomorrow, what would you do with the rest of the day?Somebody told me what STFU stands for and it was not what I expected. We are handed a blank canvas and immediately want to paint it a colour. On the road I was bored and cold and fed up, and then I started seeing the lines in a leaf, and a car going
How Big Is Your Circle? Let's Talk Love and Acceptance
How big is your circle, honestly? Not who you like. Who you would genuinely be there for. And most of us can accept a stranger more easily than our own brother.You move in and out of these levels during a single day. Give me a bad headache and mine shrinks fast. There are good reasons for countries and we are still all human. The strange bit is that the person driving you mad is usually the one cl
Feel Deeply, Suffer Less: The Unexpected Power of Emotion
Can you detach from pain without going numb to everything else? No, and that is the catch. Deny the hard feelings and the good ones go with them.There is the small mind that has problems and the big mind where nothing needs fixing. Trying to deny it all is like keeping a garden and never taking your shoes off. You never find out what the grass feels like. It is not nice watching somebody suffer, a
How to Stay Calm in the Face of Anger
Why does a raised voice make you feel sick? Your nervous system is not overreacting. It learned that anger meant danger, and it is still doing its job.I was shouted at as a child, so some of it is that. Some of it is the person triggering something older. I get triggered by my daughter more than almost anybody, because I care and because I expected more. Nobody owns the road, and yet everybody wan
The Art of Slowing Down: Spiritual Timeouts
Do you need an hour to reset, or would thirty seconds do it?Thich Nhat Hanh said smile, breathe and go slowly. I am hopeless at the going slowly. What I can do is use the small forced pauses. I left the phone at home to go and meet somebody, and I gave them my whole attention for the first time in ages. Alan Watts said muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone. You do not have to clear it. Y
Enlightenment in 2 Minutes: How Micro-Moments Can Transform Your Life
What is enlightenment, really? Waking up to what is true and suffering less for it. Not floating. And for me it started with a hundred and twenty year old book.I had a dream of a life that got ripped away unexpectedly. Then As a Man Thinketh told me I am not my thoughts, and that would not leave me alone. A sound reaches my head and my head interprets it and then tells me what it is. I am not in t
Finding Peace and Stillness in the Current Storms
How do you stay steady when the news will not stop? Six weeks into the year and it is already relentless.I am fifty two, my body is paralysed, my immune system is not what it was, and this cold has taken a hammering out of me. On top of that the headlines keep coming and I keep going back for more. So I have started asking a different question. What if I wake up tomorrow and the kettle does not wo
Emotional Connections: The Moments That Shape Us
What do you actually remember of your life? Not the years. Just the moments.I have done five hundred miles round Cornwall in my electric wheelchair this year, and what I have kept from it is moments. Everything is stored that way. I met a man who told me about being flown to Salisbury at eighteen, and I had been in that same tight space, chewing my knees, and suddenly it was like I had known him a
Navigating Life's Struggles: Acceptance vs. Avoidance
Are you accepting your life, or quietly avoiding it? I wrote this at two in the morning and it caught me out.I teach acceptance. And the one thing I have never accepted is my own disability. That is the elephant in my world. Giving in to an electric wheelchair was one of the hardest days of the early years. I have spent my life dodging labels, dodging pity and dodging the story people hand to some
Unveiling the True Self: Beyond Ego and Illusion
Who is the you underneath the you? There is a self below the ego, and the ego is the part doing all the suffering.Ask who Steven is and the false self answers first. Podcast host. Councillor. Meditator. Man in a wheelchair. All of that is memory doing the job it evolved for, remembering where the bear was. Underneath it is something with no desires and no story, and you can find the edge of it rig
Moments That Matter: A Heartfelt New Year Message
Do you actually rely on anybody? I cannot put a jumper on without help, and it took me most of my life to stop saying no thanks. You rely on people too.Looking back at a year you do not see a line. You see moments. The lad who chased me down the street with a pound for the bucket. Everybody is climbing the same mountain from a different side, seeing something genuinely true and calling everybody e
Navigating the Holiday Chaos: A Guide to Compassionate Mindfulness
How do you find any peace at Christmas when everybody expects you to be upbeat?There is the noise, the money, the debates round the table, and underneath all of it the fear of losing people. You cannot control the dinner, the presents or your relatives. It is like getting in the sea and expecting the sea to move around you. What changed things for me was sitting back and saying, go on then, let me
Vulnerability: A Pathway to Courage and Wisdom
Is being vulnerable the same as being weak? Asking for help is the most vulnerable thing most of us ever do.I recorded this twice. The first time I talked about everybody else's vulnerability and it was not honest, so I binned it. I need people. When my body goes into dysreflexia I need somebody there, and there is nothing optional about it. But there is a difference between being vulnerable and f
Beyond Mindfulness: Deepening Your Spiritual Insight
What comes after mindfulness? Noticing the leaves is the start, not the finish.I was coming down the hill in my electric wheelchair looking at the leaves, and it struck me that plain awareness is only the doorway. It is simple and it is hard, and it is nearly impossible to explain to somebody who has not felt it. Awareness is not only outward either. What can the body teach me right now. And grati
Ego vs. Essence: Finding Peace Beyond Your Labels
Who are you without your story? Take away the job, the labels and the roles, and what is left?You were born a blank canvas and other people handed you the colours. Parents, teachers, the lot. Everything you do today comes out of that. I put a photo of myself in an odd hat on Facebook and watched how quickly a label arrives. You have a thousand voices in there and some are braver, wiser or kinder t
Why Letting Go is Hard and How to Make it Easier
Why is letting go so hard? Because your mind evolved to hold on. This is about what comes after forgiveness, when there is nothing left to do but put it down.I say things in council meetings and then spend the evening asking myself why I said them. A tree lets a leaf die and fall and puts no weight on it whatsoever. For years we have lived as though a thought demands an action. It does not. If som
Transforming Your Thoughts: The Truth About Positive and Negative Thinking
Is there really such a thing as a negative thought? By the end of this I do not think you will say yes.Wait for your next thought. You cannot make one. You do not know what it will be. So whose thought is it. Your subconscious has no idea what is positive or negative. A good haul is a positive thought to a burglar. It has no timeline either, no tomorrow, no last week. It hands you what it thinks y
Moments That Matter: A Journey Through Cornwall
What do you take away from 500 miles in a wheelchair? A hundred and forty parishes, three hundred places, thousands of conversations, and one question that stopped me years ago.Four or five hours a day on the road at a snail's pace, and it never once rained where I was. The brain stores the day at the front and moves it to the back overnight, filing emotions with emotions, and it cannot tell wheth
A Special Update: 500 Miles and a Heavy Heart – Philosophical Musings from the Road
What do you do when a friend dies while you are out raising money in their honour? I was on the road doing 500 miles for the air ambulance when I got the message.He broke his neck a couple of years before I broke mine. Same level, same everything. He wrote a book. He flew planes. An hour after I heard, my ego said carry on and my body said no, and I had that argument the whole way. If you are list
The Art of Letting Go Without Losing Grip: Mastering Life's Balancing Act
Is letting go of everything actually good advice? No. Hold it too tightly and it is a hot mess. Drop it entirely and nothing happens. The answer sits in the middle.Everybody quotes the song and nobody means it. I am doing 500 miles round Cornwall. Hold that loosely and I will enjoy it. Hold it tightly, with twenty thousand pounds to raise and a set number of miles a day, and I will not. I am not i
Beyond Happiness: The Importance of Nourishment for a Meaningful Life
What is the difference between something that makes you happy and something that nourishes you? Fireworks are wonderful. They do not feed you for the week.Even a sip of water is more entertaining than meditation. But meditation gives you wisdom and calm and the ability to see things as they actually are, which the firework does not. Your favourite track is gone twenty minutes later. Enjoy it, but
Reducing Overwhelm: How to Simplify Life and Find Inner Peace
Why are you exhausted after the supermarket? Hundreds of tiny decisions. Overwhelm is rarely one big thing, it is the small ones piling up unnoticed.I went back to the Heart Sutra, which nobody wrote down for five hundred years, and then they had to add the Diamond Sutra because things got complicated. Your head does the same. Too many self-help books create a loop of needing to fix yourself, then
Achieving Calm by Trusting Your Body's Wisdom
Does this moment really need you to do anything with it? Usually not. A short one, and that question is most of the content.We so often feel we have to act. Take the step back instead and ask whether the moment actually needs you. Your body carries thousands of years of inherited knowledge and it has your back. It knows what to do without being told.One thing to try: Ask it once today. Does this m
Amae: The Art of Surrendering and Finding True Strength
What if giving up some control is a strength rather than a loss? The Japanese have a word for it, amae, and I live it every single day.My carers do not shower me the way I would shower me. I have got comfortable with that. Amae is the mutual trust in depending on somebody, which every baby does and most adults spend their lives resisting. Think of a bow and arrow. The moment your fingers let go it
Mastering the Art of Questioning: Transforming Anxiety and Finding Clarity
What happens if you ask somebody how they are and actually mean it? Most of us ask and neither side expects a real answer. Your life is not your depression.Will Young was on the phone most nights when he was suffering badly, and that stuck with me. Everything pours into a funnel and tries to get out through a tiny hole at the bottom. I am managing not to almost bleed to death about once a month no
Unlock the Hidden Gifts of Solitude and Loneliness
What is the difference between loneliness and solitude? One arrives and one is chosen, and knowing which you are in changes what you do about it.There is a rough split worth knowing. A third of your time with people you have outgrown who keep you humble, a third with people alongside you. Loneliness is not a bad thing, only an unhealthy one if it controls you. Enlightenment comes and goes, and the
Feeling Lost and Unfulfilled? Discover the Secret to Purposeful Living
What if your purpose is much smaller than you think? Maybe today it is to give somebody a hug you have not hugged for a while. That counts, and it is available now.If you have one big purpose and have not found it, are you meant to be miserable until you do? You only have this moment. Next week is not available to you and neither is last year. Maybe your purpose right now is to sit with a friend a
Why Panic Attacks Happen (And How to Find Calm)
Why do panic attacks arrive out of nowhere? They do not. Mine turned up on the way to buy a poppy, and it felt like the whole world was ending.I thanked him, went round the corner, and was suddenly terrified. I have not had one since, partly because I understand it a bit now. I am only a chapter ahead of you. A panic attack is a human with a lot of emotion and nowhere to put it, and it can mask as
Using Breath as the Gateway to Personal Connection and Calm
Why is the breath the one thing always available to you? Because if it is not there you have a much bigger problem. It even works on a stage in front of ten thousand people.Make them wait for one breath. In hospital I used to stop breathing deliberately just to set the machine off, which tells you how bored I was. Every out breath is a small act of faith that there will be more air, because you wo
Deep Wisdom: The Power of Knowing Yourself and Nurturing Inner Compassion
Why does everything feel so shallow? We consume thirty second videos and headlines at speed and never dig into any of it. Going deeper is the whole answer.Knowing others is intelligence, said Lao Tzu, and knowing yourself is wisdom. I do not know what kind of partner my daughter is, or what kind of colleague. I know one slice. Instead of asking how somebody is doing, ask what they have been up to
Embracing Innocence: How I Was Wrong About Navigating Adulthood
What would your seven year old self do with today? Mine would not know he was supposed to fix everything, and that turns out to be an advantage.Seven or eight years old, before the indoctrination and the years of being told how things work. What books would he pick up if he knew he could? I spent ten years wanting to be an architect purely because a careers teacher thought I could manage it. Comin
Shining Your Inner Light: Exploring the Journey from Pure Thought to Complex Ego
What is underneath the story of who you think you are? I took the whole thing apart, layer by layer, because I wanted to see what was at the bottom.I took the wheels off and put them back on, and my friend asked what I was doing. Same instinct. The bottom layer is what you enjoy and what you do not, and it can trap you in a limiting story. Above it come the beliefs from your family and everybody e
Moving Forward: The Power of Forgiveness in Overcoming the Past
Who is the hardest person to forgive? Usually yourself. The lad who used to beat me up on the way to school told me years later that I had saved his life.We moved to Truro, into a caravan first, and I was bullied at school. I met him in town a couple of years ago and he said I had no idea how much I saved his life. I said yes, you used to beat me up on the way there. The harder one is me. I still
How to Meditate: Even If You Think You Can’t
Can you meditate if your mind never shuts off? Yes. The shutting off was never the point.I thought I could not do it. My mind goes from a branch to a bill to next Tuesday in about four seconds. The only time your mind genuinely stops is deep sleep, and you are not there for it. So there are three ways in. Focus, where you hold one thing, the breath or a candle. Open awareness, where you let it all
How to Turn Around Negative and Dark Thoughts
How do you break the cycle when dark thoughts keep coming round again? Ian emailed me these questions, so this episode answers them one at a time.The mind is a flywheel and it stays on the same trajectory. Those thoughts are not even all yours. They are your dad's, your mum's, your teachers, everything that built the subconscious in the first place. At my lowest I asked what I would miss out on, a
Inner Harmony: The Art of Becoming Whole
What are you actually looking for in other people? Look at who you are drawn to and you find out what you think you are lacking in yourself.How many times have you heard somebody say get rid of the voice of fear? That voice wants you living a long and well fed life. It is not the enemy. The problem is we hand other people our light instead of shining it ourselves. You see it in groups too, includi
Unpacking Truths: Politics, Ice Cream & Spiritualism Unite!
Can two people both be right when they completely disagree? Yes, and a mountain explains why. What you can see depends entirely on how far up it you are stood.Shout down the mountain and ask what they can see. Trees. That is not a lie, it is the view from where they are. You can see the shed in the distance because of where you happen to be standing. Both sides of the aisle care, and care deeply.
The Kensho That Transformed My Journey: A New Year’s Message
What one thing changed my life most? A book. As a Man Thinketh, and the line that I am not my thoughts, which raises a far better question straight after it.If I am not my thoughts, then who is having them? That question went deep and never really left. We are the awareness of the thoughts, and the who I was turns out to be the important half of it. This is also a New Year's message, and I would r
Remaining Calm in the Festive Chaos: Plus Post-Hospital Update
How do you get through Christmas when you do not feel like celebrating? You are not ruining anybody's Christmas by not being in the mood for it.The family members who trigger you are struggling with it too, in their own way, and mostly for reasons you cannot see. My daughter Kemba used to sit at the Christmas table aged seven and ask whether God was real. This one also carries the update after hos
3 Life Lessons (From hospital bed not edited)
What do you actually hold on to from a hospital bed? My paralysis taught me the alternative is not just irrelevant, it does not exist. There is only the ground under your feet.This one is recorded from hospital, so it is shorter and rougher than usual. Strength in vulnerability, peace in acceptance, power in the present. Those are not slogans to me, they are what is left when everything else is ta
Voices of the Soul: Understanding and Embracing Internal Dialogues
How many voices are arguing in your head right now? I call mine the ten thousand, and I am tired. They do not go quiet just because you sat down to meditate.People go on silent retreats and still come back suffering. There is the snake in the dark that turns out to be a rope, and once the light is on you cannot unsee it. Somebody once told me I had a chip on my shoulder, and the truth was I did no
Learning to Love Yourself
How do you love yourself when society keeps telling you something is wrong with you? I was sat in the cathedral last night, and even a perfect cathedral has flaws in it.It is not broken. It is a perfect cathedral exactly as it is. You have something like fifty six thousand thoughts a day, constantly arriving, and none of that means you are faulty. If you are a brilliant reader that is one thing, a
Update 2: I’m on my way back…
Am I back yet? Nearly. I am sleeping again and I am not falling asleep every two hours.A second short update. I am doing much better. The thing about the human condition is that it does not come and go. Thoughts arise, illness arises, the body breaks down and improves and breaks down again. That is not a failure of practice, that is just being a person. The balance between what was going on outsid
Quick Update – and Thank You
Where has the podcast been for the last few weeks? Short answer: I needed to stop, so I stopped.This is a two minute update rather than an episode. It has been a rough two or three weeks and I deliberately took extra time out instead of piling more pressure on myself. I am aware I am making it sound bigger than it is. It is not big. It is just real. And if a teacher ever tells you they are sorted,
How the Thought Funnel Shapes Your Reality
Why does a small thought turn into a whole afternoon? Because it goes up a funnel, and the funnel widens as it climbs.Everything starts at a single point. One thought. Then a feeling gets added, then a story, then another story, and by the time you notice it, you are living near the top of the funnel with everybody else's stuff poured in too. You cannot do anything with a thought that is already t
Embracing Your Humanity: Discovering Peace and Suffer Less
What does it actually mean to be human? Nobody handed you a form to tick before you arrived. You are dealing with feelings that took millions of years to build.We have these incredible machines in our heads and we use them to gossip and complain. There is the small mind and the big mind, and you can step out of one into the other now and again. How do we live, how well do we love, how much do we l
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