Innate well-being

[Excerpt from the book SANE]

Self-control. Will power. Determination. Commitment. Dedication. Restraint. Mind over matter.

All ways of describing the power that this apparent self of ours has or should have over what this body does or does not do.

It looks like this control is not just possible, but necessary for every aspect of life.

To succeed, we have to persevere.

To be happy, we have to banish negative feelings.

To be in good shape, we have to resist the bad food and do the exercise.

You might be thinking, ‘I don’t get this. I don’t understand this. Maybe I’m not the sort of person who will ever get this sort of thing.’

If so I’m going to suggest something that might not have been considered before in relation to the ‘I don’t get this’.

Because everything we are pointing to, the only thing to ‘get’ is that there is no objective separate self.

And that the idea of us as separate, as needing to get somewhere obscures the peace we are looking for.

And that self only exists …

The theme of the 2022 Mental Health Awareness campaign in the UK was loneliness.

A very valid theme of course.

Study after study has shown that close personal relationships and face to face interactions have more influence over a person’s well-being and longevity than anything else – even more so than taking up exercise, healthy eating or giving up smoking or alcohol.

We are a highly social animal. Closeness and interaction with others is as vital to our thriving as water and nourishment.  An…

A question that often comes up is ‘How do I have better access to my wisdom?’ or ‘How do I make the right decision?’

We could begin by looking at the factors involved…

There is the body – ‘a universe of 37.2 trillion cells operating in more or less perfect concert’ as Bill Bryson so eloquently describes it. And an estimated 37 billion billion (37 x 21 zeros) reactions taking place every second. And there are other bodies… other humans, plants, animals, insects, microbes with their own structur…

For ten long years the Greeks had been attempting to seize the City of Troy and win the war. In exasperation, Odysseus comes up with one last desperate measure. He instructs his soldiers to build a magnificent wooden horse and to position it outside the city gates. Under cover of darkness, he and his best men climb inside.

The next morning, while the citizens of Troy are waking up the remainder of the Greek army sets sail.

‘They have surrendered!’ the shout goes up across the walled city.

‘An…

In his book, ‘The Body Says No’, Gabor Maté writes in great detail of the indisputable link between stress and a wide variety of diseases.

He demonstrates how stresses, often imposed on the developing psyche in childhood, continue to play out in patterns of behaviour in our adult life that create physically debilitating and even fatal illness.

This field of medicine is psycho-neuro-endocrine-immunology. It investigates the link between stress within the system and the emergence of disease an…

[Excerpt from SANE]

Without an understanding of what the mind really is, mind management is just a playing out of confusion.

The self exists as a thought or belief or as a state of mind. It arises in that moment in whatever appearance it takes on. It doesn’t exist outside of that. The idea of who we are is whatever the mind is doing in that moment.

For the self to try to manage the mind creates a false separation and unfulfillable effort. Because self and mind are the same thing. A belief try…

[Excerpt from SANE, Getting real with reality]

In insanity, pleasure is a release from the prison cell. It is temporary relief.

The greyhound is allowed to catch the rabbit before the chase is back on again.

The hamster wheel stops momentarily.

But it is a temporary fix and it is a fix that ultimately can make the prison harder to bear. Because we have experienced the relief of the end of the search.

The yoga class, the pills, the alcohol, the shopping hit, the love affair. All brilliant. T…

I frequently practice Bikram yoga (try it if you haven’t already – quite something!) and one of the phrases that my teacher often says is ‘Breathe. Align. Deepen.’

Breathe – focus on the breath, this brings everything into this moment, a deep immersion in the body, in the pose, allowing the intelligence of life that we are to respond to this what is, right now. Without that attention and presence, no yoga.

Align – align the body within the pose, get the basics of the pose right, come back to b…