Out of the night that covers me,
      Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
      For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
      I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
      My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
      Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
      Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
      How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
      I am the captain of my soul.

I came into the state of awareness through a surrender to the natural world.
And it made me a new kind of human being.
It cracked open the chains of civilisation in my body and awakened my sensuousness.
It allowed a deeper identity to take place inside me.
It healed deep wounds of separation and allowed suppressed feelings to come up and out.
It revealed my true feelings, including the ones that are forbidden towards the civilised world.
I felt the world inside me and I could feel the world feeling me.
This deep sense of interconnectedness happened alongside a deep love and empathy.
There is a relationship with nature now, where there was numbness before.
I know she has wisdom and beauty and everything I need to be nourished from within.
It is all inside me.
The immersion in nature opens a sincere pathway to a world that cannot be seen, or rationalised, for me.
With the awakening of the senses, my extrasensory perception awakes.
The access to intuition, visions and inner knowledge is easier.
I no longer seek to block out my sense of sound, to narrow my sense of sight, to avoid my sense of taste and scent, or suppress my sense of touch.
I am now wholly alive, at least much of the time, because I choose to be.
Sometimes effortlessly, sometimes effortfully.
And the everyday path to home, a clearer and lighter walk. 

The expectations about who we think they should be, how they should respond, what they should do.

versus…

100% responsibility within myself. That it is my job to light you up.

By the way, if it’s a really beautiful relationship, and you truly mature in a relationship, it goes beyond chemistry. Now, what lights you up most, is lighting your partner up, more than them lighting you up.

The life of pleasure, what I’m getting or not getting, is why most people are living in pain.

It’s not going to pleasurable all of the time, but it can be meaningful, it can be more than pleasurable, it can be fulfilling, it can be magnificent, and become something beyond your wildest dreams, but its going to require you to expand your model of the world beyond yourself.

I’ve watched the Seasons passing slow, so slow,  
In the fields between La Bassée and Bethune;  
Primroses and the first warm day of Spring,  
Red poppy floods of June,  
August, and yellowing Autumn, so          
To Winter nights knee-deep in mud or snow,  
And you’ve been everything.  
 
Dear, you’ve been everything that I most lack  
In these soul-deadening trenches—pictures, books,  
Music, the quiet of an English wood,    
Beautiful comrade-looks,  
The narrow, bouldered mountain-track,  
The broad, full-bosomed ocean, green and black,  
And Peace, and all that’s good.

Instead of placing patients in one dense building, Domènech laid out a campus of separate pavilions, gardens, open air, sunlight, decorative surfaces, and underground service tunnels. By the time the hospital opened its doors in 1930, the team responsible had achieved a rare union of opposites: merging the sterile, rigorous demands of early 20th-century epidemiology with the psychological warmth and rich symbolism of Art Nouveau.

Domènech explicitly rejected the traditional city grid, rotating the entire hospital complex 45 degrees. This was not merely an aesthetic choice; it allowed the longitudinal facades of the pavilions to face perfectly north-south, maximising natural sunlight and capturing sea breezes to naturally ventilate the wards.

Inside the wards, the architect utilised structural steel to create lofty, vaulted ceilings that prevented the air from feeling stagnant. To minimize crevices where bacteria could hide, he relied heavily on curved surfaces. The interior walls were clad in glazed ceramic tiles featuring a sunrise-to-sky colour gradient, designed specifically to soothe the eye and lift the spirit.

Mobile patients were encouraged to walk among the trees, breathing fresh air infused with medicinal plants. For bedridden patients, enormous windows were placed between the beds so they could always see the gardens, ensuring that the natural world remained a constant anchor.

And to keep the surface level perfectly serene, they built a mile-long network of underground tunnels connecting the pavilions. This ensured that the transport of laundry, medical supplies, and deceased patients never disturbed the tranquility of the gardens above.

Studies (most famously by Dr. Roger Ulrich in 1984) have proven that surgical patients in rooms with windows looking out at trees recover faster, have fewer negative nursing evaluations, and require statistically fewer strong pain medications than patients looking at brick walls1. In particular, exposure to high levels of natural daylight is clinically proven to reduce hospital stays2, improve patient sleep circadian rhythms3, and decrease rates of depression in both patients and healthcare staff 45.

Before designing Sant Pau, Domènech i Montaner spent years studying over 240 hospitals across Europe. One of his primary observations was the overcrowding that led to high mortality rates and designed Sant Pau to combat it. The hospital was planned with a generous 150 square meters (1,600 square feet) of space per patient, far exceeding even the 130 square meters recommended by the medical commission at the time.

The physical scale of modern medicine eventually outgrew the Art Nouveau complex. By 2009, the original brick pavilions could no longer accommodate heavy modern imaging machines and expanding surgical theatres. The clinical operations moved to a brand-new, highly advanced facility, situated at the northern edge of the campus. With the new hospital, the architects created a modern, blocky structure with a ceramic-louvered facade, while in fact attempting to translate some of Domènech i Montaner's philosophy into their 21st-century vernacular. The new building's layout is specifically designed around internal courtyards and massive windows so that almost every patient room and staff area is flooded with natural daylight. The ethos remained that a hospital should be filled with light, highly functional, and visually connected to the natural environment.

Fundamentally, most fundamentally, what just about every single person on this earth is seeking, is the same thing you are seeking.

To be enough, then, you have to keep growing, whether that it is in work, in relationships, or in both how you, and the outside world, view you. As Bob Dylan's 1965 masterpiece, It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding), put it: "He not busy being born is busy dying."

Then at certain points over the course of life, you may start to feel like you have enough financially and stop seeking more, or you are enough socially and stop attending the important events on the social calendar, or “your” partner is enough and you stop searching elsewhere. Or, you may resign to the feeling that… well, this is all I’m capable of… which may or may not be true, yet since you’ve come to believe it, it will take hold into your mind and spirit. I do promise you though, you will find new places to cultivate that feeling of “being enough.” Yet, from this perspective of perceiving and approaching life, it will never be enough.

What are the alternatives to love? I’m not writing just about the love between a man and a woman here, I mean it in the broader sense of deep connection and presence. And there is really only one alternative. That is, to play the game of life.

The game of life is tension. It is romance. It is power. It is the homeless child on the street, and the billionaire financier in his Mercedes Maybach.

Penelope Cruz goes about this way in Vicky Cristina Barcelona: “Our love, our love will last forever. It's forever. But, it just doesn't work. That's why it will always be romantic. Because, it cannot be complete.”

The game of life is duality and desire. Self improvement seminars and bio hacks. It is in the perpetual motion of … never … being … enough.

Without the game of life, we wouldn’t exist, because, well, we are participants in it. So we have to play the game. And as long as we exist in this game, we want to improve. But the game is not all there is, and playing the game, in the way we are commonly taught, is the not the only means to improve. Every moment of separation from love, is a separation from life itself. The more we play the game, become absorbed in it, the more our experience of life becomes unfulfilled. There is a longing. A longing for a space that is and always will be there, yet a space we have lost contact with, forgotten how to touch and be touched by. Neglected.

Here I propose an inversion of your approach to your life, the approach you may endow your kids with, one day. Ground yourself in the universe of love, first. Become so stable in it, cultivate the ways in which you find it, so that whatever vicissitudes may come at you as you progress through the game of life, you always have the equilibrium of love to return to. Then, and only then, do you start to tackle the game of life, to play games of power and desire, to tolerate respect from others and give them the same, to rise up the ladders of success and contribution that may tickle your fancy, and to enjoy a life well lived. Because while the games we invent in the game of life often serve ad distractions from the tension of existence, play in the universe of love is pure, unaltered joy. So, let love be the space you come home to, and often. Love as the highest priority.

The reality of this journey of consciousness is that what we focus our mind on, tends to improve. Some people improve at some things more than others, yet what we give time and energy to, improves. Give more time and energy to holding the space of love, honest love, and it will expand for you. Give more focus to being a master of the world of deal-making and high finance, and you will become better at it. Spend more time playing football with your child, and you will deepen your connection with them in that way. It is, of course, not a one way street. You will only improve over time, if you value constructive feedback, are honest with yourself, and proactively find ways to improve and breakthrough to new ground when the going is tough.

What challenge, loss, failure, rejection do on a psychological level is to make us viscerally experience that there is something missing. Like there is a hole inside of us. Like we are not enough. And people tend to fill that hole in different ways. Some push and try harder. Some avoid it. Some attempt to fill the pain with more pain (for instance, in the form of alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, or self harm). Some, and this is when we inhabit love territory, accept it for what it is, surrender to a lack of understanding or ability or resources (whatever the lack is), and then reflect on how it can be improved and go about making that happen, if it is important. They also give themselves the time to let the energy of that initial (negative) visceral reaction melt away (this part is very important, because energy tends to permeate longer than our conscious mind can perceive). The game of life approach, on the other hand, is to equally absorb and resist the lack, to seek to rise above it, to win. With this approach, anger, fear, insecurity, all these negative associations that the mind generates when it deals with “lack of”, become ingrained in us, serving as fuel. However this kind of fuel gradually takes you into murky waters further away from the space of love, so it becomes harder and harder to make your way back.

Today, we are living in a world that is riding on the coattails of the Enlightenment, yet going too far into the realm of the abstract game of life. And it’s about time to learn how to make our way back into the universe of love. How do we go about doing this?

Here at aware, we believe in cultivating a connection with what makes us fundamentally human. Food, body, breath and mind (for example, see here, here, here, and here, respectively for each). But that’s not necessarily all there is to it. Spend time with a child that has yet to be inculcated with social norms and the perils of thought, and it will pull you into its orbit of love (be careful not to introduce them into the world of society, too soon, by the way). Sit on the beach and simply listen to the sound of the waves, music free, cigarette free, alcohol free, simply talking and being with a friend, a lover, a stranger (by the way, in the universe of love, there are no strangers, we are all connected). Those are personal, individual means. We can also come back to love in the connected space of our relationships. Where are you feeling divided with your partner? How can you reconcile the differences and connect, together, once again? Beyond ourselves and our interpersonal relationships, there is also the connection we cultivate to nature and the rest of the living world. These are all ways in which we connect to the space of love, and there are many, many others, and the more often we practice them, and the more diversity we bring to our practice, the more stable and resilient our connection grows over time. Love enjoys knowing everything about you. Desire (and power) need mystery. Remember, in the space of love, there is no urge to control, only surrender and trust.

Both the game of life and the universe of love ask for us to trust. Trust is an imperative in how these worlds function. However, in the way the geme of life operates, we trust the in-built structures that filter people based upon their (often) measurable qualities, while in matters of love, we must surrender trust blindly to the universe and what it is offering us today. I’m proposing that over the course of your life, you cultivate both ways of trusting. Surrender and control. Certainty and uncertainty. Over time, you will come to notice that different matching processes (society, algorithms, and the universe) foster different kinds of relationships and opportunities.

The thing is that, fundamentally, data is binary, while love is singular. For all the decisions you make, and succeed at, which improve your quality and rating in the game of life, it will never be enough. It is only the time you spend existing in the universe of love that the search ceases. When you invert the priorities, when you truly trust you can come back to love and everything it asks of you, your experience in the game of life ceases to be rational quest for more, and simply a joy in the experience, a joy in the challenge, a joy in the struggle. Where the game of life is a fragmented series of wins and losses, the universe of love is a connected continuity.

We can’t spend all of our time in the infinite space of love. We have to live too, amongst people and amongst the natural world. We have to impose some limits on our lives, and on the world and people around us. We need some normality and certainty in particular areas so we retain the energy to deal with the uncertainty in others. And getting things done involves reconciling the demands of diverse interests. Life is more enjoyable if we spend more time doing things of interest to us (though not necessarily easy things!), with people whom we want to be with, and in order to have access to these activities, people and places, we have to become good at reconciling the complex demands of society. We have to be able to find a way to earn money, which is the currency of society and allows us the space and opportunity to operate within it with greater degrees of freedom. We have to navigate the need for power, the competition, the different desires at different moments in time, and so on. So go and do all those things! And become good at them too! Just keep your perspective and grounding of the whole universe of life, and continue to develop an elastic, open mind that can move between the two alternatives of our human experience. To play the game of life, well, and to love, honestly and purely.

Finally, imagine you have a human that has just about seen all there is to see, and they have the means to have almost all there is to have. In other words, their desires are mostly satiated. What can you give to this human? Loving presence. As they move through life, the most valuable, and enduring, quality they appreciate, is presence from another human. Now, imagine that you are with someone, anyone, a friend, a lover, a family member, and you see and feel them as complete. What can you give to this human? Loving presence. The longer you can sustain this loving presence, the more whole they will become.

Where do we seek to arrive with this mental practice? No where, this is not a means to an end. We just be, and see what happens. In the process of doing this practice, your body may over time become more relaxed and tension free, you may notice your mind is clearer and able to perceive reality more aptly, and your spirit just comes alive with greater ease. Above all, you may experience a kind of wholeness and integration, at least for a time after practising, where your inner and outer worlds just evolve in synchronistic harmony. In fact, many things may arise that you’ve never experienced before. It will depend upon you, what you need and where you are on your path. Let’s go and sit :)

• Sit in an upright cross-legged posture by the seaside in a quiet spot. Because we intend to keep our eyes focused on the sun, it is best practiced during the late afternoon when the sunlight has weakened.

• Move and tweak your body around, loosening up any tight spots, until it is supple and relaxed, yet upright with a long spine.

• Engage the breath. Begin a rhythmic cycle of breathing in through the nose, and out through the nose, slowly. Begin to notice the breath as it moves into the nostrils and out, as the stomach expands and contracts. After an initial adjustment phase, no other body part ought to be moving except the stomach and the nostrils. We will retain this steady, slow rhythm of the breath throughout the practice (eventually, our perception of it may disappear because it becomes so subtle and quiet).

• Now, notice the sensation of energy moving up the body starting in the pelvis as you breathe in, all the way up to the top of the head at the end of the inhale, and then down the spine as you exhale, all the way back down to the pelvic region

• With the body and breath engaged, we are in a relaxed yet concentrated posture, and can direct our attention onto the sparkling lights in the silvery sea closest to us (at the bottom of the video above).

• Keep the attention on the sparkling light in the sea. Absorb it. Let it become you by surrendering to it. Each time a thought or itch or emotion arises, notice it, then return the attention of your eyes back to the sparkling lights in the sea. You can eventually close your eyes and continue with the image in the quiet of your mind. If you become distracted or are having a hard time remaining focused on the image, then gently open your eyes and return your gaze toward the sparkling lights in the water.

• When this becomes stable, start to move your eyes attention closer toward the horizon. Notice the light becomes more concentrated, whiter. Keep the focus on this white light, surrounded by the vast silvery blue ripples of the sea. Notice, also, the sounds of the water. Keep the attention of the eyes focused on the white light on the surface of the water, and the attention of the ears listening to the cleansing movement of the water itself. Again, you can eventually close your eyes and continue with the image inside your mind. If you become distracted or are having a hard time remaining focused on the image, then gently open your eyes and return your gaze toward the white light in the water.

• Now, if focus has been sustained here with less and less interruption by thought, you may also notice the mind is clearing, emptying out. You may notice random tendencies of your face to smile. This expression of joy is natural. It is without reason. You are experiencing your inherent bliss. Let the joy erupt, and then return the relaxed concentration of sight and sound to the water.

• Once we feel comfortable enough to move out of the support that is the water, usually after a period of sustained attention, and a mind rather clear, we direct our focus to the orb in the sky, to the sun.

• Notice the orb. Notice the details. Notice the delicate rainbow-like colored outline swirling around it. Notice the glow. Notice the defined circle of the sun. Keep this focus going. Just be with the orb, with the white light. There is a rich tradition in the ancient meditative practises with this orb, sometimes referred to as the nimitta, and a sign of entry into high states of concentration called the jhanas. This is not important here. We are not doing these practices directly. We are just working with the ingredients of nature and letting them lead the way. The way to where? A body loose and free. A mind clean and pure. A spirit full of light. An awareness able to direct the light and darkness within and without.

• From here, just stay with the orb. You may notice certain sensations arise inside of you. New types of experiences. Bliss. Ideas. Tears. Love. Whatever comes about, just notice it, and when it passes, return to the orb. As before, you can eventually close your eyes and continue with the image of the white orb inside of yourself. If you become distracted or are having a hard time remaining focused on the image, then gently open your eyes and return your gaze toward the orb in the sky. We harness sensory tools of sight, sound and smell to empower our ability to cultivate a sustained focus on this image, anywhere.

• The beauty of this practice for those lacking in a little patience is that the sun will eventually set :) You’ll probably get a maximum of 1-2 hours of this, however that is not necessary to experience the effects, which may come in as little as 15 minutes.

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow —
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone? 
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand —
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep — while I weep!
O God! Can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Copyright Credit: Edgar Allan Poe, “A Dream Within a Dream” from The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe, ed. R. W. Griswold. New York: J. S. Redfield, 1850. Public Domain.

The problem of groupthink and individual ignorance besets not just ordinary people but also the presidents and CEOs responsible for controlling the world. They may have at their disposal plenty of advisers and vast intelligence agencies, but this does not necessarily make things better. It is extremely hard to discover the truth when you are ruling the world. You are just far too busy. Most political chiefs and business moguls are forever on the run. Yet if you want to go deeply into any subject, you need a lot of time, and in particular you need the privilege of wasting time. You need to experiment with unproductive paths, explore dead ends, make space for doubts and boredom, and allow little seeds of insight to slowly grow and blossom. If you cannot afford to waste time, you will never find the truth.

Worse still, great power inevitably distorts the truth. Power is all about changing reality rather than seeing it for what it is. When you have a hammer in your hand, everything looks like a nail; when you have great power in your hand, everything looks like an invitation to meddle. Even if you somehow overcome this urge, the people surrounding you will never forget the giant hammer you are holding. Anybody who talks with you will have a conscious or unconscious agenda, and therefore you can never have full faith in what they say. No sultan can ever trust his courtiers and underlings to tell him the truth.

Great power thus acts like a black hole that warps the very space around it. The closer you get to it, the more twisted everything becomes. Each word is made extra heavy upon entering your orbit, and each person you see tries to flatter you, appease you, or get something from you. They know you cannot spare them more than a minute a two, and they are fearful of saying something improper or muddled, so they end up mouthing either empty slogans or the greatest clichés of all.

If you really want truth, you need to escape the black hole of power and allow yourself to waste a lot of time wandering here and there on the periphery. Revolutionary knowledge rarely makes it to the center, because the center is built on existing knowledge. The guardians of the old order usually determine who gets to reach the centers of power, and they tend to filter out the carriers of disturbing, unconventional ideas. Of course, they filter out an incredible amount of rubbish too. Not being invited to the Davos World Economic Forum is hardly a guarantee of wisdom. That’s why you need to waste so much time in the periphery: while it might contain some brilliant revolutionary insights, it is mostly full of uninformed guesses, debunked models, superstitious dogmas, and ridiculous conspiracy theories.

Leaders are thus trapped in a double bind. If they remain at the center of power, they will have an extremely distorted vision of the world. If they venture to the margins, they will waste too much of their precious time. And the problem will only get worse. In the coming decades, the world will become even more complex than it is today. Individual humans—whether pawns or kings—will consequently know even less about the technological gadgets, economic currents, and political dynamics that shape the world. As Socrates observed more than two thousand years ago, the best we can do under such conditions is to acknowledge our own individual ignorance.

Excerpts from “21 Lessons For The 21st Century” and “Are we living in a post-truth era? Yes, but that’s because we’re a post-truth species” by Yuval Noah Harari.

How does the water feel young man? You don’t even know what spirit means yet, though I promise you that if you keep the same aliveness and awareness in your hands as you go through life, it will nourish your smile and spirit in the same miraculous way.

Spirit and hands is a unique connection to make, yet the human mind does it often and in abundance. The brain keeps a detailed living map of the hand. The fingers have a large, fine-grained territory in the sensory and motor brain because they are how we have touched, grasped, written, spoken, defended, counted, soothed, worked, and known the world for millions of years. Truly, the mind is not randomly above the rest of the body, doing its own thing, as it may appear to our eyes. It is built with body maps within, maps that reach out and communicate with the rest of the body through a deep network of nerves to feel the truth of things, and the map of the hand is the richest of all.

Have you ever found yourself lying in bed, lost in thought, only to “wake up” and find your hands pressed underneath your body, or squeezing onto something, or clenched into a fist?

When the mind is tense, and thought drives up tension, that map in the mind lights up into action. The hand grips and the fingers press harder and harder, as the body tries to hold itself. The tension is shared from the mind and into the hands, often without the person noticing it as it happens.

It is common for anxiety, reflection, stress, or vigilance to show up in the body: typically first as tension in the face; then as clenching, gripping or curling of the hands; as well as clenching in the jaw and tightness in the shoulders.

The way to work with that tension is to direct it into something useful or let it release through mindful presence.

Unfortunately today, many people spend a meaningful portion of their day with their fingers tightly clenched around a glass smartphone. They aren’t necessarily in danger, yet the subtle position of the hand and the surface it is making contact with, are communicating to the mind a visceral image of threat.

The Body Map In the Mind

Scientists have come to call this map of what the brain pays attention to, the sensory and motor homunculus map. The space within this map basically determines how much brain territory is used to feel different body parts. In both the sensory (responsible for sensation) and motor (responsible for movement) components, the hands are huge.

If your brain were a late 19th, early 20th century Parisian painter, it just might decide to give you massive, oversized hands, like the image above. This would very accurately depict everyday life, inside the brain, where the area of the motor and sensory cortex dedicated to the fingers and palms is significantly larger than the area for the entire torso or legs.

At the extreme end, there is something called clenched fist syndrome. It is rare. It involves sustained flexion of the fingers, sometimes with contractures, and it has often been discussed in relation to psychiatric or psychological factors. The hand literally becomes a physical stage for distress.

By the way, this mechanism works both ways. Distressed, threatened mind→ tight, closed hands. Fluid, open hands → smooth, open mind. Practising how we use our hands in positive, intentional ways, over time, can lead to a beautiful reserve feedback loop in affecting our nervous system by harnessing conscious choice with our body.

The Evolution of Communication

Our hands are doing cognitive work.

Speech shows what we are ready to say. Gesture often shows what we are thinking before we can say it. And gestures do not merely express thoughts we have already formed in words; they can help form those thoughts. They can reveal ideas we have not yet verbalized, reduce mental load, help us learn, and give others insight into our thinking.

A key region in the human brain responsible for speech production is called Broca’s Area. But evolution didn’t build it from scratch; it repurposed an older area. In monkeys, the exact homologous brain region is responsible for controlling the hands and face.

Even though vocal language has became dominant, the nervous system never forgot its roots. That is why we still “talk with our hands” today, especially when struggling to explain a complex spatial concept or when emotions run high.

Take a look at this video of a man’s hand gestures as he speaks. Contrast this immersive communication experience, weaving together face, mouth, hands, body and speech, with reading texts and emails on a 6.3 inch glass screen. One is void, emotionless, robot-like. The other seems… human? What we do is who we become.

Danger… Self-Created

The modern hand is curled tightly around a piece of cold glass, for hours on end each and every day. The fingers are gripping, often hard. The tendons are locked. And meanwhile, the nervous system is an old, honest organism. It does not know what a screen is, or what an email means. It only knows the physical shape of the body. It feels these locked joints. It feels the clenched, curled fist of a person bracing for an attack, and it stays on edge. The phone is a phantom predator, and the hand tells the brain to be afraid. The danger is self-created, but the exhaustion is real.

Many people describe a mental fog that comes from swiping on glass (low-tactile input) versus the clarity of working with wood or yarn in our hands. Swiping at glass offers no resistance, no texture, no truth. It is an empty motion. The mind spins out of control because the hands are starved for something real to hold. This aligns with the recent realisation that digital hyper-connectivity can lead to anxiety and burnout, while manual engagement with the hands offers a rhythmic, nervous system balance1.

Coming back to our homunculus man, and that vast, intricate body map within our brains. Put a man inside the magnetic tube of an fMRI scanner2. Tell him to hold completely still, and then lightly brush the tip of his index finger. Beneath the surface of a single fingertip, there are thousands of tightly packed nerve endings. They are not all the same. Some are built for deep pressure. Some are built for the slip of a wet rope. And some are so impossibly sensitive they can feel a ridge in the wood thirteen nanometers high3.

From Hand to Mind

So, what can we do about all of this? Stress is still going to arise. We’re going to be tense. Trauma, in some form, tends to happen to everyone at certain points in their lives. The modern demand of using a smartphone to communicate and conduct various tasks isn’t going away. The hands will, inevitably, want to tighten, contract and become confused at the lack of tactility (glass screens, plastic keyboards) in modern life.

There’s a lot we can do, and it was starts with being aware of our hands, making positive choices, and returning our awareness back to our hands throughout our day. In the process, we can repeatedly return our hands back to these two postures.

The standing and walking posture is a relaxed hand, with a natural, gravity inducing slight bend of the fingers. The sitting and lying down posture is open, long and intentional.

When the hand softens, the brain receives a different pattern. The hand no longer holds the signal to prepare for action, ready to ward off threat. We soften the signal, intentionally. Opening the hand may not erase grief or panic. However, it may remove one source of bodily confirmation that something is wrong, and begin to form a new imprint in the mind about the past. In this way, we also soften our view of the world as a battleground, and become open to new experience and heightened awareness to daily life.

The next step is to start using the whole dynamic beauty of the human hand in fluid, natural ways.

Take up hobbies that organically foster the hand getting messy and intimate, through touch, sensation, and interaction with raw organic materials. Play with the hands in the sea. Move sand around. Touch your (human) partner, often, delicately, firmly, long strokes, soft touches, everywhere all at once. The piano is a beautiful way for the hands to move in harmony with the mind, and we don’t all have to be Carnegie Hall concert pianists to enjoy it.

And when it comes to the smartphone. Are you able to switch what you read on your little device, to a tablet, laptop or even in paper form? Can you foster a way of holding the phone, when you have to hold it, in a detached, relaxed and distant manner?

This is all about the human touch, and how well we nourish it in the context of the demands of modern life. When the hands speak to the mind, let the voice be one of smooth, fluid and present awareness.

aliveness:

noun

1. the property of being animated;

2. the condition of living or the state of being alive.

When the human body is truly alive and animated, all of its parts are working together in a responsive, integrated way, with as few hindrances or imbalances as possible.

Elasticity, Length and Strength

Let’s begin by reminding ourselves of what we mean by these terms as it relates to the human body:

• Elasticity is the body’s adaptability to absorb force, organise tension and throughout the whole body (i.e., when put under stress), and rebound efficiently back to its equilibrium;

• Length is about the space within the body, a sort of decompression that neutralises the compressive forces on a body under tension, and opens up the pathways for energy to flow more fluidly within the body. Think the difference of a body standing tall and reaching to the sky, in contrast to the body curled inward typing while sitting and typing at a computer… which ones has an easier tendency toward lethargy (low energy); and

• Strength is about the integrity of the whole body to work as one, rather than having individual parts compete with each other through isolated points of weakness or excess power.

Developing Elasticity

Just one more reminder. The first part of this series made an important point: the body is best understood as an interconnected system of bones, muscles, fascia, and the nervous system working in relationship, rather than as a set of isolated parts. It also framed fascia as a body-wide connective web that distributes force and contributes heavily to body awareness, while the nervous system shapes muscle tone, posture, and our capacity to move with fluidity or defensiveness.

And this is separate from flexibility, by the way. Flexibility is useful, and we will surely delve into it in subsequent articles, however the aim here is not to become more loose, but rather more responsive. Stretching will gradually force more range into the limbs. Weight-lifting will work to contract muscles into greater and greater hardness. Elastic movement will guide greater aliveness into our body.

Look at how these children play in this park. This is what we’re going for. A return to who we were born to be. Arms swaying, legs squatting, bodies rolling, knees galloping.

Stay Hydrated

In addition to the movement of the body, it is incredibly, incredibly important that we stay hydrated, each and every day, with quality H2o. The vast majority of people over consume ethanol (aka. alcohol) and caffeine, and severely under consume water. The amount of water we need is variable for the unique body type and lifestyle, however a typical 6’0 male ought to be drinking at least three litres of water (100oz), daily.

Fundamental Movements for Elasticity

What about the movements you ask?

Movements are unique to you. Posture and good body alignment is crucial throughout. Breathing in harmony with the movements is fundamental. And for this reason, we are in the process of building out an entire adaptive catalogue so that you can create a guided program based upon where you are, and what your unique needs and goals are.

However, that said, we present below a few general exercises that work for almost everyone. Since these were filmed by other practitioners, we cannot emphasise enough how important it is to pay attention to your body and breath as you move, and ensure they are operating in harmony with the movement and with your own self and capabilities.

Skipping truly fosters the dynamic, elastic recoil training we are looking for, incorporating light, rhythmic, bouncy movements, with mind-body coordination, a synchronised breath, and good posture.

Whole-body bands are useful, since they offer resistance that encourages continuity rather than rigidity.

• Allow the limbs here to move using momentum and gravity rather than strict muscular control. Letting your arms heavy-swing or letting a leg swing like a pendulum loosens the tight, deep joint capsules that tend to freeze up under stress.

• Experiment with using small, fluid, non-linear movements to signal to the surrounding stabiliser muscles that it is safe to let go.

Rhythmic squats relies on the stretch-shortening cycle. As you lower into the squat, the tendons and fascia of your lower body (especially the Achilles tendon, patellar tendon, and plantar fascia) stretch and accumulate elastic potential energy. Instead of a grinding muscular effort to stand back up, you catch the "bounce" at the bottom right before your range of motion hits a dead end. The tissue instantly releases that stored kinetic energy, springing you upward. This trains your tendons to act like dynamic rubber bands rather than stiff ropes.

• This repetitive squeezing and releasing breaks up micro-adhesions between the tissue layers, and acts as a hydraulic pump for the extensive fascial networks of the body

Hanging trains the body’s tissues to bear load through tension rather than compression. When you hang, you are essentially stretching the spring of the upper body and torso. The fingers, wrists, shoulders, and spine are pulled to their structural length, storing potential energy.

The Mental Component

There’s more to elasticity than just the body movement. There is also a psychological part. A big part, in fact. The first article noted that the nervous system can hold protective patterns for years, particularly when stress becomes chronic and postural contraction becomes normal. When this happens, the parts of the body where this trauma goes into may not only tighten and lose mobility physically, but also psychological trust. The nervous system begins to anticipate force before force has arrived, in a visceral kind of perma-contraction. And a great deal of these patterns happen subconsciously, often in childhood.

Developing elasticity, in part, means teaching the body, through the mind, that it no longer has to grip and grasp. It means releasing that long-held psychological trauma from the body, returning it closer back to that natural, childlike, elastic state. This is one reason why forcing intensity into movement practices too early can, and does, backfire (think weights). A body organised around defence does not become elastic by command. It becomes elastic through repeated experiences of playful, fluid, free movements, purposeful recovery, and coherence.

The real measure of progress is whether the human feels their body, beyond just aches and pains, feels a body inside that is more unified, more springy, more spacious, and less effortful in daily life. Walking feels lighter. Standing feels less compressed. Recovery happens smoother. Reaching, bending, and turning involves less local strain and more whole-body support. The body becomes better at meeting demand without bracing against it. And perhaps above all, the mind and our personality patterns in daily life will come to reflect the freer, more confident nature of bodies too. This is the art of elasticity in the body and mind.

1. Be Impeccable With Your Word;

2. Don’t Take Anything Personally;

3. Don’t Make Assumptions;

4. Always Give Your Best.

Agreement 1: Be Impeccable With Your Word

Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

‘Impeccability means “without sin.” Impeccable comes from the Latin pecatus, which means “sin.” The im in impeccable means “without,” so impeccable means “without sin.”’

Your intent is created through your word. Your words have the power to destroy or to create. When we say a person is under a ‘spell’, it is caused by the words that have made them believe or accept a new agreement—often these are negative.

‘We use the word to curse, to blame, to find guilt, to destroy. Of course, we also use it in the right way, but not too often. Mostly we use the word to spread our personal poison-to express anger, jealousy, envy, and hate.’

Gossip is particularly bad for everyone involved, and not just the target of the gossiping. We have the power to ruin someone’s day in a sentence and hurt ourselves horribly at the same time.

‘Your opinion is nothing but your point of view. It is not necessarily true. Your opinion comes from your your own beliefs, ego, and your own dream.’

If you are impeccable with your word, it becomes a shield against the negative words of others.

Agreement 2: Don’t Take Anything Personally

Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.

‘Personal importance, or taking things personally, is the maximum expression of selfishness because we make the assumption that everything is about “me.”’

Things that others say and do is nothing to do with you. It is about them.

When we take things personally, we take offence. When we take offence, we defend ourselves. When we defend ourselves, we create conflict. When we create conflict, we inflict harm. On ourselves and on others.

‘Do not expect people to tell the truth because they also lie to themselves. You have to trust yourself and choose to believe or not to believe what someone says to you.’

When we say ‘don’t take things personally’, we mean this in both positive and negative terms. Don’t take anything personally, even compliments. This can work against us, too.

‘Whatever people do, feel, think, or don’t take say, it personally. If they tell you how wonderful you are, they are not saying that because of you. You know you are wonderful. It is not necessary to believe other people who tell you that you are wonderful.’

Even your own opinions about yourself aren’t necessarily true. Don’t take them personally, either. When we take things personally, we suffer a lot. not doing so gives us immunity to all sorts of things.

‘If you keep this agreement, you can travel around the world with your heart completely open and no one can hurt you. You can say, “I love you,” without fear of being ridiculed or rejected. You can ask for what you need. You can say yes, or you can you say no whatever choose, without guilt or self-judgment.’

Agreement 3: Don’t Make Assumptions

Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

The central problem with assumptions is that we believe them to be true, when they likely aren’t. We then gossip on this basis, and we create difficulties.

‘Making assumptions in our relationships is really asking for problems. Often we make the assumption that our partners know what we think and that we don’t have to say what we want. We assume they are going to do what we want, because they know us so well. If they don’t do what we assume they should do, we feel so hurt and say, “You should have known.”’

We make assumptions in all kinds of circumstances: when we hear; when we don’t hear; when we understand; and when we don’t understand.

The way to stop making assumptions is to ask questions, and plenty of them, until you actually know.

‘We also make assumptions about ourselves, and this creates a lot of inner conflict. “I think I am able to do this.” You make this assumption, for instance, then you discover aren’t able to do it. You overestimate or underestimate yourself because you haven’t taken the time to ask yourself questions and to answer them. Perhaps you need to gather more facts about a particular situation. Or maybe you need to stop lying to yourself about what you truly want.’

Agreement 4: Always Do Your Best

Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret.

‘If you try too hard to do more than your best, you will spend more energy than is needed and in the end your best will not be enough.’

Your ‘best’ always changes from one moment to the next. if you always do your best, though, there is no way that you can feasibly judge yourself. If you do less than your best, though, you will subject yourself to guilt and growing self judgment.

‘Action is about living fully. Inaction is the way that we deny life. Inaction is sitting in front of the television every day for you are afraid to be alive and to take the risk of expressing what years because you are. Expressing what you are is taking action.’

Take joy in the things that you do without any expectation of any kind of your reward. This is truly doing your best.

‘Not enjoying what is happening right now is living in the past and being only half alive. This leads to self pity, suffering, and tears.’

Doing your best also means taking action in the present, in the here and now. If you don’t, you can’t really live.

‘If you break an agreement, begin again tomorrow, and again the next day. It will be difficult at first, but each day will become easier and easier.’

Stay there. Stay in the flesh. Stay in the limbs and lips and in the belly. Stay in the breast and womb. Stay there, Oh, Soul, where you belong.

Stay in the dark limbs of negroes. Stay in the body of the prostitute. Stay in the sick flesh of the syphilitic. Stay in the marsh where the calamus grows. Stay there, Soul, where you belong.

The Open Road. The great home of the Soul is the open road. Not heaven, not paradise. Not ‘above’. Not even ‘within’. The soul is neither ‘above’ nor ‘within’. It is a wayfarer down the open road.

Not by meditating. Not by fasting. Not by exploring heaven after heaven, inwardly, in the manner of the great mystics. Not by exaltation. Not by ecstasy. Not by any of these ways does the soul come into her own.

Only by taking the open road.

Not through charity. Not through sacrifice. Not even through love. Not through good works. Not through these does the soul accomplish herself.

Only through the journey down the open road.

The journey itself, down the open road. Exposed to full contact. On two slow feet. Meeting whatever comes down the open road. In company with those that drift in the same measure along the same way. Towards no goal. Always the open road.

Excerpt from Studies in Classic American Literature, by D.H. Lawrence, first published in 1923.

Everywhere we find ourselves, in every moment of our day, we breathe. Whether we are conscious or unconscious, we breathe. The breath is the powerful connecting link between our conscious and subconscious minds. It is the only direct, conscious, tool we have to shape and affect our nervous system. And there is a particular magical rhythm to it, one that invites harmony into our selves. It’s simple, it’s stealthy, and it goes like this:

• Inhale 5–6 seconds: Imagine a balloon in your stomach inflating. Draw the air in slowly through the nose. Smooth and deep. Keep the shoulders and upper chest steady.

• Hold 1–2 seconds: Just a moment of suspension. Experience the fullness.

• Exhale 5–6 seconds: This is where the calming magic happens. Let the air out slowly, again through the nose, feeling the belly button pull toward the spine. Let it gently contract deeper than your natural state, to feel a sense of being empty of air.

• Hold 2–3 seconds: Sit in the stillness. That brief moment of “empty” is where the nervous system realises it’s safe to switch off the alarms.

(If this all feels a little uncomfortable for you at first. Trying placing your hand gently on your stomach, and harnessing that touch to guide your awareness of a rising and falling stomach, beneath a quiet upper body).

We call this The Resonant Breath. This name, as poetically creative as it may be (thank you :)), also carries biological significance. The rhythm of the resonant breath is one that balances the sympathetic (fight-or-flight) and parasympathetic (rest-and-digest) nervous systems. The inhale slightly accelerates your heart rate, while the long exhale and that crucial empty pause at the bottom actively slow it down, stimulating the vagus nerve. By breathing in this specific ratio, you are nudging the two systems into coherence. You’re manually levelling the seesaw, proving to your brain that you are safe enough to drop your guard, think clearly, and be present to all of experience. The Resonant Breath is the pathway to relaxed concentration.

Your Portable Sanctuary

The deeper beauty and utility of this technique is its invisibility. Your point of contact is the expanding and contracting stomach, alongside the smooth rhythm of air moving in and out of the nostrils. The oxygen of life. And with these two simple effects, you can access this stabilising mind and body rhythm everywhere you dwell.

• In the Car: People today spend a great deal of their life behind the wheel. When in the car, keep your external attention on the road in front of you and your internal attention on the breath and stomach. Inhale for 6, hold, exhale for 6, hold. Expand, contract, expand, contract. You will find that this practice not only wakes you up on the drive, increasing your alertness, it also will stabilise your mood.

• The Meeting: Hidden beneath the level of the table, the stomach expands, and contracts. While you listen, breathe into your stomach. It keeps your brain oxygenated and the mind clearer and calmer.

• The Grocery Line: Instead of scrolling on your phone while waiting to pay, practice accentuating the empty pause (the 2–3 second hold out becomes a 3-6 second moment of visceral awareness). Expand, contractttttttt. It turns a boring wait into a micro-meditation.

• On A Walk: One step after another. The mind focuses on the point of contact of the foot with the ground. The breath begins to synchronise with the rhythm of the walk.

Over time, this way of breathing and the steady mindfulness that comes with it becomes your whole way of being. Each time something internal or external triggers you out of balance, your mind and body start to know it’s time to rebalance, and how to make it happen. That’s the quiet magic of breathing well, everywhere we dwell.

Renown for their umami taste, which translates in Japanese as “essence of delicious”, shiitake mushrooms have become one of the most cultivated foods on Earth. They are able to be home-grown by using spawn and old logs, while existing in the wild far and wide across underground mycelium networks that can stretch out for miles in diameter and live as a quiet architect of forests, decomposing wood, cycling nutrients, and building the invisible networks beneath our feet. Funghi truly are unique organisms to what we are accustomed to in our daily, above ground, conscious life.

Qualities

· Inward moving · Immune potentiating · Healing · Umami taste · Below ground · Calms the nervous system · Warming · Chewy and meaty ·

Character

The name Shiitake comes from the Japanese words shii (the type of oak tree they often grow on) and take (mushroom). While they are available fresh year-round due to modern indoor cultivation, their natural season leans toward the cool, moist transitions of spring and autumn. Historically, they were wild-harvested from the decaying wood of deciduous trees, playing the vital ecological role of saprotrophs—organisms that feed on and break down non-living organic matter.

Growing shiitake does require the cutting down of healthy trees, where the mushroom mycelium needs to grow. However, these trees are usually harvested as part of forest thinning or management, taking out poor-quality, crowded or suppressed trees to allow healthier ones to grow.

Once harvested, shiitake is eaten in a variety of ways. Fresh sautéed, simmered into soups and broths, or dried to intensify its flavour and shelf life. During the drying of dried shiitake, the mushroom’s cells break down and create a surge in 5′-guanylate, a key umami compound.

Rehydrating the Dried Shiitake

When using dried shiitake, the soaking liquid becomes a “dashi” or gold-standard stock. Never discard this water; it is rich in guanylate, an umami-providing compound that amplifies the taste of other ingredients it is cooked with.

The fresh caps tend to have a mellow, earth, springy feel, while dried caps bring a deeper aroma, and more concentrated umami. When soaked in liquid, they can become intensely savoury, and often form the soul of broths and stews. They are also available in extract form (powdered or liquid), as well as in the extract of certain active compounds of the mushroom (such as lentinan).

All these varieties of cultivating and cooking shiitake result in an assortment of character traits when we eat it. We’d like to hear about how you experience shiitake and its effects on your state in the comments below, though our suggestion is that overall it promotes a grounded, nourished state.

We believe in a feeling approach to food. Paying whole-hearted attention to our current state of being. Paying attention to how each food affects our state of being after eating it. And asking ourselves — how do I want to feel? — as a barometer for what food to eat. Everything from how the food is prepared, to its taste, adjacent ingredients, and what part of the day and season it is eaten, as well as our own unique biology, influence this.

Nutrition Information

Shiitake mushrooms are a low-calorie food rich in fiber, B vitamins (particularly B5 and B6), and minerals like copper, selenium, and manganese. However, their true value seems to be in their bioactive compounds. Shiitake contains lentinan, a polysaccharide (beta-glucan) that has been studied extensively for its ability to activate the immune system.

Uniquely, shiitake mushrooms are one of the few non-animal sources of Vitamin D. They contain a precursor called ergosterol, which converts into Vitamin D2 when exposed to ultraviolet light. Placing your store-bought mushrooms in direct sunlight (gills up) for an hour before cooking can actually spike their Vitamin D content significantly.

Inflammatory Notes

While beneficial, Shiitake requires proper preparation. The cell walls of mushrooms are made of chitin, a tough substance (also found in crab shells) that humans cannot digest well. Cooking the mushroom breaks down this chitin, unlocking the nutrients and preventing digestive distress. Furthermore, there is a rare condition known as Shiitake Dermatitis, a whip-like skin rash caused by a reaction to lentinan, which usually occurs only when the mushrooms are eaten raw or undercooked. Finally, shiitake contains moderate levels of purines; while generally safe for most, those susceptible to gout or kidney stones should monitor their intake.

Scientific Research

The primary modern research around shiitake’s effects on human biology concentrates on immune function, gut microbiome modulation, cardiovascular health, and lentinan as an adjunct compound in cancer care research.

Immune health

• A randomized dietary intervention in healthy adults found that daily consumption of dried shiitake improved immune markers (including increased salivary IgA) and shifted inflammatory signalling in a favourable direction.

  (Dai et al., 2015) — https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25866155

Gut microbiome

• A clinical trial in hypercholesterolemic adults evaluated a β-D-glucan-enriched extract from Lentinula edodes and reported modulation of the intestinal microbiota composition (with mixed/nuanced changes across other endpoints).

  (Morales et al., 2021) — https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33580297

Cardiovascular health

• Shiitake contains a compound called eritadenine, which has been shown to inhibit an enzyme involved in producing cholesterol. Studies suggest that consumption of shiitake can help lower serum cholesterol levels, supporting the ancient claim of it penetrating the blood circulatory system. (Yang et al., 2013) — https://tcr.amegroups.org/article/view/1136

• Older human feeding studies (summarised in later scholarly reviews) suggest short interventions using fresh, dried, or UV-treated dried shiitake were associated with reductions in mean cholesterol in specific cohorts—an early “food as intervention” signal that likely relates to multiple compounds (including eritadenine) rather than one isolated mechanism.

  (Breene, 1990; summarised in Lindequist et al., 2024) — Science Direct

Cancer adjunct

• Individual patient-based meta-analysis work suggests adding lentinan to standard chemotherapy may offer a survival advantage in advanced gastric cancer settings (with the important framing: this is adjunct research using lentinan, not culinary shiitake as a standalone treatment).

  (Oba et al., 2009) — https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19596954

• Lentinan, the beta-glucan isolated from shiitake, has been used as an adjuvant therapy for cancer in Japan and China. This review highlights its mechanism of action, showing it does not kill cancer cells directly, but rather enhances the host's immune response to recognize and attack tumor cells. (Zhang et al., 2011) — https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21520446/

• A more recent systematic review/meta-analysis similarly reports improved efficacy outcomes when injectable lentinan is combined with chemotherapy versus chemotherapy alone, while emphasising that additional high-quality RCTs are still needed.

  (Wang et al., 2024) — https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38100922/

Nervous system regulation

• Preclinical work has explored shiitake’s high ergothioneine content and potential neuroprotective/anti-senescence effects in neuronal cell models—promising as “directional science,” but best treated as emerging evidence rather than settled human outcome data.

  (Apparoo et al., 2024) — https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38036238/

Vitamin D2 boosting

• UV-B exposure substantially increases vitamin D2 concentration in shiitake (measured in different parts of the mushroom), supporting the logic of UV-treated mushrooms as a food-based D2 source.

  (Ko et al., 2008) — https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18442245

Recipes

The human brain has two primary ways for interacting with reality, and they are mutually exclusive. Like a seesaw, when one goes up, the other must go down: the default mode network (ego/thinking); and the task positive network (present/experiencing). The default mode network lights up when you are daydreaming, reflecting on the past, worrying about the future, or analysing yourself. It is heavily reliant on time and stories. While the task positive network lights up when your attention is fully demanded by the present moment.

Let me also briefly introduce you now to persona numero uno. Persona numero uno is an abstract construct, however if it didn’t exist, well, you wouldn’t exist. Persona is you. Okay, it’s not really you, but it’s what you think you are. So, arguably (we can’t say for sure), its main priority is to ensure survival, and to do so, it is constantly analysing the past and predicting the future… by thinking. Adjacent to this is a reality it knows viscerally well — humans have survived by cooperating in groups. To survive in a group, one must know where they stand, and in this light, a meaningful component of the persona numero uno’s objective is to monitor social status, manage reputation, and ensure belonging. The child wants to get what it wants (inner world stuff), however as it moves into the world it meets resistance. So numero uno gradually comes to cultivate an identity around who you are, blending a bit of who you really are with a bit of the outside world, in order for you to fit into society and prosper. It is always negotiating status, safety, and outcome, and there are ripple effects on all of our actions when that negotiating becomes the primary lens through which we meet reality (which we will come back to a bit later).

Persona numero uno’s place inside the mind exists on the surface of what we will call ego. The ego is the inner director of your consciousness (the localised “I” we discussed earlier), it exists on the edge between your inner consciousness and the outside world, and the persona is the costume that this director puts on to walk outside. The word persona literally comes from the Latin word for the theatrical masks worn by actors in ancient Rome.

Ego creates and cultivates the persona as a bridge between your inner world and the demands of society. It is inherently empty, with no substance of its own. Therefore, it cultivates this identity by attaching itself to both internal (subconscious) symbols and external aspects from life, and absorbing them into its sense of self. To build a specific identity, the ego must also reject anything that contradicts it. Identity is, in part, carved out through exclusion. And by telling a relentless story: “I am the artist, I am the wounded one, I am not enough, I am the caretaker, I am this, I am not that.”

There is no real problem with any of this, by the way, despite what mumbo-jumbo spiritual traditions want to feed you. Issues start to unfold in part because of two factors that may occur: (i) in most people, ego and identity develops unconsciously; and (ii) in many cases it over-develops or under-develops. Because identity starts forming in childhood, where the sphere of awareness of the human is still quite small and the child is a vulnerable sponge to experience, it is largely happening in and of its own. That means that if a child, or young adult, is going through something consistently uncomfortable, or it does not feel safe in its direct environment (such as the space of its caregivers), the ego and identity will harden up fast (remember, it is, arguably, a self-protective survival mechanism). It is no surprise that the people who tend to “do well” in society, the big “achievers”, have a comparatively hardened ego, a rigid sense of self, and an incumbent ability to barrage their way elegantly through society. On the other side of the spectrum, over-bearing parents can lead to an inadequately developed identity, where the person has a harder time functioning effectively in society. In this case, a lot of the adaptability and development has happened within the protective bubble of the caregiver. This version of the ego is weak in will and has a hard time making things happen in life. A healthy, well-developed ego comes to understand itself as it is: a centre of consciousness within a vast, wide space of life and soul.

By choosing to exist in the vast open space of soul and life, I begin to notice patterns that feel meaningful in a way that bypasses my usual rational logic. Synchronicities that are almost certainly no accident. I can’t prove they are cosmically ordained, yet they arrive with the unmistakable texture of significance, like a quiet intelligence threading through events, inviting me into a larger coherence than my ego could imagine. The cause and effect nature of reality (that thing the ancients called karma) starts to really come to bear witness to our consciousness. We step out of the experience of duality, and start to reside in non-duality, observing life (and our own spirit) happening.

To reside in this space in everyday life is to quietly lighten the subject-object divide. Non-duality is the visceral recognition that beneath those useful distinctions, experience is one unfolding; you and I aren’t the same person, but the sense of hard separation softens, and life starts feeling like something happening in and as us, right here. Without the past and the future, the ego cannot exist. It requires a chronological narrative to maintain its shape, whereas the soul— or non-dual awareness — requires no narrative at all, because it is the pure, unmediated experience of the present.

Meditation offers a clean way to taste the difference, and it does so with surprising humility. Sit and notice the breath, a sound in the room, a scene in front of you, and you begin to sense how experience is always arriving as one living field. Immersion in nature does this too. Step outside into an expansive panorama where sky, trees, birds and natural organisms are each doing their quiet work and the mind remembers that it belongs to something larger than its internal monologue. It is difficult to maintain the same tight, self-referential contraction when you are surrounded by the panorama of interdependent life, each part influencing every other part without needing to announce itself. By contrast, the small black screen of a laptop or smartphone can narrow attention into a tunnel, and it is no surprise that the ego loves that setting, because it is easier there to believe that the self is the centre and everything else is elsewhere. Notice what environments widen us into wholeness, and what environments compress us back into the narrow version of “me.”

When a thought arises, especially a self-thought, the subtle “I” that evaluates and narrates, see if you can notice it as a simple event. You do not have to argue with it, you do not have to believe it. Just watch the mind’s habit of claiming: “I am thinking,” “I am failing,” “I am becoming.” Then experiment with a gentler, non-dual language as a direct cue: it’s just happening. Thoughts are happening, sensations are happening, emotions are happening; I am not it, and it is not me. The most interesting part is that the seeing itself does not require an “I” at all; cause and effect can be understood directly. When the mind tightens around fear, the world narrows, when it softens into presence, life reveals more of itself, without needing a separate narrator to own the experience.

And language matters here more than we admit, because the words we use condition experience, shaping what we notice and what we ignore, what we allow and what we brace against. Beyond simply describing the experience with words, identity claims it; reaching into the flux of the present moment, grabbing a handful of sensations and meanings, and attempting to form a solid shape called “me,” and equally so one for “you.” And then, almost automatically, it begins to grasp onto that storyline. Grasping is attachment to a preferred story and aversion to whatever threatens it, which immediately breaks the possibility of felt wholeness. The ego does its job is to manage life, but when we come to be absorbedly wholeheartedly in it, we contract our selves and others down to a narrow band of experience.

It’s also no coincidence that suffering, trauma, and chronic stress tend to intensify this contraction. When a part of us viscerally senses it is fighting for survival, it becomes extraordinarily difficult to see and experience the wholeness of life; the nervous system prioritises threat scanning and control, and the ego’s protective strategies become louder and more convincing. Meanwhile, the path of healing runs in the opposite direction of effort: less control, and a gradual surrender of that inner bracing, a willingness to let awareness widen beyond the small perimeter of protection and into the greater expanse of the soul (and life), where experience can be held without immediately being turned into a threat to manage. This surrender isn’t a single dramatic letting go, and it isn’t a bypass of what hurts; it’s the slow re-learning of safety through presence. Of course, in the thick of that contracted state, even our most sincere attempts at presence can feel like trying to relax while bracing, because the body is not yet persuaded that it is safe enough to soften the boundary lines.

To release the contracted state, we invite ourselves to actively spend more time in the soul-space. To improve the will of the ego and effectiveness of persona numero uno, we spend more time actively engaging in disciplined tasks, holding limits and in social situations that challenge our capacity for discomfort.

When the boundary of the ego softens, the contest of connection ceases to be a negotiation between personas and becomes a space of mutual completion. I begin to notice the ways you make me whole, by revealing the edges of myself I cannot see alone. And I find I can meet you where you are split, ashamed, or simply tired of pretending, entirely without the ego’s reflex to fix or manage you. There is a strange, tender reciprocity to it, almost musical: when you hit a peak, I often find myself in a trough, and I can hold steady while you rise; when I’m up high, you may be down below, and something in me naturally wants to pick you up, an instinct toward balance rather than a sense of obligation. While the ego-mind may look to extract concessions and assert power when the other is weak, soul asks for the path toward balance again and patiently invites the other to walk along it. Over time, if we are willing, we learn our harmonies, we learn the particular way our nervous systems dance together, and instead of constantly trying to rearrange the music, we begin to inhabit it, connected, distinct yet not separate.

This permeability extends far beyond intimate relationships. When we step out of the subject-object divide, that same soul-quality begins to illuminate our friendships, our passing interactions, and our relationship to the natural world. The strangers who cross our path are no longer treated as background extras in the movie of “me,” to be ignored or evaluated based on their rational utility. Instead, they arrive as synchronicities—catalysts for our growth, mirrors for our blind spots, and delicate threads waiting to be woven into the present moment. We walk through the public square, without a mind contracted into the safe, narrow tunnel of a smartphone screen, instead with eyes and nervous systems open to the strange, quiet intelligence of life meeting us exactly where we are.

Remember the two components of the brain we alluded to at the onset of this essay? The default mode network (ego-thinking) and the task positive network (present moment). Well, there’s a third, and this is where the aware way loves to reside. It is the salience network. Every time you realise your mind has wandered and you bring it back, it is the equivalent of a neurological miracle. You are strengthening the neural pathways that allow you to disengage from the ego's time-traveling, yet at the same time aware of the discipline the ego affords when necessary. The salience network fosters the flow state.

When a stressful thought arises during your day, with this practice in mind, you now have the neurological strength to shift away from what that means for personal numero uno, and back into the present moment.

The irony is that nothing mystical needs to be added for this way of life to become our default state of being. The ego can remain functional, while the deeper sense of self stops being trapped inside the persona numero uno’s constant self-preoccupation and negotiation. What we are really learning is fluidity: a mind that can move between its different functions without friction, using the ego and persona when structure, boundaries, and execution are needed, and yielding into soul when it’s time to listen, to feel, to connect, to receive, to flow. Incorporating both is wholeness, the full range of being human, where identity is neither denied nor worshipped, and where the world is less a stage and more a living field. When grasping relaxes, even briefly, what we call “me and you” begins to feel like a useful convention rather than the deepest fact, and something larger than either of our identities is allowed to move through the moment, making its quiet, integrating art out of ordinary life.

by William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments; love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come.
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out ever to the edge of doom:
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Now, unlike the rigid, compressed, often unbalanced state induced while sitting on chairs and sofas, by engaging with these evolutionary movements and resting postures, we encourage a more fluid and dynamic relationship with our bodies.

By engaging in these foundational postures, we encourage our bodies to decompress and realign, promoting natural musculoskeletal health. A crucial aspect of the postures is the natural state of the spine. When we rest in flexed positions such as squatting or sitting cross-legged, the body can experience a gentle lengthening effect that supports spinal decompression. This contrasts sharply with the flexion and compression experienced in conventional sitting. In these natural postures, the spine can elongate, relieving pressure on intervertebral discs and promoting better overall spinal health. It’s important to note that these positions are not about being in them for hours on end. Rather, it is the postural integrity and transition they provide which creates the dynamic process the body asks for. Transitioning through them for a few minutes, several times a day, is plenty.

Sitting Cross-Legged

The most basic, and accessible, of our foundational resting postures is simply sitting cross-legged on the floor or sofa (or chair if you can manage it).

Now, it’s important that do the work early on, to ensure we rest in this posture the right way for it to turn into a positive feedback loop of bodily health, rather than a negative one. So here are a few cues and potential issues to be aware of:

• If the breathing feels restricted, the posture is too rigid. Try to enter your body with the mind’s awareness, and gradually loosen it up wherever it may need loosening up.

• Let the sit bones feel rooted and weighted, not tucked under, with the pelvis in a neutral to slightly anterior position allowing space of the spine to rise.

• And while we would like a generally upright spine, invite the spine to self-organise over the pelvis with natural curves remaining present.

• Finally, gradually allow the knees to descend below or toward hip level (with support if needed).

Of course, everyone has different levels of flexibility and motion in their joints. The majority of issues with this posture, if they occur, can be resolved by introducing a sitting object, like a cushion or blanket, underneath the pelvis to raise the hips.

Passive vs. Dynamic and Maintaining The Integrity of Transitions

Chairs are designed for comfort and convenience, not biomechanical health and rejuvenation. The foundational resting postures naturally spread load across tissues (helping prevent any one area from becoming overburdened while stimulating circulation, hydration, and resilience throughout the body) and hydrate the crucial fascial layer of the body. And as we’ve already mentioned, they also help to regulate and elongate the spine, integrating breathing and pelvic mechanics.

Chairs make the body passive as sitting on them tends to shorten the hip flexors, disengages the deep core, stacks the pelvis posteriorly, compresses the lower back and narrows breathing.

While the foundational resting postures usually require active hips, active feet, a long and neutral spine, balanced diaphragm (for breathing) and mobility transitions.

Long Sitting

This is another foundational resting posture that can be easily accessed and reintroduces the body to upright sitting without hip flexion or knee folding. Biomechanically, it places the pelvis in a neutral or slightly anterior tilt (see drawing below), encouraging the spine to organise itself vertically rather than collapse (as in most chair sitting), while gently loading the hamstrings and posterior fascial line.

Unlike chair sitting, sitting upright on the floor requires active postural awareness and subtle muscular engagement, helping restore spinal length, improve proprioception, and rebalance habitual flexion from modern life. When practiced as a resting shape rather than a stretch, by spending several minutes in it with a quiet breath, sitting upright becomes a quiet tuning posture — one that supports transitions, encourages breath to move freely through the torso, and reminds the body how to sit tall.

As with the cross legged posture, the cues to wholly experience this posture are similar:

• A grounded pelvis and relaxed yet elongated spine.

• Sit on the sit bones with the pelvis gently tipping forward, allow the spine to rise naturally without forcing uprightness.

• Keep the legs relaxed rather than locked, with the feet soft and toes pointing upward.

• If the lower back rounds or the chest collapses, it usually indicates tight hamstrings or sitting too low — elevate the hips on a cushion or briefly lean forward and rock back to find neutral.

Discomfort behind the knees often comes from over-straightening the legs; allow a micro-bend or place support under the knees. If effort accumulates in the neck or shoulders, soften the ribs and let the arms rest slightly behind or alongside the body. As with all of these postures, long sitting is best used briefly and revisited often, with transitions in and out preventing stiffness or strain.

Coming Back to Ourselves

As we introduce this new way of resting, and moving, into our lives, we must also move away from the manmade structures like chairs and sofas (at least some of the time), and come back to the solid ground of the earth. As we start to sit on the floor in these postures, postures that are our birthright, postures that our modern society neglects to value, we come back to ourselves.

We can start to incorporate rising from these foundational postures to our full upright bipedal posture to fully experience our deeply embedded patterns of movement. In a sense these resting postures are a way of toning, tuning and resetting our body using the patterns that we as humans have utilised for millennia. They are empowering in that they don’t require external practitioners to create positive change in the body. Everything happens in and of its own, by the simple manipulation of our own body. To stand up from the floor is a movement sequence we mastered as children. Regrettably, in our busy lives this mastery has lessened over time until the normal act of rising from the floor becomes awkward and uncomfortable.

It simply may ask of us a bit of practice and a changing of certain habitual patterns.

The body is actually a complex, interconnected system. Like any complex system, it has developed self-correcting mechanisms over time. When a system isn’t allowed to self-correct, problems arise. Individual elements become overused, and we see things like low back pain pop up like weeds. Complex systems crave variety. They actually thrive from a bit of manageable disorder. Changing up your habits and patterns can have huge benefits for the health of a system. For the human system, something as simple as sitting on the floor can be just the change we need.

All The Resting Postures

Notice the structural integrity of the body in each of these postures. The left and right hips are working in harmony, supporting balanced load and ease of movement. The spine is naturally elevated and organized, with the head resting above the pelvis (with the deep squat being the exception). When the pelvis makes contact with the ground, the body is deeply rooted. In these positions, the body is relaxed yet responsive — loose, but in control — allowing freedom of movement alongside a light, unforced breath.

These resting positions invite you to tap into the body’s natural ability to tune itself. The simple truth is this: if you want to move better, you need to rest better. And just like any instrument, the body needs to be tuned from time to time. Fortunately, it comes with a built-in tuner — or it did, before we decided to spend most of our waking lives in chairs.

Here are some further guidelines for these postures:

• Be gradual and gentle in getting into them and out of them.

• Breathe consciously and deeply throughout the movement/posture.

• Be mindful of where the movement touches, accesses and stretches.

• Be playful with allowing other movements (e.g. stretch your arms overhead in a squat)

• Respect the experience of pain and recognising the edge of pain. Not forcing through but building tolerance to some mild discomfort.

• Repeat them several times through the day (not as a chore but as if you were re-acquainting yourself with a long lost friend – kindly and respectfully).

In this piece, we will start with a panoramic, macroscopic view of the world and economy at large, gradually narrowing focus to the individual’s role within it, and finally to the inner life of the individual themselves and attempt to weave that back into the larger fabric of the world with a reconsidered perspective. In the process, we will dive into some economics, history, and depth psychology, and finally, some plan ole common sense. If you’ve read this far, your time may already be a sunk cost, so we might as well double down now, in the hope of a meaningful future return (excuse the economics pun).

A Big Picture View

Business and life once truly seemed a zero-sum game. One artisan’s profit may rise, yet it would be at the expense of another’s loss. Venice might flourish but only by weakening Genoa. Rome prospered by looting Carthage. The pie could be sliced many ways, yet it rarely grew.

For the pie to grow, something had to come forward from the future, into today. That something would eventually be called credit: the idea that tomorrow’s wealth could be borrowed and spent today. Yet for centuries, lending against the future was regarded with deep suspicion. Usury was strongly discouraged, often condemned as sinful, and outright forbidden to members of the clergy. Even as banking spread across Italy by the thirteenth century, the Church (the dominant cultural force at that time) did not relax its stance. Instead, it increased its animosity toward creditors, warning that to profit from interest was to profit from time itself, which belonged only to God.

Then came the Scientific Revolution and the ideal of a different kind of progress. Over the past 500 years, the acceptance of ignorance, our ability to learn from it, and the creation of a deterministic future inspired by science, meant a growing trust in the prosperity of tomorrow and the broad enabling of credit. And credit meant borrowing from the future, to fuel more growth today. If you do want to make an argument that capitalism started anywhere, northern Italy in the Late Middle Ages is as good a time and place as any. By the fifteenth century, it was no longer the most populated and urbanised place in western and central Europe (that honour was stolen by the Netherlands), however, it was still the region with the biggest commercial and industrial economy. The fact that international finance and trade permeated the economy caused it to also be the site for several innovations.

Then in 1776, in what would come to be seen as a revolutionary text, Adam Smith argued in The Wealth of Nations that artisans should reinvest excess profits beyond their familial needs to hire more hands and expand production. Our modern religion of capitalism emerged out of this seed. A seed that had etched into its DNA the possibility of economic progress. Profit, Smith said, would then fuel more profit, leading to more people being hired and more production, ultimately lifting collective wealth. Today, this seems obvious in our capitalist world, but Smith’s claim, that private greed drives public benefit, was radically new. In the past, medieval princes wearing colourful silk robes flaunted wealth through spectacles, gifting, wars, and grand cathedrals. By contrast, the modern elite—CEOs, financiers, tech geeks—don muted Loro Piana sweaters and Zegna navy suits and spend the bulk of their time and resources on expanding their workforce, enabling new technologies, maintaining positive EBITDA and that sacred word, growth.

What Is an Economy?

What is the economy, anyway? What is its fundamental purpose?

The economy is fundamentally a system of exchange. Money, labor, value, and trust are moved around in an attempt to better allocate resources. A person usually integrates into it for a simple reason: survival. In ancient tribal societies, you didn’t exchange money, you exchanged effort. Hunting, gathering, child-rearing, building alongside people you knew. In that world, your “economy” was your community. A little different from the complex textbook theories we tend to associate with economics today, but quite true.

Historically, labor was local and usually familial. If your father was an electrician, you became one. If you grew up near farms, you farmed. Economic roles passed down through proximity. But the modern global economy has disrupted that axis. First with the Industrial Revolution which led to a massive mobilisation of citizens into cities, and then the subsequent introduction of mass education and access to information. Then, today, with the advent of the internet, the prospects for learning and growth are even more immediate, allowing a person born in a remote village to learn programming or currency trading or medical research, while connecting them to global value chains rather than just local ones. Theoretically, barriers have fallen. In practice, many remain.

The structural barriers which remain involve access. And we move up to the top tiers of the economy, it is no longer so much about where you are born, but about how you navigate the gates of education, capital, and social networks. The economy has become a vast signalling mechanism, telling us which contributions are valuable and which are replaceable (according to its own “religion”), and in doing so, it begins to dictate not just what we do, but how we view our own worth.

The Electrician, The Surgical Doctor and The Investor

Consider three pathways in the modern economy: the electrician, the surgical doctor, and the investor. Throughout history, the higher the status, wealth, and leverage of a role, the more tightly its gates to entry have been controlled. What has changed over time is how those gates operate.

The electrician enters the economy through skilled labor and local relationships. The gates here are largely open, offering a viable path for those without elite credentials or extensive backing. This role provides immediate utility and social connection within a community. However, the trade-off is structural: the income ceiling is firmly fixed, and the work remains tied to physical presence. It is a path of stability and tangible service, but one with limited upward mobility.

The surgical doctor represents the path of institutional permission. Entry requires passing through a narrow, decade-long funnel of education and certification. This high barrier to entry acts as a filter, often favoring those who can afford the upfront debt and the delay in earnings. Once inside, the doctor gains high social status and professional security. Yet, despite the prestige, the role remains linear: income is tied to the clock (one patient at a time).

Finally, the investor operates on the path of access to capital and performance. Access to this corridor is the most tightly guarded, often requiring elite university networks or significant personal wealth just to get in the room. On rare occasions, individual sponsorship by an already established investor may raise someone up through the ranks. This role has the most uncertainty around it, yet unlike the doctor or electrician, the investor’s progress is not linear but has the potential to be exponential; they use capital to create more capital. This role offers the highest degree of social influence and time flexibility, but it operates on a "eat what you kill" basis. It is a world of high velocity where the gates are hardest to open, but the potential for scale is virtually limitless.

Clearly, the modern economy is not a flat landscape. It’s a set of corridors, each with its own rules, velocities, and ceilings. People often sense they’re in the economy, but don’t always understand how differently it behaves depending on where they stand.

As we rise up the rungs, we also enter into higher and higher fields of energy, and the incumbent level of tension, both internal and external, that we experience associated with this energy. And with that abstract (and arguably, intense sentence), a word to the wise— this essay is now going to become increasingly psychological.

What We Do Shapes Who We Are

What we do in the economy does not just shape our income and social strata. It shapes our bodies, our minds, our relationships, and ultimately our sense of self. The deeper and longer we commit our energy and time to a single lane of the economy, the more rewarding it tends to become, and the more that lane sculpts who we become.

Take the investor. Their job is to manage risk, constantly weigh uncertainty, handle unexpected volatility, and make clear decisions often with large consequences. Their mind learns to anticipate and process vast swathes of information, and trains to filter noise from what’s fundamentally important. Their nervous system is prepared for alertness. Their breathing becomes controlled and rhythmic, an anchor of calm with a portfolio constantly moving up and down. There is always something going on in the world, and the more leverage they have, the more any tiny shift can affect their performance, their salvation. The character changes follow. These changes are not dramatic in a single year. They accumulate slowly, invisibly, the way water reshapes stone.

The Building of a Personal Identity Through The Economy

Beyond the subtle formation of who we are from our life’s work, there is also the mask we bring to our social and professional obligations on a daily basis.

The identity or persona is this social mask. It is role we wear, in order to be recognised and accepted by the world and in the economy. This persona has always been shaped a great deal by work and by social class.

For most of history, a person’s identity, outside of the aristocracy, was almost inseparable from their trade. You were not just Thomas — you were Thomas the Blacksmith, Mary the Weaver, Samuel the Carpenter. Your name and your function were fused. To know what you did was to believe you knew who you were. In small, pre-industrial communities, this made sense because life was local and roles were stable. The world was not yet so remarkably specialised, and people organically had to be masters of many trades beyond their day to day work, in order to survive. They viscerally knew they were more than their identity, because they were actually doing those other things. Modern society has changed that.

The industrial and professional economy has been built on specialisation. We now train for one narrow function and often perform it repeatedly for decades. One person installs new lighting at home. Another performs operations at the hospital. Another allocates capital. We outsource so much of our lives. This makes the system efficient, but it makes the individual, and the sense of identity, the persona, narrower, tighter.

When most waking hours, social validation, and material security are tied to a narrow band of activity, the identity formed around that activity becomes both dominant and fragile. In this way, extreme specialisation does not only organise labor more efficiently, it quietly compresses the self, reducing the breadth through which people understand themselves and relate to one another.

This is where the persona also starts to become externally engineered. Society observes your role, and then projects a character onto you. The investor is expected to be one way, the doctor or electrician another. These expectations press inward from the outside. If a person resists, friction forms. But if a person complies, gradually, subtly, the role reshapes their self-image. They begin to perform not only the work, but the personality attached to the work. Over time, the difference between performance and identity can blur. A person becomes what they are treated as. This over-identification with the persona is a psychological danger. The persona is necessary — it allows us to function in society — but it is not the whole psyche. When the mask takes over completely, other parts of the self are pushed into shadow.

The Building Blocks of The Self

The human self is not a single, unified thing, but a layered structure formed through interaction with both inner life and outer demands. One layer is this social face—the persona—shaped to meet the expectations of family, culture, and, increasingly, the economy. This is the part of the self that learns how to be employable, competent, and legible to others; it adopts the language, habits, and values required to function within a given role.

The task of our lives requires more than just being participants in the economy. It asks of us to confront these aspects that have been increasingly relegated to the shadow of our selves by the prevailing outside environment, of noticing and withdrawing unhealthy projections, and integrating subconscious contents without being possessed by them.

Meaning emerges when opposites are held rather than resolved too quickly, allowing symbols, dreams, and imagination to mediate growth. And meaning strengthens when we don’t rush to eliminate inner tensions, but allow time and imagination to help us integrate them. Growth happens when conflicting needs, effort-rest, ambition-contentment, discipline-play, independence-belonging, are allowed to coexist long enough for a deeper balance to emerge.

In modern economic life, many of these deeper impulses are increasingly channeled into abstract substitutes, most notably money, “success”, and accumulation. When economic roles narrowly reward accumulation and performance, the persona becomes aligned with endless expansion, while other aspects of the self receive little space or acknowledgment. Over time, this can produce a sense of inner imbalance: progress without satisfaction, motion without grounding.

This dynamic is ultimately lived in the body and the mind, which carry the costs of prolonged imbalance. When the signals of fatigue, stress, or disengagement are repeatedly overridden in service of external demands, the body often becomes the first place where tension is expressed—through disease, illness, or chronic strain—while the mind may narrow toward vigilance, comparison, and control. These responses are not failures of resilience, but indications that the organism is being asked to operate beyond its natural rhythms of exertion and recovery. The economic model of things would have the person take medication or undergo surgery or any host of modern medicines, yet it bares the question, would much of it be necessary if the human self was allowing it’s own natural self-regulation to take place?

The task of becoming and being our whole self, then, is not merely personal but contextual: it involves holding together the many parts of the self while operating inside an economic system that tends to trigger only a narrow slice of who a person actually is.

The Economy as a Mirror

Historically, the economy was bound by human rhythms: energy was constrained by the body, and economy activity slowed when either internal or external resources were depleted.

However, the modern era introduced a profound divergence: credit.

Humans have always needed to produce, exchange, store, and share resources in order to survive. Early economies were relatively simple because the range of needs was limited, production was local, and the feedback between effort and outcome was immediate. In psychological terms, this mirrored a life in which energy, attention, and time were constrained by the body and the environment. People could not sustain effort beyond their physical limits, and when resources or strength were depleted, activity slowed or stopped. The economy therefore remained closely tied to human rhythms of work, rest, and recovery.

Modern economies retain these same underlying functions, but with one crucial difference that has grown over the past three to four centuries: they allow extensive access to credit, enabling societies to draw on future production in the present.

In this way, a growing misalignment emerges between an economy that can continuously accelerate by leveraging future capacity and individuals whose bodies and minds remain bound by biological limits, creating profound tension between economic tempo and human sustainability.

Value and Values

How much better is the life of the upper middle-class investor who sits on a chair, in front of several black screens, inside an enclosed opulent office for 10 hours a day, and spends another 4 hours staring into a 6.3 inch glass device, to the mid-tribesman who is out much of the day in the forest foraging for food?

Economic development has reduced many external uncertainties, particularly those tied to nature and visceral human reaction, while relocating the uncertainty toward socially mediated and psychologically experienced forms related to income, social status, and personal responsibility.

The more the economic system desires a particular skill, output, or form of problem-solving, the more that individual’s time and effort are rewarded through income, security, and opportunity. The ability and willingness to sell and market oneself or one’s work in the economy plays a crucial role. In this way, the economy acts as a vast filtering and signalling mechanism, continuously communicating which forms of contribution are currently useful, scarce, or replaceable. Individuals, in turn, orient their education, careers, and identities around these signals, adapting themselves to remain relevant within the prevailing structure.

As this notion of “value” becomes increasingly abstracted, it also becomes progressively detached from direct human experience and well-being.

The economy is standardising human activity so cooperation among strangers becomes possible at scale, and with that comes an increasing human price. Activities that are difficult or inappropriate to quantify, market, automate, or monetise (caregiving, teaching, community building, ecological stewardship, inner development) tend to be undervalued, despite their foundational importance to whole human flourishing.

The Self and The Economy

If the economy exerts such a profound force in sculpting our identities, often before we are even conscious of having one, then perhaps it is time to invert our approach. Instead of an "economy-first" life, where we offer up our vitality as raw material for growth, we must adopt a "self-first" orientation. However, by this I don’t mean a self-centred egoist approach. Remember, that’s how we got started down this road via Adam Smith. This is a call for an expansive, radical awareness of one's own internal landscape. All of it, or at least as much as we can. We intentionally direct our energy inward, as we interact with the outside world, before we spend it outward.

What are my values? To bring the whole of our self out of the clouds, we must ask questions that exist outside the realm of utility. Where does my attention naturally settle when there is nothing to achieve? What physical and emotional rhythms does my body inherently crave? Which quiet instincts, forgotten curiosities, or unresolved tensions still live within my shadow? What brings me a sense of deep, unhurried aliveness? How does my nervous system actually feel when it is tethered only to the present moment?

Once the self is brought out of the clouds of unconsciousness, the task of integrating into the economy becomes a conscious negotiation rather than a blind submission. We can compartmentalise our roles without becoming them. There will certainly be periods of unbalanced activity. Yet, by truly knowing what balance is, through experiencing a good deal of who we are, we will never let ourselves stray too far and intuitively when the time is ripe to reel in the extreme activity.

A Personal Approach To The Economy

Ultimately, to understand the economy is to understand growth—and to understand growth is to recognise the human cost of pursuing it. Each person must find a role that aligns not just with their potential for economic expansion, but with their personal capacity to sustain that growth without losing themselves, their loved ones, and even their capacity to be present, to care and to love.

Just as it is imperative to cultivate the skills necessary to perform a job well, it is equally as imperative to cultivate the awareness necessary to remain grounded within ourselves through the process of evolution in our careers, and lives.

The speed of world and its economy has expanded exponentially in the past few hundred years. And while the initial construction of the economy was as a mirror of the human psyche, with the advent of credit that has changed. We don’t have access to credit on our inner energy and state of mind. We can’t “borrow” energy from the future. We have tried, with an abundance of stimulants like caffeine. But in excess it always comes back to haunt us.

Today, humans are able to allocate a great deal of energy into the economy because life is comfortable in large part thanks to the prosperity of the economy. We live in very protected worlds, compared to a life exposed to the whims of nature of people even a few centuries ago. And because the modern religion is capitalism, many people choose to channel this available excess energy back into their role in the economy. Of course there is much more that makes us whole.

The closeness and relationship with family. A connection to nature and ongoing relationship with it. We’ve come to rely upon science and medicine for our health, and in the process gradually lost touch of the medicine that is the awareness of our own selves, simply how we’re doing, and how this or that is making us feel. Food is bought en masse in artificially lit department stores. How often do you see people actually making the time to truly taste the food they are eating, to engage their sense of smell and taste. We all walk past each other down the street, heads down, unable or unwilling to hold eye contact with other passers-by, losing our connection to the greater community outside of our own small variable social circles. Sight is focused on tiny little black screens for 12 hours a day. Touch amongst people is rare, while fear is abundant. There is so much repression of what we actually need, and so many distractions and drugs covering it up. Yet they can’t possibly do so, because all of who we are lives inside of us. In the health of our body, in the equilibrium of our minds, in the vibrance of our spirit, and in the aliveness of our heart.

Eating belongs to this system. To digest is to trust. To fully assimilate nourishment, the body must feel safe enough to relax its guard. Yet the modern evenings many settle for today, force the opposite upon us. The same food eaten in different ways creates different outcomes. Consumed in a rush, under bright lights, in front of phones or televisions, it can feel anxious, heavy, disruptive. Received in stillness, in joy, it becomes grounding, therapeutic, bringing us more alive. Evening invites us to eat not for stimulation, but for restoration.

The evening food practice begins before the meal appears. In the preparation of food, slow the body enough to listen. Ask quietly: How am I feeling today? What thoughts are moving through me? Notice without fixing. Then ask a second, orienting question: How do I want to feel? Let these answers guide not just the food you decide to cook, but how you cook—when we creatively imbibe our meal with an energy, that energy finds a way to transfer itself back into us.

As evening arrives, dim the lights. Darkness cues melatonin, signalling safety, telling the mind it no longer needs to scan the horizon. Try to eat at a place that is routinely reserved for eating. Create a quiet, unstimulating environment—no screens, no urgent sounds. Silence itself becomes an ingredient. In this setting, the parasympathetic nervous system can do what it does best: help us absorb life.

When you sit in front of the meal, pause. Place both feet on the floor. Feel gravity holding you. Take a moment to go through all the thoughts running through your mind. Think them all. Then when you realise there’s nothing left, and they just want to run on repeat, let them go. That’s enough thought for now.

And transition toward gratitude—not performative, not polished, but honest. Thank the food for the nourishment it will offer. Thank it for its energy, and for its willingness to support how you wish to feel. Gratitude is a bridge between intention and digestion, and this is a blessing.

Eat slowly. This meal is a symphony between you and the food. Look at the food— really look at it. Feel how your body is responding to each bite. And after each one of these bites, place the spoon, fork, or chopsticks down. Do not be in haste to gather up the next piece. Let chewing be complete. Let swallowing be felt. Taste fully. This rhythm—breath, awareness, bite, awareness, pause—tells the body there is no emergency and heightens your intimacy with the food. The vagus nerve responds. The system softens. Assimilation deepens.

When the meal is complete, do not rush to rise. Remain seated for five to ten minutes in silence. Longer if you feel the need. Close the eyes if it feels natural. Focus on the breath, keeping the mind slow with its rhythmic flow and allow the digestive organs to transfer the energy from the food effortlessly into the body’s cells. Allow the food to digest in peace, without movement, without stimulation. This quiet integration is part of the nourishment.

Then, and only then, continue into the slower cadence of evening. Let the meal be the moment the day releases you. Let it be enough. You have done enough for today. You are enough.