Catching the big fish

The last 9 months have been a period of exploration for me after my wonderful partner packed herself off to a retreat and came back with insights into how our small family might live better and be happier.

This resulted in a bunch of divergent activity: Returning to a mostly vegetarian diet, watching Youtube videos of mostly naked men hiking up mountains, experimenting with limiting caffeine and alcohol, more exercise, meditation and upping my consumption of non-fiction books.

Did it work? Yes.

I'm not going to go on about it. But I am going to write a short review of some of the things and people that moved the needle for me:

Cold therapy and crazy breath holding - Wim Hof

Sounds mad but cold dips and showers stopped this body getting sick, in the last 9 months several virus's swept through my workplace and community and didn't touch us. Lowering yourself into icy water is also very fundamental in proving to yourself you have .. agency?

The breathing is a great segue into meditation.

My brothers think I'm mad ... just watch the videos already and see for yourself.

Catching the big fish - David Lynch

I've discovered that meditation works, at least for my brain. Maybe it's age, maybe it's me, what the hell it's too good a thing to ignore. And I'm not going to.

One of my questions was how does the inward looking nature of meditation affect creative work that is often outward looking and exploratory. I was super lucky to see a note about this book somewhere and then stumbled across a copy at the excellent Unity Books.

David Lynch has an angle on creativity I love, it's not the instant explosive epiphany or the aggressive combat of ideas. It's humane, and the opposite of stress driven.

If you're interested in where meditation or mindfulness meets creativity then go grab a copy, or ten and give some away to your friends or strangers in the street. You'll want to.

Inspiration and plant based diet - Rich Roll

This guy is gold, I love the format of talking to interesting people and his focus on mental and physical health. Well worth a listen, if you don't like the first one just skip to another episode as they're all different!