Feeling Disconnected? Discover Buddhist Tools & Modern Psychology That Reconnect You | Ed Barry

In this powerful and deeply insightful episode, I sit down with Ed Barry to explore Buddhist meditation, authentic relating, and the journey of self-awareness.

We dive into the ancient Nine Stages of Meditation, also known as The Elephant Path — a Buddhist roadmap for cultivating concentration, presence, and attentional control. Ed shares how these teachings, combined with Western integral psychology, can transform the way we relate to ourselves, others, and the world.

We also explore how stored emotions live in the body, the power of somatic awareness, and how trust — especially self-trust — is something we can rebuild through conscious practices. From calming the mind and tuning into the body, to navigating generational trauma and reclaiming our power, this conversation offers both depth and practicality.

Whether you're on a spiritual path or simply seeking more presence and connection in your life, this episode is filled with embodied wisdom and grounded insights.

About Ed:

With 16 years in elite rugby as an osteopath and injury rehabilitation specialist — from Harlequins to supporting Georgia at three Rugby World Cups and consulting for Brazil at the Women’s RWC 2025 — I bring a deep knowledge of human performance and health. My studies in coaching, breath-work, holistic health, and Indo-Tibetan contemplative psychology shape a unique approach to helping clients move beyond injury, reconnect with themselves, and align with their true potential.

Transcript

0:01

In today's episode, I talk with Ed about Buddhism meditation and authentic relating. We talk about a nine stage of meditation, the elephant path and ancient Buddhist roadmap that helps develop concentration, presence and attentional control. And how reclaiming trust through your body by becoming aware of where the sensations live. Welcome to Man: A Quest to Find Meaning, where we help men navigate modern life, find their true purpose, and redefine manhood. I'm your host, James, and each week, inspiring guests share their journeys of overcoming fear Embracing vulnerability and finding success. From experts to everyday heroes. Get practical advice and powerful insights. Struggling with career, relationships or personal growth? We've got you covered. Join us on Man Quest to Find Meaning. Now, let's dive in.

James: 1:02

Our inherent nature is that we are loving kindness. Good afternoon, ed. Can you tell me more?

Ed: 1:11

Yeah. Good afternoon, James. Yeah, it's a, it's something that's been very true for me on this path of of deep study into Indo Tibetan practices. Where, our kind of nature, our inherent nature is love. It is compassion. It's this kindness and within Buddhist practices it's really awakening you to your true nature. And that is with with love, really.

James: 1:50

So let's start there. Let's start with the Buddhist practices you,'cause obviously the reason the re, the reason I know Ed is because we did a authentic relating course about a month ago. And I think something that you mentioned, you did mention a bit about your, some body's practices then. And also when we had a chat, let's start there because you mentioned that you are a Pacific type of Buddhism.

Ed: 2:19

So I'm with a school which the lineage is within Ana Buddhism. Ana is the universe, universal vehicle, and. Previous to that, you had a lineage the hi Yama, which was the individual vehicle. In terms of how does the individual reach enlightenment? Ana is more the group more community and the, these practices. I've, I've been. Interested in Buddhism for a long time. But the kinda last five years I've been deeply into these practices through a school that I'm studying with called Planetary Dharma. And it, it merges these Indo Tibetan. Teachings from the Maana lineage the Ma Maana School of Thought with Western contemplative psychology. So merging that with Jungian psychology, human development integral. So the link between what we did with with authentic relating. So I think the originator of authentic relating. Is or was part of integral psychology, the Integral Institute, which was set up by by a incredibly intelligent man, Ken Wilber, and my, the school that I'm part of, our teacher set up Integral Institute with Ken Wilber. So there's this kind of beautiful synchronicity in teachings there and integral. Psychology really is kind of Ken Wilber looked at all of these different theories, not just West Western, but also Eastern, and looked for a lot of common themes within there and was able to merge all of these piece, these all together as you would piece together a puzzle and. Within that, looking at, as human beings, how do we develop? And there's stages of development that is recognizable within many different schools of thought. And so my school brings in the Indo Tibetan practices. With the recognition of how we are developing as human beings, that the life path that we have and the psychological tools that we can use to self-reflect and to essentially coach ourselves along this path. And it's a, it is this journey of. Speaks about, the journey the individuation the merging of our, the unification of our unconscious and our subconscious and these teachings, there's so many synchronicities within them and they're incredibly powerful. And that's where. The, how I came to authentic relating was because one of our one, one of my fellow students he's been fully into the authentic relating piece, and he said, Hey, authentic, relating the style of communication fits really well with what we've been learning about how it's about being really present. And so we've been doing all these practices that really ground us in presence. But then here was a piece that was about how we communicate from that pace, place of presence. And and of course it fits really well because authentic relating comes from an integral our school has a branch from Integral, so it fits, it just merges beautifully, which is how I ended up being on the same course as you.

James: 6:03

So just to quickly, I'll delete this bit out and now this bit, now if we turn our cameras off, I think that's disrupting the the quality of the voice. So it might be, it'd be different experience for both me and you, but it might be better. Can you hear me clearly, ed?

Ed: 6:22

I hear you perfectly.

James: 6:24

That's it. Perfect. That's fine. Going on that. What are some of the common themes that you see from the Buddhist and also the integral psychology?

Ed: 6:36

So that's a really good question. It's recognizing that there is this journey that we all go on. And this journey is a Carl well with within Jo Joseph Campbell talks about the hero's journey and. This part of this journey of individuation whereby we set out on this tar on this path. And within Buddhist, within Buddhism, there's a teaching, it's known as the Nine Stages of Madrea also known as the Elephant Path. And it's about how you apply certain tools and techniques within meditation along this nine stage path. It takes you to the path to enlightenment, essentially. And it's also known as the path of the Bodhi Satur because, and it's known as the bo, the Path of the Bodhi Satur, because Bodhi Satur, whether you believe in this or not Bodhi Satur are awakened beings who they master this path to. Enlightenments become enlightened. But they choose to reincarnate. They choose to come back down this path to then teach others. Whereas within Buddhism, if you reach enlightenment you move on to Nirvana and you don't come back. Like you've ga game over. You've completed it not back. You're not coming back into this world. Now, whether that's true or not, doesn't matter. What's relevant is that. The Bodhi SFA path is you gain enlightenment and which is the kind of release from all suffering. And then you come back and you teach people how to do that. And so how that relates to integral is that there's, there are these stages of developments that consciousness moves through. And that we are all participating in this evolution of consciousness and as we can, as more and more people are drawn into these practices and are developing techniques that expand their consciousness, that then helps draw up the consciousness of the planet, which is a good thing. Same.

James: 9:08

Yeah. Yeah. So just to clarify, the Buddhist, as they become enlightened, they go on to, is it Nirvana you said?

Ed: 9:16

Yes. Yeah.

James: 9:18

And then the integral psychology or the Buddhist that you follow. But the Buddhism that you follow, basically you help others to become enlightened at a certain stage. Yeah.

Ed: 9:34

A absolutely. So with within the whole of Buddhism that there are Bodhi, SFAs, Bodhi, SFAs are these awakened beings. I used, in, in, that's the kind of translation for it, but it's but I think enlightened can be quite triggering for people. But it's these, it's a practice that helps you reach this level of awareness whereby. You're out of this perpetual cycle of suffering, and then you teach others how to do that, that, that's within Buddhism across all realms. But it's this understanding that these practices help you develop your level of consciousness. And with integral as well, is looking at all of these different practices that expand your level of consciousness on an individual level, but then on a collective as well. From a society, a culture a universal. Kind of consciousness shift,

James: 10:28

what type of practices do they include?

Ed: 10:33

Yeah, so we we spent a long time on this nine stages of calm staying, which essentially is it, this is a foundational practice, which is learning how to calm your mind and it's, there's elements of mindfulness in terms of, really it's. Gaining control of our attention. We live in a world whereby we are so distracted and social media companies. Life is, ev just so ma, so many entities are competing for our attention, right? Where are we spending our time watching things? Where are we spending our time? Where are we spending our money? There's just this competition. And so our minds are drawn all over the place all of the time. And so this path, the nine stages of Madrea. The initial stages are about learning how to regain control of our mind and direct it back to, so it's a it's a concentration practice. So the very early beginnings. Is a concentration practice. So recognizing when you get distracted and then returning to a meditation object. And most meditations use the breath as a meditation object. So the meditation object is what you always come back to recognize. You're distracted. Come back to the meditation object. Within our school, we use the ground as the meditation object because the ground is. Stable. It's solid. It's always there. And whereas the breath is very transient. So we set up our meditation. Anytime we recognize we're distracted, and with within a meditation you can be distracted by thinking. You can be distracted by sound, by sensations in the body, and whatever it is that distracts you, you recognize it and you come back the way that you would. Bring a puppy back into the space that you want the puppy to be, and you don't want the puppy wandering off and, going and making a mess in the corner of the room and say, Hey puppy, you're staying here. And you just lovingly bring your attention back to the meditation object, which is the ground. So we spend a lot of time working with the ground, and then there are different, there are ways within, once you've. You've developed a level of proficiency of control over your attentional system, and it's not, I think that a misconception in meditation is that you're completely clearing your mind. That's a misconception that this is about being able to recognize you've been distracted, come back every time that happens, you continue to come back and what the skill is, then you get faster at doing that. So fast that as soon as something arises you've been able to recognize the very first impulse of a sensation that you're able to come back. Whereas what happens in the untrained mind is that we get stuck at a sensation may come up. For example, a sore shoulder, and then I start analyzing the pain, and then I start creating a story around that pain. My shoulder's sore because, oh, my posture's bad. Or I've been sitting here for a long time, and we get wound up in story. And the untrained mind gets caught up in that story. And before you know it, it's been. A minute or two and you're like, oh geez, I'm trying to meditate here, come back to ground. The skilled mind recognizes that first sensation and then is able to come back before getting stuck in the story.

James: 14:23

Okay. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. It makes a lot of sense. I think as well though it's more so from my own perspective, meditation. I've had a on and off kind of relationship for a long time, but it's more like. If I feel a sensation in the body, rather than giving a story, which I might do initially, I then turn my focus or attention into that sensation. And generally within a few seconds or minutes, that sensation disappears and then onto the next. So in, in fact that's like a meditation in itself?

Ed: 14:58

Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's. That forms a, that comes onto a later stage in this pathway whereby we would call that attuning. So we attune to what arises within our body because, and you'll be able to relate to this, most of the times when we have something uncomfortable come up within our body, a sensation that we, you know, that. Within Buddhism, there's three types of sensation. There's positive sensation, negative sensation, and neutral. And we tend to want more of the positive sensations. Oh, that feels good. We don't like the negative ones. And we try to push those away. And then neutral, we dunno about them. We know we're not fussed. It's the, as humans, we're very good at. Pushing away what we're feeling and the ability to actually be with what's arising is incredibly healing. And so where to move on from what you've just described? In our practice, we would attend to what's arising within our body on a physical level. We would attend to it the way that a loving parent would. Attend to a a child in discomfort, right? So there's an element of care. So something, so this pain arises in my shoulder. Like you, I'm, I'm attending, I bring my attention into it, but then I'm adding the piece of. Lovingly being aware of this and there's a lot of softening that happens with it. And then the next one that arises do the same thing. And so there's a, there's an intentional piece behind that attunement. And when you feel into your body this way, you're giving yourself permission to feel and society and men in particular as well. We've, we're not very good at feeling. Our emotions. And so the deeper layer to that is when emotions start coming up. If you go deep enough with your awareness, you'll find that there are areas within your body where there's, where sadness lives, where grief lives, where anger lives. And these are all emotions that oftentimes. We've learned not to express them because it's been deemed as being inappropriate.

James: 17:30

Yeah.

Ed: 17:31

And so we push these emotions down, we store them in our body. But within this meditation piece, if you can lovingly bring your attention to these areas within your body and be the, the archetypal perfect parent, surrounding that area with love being truly present with it, that begins a healing process.

James: 17:56

Yeah. Okay. So just to quickly go back to David, you jumped a little bit there with regards to the meditation. So what you're saying there is that for somebody who's perhaps listening, they can find something they can focus on, whether that's the breath or whether that's the ground. And start by just. Breathe breathing and moving their attention within. And when they realize that a destruction such as a thought or a a feeling, bring themselves back to what they initially started with.

Ed: 18:32

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah for a beginner, you're sitting in meditation. You choose your posture, whether you're sitting cross-legged on the ground, whether you're sitting in a chair it doesn't matter. It's about comfort. If you are, whatever you choose your meditation to be, whether it's the feeling of the stability of the seat and of the ground beneath you, or whether it's the move, the movement of the breath, it's helpful to, to label your experience. So if you recognize, you hear something that's distracted you and you're like, oh, what's that sound? You can label it as sound and that labeling of sound, you can then come back to return to meditation. Object, if there's a. A feeling in your body that pops up and it's a, it's an achy shoulder. You can go, ah, sensation, label it as sensation and then return back to your meditation object. Just as if you get caught up in thinking. As soon as you recognize that you're caught up in thinking, label it. Ah, I'm thinking. Return back to the meditation object and you just continually go through that process for however long you set your meditation up for. Five minutes is incredibly powerful. Do that for five minutes and you're developing the power of concentration, so you're reclaiming your retention, which is incredibly powerful.

James: 19:52

Yeah. Okay. Okay. So what other practices within the nine stages. What other practices did you actually start to do?

Ed: 20:04

Yeah, so we developed the concentration power by returning to ground, which brings a bit of stillness within the body and the experience. We then bring in the attuning piece, which is that being with what's arising. Then we work with. The skill of being able to increase your interest. So along this path it's a 1000 year old teaching, and along this path there's in the drawing there these kind of big fires that have been painted and the fire replicates like or depicts motivation. And, as. People do more meditation. Sometimes you, you get bored, right? Or you lose interest. So the fire depicts desire to focus in on what you are, on what you're doing. So one of the skills is becoming more interested. In what you're doing. So whether that's the attuning piece, you're, you are, you're being with the sensation that rises in your body, it's increasing your interest in that sensation. And what that would look like. An analogy for that would be if you were at a gallery and you were looking at a really beautiful painting, increasing your interest is getting right up close to this painting and you're looking at every little detail of what's there. So that's a skill. And it's a it's something that we can relate to in terms of, if we're doing something in life that we're, if we're watching a watching a match of football we can become so interested in that football match that we lose concept of time, of space, of what's going on outside of the football match. But in meditation, we can use that within the meditation. So we increase our interest, which is a, which is a. Which is a really powerful skill. And again it's, this path is the path of learning as well. When you're learning a new skill, it's important to become really interested in the skill that you're trying to learn. So really becoming your attention focusing on, I've been learning to play the guitar, so really ch dialing in my attention into the movements of my fingers, for example. So we apply an increase in desire, like my desire to. Learn this, my desire to be with the sensation that's arising. And that provides more energy because. We're trying to increase the energy within our, within the meditation, because what can happen, and again, if people who are new to this or they've been doing it for a long time, when you meditate, sometimes you get a little bit dull. You can get bored, you can get a little bit sleepy. And so the, so increasing the interest brightens up the experience within your mind. It gives you a little bit more, it gives you a little caffeine boost. And so that's one of the other little skills that we use increase the interest. Then we dial in our interest even more. So we come into, and part of this is visualization as well, but we come into the breath of the heart. So when we're breathing, we connect to the movement within our chests and. That just helps. It's, we're just going deeper and deeper into our experience, so breathing in, feeling the heart, expanding out, sideways, breathing in, feeling the heart expanding down into the depths, rising up as we breathe in. Moving forward as we breathe in and the heart expanding backwards as we breathe in. So we breathe, we feel these dimensions with it within our chest because, from a physical, on a physical level, as we breathe in, if you are, the breath expands your chest ca cine 360 degrees up, up and down as well, right? Yeah. So we dialing in our. Our attention into these movements, which again is giving us more and more energy. So we're really increasing our focus and I. We can then, we then shift up a gear of increased focus when we go to the nostrils. So we move from the breath at the chest, we move to the nostrils, and we get even closer to the finer sensations of the breath as it moves in and out of the nostrils. And again, this is just building energy for us because then what happens is we can then release everything. And because it, the analogy is you use all this rocket fuel to, to get you out of earth's atmosphere and then you switch off to the rocket fuel and you're in space and you're gliding. And so there are these really finely tuned skills to get to this point where we can relax and we can relax into this vast open space of calm of awareness. Our mind just comes to being completely still.

James: 25:21

Yeah. Yeah, that's, that kind of relates. So what I've been doing recently, I've been doing this course and part of the course is actually doing this shaking meditation and init. Initially the shaking meditation, you think, okay, must doing it for the hell of doing it. But what I've noticed recently is that. Within the shaking there's periods of time of maybe 30 seconds to a minute where I'm literally almost focused in at I've found a spot which is quite tight, and I'm living that spot trying to shake that spot out. And I'm almost with, I'm in the body and I can sense all the feelings. I can feel the sensations. You almost lose track of time. The last two times I've done it, there's been a time of where I've literally just like, where's the time gone?

Ed: 26:14

Yeah. It's so powerful when you give yourself permission to actually feel into your body, to feel what's there, because there is so much that we've repressed that we've not allowed. And it's that in that not allowing that, brings on, you do that for long enough and you start experiencing chronic illness, right? Mental health issues, physical issues so the actual kind of the gift of, there's many ways that you can. There's many different ways to meditate, right? And there's different ways to do somatic practices like body work. But it's that intentionality with what you're talking about in terms of, okay, we're gonna, liven things up by, by shaking. And then with our mind, come into our body and be truly present with the sensations that not going into story, it's how can you be with what's arising and actually, be okay with that as well. Because part of the human condition is not accepting what is right, but we want things to be different. Yeah. There's this continuous, continual battle of, I want more money or, I want to live in a, be in a better house, or I want to, what, whatever it is that we we feel that externally we need more of or less of. I don't wanna feel bored. The things that we push away I don't like being I don't like being, when I'm not doing anything right. I find people find it very difficult to just, to sit and be still. But it's this constant pushing away or trying to grab that creates the suffering. Yeah. But if you can learn to be with what's arising as you're talking about in terms of these somatic practices you're allowing all of these pent up emotions and sensations just to bubble to the surface. And that, that's very healing.

James: 28:15

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yesterday I felt quite off, off weather and. What I've noticed this year especially is there's so much potent energy, especially with what's been going on in with regards to the planets and stuff and eclipses. There's so much potent energy at this moment in time, and I think I've never, ever felt such big shifts like I have this year and. It's almost like a continue. I'm this year I'm continually releasing and the way I think, the way my body releases is it, I tend to be under the weather. And last night I was just saying to myself, you said, you know what? I'm gonna go bed early. I'm going to use, so I'm very attuned to Dragon Energy Fire. And so I said to myself, I'm gonna use Dragon Energy fire to help, to heal, to release, and I'm going to allow myself, just my body to do what it needs to do. And this morning I felt fine. I felt really good. And you are right. We, there is so much potent stuff inside us that. We are always looking on the outside of, the houses, the cars, the money, everything. But it's more the fact that if our internal state almost creates our external states, if you've got all these repressed emotions, all these limiting beliefs, all these ancestral patterns down the lineage such as money money doesn't grow on trees and all these different things, but if you don't allow yourself to feel and allow yourself to release these, they're gonna, you're not gonna change them. So I feel like we're gonna, you almost creating this continual. Cycle of what you've created is what you're gonna be, you're gonna be keeping until you allow yourself to go into your body and to feel whatever sensation needs to be felt.

Ed: 30:17

Ah, absolutely James, and there's so much in what you've just said to that. You can go into what one of the, if I speak to what you said about, you, you feel that at this year you've just been releasing so much. I think one of the things that puts a lot of people off from actually doing this inner work is that it is uncomfortable because you are dredging the bottom of the ocean, right? You're dredging up these. Past wounds, past traumas. And it's not to say that it's part of the healing, you have to relive those, but it's actually it's being present to that energy that's within those repressed emotions wounds. And, to, from a Buddhist perspective we are. We're born with. So Buddhists talk about multi-generational trauma. So there's a recognition that when we are born into this life the first trauma that you and I experience is the trauma of being separated from mother. So we're born. We come out of the womb the cord is cut. That is traumatic. That's the first. That's the first kind of trauma that I experience in this world, and we all go through that. But that doesn't, to say, that doesn't say, that, doesn't mean to say that doesn't affect us on a really deep, psychological, unconscious level. Then you have the, everything that I experience in life. Can will affect me. Whether it's, the, whatever your life experiences are, and we all have we all have different, we all have different journeys in this lifetime, but whether it's, a father leaving home early or a, the loss of a primary caregiver at an early age, all of that comes into our experience and. That's just my lifetime. I'm 44 now, and I, there's lots of low points in my life that I've had to process. And early on I didn't process them well. We're not resourced enough to do that. But then there's also, within Buddhism, there's the rec recognition of our ancestral line of trauma that gets passed on. So the stories that aren't told the, I love this thing about biology and that, when my grandmother would've been pregnant with my mother would've had all of her eggs in her. So my, the egg that made me was inside my grandmother at some point, right? And so whatever my grandmother was experiencing my mom was born in 1952, so we're, post-war, all of the. Traumatic events in my grandmother's life, I would've been experiencing that in her body. My cells would've experienced that in her body. And that's just a, so we know from epigenetics that this is true. But then there's. Further back, the ancestral line of the trauma that gets passed on from one generation to the next. Then there's the trauma of the society that we're born into. And this cycle of suffering, this multi-generational trauma perpetuates itself. And we don't need to look very far in the world to see where that's true. If we look at what's going on in Israel and Palestine, the war that's going on now. It's been going on for thousands of years, right? This isn't a new thing that's popped up. This is, this goes back many generations. And so these cycles repeat themselves. They repeat themselves within part on an individual level. W. My, my own healing has been to recognize these kind of themes that have been causing me to suffer. They continually come up until I recognize what my role is within them and go, actually, do you know what? I need to look at this in a different way. I need to work with this. That's part of my own healing. But to bring that in to this, we have this, there's so much. Generational trauma that is within us that we can constantly release. When you've done releasing yourself, there's all your ancestors to release for. And the beauty of this healing work is that the healing work that you do on yourself, you're doing that for everyone who came before you and for everyone who's gonna come after you as well.

James: 34:52

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Stan, when you said about. What my haha aha moment was there was that you said about at birth we are separated by from our mother and our, is it cervical cervicals court, isn't it? Just kick to me that we talk about always being connected. We are actually connected being, we connect to everything. We are one with everything. But maybe that realization, there's be a realization that maybe the reason that we feel separated is because we have that cerv cervical cut. So suddenly we've gone from being connected to our mother inside our mother to being completely separate. Absolute. And so there's that trauma. Absolutely. Maybe there's that sense, that realization that in order to heal that separation, we need to go and allow ourselves our, to go into our body to feel that moment when we were separated, but at a say in time, allowing our ancestral separation to come in at the same time.

Ed: 36:00

Absolutely. Absolutely. And the, there there's two levels to this separation. There's the, there's this the split from our mother at birth. And so it, it is the umbilical cord I got, I lost the the tr the name for it. Yeah. They cut the umbilical cord.

James: 36:14

Yeah.

Ed: 36:15

So we've got that, we got that trauma, but then also, look deeper in, in terms of if we, within these spiritual traditions and it's the earth is viewed as Mother Earth and we are so split off today from. Mother Earth, the planet, more so than we ever have been. It's, we are waging war against our planet with the way that we the way that we fish, the way that we farm, the way that we just, knock down forests to whatever, there's a split from a planetary per perspective there's that healing to go to, to deal with as well. Which is huge.

James: 37:07

Yeah. Yeah. I can, there's that I idea that. We need in order to do, to really step into this, we need to connect ourselves back to Mother Nature. We need to connect ourselves back to the soil, come back to the traditional ways and means in which we can really connect to that kind of that side of ourselves, and to be able to explore. I feel explore the old traditions, such as the old tribes. But also I feel like we're at a point now where we are able to, there's so many different modalities out there, so many different things which can connect deeply with, we need to start to be able to connect through. Other means and way other means, and ways in which we can new things, new ways we can start to channel new ways of connecting to the earth, new ways of connecting to other people. Yeah, I feel like there's a sense of old, but also a sense of new.

Ed: 38:18

Absolutely. And I can link what you've just said there really beautifully with. One of the so with integral psychology, there's this they look at spiral dynamics or essentially it's how civilizations have evolved over time and within what you've just said in terms of, these tribal practices that were done, with the shaman and, the how very magical type thinking, spiritual worlds and these different realms. That was the level of consciousness at that time. Integral and spiral dynamics. Look at how what should happen is that we, at that level, we then transcend that, but we include the previous level. Yeah. If that makes sense. So as we've as we've evolved and, we've we've come a long way from our hunter-gatherer early tribal. Relatives. Ancestors. But as we've developed what we've done as a society, now we've shunned all of that. We've gone, no, that's not appropriate. So we've neglected that. Whereas what you're talking about is to actually bring those practices in, include them into this time, but then it's also transcend them.

James: 39:36

Yes,

Ed: 39:36

but it's transcending from a wholesome place as opposed to we've kicked that out because it's woo or rubbish, or we're we're better than that. But actually it's a it's a very deep part of who we actually are, but we just ignored it. Yeah.

James: 39:50

Yeah.

Ed: 39:51

And so what you're talking about is this Yeah. Integrating it and transcending it.

James: 39:57

Yeah. There's a level of having this humility that. Using our body's truth and intelligence to help us to integrate the old traditions. So yes, the shamans in the rainforests, the Aborigines in Australia and the tribes in Africa, and to utilize, a deeper sense of connecting to other dimensions so that we can create this whole new way of living peacefully with ourselves, with everybody else, with the earth, and with the collective consciousness.

Ed: 40:46

Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's you can see that there's a, people are so much more interested today in the, in these older practice practices. In the West we're becoming very interested in mindfulness, meditation and yoga practices. But in the West, we're very good at taking a thread out of the whole tapestry. We take out the yoga postures out of the lifestyle of yoga. We take out the mindfulness meditation outside of the, the kind of lineage of Buddhist practice. But. These are good ways for us to get in. The school that I'm in is talking about, a lot of these Buddhist practices are, they're a couple thousand years old and they were relevant for the time when monks could go off and meditate in a cave for 10 years and then come back again as this enlightened being. It's how do we make these teachings relevant to where we are today and the challenges that we face as individuals as a collective. How can we make those teachings relevant? Into essentially bringing about a humanity that, it's recognizing that we can't keep going on in the path that we're going on. There's a lot of healing work that needs to be done, and the planet, we, we need to heal the planet because the planet's angry. It's it's bringing in these practices as you talking about bringing in the old, how can we integrate them into. Today and what works for today and then lifting up from there.

James: 42:13

Yeah, so it on quite nicely because, obviously, in order for us to really connect to our body's intelligence, our body's truth, there's gotta be a level of trust. We've gotta have trust in our own body and our on our own sensations in what we are told and our own intuition, and with almost at some moment in time, I feel like there's a lot of people who project their trust. Out into the world, there's a lot of people that don't trust what's going on because they've been lied to. And so this kind of, I, for me, it just indicates that there's a lack of trust in ourselves and myself included this month. For me, it's about working on trusting myself more and, but in order to really begin to trust ourselves. How can we start to, yeah. How can we start to build that trust? How can we start to build that trust in our bodies?

Ed: 43:14

Yeah. No, that's a great question. It's from my perspective, and it, and this is something that. We've been working on within our school is, so one of the reasons why we use the ground as our meditation objects is that the first level is the ground is stable, right? Like, when I recognize my mind's distracted, I can come back to the stability that's beneath me. And it's outside of me, right? So I can, we, we create a relationship between my experience and this experience of solid ground. And I keep reminding myself in this meditation that the ground is stable, but then I go deeper into that. So the physical level is stability, it's solid. The emotional level to that which is deeper is that the ground is supporting me. EI feel supported, I feel held. That allows for a sense of safety to arise within my experience.

James: 44:17

Yeah.

Ed: 44:17

That allow the more safe I can feel, safety or trust has got to do with safety. If I feel safe in your presence, trust arises. Yeah. So when I, so in the meditation, when I'm relating to the ground. Ground stable. Ground is safe. This is trustworthy. The more that you go on the meditation path, you start investigating. The boundary between my body and the felt sense of ground. And this is, this comes into a more advanced technique and meditation, which is called emptiness practice. But with in, with my mind, with my eyes closed, I can feel the boundary, I can feel my body, and I can feel the hard seat beneath me, or I can feel my my body weight on the ground or my feet on the ground. But if I, with interest, like I mentioned before, if I get really close within my mind to those felt sensations where's that boundary? Can I find the boundary? In my mind? I can feel the sensation of boundary, but where is this hard wall? And in my direct experience, the more that I examine that, I can see that. The ground is open. And by open what I mean is that there's there, in my direct experience of mind, there is no hard boundary. And because of that, from a psychological perspective, the stability that I feel outside of me is actually a construct of my mind. The stability is within me. So once you recognize that this boundary actually doesn't exist between me and the ground, that actually stability that was beneath me is actually also within me.

James: 46:23

Yeah.

Ed: 46:23

Then yeah, that, that safety as well. The safety from relating to the ground that safety is within, inside of me. And the more you do that you create the sense of safety and trust within your body. And that's just from a meditation perspective. I think you know that, and that, that's quite a, you need to be meditating for a while to be able to experience that. But in terms from a day-to-day perspective, coming back to your point in terms of how do we trust you, you made the point that we are, we externalize everything, right? So we're we. We, if we look at COVID, for example, we were looking at the scientists. The scientists, trust the science. It's what about my own intuition? And I'm not gonna go into the details of the COVID stuff, but it's like we've, even on a day-to-day basis. We wear heart rate monitors to measure how hard our heart rate's going. We wear devices that tell us how well we're sleeping. And I've had so many conversations with friends and clients who they track their sleeping and, they'll come to me they'll say, do you know my, my data last night says I slept really well. I got. Eight and a half hours sleep, and I hit this level of sleep, for that amount of time, and it's, it gave me a score of kinda nine and a half outta 10. I don't wear wearables I'm making this part up, but I go how do you feel? I go I wake up feeling like shit. What does that tell you about your sleep then? Because for me, if you are sleeping well, you are waking up, rested, replenished, ready to go, not needing to reach for a coffee. Yeah. So I have a advice that is telling me that I've slept well, but my body is telling me that's a lie. That's not true. And so we've outsourced that we, we're no longer listening to our bodies. So in terms of how do I trust my body? Start listening to it. Start listening to, that there's a reason why you are having three or four coffees before lunchtime. Your sleep soft. You're not sleeping well.

James: 48:31

Yeah.

Ed: 48:31

You're probably on your laptop until late, which means that you're not sleeping well, which means you're waking up feeling tired, needing coffee. So it's, it's listening to your body. Because our body is so intelligent and we've just been shutting off. I think, in terms of we, your I like how you relate to fire and, I very much the kind of opposing. The opposing opposites of, yin and yang and, night and day, fire and water. The masculine, the feminine. We are very good at pushing. We're very good at burning up energy. Go. How much can I move in the gym? Then it's like pushing into the productivity at work. Push, push push, push. We're pushing later on into that. We're pushing. When we wake up, it's go for my run. Go to the gym at lunchtime, go to the gym after work, we're push push, and we spend more of our fire. But then we're not resting, recovering, we're we're out of balance. Too much fire and not enough. Yeah, not enough water. Not enough of the kind of feminine. Too much masculine. Not enough feminine.

James: 49:43

What I've come to realize if fire is that fire. We see fire as masculine, but actually fire is both masculine and feminine. It's also, it's fire and it's also water. I think it's everything because I use fire to heal, to release. I can use fire to. I need different areas. But just going back quickly, there's a few things I was thinking of as you are talking about trusting more and a few things that I've noticed myself is that when I have, when I write a list of things to do in my diary. Aren loads. I have a list of things that I need, I want to get done by the end of the week, and I also have a list of things I want I wanna get done by the day. If you've got too many things on your list saying that you are done today, what are you saying to yourself? You're saying to yourself that you don't, there's a lack of trust in getting those things done. You're saying to yourself that I can get these things done, but actually, if you don't get any of them things done, you're saying. I don't trust that I can get these things done, if

Ed: 50:48

absolutely. And the other one, what comes up when you say that is the night before you, you tell yourself you're gonna wake up at 6:00 AM but then you snooze until 6 45 you're breaking trust the moment that you wake up. So the, I think what we're bringing together here is there's this element of learning to listen to your body and actually. Connecting with yourself more, but then also what actions throughout the day are causing you to either build trust or mistrust. Because our actions, our boundaries and, the little promises that we make to ourselves are all part of that.

James: 51:30

Yeah. We've only covered like a quarter of what I wanted to speak about. Literally, we've had a long conversation, aren't we? So what I wanna do, ed, if it's okay of you, is to get yourself back on for another episode and perhaps a couple of months time.

Ed: 51:46

Yeah, absolutely. That sounds good.

James: 51:48

Yeah. Yeah I'd love to

Ed: 51:49

just on that trust piece. C, can I add something to the trust piece?

James: 51:53

Yeah.

Ed: 51:54

So with that trust, yep. Only your ability to trust somebody else is only as strong as you are able to trust yourself. Yeah. So if you want to have more trusting relationships, the first relationship that you need to work on is that trusting relationship with yourself and the deeper level of trust that you can build within yourself. That's going to then the knock on affect your relationships is huge, which comes back to the authentic relating part.

James: 52:33

Yeah. A is a idea that we have, we're duality, so we're trust and also mistrust. But what I find that if I say I've started to learn to my, I've started to learn that, okay, where in my body do I feel trust? And I will instantly, like now, I instantly have this sensation just below my oh, what's it? My rib cage just below the last. Bone. Is it bone from a ribcage? It feels like it's there. Yeah. Your rib. Yeah. Yeah. So then it's then about, okay, how, what does it need? Or can I focus my attention? Like meditation? Can I focus my attention into that spot to build? And then over time, gradually, as you focus more on the trust, you'll be able to have more trust in yourself, I feel. But also. It also creates that sensation, that trust in our body to know where these sensations are. So where do I feel safe in my body right now? And that for me, that's my left hand below my throat left hand side of my clavicle, I think it is. Yeah. And so just being able to pinpoint where these sensations are and sitting with them sensations, I feel like we're creating trust in the body.

Ed: 53:51

Absolutely. And I think on that point, it's trust the first thing that comes up because our mind w will then second guess it, right? Yeah. I think it it's trust, the inherent wisdom within your body that when you ask that question, the first thing that comes up, go with that trust that. Rather than is it that? What about this place over here? Which we're very good at. We're very good at second guessing. We over analyzing. Yeah. Trust that.

James: 54:24

Trust that her thing. Yeah.

Ed: 54:25

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you very

James: 54:26

much, ed. That's been absolute awesome. It's obviously, I wanna get you back on because we can have such a in-depth conversation on authentic relating and injury. Absolutely. But for now we'll leave it for now. And so how can people get in contact with you and what do you offer?

Ed: 54:44

Yeah, so people can follow me on Instagram. It's at Barry coach. Ed, B-A-R-R-Y, then coach and I at the moment, it's, I'm only offering things locally. I'm based in Norwich and I work as an osteopath. I specialize in rehabilitation, so I've, I'm doing a lot of face-to-face work. But I will be offering online meditation and online coaching soon as well. The best place to follow me is on Instagram, and then you'll keep up to date with with my offerings.

James: 55:14

Yeah. Thank you very much.

Ed: 55:17

Yeah, James, I've really enjoyed chatting with you.

James: 55:21

Absolute pleasure.

55:23

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