The James Granstrom Podcast - Super Soul Model series
Have you been questioning how to live your dreams and enjoy greater happiness, health, and wellbeing? I'm James Granstrom, male model turned international speaker and wellbeing teacher. Join me every other week for new lessons, tips, and conversations on personal growth, health, healing and spirituality with my inspiring guests or straight talk from myself. I'm here to guide you to become your best self and enrich your life, so you can tune and tap into your own natural state of wellbeing.
The James Granstrom Podcast - Super Soul Model series
Healing Trauma Through Presence — Brian Hubbard & Time-Light Explained
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What if your problems aren’t separate from you — but the very energy that built the version of you who thinks they have problems?
That bold idea is at the heart of this conversation with Brian Hubbard — journalist, philosopher, creator of Time-Light, and author of The Untrue Story of You. We follow his path from early neglect and a depressive collapse to a single insight: what you don’t fully attend to keeps weighing you down.
Time-Light teaches that trauma is stored energy that shapes brain, biochemistry, behavior, and identity. Instead of chasing symptoms like anxiety, anger, or self-sabotage, Brian shows how changing your relationship with time can shift the process creating them. We unpack:
- The three time selves: present time, psychological past, and narrative memory
- Why unresolved charge explodes when fused with story
- Glimpses of no-time states such as awe, love, flow, and presence
- Practical exercises to view charged memories with compassion and free yourself from their hold
Bridging spirituality with research in consciousness and intention, Brian offers a precise, compassionate map for anyone looping familiar patterns. If you’re ready to step out of time’s grip, reclaim presence, and live beyond old stories, this episode is for you.
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Thank you for listening
Hi, thanks for tuning in to this episode. Before we begin, I want to tell you a little bit about today's guest, Brian Hubbard of Timeline. Brian's work looks at time and awareness in a way that feels both deep as well as practical, rooted in lived experience. I hope you enjoy this insightful episode. Hello and welcome to the James Grantrum Podcast Super Solar Model Series. Today we are joined by Brian Hubbard. Brian is a journalist, publisher, philosopher, and the creator of Timelight, a therapeutic approach born from his own journey through trauma and healing. Brian's work bridges neuroscience, spirituality, and deep self-inquiry, offering a fresh way to understand how our relationship with time shapes our inner world. He is also the author of The Untrue Story of You and co-editor of the international magazine, What Doctors Don't Tell You. Brian, it's a real pleasure to have you on the Super Solar Model series. Welcome.
SPEAKER_00:Oh thank you, James, and thank you so much for inviting me. It's great being here.
SPEAKER_01:Fantastic. So, Brian, tell us a little bit about your journey to discovering and creating Timelight. What is Timelight to people who don't know? And tell us a little bit more how you discovered it.
SPEAKER_00:Sure. Well, let's tell you what it is and uh to start with, and I'll go back as how it came about. Um, Timelight I describe as a spiritual therapy. Um, and at its heart is the question that if we are eternal beings, which we're told we are, why is this not more evident to us? And um my journey uh made the discoveries that the reason why we don't live as eternal souls is because we have become creations of time. And uh something that's in time cannot know that which is timeless. Now, the fundamental difference between timelight and standard therapy, wonderful though they all are, are sort of two things really. The first is most therapies go along with the belief that we we are an individual somehow that has agency and makes choices, but along the way has developed some bad habits or has had bad luck or something has happened to us, and as a result of that, we suffer from you name it, depression, phobia, anger issues, self-sabotage, and so forth. Time light disagrees with that and says there is no central actor, and we'll come back to that in a minute. But this but the key uh insight of Time Light is that it's all working at a much deeper level, which is an energetic level. And that energy is released at the moment of trauma.
SPEAKER_01:How did this experience come to be, this wonderful therapeutic healing tool?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. From about the age of two to seven, I was psychologically abused by my father, inasmuch as he never spoke to me and wouldn't acknowledge me. And our own only means of communication or from his side was just to whistle at me. So he didn't acknowledge me as a person or even my name. Eventually, my mother said, Well, you either start talking to our child or I'm I'm leaving. So eventually he did start speaking to me. Um, although I saw kickback as a young teenager, and it had done enormous harm to me, as I'm sure you can imagine it would. So by the time I was in my late teens, I really had no confidence at all. And to the extent that I really found it difficult to even go into a shop to buy clothes. I did, I really didn't think I deserved to have clothes, because you know, if you haven't been acknowledged in the formative years, no, what the hell do you think you are to want clothes? So that was an issue, along with career choices and not really pushing myself forward or thinking I was good enough.
SPEAKER_01:It's interesting. When you look at your parents as your guardians, like coming into the world, your mother represents love, your your father represents guidance and power and strength. And if you're not acknowledged by those two initial caretakers that have gifted you or brought you into this physical world, it does do damage to the psyche, as you mentioned. And we all have our own sets of challenges. Lots of people fear that they're not good enough or there's something not enough with them. When in actual fact, you're born with everything that you need, flesh and blood, and everything works. It's just the guidance, really. So I have a lot of compassion for that entry story, but I know that is just the beginning for you, Brian.
SPEAKER_00:That's the beginning. But by my 30s, I crashed into chronic depression, really to the point of uh wanting to commit suicide. And although I know that people have had much worse depression than me, this was still pretty bad. And I couldn't understand it. And I made no connection at all between that and what had happened to me as a kid. There was no, I just never occurred to me there could be any connection to that. But I didn't understand it. I did not understand why I was suffering from this depression, where there was no joy in my life at all. When really, when you look on the outside, I there should have been lots of joy because I had two wonderful kids, I had a lovely wife, we had a successful business. You know, we were ticking all the boxes materially, but I really felt that life had no joy to it, and I just really reached a crisis point, and this was really was the birth of time light because I felt I really do not want to live another day like this. This is crazy, and I didn't know what had done, what had caused it. And I've tried a few therapies along the way, but really they they didn't do a lot for me, to be honest with you. And I knew from my work with uh what doctors don't tell you, the magazine you mentioned at the beginning, I knew that antidepressants weren't really going to do anything for me because you know the chemical imbalance theory has been discredited anyway. Well, along the way, there had been clues. And the first was, in fact, with my own father, in as much as we went to go and see him, we'd sort of reconciled, you know, and so we I used to go and see him. And on the one day I went to see him, he was in bed, which is really unusual for him because he was a really healthy guy. He was 90. And I said, Well, what's what's wrong with you? What's going on? He just said, I've had enough. And I thought, oh, it's just another one of his silly tantrums, what have you. And yet, three days later, my mother phoned say, Dad has died. And I thought, wow, he really did have enough. And I thought that sort of lingered with me. I thought, well, what does that even mean? You know, enough of what? You know, you hear about people dying of just of old age. It's like they really feel like, you know, I've had it. I just don't want to live anymore. And so that was one thing, and that was just sort of lingered in my mind. And then on the day I sort of had this sort of breakthrough, was the day I saw Lynn was away, and I just picked up a book about ghosts. And it wasn't really a subject I was particularly interested in, but it was an interesting book because it was written by a Canadian academic called Ian Stevenson. He was story and after story about unfinished business. And the ghosts came back to finish something on this earth that they weren't able to finish in their lifetime. So I put this book down about ghosts, and this thought crashed into my head, which was that to which you do not fully attend shall weigh you down. And that was the first thought that of that was the genesis of time light. It took me a long time to figure out what that meant. But the transmission also said how we are made up of three time selves. And that that was it. But that was the grist of everything that I needed to work on to understand what was going on. And I worked on it, I I ran it at workshops, I developed it, and eventually I wrote, yeah, several books about it. But you know, that was the that was the genesis of that. So, and from that moment the depression lifted. I realized that we, or I, at that point, I had no idea, well, if this applied to anybody else, but I knew that I was this creation of time, that all that had happened to me was this assemblage of things and ideas and people in me that were reacting to the the trauma of uh you know the childhood. So that was the background to how time that came into being.
SPEAKER_01:So you talked about the you and the I, you know, the moment of the you and the I was created. And then you talk about how understanding that split helps you transform your reality, maybe going from some sort of trauma into back to a centered state again.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. To explain that, I have to just explain a bit more about the research that I did, but the work of Bessel van der Kocken, people like that, who said the physical brain of the traumatized person, especially the amygdala, is is misshaped. It's a different shape to the healthy person. There's also a biochemical reaction that is a reaction of trauma. Now, all of this, the fact that trauma can cause you to die 20 years prematurely, that you have you know chronic health problems, that your brain has changed shape, that you have biochemistry that's different, all of this indicates energy. That was the energy that is released at trauma. And that was what then everything else falls into place. Because if you can accept that, and the evidence is pretty solid that that must be what's going on, you we all understand the term trauma, but it goes so much deeper than that because it's also the division that starts to occur between you and the world. So you were said earlier about you and I. Well, when a baby is born and for the first year of life, there's very little division between it and the world and its parents. And it only starts to appear after that age. But when there's trauma, by which I mean the world stops behaving in a way you want it to, that split accelerates and deepens. Now, as I develop, I am I, and all my experiences are through the lens of this I, which is body centered, and you are you. So I have now created subject, me, and you forever after, and all the world will be an object.
SPEAKER_01:And Gott Hole talks about that as well. He talks about the ego is the you and the I. Yeah. And you know, even when you say words like my, etc., etc., you're referring to the ego versus the self. So is it true? And you tell me in your work, you are separating the ego, which may be traumat, rather than the real version of yourself, which is self.
SPEAKER_00:Well, okay. Well, yeah, I'm I'm not using that terminology because I think that's quite confusing. And just say you're in time or you're no time. And that to me is is simpler.
SPEAKER_01:And so give us an example of being in no time. What's a physical experience that someone might be able to relate to who's listening?
SPEAKER_00:But it's the transcendent experience, it is when time seems to stop, when you're unaware of time. And it could be a simple thing like a connection with great beauty for in everyday life, or it can be a sensation that's so deep that suddenly, my God, and you lose sense of time, and that is a timeless thing, but it's also a sense of love, of unity, and we all have those feelings sometimes, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so we could be spending time with someone we love, like a grandparent or a spouse, and we just lose time or forget time because we're enjoying ourselves, or we could be staring at the beautiful sky or a sunset.
SPEAKER_00:All of those are examples, but we also see it in all sorts of experiments, like telepathy, that's an example of outside of space, through to dreams, which are outside of time, where predictive dreams, and they're remarkably common near-death experiences, all these sorts of things are examples of the human psyche for one of a better term, experience either no time or no space.
SPEAKER_01:So your work blends a little neuroscience with spiritual insight. Yeah. Where do you see science as most clearly validating these kind of ancient spiritual texts or traditions that people talk about? And how's that sort of affecting or what you've discovered with your work?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I mean, I think that there is validation going on at the metaphysical level in terms of the understanding of unity, and I think we're getting much closer to that. We're trying to understand what consciousness is, and I think that is complex, but I think you know, physics is moving towards an understanding of that. The trouble is, I think, in terms of psychological things, physics isn't really doing a lot of work on that right now, and I think I wish it would. You know, I'd love to see Timelight being subject to some controlled trials. You know, I'd really welcome that to put it through scientific rigor, because, you know, I'm very relaxed about that, because I know it's already helped thousands of people, but I'd love to see much more of that. I think it's going to be a ground-up thing. You know, I think it's going to be a lot of individuals who start to experience this. And it it starts to change the conversation, you know, further up the scale, if you like. And hopefully science would then say, well, we need to explore this. And you know, I'd like to see that happen.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you. Is there any scientific studies you've seen that isn't timelike that you think all that relates to anchor spiritual traditions?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah, loads of them. I mean, there was a newspaper that came out just last week by a woman who demonstrated how consciousness is a unified field. And that was picking up on the work of people like Heisenberg, and she's sort of just taking it a step further. So, in that sense, yes, of course, that's going on. I mean, it's been going on for some time. You look at the work of people like uh Capra, and we've done a lot of work in this field. Yeah, as Lynn has done, my wife has done, and she's found that the you know, the idea of so many things which have been scientifically verified by her work, such as intention, uh small group intention, that has been verified. So, in that sense, it does this mean that the people are from Princeton are going to all do this research? I don't know, but it is being done. And so I think that's pretty pretty exciting.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So you spent a lot of time in journalism and publishing, and you've kind of had a front row seat into people's and seeing people have challenges emotionally, maybe psychologically and physically. What patterns do you see that timelight directly speaks or helps to help people unwind?
SPEAKER_00:I don't know about unwind, it's not a relaxation thing, but to understand and to see, perceive what is the processes are that are going on. You know, that's really what its function is. You know, the first and most important thing is clarity, is to really understand what is driving you. Because it's important to understand when we go through explaining the energies that are released at the point of trauma. You know, not only does it cause problems in terms of your health, but it also creates all sorts of issues about which are then manifested into the world. And it creates a you that has them. You know, I said at the outset, well, one of the key differences with time light is it does not recognize the idea of most therapies that there is a uh an agent who has control and makes choices, but who unfortunately things have happened to. That self is actually created by the processes of that energy to begin with, and there is no difference at all between that self that has the problem and the problem. And until you really see that, deep healing is very difficult to achieve. So that's a fundamental difference. And you know, it's it's it's really understanding that this is doing so many things, it is creating a self and uh has a lens through which it sees the world, which then, if you like, creates patterns which are self-affirming. So that that that process goes on, and it creates a self that believes it has the issue, but the issue has has him or her. That's the other way around. It's the wrong way around that we've been seeing it. And if you could only see that, no, no, there is no self, there's no Brian that has anger issues, uh, there is the energy from trauma that manifests as anger, which also then creates a Brian who then uh identifies with the problem. That actually is what is going on, and we're not seeing that, we don't recognize that, we don't understand that, but that is what's going on. So we have it round the wrong way, and when you see it that way around, say, oh, there is no difference between me and this energy. In fact, that I am the creation of this energy, this self is a creation of the energy itself, then I can start really looking at that and and looking to heal that. Now, the the fundamental point is that to me, good therapy is all about changing our relationship to time. That's the fundamental thing. It's not changing or not trying to fix the anger problem. What we want to look at is what's driving the anger, the processes behind that, which is the energy. And then when you start looking, working at that level, then it can transform. Because otherwise, if you think that, for example, yeah, let's go back to our anger issues. You know, you think you have anger problems and you want to fix them. Well, where does the desire to fix them come from? It comes from the anger, so therefore, um it is just a is just an extension of the original problem. So, really, rather than trying to fix it or whatever, is to perceive it. And that's what I said. So important to have that clarity. And there are four stages to the time-like therapy. And the first stage is identifying these issues, and there's loads and loads of questionnaires and things we we do to try and do that. But all of these are manifestations. So, whatever it might be, you know, my might have a hair trigger anger, I may self-sabotage, I may suffer from depression, I may be anxious about life. All those are manifestations, and they are manifestations of the process. And one of the first mantras I teach my therapists is treat the process, not the manifestation. Because if you deal with the process, all sorts of manifestations, all the problems we think we have, actually start to disappear. If you try and deal with one thing after another, you you know, you'll be forever doing it. You have to see it differently. So the first stage is recognition, the second stage is called revelation, and that is really understanding the three-part model of ourselves. And I would just spend a moment on that, if I may, because you know it's broken down into present time, and you are within present time, your body, yourself, is within present time. It's not that you are creating, you are within it. The second one is the past selves, the psychological past is the one we've been talking a bit about. About where the energy of trauma resides. I mean, this is a map, you know, it's not, you know, but it's just a way to understand your psyche. The second memory is narrative, which is your story. You remember your name, where you're brought up, your religion. Yeah. And the third one is knowledge, which is I know how to tie my shoes or change your light bulb. But all of those things are actually acts of memory. You know, and it's an extraordinary thing, but that is true, but it's all memory. And I don't want to sound trivial, but when you fuse two of those memories, which is the narrative with the psychological, that is the home of all conflict. All wars are fought over memory. And it sounds trivial, and I don't mean to trivialize it, but war and conflict is a is a is an act of memory. If no one remembered anything, there wouldn't be the war or conflict.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So friends do fuse to be.
SPEAKER_01:I remember I had a spiritual teacher once that said, you know, if you could give everyone a lobotomy, it would make life a lot easier. But you're not going to do that. And it brings a little sense of humor because there you're saying memory is what causes a lot of challenge. You did this or you didn't do this, or et cetera, et cetera. I guess my next question that I really wanted to sort of go go into is, you know, for someone who is repeating the same patterns in a loop, a negative loop, the same stories, the same triggers, what's the first gentle step that they could shift their relationship with time?
SPEAKER_00:Well, there are lots, actually. Um, because we go through about there are about 21 different exercises that we carry out. Um and that that is in the third third phase, which is called becoming time-like. And having gone through the revelation, which is understanding the three-part self, then that then we can move on to that. And so going back to the first phase, which is manifestations, and that is to recognize these patterns are going on. You know, you are having money problems, you are having relationships problems, you can't hold down a job, or whatever it might be, these are all manifestations again of the energy. So we say, okay, you know, you how are you going to fix money problems? Well, if you change the energy, then money problems will change. And the person who has that energy issue can't fix it because it's something that is happening to you. So what we do is we have a whole series of exercises which help to change the relationship to time. There is uh things I could suggest that people do, and recognizing that they are not the agent doing this. And that's very important to say, well, it's not down to bad luck, it's not down to genetics, it is down to the drive of the energy from the past.
SPEAKER_01:So you're saying it's kind of memory, or what is it?
SPEAKER_00:No, it's it's it's is energy. You see, the point is we I still very well remember what my father did to me, but because I've changed my relationship to that, it has no power over me. It is not driving me.
SPEAKER_01:I remember it, but it has no power, and that's really the point. So it doesn't have a negative charge in Brian's system anymore. Right. So that's interesting. So the first you said the first thing that people could do in a challenging loop that they have over and over again, you'd say, is to be aware of it. What to remind me what the follow-up of be after what happens after being aware of it.
SPEAKER_00:Well, the first thing to be aware of why it's happening, and as I say, that's because energetic. They know they have it, but this is to understand the energy. Because don't forget, the very first formative expression was that to which you do not fully attend shall weigh you down. Then what does that mean? That to which you do not fully attend shall weigh you down. It's a really important thing. Crashed into my head. I don't know where it came from. And what it's really saying is that unless you fully attend, unless you're complete, fully conscious of any situation, you will take it with you, is essentially what it's saying. So what we do is all sorts of exercises where we encourage people to be to attend. And because time does not exist at all, other than as energy, we can always go to that moment. So, for example, I do an exercise called a thousand feet in the air. So, with that, you are a thousand feet up looking down on a seminal moment that happened to you in your life. It could have been your parents blocked you from doing something, or they said something so cutting to you, whatever it might be. Yeah. But at that point, you are a thousand feet in the air, you're looking down, you are in that situation as well. And furthermore, you have X-ray vision, and you can see the motivation and the background of all the players, and all the people you said, oh, we did this thing to me. You understand their motivation as well. So that's one little exercise. We also do exercises like, for example, rewriting the biography of your parents, and that is a very, very profound thing to do for people because it takes them up to the point of your birth. And it's saying, My God, and the pet your parents being born and the great excitement at a birth, you know, their first day going to school and so proudly holding their satchel, and you know, when they finally meet each other, all this sort of thing, where they so, you know, it's almost you could almost turn it into a Hollywood musical. But they are become human beings who had all sorts of issues and aspirations and hopes. And these people who, you know, when you see look at my father, was like a monster to me, isn't a monster at all. And I suddenly understood that how human he was and all the things that he suffered and hoped for, and so did I. So that was being to those that to which you do not fully attend. Now I fully attend, and I understand. I understood that my father had an emotional age of about five, but that was the best he could do, and that was a releasing thought. That was the best he could do. Yeah, that's very important to understand.
SPEAKER_01:So, would you say this kind of relates to the untrue story of you then?
SPEAKER_00:Well, the untrue story of you, which was the title of my book, which people think was quite an odd title, because it was untrue, because I didn't fully understand everybody's motivation. So every experience, and it is for most people, is from my perspective. You know, you hurt me, and whatever it might be, I then react from that perspective. I'm not reaching out to you because usually because I can't, if I'm small, I can't do anything about it. But I'm free, I have, but I did not attend because I did not understand the motivation of the other person, and we have to eventually do that. And you say, Well, you're a small child, what are you supposed to do? Well, probably very little, but you do have to do this, and similarly, we you know it's worth saying that we talk about trauma and we think about childhood. 40% of all trauma happens as we're at when we're adults, yeah. You know, so you know the same applies, and we have to attend, and we have to live so that time does not live us.
SPEAKER_01:I really like that. We have to live as though time is not us. Yeah, I like that. Let's try and simplify that, what that might mean in a in a moment, momentary experience.
SPEAKER_00:As I say, for most of us, we are creations of time. You know, I said that at the out the outside, we are creations of time. So, how do we not be creations of time? Well, we have to be fully present so that the energy of time does not live through us and create us and create a world and create the way we see a world. But we are fully present. You know, you mentioned Eckhart Tow, I think, a lot power of now. Well, this is how do you attain the power of now? Yeah, to be fully present in the only state that actually exists. The past doesn't exist, the future is an extension of the past. But how do you be fully present? The only thing we can do is to change that relationship to time in order to do that.
SPEAKER_01:Well, Brian, it's been really insightful listening to you today. And your books will go into such great depth of what you're able to only convey here in the time we've had together. Okay. And people who are inspired by your words today can have greater depth with the content of some of your brilliant work and be able to really uh maybe take it on and take those exercises and put them to their highest good.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, of course, and I hope they do. Furthermore, if I just may do a quick shout out, I've also developed a training program. I'm now looking to train up time-like therapists, and I've put together an accredited course, and I really do welcome existing therapists to take a look. There's some videos you can have a look at to get a better flavor of it. I'd like you to have a look. And there are people, we did a survey and found that 20% of the people we were sort of in contact with actually wanted a meaningful career change. We're really interested to become time-like therapists. I'm bound to say this. I think this is incredibly significant. I think that the realization of what time is and how it shapes us and the world is quite profound. And I think we're on the tipping point of a new spiritual evolution. And I think that time and understanding time is a really important key to that. So the more we can help people overcome that by having bringing on board our spiritual warriors, our timeline therapists, to reach out to hundreds and hundreds of people, make thousands of people, we'll I think we can start achieving a shift. You imagine if in any war zone you choose that most people have gone through time-like therapy, there wouldn't be the conflict. It wouldn't happen. I truly believe that timeline gives people the keys to do that. On a personal level, and that's really important, so that your life becomes to live fully present is an extraordinary experience. What it truly is, James, to be fully present at every moment, to see the entire miracle of life unfolding before you is to wake up every morning and to the extraordinary gift of life that you've been given and say, my God, this is a blast. This is crazily great. You know, I mean, it's just amazing. And it really is. To live like that, which every human being has the right to do, which we're supposed to do, is something I think that we should all have.
SPEAKER_01:I will share all the links to your books and your uh website underneath. But if there's anything you'd like to say, just as a last minute statement, what would you like to share with the audience?
SPEAKER_00:Simply that everyone should become time-like. It was given to me, I'm now giving it to you. Love it. I hope you use it. Thank you. Lovely.
SPEAKER_01:Brian is this week's Super Soul model. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks for tuning in. And if you've enjoyed this episode, remember to subscribe and share and join our community. Until the next episode, wishing you a wonderful week ahead and green lights all the way.