Feelings with Strangers

In this solo episode, I talk about health and the higher aspects of ourselves, and why I believe the two cannot be separated. It is much harder to connect to your soul, your purpose and what you truly want from life when your body is tired, unwell or struggling. We are embodied beings, and when the body is out of balance, the voice of our North Star becomes faint. I explore the idea that we are not born onto the earth, but from it, and how far modern life has taken us from the elements we are made of. We live in boxes in the sky, wear shoes everywhere, lose the stars to light pollution and rarely touch soil, feel the sun or look to the sky. I share what I notice between people who live close to nature and people arriving from dense cities, and what happens when we build a bubble so protective that it pushes nature away. This is a conversation about living in your times without being of your times, and making conscious choices rather than quietly accepting what the culture hands us.  You are the sky, the soil, the water and the stars, and your body is a divine antenna for all of it.   Feelings with Strangers YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@FeelingswithStrangers/videos Socials https://www.instagram.com/feelings.with.strangers/

What if the way your teeth come together is quietly shaping your posture, your sleep, your mood, and even how you age.   In this conversation, I sit down with Ken Leaver, the founder of Reviv. In 2014, his life fell apart within a month of a dentist in Vietnam filing down his teeth to treat TMJ. At 37, and with healthy habits, he was suddenly facing brain fog, sleepless nights, daily panic attacks, and the feeling that he was ageing rapidly. What followed was seven years of experimenting with splints, appliances and his own body, and the conclusion he reached is strikingly simple. Ken believes the teeth hold the height between the skull and the jaw. When that height is lost, the soft tissue and fascia around the skeleton begin to deflate, leading to a host of systemic modern health issues.   His approach comes down to two rules: add height between the teeth, and allow the upper and lower teeth to meet without locking together. We talk about what he's seen in the Reviv community, from clenching and grinding to back pain, straighter teeth and better mental health.   I also share my own experience of wearing the mouth guard for almost a month, including some of the best sleep I've ever had. We touch on hair loss and the scalp, fascia and hydration, and why earlier generations looked so different. Ken also shares his view that the body was designed for perfection and can find its way back at any age.   This is a conversation about structure, self repair, and questioning the systems we hand our health to.   Feelings with Strangers YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@FeelingswithStrangers/videos Socials https://www.instagram.com/feelings.with.strangers/   Reviv Site https://getreviv.com/?sca_ref=12227321.fUpRhVSygPc4GK&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=24306937380&gbraid=0AAAAA-XEkyyJdemwng-6jvXGpM6vcoR-E Socials https://www.instagram.com/egk_reviv YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@EGK-biomechanics

What if the life you're chasing, the security, the recognition, the right relationship, was never something you had to earn? In this conversation, I sit down again with Brian Withers, a teacher of what he calls the creative process, the idea that we arrive already whole: already worthy, already resourced, already carrying gifts the world is built to receive. Brian argues that life was designed to run on something far simpler than effort, a natural, almost automatic exchange between people expressing who they are and people benefiting from it. Somewhere along the way, most of us picked up a very different script: that we have to prove our worth before we're allowed to feel good, and Brian walks through exactly how that belief takes root and what it actually costs us. We get into the mechanics of it: the difference between the conscious mind and the subconscious one, why repeating a positive thought once doesn't undo decades of conditioning, and why your body's symptoms and your run of bad luck might both be pointing at the same misalignment rather than separate problems needing separate fixes. Brian makes the case that joy itself, not effort, not hustle, noteven money, is the real currency underneath everything we're trying to buy. This conversation explores what it actually takes to stop performing the life you want and start living it.   Feelings with Strangers YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@FeelingswithStrangers/videos Socials https://www.instagram.com/feelings.with.strangers/   Brian Withers YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@brianwithers357 Socials https://www.instagram.com/theknowledgeoflife/ Site highervibrationsnow.com

What if everything you are searching for was never lost, only out of sight, like a pair of glasses sitting on your head the whole time? In this conversation, I sit down once again with Hitesh Bhatt, a yoga teacher and YouTube creator, who speaks widely on the ancient traditions and texts. We begin with a simple question: how do you convey teachings that have to be lived to be understood? Hitesh's answer is that every teaching that ever made sense to him already felt familiar, and that books, teachers and friends are only reminders pointing us back to ourselves.  We talk about the mind as both the source of our conditioning and the way back out of it, the borders that exist in our heads but not on the Earth, and what he has noticed in people who return to their own nature: a deep relaxation and an acceptance of themselves even when they are not relaxed at all.  We discuss the idea that there is no person, only a mask; the limits of language; and why he no longer believes in enlightenment as a destination.  This is a conversation about simplicity, belonging and the illusion of safety. At its heart, it asks what changes when you stop treating life as a problem to be fixed.    Feelings with Strangers Socials https://www.instagram.com/feelings.with.strangers/ Youtube https://youtu.be/kmDja4q83i8?si=xIl7TbBrdeCEk5dh   Hitesh Bhatt YouTube Echoes of Existence https://www.youtube.com/@EOExistence Instagram https://www.instagram.com/yogawithhitesh Linktree https://linktr.ee/echoesofexistence Substack https://substack.com/@echoesofexistence1 Podcast Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/echoes-of-existence/id1837613927

Growing up, I skimmed astrology in the back of a magazine while waiting in line; it felt like random fortune-telling rather than the ancient guiding principles of your archetypes.  Steven Forrest is one of the most respected voices in evolutionary astrology. He has spent over fifty years and 50,000 readings deeply understanding this triumph of human consciousness.  In this conversation, we cover the difference between a fatalistic approach to your astrological chart and one that points out a way to make informed choices. Steven's approach isn't about fixed personality types; it's about tracking the same restlessness we can all recognise in ourselves, the fact that none of us is the person we were a decade ago, and asking what a birth chart might reveal about the direction that change is already pulling us in. We get into free will and its stranger cousin, the freedom to avoid using it. Steven has a phrase he returns to a few times: informed compassion, the idea that once you understand where someone's fear or defensiveness actually comes from, judgment tends to fall away on its own.  If you've ever wondered whether the thing pulling at you beneath the surface has a shape, a logic, or even a kind of map 'home', this conversation will help.    Feelings with Strangers YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@FeelingswithStrangers/videos Socials https://www.instagram.com/feelings.with.strangers/   Steven Forrest  Site http://forrestastrology.com/ Lila App https://www.lilaverse.app/  

Can learning about yourself be done not through more thinking, but through moving your body until the truth comes out? In this conversation, I sit down with Adam Barley, a movement and embodiment facilitator who has spent more than three decades helping people access what words alone can't reach. Adam's own path started almost by accident: a friend's book landed in his hands one frustrated Sunday afternoon, and within two hours he'd decided to leave his job and sell his house to follow it. We talk about the shame and repression he carried from a buttoned-up English upbringing, and how dance gave him a way to feel what he was never given permission to say out loud. We also go somewhere much harder. Two years ago, Adam was diagnosed with an aggressive, fast-moving cancer that took him from perfectly healthy to unable to walk in three weeks. He describes the experience through an old, beloved children's story, of finally having something claw through a skin he could never fully shed on his own, and what it actually took to come out the other side changed, not just recovered. This is a conversation about grief, fear, the strange gift of heartbreak, and why healing doesn't have to look like effort at all. Sometimes it looks like shaking, crying, or dancing with no one watching. If you've ever needed permission to move without knowing why, it's time to begin.    Feelings with Strangers YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@FeelingswithStrangers/videos Socials https://www.instagram.com/feelings.with.strangers/   Adam Barley Site https://adambarley.com/   Events & Courses New Course Listening in the Dark https://adambarley.com/events/listeninginthedark/ Adult Addict https://adambarley.com/events/adult-addict/

What if the voice in your head telling you you're not good enough was never actually yours to begin with? In this episode, I sit down alone to talk about the looping thoughts most of us carry every day, and the moment I realised I had a choice in whether to keep believing them. I share how I spent years assuming my negative thinking simply was me, a permanent feature of who I was rather than a pattern I could examine and change. I get into where those thoughts actually come from, the difference between a thought that serves me and one inherited from somewhere else entirely, and why meditation has been the single biggest turning point in learning to create space between a thought and my reaction to it. I also go into the deeper terrain I've come to hold as true: that perception shapes reality far more than we're taught to believe and that the body carries far more than we realise. This is an episode about awareness, self talk, and the long, imperfect practice of choosing love over fear, again and again, even on the days it doesn't come easily.   Meditation Course  https://meditationsteps.org/   Feelings with Strangers YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@FeelingswithStrangers/videos Socials https://www.instagram.com/feelings.with.strangers/  

What if you've been taught to see your body as something to control, discipline, and force into shape, when the only thing separating you from radical transformation is learning to listen to it instead? I sit down again with Mikey Breathes, a world traveller, energy teacher, and the creator of The Guide, for a wide-ranging, unfiltered, and often very funny conversation about energy, self-love, and what happens when you stop fighting your own body. We start from China, where Mikey is three months into a stay he describes as the most physically intense place he's ever lived, and use it as a jumping off point into the real subject of the episode: voltage. Not vibration, not manifestation, but literal energy, what generates it, what discharges it, and why so many of us are walking around running on empty without ever asking why. From there we get into self-love, redefined not as indulgence but as self-preservation, and its opposite, which Mikey argues isn't self-hate but self-ignorance. We talk about the difference between discipline and cooperation, about what it actually means to be present with your body rather than at war with it, and about escapism in all its modern forms: doomscrolling, new age spirituality, waiting for disclosure, outsourcing your thinking to AI. Mikey shares the personal story behind his own health journey, and we get into some genuinely big territory: momentum over manifestation, dependency as a loss of power, and what it means to bring life into every interaction you have, rather than waiting for life to happen to you. A note on tone: this one is loose, playful, and frequently ridiculous, but the message is clear - maybe it's time to begin to listen to your boy rather than trying to control it.    Feelings with Strangers YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@FeelingswithStrangers/videos Socials https://www.instagram.com/feelings.with.strangers/   Mickey Breathes Socials https://www.instagram.com/mikeybreathes/ The Life Guide https://theguide.life/?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio

What if the depression you can't explain, the boredom that follows your "success," or the sense that something inside you is protesting isn't a malfunction, but your soul trying to get your attention?   In this conversation, I sit down with James Hollis, Jungian analyst, author of over twenty books, and one of the most respected voices working in psychology today, to talk about what it actually means to live a meaningful life, and why so few of us are ever given permission to try. We open on something deceptively simple: the gap between what the world wants from us and what our own nature is quietly asking of us. James explains why this estrangement is built into being human, shaped by early adaptation, cultural noise, and a nervous system never designed for the volume of stimulus we live inside today.   From there we move into the psyche as a self-repair system, one that will produce depression, addiction, and repetition compulsion not to punish us, but to get our attention. We talk about feelings as autonomous, honest data rather than something we invent, and that meaning is something we're obligated to discern for ourselves, not something a parent, culture, or institution can hand us. James shares his own decision to leave a secure, tenured academic post in his thirties, a choice many around him thought was reckless, and reflects on why honouring what's true for you rarely looks safe from the outside.   This conversation moves through grief, permission, the false self, the narcissistic agendas we all carry, and what Jung meant when he said the greatest burden a child carries is the unlived life of a parent. And it closes somewhere unexpectedly tender, on ageing, mortality, and what James calls the quickening of the spirit.   If you've ever felt a low hum of dissatisfaction beneath an outwardly "successful" life, this will help.   Feelings with Strangers YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@FeelingswithStrangers/videos Socials https://www.instagram.com/feelings.with.strangers/   James Hollis Site https://jameshollis.net/ YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@JamesHollisFilms   Books mentioned in this episode Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Meaning-Second-Half-Life/dp/1982683473 What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life https://www.amazon.com/What-Matters-Most-Living-Considered/dp/1592404200 Swamplands of the Soul: New Life in Dismal Places https://www.amazon.com/Swamplands-STUDIES-JUNGIAN-PSYCHOLOGY-ANALYSTS/dp/0919123740 Autumnal Days: Courage, Integrity, and Ownership of the Soul (forthcoming) https://www.amazon.com/Autumnal-Days-Courage-Integrity-Ownership/dp/1649635028

What if life is simply a mirror, and every frustration, delay and setback is showing you exactly what you believe? In this conversation, I sit down once again with Brian Withers, author, life coach and creator of Higher Vibrations Now, for our third conversation together. This time, we move from theory to practice: where action actually fits into manifestation, and real stories of people who have changed their lives by changing their energy. Brian is quick to clarify that he doesn't teach manifestation at all. He teaches alignment, with manifestation as the natural byproduct of the energy flowing from you. From there, we unpack the difference between inspired action and joy action, why we are receivers rather than makers, and how something as ordinary as sitting in traffic can become a conversation with the Law of Attraction. We speak about thought options, the simple but radical idea that we are never obliged to think the thought that arrives first. Brian explains where our thoughts actually come from: generational faulty beliefs, inherited voices passed down from parent to child, running on auto-repeat in the subconscious. That these beliefs, not our genes, are what we truly inherit. We also explore the difference between empathy and compassion, why jumping into the hole with someone helps no one, and the practice Brian calls reparenting: giving ourselves, as adults, the vibrational guidance we never received as children. This is a conversation about energy, patience, momentum, and the stages between wanting a different life and living one. It's about why joy is the currency of abundance, and why the timing of change is different for every single one of us.   Feelings with Strangers YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@FeelingswithStrangers/videos Socials https://www.instagram.com/feelings.with.strangers/   Brian Withers YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@brianwithers357 Socials https://www.instagram.com/theknowledgeoflife/ Site highervibrationsnow.com