Get Booked – John Siddiqe, Signposts Of The Spiritual Journey 041021

You are listening to Get Booked with me, Hazel Butterfield, for Women's and Men's Radio Station. I absolutely love doing this show, talking to authors, chatting about anything and everything books related, and all the joy, enlightenment, and escape that good books can provide. Sit back and let us entertain you with a different guest each week, sharing who they are, what they do and what inspires them. Now, today on the show, we have John Siddiqs with the Signposts of the Spiritual Journey, which is going to be released this year, November the 23rd. John is a much-loved wisdom teacher, writer, and poet best known for his authenticity, humor, and feet-on-the-ground wisdom. I have loved working through John's latest book, a delightfully unique and open approach An introduction for some to spirituality. Uh, let's get cracking. I can't wait to have a good old chinwag with you. Hi, John, how are you? Hey, Hazel, it's lovely to be here. And it's, uh, because I know the book's not out yet, so it's great to kind of actually be talking to somebody who's read it. Yeah, I've just been— do you know what, it's interesting because I'm not really a spiritual person, and I like, as I said in the intro, I love the approach because it's It's definitely more open, and it's— I love the explanations that you've given, and you— it's an all-rounded approach for anybody and everybody, isn't it? That's it, absolutely. And northerner to northerner, uh, I would say to you that kind of, you know, if you're the kind of person who thinks that you're a spiritual person, you're probably not. So, uh, my approach is, is kind of because it's your ordinary life, it's actually entering properly into your ordinary life. That is a spiritual path, whether you want to use that word or not. You have to use some title on the COVID but kind of, it's so easy to kind of slip into kind of false ideas and identities of ourselves. I'm a spiritual person, I believe in this, I believe in that. But actually, the path has to come from your own heart and your own life. So these kind of like additional identities don't really help us at all, right? Yeah, yeah. And I think also There's a lot of preconceptions with spirituality, but I think predominantly this book is just about love and understanding, loving ourselves, understanding ourselves. It really is. And, and I just want to point out to all of our listeners that, um, regular listeners will be used to my more adapted southern accent, but when I have a northerner on the line, my accent goes all over the place. And we've just found out that, you know, you're actually from about 10 minutes away from me up north in one of my favourite places. Absolutely, yeah, well, 15 minutes on the— yeah, 15 minutes if there was a clear road because that road between where I live and where you are from in Huddersfield is kind of— can get pretty bunged up, can't it? But yeah, as the crow flies, 10 minutes. To be honest, it's a lot quicker to get there because of that great big hill. Yeah, coming down that big hill, absolutely. I always get in trouble actually when I go back up north, I call I quite often go and stay in one of my favourite— there's a hotel and there's also like an Airbnb place as well in Hebden Bridge and I'm like, 'Oh, I'm gonna go stay there because I love it' and the dog gets really happy because she gets to go up into the woods. Well, you need to let us know next time you're here. Oh, I will do, I will do. It's been a little bit too long since I've been there and it is absolutely stunning. I mean, have you— has the flooding stopped? Because you were struggling a little bit at one point. The town has had some real flooding issues and they keep building houses in the floodplain and stuff, so there's not much brains go into it, never mind heart, unfortunately. And they're determined to keep on building houses. Whatever you do, people, don't build— buy a house on a floodplain. They've been doing this kind of big European-funded sort of flood alleviation scheme, but it's not been tested to destruction yet, so we need to kind of get through a proper winter with it and see if it works. The thing is though, where you live is just so unbelievably pretty that people just say, "Eh, give it a chance, let's just, we'll just see what happens." It is one of the most beautiful places on earth, it really is, and I'm not saying that just because I live here. The landscape around here, the hills, the walks, the rivers, the water, it's just, there's nothing like it quite honestly, you know, and that's why it's used for so much filming and all that. There's always like a film crew hidden in the woods somewhere, you know, or along the canal. I walked in, I bumped into a film crew yesterday walking along the canal as I was walking along the canal. They just pop up everywhere and it's because you just— there's nothing else like it, quite honestly. Oh yeah, the vistas, it's absolutely stunning. Yeah, it's incredible. But yeah, if you're gonna come and try living here, just try and be up a little bit. You know, I'm one street away from the bottom. Ah well, there you go. Yeah, but we don't flood, we're just enough, we're just enough, we're about 8 foot above where the floods are. Oh well, fingers crossed. Yeah. Do you know what, living in somewhere so picturesque, does that actually help with your inspiration and kind of getting writing done? I don't know because My goal isn't to get writing done, in a way. I know, I mean, this is my 8th book and kind of, um, you would assume, uh, that that's kind of an angle that I take, but I don't consider myself a writer. Uh, writing just happens to be something that, that kind of, uh, God, for want of a better word, or whatever you would call it, kind of seemed to have put into the karma of this lifetime. And I mean, I work hard at it and, and I really put my efforts in, but I've got a great team as well at Watkins, and the distribution is done by Penguin, so we've got an amazing team behind us. But I don't go out of my way to do that, but my daily walk in the woods I think is a huge part of being able to kind of turn up and write when it is time to write. Do you know what, that is so important. I mean, they call it forest bathing, don't they? Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Shinrin-yoku. And what I've been finding, especially, I've read some similar books around meditation and I definitely find Signposts of the Spiritual Journey quite a different route and I've really enjoyed reading it. And I found that, I mean, I'm the kind of person that listens. I go out for walks every single day. I'm one of these people that, you know, I hit 15,000 steps pretty much every single day, even if I have to get up at 6 AM. I've got a dog as well. And I, I listen to books on Audible and I steal my son's Spotify playlist. And what I have found that I've started doing is I have my earbuds in and I don't listen to anything at the moment. And I'm just— it's incredible how much more I'm enjoying my walks when there's just nothing going on. It feels like I'm meditating. Absolutely. No, absolutely. Walking is one of the best kind of emotions if we're you know, I'm sure we'll talk about mental health and stuff as we get into this a bit more, but walking is one of the best emotional processing tools that we have. And what I find exactly the same is that I kind of, I don't listen to music when I drive. I don't listen to things when I walk. I just actually enjoy being where I am, you know, and listening to kind of like the space between the bird sounds and things like that, or just listening to the river and stuff. And feeling your feet as you're walking along. And yeah, I mean, you'd think that Signpost would be a book about meditation. It's quite funny when you get to the first meditation in the book, it actually says, I bet you thought we'd have talked about meditation before now. It's because it is quite a different— I don't know if route is the right word for it, but, you know, my editor, when she approached me to kind of write for Watkins, it was that kind of difference that attracted them. It was the kind of And I hear this a lot about my work. People go, oh, you're different, you know. And I always reply, well, I hope so. Yeah, I hope so, you know. Oh, it's not the same as all the other meditations. Thank God. Yeah, all right, you know. Um, oh, you seem to speak like a real regular human being. Oh, that's all right. Yeah, that I don't do a kind of false new age voice or anything. Authenticity and kind of honesty and meeting yourself in your own life. That's kind of where this book begins, but that's kind of where I begin, I guess. You know, that's always been my journey too. It's like, what's real? How do I turn up and not be false in this situation? When you kind of— you go out to a bar— I mean, I don't drink anymore, but if you go out on a Friday night or Saturday night you listen to the laughter around you and you feel people— I don't know if you're— if any, if any of our listeners notice this, or you listen— notice this, Hazel. The laughter is kind of like a false laughter to kind of create a kind of forced sense of belonging in groups. And yeah, uh, we kind of have to culturally agree in certain ways, and I find that all to be like the taste of death and ashes in my mouth, quite honestly. Whereas when something is just simple and it's you and me and we're just ourselves, well, surely that's the right place to begin. And that's the way to kind of actually put our feet on the earth and be genuine. Yeah, absolutely. And not even a false idea of genuine, because you get this false sense of authenticity too, where people are really brusque and horrible with each other, um, going, well, I'm just being authentic, I'm being radically honest. 'Actually, mate, you're being a bleep bleep bleep.' But, you know, um, uh, you have to kind of keep the love in place, basically. And, um, uh, but we're worse with ourselves. The, the, the, the person that we're worst with, with all of that, is ourselves a lot of the time. I did find, actually, um, because I'm sure there's many people who are not used to, quite skeptical about spirituality, um, I actually flagged page 8 where you've put quite early on a personal note on the language here, and I— that really helped me because it kind of led— it started the path for me because I knew that it wasn't going to be— I suppose the word is woo-woo. No, there's no woo-woo. Yeah, there is no woo-woo. There's no woo-woo. There is no woo-woo. If I'm honest with you, you know, We've used the word spiritual, but I actually prefer the word sacred. Oh, okay. Um, because everybody experiences sacredness in their own lives. Uh, spiritual sounds like something that you add on to yourself, but as I say, you, you, you give a book a title, it kind of fits into a certain genre. We know where it's going to go on the bookshelf in the bookstore, you know. And you have to do that, you have to do that, you know. But as I reflect on my own practice, like, and I've been practicing a very long time, the, the key to it all has been kind of love and honesty, authenticity, and, and this kind of hint of sacredness. And sacredness is like you hold your baby in your arms and you're just looking at each other, or you're sat with the person, you know, your family that you look, you know, and you— or somebody that you love your chosen family or your birth family if you get on with them, and, and there's something simple and real between you. That's the quality of sacredness or true spirituality that is the beginning point within ourselves. There's something in each— inside each one of us, apart from that kind of adapted personality that we've learned to kind of live in the world with, there's something inside each of us that just feels like us the whole time. And really, the spiritual path or the sacred path is noticing when you're not in that place and then deciding to do something about it, to heal the blockages that get in the way of you actually having that sense of wholeness in as much of your life as possible. You talk about blockages quite a bit in the book, and well, there's a basic methodology to the book. Um, yeah, so I wanted to kind of lay it out really clearly. So basically there's different stages of the movement towards greater awareness of this kind of whole self, I suppose. So that's the 16 signposts, kind of things that you will notice, uh, along the way. Then there's what the blockages are that stop you experiencing that, and then what blockages you will meet once you are through that area. Kind of thing, because there's always more blockages, uh, and more awareness to have, and more love, and more honesty, and more authenticity, because we're constantly evolving and constantly learning. And no matter what path you're going on, you can't determine that exact path, but you can, you can try and give yourself, you know, a leg up as much as possible. But well, that's it, people constantly working on ourselves. Yeah, people tend to think that you do a thing, you're done now. It's like emotional healing or mental health healing or training at the gym or looking after your body. You don't go to the gym once and suddenly you're slim or got muscles. You don't kind of— Oh, is that what I've been doing wrong? I went once and I don't understand why I'm not fitting back into the clothes I was in 10 years ago. It's because we've built the world the wrong way around. What we should be able to do, we should be able to go to the gym once, right, slim right down to our ideal weight, and then kind of pay for it later. But sadly we have to pay for it day by day. And, and, but, you know, looking after ourselves mentally, emotionally, spiritually, you know, um, relationally and so on, it's not a do it once and then it's done. It's like a constant unfolding from an honest place in ourselves. Yeah. So this would, this would be no different. So forget an endpoint, forget ever having an endpoint, just Be what you can in this moment with each other. You and me talking to each other right now, be in our hearts with each other, be in, you know, an open space and an honest place with each other, and that will mean that the next day is a lot better. And it's appreciating that we do have our ups and our downs and to just keep on going, to let go as well. And you know what, I'm actually reading, um, I've got an Audible at the moment that I am so incredibly loving, and I can't actually say the title on air because it involves swearing. Oh, is it that one? Yeah, well, no, there's a few of them like that. Oh, there's a few of them. Yeah, I mean, this one is by Andrea Owen, and it's called How to Stop Feeling Like— Yeah, yeah. Sugar. Sugar. Yeah. Yeah. It's about just accepting what's happened and keep on working on yourself and move on, let it go. And I'm absolutely loving it. It's a bit like if Glennon Doyle and Brené Brown had a love child. Right, right, I get you, I get you. Yeah. Now I do want to talk about these signposts in a little bit more detail, but first off, and it's taken us pretty much 20 minutes to get here, uh, tell us a little bit more about yourself. You did warn them about Northerners, didn't you? Yes, I was hoping that we could actually— I wanted to end the show with one of my favorite meditations that you've written down in the book. And I'm okay, I don't think we're gonna have time. Oh well, we'll see, we can drop in a little bit. Yeah, so yeah, tell us a little bit about yourself. Who, who are you? That is the funniest question in the world, isn't it, really? I mean, what, what route do you want to take with it, Hazel? Because there's the spiritual journey version, there's the pain journey version, there's the, well, really, you know, I just am who I am talking to you right now version of it, you know. I would say, what, what got you to the point where you knew this was your calling? That's really easy because I knew when I was 6 years old. Yes, I read that. Yeah, I was born this way, and it's really weird because, and it's not something I talk about a lot. I certainly do, I talk, I do talk about it in the book, but I try to really minimize it. I'm one of these, I was one of these children that used to have kind of visions and, you know, I learned quite later, kind of a little bit later on, if you talk about stuff, they lock you up because they think you're bonkers. Especially up north, you silly twazzock, get in this padded cell, you know. But when I say visions, I don't mean like, you know, UFOs coming down from the sky or anything like that. I just had this kind of sense of the oneness of life underneath everything. And it used to kind of burst through quite strongly. And now that I'm, you know, I've studied and read and, you know, really kind of put the, put the work into kind of, um, look backwards, you know, in the kind of the Ayurvedic lineage and the yoga lineage and the different meditation schools and so on, you know, going back thousands and thousands of years. I really do my research um, but to base it on real experience. I realized that there were what you might call kind of Kundalini awakenings, or kind of, you know, sort of big shifts of energy. And that never stopped all the way through my life, apart from now, at this ripe old age that I am now. It's almost like a kind of sort of just a, just a gentle illumination. There's like kind of an extra light that I see, and sometimes I think other people can see it, but we don't allow ourselves to. But, um, so I knew at 6, although I didn't have the means to express it, that, that I was drawn towards what we might call a sacred life, or, um, I don't know, because it was only my life. I can't explain it in terms of something abstract because it's not abstract, uh, to me. It was just, it's just the, the sense of my own life. And, um, approached because I was right, my mum was an Irish Catholic, my dad was an Indian Muslim. So I went to see our local priest when I was like 14, 15 to ask about maybe becoming a priest because it was that strong in me. And then I was reading books like Illusions by Richard Bach and, um, Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, and those were kind of just affirming me, you know. The Prophet, Khalil Gibran, Mr. God, This Is Anna by Finn, stuff like that. And all I was seeing was kind of signs of kind of like, you know, follow the path, the journey to the east, as they called it, uh, in the hippie times. And, um, and the priest, priest said, no, no, no, Catholicism wouldn't want you. And, um, uh, because that's just too weird, man, you know. And so I kind of followed different schools and things, but what I found was is that I, I kept coming back to this kind of what in old kind of spirituality, old Indian spirituality, the yoga lineage, proper yoga lineage, not kind of Western exercise yoga. I keep— I can't keep— it just kept coming back to this. Yes, you can put yourself into a different religion, or you can put yourself into a lineage, but at the end of the day, there's just this sense of life. There's just this sense of I am. Not I am as in me, me, me, ego, but I am as in completeness of life sort of thing. Within, within— even though you've got your situations and you've got your difficulties in life and all that, there's something inside each one of us that is part of— that is the wholeness which uniquely expresses as Hazel through her sort of karmic life, through John through his life, through my mum, through my wife, through the dog, you know, through that tree. Um, and that's exactly the same as I felt when I was 6 years old. So it's kind of like I've gone kind of full circle. So any kind of trips out from that into kind of illness, depression, mental health stuff, being involved with this religion, being involved in that yoga lineage. It's story, and the truth that— and then it doesn't matter so much, but the kind of the wholeness is what matters. What's interesting, what you said there, is about, you know, how the Catholicism wasn't necessarily the route to go down. There were a lot of people who are constantly searching for somewhere to fit, and that is the basis for a lot of anxiety and depression. And people— it really is, yeah. And they need to understand themselves and forge their own path. And I think it's becoming a lot easier now for people not to go down a particular route that they've been told about and to actually build their own path. Well, we talk about this in Signpost, don't we? There's a section on this where I kind of actually really get into it. And what I would, what I say in a nutshell, I mean, I don't want to give away the, the big secret at the end, but it was the butler who did it, um, um, with the candlestick, with a candlestick in the library. Um, yeah, no, there, there is a, there is a, there is a special end to the book, but, um, uh, uh, but what I, what I said, why, I don't know what the word is, suggest offer, invite people to consider in Signpost is to not give up their religion, to not change anything at all actually. Because one of the things that we do is we try and chop off from things to get to somewhere, but that's somewhere that we think we want to get to is an imagining. It's something that we've read about or whatever, and it seems appealing, and we try and jump into it. We try and take on that thing wholeheartedly. We say, I'm a vegan now, and I'm a Buddhist, and, uh, or, you know, I, uh, I only drink real ales, or I drink gin. So we try and take on the thing as our persona, as our personality. Or I'm a Christian, I'm a Muslim, I'm a Jew, I'm a Buddhist, I'm a this, I'm a that, I do Vedanta. Um, and I would say just stick with who you are and what you are but go to the heart of that thing over and over again, that place of authenticity and genuineness in that. And so if you go to the religion of your religion, you end up in the same place. And then you might find that the form no longer suits you. But if you kind of go, right, I'm chopping this off because I'm going to become somebody else, it's just another adaptation, it's just another thing. Does that make sense? Yeah, no, it does, and I just think the most powerful tool, the most powerful gift we can give to each other, which is why I love reading, because whether it's fiction or non-fiction, it teaches us something about other people and about ourselves and where we can recognize certain similarities. Knowing yourself is the most powerful tool ever. Absolutely, yeah, and there's different ways of knowing yourself. Obviously there's the psychological aspect of it, Obviously there's kind of an emotionally literate aspect of that. Then there's your health layer and all that. We've got so many dimensions to us, but underneath that there's this, this sense of kind of true self or whole self or I am, uh, and then there's more to it than that. But we, you know, uh, that's, that's kind of for deeper reading. Yeah, I don't, I, you know, I don't think that we should kind of chop anything of ourselves off, but what happens is is that as we kind of keep coming to what's true in things, the things that are not true just simply dissolve. So instead of looking for the right place to be, just enter into the moment where you are, uh, and, and then the stuff that's not real or false or that's kind of, you know, limiting, we actually will just see it more clearly so we can make changes, or it will just dissolve. Well, this is— I mean, there's a fantastic saying, um, I, I read it in a book and it was called The Anxiety Girl. And, and, and this relates to meditation because meditation is all about being in the here and the now and just calming yourself down. And in Anxiety Girl, it said we need to live in the now because depression is fear of what's happened in the past and anxiety is fear of what's going to happen in the future. And if we live in the now, both can't exist. I agree on one level with that, but being somebody who suffered with terrible anxiety in his life and enormous depression. Oh, myself too. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you know, almost like hospital-level depression in my 30s. My doctor was ready to lock me up, actually. I'm so grateful to her. She was such an amazing woman. She made me really look at my life. I would say that when we hear things like that, it's really easy to get into a bit of kind of guilt and shame with ourselves of, oh, I need to live in the moment, right? What we don't say to ourselves is, yes, but I don't bloody well know how to do that. Well, that is hard. Yeah, because when you are depressed, you're not thinking straight and it's black fog. Exactly. And I do like the concept That's why I've— that's, that's, that's the kind of— if there's a USP about Signposts, it's not that I have the answer, it's that I question— that it questions stuff like that. Because if we don't kind of, uh, it sounds so good, it sounds so amazing to say just be in the now, just be present, just let go, but no sod ever shows you how to, right? So what I thought— well, that, that's what we've tried to do. I mean, I, I I can't say I don't know whether I've succeeded or not. What I've done is taken a, a punt at it with all my heart and soul, uh, and said, you know, well, maybe this is how we can do it, or I've observed this, uh, in people, and, and I've observed this in my own life, and so on. And, um, and it's that how-to is, is really, really important, uh, because otherwise our ego attaches to things and will say, okay, I am letting go, I have to let go of this thing. So it gets involved, and of course we don't let go because we're, we're busy kind of having a battle with ourselves. But this is why it's called a practice, a meditation practice, a yoga practice, because you've got to keep on practicing. You don't just flip a switch and bang, you're there. It's something you have to work at. It's, you know, as you said, like the gym. Yeah, I think on one level there is that, on one level there is that kind of turning up, but the actual entry into the moment is not something that you have to take a running jump at. It's, it's actually about realizing that you are just kind of living in your old conditioning and stuff. That's what takes the time, accepting that you're living through stuff that keeps you out of the moment. Um, it's not that you take a run-up and then suddenly you can enter the moment. It's actually about softening that stuff back the identity layers that you've been living through that actually keep you out of your life. Wow. Yeah. It's— yeah, I must, I must say the, the way that you have described this in Signposts and, and about, you know, the blockages that we have and the processes that we go through, I found it hugely helpful because, you know, As human beings, we do fail at things, and we're getting increasingly busy, and if we fail at something, it's so easy to give up, isn't it? Absolutely, yeah. But where does that idea of failure come from, I guess? Because is that not just another one of those mental ideas that we carry, that there's a failure, rather than this being an adventure and let's see what happens? Well, maybe, I mean, you, you mentioned about going back to the age of innocence before life kind of gets in the way. I did read a brilliant book by, um, there was a group of 3 authors who wrote a book on how to find your inner child, to be a kid. Have you, have you read that one? No, no, no, but inner child work is a really important part of this journey, I think. Yes, definitely. Um, do you know what, I should— I'll send you a link to the, the book Be More Kid because it is absolutely fantastic. It's just, you know, going back to before, before life tells us what we should be and how we should behave and what, what's important, and it all just gets a little bit messed up, doesn't it? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I love a guy called John Bradshaw who was kind of like the originator really of all the inner child stuff. Right, and then there's all this other stuff that comes after, but I always go back to him and his stuff. There's a book of his, Homecoming. At the back of Signpost, there's a kind of list of recommended reading. I love it that you've split it up into different sections depending on what people want to find out about. Well, I'm not trying to kind of— you see, a lot of people would kind of come at this of kind of, right, here's my book, now how can I capitalize on people the most and how can I milk it as much as possible? What I've done with this, I've kind of gone, right, here's 40 years of kind of practice and study and kind of experience and whatever. There it all is. Off you go. Now leave me alone. Which is kind of, you know, not because I don't want to engage with people, but why do we have to keep people spinning in a kind of spider's web all the time to keep kind of taking from them? You know, this book should actually be enough in some ways, you know. Um, but Bradshaw's amazing. He really kind of gets down to it. He's a how-to guy. If anybody kind of is wanting to work with inner child stuff, maybe like this book that you're saying about Hazel, um, Bradshaw isn't kind of like a, well, wouldn't it be nice if, and, you know, I invite you to— it's like, look at this horrible thing sitting on the table, right? We're going in, you know. And, uh, and then you're like, oh my God, my family were alcoholics, and, uh, and I learned to adapt to them in this way, and that's why I've been living like this. And all my thing that I think is me is actually a defense system. Oh God, I'm in trouble now, you know, kind of thing. And he takes you through it so gently and so kindly. Um, he's amazing, Bradshaw. And if maybe I've kind of learned some of that stuff from him, you know. Of kind of actually getting your hands dirty. I'm just putting it into my Amazon basket as we speak. There you go. Hey, we're supposed to be selling my book here! Do you know what, this is what I do, I mean, I do always ask people for their book recommendations. So Bradshaw, John Bradshaw, yeah, anything by him. So let's do the Bradshaw thing properly, okay? If it's family stuff, so if it's like the wider family, Okay, then there's a book called The Family, right? He makes it really simple. The family, right? Homecoming, which is about how to actually come home to yourself through your inner child, reclaiming and championing your inner child. Exactly, absolutely beautiful. And then the stuff that he really specializes in, which is toxic parenting and sort of alcohol and addictions. So if those things are figured in people's lives, then, you know, he's done a kind of a book for each of those things. And if you paired him with the kind of stuff that we're talking about in Signpost, I think you can actually really kind of add a lot of value to your own journey, quite honestly. I mean, he's so beautifully, radically honest, it's incredible. I love that, and we do need a lot more honesty. Yeah, we do, we do. And there's, I mean, what I tend to do with my books is I go from like, I have like a route of 3 different, I read 3 different books. I'll go for something that's like yours, which is more, I hate the term self-help, but it's a bit more maybe personal realization. And then I'll go to— Oh, I like that, I like, can I have that? First realization. Yeah, that's, that's your little present. Okay, I'm having that. I'm actually writing it down, love. Yeah, brilliant, I like it. And then I'll go on to something that's fiction and then something that's just ridiculously funny. And so I do that route each time so that I'm constantly just switching up rather than just overloading with one particular genre. No, that's right. That's right, you've got to keep it wide, you know. I was thinking to myself, at some point she's going to say, have you got 3 wellbeing tips or something like that? And one of them was keep it real, keep your experience wide, don't narrow down too much. And keeping humour involved in it is really important too. Oh yeah, definitely. I mean, in my household, it's possibly, we're always kind of swaying between the kind of humour that's either ridiculous or possibly going to offend at a dinner party. Okay, that sounds like— I'll come to that dinner party. Yes, but you've kind of— you've started, so I feel like you should finish. I do always ask for 3 tips on mental well-being because I love that. I love other people's perspectives on what they love and what they use to try and keep themselves as as mentally fit as possible. So what would be your 3 tips, keeping in mind you've given us one, but by all means give as many as you like. Okay, yeah, well I've got 4 actually, it's 4 that came up. So I've got this, but you see I've got this astonishing publicist, Vicki, hey Vicki love, and you know, this is, it's just wonderful, and so she's like, Hazel always does this, you know, so we, you know, it's not just kind of coming on somebody's show, you know, I listen to you first and make sure I've kind of heard what your show's like, things like that. And, and she kind of gives me such amazing backup, so I, I feel like a very blessed human being at the moment. Okay, so, uh, so my 3 tips are 4. Uh, so number 1 would be do it with love. Uh, and, and I actually, just to expand on that a little bit, like when we talk about mental health, I find myself so strongly in disagreement with a lot of what's put out Mm-hmm. Because we leave emotional health out so much, and unless the heart is engaged, there can be no improvement in mental health. So very often what we try to do is we go to war with our minds instead of realizing that we're hurt and bringing love to it. This is kind of almost like an inner child sort of thing. So if the mind is hurting, You know, if it was your child that was hurting, surely you wouldn't shout at it and yell at it and call it this and swear at it, which is what we do with ourselves with our self-talk. We would talk to our child with love. So we have to treat the child— surely the mind is a child of our awareness, a child of our consciousness. So we need to treat the mind with love, but we also need to meet ourselves with maximum love when we're not very well or when we're going on our journey or healing. So number 1 is do it with love. Number 2 is take 100% responsibility. You can spend all day talking, blaming everybody else. My parents did this, and the school did that, and that person did this to me at that age, and I'm never going to get over it. So what you've done is you've made your limitations there and then. It doesn't mean to say that these things didn't happen. But the only person who can do anything about it is you. So it's a horrible thing, and this is a Bradshaw concept, we have to take responsibility for what we've not been responsible for. But this is just the language we use as well, and yeah, I mean, something happened in the past, right? And you need to just sometimes just adding a few more words into your sentence which separate what happened to how you're going to progress in the future. Um, I'm really sad at the moment. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, you'd be so careful of the language. Or you can say, I am feeling really sad today, because, because you're feeling really sad, but the I am is not necessarily sad. Have you noticed that you can be really happy and sad at the same time? Oh yeah, you know, it's not as simple as I am this and I am that and I feel this and I feel that, because, because it isn't. Um, the wonder of duality. Absolutely. So responsibility doesn't mean blame. Responsibility means saying, okay, this is what's on the table, and then moving out of our reactivity to it and actually just seeing the work that needs doing and then lovingly doing that work. So love and responsibility. Number 3, don't forget to dance. Ah yeah, uh, dance as much as possible, um, because you need a break from it all, and you will do more emotional and mental processing while shaking your thing than, uh, than you will if you kind of sit there looking at it going, so I don't know what to do about you. Not trying to avoid anything, but you can even dance when you feel absolutely the worst. I don't know if you know Gabrielle Roth, Five Rhythms, um, her original Five Rhythms stuff. I've got her old videos and she does this thing where you take whatever you're feeling right now. I do this with kids in schools. I do sort of meditation and stuff for kids in schools quite often and, um, uh, and I always get them dancing. I bring some music and get them dancing and I say, take whatever you're feeling right now And then if you're feeling like dirt, let's move our arms as if we feel like dirt. Let's move our elbows like we feel like dirt, and our hips. And, and, and then suddenly you don't feel quite so much like dirt anymore. You actually start enjoying it, or you start laughing at yourself. And so movement of the body is a great emotional and mental processor. So that— so, so that's number 3. And then number 4 is keep it wide. I.e., don't overfocus on the one thing and make that, you know, I am dealing with this thing that happened to me and that's the only thing in my life right now. Make sure that you're looking after your health, eating right, getting your daily walk every day, doing your journal, being with your friends, playing some music, whatever, but keep it wide. Don't narrow down too much. Well, this actually relates a little bit, the section on page 68 possible areas of upgrade, you know, just look at certain areas that you can possibly upgrade and widen your capabilities. Yeah, that's right, that's the kind of keep it wide section of the book. I think it's called the path of upgrade or something, and I noticed that in my own life, in the kind of you make the smallest real forward step in kind of small but meaningful areas like You don't suddenly kind of switch your diet out, but you just kind of drink a bit of extra water every day. And then, because then once you get used to that, then you can take another step and then another step. It's all baby steps in, in kind of lots of different areas. But if you take a kind of almost like patchwork approach with what suits you, you can make enormous progress really, really quickly. Well, it's like GCSE revision, you know, bite-size. Do a little bit and you'll be surprised how much these little bits add up to. Absolutely. Sometimes we look at something and we have a goal and just think, that is way too much. But, you know, possible areas of upgrade, just slightly upgrade each time. It'll become part of your practice, part of your being, of who you are, and then you can slightly do a little bit more. You know, don't say, right, I'm going to go to the gym 5 times a week. Start by going once. Get used to it, squeeze in another one in a month or so, you know. Well, you know what's the most— do you know what the most important thing about going to the gym is? Getting out, walking through the door. Yeah, isn't it? If you can— if you get your footstep outside your own door and you get your foot in through the gym door, job's done. Stand on your yoga mat. It's not about projecting through 30 minutes of doing Surya Namaskar. It's standing on the end of your yoga mat, and then you think, well, I might as well move a little bit. You do one round, and then it leads to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. So we're always trying to jump to the end, but I, I would like us to be at the beginning always. We're always at the beginning and enjoy the journey. Well, there isn't really a journey, is there? I think, I think there's just a constant now. Yeah, yeah. There's the constant now of things, and then there's like, oh yeah, well, that thing needs a bit of work, and, and, you know, so then that, that's time-based as I work on that thing and dissolve that thing or open that thing up and learn about it. But most of it just takes place in this moment because there isn't another, another moment to do it in. I love that. Interestingly, um, when I was listening to my Audible, um, at the gym the other day actually, and she She was talking about certain mantras, and I was thinking, that's something I've got to ask John. Yeah, what is your favorite mantra? Um, I have one that I use myself, but if I guess that I'm not going to share actually, um, because you're meant to keep your mantra to yourself, and, uh, it's yours, something's got— and it's mine. Yeah, so, so I, I, you know, I mean In part of my life, I'm a kind of fully initiated old-style yogi, and, um, with the full name and everything, you know. Um, and sometimes people try to call me that, but I just keep John because I say, you know, the name John Sadiq is kind of enough, quite honestly. I don't need an additional identity. Um, so I'm trying to think what mantra I would say for, uh, outside of my own practice. Um, You see, and that's something else. You've always got to keep a little something for me, for yourself, uh, not, not give everything away all the time. And, uh, and it's okay to not share. See, it's fine me saying, yes, Hazel, I have a mantra. No, I'm not telling you. I did wonder whether you'd tell me, actually, because I think, I think if I, I want to really work on myself and find one that works for me, and I haven't found one yet, and I think when I do Fine. Well, let's, let's look at how mantra works, okay? Let's look, actually look at how mantra works, because again, like you were saying before, maybe it's not a case of finding the one that kind of is externally right, but it's kind of, it has to be an internal sort of thing, doesn't it? So, you know, the, the, the syllables of the mantra, the bija aspects of the mantra, they have a kind of resonant aspect to them. Uh, so it's not just kind of like the literal meaning of the mantra, but the mantra actually, because it's old language, you know, Sanskrit, it can— it's kind of closer to original sound. Um, and so you're kind of engaging with that in a way. And then it's how you engage with it. So if you're just kind of going around your mala going, you know, like Ram Dass, for example, uh, if you remember Ram Dass, he used to go Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram which was just saying the name of God. Um, and that's what his teacher Neem Karoli Baba taught him. And he would just kind of, even when he was giving a talk, if he was sat here talking to you now, he would keep his mala in his hand and he would just internally be turning his mantra around. Um, uh, and so you can kind of do it as if you're kind of hiding in your mantra, or you can do it as if it's kind of like an offering from the heart, or it's just a sort of sounding of vibration that you're kind of aligning with. And so I think you need to kind of choose your path with the mantra, and then maybe the mantra just kind of finds you once you've kind of done that. Yeah, sometimes we can keep on looking for something and then it just arrives at the weirdest times. Yeah, and that's what happened with mine. I was given a particular mantra by my teacher, um, back in the day But then I found that later on a new mantra kind of emerged that's from a very classical text actually, which is really interesting, uh, and it was just absolutely not replaced the old one, but just like, this is where we are now, this is, this is the way forward. And, uh, and it's, and it's, and it's, and it's amazing. I mean, I am creating a kind of membership area of my, um website at the minute, and kind of, uh, there's a free membership site, but there's going to be a subscribers area, and, and that's going to have some mantra stuff and things in it where I suggest some mantras for people and stuff. I just want to point out to our listeners that that's authenticliving.life, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, but I would suggest if you need a place to begin, just begin with Om. Okay. Yeah, just, just begin with Om, you know, because Om is the primal sound. And it's, it's what you, what you hear in the silence in between things. It's kind of like the resonant everything that everything comes from. Oh, it's the, it's the, you know, even at the Bible it says, in the beginning was the word, and that's the word, you know. Amen comes from Om. Ameen in the Islamic tradition comes from Om. They all come from Om. So we may as well go straight to the biggie. And go from there. Go from there. Or maybe that's all that you need, just om. Just, you know, try it and see. I'm gonna— I will do. Do you know what? There's something weirdly magical when you're in a room of everybody doing yoga and then they all do it and it just hits that unified tone, and it feels fantastic, doesn't it? It does, yeah. If you get 15 people or whatever in a yoga class and then you do some oms at the end, like a joint om, just all moving with your natural breath, it is one of the most beautiful sounds. I mean, it is the— I can't think of anything more gorgeous, actually. We— I think I need to, um, up my yoga game because I started going a little bit left field with my yoga. I did it with, um, a friend of mine, and we used to do yoga every Wednesday. And we used to either do Woga, Doga, Choga, and Goga, which is basically— Woga is wine and yoga. Uh, Choga, we'd have a cheese board afterwards. Uh, Goga was having gin afterwards, and Doga was when we let my dog join in as well. And so I think we went a little bit off course with our yoga, so we need to possibly get back to seeing a practitioner rather than me and my friend making up our own style. Well, you know, there's that, but that's the asana practice, you know. Yoga is much bigger than that. And so, you know, you have the, the 8 limbs of yoga, and, and the most important thing in yoga really is the yamas and the niyamas, you know, the first two, first two aspects of yoga, uh, and pranayama, which is kind of, uh, You know, if you ever want to improve your health, um, learn, learn some simple pranayama. Pranayama is very mistaken in the West because they take it to mean doing breathwork, uh, but it's not actually that at all. It's about prana means the life force, and life force is carried by the breath, but it— but breath is not the life force itself. So it's learning to work with, uh, the internal energies of your own, of the life force. So you you can take more in, you can hold it and retain it and so on, but you can also circulate that prana around the body. You can bring it to areas that need healing, you know. And, and so, um, and that's actually more important than the postural work. So learning to work with your life energy is kind of part of really what yoga is about. Do you do any of these online? I mean, I know that you said you do some work with Lululemon. Do— are they all No, I don't teach yoga at all. I don't teach yoga at all. I just do— I just have my own practice with yoga. With meditation, I teach meditation a lot online. I teach with, um, uh, an app called Wellness Coach 3 days a week. Uh, I teach live with, uh, Insight Timer, but I've also got a course on Insight Timer called Self-Acceptance Through Authenticity. Um, and that's had like 20 people done it now. And, and actually it goes with the book really, really well. Um, and so that's, that would really be worth people checking out because it's a nice audio course. And, uh, and you can just do it like, you know, once a week or something like that and kind of do the exercises and things. And I think that really helps take you forward. Um, and the book isn't really based on that course, but there are elements of the course in the book. So I think they're a really nice pairing. Um, and we just need to remind people as well, um, that they can go and have a look at Signposts of Their Spiritual Journey on your website authenticliving.life and make sure they pre-order it so it arrives. It's up for pre-order right now. And, um, yeah, it'd be lovely if, uh, if people did pre-order it. It really helps with kind of sales rankings and, and, uh, and all that sort of thing. But, you know, more than anything with Signposts, um, it's funny because I'm not trying to flog anything to anyone. In a way, I genuinely, with my hand on my heart, did this book because I'd intended not to write anymore. It's my first book in 10 years. I'd actually sort of retired from writing and said, okay, I'm just going to teach quietly now. And the only reason I've done it is to kind of— for it to be a kind offering in the world of hopefully something real amongst all the noise. That's quite honest. It's something just is urging to get out, and regardless of whether we want to stop something, sometimes, you know, there's that burning need to do it. And I guess it was there, and it— I'm sure it poured out of you quite easily. It was, it was actually quite quite straightforward to write. Yeah, yeah, it was. It took me 2 years, and, um, uh, you know, and I have my, my way of writing and things, and, um, but it just seemed very natural. It's— and, and the response to it, even though it's not in the public domain yet, in the public realm yet, but the people who have read it, everybody kind of goes, oh yeah, this is what we need actually right now. This is exactly the right time for this book. And I'm finding that to be such an amazing response. It's very straightforward, it's not pushy, and it's very comprehensive. And I hope you can have a good laugh in there as well, quite honestly. That was one of the signposts when people— when you pointed out that some people might be awakened and suddenly start annoying other people with their new realization as It's like, yeah, yeah, we do that, don't we? We definitely do that. Um, but yeah, no, it was— it definitely did have quite a lot of humor. I thought you were gonna— I thought you were gonna mention the other one. There's one, isn't there? Kind of the first rule of the spiritual life. Do you remember? Oh yes, I don't— can I say that? Can I, can I say that without swearing? Uh, you can, you can use different words. Yes, the, the— yeah, okay, well, fudge and sugar and— well, absolutely. So So we could add this into our top 3 tips actually, so this can be the 5th of the 3, so it can be a kind of a pentology or whatever it is. The 5th tip is don't be an a-hole. Yeah, yeah, and do you know what, a lot of people could live by that, that could be a lot of people's mantras. There you go, there's your mantra, don't be an a-hole. I mean, being a northerner, I'd probably go a little bit further a little bit higher on the swearing myself. Om, om, don't be an a-hole. Yes! Oh, there you go, we've just given everybody the biggest tip of their life. I think we've probably just put everybody off. Do you know what, I bet we have. Now there's one other question as well I like to ask everybody, and because there's so much social media out there, there's so much, so many people trying to offer up information and advice and all these influencers. Yeah, I'm not one of them. No, and sometimes we need to just be reminded of good, wholesome, interesting people, whether it's just because they're funny or they don't take themselves too seriously. And I like to remind our listeners of just good people in the, in the public eye to look out for that are just doing something that are contributing to our life. Who would that person be for you? Oh, you know, I've been struggling with this, and, um, because I don't partake of culture I don't watch TV. Um, I haven't done— a Northerner that doesn't watch Emmerdale? I, I— no, I don't watch anything. Uh, I don't want anything streaming or anything. I don't watch anything. Um, because, because of where it comes from. Um, it comes from a place of trying to kind of capture us through the pain body a lot of the time. And, um, and we don't— we, we need to Everybody's free to do what they want, but what I found is as my own practice deepened, you know, drinking just went away, watching TV just stopped. I access news by just kind of looking at kind of a few different news sources over, over, you know, in with it. I give myself like 3 minutes and I just go, right, now I know what's going on. But it's always the same thing that's going on— division, duality, uh, not using love to move us forward. Moral panic. The world— so it never changes. You don't really need to read the news, so I don't really read the news much apart from knowing some specific information. Um, and so I don't— I tend to be very out of date musically. I love music and I love dancing and things, but I don't know anything about movies. I don't know anything about sport. I don't know anything about, um, TV personalities or celebrities or anything. I have no idea who people are. Uh, the last thing that I saw that somebody famous did that actually impressed me is a video on YouTube of, uh, because I'm trying to desperately come up with somebody, Hugh Jackman, right? Uh, who was in The Fountain, and I think he was in some superhero films or something. Um, Wolverine. Okay, well, he's very famous. Uh, and there's a video of him on YouTube talking about his meditation practice, and it's fantastic. Absolutely humble, sweet, and very, very real. And, uh, about how his life has changed because of his meditation practice, because he's been, he's been, he's been meditating about 15 years, and, um And he's just a very, very— because this is the interesting thing from a kind of yogic point of view. When you look at people, the reason that, that kind of, uh, the way that kind of a lot of TV and film works is it tries to kind of get us through our lower energies, kind of. And then as we kind of— but as we kind of genuinely walk this true path of our own lives, what happens is, is that those lower parts of us kind of get kind of cleaned out and become more real, and the kind of heart opens and the mind opens, the soul becomes more illuminated or illuminates our life more. And so we can still see that somebody has kind of like a charisma or a magnetism to them, but you also see more of the kind of the wholeness and the soul of that person. And in that interview, you see— you're going to see this famous person but then you see this very pure soul at the same time. And it's really, really quite interesting. I'm just looking it up now. Yeah. Have you got the title for it? I don't know what it's called. There's so many. There's a lot of where he's talking about Transcendental Meditation. And there's quite a few up here, but I think I'm just going to work through quite a few of them. Howard Stern. Hugh Jackman and Howard Stern discuss Transcendental Meditation. No, it's not Howard Stern. It's just talking to some guy. I'm just going to look on my phone right now. I shouldn't be doing this. While we're talking. Oh no, it's fine because I'm gonna look through quite a few of them and I'm gonna keep on working my way through until I've listened to all of them because let's be honest, he's quite nice to look at as well. Thank you so much, John, for chatting to us today about everything. Oh Hazel, it's been gorgeous. Thank you so much. Thank you for a lovely— I like your description of what you do, you know, kind of we're just going to chat away and people can kind of listen in. I like that way of doing things. No, I love it too. These are my— when I, when I do these chats, they just absolutely lift my spirit and soul. They're just fantastic. And, and I get to speak to people like you, and thank you so much. And just— oh, you're a star! Ah, thank you! Let me know when you're up this way. I will do, hopefully very soon. Okay, we'll go for a coffee and squeeze or something in Hebden. Yeah, let's do it. I'll bring the dog. See you soon. Thank you so much, John, and thank you for joining us here on Get Booked.