Make a fist round the thing you are clinging to, then open your hand. Notice it does not fly off. That is the whole lesson.

About 11 minutes with Steven Webb's calm voice.

It can be an object, a person, a habit, or just how you think things ought to go. First you feel the grip, actually in your fingers. Then you open the hand and let it sit there like a butterfly, not pushed away and not held. Push at an attachment and it grips harder. Stop pushing and it starts to loosen on its own.

Treat me to a coffee, keep the podcast free, and get my Weekly Calm every Sunday. It is all on stevenwebb.uk

Thank you for sitting with me.

Steven

Stevens new course: Finding Peace in Everyday Life (you choose how much to pay)

• Support Stevens work and links to other podcasts: stevenwebb.uk
• Donate paypal.me/stevenwebb or Buy Steven a coffee

For the aches you have started apologising for. A weathered bench above a beach, and two younger versions of you already sitting on it.

About 15 minutes with Steven Webb's calm voice.

The Japanese have wabi sabi, the beauty in the worn and the cracked. A bench left out in the salt for years. I think we can look at ourselves the same way. Every line and every ache is a record, not a fault. Your body has never once left you, and it has done its best with everything thrown at it.

Treat me to a coffee, keep the podcast free, and get my Weekly Calm every Sunday. It is all on stevenwebb.uk

Thank you for sitting with me.

Steven

Stevens new course: Finding Peace in Everyday Life (you choose how much to pay)

• Support Stevens work and links to other podcasts: stevenwebb.uk
• Donate paypal.me/stevenwebb or Buy Steven a coffee

Forgiveness is not for them. You do it to stop drinking the poison and waiting for someone else to feel ill.

About 11 minutes with Steven Webb's calm voice.

In Zen there is mushin, no mind. Not empty, just roomy enough that things can arrive and leave again. You bring one person or one event, say plainly that it happened and it hurt, then ask what it taught you. I do not believe in forgive and forget. I do not think it is possible. You never have to tell them. It is not about them.

Treat me to a coffee, keep the podcast free, and get my Weekly Calm every Sunday. It is all on stevenwebb.uk

Thank you for sitting with me.

Steven

Stevens new course: Finding Peace in Everyday Life (you choose how much to pay)

• Support Stevens work and links to other podcasts: stevenwebb.uk
• Donate paypal.me/stevenwebb or Buy Steven a coffee

Recorded late in my own afternoon with too much still on the list. Five minutes to settle before the evening.

About 5 minutes with Steven Webb's calm voice.

Shoulders, eyes, forehead, breath. Nothing else in it. There is one idea here I keep coming back to. It is far easier to bring your calm to the world than to calm the world down first. We nearly always try it the hard way round.

Treat me to a coffee, keep the podcast free, and get my Weekly Calm every Sunday. It is all on stevenwebb.uk

Thank you for sitting with me.

Steven

Stevens new course: Finding Peace in Everyday Life (you choose how much to pay)

• Support Stevens work and links to other podcasts: stevenwebb.uk
• Donate paypal.me/stevenwebb or Buy Steven a coffee

Shikantaza, which is Zen for just sitting. You do not fight the thoughts, suppress them or work them out. You just stop boarding them.

About 14 minutes with Steven Webb's calm voice.

Sit on the platform and let the trains come in. That one is not yours, so you do not get on. Your mind hands you another straight away, and eventually it learns which ones you take. One line does most of the work here: I have thoughts, but I am not those thoughts.

Treat me to a coffee, keep the podcast free, and get my Weekly Calm every Sunday. It is all on stevenwebb.uk

Thank you for sitting with me.

Steven

Stevens new course: Finding Peace in Everyday Life (you choose how much to pay)

• Support Stevens work and links to other podcasts: stevenwebb.uk
• Donate paypal.me/stevenwebb or Buy Steven a coffee

Zen does not fix your life. It stops you needing to. A short talk and a sit, for anyone tired of working on themselves.

About 12 minutes with Steven Webb's calm voice.

Somewhere along the line we were told peace is earned, and that once everything is sorted out we can finally rest. I think that is backwards. This one asks you to be the sky that lets every kind of weather through, and to sit with three lines: nothing to do, nowhere to get, nothing missing.

Treat me to a coffee, keep the podcast free, and get my Weekly Calm every Sunday. It is all on stevenwebb.uk

Thank you for sitting with me.

Steven

Stevens new course: Finding Peace in Everyday Life (you choose how much to pay)

• Support Stevens work and links to other podcasts: stevenwebb.uk
• Donate paypal.me/stevenwebb or Buy Steven a coffee

I use this one when I feel myself contracting, usually because of other people. A circle that keeps getting wider.

About 12 minutes with Steven Webb's calm voice.

Your closest people first, in a circle around you on a meadow. Then it widens to the ones you half know, then to strangers, then to the ones you find difficult. If you meet resistance you soften round the edges rather than force it. Then the edge dissolves altogether and it is just love in, love out.

The companion talk episode: How Big Is Your Circle? Let's Talk Love and Acceptance

Treat me to a coffee, keep the podcast free, and get my Weekly Calm every Sunday. It is all on stevenwebb.uk

Thank you for sitting with me.

Steven

Stevens new course: Finding Peace in Everyday Life (you choose how much to pay)

• Support Stevens work and links to other podcasts: stevenwebb.uk
• Donate paypal.me/stevenwebb or Buy Steven a coffee

When everyone says you are doing enough and something inside you still says you are falling short. This is a place to rest, not to fix.

About 14 minutes with Steven Webb's calm voice.

The part that says I must do more is not your enemy. It is a child that never felt finished. You let it ache and you hold it. Underneath is a bigger mind that already holds everything and wants nothing. You are both, and you are the one who sees both. I let the small mind ache. I let the big mind open. I rest in the middle.

Treat me to a coffee, keep the podcast free, and get my Weekly Calm every Sunday. It is all on stevenwebb.uk

Thank you for sitting with me.

Steven

Stevens new course: Finding Peace in Everyday Life (you choose how much to pay)

• Support Stevens work and links to other podcasts: stevenwebb.uk
• Donate paypal.me/stevenwebb or Buy Steven a coffee

Turn the phone face down. Eight minutes of the actual world instead of the one on the screen.

About 8 minutes with Steven Webb's calm voice.

You use what is really here. Sounds you do not bother naming, the air on your face, the chair under you. The pull to go and check something will come, and you can feel it come and not move. The real disconnection is noticing there is nothing you need to do with this moment.

Treat me to a coffee, keep the podcast free, and get my Weekly Calm every Sunday. It is all on stevenwebb.uk

Thank you for sitting with me.

Steven

Stevens new course: Finding Peace in Everyday Life (you choose how much to pay)

• Support Stevens work and links to other podcasts: stevenwebb.uk
• Donate paypal.me/stevenwebb or Buy Steven a coffee

Falling asleep is not something you do. It is something you allow. Eight minutes of getting out of the way.

About 8 minutes, mostly tense and release. Only listen where it is safe to sleep.

Toes, calves, thighs, arms, face, then everything at once. Tense and let go. It is the quickest reliable way into sleep there is, and it is nearly all of this episode. Somewhere in there the limbs stop feeling like yours to carry. The body goes first and the mind follows, which is the right way round.

Treat me to a coffee, keep the podcast free, and get my Weekly Calm every Sunday. It is all on stevenwebb.uk

Thank you for sitting with me.

Steven

Stevens new course: Finding Peace in Everyday Life (you choose how much to pay)

• Support Stevens work and links to other podcasts: stevenwebb.uk
• Donate paypal.me/stevenwebb or Buy Steven a coffee