#862 Mindfulness Retreat - Let me bore you to sleep - Jason Newland (11th July 2022)

Hello! Oh, how are you? Are you well? That's good. Ah, so here we are again. Let me bore you to sleep.

The wonderful little podcast about very little, very, very, very little. So my name's Jason Newland, and my website is jasonnewland.com. So only listen when you can safely, safely close your eyes. Ah, question of the day.

What attracted Geri Hall to Rupert Murdoch? What about him? There's lots of good things about him. I was just wondering what, what was the main thing that she really found attractive about him? So, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. That's a bit of a cynical start to the podcast, Gigi.

Maybe. Maybe. I had a lot of problems with yesterday's podcast.

Lots, lots, lots of problems. And if it continues, I'm going to get very annoyed. So basically what happened is, I did the recording yesterday, and I had these, ah, I can only say it was like clicks.

And there was about 30 of them spread throughout the recording. I had to find them, delete them, and everything. And it was really quite a task.

And because of the software I use, often after about 10 minutes, I'll be editing and then the app will just close. So I've lost all the changes I've made. So what I did is I edited it in 10 minute slots and saved every 10 minutes and then reopened and did that.

Well, somehow, keep saving the same recording with changes. I ended up with a distorted recording. I didn't realise, so I uploaded it because I've been doing this a long time, never happened before.

And I was listening back just to make sure the volume was okay. And it was distorted, not, not distorted badly so that you couldn't understand what I was saying, but tinny and a bit, a bit, um, yeah, just a bit distorted and I didn't, didn't like the sound. So this was last night, I uploaded them.

So it was yesterday's recording. This morning, I had to start all over again. I thought about just deleting the whole thing and just making a new recording.

But what I did instead was I made, I went back to the original recording that hadn't been mastered. And I made the changes in there. And I, I found a different way of doing it.

So I found a way of marking each one, saving it and then deleting each bit. So I only saved it once and then I mastered it to make it louder, improving the sound and it worked, seemed to work okay. But it took me hours and hours.

Yeah, I probably spent about five or six hours on that from yesterday till today, just for one stupid recording, when it would have been easy just to delete it and record another one. It would have been, it would have saved time. Now, I don't know what has caused the clicking.

And if it happens again today. I've listened and I've you know, I've done a tester and it wasn't nothing was happening. I don't know if it's some kind of interference.

If it's the microphones broken or not working or the disconnection that keeps coming undone. If there's some kind of static issues from other equipment. I don't know.

I really, really don't do not have a clue. So I'm just gonna go with it. And even now it looks, I know what they look like on there.

And it looks like there might be one there already. So I'm gonna stop this and see. I had to stop the recording, unplug it and listen.

And that bit that looked like it might be a click. It wasn't. Very strange, very strange.

So what I've done is I've turned the volume down on the actual microphone as I record. So I had on pretty much maximum. So maybe that was distorting it and I've realized that I can record on a lower level.

And when I put it through the mastering software, it increases it the same as if it was a higher level anyway. So I don't want, I don't want to have to learn this stuff. I don't.

I just want to be able to make the recordings and just move on with my life. Make the recording and upload it. You know, a little minimum, minimum editing.

But now it's just got more complicated. I mean, until about two years ago, before I got the microphones, the decent microphones, I was having to spend a good two hours editing each recording. Sometimes longer.

I have to listen to the whole thing and just take out bits and bobs and background sounds that were too loud or distortions or words that are, you know, that were a bit mumbled because the microphone wasn't picking it up because I was using a lapel microphone for a while. So since I've been using the better mics, it's, I thought, I thought I had it sorted. I really did.

But I hope that my other recordings haven't had that. But I do listen back. I don't listen to the whole recording, but skip through and I know how to tell when there's an issue in a recording.

Usually there's, because, you know, it's, if you've never used audio software or editing software, there is a, it's basically a line across the screen and little bumps, you know, where, you know, where the voice is talking and stuff or other sounds. Sometimes it peaks high. So someone, I don't know, if someone blew a whistle in, in the kitchen, there'd be, you know, be a big spike.

Why would someone blow a whistle in the kitchen? There's no one in the kitchen. I don't know. Perhaps it wasn't a good example, but if I coughed or if I sneezed or, you know, any other bodily functions, of course, I don't, I'm not safe.

I farted, but I would never, I'm a professional, I'm a professional lady and I would never do anything like that ever, ever. Do you never accuse me of stuff like that? I would never. How dare you? How dare you accuse me? So, um, Mary sent a message.

Thanks for your message. I can't remember what you sent, but thank you. You sent something.

What did you send? But anyway, thank you for your kind words. I did, I think I replied. So, because I did ask the other day, are the recordings better, a louder volume? I'm hoping it's not just louder, but clearer and just a better quality.

The background sounds more reduced. I mean, there shouldn't be a huge amount of background sound with this microphone anyway, but if there's a plane going past and I'm doing a whisper recording, you're going to hear the plane because quite often in the, or the hypnosis recordings, I leave gaps that are quite long, you know, maybe 10, 20 seconds, maybe a minute sometimes where I don't say anything. And of course I don't do that in these recordings because I'm a little chat box in the let me bore you to sleep podcast.

So I hope it's okay. All I want to do is just make the recordings. I want to do some more stuff.

I want to do some more hypnosis stuff. I want to read some more hypnosis books. And I get distracted by the other stuff.

You know, I mean, you've, you've heard me in action, getting distracted. If you listen to these recordings enough, a few times, you'll see I often get distracted. You know, yesterday I had this magazine in front of me called a woman and I was going to go through it and read stuff.

I got as far as reading one tiny little bit from the first page, didn't even open the magazine. And I still managed to talk for about an hour and a half or an hour and 20 minutes or whatever hour and 15 minutes, three minutes for three minutes. So, and I ended up talking about Patri girls and just, I think what it is, is because when I mentioned something, I realised that even though I do have an audience in the UK, I have a good size audience in the, you know, live in the UK of England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Isle of Man, Isle of Wight, Guernsey, Guernsey, is that UK? And a few other places.

So, a lot of those people who live in these places would know or at least understand a lot of the references that I use when I refer to maybe a celebrity that's in this country. For example, if I mention Michael Barrymore, people in America, some people in America, maybe most, may not know who I'm talking about, but anyone in England knows that he was an absolute superstar here. But then if I mentioned another comedian, Benny Hill, a lot of Americans would know about Benny Hill.

I mean, in some cases, Benny Hill is probably more famous in America. At some point, you know, because he wasn't on the telly in the 90s here. But in America, he became very popular.

And he was a genius. He was, he was, again, he was very, very famous. And he was on telly from the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s in this country.

And they seem to drop him. And then I think he became quite well known in America in the 90s with reruns of his old shows. That is kind of an example of what I mean is I might mention someone that you may understand if you're in another country, but you might not do so.

I kind of explain it. So I was talking about Peter Andre and Jordan, the Patriot or former Patriot. And a lot of people, I mean, there's a lot of people wouldn't know who they are as well live in this country.

Some people just it's not their thing. It's something they don't like Peter who? And but they are quite well known in this country. And I'm sure also Australia as well.

Peter Andre is Australian. And but he might be known in other countries, especially Europe and that because he was, I think he's quite a quite a big star in around Europe as well. So I end up talking and trying to describe who the people are, what the references that I'm making.

And by the time I've done that, I've forgotten why I mentioned it in the first place. And then the recordings finished and the hour is up. It's like, oh, oh, why? See, yeah, that's I guess trying to cater for every body trying to.

It's impossible. It's impossible to do. But I just know that from just from the stats, and I'm not going to talk about the stats, but just saying from the statistics, it's, you know, high percentages of my audiences in America.

And the second highest or the second highest percentage of my audience is in the UK. And then the third highest is, I think, Australia. And I got audience, I've got audience all over the world, but the like the the bigger chunks is kind of Denmark, Ireland, parts of Europe, Germany, New Zealand, South Africa.

So like English, some, I know South Africa isn't predominantly English speaking, but there are a lot of English speaking people live in South Africa. And England is, again, is predominantly English speaking, but there's lots of people that don't speak English or as a first language, but it's predominantly kind of an English speaking country. And America, of course, is millions and millions of people that English being their second or third language that live in America, but it's still classed as an English speaking country.

And Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, parts of South Africa, there's a lot of English speaking people, or there used to be. And I guess I'm assuming anyone listening to me can speak English, because otherwise you wouldn't be able to understand what I'm saying. Unless there's some kind of interpretation software being used, and that possibly, I don't know.

So, but that that would be, and to, to listen to this as your second language or your third language, I do wonder what that's like. Because I must sound a bit strange at times. Some of the things I come out with must seem quite weird for anybody.

But, but, you know, it must be weird for people that are in my culture, that are kind of being raised in England and being raised around the same TV shows and the same kind of belief systems and laws and kind of, you know, all that stuff that same kind of schooling system and, and then to, you know, it's probably weird to them. Well, I've been told I am. But for someone from a completely different culture and a different, which every, every country is a different culture, isn't it? Different, different rules, different kind of lifestyles, different belief systems, even English speaking places are just, America is very different from England.

Canada is very different from England. And, but the thing is, there's obviously similarities as well, huge similarities. I mean, in the, I say the UK, I don't know, but like UK, England kind of area, we almost want to be American.

We copy America a lot. I really copy. It's almost like we want to be American.

And not just like the individual people, but it's like the government almost seem to want to, we, we follow your lead, your lead in America, the people in America, England seem to follow the lead of Americans. And it's, I think it's, that's not, I don't think it's a good or bad thing, really. It's just what it is.

It's, it's interesting. But some things annoy me. Snick, remember we, the marathon, chocolate bar, marathon, chocolate bar or chocolate bar.

I was stuttering. Don't make fun of my stutter. It's a disability.

Do not make fun of my disabilities. I'm actually disabled. Bipolar is a disability.

Yep. Didn't, did you know that? It's true. Weird, isn't it? I don't think of myself like that.

If I can get a parking permit, that would be making, you know, I've got to tell you this story. Okay. It's not relative to anything we're talking about, but it just reminds me of how, how human beings can be a bit strange.

Okay. And for those that you know, my history of how I got into doing this, I kind of started off, I learned hypnosis back in 1998. And then I did, I went on this course, it was a Buddhist retreat for a week.

And it was about pain control, pain management, using meditation and mindfulness. And the lady, she was an order member that was running it. She was running it.

And the person that was supporting her, he was a hypnotherapist. She had a serious back or neck injury from childhood or teenage years. So she was using it.

She, she almost developed these techniques for herself and then started to teach them to others. So I went on this training course, not to help myself because I didn't have any chronic pain issues, apart from my shoulder, but it was just a shoulder thing. It wasn't like anything serious.

Although I did need to steroid injections, but you know, it wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't affecting my mobility. That's what I mean. So if that, if that shoulder injury had been in my knee, I'd needed a walking stick.

Seriously, because it was, it was really, Oh, I, and all it was is I banged it on a shelf. I remember the conversation I was talking, I was in the Buddhist community in the previous town that I used to live. And this is probably 2005.

I'd moved in, in the, I think the March, 2005. So this is probably May. I'm talking to my friend about something that another person who lived in the house had said to me, and it just seemed really rude, what he'd said.

And I was just like trying to talk it through. And my other friend, he was trying to sort of, he was listening. He was a really good listener.

And he was like, Oh, you know, not to take it too seriously or whatever. And I sort of, thanks, thanks for listening. And you know, I feel better now.

And he was really good. It wasn't a long conversation, probably much longer for him than for me. And so he said, let's go to bed.

So I said, when I said, how can I thank you? He said, no, you go to your bed. And I was like, okay. So I stood up.

Now, I'd never sat at that table before. And I'd never sat in that chair on that table. And I stood up and I banged my shoulder.

And it was the edge of a wooden shelf. And it was a sharp edge. Not sharp as in cutty, but just sharp wooden.

And it was so, so painful. It was like really, really. And I just, I couldn't believe such a thing.

And the force was only me getting up. So I didn't think it would be even that, but it dug right into the nerves and it could, it was an injury. I needed to have an operation to fix it.

I didn't have the operation, but I was told I needed basically the, the bones, the cartilage was rubbing against each other. That's basically, and then on the nerves, it needed to be shaved down. So I kind of, I suppose in a way I kind of broke my shoulder a bit.

I sort of chipped a bit. So I just remember that. I remember that.

I felt like I'll remember forever because it was such a weird way to injure myself. You know, I felt so good after talking to my friend. He really kind of put my, put my brain into a different perspective, a positive state.

And the next thing I'm yelling like, Oh, he's laughing. So it clearly wasn't quite as compassionate as I thought. And, and that started about three years of problems with my shoulder, like physiotherapy, um, uh, steroid injections, examinations, x-rays, all kinds of stuff.

Just for something so simple is just standing up wrongly and banging into a shelf. Absolutely ridiculous. But yeah.

Okay. So I was at this, this mindfulness pain relief or pain management, and it was, it was kind of part of a course and it, you could go on to become a certified. I can't remember what they called it.

There was a name. I didn't, didn't bother with doing that, but I just wanted to learn more because at that time , at no, no, no, I hadn't. I was just in the throes of doing the pain relief, the free pain relief service that I started.

I don't think I'd started it yet. So I went away to this thing and I think it was like five days or a week long and it was in Oh, is it in Wales? Might have been in Wales. I think it was in Wales.

In fact, if I remember, I think it was actually at a female retreat center and it was snowing, but it was kind of like, um, February, March, but it was really thick snow there. And normally it's a female, like female order members lived there together. And it was where female Buddhists would go to meditate or to go on retreat, a female retreat center.

But for some reason they had a unisex one for that, for that course. So yeah, it was in Wales. Yeah.

Anyway. And we were living, sleeping in dormitories and stuff like that. And it was, yeah, always find it a little bit strange sleeping in a, in a room with people.

Just there's something really, really strange about it. Just, I don't know, not quite sure how to explain it. It's just a very, I mean, there's going to be some people, listen, I've never done that.

I've never, maybe never slept in a room with other people. And some people might have spent the whole childhood sleeping in a room with a brother or sister or sleeping in a bed with their brother or sister. I've done both.

I've slept in a bed with all my brothers, I think at some point when I was younger. So, you know, it's when I was a child, when I was very young. So we wouldn't fit in a bed now, not as adults.

And I need one. I mean, I'm big, my oldest brother is huge. He's six foot five and probably as wide, probably wider than me because he's bigger.

So he's, he wouldn't be able to fit on my bed. If he sat, if my brother sat on my bed, his, his knees would be off the end of the bed, if that makes sense. Because he's so much taller than me.

How? I don't know why. You know, I'm five foot eight. Now five foot eight and six foot five is a huge difference.

That's, it's a massive change. You know, it's a height difference is phenomenally long. It's long.

It's a long distance. But how did he end up being tall? Why? It's not fair. I mean, I'd like to be six foot five.

I could, my whole life would be different. How would it be different though? That could be a question. What do you mean it'd be different? Why? Well, the thing is, I'd like to say, well, I would never get, I'd never get bullied at school, but I never got bullied at school.

So that wasn't an issue. But it, I probably would have felt more confident within myself physically if I'd have been bigger, if I'd been taller. I mean, I wasn't, when I was at school and even during the first, until the, up to the age of 25, I was skinny.

I'm like skinny, skinny, skinny, skinny, skinny, really not an ounce of fat on me at all. And then I put a little bit of weight on when I, when I first had antidepressants and I put a bit of weight on, but I think I'd lost quite a bit of weight even then, because I'd been a bit ill for a while. And then I was still self-aware of how skinny I was.

I was embarrassed by it up to the age of 29. And then the December, well, basically in 2000, I was still 29, but I was 30 in August, in 2000, I started to put weight on. And, um, I mean, it wasn't even a huge amount of weight, but I think I was 10, maybe 10 and a half stone, 10 stone, maybe 10 and a half, something like normal.

That was my weight before. And then I put on probably a stone and a half. So I was probably about 12 stone after maybe three months.

And the first time I realized that I was fat or getting fatter, because weird, because I was 12 stone, I'm now two, two and a quarter stone heavier than that. No, three and I'm 15, 12, 13, 14, 15, three stone and three, three and a quarter stone heavier than what I was when I started getting fat. So you can imagine how fat I am now.

I'm like the blob. Sometimes I can't get out of the chair because the fat moves between the, you know, the armrests, it moves between the armrests and the back. So I get stuck.

I have to try and like, how do I mislodge all of them. I remember when I got stuck in the bath, I had to call my friend, he had to come up. And he said, Where are you? I said, I'm in the bath.

And he said, No, there's nothing. It's just this big blob in the bath. I said, No, look.

I said, Oh, and he could see my head poking out. It's like, Oh, I didn't realize that's what you look like naked. That's a bit unfortunate.

I said, Yeah, thanks. Can you help? He said, I don't know how. I said, Well, he said, What about a plunger? Would that help? I said, It needs some big, big massive snowplow or something.

That's rude. Anyway, the first time I noticed that I was getting fat was we ran out, we was in the comedy club and the kitchen had run out of birthday cakes. I used to give these little birthday cakes out to people who, you know, can't believe I'm saying this sentence, had a birthday, not obviously, they had a birthday.

And you know, it's just a nice little thing to do. These cheap, cheap old little cakes and just like, Oh, happy birthday and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And she said, We ran out of cakes.

And I said, Well, why are you whispering? She said, I don't know. I said, Why don't you go to the garage? There's a petrol station around the corner. I'm sure they sell some kind of cake thing.

It might not be the same, but it'd be something stick candles on. And she said, Okay, but like, then she took my hand, he said, Can't run. Because we needed to get back quick and everything.

Okay. So run. And I had this, I had this feeling that I've never had before in my life.

I mean, I'm genuinely in my whole life, childhood and adulthood. So for 30, nearly 30 years, never experienced this feeling before. And it was my belly wobbling.

It never happened. I never had a belly to wobble. I never had a belly, I was always slim.

And suddenly my belly was wobbling. And it was it was a funny feeling. And I remember telling her when we got back, I said, My belly just wobbled.

She found it hilarious and told everyone. I was like, Yeah, but you don't understand this never happened before. I've never had my belly wobble.

Wobble, wobble. It's never happened. You know, I've run, you know, it's just all I can imagine.

It's like having, I can't say I imagine it's like having boobies. And I know what it's like to have boobies now, but I'll be back then I didn't. Back then it was just a belly.

I grew the boobies couple years later. And it was weird, though, just that like wobble. Wobble, the wobble feeling.

I've never had that. It was surreal. And I didn't really know what to do with that, that new information.

Now, a lot of people with that new information, especially because, you know, still fairly young would be exercise. Not me. No, not even because, you know, I remember going back even to 1991.

I remember looking at my stomach and I could pinch a little bit of skin, like a little tiny, not even an inch, you know, tiny little one thinking I'm getting fat. And I start, so I do some sit ups and suddenly it's almost like doing 30, 40 sit ups was enough. And the fat disappeared, even though it wasn't fat, really, but it was just maybe it's a little bit of liquid on my, on my belly.

And I was worried, like, even I didn't like being skinny. I do want to be fat. I do want to be skinny with a belly.

And I was, if you think about the skinniest belly, that was me. That was all the way up to 30, well, 29. I was skinny.

I had a few, a few periods when I put a bit of weight on, when I was at Butlins. I, so I put weight on when I first went on the antidepressants, which was in the, when was it? Late summer, 1995. And then I stopped the antidepressants because I didn't like how they made me feel.

And then I went and worked at Butlins. So I was evicted from where I was living. So I went and worked at Butlins.

And I was eating three times a day, three cooked meals a day for the first time in my life. And I was having a pint of milk with each meal, including my breakfast. And I was also drinking in the evenings as well.

And I put weight on. I probably added an extra stone. So I probably, that's when I possibly got up to about 11, I probably was about 11 stone at that point, or 10 and a half.

So I don't know, because I'm guessing, I'm guessing, when I, when I went and, can you hear that in the background? I don't know what that is. That's strange. When I was a bit unwell, and before I went on to the antidepressants, I wasn't eating much.

So I wouldn't be surprised if my, my weight went down to about nine stone. So I imagine I was quite really light. So when I went on to the antidepressants, I probably put about half a stone on, like literally within a few weeks.

And then I put probably another stone on. So I probably went to like a 10 and a half stone when I was at Butlin's. So it's the heaviest I'd ever been.

I felt bigger and everything. But then when I got used to that, being that size, I realised I was still skinny and I was still very sensitive of my, my physical appearance. Because, you know, I'll give you an example.

I, back in 2004, I decided to not drink any alcohol or really indulge in anything for a whole year. So I decided to have a nice year of doing nothing, you know, working and everything, but not, not drinking, just to give my body a rest. And I went, I lost lots of weight, I went down to I think 11, 11 stone, 11 and a half stone, something like that, which is the ideal weight for my height.

And I was skinny, like my waist was skinny. The rest of me wasn't, I was, I was doing weights, I was doing Wing Chun Kung Fu, I was training and stuff. So I wasn't like skinny all over.

But my waist was absolutely tiny. Like just like it used to be. Now 11 and a half stone, when you think about it, 11 and a half stone, 12, 1, 12, 13, 14, 15, that's over, over four stone heavier than then.

And I still don't feel particularly fat really. You know, I am, but I don't feel, and it's weird that even when I got to, so when I moved, I was, when I moved from London, I was probably about 12, 12 stone, 12 and a half stone, maybe. 12, so I wasn't big.

I wasn't slim, like waist wise, I wasn't fat, I was chunky, I guess, you know, kind of well built, but not, I didn't have a big, huge belly or anything. But you know, it's, I don't know how to explain it, but I was just like normal size, really. And then sitting down in an office all day, I started to put weight on and started to spread a bit.

And then I left that job and I, for, you know, quite a while, I managed, I got my weight right down, started another job in a call centre, slim, 11 and a half stone. And within months, I put the weight on because I was sitting down all day again and eating and drinking and all the other stuff. So it's kind of weird the way my weight's sort of gone around.

And then I thought I couldn't get any bigger. And when I moved from the town I was in to do the degree course, the counselling degree, I was probably 12 and a half stone, 13 stone. And I remember when I reached, I think I hit 14 stone, or maybe I hit 13 stone.

And I felt like a huge pig. Like literally, I felt physically massive. I'd just eaten a big fried breakfast, so that probably didn't help.

But I remember I weighed myself and this was in London, I was just visiting London for some reason. And I was huge, I felt huge, absolutely huge. And this is probably, maybe I was 13 and a half stone, something like that.

And so the heaviest I'd ever been, this is 2007, 2008 time. I felt fatter then than I do now. And I'm two stone heavier than I was then.

I just couldn't believe I've got so heavy then. But now, so I'm 100 kilos, so that's 15 and something, 15 and a quarter or something. So 100 kilos.

And I've just stayed at 100 kilos for years now. It just doesn't move. Doesn't seem to make any difference what I do, it just stays.

And I guess that's the way I'm supposed to be, which is fine. I mean, I can get slimmer, I can lose a bit of fat and stuff, but doing the weights and stuff, I'll probably still end up being the same weight, because muscle weighs as well. But I kind of, for me, I don't worry about it, but I'm not that bothered about the weight as much as the fat content.

It wouldn't bother me if I weighed 20 stone, if it was, if I was, it would be too much for my body because I'm not tall enough, too much pressure on the body. But it would, you know, if I was muscly and just muscly, then, you know, I could potentially be heavier. But I reckon, I mean, I don't know if it's possible at this age, to get super muscly, but I could probably do that on the way I am.

I wouldn't need to put weight on. You know, I could, I could eat more and do lots of exercise. I probably wouldn't put, I put muscle on, but I probably wouldn't put weight on.

I'd lose fat. I put muscle on and lose fat. So it kind of equal itself out as far as the weight goes.

I'm making that up, but it sounds like it could be true. It sounds like it could be. Anyway, I went this, I was at this, uh, this Buddhist pain management thing.

And it was good. It was a really good atmosphere. It was quite friendly, jovial.

There was a mixture of men and women, and I got on with a few people and, you know, it was okay. And right at the end, because there was a mixture of people that were there with their own physical disabilities. So they were there to try and help themselves.

And some people like myself was there to aim at helping other people. And some people were there for both those reasons. At the end of it, the very, very, very, very last day, this woman, one of the people, and she was quite, um, verbal throughout the course.

So people knew her, not verbal in a bad way, but just, you know, she was quite outgoing and she was known. Everyone kind of knew who she was. And it wasn't a big group.

There was probably, I don't know, 30 of us, 25, 30, maybe less even. And she, she was in a wheelchair. She hadn't been in a wheelchair the whole time.

And she was riding around the wheelchair and just like laughing around. Um, I didn't pay any attention to it. Uh, you know, just wasn't interested.

I was, I was more interested in whether or not someone took my cup because I had my name on my cup and I was wanting to make sure no one had to use my cup. That was all I was in. It's all I cared about in the world.

And so I got the proper seat because I like to get a certain seat in the living room near the fire. The fire. Anyway, we all got called together by the boss, by the leader of the group, by the, you know, the trainer or whatever.

And there'd been a big, a big row had gone on. And I did, I was oblivious to it all. Absolutely oblivious.

I don't know where I was. I must have been playing in the snow or something when all this was happening. Anyway, we were all called together to discuss it.

Now what happened is some of the people on the course took offense to this lady wheeling herself around in a wheelchair because they thought she was making, they felt that she was mocking people in wheelchairs. When the fact is, she had a physical condition where sometimes she needed a wheelchair and sometimes she didn't. And for the first four days of the course, she didn't need a wheelchair.

She was physically, I think she might have had MS or something where, you know, she has different, you know, different, different days. But on that particular day she needed the wheelchair. But they saw her, she was still laughing around like she normally would.

She's very well spirited up kind of person, positive person. So they took that as, some people took that as she was making fun of people in wheelchairs, which she wasn't. No one seemed to question the fact that she had a wheelchair.

Where did she get it from? It was her wheelchair. She brought it with her. You know what I mean? Like, where are you going to, not just going to find a wheelchair in the snow, are you? So they basically, and I think what she did is she offered someone a go in it.

Someone said, oh, can I have a go? And she said, oh yeah. So she sat down in the chair and let someone go. So they thought they took that as she was just mocking people.

Well, actually she was doing no more than what I would do if someone says, can I try your glasses on? Okay, go on then. You know? So she'd done absolutely nothing wrong at all. But they attacked her, like verbally, they had a go at her.

So she got really upset and everything. See, I was oblivious to all this. I didn't see any of it.

I heard about it afterwards. I didn't like, what? What's going on? Why so serious? And the leader of the group pointed out that she also sometimes has to use a wheelchair and other times doesn't need to, depending on how bad her back is. And, you know, the fact that we're all there training to either help other people or ourselves with chronic pain conditions should have an open enough mind or to even maybe have the knowledge.

I knew this stuff anyway before because I'd studied chronic pain since early 2000s. I used to buy textbooks on chronic pain because I wanted to learn about it. I wanted to know the different types and how it could be managed and how it's managed medically and scientifically.

And then all the other different techniques are used, you know, such as acupuncture and acupressure and even things like Reiki, massage, Shiatsu, crystals, you name it, all the different techniques that have been used over the years, reflexology. So I learned all about that, not necessarily how to do it, but I learned about how all these different things are used. I mean, there was a book that I had, I don't have it anymore, but I had it and it was Kabat-Zinn, I think his surname is Kabat-Zinn.

He's a very famous author on mindfulness and he did a book, Catastrophe Living or Catastrophizing Living or something. And he talked about chronic pain and stuff like that. It's really quite a thick book actually, but it's a good book.

He talks about that. I mean, as I'm saying this to you, I'm looking ahead of me and there's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 15 books in front of me on chronic pain, like hypnosis and chronic pain. So yeah, I've still got a few books on that subject.

But these are just hypnosis books. The actual, I used to have textbooks, actual almost surgical books on chronic pain and also on acute pain as well. But I don't have those books anymore.

But I think what that did for me is, it was a really good learning experience to realize that, first of all, to not to jump to conclusions, you know, not to just, I mean, if we're going to walk around just being reactive creatures, then we're basically dogs. We're cats, we're dogs, we're animals. And I'm not saying that in a negative way because I love dogs and I love animals.

But acting reactively, which is reacting, isn't it? Reacting reactively, eating eatingly. Yeah, we're able to do more than that because we have brains that allow us to not be reactive and to be able to step back and to be able to cognize. That's the difference between us and animals.

We can cognize, we can think things through. And it's, it's a gift. It's such a gift.

It's amazing, really, when you think about it. That we're able to think. How amazing is that? Really? Don't you think? Isn't it amazing? We can think things, we can process information in a way that without just reacting like a like a flea or a fly, just, you know, or a chicken, or a pig, or a cow, or a goose.

I'm getting hungry. No, you know what I mean. It's just, we're, it doesn't, I don't think it makes us better than the animals, but it's, it's different.

And it gives us, that's why we have buildings, and we have bridges, and we have, you know, we have structures of communication and all that stuff, because we're able to think. Without that ability to think, we wouldn't have pretty much anything. We'd still be living in caves.

You know, we wouldn't have anything. Everything comes from thoughts, doesn't it? Everything comes from an idea. Every invention ever invented comes from an idea, just a thought.

So thinking is amazing. It really is a gift. And I don't think being creative or thinking has got anything to do with intelligence, really.

It might do, I might be wrong, but I am a bit of a div at times. But I think we're all creative. Everybody's creative.

Everybody can think, if you choose to, but in a way that's like, purposeful, you know? Like, well, I'm going to think about this, not be a slave to thoughts and like, be reactive all the time. Oh, I've got no control over my thoughts. Yeah, I am.

I'm going to focus on these dresses in this magazine, and how I would look wearing that green polka dot dress. I would look awful, so I will not be buying that dress. But you know, I mean, it's, that is the fact, I would look awful.

I do not suit dresses. It's weird, because I look at P Rondre, again, if you want to know who he is, just check out yesterday's podcast. P Rondre, he's got to be my age.

He's got to be. Oh, he's 49. Okay, fair enough.

So he's a couple of years younger than me. He's slim, good looking, got a great body. I'm going to start crying in a minute.

It's not fair. It's not fair. The thing is, there are some people, probably not many, but it's a handful of people that would look at me thinking, I wish I had a body like his.

Now, I do mean maybe three people in the whole world, but there's someone out there that would like to have a body like mine. Maybe two people. Come on, give me two, I can't be generous, at least two people in the whole, I'm talking out of what how many billions there are in the world, at least two people would look at me and think, I wish I was as slim as him.

At least one person, there's got to be at least one person in the world. Just give me that at least one person would admire my physique. Physique, my physique.

Anyway, I want to go now. I hope this recording has worked out okay and I can just like stick it through and upload it without too much hassle. Hopefully.

So thank you for listening. Remember to be kind to yourself because you deserve to be happy. Lots of love.

Bye.