This morning I was meditating on the couch and I was reflecting on what ways of being and thinking have impacted me the most over the past 5 years. It felt pretty obvious and clear to me and also filled me with a lot of gratitude that I have found them. Here’s a list and breakdown:

1. Somatic Experiencing

What is it? It’s a way to restore integrity in your body by way of feeling and completing movements, felt sensations and thoughts.

What do I love most about it? Out of all the practices I know, this is the one that has by far impacted me the most. Some of the reasons that come to mind:

• It’s extremely subtle: Somatic Experiencing has a built in method, by way of its slowness, to really catch all of the unexpressed parts of my experience. It helps me restore to a feeling of wholeness and goodness, by leaving nothing out. The SIBAM model which stands for Sensations, Image, Behavior, Affect, Meaning really meets me where I am and honors the full range of my humanity.
• It doesn’t have a strong opinion of the world: Well, in a way it does, of course. But what I mean is that the method itself is more or less completely trusting that my nervous system has all the answers it needs. All we need to do is make enough space for things to organize itself into alignment and meaning. This spaciousness, is a quality that I cherish so deeply about SE (Somatic Experiencing).
• It made me much more alive: I feel that my experience as a human has changed dramatically, insofar as that I see my life’s experiences as a much richer accumulation of impressions than before. I’d be so lost in my mind’s thinking, and feel that this is all there is to myself. With SE, I learned that the plain of sensations, feelings, behaviors and imaginations is just as rich as my thinking and meaning making. It feels as if I want from being 10% alive to being 90 or 100% alive at times.
• It’s easy to learn: Anyone can learn Somatic Experiencing as a practitioner in I’d say 1 day, or maybe even 1 hour. All you basically do is learn to track your experience across the 5 areas and let them complete. To master it, naturally it takes a life-time. I simply attach a lot of truth to “easy to learn, hard to master” practices, because they feel right.
• I love Peter Levine: I’ve watched several videos from Peter Levine over the years. And the man is simply a gem, someone to put up a statue for. I have this sense that my whole body relaxes when I watch him give a session to someone. When I see Peter, I see someone who has become deeply unafraid of being fully human and this is something I cherish deeply.

What do I hate about it? 

• Their branding sucks: Somatic Experiencing dubs itself mainly as a Trauma Healing technique, heck their website is called traumahealing.org. Don’t get me wrong, healing trauma is a phenomenally important piece and I’ve healed lots of my own trauma with it. In my mind the application and scope of Somatic Experiencing goes way beyond healing trauma and has much more to do with living the good life in my opinion. I wish they’d branch out with their branding and offer more “living well” programs instead of just “healing trauma” programs.
• There are cultists: This has little to do with the practice itself, but over the years, as I’ve met more and more people in the community, it’s inevitable that you discover that there are “die hard” believers in there, who take SE as the gospel, instead of as a tool. What can you do about that? Not much I think, it’s gonna happen anywhere.

Main book: In an Unspoken Voice

2. The Grinberg Method

What is it? Our inability to allow ourselves to feel fear and pain is at the heart of most of our lives problems. The Grinberg Method teaches you to integrate and learn how to feel fear, pain and anger again in your body in a visceral and exciting way.

What do I love most about it?

• It’s intense: The Grinberg Method doesn’t fuck around. You lie down on a massage table and the practitioner gets to work. Right, where it hurts the most. And I mean, literally right where you have the most pain or uncomfortable feelings in the body. I’m a sucker for these kinds of radical, to the core right away kinds of methods and I feel that Grinberg cuts through a lot of bullshit with its approach.
• I’ve had my most authentic expressions of anger with it: One time a spot the practitioner pressed hurt so bad, that I screamed so loud and got so angry like I never had in my life. And like most people I know, I also have a surpressed anger problem. Afterwards, I felt scared that I’d done something wrong and than I felt a world of a lot better, to have had to courage to express my anger. I feel bad for anyone that was in the house or the near vicinity that time, I’m sure it startled the hell out of them.
• I love touch: Most (psycho)-therapeutic methods I know are very cautious with touching people. And I get the caution, but it’s also a lot of bullshit with what we know about the human nervous system and how healing and soothing touch can be. The fact that Grinberg is so hands on and the practitioner is literally so close to me and puts there hands on me has taught me a lot about the potential and the pleasure and the gratitude for human touch. To re-unite with our own sense of touch and our wish to touch the people we love authentically is almost a by-product of the method and one that I consider immensely important.
• The community: Every Grinberg practitioner I’ve met so far in my life has been one incredible human being. I’m not quite sure what means or counts for, but there’s a kind of rootedness and presence from the people that have gone through this kind of training it seems, which takes a few years to complete. I’ve decided that this community aspect is a big bonus for me.

What do I hate about it? 

• The “foot reading” is a bit hokey: Look, I don’t care for science too much, nor do I understand it very well in its essence and I don’t read many science journals. What works, works, mainly and most often that’s determined by my own felt-sense experience. I’m a believer in that. The emphasis that (some!) Grinberg practitioners put on foot-analysis, which is a core component, just simply seems a bit over the top for me. I met one practitioner who I’ve worked with for almost a year, that dropped that method almost entirely and I’m grateful for that. It just seems too hokey to me to put that much emphasis on it.
• It can brush over subtleties: Grinberg is immensely powerful, don’t get me wrong. On occasion, I’ve noticed though that it can brush over subtleties of experience in my body. This might have to do with me or the practitioner, but in general, I do believe that it simply looks at the  most intense and stuck experiences in our bodies and less at the subtleties. All fine by me, since I love SE for that, it’s just worthwhile knowing I think if one engages with it, that you might need another modality for your most subtle experiences.

Main book: I’ve not read any of the books, but the founders videos on Youtube are a great primer with more detail.

3. Vipassana Meditation à la Thich Nhat Hanh

What is it? Thich Nhat Hanh’s opinion of the world is simple enough: Come back to the present moment as fully and as often as possible to experience and enjoy life deeply. You do this by noticing your breathing and your body again whenever you forget.

Context: For over a year I lived in monasteries and practice centers that Thich Nhat Hanh established or inspired. I got a pretty good idea of the way of life and teaching method from that time.

What do I love most about it? I was in a pretty dark place after I left the startup I founded several years ago. I took refuge in a Thich Nhat Hanh monastery north of New York City and moved in there. That this was possible and that I could heal some of my wounds and reflect on my life to date there is something I will never forget as an act and offer of kindness on their part.

• It’s super gentle: I first discovered meditation mainly through the San Francisco Zen Center, which I experienced as fairly harsh and enduring. Thich Nhat Hanh’s approach was very different by contrast to that. I’d describe it as the most gentle form of Buddhism that I know. This means that there’s a general sense of warm-heartedness and compassion and understand for whatever it is you’re going through. This, to me, was such a new experience and had me feel at ease and relax deeply. Any practice they offer seems to be embedded in this way of gentleness. There’s a lying down meditation called “deep relaxation”, that I think is one of the tradition’s biggest accomplishments. To celebrate this kind of relaxing and non-doing in such a gentle way brought me a lot of joy. If you’d like to try one, they have a free app, with some great guided meditation, including a number of deep relaxation meditations.
• It reconnected me back to nature: As part of life at the monastery, every day, there’s a walking meditation through the forest that’s fairly unstructured. This daily practice for many months instilled in me a renewed sense of connection of what being in nature really means. Noticing my steps on the forest floor over and over again brought something back to me that I felt I had long lost – a sense of trust in the natural world and a sense of remembering of where I come from. Since that time, I’ve been hiking and going into nature much more regularly and I mainly attribute it to their method.
• It taught me how to slow down: Thich Nhat Hanh’s approach to life and meditation goes far beyond formal sitting meditation. It uses words like “eating meditation”, “driving meditation”, “writing meditation”, etc., meaning mainly that every activity we can do, can be turned into a formal meditation practice. I like that and it pointed me overall into the direction that living life as a whole with conscious awareness is the point and not trying to meditate myself somewhere. There’s a line from Thich Nhat Hanh that stuck with me where he says roughly “I tried going fast, I tried going medium and I tried going slow. And slow always seemed to give me the best results and I made the least mistakes.”. I like that.
• They have songs! I believe as humans we all sing too little. Singing has so many benefits for our nervous system and in general is so much fun to do. Most of us are too embarrassed to sing, except for maybe under the shower when no one is home. If you join a regular Thich Nhat Hanh meditation meet up in your town, you’ll notice that the first thing they do is song songs. It takes a while to get used to, but at this point, I notice how deeply relaxing both the lyrics and the act of singing together is for me in a group. Highly recommended!
• It’s welcoming and accommodating: If you’re looking for an easy, low-commitment, low boundary place to start to learn meditation in a group, I can’t think of a better place than the Thich Nhat Hanh tradition. Almost every major city around the world has a meet up once a week, for both young and old. You can google that easily. You can also download the app, read the books, which are so simple and easy to read, or join online sanghas (their word for community). It’s all free or donation-based and just very welcoming and accommodating.

What do I hate about it? 

• It’s really unprecise: The basic instruction of the whole tradition can be summarized as “come back to your breath, come back to your body”. Technically, I’d agree that that is the whole thing and covers it all. But in reality, it leaves very specific circumstances and experiences uncovered. This can lead to a lot of unnecessary confusion and questions for the young practitioner (once me! :D). So while I deem their approach and meditation method a wonderful starting point and a great grounding place even as life goes on, for the more intricate and difficult experiences of your life, I’d highly suggest you seek out a more precise body & mind practice like the two I mentioned above for example.
• The community can be quite close-minded/rigid: This is a religion after all. A long time monk who’d left the tradition once remarked to me “As enlightened as I find Thich Nhat Hanh, as much I find it important that we don’t forget he’s also an old Asian man steeped in his very specific patterns, culture and traditions.” This is true for all of us I guess, we’re all steeped in our traditions and patterns. With this tradition in particular however, I noticed that quickly I bumped into a lot of boundaries that I felt were not rooted in truth, but simply in the good old “that’s how we’ve always done it!” approach. And I hate that shit more than anything else. It was ultimately also something why I left the monastery. Change happens slowly in those kinds of places, if it happens at all. That’s all fine and it doesn’t negate their amazing contributions to my life that I’ve received and continue to receive, but I feel it’s important to mention this here regardless.

Main book: Peace is every step (Highly recommend this!)

4. Non-violent Communication

What is it? Marshall Rosenberg invented a form of speaking that first and foremost focuses on our feelings and needs. Any and all of our problems stem from our inability to voice our needs and feelings clearly to ourselves and others. As we learn how to do that, our lives change for the better.

What do I love most about it? 

• It gave my body a voice and a language: For most of my life, I felt stuck in having a way to talk with others, that honors myself fully, builds connection and also gives me a clear route to find agreement and produce results. NVC does and did all of that for me, although it’s become much less formal for me in it’s use, the basic frame work does it’s work behind the scenes and I enjoy revisiting the premises regularly.
• It makes life very very simple: When I focus on all the stories and ideas that my mind produces, I can get lost so easily in infinite complexity about things. NVC makes life much much simpler. Instead of all the drama that your partner is this and that kind of a person? I’m angry, because he left the fridge door open. And I want more order in the goddamn house. Boom, simple and to the point. We don’t have to attach all the “you always!” and “He never!” bullshit that tries to analyze and create patterns out of simple moments that can be much more easily spoken to.
• I love the dude! If you’ve never seen a video from Marshall Rosenberg, go watch one online. He’s like a good-hearted Clint Eastwood character, despite his rough appearance in style oozes warm-heartedness and good natured intent. Watching him do sessions online with other people is also a simple and wonderful way to learn and get to the heart of the practice of NVC. This workshop is one of my favorites, I’ve probably seen it a few times in its entirety.
• It’s really fun to practice: For a while, I’d do practice sessions with my buddy Shea back in the monastery every other day or so. We’d take on roles of our girlfriends, mothers, fathers, whatever difficult conversation we could imagine and then play it through using NVC. It was tough and got real very quickly, but this is also what made this so fun and alive. You can easily ask any committed friend of yours to do an NVC role-play with you and it’ll make the ideas much more real.
• There’s so much growth potential: NVC is another one of those “learn it in 10 minutes, master it in a life-time” kind of practice. I’ve discovered so many subtleties in this practice over time. In particular as we begin to let the formal “feelings and needs” language fall away a bit and notice how feelings and needs can be expressed and understood in so many different ways. My current coach is a master in that – a simple hand gesture that he makes and I have the sense he just understood my whole 10 minute monologue. I love that kind of potential to sharpen a practice so that it becomes completely natural and fully authentic.
• It interlaces so well with the practices above: This is both a gripe I have with NVC and also one of it’s biggest potentials. Since it is a very bare bones framework, it leans itself very well to be interlinked with most all of the above practices. For example, in meditations, I’d sit and speak out feelings and needs out loud to myself to understand a certain situation better. Or in an SE session, having a wide vocabulary of feelings and needs can produce the necessary subtlety to move through difficult experiences smoothly.

What do I hate about it? 

• The first phase of learning it can be really irritating for others: This is a given, but be prepared to get a lot of rebukes from your friends and family as you begin exploring this practice. “Why are you so robotic?”, “Why are you talking like this now?”, “You just sound weird!”, can all be things you’ll likely hear as you try to establish yourself in feelings and needs language. Let it touch you, let it disappoint you that people close to you don’t get it, but don’t let it stop you from continuing to practice. You might need to be more specific with the people that you practice it at first, or use it with people that are not that close to you, whatever it takes. This part can still suck and produce a lot of pain.
• It’s not by default embodied: At this point in my life, I believe that any practice that isn’t rooted in the body isn’t really worth pursuing or has a long-term potential for transformation. And although a lot of great pracitioners, in particular Sarah Peyton, have evolved and expanded NVC to include sensate experience much more fully, it’s still a bit of a lack in the overall framework. Be aware of that and add it yourself or find teachers and practitioners that do so if you’re intrigued to pick it up.
• The framework can become an empty shell or fortress: If you say you’re angry, but you’re not really angry, but you feel like you can hide behind the NVC framework, then things can get ugly quickly. And I’ve noticed this in others before and probably in myself too. Any framework we use, we can use with violence and NVC is no different. Just watch out for this one, our egos are cunning and we quickly think we’ve become superior using or practicing a new modality (it’s definitely a big weakness I have!) and yet, that’s a lonely road and stops me from doing what I really want: to be alive, honest, truthful and in connection with others.

Main book: Nonviolent Communication (A Language of Life)

5. Radical Honesty

What is it? We all lie like hell. And our lives will be dead and we will be dead much sooner because of it. When we start telling the truth, our lives will change for the better and towards more aliveness.

What do I love about it? 

• It hits moralism head on: I come from a deeply conservative, catholic household. The amount of “should do” and guilt that follows if you don’t that I was conditioned was very strong. Radical Honesty speaks to this very specific issue more clearly than anything I’ve read and has helped me, step by step, to find my way out of that maze and to accept that we’ll never be really free of it. It’s supported me even more in the belief that life is about creating what we want and not about following rules.
• It’s brutally honest and contradictory: I know! It’s in the title, but the author in my opinion walks the talk in a way that I haven’t witnessed before. In one section of the book he lays out his motivations for writing the book, which range from wanting to be famous, to get even richer, to help people, to feel better than others and so forth. I appreciate the seeming contradiction of these motivations deeply, because they also often resonate with my own.
• It helps me integrate my anger: The biggest emotion the book and practice focuses on is our anger and resentment. And how we have all learned to suppress it in western society. Reclaiming our anger and getting really angry, to the point where we might seem like the biggest jerk was an extremely relieving proposition for me. To clearly decouple anger from violence and yet not shy away from the heat of the moment was another powerful distinction.
• It’s fun and light! I have a real knack for the hard and difficult emotional places and work. That’s good to a point, but eventually it can get tiring and heavy. Radical Honesty has a built in lightness about how to view life, how to let up on ourselves and not take it all too seriously. That dose of fun is something that I can use on the regular and practicing radical honesty has on a number of occasions brought out humor in me and others spontaneously.

What do I hate about it? 

• It’s not that precise: I’ll preface this that I’ve never been to a Radical Honesty retreat or coaching session, except for having read the book and practiced the exercises in there. The general premise is to tell the truth, to ourselves and others, summed up as speaking to “the thing you least want to talk about”. I love that, but I’ve already run into a number of situations where I’ve gotten a bit stuck on how exactly to proceed or do that, when the other person reacts in a certain way.
• It’s a bit too one-dimensional: The Radical Honesty framework is very pointed and clear, yet I have the sense it lacks some broader definitions and nuance for different types of people and circumstances. I think it works wonders for people like me, who already have a strong disposition for truth telling, I can imagine it’s a bit of a turn-off for people who’ve come at life from a different angle, Maybe that’s their point though!

Main book: Radical Honesty: How to Transform Your Life by Telling the Truth

6. How not to Die (Diet & Nutrition)

What is it? Whole foods that are plant-based and eaten without salt, sugar or oil will give us the highest chance to not die (too soon).

When I was writing this article it seemed useful to also include my eating practice, since that’s been a big part of my transformation journey.

What do I love about it?

• It’s simple: Whole foods, plant-based, no oil, salt or sugar. That’s not very hard to keep in mind. Beyond that, they have a  concept called the “daily dozen”, which gets a bit more complicated but gives you a general guideline of 12 servings of the healthiest foods to eat every day.
• It ditches the moralism: This practice doesn’t make any claims about veganism or claiming to better the world. It simply takes the stance of reviewing as many scientific papers as possible about foods and showcasing which ones have what kind of effect and then making conservative suggestions for certain kinds of foods. It’s somewhat dry in that regard, but also makes it highly trustworthy.
• It’s all science: I love this as much as I hate it. The author Dr. Greger ditches any and all personal recommendations. And as pointed out above, the only thing it does is look at scientific evidence for all kinds of foods and their effect on us. And it lets you make your own decisions and takeaways from there mostly.
• It reveals the politics of science: In the process of breaking down scientific papers, alongside it, he breaks down the source of funding for the various papers. I remember one example about a paper about how great eggs are, funded by the egg industry. Duh! Somehow it makes me trust him even more, that looks at the behind the scenes stuff. On top of that, he’s clear on his own motivations and funding sources to show that he doesn’t have a vested interested in pushing any of this or that.
• It’s precise: You can literally google almost any ingredient or food together with “how not to die” and you’ll have a high chance of finding an in-depth video reviewing hundreds of scientific papers on the subject. Try it with blueberries, avocado, bread, soy milk or anything that comes to mind for you. It’s really something.

What do I hate about it?

• It’s all science: I do believe that ultimately the best source of decision making is our own direct and personal experience to help us determine what works and what doesn’t. And science is a healthy and important supplement for that. So the fact that personal experience isn’t factored in at all, makes the whole thing a bit too dry for me at times. I’ve taken a lot from it, but I think food is connected to our well-being way beyond its nutritional and chemical value and I think that matters.

Main book: How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease

Bonus: 7. Cold exposure

I want to offer one final bonus practice, which is to expose oneself to the cold. Most notably this has been championed by Wim Hof over the past decade or more. And I think he’s done a phenomenal job with it.

My personal practice is inspired by Wim Hof, but involves to simply expose myself to ice cold baths regularly for longer and longer periods of time after I’ve been in the sauna. It’s simple, but it’s benefits on my sense of embodiment and wellbeing have been very noticeable.