The Natural Life-stylist

My friends Mariano and Maga left London feeling burnt out and landed in Catalonia where they’ve created a space to burn bright and bring together craft, community, and creation as one shared practice.

This space is called it’s a place where regenerative agriculture, ceramics, food, fire, workshops, and shared life are part of the same living ecosystem.

They’re not trying to build a finished place, but to sustain a space where people can learn, produce, share, and transform something together.

If you’re visiting Barcelona, then I’d highly recommend dropping in as it’s only a one hour drive away from the city.

The bonus is that it’s 800m up, so it’s a great place to go to get away from the somewhat intense humidity in the city.

Maga is having a kiln lighting party on the 11th of October so hopefully I’ll see some of you there for a little co-creation.

I took an 1100km hour drive from our home in Portugal to Sitges, to stay with .coach and his beautiful family before holding a 7am morning movement, breath and sea dip session with the wonderful .sitges community.

12pm I arrived at my publishers .es to finally get my hands on my latest 📕Take The Stairs and sign hundreds of thumb blistering and wrist cramping books before heading onto to hold a talk, get sweaty and rather chilled in the 2 degree tub with the incredibly welcoming .barcelona community.

I then had the absolute pleasure of visiting old friends in Catalonia, who are on the same path as us in leaving the Uk and setting up a regenerative, reconnecting to the land, farm house hospitality, community space called - it’s absolutely breathtakingly gorgeous and only one hour away from the humidity and hustle of Barcelona city.

I then woke up mega early (slightly spangled from the two days of excitement) and went for a cheeky 5km trail run with Ciaran before I taking on the mammoth 10.5 hour drive back to Portugal.

‘Fuel Stop Squats’ and the “I get to drive 1100km” rather than “I’ve got to drive 1100km” inner self talk was however the ultimate flex for enabling me to lean into the 10.5 hours of brain and butt numbing discomfort.

3 days of absolute joy!

I love humanity and I want it to continue!

Once upon a time, a young boy discovered a butterfly struggling to emerge from its cocoon. Intrigued, he sat and watched as the little creature strained against its confines, seemingly fighting a fierce battle to break free. Wanting to help to create comfort, the boy carefully cut away the cocoon, allowing the butterfly to escape effortlessly. Yet, to his surprise, the butterfly emerged weak and unable to fly.

What the boy didn’t understand was that each inconvenient and uncomfortable struggle to break free from the cocoon was essential for the butterfly to reach its full potential.

This poignant parable serves as
a powerful metaphor for our own lives, especially in today’s world, where comfort and convenience now takes precedence over growth and resilience.

In our hyper-modern society, we have engineered an existence dominated by safety and ease.

From the moment we wake up to the moment we go to bed, our lives are filled with conveniences designed to minimise discomfort. Smart home devices adjust the temperature to our liking, food is delivered at the tap of a button and screens provide instant gratification through entertainment.

While this abundance of comfort is often celebrated as progress, it poses a significant threat to our wellbeing and potential.

Comfort has become our cocoon, and like the boy who cut the cocoon to help the butterfly, we often seek to eliminate discomfort from our lives.

However, in doing so, we rob ourselves of the essential struggles that cultivate strength and growth. Just as the butterfly requires its struggle to develop fully, we, too, must embrace discomfort to become capable, competent and confident and unlock our human potential

Excerpt from my new 📕 Take The Stairs

“Inconvenience Foods” excerpt from my new book:

The only time I would consider myself to be out of shape was in my teens when was I flipping burgers in Mcdonalds and I was over fed on processed foods, yet under nourished, and my input wasn’t conducive with my output, which I think from the logical part of our brains makes perfect sense doesn’t it?  If we’re overfed, but under nourished and our input far exceeds our output, then isn’t it obvious as to what the outcome will be.

But when high calorie dense foods are literally like crack dealers with the best high budgeted marketing teams, who are hiding in every kitchen cupboard and on every street corner, and we have an onboard computer trying to convince us that we need to conserve energy and minimise metabolic cost we have the worst recipe known to our evolution kind of outcomes.
 
The real uncomfortable challenge lies in overcoming the limbic kickback cravings, but therein lies the golden eggs I’ve gained from fasting. It’s akin to an extreme elimination diet, teaching me to avoid stocking convenience foods or indulging in fast food. More importantly, because I’ve opted out of these easy choices, the Riddlekids have not witnessed me consuming them, leaving them without a template or palate to get past for such foods.

Instead of Mcdonalds, they associate “Maccy D’s” with my spontaneous snack: on that post swim run “always-kick-start-your-metabolism-before-you-eat” drive back from the beach, I stopped at a local shop and brought back a big bag of fat macadamia nuts and juicy medjool dates, dubbing them Maccy D’s.

To the Riddlekids, this is now synonymous with healthy snacks rather than the fast-food chain Mcdonalds that I blew up on.

Book signing day!

Thanks for all your support in getting ‘Take The Stairs’ out in the world. You are loved!

I’ve got DOMS in my hand and wrist and a blister on my thumb, but we got the book signing endurance event cracked in 5 hours.

Shout out to my publishers .global who have been absolutely brilliant from concept to book signing.

Shout out to for ensuring all the logistics went smoothly today.

And in the words of Biggie:

Yeah, this book is dedicated to all the teachers
That told me I′d never amount to nothin’

🦁 16 hour fasted 5km run for the Bowman before brekkie.

Absolute Kudos to this 6 year legend for smashing out a nasal breathing 5km in his .kids footwear in just 35 mins.

“Our Performance Is Only As Good As Our Recovery”.

Emotional and sensory dimension is up there with the most important frontiers in wellness.

You don’t need more bio-hacking longevity language.

Sound, light, scent, movement, and social energy change how we feel.

How we experience an environment helps us regulate, recover, connect, and perform better.

“Our Performance Is Only As Good As Our Recovery”.

Before the information rich experience poor technological age and all the wellness protocols, we experienced the world through sensation, emotion, and atmosphere.

One of the best tools to experience the authenticity all of the above is through our breath - nasal breath to be more precise!

👃 Breathe mofo’s, 👃Breathe!

Despite being domesticated humans living in linear cages where we can’t see the bars, our bodies, brains and hormones resonate with the natural world we once thrived in.

Ground sitting provides an opportunity to unlock those cages with invisible bars and unravel the normalised structures of modernity, allowing us to primally prime ourselves for the ever-changing experience we call life.

‘Health is modern wealth, but ancestral health is billionaire wealth. When your body meets the demands of your mind, you cease being a passive passenger on the path of least resistance and become a strong, capable being, ready to embrace change.’

Now, I thrive in my fifties, engaging in ultra-endurance activities and recovering to do it all over again the next day. I attribute this level of resilience and vitality to my commitment to ground sitting, which has become a form of rehabilitation—a way to enhance my posture and liberate my joints.

This practice not only enables me to maintain mobility but also reinforces the idea that our bodies are designed to move freely and dynamically.

Interestingly, longevity studies suggest that one of the best indicators of age is how well we can get up from the floor. But if we cannot even manage to get down to the floor with ease in the first place, it raises significant questions about our physical capabilities and overall health.

After all, the absence of ease is dis-ease.

By choosing to engage with the ground, we shift the originally perceived discomfort to a position of comfort and ease and enable ourselves to remain comfortable in our bodies as we meet the demands of life as we age.

Are you sitting comfortably?