All posts by Barry Daniel

About Barry Daniel

I live in the Lake District in the UK where I run a guesthouse with my partner Kate and my cat Manuel. I enjoy painting, hillwalking, reading, visiting and entertaining friends, T’ai Chi and playing the guitar. I’m engaged to a certain degree in the local community, as a volunteer with Samaritans and I’m a fairly active member of the local Green party. I’ve had a relatively intuitive sense of the Middle Way most of my adult life but it found a greater articulation and a practical direction through joining the society. It’s also been interesting and great fun engaging with other people with a similar outlook. My main contribution to the society is conducting the podcast interviews, something that gives me a lot of satisfaction and that I’ve learnt a lot from.

The MWS Podcast 160: Sukhema on the Art of Doing Nothing

Sukhema (aka Larry Butler) is a poet and a publisher who teaches tai-chi in healthcare settings, leads therapeutic writing groups for Lapidus Scotland, and has helped establish Towards Transition Glasgow. He completed a facilitator training in the Work That Reconnects (WTR) with Maitrisara, Chris Johnstone and others in England. He co-led a WTR facilitator training course in Scotland with Jenny Mackewn. Larry has 30 years experience facilitating groups and he’s here to talk to us today about the Art of Doing Nothing.

MWS Podcast 159: Margaret Wheatley on Who do We Choose to Be

Our guest today is Margaret Wheatley. Margaret, or Meg has worked globally in various roles since 1966, such as a speaker, teacher, community worker, consultant, advisor, and formal leader. She believes that leaders must evoke people’s generosity, creativity, and community in a world that she feels is tearing us apart. A deep understanding of Systems Theory underpins her work and she has written nine books, including the Leadership and the New Science, her recent The Warrior’s Songline as well as the recently updated ‘Who do We choose to be’ Facing reality / Claiming Leadership / Restoring Sanity, the topic of our discussion today, which for me is an inspirational book on not only how to be a sane and compassionate leader in times of crisis and likely collapse but also for anyone who would like to embrace a more pragmatic version of hope that is based on action, courage, presence and responsibility rather than wishful thinking.

MWS Podcast 158: Dan Nixon on cultivating a spirit of questioning in relation to our digital lives.

Our guest today is Dan Nixon. He’s a writer and researcher specialising in themes around attention, environmental philosophy and digital culture. A particular area of interest and expertise is the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty and he’s also a mindfulness teacher. He’s written a couple of essays for Aeon and his ideas have been picked up and discussed in the Sunday Times, The Economist and the Guardian among others. He co-lead Perspectiva’s work on the Digital Ego. He’s going to talk to us today about cultivating a spirit of questioning in relation to our digital lives.