Hello Courageous Pals,

For those of you who could make it yesterday, thank you so much for joining me for tuning in to truth at the inaugural Courage Pie! I hope you found it as energising and heart-uplifting as I did. I am truly honoured that you chose to spend this time with me among all the other things you could have been doing! Please do join us for the next one on 25 February.

A few follow-ups from our time together yesterday:

Retreat, retreat! Courage Pie: Fully Rounded will be taking place Saturday 3 - Monday 5 May (that’s May bank holiday weekend, folks) at the very magical NourishHQ in the Yorkshire Dales. Find out more, ooh and ahh over the venue photos, and reserve your spot here. Just 9 slots available, so book fast! (This one’s for women only, but I promise I’ll do an all-gender retreat another time.)

She blinded me with science… If you, like me, are an academic who craves citations for things, I’ve got you covered:

• Why did we try to get our conscious mind out of the way? Have a look at Timothy Gallwey’s The Inner Game of Tennis (1974), with a very succinct description of his core ‘Self 1’ vs ‘Self 2’ method on his website (you have to scroll down a bit to find it.) Basically, you need to quiet your analytical mind in order to let the subconscious do what it needs to do to help you flourish. This lets you access your natural, zen, in-the-moment flow state.

• Why do it with a visualisation? Check out the Jungian concept of ‘active imagination’ and its uses (ways to bring the subconscious into the conscious mind; chunky academic article here.) Anecdotally lots of famous creatives (Edison and Dalí being two oft-cited examples) use various wacky methods to almost-but-not-quite fall asleep in order to build that bridge to the unconscious mind and generate new ideas - we were doing the same thing, but without the ball bearings.

• What was the deal with the moving around? Motion really helps to embed learning. There’s a reason we say that we “know it in our bones.” A while back the Stanford VR lab was doing some research showing that motion, emotion and learning are closely related: we retain things that we learn better when they have emotional resonance for us, and actual physical motion can more easily give rise to these emotions. This link is so powerful that simulated motion in VR can be used to actually train people to be more empathetic. Cool, huh? But you don’t need a fancy VR headset to make the most of this link between motion and learning - we did the unplugged version!

February’s theme is still TBC but given the emotive nature of the month it might be about befriending the forbidden emotions. (Those are the ones you cover up with more socially acceptable emotions instead of being honest with yourself about what you’re really feeling.) See you next month (bring a friend!) for another slice of Courage Pie.

Very best,

Caitlin