About
Arjuna Who?
You can build a life you love and still fail to arrive in it.
In my late twenties in New Zealand, on paper, I had everything sorted.
I worked as an outdoor instructor, spending my days on whitewater rivers, running trails, and snowboarding with great people around me. From the outside, it was a dream. But on the inside, I couldn’t shake an ache I didn’t have words for: a hollow, restless ‘something’s missing’ that whispered that no matter what I did, saw, or achieved, an essential piece of the puzzle wasn’t there.
I called it the Donut Life: full and rich on the outside yet hollow in the middle.
And I noticed something else on those rivers. The power of the mind. I’d watch people who were capable of so much more freeze at the top of a rapid. They would decide to walk where lesser, but certainly more gung ho, paddlers would throw themselves into it.
I saw the power of the mind first hand to shape our reality: To convince us we were less than we actually were, to give fear and doubt and worry way more of a say than it should.
We weren’t really stopped by the objective risk. We were being stopped by the noise in our own heads, the endless mental static running scenarios, cataloguing fears, and pulling us out of the only moment we actually had.
Many people never stand above a Class IV rapid. But almost everyone runs that same exhausting internal commentary and general mental noise the moment their feet hit the floor in the morning.
The noise is a symptom. Undernourishment is the cause.
The modern self-help world tells you that your mind is broken and needs fixing. It hands you coping mechanisms, tracking apps, breathwork protocols, and positive affirmations, turning changing your mind into another project on your to-do list.
And they all help to some degree, but when does it end?
Managing symptoms might buy you a temporary patch of calm, but it never sets you free. You can manage the static for the next thirty years and still live as a spectator to your own life.
People aren’t broken. They’re undernourished.
A racing mind isn’t a malfunction; it’s like a hungry stomach rumbling. It’s simply telling you that you are trying to survive on the surface of your life. It’s a sign you’re actually missing something deeper, that you’re starving for foundation, presence, and genuine contact with reality.
Why I teach this
This restlessness eventually led me to the Bright Path Ishayas’ Ascension.
When I learned this practice, something went deeper in a much simpler way than anything I’d ever tried. Not because it was dramatic, but because for the first time, something opened that had nothing to do with my mind shutting up.
The techniques gave me a quiet, unshakable fullness that was simply there, beneath the noise, closer than my next breath. Not something I had to earn, prove, or hustle for.
I dove in, and took vows as an Ishaya monk in 2003 and still spend quality time in deep retreat. It’s always lovely, but the real benefit is the daily practice and how differently I relate to life, my mind and myself.
I teach because I know what it’s like to live on the wrong side of the voice in your head. I know how it feels to have everything on the list and still feel half-absent from your own relationships, your family, your work and your passions. And I know what’s beyond that all of that noise.
Being able to see the door people are banging their heads against and not offer them the key, isn’t something I can live with. That’s why I teach.
My life today is as ordinary and full as anyone’s. I live in Richmond, North Yorkshire with my wife and two kids. I do the school run and the dishes. I run in the mountains and get out in my kayak whenever I can. I do everything I did before.
The difference is that peace is no longer a prize I hope to find once the inbox is empty and life behaves itself. Peace is now the foundation I live from.
This is the possibility that I want to share with the world. How to find out the deeper current beneath the noise, and really come back to the life you are living.
The two books
If you want to read more, my teaching and philosophy are captured in two published books:
200% — An Instruction Manual for Living Fully (2018)
The case for having it all: 100% inner peace, depth, and stillness, combined with 100% full engagement in the messy, adventurous reality of modern life.
Chasing More and Finding Enough (2021)
An investigation into the modern epidemic of “when/then” thinking—and how learning to recognise your own inherent enough-ness changes how you lead, work, and relate to everyone around you.
Where to begin
If you are ready to find out what’s waiting beneath the noise, the best place to start is with my free audios and guides:
[ Get the Free Guides & Audios → ]
You can't think your way out of this
But you can begin to experience life differently.
These free guided audios and written reflections are designed to help you notice what’s underneath the noise - and what actually nourishes you.
Mission
Vision
Values
- Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet
- Luctus nec ullam corper
- Pulvinar dapibus leo