Joel Monk: [00:00:20] Welcome back to the Coaches Rising podcast. Today I'm joined by Simon Hampel. I wanted to invite Simon on because Simon is in demand. He is being invited to help organizations different parties. to mediate, to negotiate, through divides, through conflicts. And I wanted to know what are the principles behind the way Simon works that has him be in such demand. And so that's what we're going to explore in the conversation today. What is this work that he's doing?

Joel Monk: with these organizations. Not only that, I wanted to invite Simon on because he's someone for me who is an incredible convener. [00:01:02] He has an incredible network and is connected to people. I find incredibly inspiring, bringing them together into inspirational community in response to the times we find ourselves in. So, that's why Simon's here. Just a few more words about Simon. He's a serial entrepreneur.

Joel Monk: He's founded a couple of companies before. He is a former CEO, somewhat of an explorer, and a delightful human being. So with all that being said, here is the podcast with Simon Hampel. Simon, so it's great to be with you today. And, um I'm delighted we're having this conversation, we're just getting to know each other, although in some way we're part of the same community. But yeah, I mean, treat about you and what you're up to in the world. And first of all, let me check in how are you doing right now?

Simon Hampel: [00:01:56] Doing well. Thank you. I've had a litany of household appliances break down in the course of the [00:02:06] what I wonder why, what am I increasing or why I love the family and the expensive obviously replet replacing them. So that's what a sense of birth and and I actually have just come from I love me. We're the friend of mine. We're we're we're we're gone to a company. But we know quite well now, he's asked us to try and bring meditation and mindfulness alive and it's not a place you'd imagine going and it's, but yet when we're in there, it feels very safe and there's such lovely people and they're right at the beginning of this journey and it's just like at the coal face of the challenge, so I'm bringing that spirit back into this course, I've just returned from it and just marveling at sometimes it just is simplicity of sitting together and, and

Simon Hampel: with an open heart, how much can be felt within now? I've just been together just really. That's a lovely experience. [00:03:02] I've had that bring up to this call.

Joel Monk: [00:03:06] Well, I'm hoping we'll get to unpack that a little bit further as we meet. Could you give the listeners just to share with us a little bit about You know, what are you up to and what are you up to in the world with your work right now and in a sense, like, what are you taking a stand for with your work? Hmm, thank you.

Simon Hampel: [00:03:30] I feel like I've got a life of many chapters, Joel. It's like I've lived many lives in one, which maybe that's as strange as you can say, but it's an experience I have. Other under. there really is a moment now of my various trippy trees coming together into one river there's something about that feels very true to me. And I think it's because I'm feeling just more enough and able to be myself across the breadth of what I do, something about that [00:04:10] and challenging because you don't quite know where you're going to be. So I say all that as a pretext to them, what am I doing? Well, as I'm showing up more as me, that's what I'm doing, actually,

Simon Hampel: And me is 57 years of lived experience in this world. Father of three, small children, 85 and three. So I'm carrying parenthood as an older father and a husband to my lovely wife, who's a doctor of Chinese medicines. We've got healing in the house. There's a lovely feeling to have a healer with us and the joy of young children and all the challenges of growing with them. I've been doing a sort of journey of inner inquiry for 20 odd years now and somewhere slightly longer and that feels expensive and exciting and challenging and if you use the Wilber wake up clean up grow up show up I feel like all four are alive for me and sometimes there's a particular focus in one of those four buckets but they're all happening [00:05:26] And then I've had this a new experience. I accidentally found myself in a Zen centre run by a Jesuit monk in Southern India about 16 years ago.

Simon Hampel: And I went for a day of stay for two months and I built a practice of meditation that's lasted the course of time and it was definitely gift. And I had some very powerful energetic experiences in my body when I was there, which initially would come back when I was on retreat or eventually into my daily meditations. [00:06:01] But in the last few years, they become available in my life by standing at the bus stop, I began to move and I don't know, I get this urge to, that was a case I wanted to sort of all on a staying on a jewellery, which is very embarrassing, utterly absurd. But I say that because I'm feeling quite charged in this energy, in that it's very ecstatic and rather beautiful in my body. And it's very potent. And so that combination of experience running things in that 57 years of, of them, of living, I have run my own businesses, I then run NGOs, have taken and worked with leaders around the world, on their journeys of inquiry and growth.

Simon Hampel: And so there's something about the permission to be at the top table with leaders that allows the enoughness to not look over my shoulder, particularly like I made them before. [00:07:00] with imposter syndrome or not good enough energy and really joyfully inquires to how I can be a service and contribution. There's something about that. There's true. And then the energy only feels like I have a quick now to hold a space safely to allow the presence to to what's needed, whether it be coming through me or others. And then this energy bit is something about a vibrational space. It's like changing the vibrational container for us to connect the deeper level.

Simon Hampel: And so with those three pillars, holding me. I have been doing two particular things recently. I've been inquiring into how consciousness energy and technology come together to create tipping points for change in the world. [00:08:04] I have a variety of really beautiful inquiry conversations happening with communities here in the UK across Europe, as in Australia and New Zealand and across the U.S. particularly the West Coast. while the wondrous and this sort of a renaissance of humanity possibility and how we grow together, how we sort of hold the line, learn together, something going on there. And then the other side of the coin is, my crust is I've been And behind me for nearly every year now, the phone rings here in a half post, and someone says, can you come and help us me?

Simon Hampel: And there's a sort of form of mediation, resolution, and then renewal work that I'm being asked it. to enable, and it's, you know, it could be shareholders with a founder they've invested in, it could be a chairman with his chief exec, it could be three board members who have fallen out, it could be a foundation that's forming that wants to start well and and knit each other together and integrity, all those four are examples of what I've done, and they pop up once or twice a month, and I end up quietly going somewhere. [00:09:21] sitting at a room or if I can get everyone outside, they will having intense and beautiful connected. experiences and conversations that seem to lead to some unlocking or unveiling of a potential different and new pathway. And then there's a renewal piece which not always but sometimes and then asked to walk alongside those I've just served in that renewal and in that whatever that is, there's mapping itself out. I feel just so privileged. It's like [00:10:01] I think maybe I used to run, I was co-managing partner of a lovely organisation called Leaders' Quest, which is amazing and I stopped doing that about seven years ago.

Simon Hampel: And I think I was a little bit jaundiced at the end around my relationship with commercial life, much as I had been an entrepreneur and run my business and I often saw over the world. I was something about commercial capitalism that just... I was stuck in judgment, I think, and struggling to understand. I roll and I think I've come back full circle now where I'm just like, I don't, I just don't feel the issue of what it is you have chosen to do whoever you are. I'm just delighted to sort of stand alongside you and support what's needed because something good will come from that. I just know it within myself. And of course, they people I'm working with touch, such interesting systems, as always, organizations, companies, bigger ecosystems, just feels why wouldn't I do this? And it's the coal face of the challenge that that allows me to bring that learning back into my briguring, inquiry around consciousness, energy, technology in these communities, I'm part of this.

Simon Hampel: [00:11:07] There's a lovely union, young and seesaw that's happening, that sort of gives me permission.

Joel Monk: [00:11:18] Thank you for that. Such a beautiful encapsulation of what's unfolding for you and there's few themes which I've noted down which I want to come back to. Particularly I want to come back to the community you've been gathering around consciousness technology. But I want to just pick up what you shared about the work you're being called to do and how you feel inside of that work. Could you, so let me say this, like one of the themes we've been exploring on the podcast is how are we being invited to evolve in our times, as practitioners who serve and support individuals and teams and organisations to thrive and, you know, we've also explored how [00:12:14] the ways that we can define ourselves being a coach, for example, can feel too small sometimes and that there's this place beyond that that can feel quite liberated and where maybe a different kind of genius flows through us or our gifts come online. And I kind of hear that in what you're sharing in your journey is that, through your journey, you've become you.

Joel Monk: And I think that's really powerful. I want to underline, it's like, it's not, you're not playing a role, per se, even though you might be kind of outwardly facing seeming to play a role, but it's like, you've just become you and you're giving yourself fully in these situations. So I want to go deeper into that, but I wonder what comes up for you around [00:13:05] You know, what, how you feel about the kind of practitioner you are and how that relates to what's unfolding in the world and, you know, the journey of life. So to speak. Oh, so much popped up for me.

Simon Hampel: [00:13:19] It's like I had a menu just cascaded into my mind, the things I could speak to there. Oh. When I left Bodhi Zendo in March 2010, this is the Zen to inquire into what it was that we were trying to do in the world, and we met once a month. [00:14:02] the crowd on the knee six or seven years, some of the practitioners, some of the coaches, some were people running organizations, but I say about the kindred spirit and I, my connection to them that gave us permission to make the time available, to practice what it was you doing. And I've noticed I've done their ever since. I've seen me, you always had a circle of people around me that every month I can lean on and into that I grow alongside both in listening and Um, to that feels true.

Simon Hampel: I also remember a lovely shamanic acupuncturist friend of ours who was talking to my darling wife and she started a journey of acupuncture as a practitioner herself many years ago and she was like concerned who had plans to be and how would you mark in herself and she said look, you will just get the clients that you are ready for and as you mature and grow in your practice and your gift. So those clients will change and those [00:15:03] by 10, 15, 20 years ago, it's, they're different people there. And they're different types of people, and I recognize that's because of what's happening for me is also allowing that possibility that happened in front of me. And then what I, and I give, so that's true. I, what else? I think my, if you say yes to the afternoon, I walked with a Zen, sorry, a Taoist acupuncturist, a masterful man who's been teaching my lovely wife in the apprenticeship of the next layer of her learning. He said, I love you.

Simon Hampel: [00:16:00] If you hear this home, I love you. And I had a lovely walk in Hyde Park with him. And we were exploring his journey into the meds. And he was sharing that he realized more and more it's not the theory and the books. But it's the felt sense of the meds and the brings him alive and how he's trying to bring his students on the journey as much as he is trying to surface patients. And I realized that is kind of what's happening for me too. It's like the direct experience. and be integrating my learning into my daily life.

Simon Hampel: Like, I'm living a retreat to my children. As much as they ask, equips me for them what presents itself in the work that I'm doing. But it's a direct experience. I'm really, as if my body has, as [00:17:00] a wholeness to my experience and you asked a question earlier as you were commenting that that wholeness creates I think a container where if the presence is felt in the vibration is true, it literally accesses the creative intuitive impulse beyond any of us. There is something bigger than available and it's a really a felt and no speed so thing and it's happened time

Joel Monk: [00:17:39] Beautiful. Yeah, that feels so such an invitation being made to us as practitioners that, um, you know, that place of mastery. as an ongoing journey and never ending on going journey. But it's a significant shift in that journey as when we, you know, the methods and maps and tools really move into the background, they can be called upon. [00:18:11] But they're no longer the lens through which We are trying to make sense of the individual or people that we're with, but actually there is this felt sense which takes like a primary, kind of seat, like feeling, feeling what's emerging. Yeah, lucky.

Simon Hampel: [00:18:33] Yeah, that's how you'll spot on.

Joel Monk: [00:18:35] That's, that's what's happening. So, You know, I know when you get called to your clients, you know, whether it's, you know, it sounds like you're often working with, you know, groups of people. Tell me a little bit more about what happens for you in those moments, you know, like maybe it's as simple as saying, like you, you start to feel what wants to be spoken or what wants to be named, but yeah, is there a, [00:19:08] because we're a process.

Simon Hampel: [00:19:10] Yeah, I mean, I don't have a methodology. Okay, so I get, it was a go on to my website and say, it's great. So what do you actually do with the structure and form? And it's like, no, it's so emergent. I wouldn't be true to myself if I did that. Obviously, like you speak to Joel, I have lots of tools and skills. things that I've learned over the years because of the circles that we've been I've been part of and because of leading Leaders' Quest and other things, Global Leaders Academy, I've had the gift of receiving lots of ways of holding space and bringing conversations alive and. But what?

Simon Hampel: I think happens. And by the way, it's never any more than three or four people. It's there's small groups. It's one on one, which one on two, which three on two. Yeah, that sort of destructive you imagine. I'm in a room often for a day or two with just me and these three or four people who have not seen I do I, you say. [00:20:10] So you know, you're coming into at the degree of I always endeavour to speak to everyone before I meet them and if I can meet them in person, I will.

Simon Hampel: I want to get context and backstory. Obviously, build relationship where they feel a sense of safety to me in a sense of trust. So that, you know, whatever the work is, however quickly it comes into my gift, I invite that before I even meet people because it feels important. And it gives me a sense, often I have an intuitive sense of what's going on And so I'm sitting with that, as I walk into the room, the room is usually a neutral place away from, I was recently flown to Lisbon by an organisation who do not operate there, because that was the place they wanted these people to meet in as a neutral ground. [00:21:00] I did the say, I wreck you big many years ago, and I try and bring alive the context. in the room for everyone. So there's something about getting them to speak to why we're there and often I find that the reason the stuckness is in place is that the history is different.

Simon Hampel: So I try and go back to the origins of the relationship and the felt sense of what that relationship was like then, which is broadly always a positive experience because they came together for a good reason. And if you can find the energy of that good reason, and then notice where you're at, it's not well, that's interesting. We didn't go straight on, we turned left, that's quite painful. So I try and imagine what was happening for that left turn to take place. So we build the story together, and it's often the invitation is for us to listen, and the permission is questions of clarification, but not the judge nor to suggest things were right or wrong, and it's amazing with that. [00:22:06] degree of over time. You need time for this. You can't just do this in an hour.

Simon Hampel: So hence why it's a few a day or two and there's always an overnight stay because you've got to build a context and that story and constantly be listening and feeling into who's connecting to this, who's withdrawing, who doesn't feel like they sit comfortably with the story or those things. I go to the future and what the where they hope they would be because of what they formed initially by coming together. And so there's again the sense of positivity. If you've got your booking ending, book ending, the challenge with two things that feel really exciting and possible. And then you come into the mess in the middle and say, well, what is it? Where are we now? And it's much easier once we then have got those two bookends in place and we look at the middle bit to go, and then people sort of like, [00:23:06] Wow, and I can understand a bit more why we're here now and I didn't realize and appreciate that that's why you were doing what that was getting the way we made these choices that affected the way that things cascaded and the organization so much becomes available and I try hard to encourage reflections that both operate on the why things aren't working but what has worked.

Simon Hampel: So you get those two things together. No, it's not always what I do. I'm just giving it this particular recent piece of work, it was exactly in that form. And then I just sit and I listen and I notice the piece of the field itself begins to sort of like it begins to invisibly knit everyone together. There's some form of work happening. And I just need a whole that space and and stay quiet. [00:24:00] So I'm not doing on this call and I'm allow what needs to be spoken to the come out and obviously, occasionally.

Simon Hampel: Step in and put my hand on the tiller gently if required. But stay quiet. Listen, listen, allow what to pop to pop. Occasionally park things and bring them back. Just And then walk, you know, get out of the room and go into nature and hear people often, go in threes if they need to and come back, you know, have other types of conversation. Keep that knitting alive until such time as we come to the end of the time and hopefully there's some form of resolution or at least way forward that's opening up because of that experience, which we can then hold lightly and carefully and because it's fragile and it needs care and attention for it to grow.

Simon Hampel: [00:25:04] But that's broadly what happens.

Joel Monk: [00:25:08] Yeah, beautiful. The, the, the The bad luck to kind of unpack a bit further is, you know, when you listen in this way, you know, like I can really get a sense of like that you can, you're attuning to this knitted field that's kind of emerging as people, you know, share more and more. And, um, When is it? I'm imagining that at some point you might start to feel something, you know, like a, you know, you described it for as a kind of creative impulse or there's a felt sense of something and how, how do you recognize that in yourself or, um, yeah, what happens in that process.

Simon Hampel: [00:25:58] Well, thank you for asking, I mentioned earlier on the call that I've had these energetic experiences for many years, and that they are beginning more potent and more available and more regular. [00:26:12] So what I'm about as fast as happening now, but actually people who have seen me, but I'm beginning to move and sort of rotate my hips is that it's like my body takes over. partly it sort of rotates both clockwise and anticlockwise occasionally sort of spins. Sometimes my head goes back and I air comes out and you know, I don't try and make it about myself. I don't I don't I don't suppress any of it. I know that's not helpful, but I also don't try and make it out too overt. I just notice it to be true and of course the more comfortable I am with it now and the more people know it's a bit of very I really have very rarely had any feedback, and the other than like, oh, that's, it's like helpful in what's happening.

Simon Hampel: There's something helpful about it, harming through unusual, whatever the words are, creates curiosity. [00:27:06] And so this intuitive, creative impulse, it's somehow related to the, the movement of my body, way marker on the road. It's like, go that way. It's sort of, I begin to spin. It's okay. We're across ways. We're going to go left here.

Simon Hampel: It's like a, it's like a, it's like a, it's like a, It's a sort of virtual map of energy. I'm following here, and sometimes I feel terribly tired. It's like, I want to just literally close my eyes and fall asleep on the floor and run at me. And it's like, we don't need to keep going down that path. That is not going to serve us. I really don't need to say a case. It's like, oh, I feel exhausted.

Simon Hampel: And then I suddenly happen to like, get energy back into my system, I work. OK, that's going to go this way. Follow the energy. So I'm following the energy the whole time. [00:28:02] When I do that, it's seemingly breaks through into the lives of others in the way that they speak more wholly about what's happening for them. There's something about expressing a felt sense around the thought sense of what's going on. Sometimes stories come out, sometimes it's a glitchy go into, you know, often a very vulnerable state because, and you've got to hold that very delicately, but there's real appreciation and reflection that suddenly comes to being.

Simon Hampel: And of course, if one person does that, it just gives permission for everyone to go there. It may never have done, even if they've been operating together for many, many years. And they notice in that sharing or opens up for them as a possibility that they hadn't previously noticed before.

Joel Monk: [00:28:59] I can feel such excitement in me as you share this. [00:29:04] I'm thinking of a recent meeting I was in. It's kind of strategy meeting. And there was a real sense of like, I can't remember the words you used to describe it, but thought, feeling versus felt, feeling. In the meeting, it felt like we were exploring what we're inspired to create, you know, planning for next year, but that feeling was missing. If I'd like there was a certain habituation to the conversation or superficiality, but I don't say that pejoratively so much.

Joel Monk: But there's something was missing and it was vulnerable to kind of name that and then just say, [00:30:02] to kind of create space, you know, to create a break and I could feel the impulse to move into back into a kind of safer territory of knowing of the known, you know, because it's kind of vulnerable to hang out in that space where the electricity or the felt sense kind of turns quality of aliveness, truth, inspiration came online. And that there was a whole different order of quality of intelligence to our conversation that came through. And what was interesting was then, you know, in the last, we had five minutes, but then we made like four or five very important decisions, but very quickly because they came out of that sense of a lot of that emerged. [00:31:08] And we could have spent a whole hour in the other kind of thought-thought-feeling place or thought-some-based way of being together and we wouldn't have connected to that clarity. So what you share reminds me of that.

Joel Monk: And I feel it's really essential. It's one of the kind of moves that's being invited for our times, it feels like to connect more to that place.

Simon Hampel: [00:31:39] Yeah, so there's a lovely man called Bill Sharpe. Hello Bill, and the reason why you'd be listening, but if you are, I'll be building an extraordinary man and being a mentor of mine over the years. And he wrote Three Horizons: The Patterning of Hope you'd rather love a little pat flipping and get the chance to read that. And Bill was always talking about a mentor of his, I now forget who that was and so on and saying, but about him being encouraged to be a transformative presence. [00:32:02] But that was his gift. Remember hearing that many years ago and being And we're describing that a little bit here, a lot of our gift as the hold of the spaces to be a transformative presence. And the thing I was also thinking about, as you were sharing, is the... We've all had happy accidents of that experience in our lives.

Simon Hampel: including all the people I work with, even if they've never been on this journey that we're describing, if all this sort of conversation is just sounds like mumbo jumbo, actually they've had experiences of happy accidents, intuitive creative impulses, parity in connection which are bigger than themselves and it resulted in something. And so that is known within their system. And sometimes I even speak about it. [00:33:00] In fact, sometimes to break the ice, I even talk about it. And we have a, and I have a little checking session around synchronicities. And you know, everyone, because whenever you speak about synchronicities, whatever I speak about synchronicities, it brings the room alive. Because everyone's got, once they know what a synchronicity is, and there's a question sometimes, what does that mean? But once we have the conversations with these, think this is like, oh, well, I had, and then they shared, it's always got energy and excitement and fun and connection.

Simon Hampel: And then they go, and so the room becomes alive with synchronicities. And you're giving that felt sense again to the happy accident. And it's happy accent because it's not created in awareness and it's not something that we cultivate through a choice and what I'm speaking to here is cultivating that happy accident and designing those more available and then giving them the experience of them knowing they can do that for themselves with practice and awareness.

Joel Monk: [00:34:03] How much do you think you're what you've said about becoming enough and showing up as you is plays a role in being a transformative presence? Because I think it's important, you know, people say that like, you know, being authentic just be you. So it can sound a bit trite, but I think there's something very profound about that move. And I wonder what you feel that move has brought in terms of what we're sharing now around being a transformative presence and attuning to this felt sense.

Simon Hampel: [00:34:50] Thank you. I'm going to share a story in a bit. I want to speak to that before I share the story. I am sure I have used the word transformative presence for many years and roll out that is my gift or maybe of other people's gifts, but it's like there's also little voice saying you're not really transformed, you know, good for silence, but energetically it's not quite true is it? [00:35:21] whatever it is that's going on inside of me is just going. So I think there's something about truth here to oneself. I mean, I give you an example. So in our family, and I'm sure that wouldn't might be sharing, I don't need as much sleep.

Simon Hampel: And so I generally get to other kids not always been more times than not if there's someone getting up in the night. And that's fine. And what I've noticed that's been different for me in my last eight years of parenting, is that now I think through the sort of Trojan horse of practice and awareness of nothingness, when I hear a little sound, whether I'm in a deep sleep, a layer upon layer into sleep and cautioners where we'll write at the surface, [00:36:16] it's like imagine inside of me is a beach of pebbles and imagine a pebble in the middle of that beach suddenly begins to vibrate like a sort of golden color and it becomes a bit molten and then it touches the pebbles next to it and they vibrate and it goes out so it's like an expression of energy coming from the centre out and it feels like that feels like It's like my body is listening and it just wants to vibrate something of love as I come out of the bed so that when I meet my daughters or my son, it's like they are experiencing both a face that's sort of, you know, cannot crossly looking at them, why do I come here? [00:37:08] But it's so late or too early or whatever the conversation And you know, whatever is there about to say, they feel safe, they feel real something hurt, something's woken them up, whatever's happening. It's like the vibration means that I am presenting an honest love for them that's just true.

Simon Hampel: And so I smile and whatever they say, I generally just say, God, will you? I'm sorry to hear that. And I swivel them around. I walk them back to their bed. Whatever it is, of course it is. something I've got to do with like the big sick. I would do that, but usually it's not, usually it's some sort of need but very quickly if I can help not trigger their cortisol and their stress response. I can get them back into bed and asleep within two or three minutes just by hand on them and they're asleep and it's like me going for a pee and frankly it's a 57-year-old man.

Simon Hampel: Yeah, where's what happens in the 90s? They say, doesn't really disrupt my sleep. [00:38:01] Sometimes I'm a bit wide, but it takes a bit time to go to bed. So yeah, and I say that because I think there's a truth. And by the way, I don't always do that. That is not a permanent state of which it was. But I'm noticing that it's having more. And as it does,

Simon Hampel: the relationship to him, my child, just it's just such a lovely connection. They know that they're held and they're not reacting. There's no need for words and they just go back into a gentle and then deeply. And I think that's the same when I'm in the room. If I can feel that truth inside of me coming into the room. And that's what happens. And if it's not true, you know, I am know there have been times what I'll have a fake smile on my face as I come to the door pretending that I'm happy that they've woken me up, but buttering me inside is going, you are so annoying. This is a third time tonight and I've fed up with it and how are you going to stop doing it?

Simon Hampel: Because you're really giving me upset and not an exhaustive. That's what the conversation inside of myself, as well as are for you. [00:39:02] So I think that's the difference to me that I'm gradually, not fully, and gradually the scales, the weighting is beginning to become more balanced and perhaps in time it'll be game the other way, used to say, but it just feels more available, more regular, because it's more practiced, and it's just more in my life.

Joel Monk: [00:39:23] Hmm, and so it's like a, if I hear that story, it's like a vibrational connection to, to yourself or a kind of, um, freedom of, uh, connection and sense of who you are and, yeah, yeah, it's both on.

Simon Hampel: [00:39:52] It feels so liberating. It's a nice way of really liberating. And therefore, I can be very nimble and what I need to do. [00:40:01] I'm going to go with this. I'm feeling very alive and nimble and aware and awake. Even if I want to go back to sleep, it's not. It's a funny thing to say awake, but it's not. Doesn't prevent me from putting my head back in the middle and falling asleep.

Joel Monk: [00:40:15] It kind of reminds me of, I remember. So it gets back to me of like the difference between playing a role and just showing up nakedly. And I remember this story of like being with the potential coaching client. And we always meet with people to explore the possibility, you know, before we ever agree to work together. Sometimes over two or three conversations. I could feel like I was in a kind of slight coaching mode, like I want to help you and I could feel we weren't there, I could feel like this isn't it. [00:41:01] I can always feel it when we get when we're in the right place. And then I remember just being like this, this isn't it, I dropped all pretence,

Joel Monk: all pretence in that moment. I just met with this person and the conversation became electric electrified and this person was like this, I want to be in this. With you, And I want to call it like surrender or, you know, like dying on the sword, I sort of speak, it's like that real, real value and service comes through when there is that kind of, yeah, I don't know, again, it's hard to find the words, but just deep authenticity or deep truth and it's vulnerable to share that, it's actually, it's like a vulnerable thing to be that in the world.

Simon Hampel: [00:42:13] And I think it's also important, yeah, and I get it wrong. But, you know, in Fair enough, it was a busy household and appliances would be meant to be put on and there's lots going on and we all have that and saying the way you could say, well Fair enough, that's the way what it means to be a parent, but I realize that I had a choice there and I just I let go of my choice for the urgency of the time and when she got to school, she said to walk to school and her socks without wearing her shoes. [00:43:07] So I had to carry issues. We got there and gradually in the end, got to choose and I got into a classroom. And I just felt quite ill. I felt kind of really sick inside of me. And I thought, I've had a role here. I really not served here.

Simon Hampel: And I feel I feel very obsessive about it. And I don't know what to do. And I was just, I just noticed it was such a strong feeling, which I've also, by the way, as a sort of meta-king, when I don't feel like being the best version of me, it's so much more much quicker awareness, and it really comes to the surface, which, I have whom when I was walking in the Mesta shared this and he said, that's actually very healthy because it means that some of you're not embedding it in your body for later repercussions. You know, you're being given the gift presenting itself again, are you going to resolve it? Are you going to transmute it then and there? And I don't, I wasn't as conscious as he made me of it until yesterday. [00:44:01] I've never been in the morning.

Simon Hampel: I was not feeling comfortable. I'm really too full of it. And I noticed that it'll cuddly, frankly, lie, strange, that in what she carries around with it, and she's been heops it on the sofa. So I picked it up and it's got a lovely smell, because of course she cuddles it and she's, you know, probably should be washed years again, but it's I love the smell. And I put it on my shoulder, I was a smell to it, and I thought I'd take a picture of me saying sorry to Frank. I'm going to share it, because I really like, yeah, because Frank's important to her. So I had a friend from my shoulder, I took a picture of the two of us. When I saw that evening, I said, I'm really sorry, darling.

Simon Hampel: In the way she said to me, remember when I was talking about, I said, I'm really sorry. I don't think I'll help you this morning. I don't know where she sort of ran out to me. Just hug me and say, I'll thanks Dad. And then I said, I took a picture of me and Frank. I really felt bad for Frank too. She went, you didn't. I said, I did it and she showed her.

Simon Hampel: And she just gave me the biggest kiss around off. And I thought, I just feel like, again, as I could, that moment has just, practically has been cleaned, brilliant. [00:45:03] You know, who knew it was possible? But I'd gone down a path that didn't serve and I came, but I reversed back up as quickly as I could. And I think that's also important to know that those things are possible and true. And we all have them the whole time.

Joel Monk: [00:45:15] Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, and maybe also that we become sensitive more and more sensitive to when that's the point.

Simon Hampel: [00:45:25] Exactly.

Joel Monk: [00:45:25] Yeah, when we're out of alignment with, you know, what's most important to us just didn't feel. I felt deeply uncomfortable in my side of myself.

Simon Hampel: [00:45:35] Yeah, which I think is the is the numbness thawing out. I can feel. Yeah.

Joel Monk: [00:45:46] Can I ask you about your community or, you know, the love you have for, you know, this confluence of technology and consciousness and community? [00:46:01] I see community becoming a stronger topic these days in certain communities, you know, there seems to be different types of communities forming and yeah that feels significant and it feels pertinent to our times and what I know you've got your own community that's kind of held but with you at the centre what could you say a little bit about that community What your intention is and why are you feel inspired by bringing, you know, technology, consciousness, a community, yeah, energy, energy, yeah, that's the third one.

Simon Hampel: [00:46:53] Um, of course. Well, there's the number of strands that lead to the centre. There's the strand of her having holds held circles since 2010. [00:47:02] I've just had such joy that it's like, this is the next iteration of the circles that I've been holding. That's just true. And it's 15 years on. So it's a bit of a sort of, wow, lucky me, I get to play new all these people. Why would they do this?

Simon Hampel: I know I learned from it. I know I can although this is virtually online because people in it are from the West Coast, the US, all of it Australia, so there's no way we can meet in person or about who will one day in some form retreat, but broadly it's online. That at my journey, I and a number of friends. We started the organization called Sarsen a few years ago and we were trying to bring practices into people's lives, into, you know, I found up and working in some amazing businesses like Google and Accenture and Pizza Hut, and others being practices of awareness of presence of meditation, mindfulness of breath work, of tapping and sound and nature. [00:48:05] It was really exciting, we couldn't scale it. Just we got lots of super fans.

Simon Hampel: We couldn't scale it and it just feels unreasonable to keep drawing down shareholder money and not make it sustainable. So we formally close it down about 18 months ago though actually it's still taking us time to close down because you've got it on a company, all these things take time. And it's been dying well, Joel. It's a hard thing to say in that I'm really it's been very interesting and that's supposed to help for and challenging perhaps here to the from shareholders to team to clients to, you know, all the stakeholders, people behave really well. There's no drama in the system. That's an education itself.

Simon Hampel: I don't think I've ever been involved in this diet well. Part of it, therefore, says, well, why didn't they live better and longer? It's annoying. But part of it recognizes just true that it's dying well. [00:49:01] And then what are my learnings from that? What part did I have to play in why didn't work? Of course, this is that's a broader I think I've only been able to notice subsequent closing the doors is that I have grown in the last decade in my own journey and my learning edge is not actually where the Sarsen learning edge was in a different place.

Simon Hampel: And so although I was committed and I was hard working and I turned up every day and I really put all my energy, I don't think anyone would doubt my work ethic and my I don't think I was actually, I wasn't finding that creative intuitive impulse of my learning edge. For that, that wasn't there for me, and I think other reasons too. And so when, and yet, the feedback from everyone in the system from shareholders to clients to team to participants has been, well, don't give up, this is really important work, [00:50:12] And I realize I need to let go of the organization and actually of running anything and just I need to come to kind of tell my own stuff here and so that was the piece that I realized was and where is my learning edge and my learning edge. seemingly as around layers of consciousness and the capacity for us to grow into that another layer, this sense that there is a possibility of a Renaissance humanity taking shape around us, that the conditions are in place for our sacred world come alive in some way. And I think what you're describing in these communities is this is the sacred commons coming alive that there are communities of like-minded people being drawn to each other often the sort of Dunbar brief of around 150 and that they have particular energy that will hold them and [00:51:08] the group I'm holding is just over just under 130 people and sure to be up by 150 by into the year and it's for me the expression of my inquiry here is well it's it feels like everyone and again I don't mean it's judgmentally it's like a felt sense of mature soul human beings that's not what's more but coming together to

Simon Hampel: to hold the line in the face of, you know, lots of challenges in our world, to know each other exists. Because that's just helpful because often we feel lonely, not supported, or where's the likes of me somewhere else? Because I can't have this conversation, the immediacy of my home and the immediacy of my office and immediacy of my friendship group. So hold the line, know we exist. Um, I've always loved joining dots. [00:52:01] I can't help myself but connect people and ideas and opportunities. And so, what a joy to have nearly 130 people who like cascade is if I'm want to aeroplane with the names and front of me running up and down the the screen and front to keep thinking about. So I had I put that person with that person and that would make a lot of sense.

Simon Hampel: That's a really good idea. They should find out about it together. That's just happening. So it's alive and or invisible knitting underneath. And then there's something about love when we talked about that feeling that felt sense growing out from the centre, it's a felt sense of love for my children for each other. I know that because of the rigor of my day and days, I get depleted and yet this energy in my system is like a hybrid engine. It's like I have access to a different energy source plugging into the mains. And I think we all do.

Simon Hampel: So maybe my role in this community is also to be like the virtual garage attendant and I have the hand on the nozzle and pop it into each of our tanks, but into our other tank, not the one that we will as we eat our delicious food and [00:53:08] during quadrinks, and so I invite everyone to soak in love. I pop the nozzle into the tank every six weeks from our, and we have a loving meditation to soak in love together and to replenish, to stick back out into the world, and what's so beautiful about that is it's on my edge of, and I even say that, can I even do that, do I permission? And then to say that to people who run, in some really very senior and to have the receptivity of people saying thank you that's what I need to. So it's just true. It's a shared experience. I'm noticing to be true.

Simon Hampel: It connects us all and then the last piece of the puzzle is I think there's a lot of wisdom popping up from both masterful human beings who are sharing what they feel is needed and sort of groups and individuals who are noticing [00:54:07] bigger questions. There's something happening. I've got a body of work that keeps coming at me and it's like, we're a petri dish, we're a laboratory on a place that was done in the center of it and then makes sense of it together and play with it and see how cascades out into our ecosystems. So it's a really hence this relates on to humanity potential. Why wouldn't we try that? And my role is to not be the wisdom keeper, but maybe to hold the

Joel Monk: [00:54:37] I was going to ask you a little bit more about the intention of the group because we hear this term like islands of coherence, islands of sanity and on the podcast we've explored a lot about which is very clear now that [00:55:01] Wow, this is, we're not in business as usual, you know, crazy world, we live in incredible times and it does seem clear that certain things are breaking down and therefore, you know, I've heard others speak about coming into community and forming islands of coherence and sanity are these groups, are you as your group, you know, an island of coherence and in sense, that's the main purpose, you know, or does it have a purpose of, you know, like being a petri dish that potentially collaborations or projects may arise out of this community and impact the world. We were speaking with a mutual friend of ours recently and one of the things I shared was my sense of dissonance around my love and care of the evolution of consciousness and the [00:56:14] the need for us to do in a work, but to really be in the world, having an impact in the world, but that whole movement. And then, but seeing how, where are these groups of people really having an impact in the world stage? I loved integral theory.

Joel Monk: And there was Ken Wilber and the Integral Institute, but that felt decides flying in the end. Beautiful things came from it. what impact did that really have in the world? And so that's one of the things I'm sat with is if there is to be a Renaissance, that means it's going to have to have real impact, you know, in politics, in governance. [00:57:01] And where will that come from. So I don't know if that makes sense. What I'm just kind of thinking out loud and why don't make a few questions in the process.

Simon Hampel: [00:57:10] Yeah, I love it. I love it. Yes, I think this is it emerging. It's early. There is a definite sense of action coming from it and through it. It doesn't feel like we're just going to sit there and go here. I think that's very lovely, and of course that is the knitting that holds and binds us, I think, you know, if this is something going to be building, I imagine this is five to ten years, already, I can see that shape and form existing for some time now, and with the depth and beauty will come. I, um, because of the nature of the people in it, they're already many of them,

Simon Hampel: right in the commercial and market place of life. [00:58:01] So the good news is this is not a group of people who aspire to working with these people who are actually doing stuff day-to-day that have affect lots of people. So that feels a good starting point because they've got their finger on the is because there's permission to see each other as his, that we also have permission to hold the mirror up to each other about living this work in the immediacy of our life because something about action for me is the integration of action in the immediacy of your first circle and then the next circle and then the next circle. And so often it's, it's People want to go out to the third or fourth concentric circle beyond themselves because that's where things have to change. It's like, it doesn't change. [00:59:00] So I'm noticing that in this inquiry, all of us together, there is an inquiry about what does it mean to integrate the collective learning we're having from our various teachers and guides and in the journeys of our own.

Simon Hampel: Now, with my daughter at the door, when she wakes me, at half past twelve, half past two and half past four. That is so much part of the doing, because I know if I do that. regularly and it lands for both of us and I grow, it would by the very nature of that be the same as I walk into the room with a chairman and a chief exec, because I have this lived experience coming through me and I have the confidence and the experience of the difference that it makes. So the doing action comes in the repetitive practice in the immediacy of who you are and that's And then I think there's this broader unknownness that the technologies, there's a lovely, great friend of Jamie Arbib, who's written a book called Stellar, the whole premise is that we already have the technologies that we need to create an abundance of life. [01:00:15] But we don't necessarily have the stellar humans to match the technologies that are coming through. And I think I think a lot of us in this conversation are trying to understand how we can operate from both the inner and the outer, that there is a group of inner practitioners who kind of know the direction of travel, but don't speak the language of the outer world to land and there's a group of people in the marketplace of life who instinctively know what they're trying to do is not working, but haven't got a sense of connection into the the we were the inner.

Simon Hampel: And I think where I hope we're going to operate from is the bridge where we have permission because who we are to bring both together and try and meet that in the middle that that is feels very true to me and very real. [01:01:03] And I think it's a long term learning journey like the University of life we are part of there is a learning journey that is experiential on a daily basis I could tell it for us, but it's an interesting experience.

Joel Monk: [01:01:22] Yeah, it's a very personal person. Yeah. Yeah, beautifully spoken, and I, you know, there's, I don't know, if you've seen Peter Limberg's two-by-two that got, you know, the agentic sage comes to mind here.

Simon Hampel: [01:01:41] He did his part of this conversation for a little bit recently. Yeah, right. Beautiful.

Joel Monk: [01:01:46] Yeah. So it seems to be capturing people's imagination that notion of an agentic sage. I have some bones about the way some people have spoken about it, which has a very Anglo-American kind of definition to it, which doesn't quite sit right. [01:02:07] But at the same time, the, you know, Peter's articulation feels, you know, I love Peter's work.

Simon Hampel: [01:02:14] Yeah, or just.

Joel Monk: [01:02:16] Yeah.

Simon Hampel: [01:02:20] it just feels like part of our time so it does it just feels it's unfolding follow the energy always follow the energy yeah that's that feels important and I'm following the energy in this and being open to it listening it's also fun though you know it's but I'm getting I'm building amazing friendships here that, you know, as my lovely wife again, she says, ah, but is it paying them what we just like, no, it's not paying them what we just, but I feel alive and it's really, really into why wouldn't I do it? I mean, it's friendship's a global now. And so I've got to, like, wow, how amazing. And, you know, we kind of laugh and try together we share experiences. That feels so much part of it. Really real. [01:03:01] It's not worthy.

Simon Hampel: I mean, it's intensification because we're sitting there and, you know, difficult conversations, but it feels very alive in its playfulness and fun, too.

Joel Monk: [01:03:14] I notice in my life, recently, there's been a big, like, amplification of synchronicic meetings, including the one I had with you just a couple of weeks ago. I keep going downstairs to my wife and I'm like, wow! Wow, I just met the most extraordinary person, you know, and, you know, they're, they, they're just beautiful. They're shining and they're taking, you know, they stand for such beautiful things and, you know, I'd like to have three of those conversations in one day. I feel so grateful and I've noticed that has amplified recently to the point where I'm like, whoa, what's, what's going on here?

Simon Hampel: [01:03:58] Yeah. That's so low. [01:04:00] Well, they are synchronicities. It's just like you said, what were synchronicities alive? And you've come alive. I could just see you're glowing talking about it. I was just sharing in the cool slightly earlier today. Hey, synchronicities are always there.

Simon Hampel: Then just always there. It's just that we're not always aware of them. They're always in front of us. And when we tune in, it's like, wow, it's inspiring. It's connecting. It's life affirming, and I think the realm of synchronicity that, you know, this age is would speak to the fact that planetary consciousness is the realm of synchronicity, and that as you tune into that, it just becomes alive more and more for you. And it's the practice of noticing that actually connects you more and more.

Simon Hampel: Doesn't mean life can be perfect. Things can work out and you can end up winning the lottery. It means that you show up in the way you need to show up to whatever's presenting is held in front of you.

Joel Monk: [01:04:47] And just for those listening, what do you mean by planetary consciousness?

Simon Hampel: [01:04:50] I know that's a big question, but if we imagine that this world that we live on has its own consciousness, can you imagine that it is alive? [01:05:03] And there is a conscious layer of activation and availability that perhaps is becoming seemingly the case in the variety of communities about finding themselves in each other. In noticing the sacredness to this world, the sort of interconnection into the inter-relationship is just true and that if we can allow and give expression to what that is a direction of travel that will only serve us collectively. So there's something about that felt sense. It's spoken to, I don't have connection into the dimensions to say, ah, this is now planetary consciousness doing a week. I don't, I don't see colors or methane jewels and not that's the person.

Simon Hampel: [01:06:00] But I have a felt sense of unfolding of awareness and this connecting to the means of life that feels like there's another layer of possibility in front of us, which is very enticing, exciting. And I often say to myself that I start the day, I wish for the invite myself to see more today and to know with great humility that there's always more to see. And my certainty doesn't kick in alongside, but it feels like that's a really lovely invitation.

Joel Monk: [01:06:32] Yeah, that's beautiful. does the explosion of interest, people have in meditation and embodiment practices, and there could be priming them, priming the realization, or the recognition of planetary consciousness more fully.

Simon Hampel: [01:07:01] Well, I go back to the other things, because at the beginning, I did not have that until I was 42. I didn't, nothing I've experienced in our experience up until the age of 42. I just didn't, I wasn't there. And then suddenly it arrived. And now it is true. And it's like, I can't not own that. And there's something bigger than me happening here.

Simon Hampel: And people can say, oh, it can give me all sorts of descriptions and whether I'm, whatever, I just know it to be true. And I feel the beauty of it with inside myself. And I just know that that is something that's bigger than me. And that's an afflity. I felt like it's so lucky me to have had that visceral physically experience so regularly to help with the enoughness, because it's like, it's just there.

Joel Monk: [01:07:53] If I can't escape it.

Simon Hampel: [01:07:55] And I just have to say that, without, you know, I don't have something huge evidence based apart from myself, and you can see me moving in that. [01:08:05] I'm not trying to do that. It's just doing it.

Joel Monk: [01:08:08] Right. Yeah, Simon, this has been such a beautiful conversation. And it's a delightful way to get to know you more. I wonder if there's anything you don't need to, but if there might be anything you want to share as we come to a close now that feels important.

Simon Hampel: [01:08:32] Yeah, I will share. I apologise for imposing other people's belief systems, but I think I have experienced somehow a fundamental realization that there is a multi-dimensionality to life and that experience once experience can't be lost or forgotten, which means I look at [01:09:01] And I know it's be true and you know it's available for all of us and I marvel about the fact that it's seeming me is in my life now and I just I want to just point to it possibility for everyone because I know there's a more of us that experience, what a different path what I've been up.

Joel Monk: [01:09:21] Hmm, beautiful. Yeah, I just want to give that a bit of breathing space. Where can we find out more about you Simon? I mean, I don't know if you want that, actually. That's a question I often ask at the end of these conversations, but maybe there are people who've listened to this who feel inspired by what you've shared today.

Simon Hampel: [01:09:45] Yeah, look, I have a little website. www.simonhampel.co.uk. So they can see a bit about what I've been doing in the sort of mediation resolution. That's fair in a few. Our friends who've fed into the work, I'm always up for the conversation and I think it'd be a really interested in what I know more between you and I, we could be able to find us, but find me. [01:10:14] And I'm not resistant to tool actually. It's like, I don't want to say, How do we pay it forward in life?

Simon Hampel: That's what I want to say. So I want to pay it forward for whoever's listening to this name that I don't expect something back is back. It's then paid forward in their own way. That appeals to you and there's something I can support in the paying forwardness of life. And that's the way to think about it.

Joel Monk: [01:10:46] People, thanks Simon. Here we are. We're at the end of the podcast. Just do a heads up again. If you're not on our mailing list and you want to stay in the loop about other things we create, then head to coaches rising dot com put your name in the sign up box there. [01:11:02] You'll also find some of our other offerings online trainings for coaches there. And just want to end by wishing you well. And I'll see you again next time.