Sez Kristiansen

This is a preview of an article originally written for Substack, where we dive into a deeper exploration of identity, survival, and the self that tries to keep us safe. Through the practice of cold-water swimming, I explore how we might move from total immersion in thought into the freedom of Selfless awareness, even in the midst of difficult and painful moments in everyday life.

You’re welcome to join the deeper conversation on Substack.

This podcast is now an archive. If you’d like to explore my more recent work, meditations and poetry, I invite you to listen in places where I can also respond to and support you in return. You can find me on Insight Timer.

Support the show

• For guided courses, full episodes, meditations and access to extended versions of my sleep journeys, please go to Insight Timer.
• Every Thursday, I send out unpublished poems & audio essays to help us embody our felt sense of wholeness through nonduality, nature, and self-inquiry on mySubstack.
• You can also find supportive courses on my websiteor grab a book for your journey onwards on Amazon. ✨

Dear People. Due to Spotify changing its algorithm and Insight Timer changing the way they support meditation teachers, I will only be posting clips of longer, free meditations that you can find in full on Insight Timer.

This helps support the time, effort, and devotion put into creating these pieces, without the use of social media or advertising. I truly love the deeper conversations that come from these pieces, and if you want to step closer, you are always welcome to become a member of my Substack.

Over the years, I have desperately wanted to simplify my life and my offerings so only what is true and full of heart remains. Thank you for your support, and the way your presence shapes my own life. In deepest regard, Sez

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About this episode...

We are about to discover, through direct experience, what emptiness feels like. Not as a concept that can further dissociate us from our bodies. Not as a spiritual claim that self or no-self is the final truth. But by going beyond both, we can touch the heart of emptiness as an undeniable, lived experience.

My own exploration of emptiness has profoundly changed the place from which I live my life. It has transformed what once felt like complete isolation from the world and from others. But I also wandered into extreme views that became just more concepts to uphold.

I feel these teachings can easily become disembodied from our humanity, so I'd love to offer an alternative: a gentle, nature-based journey that reveals emptiness not as something fearful, dull, or void, but as something deeply alive and intimately woven into our experience.

The field sounds were recorded at Kårup Skov. I'd love to hear how this lands with you.

Listen to the episode for free, and in full here.

Support the show

• For guided courses, full episodes, meditations and access to extended versions of my sleep journeys, please go to Insight Timer.
• Every Thursday, I send out unpublished poems & audio essays to help us embody our felt sense of wholeness through nonduality, nature, and self-inquiry on mySubstack.
• You can also find supportive courses on my websiteor grab a book for your journey onwards on Amazon. ✨

This is a small clip from a community letter I write every week for members on Substack. I talk about being a very sensitive person, who feels the world's pain incredibly deeply, but how self-realization can change our relationship with helplessness, making it a communal grief rather than a personal identity. We can feel helpless without becoming a hopeless person - action from feeling rather than a separate self is more loving, compassionate and supportive for a world that is no different than our own skin.

You can listen to intimate reflections on coming home to ourselves and the rest of this post here: https://sezkristiansen.substack.com/

Or listen to poetry and meditation on Insight Timer:

https://insighttimer.com/sez

Support the show

• For guided courses, full episodes, meditations and access to extended versions of my sleep journeys, please go to Insight Timer.
• Every Thursday, I send out unpublished poems & audio essays to help us embody our felt sense of wholeness through nonduality, nature, and self-inquiry on mySubstack.
• You can also find supportive courses on my websiteor grab a book for your journey onwards on Amazon. ✨

Support the show

• For guided courses, full episodes, meditations and access to extended versions of my sleep journeys, please go to Insight Timer.
• Every Thursday, I send out unpublished poems & audio essays to help us embody our felt sense of wholeness through nonduality, nature, and self-inquiry on mySubstack.
• You can also find supportive courses on my websiteor grab a book for your journey onwards on Amazon. ✨

This track is a daily invitation to return—to yourself, to presence, to the unshakable truth that you are already whole. It is a reminder that nothing in life needs to be fixed or figured out for you to belong to it completely. Through surrender and by offering a radical presence to all experiences, you are guided to embrace uncertainty, failure, longing, and love without resistance. Let these words be a refuge, a steadying force in the midst of change, and a call to live with more ease, depth, and trust in the unfolding of life. May this also serve as a supportive companion to all those on the W(hole)ness course, as a quick reminder that simple presence is the pinnacle of all spiritual ambitions. Thank you for all the unexpected ways we converge paths through these words. Love Sez

Support the show

• For guided courses, full episodes, meditations and access to extended versions of my sleep journeys, please go to Insight Timer.
• Every Thursday, I send out unpublished poems & audio essays to help us embody our felt sense of wholeness through nonduality, nature, and self-inquiry on mySubstack.
• You can also find supportive courses on my websiteor grab a book for your journey onwards on Amazon. ✨

Imagine meeting your last breath, and feeling utterly, truly safe...

This meditation explores the difference between conceptual safety and the felt safety that arises when we stop separating ourselves from our emotions. It guides you out of the mind’s protective shelters and back into the raw, honest intelligence of the body, where fear, grief, and uncertainty can finally be met without resistance.

Through embodied inquiry, you learn to dissolve the imagined distance between “you” and your sensations, revealing that even anxiety and instability can become safe when fully felt. This practice helps you rediscover undivided presence as the only real refuge. It’s an invitation to return to the wild, grounded aliveness that has always held you — the safety of simply being here.

Thank you for being here with me and for exploring the deeper truths - without negating the body. I have lots of poetry to share with you in the new year, and I very much look forward to staying in touch.

Support the show

• For guided courses, full episodes, meditations and access to extended versions of my sleep journeys, please go to Insight Timer.
• Every Thursday, I send out unpublished poems & audio essays to help us embody our felt sense of wholeness through nonduality, nature, and self-inquiry on mySubstack.
• You can also find supportive courses on my websiteor grab a book for your journey onwards on Amazon. ✨

(Please note that these poems and meditations are released 3 weeks after they have been published on Insight Timer Premium. To receive them quicker, you are welcome to listen there. Thanks so much for being here!)

This is a short poetic reflection that reminds us that we cannot lift one thing in the forest without it being attached to everything else. When there is simply 'the holding' that remains (rather than the 10 thousand things) without a name, without a story, and without identification with a thought, we might quietly get a peek into our self-less, interconnected natures. I hope this meets you where you are, as you - as we all are. Much love, Sez

Support the show

• For guided courses, full episodes, meditations and access to extended versions of my sleep journeys, please go to Insight Timer.
• Every Thursday, I send out unpublished poems & audio essays to help us embody our felt sense of wholeness through nonduality, nature, and self-inquiry on mySubstack.
• You can also find supportive courses on my websiteor grab a book for your journey onwards on Amazon. ✨

This piece is a gentle ode to idleness—a meditation on the quiet, miraculous fullness found in simply sitting, watching, and being. With the sea as a companion and the sky as a witness, we explore how presence asks nothing of us but attention. In a world that constantly demands productivity, this poem offers permission to pause, to be thoroughly unuseful, and yet feel more whole than ever. Through images of waves, wind, and distant sails, we are reminded that being present with whatever arises can be one of the deepest spiritual 'achievements'.

If this reflection speaks to you, I invite you to journey further in my new course W(hole)ness (on Insight Timer & my website)—a slow, spacious return to the essence of who you are. Thank you for allowing this work to sit with you for a moment, and I look forward to adding more poetry here soon. Much Love, Sez

Support the show

• For guided courses, full episodes, meditations and access to extended versions of my sleep journeys, please go to Insight Timer.
• Every Thursday, I send out unpublished poems & audio essays to help us embody our felt sense of wholeness through nonduality, nature, and self-inquiry on mySubstack.
• You can also find supportive courses on my websiteor grab a book for your journey onwards on Amazon. ✨

// A Spotify Exclusive //

This poem is a quiet ode to the cosmic woven into the domestic — how even the simplest gestures can become sacred when seen through the eyes of wonder. It’s a reminder that we are not separate from the universe, but shaped by the same forces that form stars, radishes, and tenderness.

🌙 To receive new audio poems like this one every week, become a member of my patron-only Substack: SEZ ON SUBSTACK. These poems are exclusive to my closest listeners, woven with care, and meant to meet you in your own unfolding.

Come, be part of the constellation. ✨

Thanks for sharing, caring, and simply being present with this work. Love Sez

Support the show

• For guided courses, full episodes, meditations and access to extended versions of my sleep journeys, please go to Insight Timer.
• Every Thursday, I send out unpublished poems & audio essays to help us embody our felt sense of wholeness through nonduality, nature, and self-inquiry on mySubstack.
• You can also find supportive courses on my websiteor grab a book for your journey onwards on Amazon. ✨

In this soundscape laced with gentle words, you’ll be guided into a reflective and sensory-rich journey through the natural world and your place within it. Blending poetic language with grounded presence, this poem explores what it means to belong to life, not as something separate, but as life itself becoming aware. You'll be invited to soften the boundaries between self and world, and to rest in the quiet knowing that you are nature, making sense of itself. I have hand-gathered the nature soundscapes from New South Wales in Australia, where we hear the unique 'whip-crack' sounds from the Whipbird, the bubbling Noisy Minors, croaks from Golden Bell Frogs, and Black Field Crickets. I hope this recording helps you remember your place in the greater Whole, and perhaps even helps you see that your deepest questions are what makes us who we are. Much love, from Sez.

Support the show

• For guided courses, full episodes, meditations and access to extended versions of my sleep journeys, please go to Insight Timer.
• Every Thursday, I send out unpublished poems & audio essays to help us embody our felt sense of wholeness through nonduality, nature, and self-inquiry on mySubstack.
• You can also find supportive courses on my websiteor grab a book for your journey onwards on Amazon. ✨

A new 7-part guided mediation course is now available on both:
Insight Timer
and
My Website (there's 15% off for Substack members)

This course has been created through deeply personal experience to help you dive into the essence of self-realization through the void or the lack we feel inside. By using a personal blend of modalities, including Internal Family Systems, Direct Experience, Self-Inquiry, Visualization meditation, somatic experiencing, poetry, and non-duality, I provide an integrated, embodied, grounded experience of what it means to be truly whole, no matter what shows up in life.

I hope to dive into the heart of who you really are through this course and am available to answer all questions you may have in the comments on both Insight Timer and Substack.

Support the show

• For guided courses, full episodes, meditations and access to extended versions of my sleep journeys, please go to Insight Timer.
• Every Thursday, I send out unpublished poems & audio essays to help us embody our felt sense of wholeness through nonduality, nature, and self-inquiry on mySubstack.
• You can also find supportive courses on my websiteor grab a book for your journey onwards on Amazon. ✨

This episode is taken from my last free newsletter of 2023! The original voiceover can be found on my SUBSTACK, along with the transcript and a poll I've put forward to all listeners.

You don’t need to be free of your ache in order to be free. This is what this year has helped me see and I hope it can be of use to you as you navigate this path back home to peace, love and freedom.

Thank you for sharing, or for simply being present. As I continue to exist without any social media, I am grateful for all the ways you help this work move in a heart-based manner. Please always feel free to ask questions or let me know your experience by emailing: hello@sezkristiansen.com

Support the show

• For guided courses, full episodes, meditations and access to extended versions of my sleep journeys, please go to Insight Timer.
• Every Thursday, I send out unpublished poems & audio essays to help us embody our felt sense of wholeness through nonduality, nature, and self-inquiry on mySubstack.
• You can also find supportive courses on my websiteor grab a book for your journey onwards on Amazon. ✨

Hello dear listeners. Simplifying life is a way of returning to the roots of your being, and in this pursuit to live more intentionally, I have left social media to concentrate on offering new poetry, meditations and courses on Substack.

My time is spentherenow, so I hope you will join me (think less 'attention deficit blackhole' and more 'intentional infinite space'!) Nourishing content is sent to your private email space on a weekly basis.

For now, here are some clips I've put together from the new private podcast, called Sit With Sez which I send out every Monday. I love being a part of your journey and look forward to connecting with you and any questions you have in the comments!

/////

SEZ' NEW POETRY BOOK

Support the show

• For guided courses, full episodes, meditations and access to extended versions of my sleep journeys, please go to Insight Timer.
• Every Thursday, I send out unpublished poems & audio essays to help us embody our felt sense of wholeness through nonduality, nature, and self-inquiry on mySubstack.
• You can also find supportive courses on my websiteor grab a book for your journey onwards on Amazon. ✨

From the new, free mini-series, Surrender with Sez, comes an episode for all to enjoy. To listen to more of this series, join us onSUBSTACK.

A short talk and poem to help you ease into the foundations of your being.

Don’t waste a pain, a crisis, a depression, an illness, don’t use them as motivation or escapes, don’t get used to them, don’t transcend them but walk through them by releasing them and by always returning to the truth of who you are.

This series is based on the new HEALING HER (vol.2) poetry book, which is available now. Read the introduction or get the book HERE>

Support the show

• For guided courses, full episodes, meditations and access to extended versions of my sleep journeys, please go to Insight Timer.
• Every Thursday, I send out unpublished poems & audio essays to help us embody our felt sense of wholeness through nonduality, nature, and self-inquiry on mySubstack.
• You can also find supportive courses on my websiteor grab a book for your journey onwards on Amazon. ✨

A poem to help you discover yourself without the external noise that bombards us every moment. We often seek answers through this stream of information, but it tends to not make us feel like we are healed or whole, and often causes a rift between where we are in our lives right now and where we wish ourselves to be. What if we listened more attentively to the well of wisdom we already hold within us? What would bubble up from that space if left undammed?

Join my new newsletter onSUBSTACK where I share weekly audios and bonus content to my Insight Timer meditations.

Connect to more free courses and healing poetry via the website, Sez Kristiansen

Support the show

• For guided courses, full episodes, meditations and access to extended versions of my sleep journeys, please go to Insight Timer.
• Every Thursday, I send out unpublished poems & audio essays to help us embody our felt sense of wholeness through nonduality, nature, and self-inquiry on mySubstack.
• You can also find supportive courses on my websiteor grab a book for your journey onwards on Amazon. ✨

Those of us who have been traumatized often find ourselves shut inside protective caves that sever us from our feeling body. Returning to who we are, therefore, means leaving what we know - those coping strategies (caves) - that no longer serve us. Finding our way back home to our soft mammal of a body means giving up the reptile within that keeps us perpetually in fight/flight/freeze mode. I hope this helps you with whatever you are going through right now, Sez

Support this work by becoming a subscriber to the SUBSTACK NEWSLETTER

Support the show

• For guided courses, full episodes, meditations and access to extended versions of my sleep journeys, please go to Insight Timer.
• Every Thursday, I send out unpublished poems & audio essays to help us embody our felt sense of wholeness through nonduality, nature, and self-inquiry on mySubstack.
• You can also find supportive courses on my websiteor grab a book for your journey onwards on Amazon. ✨

Whatever you are going through right now that makes it feel unsafe to be you, know that you are being asked to unfold even more and bare that pollen-drenched center of yours to the light. Join me on this soundscape that encourages us to reflect upon the value of the coping strategies we use to protect ourselves and remember that being still with our discomfort can lead us into a deeply expansive and meaningful life. Thank you for sharing, commenting, or just being here with me today.
Sez
_____

Get the printable text of this piece by joining me on SUBSTACK
These poems are also onInsight Timer

Support the show

• For guided courses, full episodes, meditations and access to extended versions of my sleep journeys, please go to Insight Timer.
• Every Thursday, I send out unpublished poems & audio essays to help us embody our felt sense of wholeness through nonduality, nature, and self-inquiry on mySubstack.
• You can also find supportive courses on my websiteor grab a book for your journey onwards on Amazon. ✨

Sez's new & unpublished poetry has moved to the Substack app. Listen, read & join the community for free HERE
Are we friends yet? Let's connect!
_____

Nature has an alliance with the Great Mystery and is therefore guided, healed & grown in accordance with that trust. Why do we consider ourselves separate from that same companionship when we ARE nature? This is a 3-minute poem about how nature never gives up on itself & how that seed is planted within us too. I hope it offers relief to those currently in doubt of their spiritual progress. Thank you so much to all who listen, comment, donate & share. You are the reason this work exists.

Support the show

• For guided courses, full episodes, meditations and access to extended versions of my sleep journeys, please go to Insight Timer.
• Every Thursday, I send out unpublished poems & audio essays to help us embody our felt sense of wholeness through nonduality, nature, and self-inquiry on mySubstack.
• You can also find supportive courses on my websiteor grab a book for your journey onwards on Amazon. ✨

Can the medicine, offered to ourselves in the midst of ache, be that which keeps us searching for a cure? Can the voices that encourage us to feel differently than we do, be better than we are in that moment - be what’s keeping us oscillating between self-healing and perpetual self-wounding.

15 minute talk - 12 minute guided meditation - end notes.

To receive the pack of mediation cards that go with this meditation, consider becoming a paid member (just 7 dollars per month) of Sez' newsletter - SIGN UP HERE

Support the show

• For guided courses, full episodes, meditations and access to extended versions of my sleep journeys, please go to Insight Timer.
• Every Thursday, I send out unpublished poems & audio essays to help us embody our felt sense of wholeness through nonduality, nature, and self-inquiry on mySubstack.
• You can also find supportive courses on my websiteor grab a book for your journey onwards on Amazon. ✨

Read & Listen to Sez' weekly newsletter here:
SEZ ON SUBSTACK

Allow earth to yawn open and devour you whole or salt to carry your body across its foamy shoulders and rest in the knowing that you are being cared for. Your body will be balmed in honey and butter will be dripped over heart, tobacco and cornflour cast at your feet, the crown of your head wrapped in laurels and red powder blown across your face. And as you make sacred of nature, so does she make sacred of you. Reciprocity.

Connect with Sez, ask questions & join the community - INSTAGRAM

Support the show

• For guided courses, full episodes, meditations and access to extended versions of my sleep journeys, please go to Insight Timer.
• Every Thursday, I send out unpublished poems & audio essays to help us embody our felt sense of wholeness through nonduality, nature, and self-inquiry on mySubstack.
• You can also find supportive courses on my websiteor grab a book for your journey onwards on Amazon. ✨