Psychology Informed by Nonduality – A Conversation with John Astin
“…there’s something about the way that John expresses this, that emanates this peace, and opens to the trip of the ordinary”
I felt very moved by John’s recent book, In Every Wave, The Entirety of the Sea. I’ve read it three times now, and loved listening to him talk about his process during our recent podcast conversation. He shared with me that he compiled the book based on transcriptions of his talks, and as I listened I could feel the sense of mystery even in how he described the challenge of translating the spoken word into written form.
My experience is that John speaks so clearly from direct experience, and one would assume that this would flow easily into a book format – and yet it didn’t. The written form, I’ve realised, needs its own context; and when writing on the context of This, it takes a certain kind of craft to speak to mystery and absolute hereness in a way that doesn’t dilute the simple yet extraordinary fact of your experience and my experience, right now – and how it feels versus how it is described.
Reading the book, I felt that John masters this. He peacefully alludes to the mysterious frameless frame that we call “living life” in a way that is thoroughly accessible. He doesn’t obscure; he expresses the relatable, very human, yet simultaneously transcendent trip of the ordinary everyday wonder. Feeling the flow of experience in his writing is effortless, and the way he frames things is just enough to allow the beautiful message of the seamless nature of experience to be accessible, relevant, and deeply wise.
John is very clear that there is nowhere to go and nothing to attain – and if the reader arrives at his writing with intention and interest, they will be easily encouraged to gently yet earnestly inquire from the freedom they already are, rather than for it.
I’ve picked John’s brains now on a few occasions as Nic and I have been bringing the Reclaiming Wholeness Nondual Therapy Training to life and have absolutely loved our conversations. He challenges me. Brings me back to ground. Keeps me real about what the heart of the work is, what the challenges are, whilst also encouraging my heart to dance into the beauty and majesty that is the awesome aperture of possibility that opens to us all as we consolidate what the nondual understanding brings to therapeutic spaces.
Our conversations have illuminated my own blind spots and assumptions as well as carving out key considerations and points of inquiry for myself, both as a practitioner and as someone who absolutely loves bathing in the mystery that is experiencing reality unleashed from the confines of imagination. Coupled with my ongoing inquiry with Nic, and now as we pull together the training programme for our first cohort to be delivered mid-October, I feel immense gratitude. I’m also delighted to say that John has offered his support as we roll out the training to practitioners and individuals keen to dive deep into life’s mystery. I have asked if he will meet with us during our peer group supervision (attended by practitioners who have completed the training) and he said “yes.” John, we are holding you to this!
I hope you enjoy listening to the conversation as much as I loved engaging with John — and have added here some of the reflections that arose out of our conversation and have been carefully considered as we have carved out the training.
Translating Direct Experience into Form
One of the themes that struck me most in my conversation with John was his experience of how difficult it was to translate his some 200 YouTube talks into a book. That mirrors exactly what Nic and I are doing with the Reclaiming Wholeness Nondual Therapy Training. We’re trying to translate something living and experiential into a form that can be shared and taught. Like John, we’ve learned that it’s not about locking the mystery into rigid frameworks, but about building containers sturdy enough to hold openness, spontaneity, and discovery.
Radical Empiricism in Therapy
John repeatedly returned to a simple but radical question: what is actually here? This question is at the heart of our training. We’re encouraging practitioners to see beyond the assumptions built into labels, diagnoses, or even their own interpretations, and to stay close to direct experience. This “radical empiricism” grounds therapy in living contact rather than preconceived theory.
Mode Switching: From the Describable World to Direct Experience
In our training we’re teaching a “mode switch”: learning to recognise both the describable world (our stories, models, and concepts) and the perspective of immediate experience. This switching opens a new kind of resilience and fluidity for practitioners and their clients – especially in intense emotional states and experiences of ‘stuckness’ where thinking and feeling alone can’t bring relief.
Meeting Suffering Without Reifying It
John raised a vital point about how therapy can unwittingly collude with the client’s framing of their problem. In designing our training, we’ve placed great emphasis on meeting suffering with compassion but without reinforcing the sense of a separate self or a fixed, problematic “thing.” This gentle non-reification allows the client’s experience to move and unfold naturally – simply because that’s what this does.
From Coping to Inquiry
Much of mainstream therapy focuses on coping, symptom management, and improving circumstances and self. These have value, but as John pointed out, our struggles, longings, and crises can also be portals to deeper inquiry. In our programme we explore how practitioners can meet personal emergencies – not to bypass or minimise them – but to honour them as opportunities to touch the roots of suffering.
The Radiant Parent Principle
Our model of “Reparenting as Presence” resonates strongly with the ocean metaphor that John so skillfully draws upon in his book and talks. Instead of teaching clients to “become” more self-accepting, we invite them to feel into the unwavering availability that is always already here – the radiant parent quality of consciousness itself. Practitioners learn how to embody and model this quality so clients experience safety and attunement at a nervous-system level, are supported in a way that includes understanding of human attachment needs, whilst illuminating key principles of radical empiricism. This offers a psychology that never leaves the ground of being.
Acceptance as Already Complete
John’s words reframe acceptance as something intrinsic, not earned. This is central to our training philosophy: therapists need not instruct clients to cultivate acceptance, but rather to sense the unconditional openness already present in their experience.
Bridging Nondual Insight and Evidence-Based Practice
One of the most exciting aspects of the training is our effort to integrate nondual understanding with evidence-based therapeutic tools and approaches. This bridges a longstanding gap in the mental health field. We’re showing that practitioners can be both rigorous and radical while collaboratively exploring the ineffable.
Safety, Play and Curiosity as Gateways
Because deep inquiry can feel destabilising at first, we teach practitioners to establish safety, playfulness, and curiosity before diving into difficult material. This gentle scaffolding allows the nervous system to relax and the mind to open as effortless being – a prerequisite for genuine insight.
Training Practitioners to Model and to Point, Rather than to Fix or to Teach
This training is about embodiment – in the sense of being this that is and harnessing the nature of experience and its naturally alive self-interest and curiosity. We’re not simply teaching techniques; we’re supporting practitioners to reveal themselves as the space of curiosity and openness. This is beyond modelling; this is being the hyperintelligent aliveness of this that is. Much more profound than any intervention or script, this is what invites clients into the living mystery John speaks of.
Our Invitation
If you’re reading this and feel called to look more deeply into the nature of life, experience, and suffering – whether you’re a practitioner, a student, or simply a curious human being – you’re warmly invited to explore with us.
The Reclaiming Wholeness Nondual Therapy Training is designed not just as a professional course but as a living inquiry. It’s a space where therapists, healers, and earnest explorers alike can learn to meet life from the ground of presence, discover the roots of suffering, and experience how healing and wholeness unfold naturally.
We’d love you to join us – in training, in conversation, or simply in shared inquiry – as together we learn to embody the openness, safety and curiosity that John and I spoke about so deeply. John’s book will be included on our recommended reading list for practitioners – and I highly recommend that anyone interested in either deepening or beginning their exploration of life’s mystery gets themselves a copy.
You can:
Buy In Every Wave, The Entirety of The Sea’ here.
and Book Your Place on the training here.
