QnA about me and the Supercharged Taoist book

Why did you write the book?

I wrote Supercharged Taoist, because of all the big names in the self-development world, I’ve never met anyone with a more colorful or supercharged story of becoming and wanted to share it to inspire everyone to become the very most they can too. I want to share the ride with them.

I tell my story as a medium for transmitting the way to follow the Tao in your life and make it work for you. I wanted to write a book that could do that effectively without being a polemic, so making it much easier to ingest and enjoy.

I tell the story of how I was led on a fabulous adventure of learning and experience to become the Supercharged Taoist Barefoot Doctor I am, to demonstrate, how by following your fascination and being awake to the potential in everyone you meet, you find the magical keys to supercharging your own existence.

I studied my art and craft all over the globe, from the harbor of Hong Kong to the high country desert of New Mexico with some of the finest, most illustrious and famous teachers and gurus of our times and wanted also to honor and celebrate them, along with those fabulous times before they vanished from collective memory.

And I wanted to share the nub of the wisdom I was so privileged to gain from each for the reader’s personal enrichment.

And through all that, along with my intimate, candid style of writing, I also wanted to transmit the profound love I carry in my heart for the world, doing so as part of my self-given mission to heal all the suffering.

And I believe I’ve succeeded.

What is a Barefoot Doctor?

Traditionally, the barefoot doctor (a metaphor for humble healer/life-skills teacher) wandered around the rural areas of ancient China, dispensing healing and spiritual succor in various forms wherever she or he went. Most of them were women in fact, steeped in the ancient traditions of acupuncture, massage, herbs, chi gung, psychic skills, storytelling, shamanistic magic (equivalent to modern day hypnotherapy), music and song. They were cherished by the people and looked after well wherever they went.

As a similarly and blessed-to-be cherished modern day version I’m also steeped in 43 years of experience in all these practices, including and especially the musical-shamanistic aspect. At the most exciting and entertaining end of the spectrum, I express this by doing innovative club nights called Dub Spirit, using therapeutic rhythms to support a neo-shamanistic voyage into the Tao of the dance floor. The UK Sunday Times recently hailed the event as the hottest new offering in the world of party and club entertainment and saw it as the spearhead of a new ‘flow-with-slow’ movement, even though the tempo is a full 124 BPM.

I then teach the philosophy and methods underpinning all the work I do, no less excitingly but far more thoroughly and responsibly, in a series of online video courses called School For Warriors and in all formats, text, audio and visual on two large websites: www.superchargedtaoist.com and www.barefootdoctorglobal.com

I’ve also now written 13 books, including SUPERCHARGED TAOIST to support the whole show on paper.

And I travel around peripatetically giving talks and workshops.

I’m based in the hillside forests of the magical, mysterious white isle of Ibiza, in the deepest Mediterranean and all in all am blessed with a supercharged existence.

I give of my all and receive the blessings of the All.

And it’s this essential mechanism I share at the heart of all my teachings.

What is your philosophy on life?

Love in the Taoist frame.

I’m a Taoist, a loving Taoist.

The Tao is another way of referring to the background cosmic presence – the consciousness informing each of us and our entire universe and beyond.

It manifests itself by the friction caused by the ever-cycling opposites of yin and yang, contraction and expansion, night and day, scarcity and abundance.

This cycle operates at all levels of life.

Knowing this enables you to transcend preferences for this over that, because you know every cloud has a silver lining (and every silver lining has a cloud). Transcending preferences, you remember to remember to feel the profound joy of simply being alive, come what may, no matter what – without exception.

This is achieved via practicing diligently, delightedly and daily from a vast selection of meditation and psycho-physical techniques (Tai Chi, yoga-like exercise, specific running exercise, walking exercise, self-applied acupressure and so on), which as well as providing the basis for enlightenment in the midst of the world, of the ‘ten thousand things’, effectiveness in performing all your tasks, success in all your endeavors and health and wellbeing of body, mind and soul, also make you feel naturally high all the time. The practice supercharges you.

By teaching you how to situate your consciousness and sense of self optimally within your skin, you make yourself authentic – you become your natural self.

Being natural and hence in touch with the natural flow of events, you naturally live according to an innate set of personal ethics: integrity, respect for all life, sense of fair-play, compassion in dealing with others, valor, honor, generosity, bravery, courage and kindness.

With a naturally born set of ethics, you don’t need to concern yourself with morals. Morals are exerted from without. Ethics arise from within. When centered within, your behavior will naturally accord with the highest good of everyone at all times.

Taoism also offers the art of developing, harnessing and using chi – supercharged life-force for healing, self-defense and manifesting the things you need to succeed in your mission on earth.

Your mission, incidentally, is to feel the innate joy in every single moment, no matter what, and to share the essence of that with everyone you meet, through every thought, word and deed.

Finally, with all this in place, you learn to let go and allow the Great Current to pull you along on the adventure of your life.

This is what I teach people to do.

You provide many stories of your adventures in the book. Is there one story that stands out above the rest?

I do indeed tell many colorful, poignant, funny, and stimulating stories in the book and it’s impossible to have a favorite, so this is merely my momentary vote.

While I studied with many famous and respected teachers, guys like RD Laing, the genius, controversial, counter-culture hero psychiatrist and psychotherapist, about whom it would have been easy to devote a whole book, my very first and always most important teacher was my own dad, Victor.

Victor was a king among men. Rough, tough, yet cultured, compassionate, warm, generous, powerful, loving and huge in presence and stature.

Once we were walking along talking philosophically as we were wont to do – I was 7 at the time, him early 30s, when turning into a friend’s building to pay him a visit, he inadvertently stepped into the edge of some wet concrete being laid on the step.

The big burly guy laying the concrete straightened up started to mouth the c-word. My dad floored him with one expertly delivered punch well before he’d landed anywhere near the N.

I was astonished. He’d been a boxing champion in the army and had been teaching me to box since I was old enough to stand, so I was used to the mechanism of the punch but had never witnessed such a display of real-life primal power before and I was in a state of stun, in which linear time stopped still.

And there and then, in the eternal moment, Victor immediately bent down and helped the guy up and apologized. He explained how he hadn’t wanted that language used in front of me. And then he turned to me, still holding the guy’s arm in a brotherly way and said, “Steve, I’m ashamed of that, it wasn’t a clever way to behave,” or words to that effect. He humbled himself with dignity and compassion in front of me and the two construction guys (the other one had backed off throughout). Then we all shook hands like brothers, including me. It was an amazing moment of initiation into the adult male world and into the wisdom that says it’s OK to know when you’re wrong and to say so, so amends can be made without delay.

What would you like readers to take from the book?

When you read this book, I want you to walk away feeling encouraged. Encouraged to follow your fascination and through that enter again into that dialogue with the Tao we all have going on as children but then lose through adopting the too-often crippling veneer of adulthood.

I want you to walk away feeling filled with a different angle, a new view of life and, with that, a new level of zest and zeal to get on with your own adventure-of-becoming without delay, no more self-limits.

I want you to walk away with a newfound respect for the great minds that went before to whom we all owe so much and from that, gain a new even more positive perspective on what’s possible in the future.

And I want you to walk away feeling loved. Loved by me, in the writing, and most importantly, loved by the Tao informing me, you and everyone and everything in existence.

And in feeling that love, be authentically stimulated to share it more fully and freely with everyone in your world.

Because it’s through the spread of this very love and the innate joy for life informing it, that the great miracles we now all need will come about.