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Wellness Curated
On Wellness Curated, Anshu Bahanda gets world renowned experts on physical and mental health to guide you pro bono. Packed with content that helps people to understand their bodies and minds better and to find relief from the pain and restrictions that have long prevented them from living their best lives, this show is a go-to resource for anyone who wants to improve their quality of life.
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Wellness Curated
Afraid To Be Alone With Your Thoughts? Here’s What The Experts Say
You crave quiet, but even when the world goes silent, your thoughts keep racing. You stay busy, scroll endlessly, or distract yourself — anything to avoid being truly alone. But what if solitude wasn’t something to fear… but a powerful way to calm your nervous system and build emotional resilience?
In this episode of Cultivating Inner Peace, host Anshu Bahanda speaks with Robert Kull, who spent a full year in intentional solitude on a remote island, and Maggie Hamilton, social researcher and author, about the benefits of solitude — and how it differs from loneliness.
Together, they explore how solitude and mental health are deeply connected, how stillness and mindfulness can ease anxiety, and how small, accessible habits — like screen-free time or quiet walks in nature — can help you reconnect with yourself. You’ll hear why being alone doesn’t have to feel lonely, and how solitude can become a simple mental health practice that leads to real clarity.
If the idea of being still feels hard, maybe that’s exactly where the healing starts.
🎧 Watch now to discover how solitude can help you regulate your emotions, shift your mindset, and find peace — even in the noise of daily life.
For a transcript of this show, go to https://wellnesscurated.life/afraid-to-be-alone-with-your-thoughts-heres-what-the-experts-say-2/
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Anshu Bahanda: There's a quiet that most of us never truly get to. I'm not talking about the pause between conversations here, or the quiet before we go to sleep. I'm talking about when we're not performing for anyone, when we are not playing any roles, when there's no distractions that we're hiding behind. And this space can get uncomfortable, unfamiliar. But then something remarkable can happen — that we begin to form a relationship, or a deeper relationship, with the most important person in our lives — ourselves.
Welcome to Wellness Curated. This is your host, Anshu Bahanda. And as we're doing this series, Ancient Wisdom for Modern Living, today we're going to be talking about our new season, our very special season: cultivating inner peace. And today's episode is all about solitude — and what solitude means, how it's different from loneliness, and how through solitude you can form a relationship with yourselves. We have two guests, two absolutely incredible guests, today for this transformative episode. One of them is Robert Kull. He's a writer, he's an academic, and a seeker. In 2001, Robert actually spent a year in solitude on an island off the coast of southern Chile, and this is where he learned to face himself and all the emotions that came up. As a result of that, he wrote a book called Solitude: Seeking Wisdom in Extremes. And then we also have Maggie Hamilton, who's a social researcher and author, and she's a former publisher. She has written a number of books. One of them is When We Became Strangers and another is What Happens to Our Kids When We Fail to Grow Up. Maggie explores the fabric of society and looks at emotions and what happens when people lose connection with each other and with themselves. Welcome to the chat, and thank you for being here with us today.
Robert Kull: Thank you.
Maggie Hamilton: Thank you.
AB: I want to begin with both of you defining for us what is the difference between loneliness and solitude.
MH: Loneliness is, I think, a disconnection from ourselves, including our biology, a disconnection from those around us, and a disconnection from the web of life. Solitude enables us to drop into our authentic selves, to understand who we are, over a period of time — who we are profoundly on every level: physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. And it connects us back into the fabric. So they're actually polar opposites.
RK: This is an excellent question. What is solitude? Sadly, I don't have an answer for it. When I was doing my PhD defense 25 years ago, one of the examiners asked me that question, and it was a valid question because my research was solitude. I'd read a lot about it, and I spent a year alone in the wilderness. And so I thought about it a lot during the defense. I just kind of thought for a long time, and I finally had to admit that I didn't know. And he smiled and nodded because he had a Buddhist practice. And so there was the recognition that solitude is a label we put on complex experience. So it's always different. Each person's solitude may well be different. Each time we spend in solitude can be different. So I don't know that there's any particular way of defining it. Loneliness, as Maggie said, for me, alone in the wilderness, when I felt lonely, it was because I felt really disconnected from myself. I didn't miss other people. I missed myself. Loneliness is something that happens in solitude sometimes, just like it happens anyplace else. It's an emotional feeling that comes over us when we feel disconnected. And so we often try to avoid that feeling rather than simply getting to know it — what is this feeling?
AB: Robert, what you said about getting to know our feelings — you actually, like you were saying, spent this year in solitude, right? And you were forced to face a lot of feelings about your inner world that maybe you might not have come across had you been living with lots of people around you. So tell me, what was your biggest lesson that you learned?
RK: Shit happens. I think that's the biggest lesson, right? We often live with the illusion that we're in control of our lives. And alone in the wilderness, it becomes clear pretty quickly that we're not. So I grew up in the United States. I was a white guy in the United States. And I grew up with this notion that I'm a strong, autonomous man, an independent person, self-reliant. And alone in the wilderness, that just fell apart. There's a sense that we each carry around this persona of who we think we are, and we send out messages to the people around us asking for reinforcement — you know, you reinforce my self-image and I'll do the same for you. In the wilderness, that falls apart because the wilderness doesn't care — the wilderness just is. And so it was very difficult to feel myself crumbling, to feel my identity, because I was identified with my identity. I thought that's who I was. And so I thought I was dying. I almost went insane. It's a huge challenge to let go of who we think we are and relax into the changing flow of the world and ourselves in that. So that surrender is a really fundamental part of the process for me.
AB: Surrender — that's interesting. And at what stage? Around two months, three months, six months — when did you feel like you accepted the situation and surrendered to it?
RK: So, I had previously spent three months by myself. And even though at the university I refused to set any conditions on this research project — what I was going to do — I wouldn't promise to write. I said, my commitment is to go to this island and spend a year there and see what happens, like a meditation retreat. If you go into a meditation retreat with a preconceived notion, you know you're going to bump up against that when things don't work out as you think they're going to. I went with this idea that I wasn't going to have expectations, but of course, I had expectations — because we do. That's what our mind does. And so, I'd been alone for three months in the wilderness in Canada many years before. So I assumed that there would be this kind of three months of turmoil and challenge and surrender and all this stuff, and then I'd be blissed out for the rest of the time. It didn't happen. It just did not happen. And that was maybe the hardest thing about the year. There were certainly times of slipping into the flow of wonder and just being part of the universe, and then it would all just crash again. So probably the hardest part of it all was just — at least for me — there is no final kind of unchanging stage of enlightenment, of just bliss. It's like I have internal weather. Here in Vancouver, there's strong weather — it's rain, it's fog, sun. Inside, I have weather patterns as well. And as long as I fought against that, it continued to be a problem all through the year. Sometimes I would find equanimity and allow things to be what they were. Other times, I would just fall back into fighting against it until I became exhausted with beating my head against the wall and would surrender. And the funny thing — there's a negotiation. Once I recognized that I had to surrender, I would bargain with myself or with reality. I'd say, "Okay, I'll surrender," but in the back of my mind, there was this "so that" — this little voice going, "so that I can then feel peace." And of course, that's not real surrender. So it was an ongoing challenge of just kind of getting exhausted and letting go.
AB: Yes, of course. Wilderness must be that much exponentially harder, I guess. Maggie, I want to ask you about… you explore modern life, and you look at things like technology, you look at social structures, you look at things like parenting and how that affects us and our connection to others and to ourselves. So, can you tell me a little bit about what you find normally when people lose connection with themselves? And can solitude help?
MH: I'm inspired to do this because virtually all of my adult life I have lived in cities. And I'm a great believer that we can ensoul city life. It doesn't have to be heartless, it doesn't have to be lonely. It can be a deeply intimate experience. We can have profound spiritual experiences in the city, even though in popular parlance that's often not felt to be the case. So that's what inspires me to do my research and see what comes up. But in terms of disconnection, I think what we see is a deepening loneliness. We know from research that the loneliest group of people on the planet right now are our 18 to 34-year-olds, which is heartbreaking — far lonelier than elderly people, for instance. We see it through that inability to sit with each other and see each other and hear each other — you know, that kind of waiting to talk — and the whole dark side of social media, where we are in performance. And you alluded to that earlier. I look at the performance culture a lot, particularly around reality TV, for instance, and how that's impacting our young people. It's an inability to empathize with others, often in their situation. At the same time, it is a kind of desperation to try and make life this happy experience it's meant to be. And I must say, I have mixed feelings about the whole positive psychology movement. I'm so interested in Robert's experience because I think, both in terms of mainstream culture and new-age spirituality, we're all seeking to be blissed out all the time — and that is not what life is about. Solitude enables us to start to come down from this, to get to know ourselves, and to form an intimate relationship with what's going on around us. That's not to say life is going to be one blissful experience, but it means it gives us sufficient calm inside — as does, of course, meditation practice and other spiritual practices — to be able to at least attempt to stand strong in the storms of life and to approach them with a sense of calm as much as we humanly can, even though things may be going to pieces, without feeling that life has shortchanged us in some way. I think that's very much a narrative in the West — feeling it's not fair. Clearly, a lot of these people have not traveled very far on the planet. My husband and I love to get off the beach and trek, you know, in Asia, because that's our neighbor. It's always so inspiring, and you learn so much from these people around the world about that ability to be with oneself.
AB: Very interesting. There is a certain element of entitlement.
MH: Absolutely.
AB: In some of the western countries.
MH: It's like autism — there's a scale — and, you know, without finger-pointing, some countries are higher on that, and I think Australia is one of those because we've been a very lucky country. We're mineral-rich, which, of course, is a mixed blessing, and it does give people a sense of entitlement, which I think is quite soul-crushing. By soul, I mean the deepest part of who we are, the most profound part of who we are. And so yes, I feel solitude is absolutely vital, and we need to be teaching our kids practices of solitude.
AB: Thank you for that, Maggie. The next thing I want to ask both of you — Robert and Maggie — is that solitude has been known to help with reducing stress, to help with actually combating loneliness. I would love to hear your views on that, because how can we help people create the solitude that can actually nourish them rather than them feeling like the worst thing that can happen in their lives is to be alone?
MH: I think solitude needs to be a series of practices. I was born in the north of England, and so I've always had a very practical bent, you know, and I love the idea of getting to know the person on the street. So I think it's about exposing them to tiny practices — like spending five minutes in your local park just sitting in the sun, taking it all in. Encouraging children to be immersed in nature by having, you know, it doesn't have to be the big family expedition, but part of the weekend where you do go off and have a walk in nature. Even within the home, parents can create a solitude vibe. That might be Sunday morning or Sunday afternoon where the socials are not on and people are left to chill in their own space. So yes, I'm a great believer in tiny, doable steps for the everyday person who is not necessarily going to go off and do the Vipassana — or not immediately — but that might be the stepping stone to those things.
AB: Thank you. Thank you for that, Maggie. Robert?
RK: Sometimes when I'm alone in the wilderness and I'm feeling kind of alienated, kind of cut off, I get to thinking: what can I do? How can I be part of the community out here? And then all of a sudden, I realize — oh, sitting here in my body, I'm already a community. I'm not a single thing. I'm not alone. I have mites inside of me. I have viruses. I have bacteria. This body that I think of as me is a whole community already. Every cell is a community of prokaryotic cells that have come together to live symbiotically. The air that I breathe — the oxygen that comes into me — has been in other people's lungs, other animals' lungs. Trees have created it as a gift to me. I don't know if you know the drawings of M.C. Escher. He's absolutely one of my favorites, and one of the drawings he has that is just always present to me is called The Ribbon People. It shows two figures — in this case, it's a male and a female — and they're just the heads. They're formed by ribbons. You can see through them; the surface of their faces and the outside of their heads are the ribbons, but spaced between the ribbons are spirals. These two figures are floating in space. They're both looking at a sphere. As you look, you realize they are profoundly alone, each of them. They can never experience the same sphere because everything's changing through time, and they can never be in the exact same space where the other one is. They can change places, but then it's a different time. So they're profoundly alone. The ribbons, though, up at the top, intertwine. Through culture, through communication, through art, through conversation, through music, we can begin to link with each other and share our experiences. So, in this sense, we're not completely alone, because I can listen to you and get some sense of what your experience in the world is. Down below at the bottom, they're both made of the same ribbon. They're not separate at all. In solitude, it's an exploration of this deep connection — that each of us is a manifestation of an underlying connection. We're all the same. Part of solitude is to settle into ourselves. As long as we force ourselves to stay at the level of thought and communication — that's great, there's nothing wrong with that — but it can prevent us from allowing ourselves to sink down beneath that level of thinking and to just sense ourselves to be part of everything else. So I think that's an important piece of all this.
AB: You're talking about being part of a collective consciousness. So you feel that you're part of something much bigger. When you really sink down into your space in solitude, that's when you really feel the connection.
RK: Yeah, it's always there. We're never not connected — and the same physically. It's not just a spiritual thing; it's also physical. The very consciousness with which I'm experiencing solitude — that's a collective consciousness that didn't arise for me alone. I grew up in a culture, and the consciousness with which I encounter the world is already a collective consciousness. Even my feelings of loneliness arise in a particular cultural context. One of the things in solitude: I often kept busy. I just relaxed into things as they were. It was often the most difficult day of the week because stuff that I otherwise, even out there, could avoid would come up, would fill me, or I'd slip down into it. Sometimes, rather than avoiding or trying to understand or tell stories about it — looking at history, "Why do I feel this way?" — if I just allowed myself to sink way, way deep into the darkness, into the depression, into the alienation, it would open out into magical wonder. Right in the heart of it. Now, you have to be careful. I have to be careful. And I assume kind of everybody has to be careful, because some of this inner darkness is juicy. It's not easy, and it can overwhelm us. Often in culture, we use other people, we use media, we use teachers, we use whatever to escape facing this difficult stuff inside. When in solitude, that doesn't work, because repression doesn't work. Eventually, it comes up. And if you try to hold it down, it can just come up and overwhelm you. But if you let it carry you away, that also doesn't work. And so there's this dance between experiencing it and stepping away from it — sometimes just taking a breath or listening to the birds sing. It's this dance with the self: not avoiding, but not allowing the darkness to carry you away either. And in that willingness to experience all aspects of ourselves, there's incredible freedom in that.
AB: Maggie, from the work that you do — let's talk about parents here. We're talking about a lot of teenagers. We find they're anxious, they're withdrawing from each other, they're kind of disconnected from themselves. So as parents, our instincts are very often to get them to be busy, get them to be engaged, organize social activities for them. How can we advise parents to actually create safe spaces for these teenagers to heal in solitude and heal what they're going through, without always being busy, without always being taught to be busy?
MH: Part of it is actually how we live our lives, and, you know, they pick up from us the over-scheduling. They turn to social media when mum and dad aren't around, or very young parents now use social media — and we're talking from 18 months up to toddlers — for calming. So we have to look at our own habits. Then I think, to start with — although we're talking about solitude tonight — I think it's really important to have a culture in the home where anything can be discussed. And there are lots of ways we can do that. I think we need to have that kind of openness as parents into their world, because these kids are pioneers. None of us have ever walked in these places, and some of them are pretty damn dark. But beyond that, it's really important, I think, rather than getting them to be, you know, the violinist, this or that, the other, to quietly observe the passions of the kids. I was talking to a psychologist who works with young people some time back, and he had the most beautiful story about one boy who was being extremely difficult at school. He was about 14 and nobody could get through to him. Luckily, he lived in the country and he had an old neighbor who latched onto the fact that this kid loved chickens. They started to buy chickens for him, and that was his place of solitude — where he could slip out of what everybody expected of him: his mum, school, everything else. For him, being with his chickens was the thing. So I think the passions of our kids are really important. And I think the other thing — and this really has to start before teenage life — is connection with nature. Research is showing, for instance, that prisoners in the UK spend more time outside in a week than do the kids. It's one of the stats I use when I'm talking to parents and professionals here. You can see people getting quite smug, but then I say, "Well, we're a great outdoor country, but is this actually happening here?" And it's not. To have that connection with nature — to have that beloved tree, you know, that might be in the park or wherever, that you can go and sit under, or you can climb up the branches and lie up there and look at the canopies — is so important. Obviously, when the kids are younger, mum and dad do need to be within CUI — they're going to be standing at the bottom of the tree. But I think it's really important to cultivate that curiosity for nature as well. I was very lucky. I grew up in the country for the first five years of my life, and I had all those aspects. I can say now, in my 70s, that deep connection with nature — which I do have when I can in the city — but that profound connection I had for the first five years anchored me into something very profound. So I feel it's really important for our kids to have that — to know that they are loved unconditionally, but with strong boundaries. We can't expect them to go off into these experiences without a structure. And we seem to be very against structure now. I'm not talking about kids growing up in some sort of over-regimented regime, but they need structure, and most modern kids don't have that, particularly if parents are separated. These kids just live, you know, their lives are all over the place — because they do this with mum and her new boyfriend, and they do that with dad and his new girlfriend — and it's hard, it's really hard. So I think that unconditional love, but the boundaries as well, are crucial to create the safety for them to have these experiences — with their passions out in nature. And, as I say, I think a family ritual of chilling to create solitude is also very important.
AB: Well, that's lovely. Thank you for that. Robert, you also talked about in your book how, during your year in the wilderness, you were forced to face certain habits and thought patterns, and you talked about how a lot of these became clearer to you. So, can you tell us — maybe talk about one thought pattern that emerged and which you changed, and which changed your life?
RK: Well, I guess it was a thought pattern. Maybe it's the most basic thought pattern we live with — this self-identity, this idea we have of who we are. It's amazing how much time I spent denying reality, you know, attempting to make things the way I thought they should be or the way I wanted them to be. It's astonishing how much time and effort — I think everybody basically spends — denying reality. It's incredible. And this is a kind of thought pattern of living, continually living in a world of make-believe, where we see ourselves as different from what we actually are. Often, as we look back on our lives, we see ourselves as the heroes of our own story. And we rarely live up to that heroic ideal in our actual here-and-now lives. So there's a sense of disappointment, like something's wrong — "I'm not living up to who I know I am or who I should be." That's huge. I think for many of us, it's like, wow, where did I get this idea of who I am or who I think I should be? So there's a sense of judgment and comparison — not just to others, but to us, to who I think I should be, right? That's huge. That's a huge pattern to face: the expectations. You know, I read a lot of spiritual stuff. I'd heard a lot of teachers yammering on and on about this enlightenment stuff. And I thought, well, something must be wrong with me because that's not happening to me. I'm having moments — but they, like all other moments, are transient. They come and go. And it was hard to let go of that teaching that there is this permanent state of enlightenment. Maybe there is for somebody — I'm doubtful. Nothing else is permanent in the world. Why should that be? But it clearly isn't for me. What deepens is the sense of equanimity, of allowing things to be what they are. So that was an important piece. I think one of the most difficult. I understood theoretically that each of us is capable of doing really dark stuff in our lives given the right circumstances. You know, we typically think, "Oh, those people — and I'm not that." In solitude, it would come up that I had to really face this demonic aspect of myself — not theoretically, but really experience it in myself. That was hard. That was really, really a challenge — to just go, whoa, there's some dark down here. This is part of who I am. This isn't something somebody else is experiencing. This is hard. I think maybe one of the things I'm extremely concerned about is climate change, environmental stuff, and how it's just gone onto the back burner again. I think, rather than telling young people, "Oh, you can have everything, you know, just change the light bulb and it's all going to be cool," we should say, no, this is the hardest thing anybody's ever had to face. This is an enormous challenge. World War II was nothing compared to this. And we should set it up as a challenge for people. The same with exploring within — being alone is hard. This isn't easy. This is a huge challenge. You're not copping out by doing this. You're doing the hardest thing you can do: to move away and stop worrying so much about what other people think of you and find that sense of self-acceptance in yourself, of saying, no, I'm the judge of my own life, not somebody else. But that's not a cop-out. That's not an easy thing to do. That's a hard thing to do.
AB: Maggie, I want to ask you about your book. In your book When We Became Strangers, you talk about restoring this connection with others and with your own self. How can a practice of solitude help people get to this point?
MH: The thing with solitude is it gives you a relative stillness — not always, but on the best of days. That stillness enables one's perceptions to be much more finely honed over a period of time. I would say both a meditative practice and a practice of silence are really powerful parts of that solitude practice, as it were. And taking Robert's point — that, you know, do we ever fully arrive? No, I'm not sure we do — but progressively we are more able to then be with others, and be with others in a way that is genuine, that is not trying to fix other people or trying to deal with our own discomfort in situations where they're talking about stuff that is kind of threatening to us emotionally or otherwise. I've come to this realization that in the complexities of this sad, tired world we're in at the moment, one of the most profound things we can be is a safe person — a person who can be trustworthy. Humans make mistakes — you know, we don't all make the right calls. We have good days, bad days, and we have the dark nights of the soul and so on. But there's a ring of truth about what we attempt to do, even if we fail — in friendships, in how we are in the world — that we're not trying to perform for others, but trying to be with others in an authentic way. And to admit we don't know the answer — but to be able to sit in love with people when things are difficult. I think that's what this world needs. I find this a lot with younger friends. They don't need me to solve their issues at work, with their partners, or whatever. They just need somebody who's going to sit for an hour with them over a cup of coffee and listen — and listen deeply to what they're saying. Often, because we've got that well inside of us through our solitude practice, they actually come up with some sort of way forward themselves — because they've had that backdrop, having been listened to profoundly, to actually start to see what's going on for themselves, rather than trying to rush it out before the other person gets their stuff in. So to be a safe person, I think, is a profound thing. I think it requires a practice of solitude and silence to be able to have that level of compassion. That is, you know, it's not going to be perfect necessarily, but it's genuine — and people, I think, respond to genuine. And I think that's doable for the everyday person, which I think is the important thing — that they feel this is something they can work with. And having experienced it with others, hopefully, they see the value in that.
AB: And Robert, what about you? What would you recommend? Because I feel like people are scared of being alone. So, what would you recommend as one simple practice that people can take up which will help them?
RK: I think Maggie's ideas are great. The one thing I would add — the kind of meditation I do — it's not touchy-feely, it's just following your breathing. It's using your own breathing as an anchor to, over and over, just come back to yourself. For me, that's the anchor of stillness. I think that's a really useful part of the stillness because, you know, it's one thing to say to the mind, "Don't be busy." It doesn't work so well — at least for me. But when my mind is caught up and running around, over and over, when I wake up to the fact that I haven't been still with myself, just present with myself, I can come back to my breathing and use that because it's always with me. It's nothing out there. It's just straight-up biology. So, I think that's useful. I include meditation in the university course I teach on worldviews and ethics. It's a required part of the course. The way I frame it is: I don't know that everybody should meditate all the time. I've found it super useful in my life, but you won't know unless you try. So, for the 10 weeks of this course, you get a chance to try it out and to actually develop a daily practice — 15 minutes a day. And then at the end of it, you can decide you don't want to keep going, or you decide that you want to keep going. But at least you will have not just thought about it — you've actually stepped into it and practiced it for a while. I think that can be useful — to just encourage people: "Try this for a while." Maggie mentioned before about boundaries. I taught scuba diving in the Caribbean for years, and I was a young progressive, and I didn't believe in any kinds of instructions. I'd say, "Okay, you know, here's how I clear my mask. Go under the water, and, you know, put some water in your diving mask and try getting it out." And half the people almost drowned, right? They lost all kinds of confidence — in themselves and in me. Eventually, I just got really strict and said, "Look, here's the way you clear your mask. Do it this way exactly as I'm showing you. Once you've demonstrated to me that you can clear your mask of water, then you can experiment and do it any way that works better for you. But first gain the confidence to know that you can do it." So, I think sometimes it can be useful to set up a regular practice — to get young people into a regular practice.
AB: And structure, like you've said. Yes.
RK: I think a group can be really helpful — to sit with a group once a week. You know, I don't think it matters what practice we use. One of the things I think is fascinating is I grew up believing Christianity was the only way. And then, once I dumped that, I adopted this notion of the wheel and the spokes: we're all starting on the outer rim of the wheel, and there's all these different spokes, but we're all going to the same place. I believed that for a long time. Eventually, I thought, well, what if we're not? What if meditation takes us to different places? What if there is no one common place that we all go to? Oh, well, that's a little unsettling — but okay, right? To just accept that we may not be going to the same place. So, I think a meditation group that doesn't lay out a bunch of restrictions and dogma — but just recognizes that you're not doing this alone in the world, that there are other people also involved in this practice of self-exploration, of coming back to themselves — I think that can be really helpful as well.
AB: Thank you so much for offering us these deep insights into a topic which, when I was preparing for it, I thought, "My God, this is such a hard topic. How are we going to communicate this to people?" So, thank you so much for talking about connection — connection to ourselves as being the most important thing here. And to our listeners, I just want to say: solitude doesn't mean disconnection. It means returning to the one relationship in your life which is very important, as you've heard today — and being kind to that relationship — and that's your relationship with yourself. I'm going away with a lot of pearls of wisdom. Thank you to all our listeners for being here with us today. This is Cultivating Inner Peace, which is part of the Ancient Wisdom for Modern Living series. I'm your host, Anshu Bahanda, and I will encourage you — before your next time — to pause, step back, and listen to yourselves. And who knows what you'll find. Thank you all.