Pneuma with Daniel Finneran

Jason Stephenson is the founder and host of the wildly popular YouTube channel, “Jason Stephenson: Sleep Meditation Music” to which some 3 million people (and counting!) are subscribed.  Since joining the platform in 2011, Jason’s videos on sleep, mindfulness, meditation, music, nature, life, and breathing have amassed over 700 million views–a number to which I’m honored to say I’ve contributed! I...

William Butler (WB) Yeats (1865 - 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer, and statesman.  A poet to whom I was introduced at the tender age of twelve, Yeats has continued to inhabit a special place in my heart.  His finest work, in my opinion, is "Sailing to Byzantium". After the collapse of Rome in the fifth century AD, the center of European culture shifted east to the Golden Horn. Renamed "...

Thomas Traherne (1636-74) was an English poet, writer, theologian, and Anglican cleric to whom I was recently introduced. His only extant work, Centuries of Meditations , completely swept me away. It’s a short but powerful book with which you should spend an afternoon.  In this episode, we’ll focus on a couple of passages from Traherne’s Meditations . In them, he lists the countless gifts that the...

The 4-7-8 breathing exercise, of which the great Dr. Andrew Weil is widely-acknowledged to be the inventor, is simple and effective. You need only do the following: inhale for 4 seconds; hold the breath for 7 seconds; and exhale for 8 seconds. That constitutes one cycle. You'll then repeat this sequence for a total of four cycles. Perform this at least twice a day.  A little "behind the scenes": t...

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was an English poet, journalist, and author of short stories. An unbending defender of the British imperial project, his reputation has suffered in recent years. Many of his detractors today echo the judgment rendered by George Orwell, who called him, in positively venomous terms, a morally insensitive, aesthetically disgusting, brutal, sadistic, jingo imperialist. Well...

The title says it all! After a peaceful morning spent reading on the beach, I took a few minutes to absorb all the natural beauty, tranquility, picturesqueness, and happiness that surrounded me. Join me and interrupt your day with the gentle sound of waves rolling on the beach, wind blowing through the trees, laughter dancing in the air, music echoing in every direction, and--the least euphonious...

Encased by slippers, sneakers, and shoes all day, our poor feet are suffering from the mistreatment of modernity. For twelve, sixteen, eighteen hours, they're confined to ill-fitting shoes from which they want nothing better than to be set free. Sadly, they're prohibited, for almost the entirety of their life, from bending, bearing, feeling, and moving as the Author of nature intended.  In this ep...

The story of Momotaro (the "Peach Boy") is one of the most famous and beloved in Japanese folklore. Born of a giant peach that was floating down the river, Momotaro was adopted by an elderly couple that was incapable of having a child of its own. Nurtured by his parents' unremitting love and care, Momotaro grew to be a big, virtuous, strong young man. Eventually, he set out to confront the nasty d...

I'll bet that you weren't expecting to see those two names joined together!  Such are the promiscuous and varied sources from whom we here on Pneuma draw our inspiration. We look at once to the courtly Florentine political philosopher (by whom the murderous Medici were, for better or worse, advised), and to the ascetic Indian sage who, in the sixth century BC, attained enlightenment and enjoyed an...

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." Is there, in all literature, an opening line with which more minds are stamped? A passage more famous and quotable than that with which Dickens' timeless classic begins? I think not! Set in those two great centers of learning and culture, London and Paris, before and during the French Revolution, A Tale of Two Cities follows the tribulations...

Not even the most experienced traveler (to whom thousands of valuable “miles” and precious points have accrued!) is totally immune to the uneasiness and discomfort associated with flight.  These feelings, sadly, are an inescapable part of our airborne journeys.  In this episode, we’ll go through a mediation by which our stresses will be quieted, our equanimity restored, and our flight made much mo...

"To live in accordance with nature".  That, in its simplest form, is the central principle around which the entire philosophy of Stoicism revolves.  To live in accordance with nature is to practice the four virtues (temperance, prudence, justice, and courage) for which we all have an inborn aptitude and reverence. It’s to elevate temperance, the virtue of moderation, self-control, self-possession,...

Can you be happy in this life? Can anyone, for that matter, be happy (I mean truly happy) in this life? Join me, Aristotle, and St. Thomas Aquinas as we address this difficult question.  Be sure to subscribe to and follow this channel. Leave a Five-star rating on it and share it with friends!   Finneran’s Wake Listen to some fascinating conversations on your favorite podcast streaming service:  Sp...

#sleep #bedtimestories #bedtime #relaxing #calming #soothing  Get comfortable!  Here's an excerpt from Thomas De Quincey's intoxicating work, "Confessions of an English Opium Eater".  The title, I think, says it all.  De Quincey's confessional joins a timeless genre to which such luminary names as St. Augustine and Jean-Jacques Rousseau contributed. In this excerpt, you'll learn how the esteemed B...

Refine your aesthetic sense, heighten your appreciation for nature's splendor, learn what it means to experience the sublime and the beautiful. This episode, at whose center the great Irish philosopher Edmund Burke stands, is something of a didactic meditation. In it, you'll learn how to think about the sublime and the beautiful, and how to talk about aesthetics in a more sophisticated way. If you...

That bothersome, inescapable tension in which your sore neck is all "knotted up"... Well, it's about to be unravelled. If these simple stretches don't put your neck at ease, the buttery-smooth cooing of my voice just might. Check out my new YouTube channel, "Pneuma by Daniel Finneran", on which I'll post an accompanying video. And visit my sister channels, Finneran's Wake (YouTube and podcast) and...

Food, shelter, and clothing--these are the fundamental needs without which we can't long live, the biologic claims on us to which we can't be inattentive (lest we cease to exist!) We all know this to be true, but these things quickly become, once we detach ourselves from the modest demands of nature, ostentatious treasures, immoderate indulgences to which we become lost. Let's think about these ba...

Are you most decidedly NOT a morning "person"? Listen to this episode, inspired by the wisdom of Henry David Thoreau, and your affirmed dislike of the dawn might just change! “All memorable events transpire in morning time and in a morning atmosphere. The Vedas say, ‘All intelligences awake with the morning’. Poetry and art, and the fairest and most memorable of the actions of men, date from such...

An excerpt from Henry David Thoreau's enduring contribution to the great American canon: Walden. Picture yourself nestled in bed, encased in blankets, warmed by the embers of a fading fire. You're in a tiny cottage on the northern banks of Walden Pond, a cool, limpid body of water off whose pristine surface, a chilly breeze is now blowing. The chime of the crickets, the lapping of the waves, the c...

Wisdom, according to Cicero, is the "Mother of all good things". Yet, wisdom, this benevolent benefactress, is evasive; she's not only difficult to obtain, but hard to define. Depending on the context, we crown her with the following names: prudence, phronesis, or, best of all, Sophia. In this episode, we'll explore our benevolent mother, Wisdom, in all her various forms; connect Cicero (a Roman s...

Join me as we meditate on the beach this fine day! Liberate your feet from those restrictive shoes in which they're cramped, and feel the warm, soft sand dance between your toes. Fix your gaze upon the blue ocean and the thin horizon, of whose imponderable depth and vastness we have only the faintest notion! As you do this, we'll spend some time thinking about the sublime. We'll look to the insigh...

A reading of Genesis from the Hebrew Bible. Fall asleep to the most majestic tale ever told (or sacred truth revealed). IF you succeed in staying awake through this episode (a feat of which only the most caffeinated among you has any real chance!), you'll hear the timeless story of creation; day by day, how the vast cosmos came into being; the earth and all its verdure; the sea and all its fathoml...

Behold! For those of us who want to eat like Titans, conquer like Olympians, think like philosophers, and thrive like the divine beings we were always meant to be, I introduce, for the first time, the “Promethean Diet”. A diet of which you’ve probably never heard, The Promethean Diet (trademark pending…!) has sustained our species from the very beginning of time, from the earliest dawn of our crea...

After a 10-mile run, join me as I cool down on my spin bike and air my thoughts! This episode covers the idea of "Unity in Multiplicity", a phrase to which the great Polish-American poet, Czeslaw Milosz makes reference. I expound upon this idea, which leads me to think about art, nature, personalities, God, and Parmenides--the Pre-Socratic philosopher to whom Unity, or oneness, was the fundamental...

Works and Days, by which restful nights are made all the sweeter. You're going to love this super sleep-inducing tale first told by Hesiod, a Greek poet of the 7th-century BC, who was a contemporary of Homer, an inspiration to Plato, and a hero of mine. IF you succeed in staying awake through this episode (a feat of which only the most caffeinated among you has any real chance!), you'll hear the s...