Hi Reader. During the first session with a new client this week, he shared some familiar stress. Busy job, two young kids, no time for yourself, relationships strained. Plus, this low buzz of anxiety that follows you from room to room. He shared something that triggered my memory. He said he couldn't really remember the last time he was fully present with his kids. Not distracted-present. Not phone-in-hand-present. Actually tuned into the kids. Then he said this out-loud. Something I hear in...
14 days ago • 3 min read
Hello Reader. I was out strolling around yesterday afternoon and just thinking out loud, talking into my recorder. I couldn't shake off this energy of thought from a mastermind meetup I had this morning with some buddies. It is just a handful of life coaches, and we show up every week for each other. Listen. See how we can help each other. And this isn't because it's easy, or for performance (well, maybe we slip into that sometimes, regardless.). No. Instead, we aim to show up because it...
27 days ago • 3 min read
Hi Reader. I usually split my week between life coaching sessions in the morning and strength coaching at the gym in the afternoon. Somewhere in my schedule this week, something synced up in my thinking between these two worlds: There are two kinds of Heavy. Heavy because it matters to you. And heavy because it's wrong for you. Most of us have lost the ability to tell the difference. We've been grinding and optimizing for so long the understanding got buried. Everything feels like resistance...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Hi Reader. I've been coaching a couple of guys through something hard the past three months. Rebuilding love. Or maybe more accurately... learning to explain what love is to themselves. How it feels. What it means. Because neither of my clients had a map for it. They had the pain, for sure. The history. That tight feeling that something had closed off somewhere inside them, and they weren't allowed back in. So we've been studying love. Well... I didn't say it like that, but we are. I started...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
My Week Roundup - Capacity Hey Reader. Abigail Adams wrote this letter to her son during the American Revolution: These are the hard times in which a genius would wish to live. Great necessities call forth great virtues. When a mind is raised and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities, which would otherwise lay dormant, wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman. I've been re-reading that quote a few times this past week because honestly, I...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
The Longer Pause - 600 Million Breaths Hello Reader. Through my wanderings on YouTube this past week, I came across a talk with Jordan Peterson & two younger podcasters. One of them spoke up on how Eckhart Tolle's book The Power of Now completely shifted his life. Then he asked Peterson what he thought of Tolle's work. Peterson answered that he hadn't absorbed much of it, but grouped his work with humanist thought. And as such, he said, it was doomed to failure. It disregards the mysteries...
2 months ago • 2 min read
In the Arena 🥊 Friday Edition — April 3rd, 2026 Hey Reader... it's been a few weeks. Life got full in the ways that matter. Here's where I landed. I've been a student of death for a long time. Trying to learn from it. Buddhist practices introduced it to me years ago. Dissolution meditations. The teachings on impermanence. Visualizing the body fading away. I've used some of those practices for about ten years. And then this past week, I sat in a hospice room with someone I cared about. There's...
3 months ago • 1 min read
In the Arena | Weekly Roundup 🥊 Friday Afternoon Edition — February 6th, 2026 Hey there Reader... This is Mark Walker, coach, facilitator, bard and writer. This newsletter is where I share what I’m learning, living, and wrestling with... via personal stories, coaching insights, and tools to help you move through stuck spots with more presence and courage. You might’ve signed up for a session or event with me, and that’s why this landed in your inbox. If it’s not your thing, feel free to...
4 months ago • 4 min read
In the Arena | Weekly Roundup 🥊 The early Sunday Edition - October 12th, 2025 Hey there... I’m Mark Walker, coach, facilitator, breath-work guide, and creator of In the Arena. This newsletter is where I share what I’m learning, living, and wrestling with... via personal stories, coaching insights, and tools to help you move through stuck spots with more presence and courage. You might’ve signed up for a session or event with me, and that’s why this landed in your inbox. If it’s not your...
8 months ago • 3 min read