I do a monthly Q&A for students of my course. Here is a question from August 2026, and an edited version of my answer.

In certain states, like when I'm tired, sick, overwhelmed by stimuli, depressed, I get 'online' less frequently. Are there changes in life that can make being present more frequent, like diet, sleep, or exercise?

Yes. From my context, I've found my own practice more difficult while recovering from my recent knee surgeries, not getting enough high-quality sleep or rest and not always being able to eat what my body needs. There are a few things going on here.

First, the principle of psychophysical unity applies: the body and mind are not separate, but are one continuous process. So, to be 'online' is something that involves the whole bodymind. If the body is compromised by illness or fatigue, then the whole system is affected.

Presence is still always available in these states, but it may show up quite differently from when you're healthy and energetic, and if you expect presence to feel a certain way, you may not recognise it when it does emerge. For example, you may find yourself looking at your life circumstances and simply feel sad. This could well be presence!

Consider the Four Spectra of Presence (I introduce these in this recent essay). You can be sick and tired while being fully there to experience being sick and tired (high knowing), remembering that there's more than just sickness and tiredness here (expanded awareness). While acknowledging that you are sick and tired, you can still be curious about things that aren't sickness and tiredness (un-fixated attention) and you can tune into the invitations in your experience to act to the extent your capacity allows (high availability).

You don't have a felt need to be healthy and energetic, but the sickness and tiredness take up just as much space in your experience as they take up. Or, as my teacher might say, there's the sickness... and there's everything else.

On the other hand, consider those spectra when on autopilot. This might look like the sickness and tiredness taking up all of your experience (contracted awareness), looping around resistance and resentment that you're sick and tired (fixated attention), feeling rigid and stuck, even after accounting for the effects of the sickness and tiredness (low availability) and simply numbing the whole experience by doomscrolling (low knowing).

And there's no judgement in me around that last paragraph, by the way. All of that is simply a thing that happens, and it is emphatically not bad. The practice here is about noticing it happening and then consciously putting it down, which can be as simple as noticing that the world is actually bigger than your experience right now. And sometimes doomscrolling is legitimately a better choice than being overwhelmed by your experience, although I'd argue that choosing it is still better than not choosing it.

To borrow from traditions like Internal Family Systems that use 'Parts', it's like noticing you have been hijacked by a Part, acknowledging that Part, and then remembering everything that isn't a Part—"oh yeah, I have been fixated on my suffering, and wow those clouds are beautiful; funny how I didn't notice."