How I Work — What's Behind Each Ring, and What the Evidence Says

How I Work

Everything You've Tried Probably Worked on One Ring. I Trained Across All Three.

Therapy works on the story. A business coach works on the strategy. Willpower works on the behaviour — for a while, until it doesn't. None of that means they failed you. It means each one only ever reaches one ring, and you've been carrying something that lives across three. Coaching is how I work with you on all of it — structured, one on one. Which of the tools below actually gets used depends on which ring the work points to, never on a fixed menu everyone gets. Here's what I trained in for each one, and what the actual evidence says about every piece of it — including the one piece that has none.

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Steve Nye writing in a notebook during a session

The Vehicle, Not a Fourth Ring

Structured 1:1 Coaching

Weekly sessions, not open-ended check-ins. Each one is built around one thing — a decision, a habit, a conversation you're avoiding — and it doesn't end until there's something specific you're doing differently before the next call. No worksheet gets filed away and forgotten. I trained for this under Brendon Burchard's High Performance Institute: a full certification, a fixed twelve-session structure, and a process for making sure what gets decided in the room actually happens outside it.

I'm a Certified High Performance Coach, trained by Brendon Burchard's High Performance Institute.

What backs this

There's no clinical trial behind a coaching conversation, and I'm not going to pretend there is one. What you can actually check: the certification is real and current, the session structure is fixed rather than improvised, and every session produces something concrete you leave holding — not just something you talked about.

Steve Nye practising a slow qigong movement

Foundation Ring

Spring Forest Qigong

Qigong is a Chinese practice combining slow movement, controlled breathing and focused attention. Spring Forest Qigong is a simplified form of it developed by Chunyi Lin. In practice it looks like breath and movement work aimed at calming a nervous system that has been running in high alert — not incense, and not a ritual.

I hold all three Spring Forest Qigong certifications — Certified Trainer, Certified Healer and Certified Instructor. This is also where my own practice began: qigong is what I found when conventional treatment had only managed the symptom.

Evidence: One Randomized, Controlled, Peer-Reviewed Trial

This has the strongest evidence base of anything used in this practice, and stating that accurately means being exact about what was tested. A randomised controlled trial run through Mayo Clinic and the University of Minnesota assigned 50 chronic-pain patients to weekly 30-minute sessions of EXTERNAL qigong — the practitioner-delivered form, where a trained person works on you — or to an attention-matched control. It found statistically significant reductions in pain intensity in weeks two, three and four. The limits matter as much as the result, so here they are in full: the trial tested the practitioner-delivered form as an adjunct to pain medication, not the breath and movement you would practise yourself; 74% of subjects were receiving other treatments at the same time; the paper does not name Spring Forest Qigong; the difference was no longer statistically significant at the eight-week follow-up; the study could not be blinded; and it measured pain, not clarity, energy or productivity. Most sites in this field blur the practitioner-delivered form and the self-practice into one claim. They are separated here on purpose. This does not establish that qigong cures anything.

Vincent A, Hill J, Kruk KM, Cha SS, Bauer BA. “External Qigong for Chronic Pain.” American Journal of Chinese Medicine 38(4):695–703 (2010).

This supports personal growth and stress management. It does not diagnose, treat, or cure any medical or mental health condition, and it is not a substitute for medical or psychological care.

Engine Ring

Silva Method

The Silva Method is a structured relaxation and visualisation training that teaches you to enter a calm, focused mental state deliberately, and to use that state for goal-setting, mental rehearsal and problem-solving. It is closer to a structured meditation protocol than to anything mystical.

I'm a Certified Silva Method Instructor, licensed by Silva International to teach the method.

Evidence: One Narrow, Independent Finding

Research published in Neuropsychologia in 1972 found that people trained in this kind of practice can voluntarily produce alpha brainwave states. That finding is real, and it is narrow: it says the state is genuinely trainable, not that any particular outcome follows from it. Silva International also publishes a set of its own small internal studies from the 1970s and 80s; those were not independently peer-reviewed, and we don't cite them as evidence. Claims you may see elsewhere about intuition or remote perception have no scientific support and are not part of this practice.

Independent EEG study, Neuropsychologia (1972).

This supports personal growth and stress management. It does not diagnose, treat, or cure any medical or mental health condition, and it is not a substitute for medical or psychological care.

Compass Ring

Ancestral Clearing

Ancestral Clearing is a guided, conversation-based process that works with inherited family patterns and beliefs — the assumptions about money, worth and “enough” that tend to get set long before you were old enough to question them. It is a conversation, not a ceremony.

I practise Ancestral Clearing as part of my work on the Compass ring.

Evidence: None Published

Nothing. There are no peer-reviewed studies, no clinical trials and no published research on Ancestral Clearing as a named practice, and we're not going to pretend otherwise. What exists is practitioner and client report. Claims made elsewhere that this alters DNA or works through epigenetics are not supported and are not made here. If an absent evidence base is disqualifying for you, that's a reasonable position — the Foundation and Engine work stands on its own, and plenty of clients never touch this at all.

This supports personal growth and stress management. It does not diagnose, treat, or cure any medical or mental health condition, and it is not a substitute for medical or psychological care.

Which of These You'd Actually Use Is Decided With You.

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