Sitting, Feeling, and Healing with Joseph Clements.Sitting, Feeling, and Healing with Joseph Clements.
The Elevate Experience
Musician and meditation teacher Joseph Clements shares how punk rock, relapse and a ‘gift of desperation’ led him to a simple practice of sitting with difficult feelings. The conversation focuses on meditation, sensitivity and identity in recovery, showing how “sit, feel, heal” can support people at every stage of sobriety.
1:04:16•19 Jul 2022
Punk Rock, Meditation and Sobriety: Sitting, Feeling and Healing with Joseph Clements
Episode Overview
- Creative outlets like music can support recovery but can also become another form of addiction when driven by approval-seeking.
- Meditation doesn’t mean stopping thoughts; it means changing the relationship to thoughts and emotions, often starting with a single breath.
- Joe’s simple “sit, feel, heal” idea starts with sitting still, then feeling what’s present, and gradually developing compassion for those feelings.
- Emotions such as anger and sadness are experiences, not identity; shifting to “I’m experiencing anger” creates space to respond rather than react.
- Healing in recovery is a slow process that asks for patience, community support, and a willingness to meet oneself with kindness instead of judgement.
“Nothing outside of myself was going to fucking heal me… it was just going inward.”
How do people cope with the challenges of staying sober? This conversation with musician and meditation teacher Joseph Clements (Joe) gives a raw, funny, and very human answer. The chat circles around three big parts of Joe’s life: punk rock, relapse and recovery, and learning to sit still with his feelings.
He talks about finding his voice as the singer of Fury 66 *after* getting sober, and how the band “saved me in a lot of ways” while also feeding a huge hunger for approval that became its own addiction. When the shows, tours and attention faded, relapse followed.
From there, Joe shares how meditation became his second “gift of desperation.” Angry, agitated and newly sober again, he reached a point of thinking his family were “better off without me.” A friend finally got him to a meditation class, where “within a breath or two” he felt a tiny bit of peace – enough to make him want more.
That led to years of silent retreats, teaching meditation in juvenile halls and rehabs, and building a simple framework he now brings to people in recovery: “sit, feel, heal.” You’ll hear how he helps people fresh out of detox who say, “you took away my medication, now you’re giving me meditation, fuck you,” by keeping it as basic as feeling feet on the floor and admitting, “this fucking sucks” when it does.
Joe also talks openly about masculinity, sensitivity, and learning to see feelings as experiences rather than identity: “I’m not anger, I’m experiencing anger.” This episode suits anyone in recovery who’s restless, sceptical about meditation, or trying to figure out who they are without substances, titles or roles. It might leave you asking: what would change if you stopped trying to fix your feelings and just sat with them for a moment?
Do you want to link to this podcast?
Get the buttons here!
More From This Show
The latest episodes from the same podcast.