Latest / Life Will Be the Death of Me with Chelsea Handler / Come Out Of The Meditation Closet with Andy Puddicombe

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Come Out Of The Meditation Closet with Andy Puddicombe · Life Will Be the Death of Me with Chelsea Handler

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Chelsea Handler. Welcome to Life Will Be the
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Death of Me, a production of I Heart Radio. Hi,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: good morning, Good afternoon, Brandon, what time is it? Okay?
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Good to know? Good to know. I always keep me
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: posted about the time. We have a very special guest
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: in studio today, somebody who has been an influence in
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: my life without ever having met him, because he co
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: founded the Headspace app. Brandon, you know how much I
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: love my head Space I do, and I'm really leaning
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: into it now. Uh Hi, Yeah, he's leaning into it.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: It's Andy Pudico me. I'm going to say that wrong.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: So I said it wrong, so you can correct me.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: I mean, I say yeah, but you can say however
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: you like, yeah, because we don't know that you know
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: the right pronunciation of exact exactly. Who knows he's got
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: it right. First of all, congratulations on a very very
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: successful app. Thank you very much. And I know you
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: co founded it with your business partner. Yeah, he's actually
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: a very dear friend. I mean we we are the
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: most accidental entrepreneurs ever. We started it at ten or
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: eleven years ago because we felt really passionate about it.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: We actually started a not for profit and one thing
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: that to another and it became this thing, and now
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: it's a thing that about fifty six mill people have
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: downloaded and news that is amazing. It's crazy. It's amazing
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: because sometimes I go on and it'll say, okay, you
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: can meditate now, there's one thousand, you know, five people
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: meditating right now, and you can join in, and another sentence.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: I never thought i'd hear myself say like, oh, I
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: can't wait to do my group meditation. You know, it
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: catches on. It becomes like an addiction, Like anything else
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: in your life that makes you feel good, you want
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: to do more and more of it. And believe me,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: that has changed. I mean, trust me. Like ten years
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: ago when we were we were starting this, I mean one,
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: it wasn't an apple at that stage. We were running events,
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: but we just hadn't got to that point in popular
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: culture where people were happy to talk about sort of
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: meditation and mindfulness and and just looking after the health
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: of the mind. I just don't think we were there
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: at that point. No, it seems like there is a
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: shift in consciousness happening. I think also with the back
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: drop of our political system right now all across the world,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: what's going on. Yes, yes, yes, don't. If you don't
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: know what's going on, it's better to not look and
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: just wait for it to pass. All the meditation. The
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: more I watched the news, the more I meditated. So,
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: but let's talk a little bit about your personal history.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: So you were born in London. I was. And then
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: what happens what happened next over the next futy odd years.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: So I was born in London, but very when I
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: was about too I moved to the Southwest of England
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: by yourself, on my own. Yeah. My parents are very progressive,
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: just let us do whatever we wanted and more neglectful. Yeah,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: if you My mom insisted it was progressive, so let's
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: go with that. Know. So we grew up in the
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: south West of England, which actually is a very progressive
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: kind of place, which is probably why I ended up
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: sort of going to meditation classes when I was like
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: ten or eleven years old. Yeah, that is progressive. Yeah,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: I think I think it was unusual for that time.
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  Speaker 1: Especially these days it's available in school and all kinds
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: of different places. But back then that was a really
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: kind of unusual, unusual thing. But I had a mom
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: who worked, you know, she worked she changed a hypnotherapist, psychotherapist.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: You know, we had a flotation tanking our garage that
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: people will come around and us. I mean we were
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: definitely kind of on the outer edges in the French.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: That was definitely yeah say yes, yeah, I catch what
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: you're saying. Yeah. So, in some ways, really really normal
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: kind of upbringing. You know, I was a young man,
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: I was playing football and tennis and rugby and all
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: those kind of things, hanging out with mates, and yet
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: there was this other kind of side and going on
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: as well, and with the parents like that. That was
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: your father into that too. Father most definitely was not
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: like that, which is probably why they got divorced when
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: I was about ten. So Dad was very strongly rooted
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: in Christian faith. Some of that stuff was slightly outside
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: of his comfort zone, I would say, yea, and very caring,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: very supportive father, but they had very very different interests.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: So growing up with a mother that was kind of
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: spiritually connected, did that show in her parenting? I think
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: you did. I Mean, it's funny because on the one hand,
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: I say that stuff was going on, and on the
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  Speaker 1: other hand that it was just a very normal kind
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: of upbringing. You know, I think she was very She's
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: very caring, very supportive, she's very well kind of educated
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: a guest through her own training as a therapist, so
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  Speaker 1: she probably lets some stuff go that some parents might
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: not let go. But equally she come down pretty hard
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: on us, so you know, we didn't get away with it.
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  Speaker 1: Definitely wasn't one of those households where you could do
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: whatever you wanted. And yeah, I think people have an
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: idea of like people who are into that, you know,
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  Speaker 1: especially previously when when I'm sure we're close in age,
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: when we were growing up, it's like it was meditation
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: was thought to be a lot more woo woo than
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: it is now. For sure, there certainly weren't apps or people. Well,
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  Speaker 1: there was no internet at that point, so that probably
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: what comes first, the chicken or the egg, the app
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: or the internet. Um and so okay, so you grew
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: up doing that, and was it something you were prideful of?
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  Speaker 1: Like did you tell your your bros that you were
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  Speaker 1: going hard to meditate or get into it? I did so.
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  Speaker 1: I I told one friend, a dear, dear friend of
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  Speaker 1: mine who I trusted so much until that day. Um,
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: I still love him now, but I did tell him.
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  Speaker 1: And the next day I walked into school and it
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: was into our I can't went with rules studies class
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: or something like that, and everyone was sat on the desk,
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  Speaker 1: cross legged, chanting, sort of arming at me as I
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: came in the room, and I realized at that point
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  Speaker 1: I couldn't trust this really good friend of mine. He
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: told everybody. Um and again it just I can't imagine
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: for a minute that would happen now. I mean, that
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: was so long ago. I mean I can't even remember
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: how long ago. That was, thirty five years ago or something. Um,
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: So it became something that I just did and didn't
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: talk about. And then fast forward and you decided to
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: become a monk. I did. Yeah, why, I know, it
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: sounds within the context of how most of us live,
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: it sounds like a really big leap For me at
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: that time, it felt like the most natural thing in
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: the world, and everything in your life had been leading
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: to that direction. Was there something that flipped the switch
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  Speaker 1: on for you? Yes? So I was I trained as
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: a personal training I was working as personal training studying,
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: which always leads to much which always like everyone right,
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: all the all the person the best personal trainers you
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: know end up being monks on nuns. No, so I've
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: been training and working as that. I was at university
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: studying sports science, so I was going down the route
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: definitely of health, but not really feeling particularly fulfilled. And um,
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  Speaker 1: I was involved in a car accident or a group
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: of us standing outside a party one night, and I'm
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: a drunk driver crashed into into the group and killed
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: two people and injured you know, a lot, really badly.
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  Speaker 1: And I think of all the things that led up
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  Speaker 1: to it, that was one of the major things that
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  Speaker 1: kind of got me thinking, am I doing as much
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: life as I would like to? And am I getting
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: the kind of fulfillment out of life that I would
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  Speaker 1: like to. I definitely didn't go through a conscious process
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  Speaker 1: of should I be doing this or should I be
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  Speaker 1: a monk? What are the pros and cons of being
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  Speaker 1: a Buddhist monk or anything like that. I just found
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  Speaker 1: myself one afternoon with a strange conviction like knowing what
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  Speaker 1: I needed to do. And I went into university that
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: same afternoon and I told my my lecturer that I
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: was going to quit university and I was going to
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  Speaker 1: go and be a monk. And he said, You're mad,
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: and he said you should go and see your doctor. Um,
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: and there's some really good anti depressants that you can
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: try to inflammatory. That's what they give people who want
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: to be What are you laughing at, Brandon? You know
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: that's true. You know that I'm a pharmacologist. So yeah,
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: I mean and you know, one thing that to another.
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  Speaker 1: And three months later I found myself in him alayas.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: You know, Wow, one does such an exciting life story.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: And so when when you become a monk, you have
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: to renounce or denounce many things, right. You definitely give
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: up a lot of stuff, material things. Yeah, you give
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: away you can actually give away everything. You have to
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: give away all your clothes, you know, any money. I
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: didn't have a lot of money at the time, so
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: it was easy. What about your Pokemon cards? You have
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: to give those, I should imagine you do. I didn't
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: have a large collection. Um. The only thing that got
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: away was my my mom stashed all my photos in
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: the attic. She didn't want me to give those away.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: But everything else kind of went. And you give up sex,
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: You do give up sex? Is one of the man
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: hesitated about that that well, it was probably the thing
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: that I was most resistant at that age one would
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: be almost twenty two years old, right, So that was
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: one of the bigger challenges, I would say, But you
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: felt the deepest poll you had was that you felt
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: that you had to do something more to give back
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: to life or to feel life like what was it
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: that you were missing or that you were after? So
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: I think there were two components to it. I think
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: part of it was an escape and part of it
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: was an exploration. I think the escape part I was
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: wanting to get away from a mind that seemed to
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: be working excessively but like a washing machine, just going
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: around around around, feeling overwhelmed by emotion and not really
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: knowing how to sort of deal with that. And then
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: the kind of the exploration side was wanting to feel
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: kind of more connected. I think I felt quite isolated
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: from from the world. I felt, although I was surrounded
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: by people, I felt quite lonely, and I think wanting
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: to connect and wanting to kind of almost get beyond
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: the thinking mind. I wouldn't have known how to describe
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: it at that time, but I think that was where
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: I wanted to get to. It sounds like like a
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: term for enlightenment, right to experience enlightenment. Yeah, I was
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: definitely it's funny in retrospect because you know, it's kind
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: of ridiculous as well, like enlightenment, I think because it's
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: held up there is this like this idea that we
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: need some new language. We definitely need to replace the
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: word journey because that's so a going from The Bachelor.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: They ruined a lot of worlds, and we need to
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: replace enlightenment because you know, even awakening feels like, you know,
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: you have to have many awakenings, not just the awakening,
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: and many awakenings they say lead to enlightenment. Is that accurate? Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: And well look the way it was described to me,
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: and this won't necessarily resonate with everybody, but I found
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: it really helpful. Was rather thinking of enlightenment as a
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: place over there, something we need to get to, somewhere
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: we need to get, rather think about it as stability
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: of being present. So in every single moment that is
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: an enlightened moment, if we are present in the moment
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: multiple times that day, then we're having multiple moments of
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: enlightenment throughout the day. When we get to a point
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: where we have stability of being present, non distracted, there
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: is an enlightened kind of state. And I found that
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: a really useful way rather than thinking of always trying
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: to get to somewhere or achieve something, instead in terms
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: of letting go of everything and just being present. And
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: when we do that, we kind of find what we
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: were always looking for. Yeah, And that through practice you're
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: able to be more and more present throughout the day
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: and just training. That's and it's it's almost I think
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: it's it's deceptively kind of a simple. It's almost so
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: ordinary that we can't believe that that's what it is,
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: and so we kind of find ourselves looking for something
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: more than that, right, and then we get disappointed, and
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: we set up lots of expectations, and we get frustrated,
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: and we give up meditation and you know, all these
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: things that people get into and out of all the time. Yeah,
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: And I think the most important lesson I've learned is
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: that the more frazzled you are about making the time
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: to meditate means the more you need to do it
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: and the more impact it will have that day or
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: in then that time period. But back to your monk,
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: could Okay, so you make this commitment, how long is
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: the commitment. So first you train as a as a layperson,
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: then you train as a as a novice monk, and
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: then and then you ordain as a fully or dained monk.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: So in Southeast Asia, want to get in too many
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: sort of technicalities here, but in case he was listening, well,
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: I think it's pretty interesting. So Southeast Asia, you can
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: go in and out of the monastery up to eight
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: times in your lifetime. There is no sort of fixed
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: term that you go in four You can just go in.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: It's very easy if you want to come back out
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: a month later or a year later or five years later,
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: and then you return eight times. You can go up
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: back in and out up to eight times in your
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: in your lifetime. And what happens after the eighth time
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: you're cut off? I think that's it. That's someone at
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: the gate sort of checking your standford. Yeah, you can't
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: come in. Sorry, I don't know how it works. I didn't.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: I didn't. I trained in the Burmese tradition for about
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: five years and then I swept over the to the
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: Tibetan tradition for five years. And in the Tibetan tradition
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: you take a commitment for one year, three years, five
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: years or life. And I mean it's a massive jump,
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: right for five years to life. I feel like they
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: should have had some more seven and a half years
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: should be the next something like that. Yeah, it is
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: a yeah because he has a lot, right, because you
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: would have to I would think a logical person or
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: a reasonable one would have to commit to a certain
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: amount of time of or first take it for a
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: little spin and see if this is something you can
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: commit to for the rest of your life. Is that
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: what must be? So I thought this was this was
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: kind of the genius at the approach. I thought was that.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: So you go in and it's a little bit like university,
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: you know. So you you go and maybe you take
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: a three year commitment, so doing a bachelor's right, and
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: you if it's going well, you decided to stay, you
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: take perhaps another two years commitment or three years commitments
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: like doing a master's. Some people will stay and do
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: the equipment of PhD, and those will be the teachers
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: that will live in the monastery forever and teach, and
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: some people will leave and then go and kind of
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: get jobs. So it's not like everyone goes in and
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: stays in for life. There's definitely a sense of kind
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: of coming coming and going. And I remember the very
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: last commitment I made. I had to decide between three
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: years in life and when I set off to become
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: a monk. I really thought I was gonna do it forever.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: I really thought, you know, I thought, yeah, I thought
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: I was going to be almost said journey. But I'm
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: not going to say a journey. I thought that was
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: going to be my way, you know, in life. And
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: so I had to go and see my each of
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: the next day and I decided I'm just gonna leave
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: up to him. Genuinely couldn't decide. It was the first
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: kind of moment where I wasn't really sure and um,
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: and he said, well, why don't you just do another
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: three years kind of see how you feel that at
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: the end of that, and um, and we'll talk again.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: And I'm really really grateful that he just said three
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: years rather than life, because I'm happy he saw the
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: direction life is. Let's take. Yeah, I would imagine. I mean,
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: we all are usually end up happy with our decisions
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: in the long run, don't we. I think so more
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: often than not. Yeah, as long as you're in the
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: you know, you have to accept it at a certain
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: point that this is your life and if you're not
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: behind it, then you're not You're not on your own team.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: And even even I think those decisions that seem really
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: hard or the difficult at the time, I think often
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: in retrospect we look back and go, Wow, that was
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: so difficult, and yet now, actually I'm so happy that
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: that happen. Okay, we're gonna take a quick break and
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: we'll be right back. And so what as one do
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: all day for three years other different levels of training,
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: I would assume yes, So throughout that kind of time,
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: there's a surprising number of options. Okay, well, I think
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: you need to break them down. I'm very curious. So
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: you could live in the monastery and not necessarily do
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: a ton of meditation. If I know monks and nuns
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: who do no meditation, they wanted to be in a
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: community of light minded people. They do gardening and cooking
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: and cleaning, They help run the monastery, they help keep
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: it sort of ticking over. And then there are some
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: that do a little bit of meditation some of the
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: day and some of those other duties. And then there
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: are those that are really kind of have a passion
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: for meditation. I probably put myself in in that bracket. Um,
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: And so you do, you tend to do a lot
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: of retreat so you might go into a I don't know,
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: three three months, six months, year long, four year retreat
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: and you just you meditate all day, every day. And
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: that's that's the gig we were at. I was at
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: a retreat last week at I M. S In Barry,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: Massachusetts for victims of gun violence. My friend put it together.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: Sharon Salzburg was there and some other teachers were there,
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: and so it was victims of all different school shootings
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: throughout the country. And it was a four day retreat.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: But there was a monk that was there. He came
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: to breakfast every morning at and win his robes and
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: you're not supposed to talk to him. And he was
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: there for a year. But on either side of this retreat,
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: there were two other retreats and one was a silent
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: retreat and they said two people had been there for
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: two years. And I just couldn't fathom the idea of
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: something like that. You get into it, you settled into it.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: Do you think a lot of people experienced trauma and
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: then go to do something like that, yes. Often. I
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: think the challenge of that, though, is that it's a
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: very revealing process, and often you experience those traumas, thoughts,
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: feelings with greater intensity within a retreat because there's no
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: where to hide from them, there's no way to distract
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: yourself from them. So I think it can be a risk.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: I would always advise people if they've gone through a
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: lot of trauma, start meditation just little and often make
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: sure you're discussing those traumas with somebody with considerable experience,
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: and then look towards retreat as a as a longer
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: term goal, rather than thinking, hey, I know, I go
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: and become a monk or none and dive into retreat
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: for a year. I think that can be potentially sort
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: of difficult, right yeah, And so what was your transition like?
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, you must have forged relationships with people there
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: that you still have, right absolutely. I mean it's funny
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: in in some of the retreats, obviously they are silent,
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: so it's amazing the relationships you can form in silence.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's still your next door neighbors. It's still
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: kind of in a room next door to them. You
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: still see them every day. You just don't speak to
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: them very much. You know, the best way to neigh
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: it may it may well be there might be a
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: lot of pea that would be just communicate via Yeah,
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: that would be a lot a lot. Nights are probably
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: for everybody. There's friends there who Yeah, they'll they'll be
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: friends for for life. And definitely one of my teachers
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: as well, he was my retreat master. He was a
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: tibetanman abbot of the Tibetan Monastery, one of the ones
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: that are trained in. In fact, we've remained so close.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: A couple of years ago, Rich my co founder, said hey, look,
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: you know we we do a yearly retreat for the team.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: We take them up into the hills of Malibu and
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: do like a day up there. And he said, why
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: don't you invite Lama over? And there's no way he's
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: going to fly fly out tomorrow. He's been very supportive
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: of what we've done, but I don't think he's going
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: to fly. And I said, I'll ask, and he said yes,
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: and he flew out and it was kind of surreal.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: We're in a vineyard up in and he was at
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: Gory Hills or somewhere, and to see these bright kind
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: of robes and this Tibetan monk with his long, kind
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: of whispy silvery beard sort of sitting there at the
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: front with these vineyards behind. It was amazing. And to
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: see the team and the team to kind of have
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: access to someone like that was amazing. And what was
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: your I bet it was amazing. I mean, there is
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: there is definitely a power in a group getting together
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: for the same goal, which is I think the thing
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: that I always get surprised about. And I don't have
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: a lot of experience with retreats or or meditation other
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: than what we'll talk about in a minute, but I
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: think you expect people to be so evolved that there
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: is no regular stuff you see in day to day life,
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: Like you know, I went to this one conference with
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: a bunch of neuroscientists and a bunch of really esteemed
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: therapists and authors, and there was definitely like a pecking
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: order and all of this kind of competitive nature. And
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: I remember saying to my sister, Oh, they're just like
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: everyone else. You know, you hope that people are going
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: to be beyond that. I know you do, but then not,
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: we're not. And it is always extremely disappointing to discover.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: It's really interesting though. You go into um Um, you
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: go into a monestery. I'm not going to say which
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: monastery this was. Don't worry, I won't know it. No
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: one listening, But yes, I remember, we'll get into to
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: a monastery. And I'd come from a very very serious
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: monastery at that point. And I walked in through through
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: the gates and this guy ran out of the door
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: and there were some monks and nuns are sitting around
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: it in their lunch, and he ran out and he went, Yes,
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: Lama's going away no meditation for a week. And to
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: me at that time, I was going, what I thought,
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: that's why you kind of came here. And I was
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: very sort of pious and worthy in my kind of way,
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: you know, at the time, I come from this very
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: serious place, and I was quite you know, judgmental kind
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: of towards that. But actually when I the more time
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: I spent in the monastery, the more I realized that
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: just because you shave your head and you're put in
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: different set of clothes don't make a different person. Monks
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: and nuns are not like bunches of enlightened beings. You
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: don't shave your head and become enlightened. You go in
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: there because you realize how unenlightened you are and how
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: much you need to train your mind. So it's actually more,
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: it's quite After a while, it becomes I found, I
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: don't know about in kind of secular retreats and stuff,
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: but in a monastic context, actually everyone was really aware
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: of their own neurosis, and everyone there was a really
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: good community spirit, which wasn't too hierarchical, which wasn't too judgmental. Um,
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: but stick any group of humans together in a small place,
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: stuff's gonna happen. Just does the nature of being human. Yeah, yeah,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: I suppose that's true. I mean, we can't have one
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: without the other. You have to have, like, you know,
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: the good side of humanity and the icky side of humanity.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: And I remember going to one of my teachers and saying,
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: we've been doing a lot of retreat and I said,
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: you know what, the group retreats good, but I'd love
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: to just go and do like a year on my
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: own or something. And he was like, yeah, said maybe
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: not just yet, he said, he said, think about it
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: this way. He said, you're still very rough, And he
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: said it's a bit like putting a stone in a
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: washing machine or something, you know, or a tumble a
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: stone tumbler, he said. If lots of stones go in,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: he goes, if you go on there on your own,
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: not a lot is going to happen, just gonna go
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: kind of round and around, he said. Put lots of
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: stones in there together, lots of you that are really
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: kind of rough, and you're going to kind of knock
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: against each other, and over time you'll become a bit smoother,
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: a little bit softer. And I like the idea because
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: it's really easy if you go away on your own
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: kind of hide, you can hide from all your own
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: nonsense and think that you can just sit there kind of,
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: you know, pretty calm, and think that you're enlightened or whatever.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: It's the same idea. It's like me saying, oh, I'm
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: gonna go up to Santa Barbara for three days on
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: my own and really walk walk the beach up and
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: down and really for you know, think about what I'm
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: gonna do with the next year of my life. And
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: what I ended up doing is going up there and
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: watching TV for three days, like there's no one, there's
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: no special time with myself. You're just more able to act,
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: like you know, to resort or defer to your bad
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: habits when you're not being pushed by other people. So
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: that is a really valid point. But let's talk about
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: the different types of meditation there. So, um so there's
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: t M, which is really popular too. A lot of
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: my friends do that. I don't know a lot about that,
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: just from what I've been told. Well, why don't you
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: talk to us about TM and what you're there's Buddhist meditation. Yeah,
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: I'm definitely not an expert on TM. I grew up
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: doing TM, so that was TM is what I learned
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: when I was ten eleven, I did when I was twelve, thirteen, fourteen,
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: and so I have a fairly good sort of familiarity
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: with it. They tend to use a mantra, so a
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: word or a phrase that you repeat over and over
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: and that's your point of focus throughout the twenty minutes
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: do twenty minutes in the morning, twenty minutes in the evening,
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: And that's kind of the structure for for TM. I
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: think the beauty of it is a simplicity. There is
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: just just just a work and you just said over
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: and over and over again, and that's your focal point.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: I think that's I like that about it. I think
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: for some people it can be a little bit even
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: if you think about the word sort of transcendental meditation,
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: for some people that can be an obstacle or a barrier.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: It needn't be. Sometimes it can feel a bit mystical
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: perhaps for some. But that's true of all of these
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: different types of meditation. Some will resonate with with some
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: people and not with others. And that's always my advice
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: kind of like it's not there's good ones and there's
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: bad ones. Find what works for you, Find what talks
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: to you, what resonates with you. Yeah, And so what
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: sile of meditation is yours? The mine is is very
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: much having spent sort of ten years doing that sort
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: of um that training within the Buddhist tradition and in
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: those later five years the Tibetan tradition um is Tibetan
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: Buddhist practices mostly, and probably the one that I practice
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: the most is called sort of resting in awareness. So
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: it's where you don't really have a focal point as such,
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: You're not necessarily focused on the breath or a visualization.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: You're simply allowing the mind to rest on its own
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: in itself. And sometimes it gets distracted, of course, but
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: it's not like you're seeing the distraction then coming back
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: to a point of focus. You feel kind of stable
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: enough in the practice to just allow those things to
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: come and go and not get to sort of core
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: up in them. Yeah, I think that the the the
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: biggest thing that happens is people think they're doing it badly,
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: and you take so much judgment about how you're meditating, like, oh,
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: I can't get these starts out of my head. That's
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: the point. The point is to accept that you have
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: all these starts and recognize how easily distracted you can become.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: There is no bad meditation. It's really I can't. I
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: can't stress that enough because sometimes, like I've noticed myself
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: in the middle of my meditation literally checking my phone
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: for text messages, forgetting that I was meditating. Did I
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: just said, there's meditation notion In the beginning, I was like,
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: I realized how unfocused I was because I had all
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: of a sudden be like, wait a second, what are
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: you doing on your phone? You were just meditating. That's
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: how bad it was for me, And so how badly
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: I needed it. Also, I know that was one of
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: your issues when you started, right yeah, And I kind
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: of took her lead on it. She'd be doing and
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: she would text me and if I got there in
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: the more and she's like, hey, meditating for ten minutes.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: And that was my way of knowing, like, she's going
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: to be up there. She needs she needs to focus
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: on the meditation, whereas now when she doesn't. Sometimes I'll
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: come in and out of her room. She doesn't even
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: know I'm there, and I don't know she's meditating. She's
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: just sitting outside doing it. So when you can integrate
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: it into your life in a way that isn't something
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: that you're like, I have to do this right now,
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: and it just becomes a habit. It's impactful because now
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: I do it. Or sometimes I'll text her like I'm
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: outside for ten minutes and it's in the middle of
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: the day, I'm gonta meditating, Or I'll just turn my
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: phone on do not disturb, and then she'll come down
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: like where we're I was like, oh, I's meditating for
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: ten minutes. Just like getting in the habit of it
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: being just your daily experience, not something you're setting yourself
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: up to do. Yeah, I think that's the most important thing,
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: is she just And it's takes a little while right
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: to get to that point where it has become so
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: much part of your daily existence that you'd miss it
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: if it if it wasn't there. But it is really
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: easy to be hard on yourself in the beginning when
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: you start meditating, like how she says she would get distracted.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: I would get more angry by the end of the
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: meditation because I'd be listening to your voice doing it.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, I don't make anyone angry and and no,
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: and so it's supposed to be very calming and it's
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: and it's guided, which is the best part. But by
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: the end of like, why can't I just focus on
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: what he's saying and let my mind go? And I
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: remember thinking I heard someone say one time that it
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: should be like a leaf floating down a river, Like
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: that's how passing thought should be. While you're meditating, you
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: acknowledge it's there and you let it go. I like that,
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: and so that's what I would try and remember. But
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: in the beginning, you're just You're like that, I can't
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: do it. I can't stick with it, and also for
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: me specifically, and I know this is how so many
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: people feel. It's that instant gratification. You're like, I meditated twice.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: Why don't I feel better? You know? Why are and
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: I'm more focused? It's not working. I remember walking into
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: my psychiatrist, Dan Segull, I know, you know, went into
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: his office and I was like, listen, I meditate. He goes,
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: have you been trying to meditate? Because I was still,
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: you know, on this kind of fast cycle of thoughts
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: and everything was obsessive and I couldn't just sit still,
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: you know. He said, had did you try to meditate
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: this morning? I said, yeah, and I think it made
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: me in my day words. I really had that argument
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: because I was so frustrated with the inability to connect
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: with it right away, and for most people they don't
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: have I know, I surely did not have the patience
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: to understand that I had to commit to a certain
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: amount of time, which in my instance was three months.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: And I started with your three minutes, which was obviously
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: completely doable for anybody to do three minutes a day,
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: and then by the time you get to day ten,
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: you do want to bump it up to five minutes
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: or ten minutes, and I think time is one aspect
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: of it. I do think the other aspect is there
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: is not only the sense of kind of what are
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: we going to get out of it, but there's also
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: a sense of our approach to it. I feel like
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: it sometimes it sounds like a broken record, but hopefully
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: not too many of your of your community have heard
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: me speak before. But um, if you want to hear
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: him sound like a broken record, you could just download
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: the app and just listen to all the different meditation courses.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: There's a course for everybody. You can take a course
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: on eating, you could take a course on sleeping. There's
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: different levels of courses there is. It's true, but I
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: think our approach to it is that we should feel calm,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: we should feel relaxed, we should feel more focused. There
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: is no should here. Meditation was never designed for those things.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: Meditation was designed to see our mind more clearly, to
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: understand our mind more clearly, so that we could benefit
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: ourselves and we could benefit other people. And that's it total.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: There's no more to it than that. Relaxation is a
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: side effect. It's an amazing side effect. Focus is a
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: side effect. It's not the purpose of meditation. If we
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: sit down and we think, right, I'm going to try
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: and make myself relaxed, We're already screwed. It's over. If
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: we sit down and think I'm going to try and
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: make myself focused, we're already thinking about the process of focus,
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: and we're projecting an idea onto the meditation rather than
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: simply watching the mind. So if at the beginning of
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: every meditation you can let go and this is a
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: big task, and this in a way is the practice
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: of meditation, learning to let go of these things. You
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: can sit down and go, Okay, I'm gonna let go
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: of every idea that I ever thought meditation was about,
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: and I'm just gonna sit doesn't matter what my mind does.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: I'm just going to learn to watch my mind. That is,
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: I would say, the practice of meditation, and it purist
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: kind of form. And when we do that on a
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: regular basis, then all those other things like relaxation and
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: like focus and everything else they come about kind of naturally.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: We don't even have to think about trying to make
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: them happen. They just happen. But yeah, and and the
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: noise quiets down in a natural way too. Like, I
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: definitely noticed, because there's a there's a period and I've
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: spoken to Down about this, I think, and you on
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: this podcast about there's a period where you're really trying
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: to be so self aware that you become self absorbed
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: in that process because you're constantly thinking about your own
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: behavior and in my case, my own reactivity and my
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: you know, react, give myself the space respond where I'm
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: constantly assessing my own behavior that I'm running around all
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: day just like obsessed with myself and so self absorbed
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: that I'm like, oh my god, it's such a pain.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: And they asked to be a mindful person. Yeah, and
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: that's because we tend to think that thoughts associated with
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: meditation or mindfulness or with our behavior are somehow more
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: important and we should take those seriously and we should
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: be attached to those, whereas thoughts about what a conversation
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: we had yesterday or something that we're planning to do tomorrow,
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: those aren't important. So most of us, over time, we
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: find it really easy to let go of the planning
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: kind of bit and the reflection bit, but we tend
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: to take really seriously the thought, oh I wonder if
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: that means, oh I wonder if I'm meditating, right, oh,
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: do that made me a good person? And rather than
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: just treating those as thoughts and going oh yeah, thinking
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: and letting it go, instead we dive into it, We
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: make it part of the narrative, and we get caught
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: up in a new storyline. So now we're no longer
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: the storyline is no longer what am I doing at
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: work tomorrow? It's like, am I a good person? Am
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: I meditating? Well? Am I being mindful? And we're then
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: just thinking about that stuff. It's still noise in the mind.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: There is noise, but you do eventually come to them.
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: At least I have come to a much more natural
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: place of where you started. I started meditating from my
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: brain and my mind to quiet, and you very naturally
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: make the progression to move outward in a loving kindness
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: way to the people in your life that are in trouble.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: And then you have, of course, where you're constantly meditating
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: for people that you kind of you know are ambivalent
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: towards um, you know that you don't have the greatest
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: feelings for. And I was just on a family vacation
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: doing this every morning, going okay, I'm meditating on this
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: person I'm picturing them and the visualizations also for me,
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: are really helpful. Do you do that? Do you do visualizations?
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: Because that's I think what has been the difference for
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: me sticking with meditation, which again I'm not someone who's
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: been doing it every day but regularly, like you do
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: it every day, Chelsea, I would like to get to
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: that point, but I'm still using it. It's like I
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: really rely on it as like I'm stressed right now.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: Like we were in the car the day and my
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: boyfriend's like, why don't you do headspace because I was
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: wound so tight and he could tell and he's like,
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: I think you just need a few minutes. And I
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: did it and it really does help. You can still
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: rely on it for that, but it becoming part of
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: your daily routine is obviously the goal. What do you
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: think the biggest misconception about mindfulness and meditation that people
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: have is there are a lot, but I would say
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: the biggest is that is designed to stop you thinking,
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: and that's why most people struggle with it, and that's
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: why most people give it up because they don't want
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: to because they think that if they meditate, their thoughts
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: will stop and they sit down to meditate, and the
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: thoughts keep going, and they're like, I'm therefore I'm no
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: good at this, or therefore meditation doesn't work. Meditation isn't
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: designed to stop the thoughts, so no wonder it's confusing, right,
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: I would say that is the big and also even
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: it prevents people even from trying meditation because they think, oh,
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: my mind so busy that I could never meditate. It's fine,
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: you can meditate with a busy mind. You can meditate
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: with the quale, but more of a reason to meditate
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: your mind. I mean that is the number one excuse
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: that everybody says, oh, I can't whenever I say to anybody,
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: because when I start, you know, try a hard on
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: for something, and I overcorrect. So I've been like, you know,
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: banging this drum about therapy and meditation and awakening for
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: the last six months, and I'll probably go another six
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: months and then I'll become a monk. Watch do they accept? Yeah,
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: you could write me based on your knowledge of me.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: I think that that's a slam dunk. You would like
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: that if I went away to become a monk. And
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: as far as but let's talk a little bit about
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: the science to meditation and behind meditation about you know,
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: I know I meditated every night before I go to
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: sleep too, do your sleep meditation. And I also have
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: gotten looks when people, you know, when I'm in the circles,
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: when when somebody asked me what my practices and I say,
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: I'm new to meditation. I do you know, twenty minutes
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: a day on a guided app. I've definitely gotten the
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: eye roll from several people that I'm doing guided meditation,
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: which I want to say, hey, just you know, that
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: is so not the attitude that I'm joining this troop
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: of people for. Well, you know, in those situations, I
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: think it's always really interest you can kind of let
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: that person have their moment of judgment, like that's their
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: own practice. If they're still working through that kind of
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: that judgment mental attitude, just let them kind of do that,
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: like you have your thing and enjoy that thing and
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: let them have and just smile and to thank you,
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: say thanks very much, thank you, because I'm sure you've
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: gotten that from people in your circle about being commercialized
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: or selling out or whatever their judgment of you is
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: for for creating an app. I mean rewind. So we
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: launched the app eight years ago and rewind eight years.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: I mean, we've got so many emails, letters from angry
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: Buddhists kind of, you know, really upset about the fact
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: that one we're putting on an app, that we were
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: charging for it, and it took a little while to
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: kind of really get comfortable with what we were trying
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: to do. We don't get that anymore. I think it
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: has changed. I think people have just accepted. I remember
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: kind of researchers and professors writing to us saying it's ridiculous,
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: nothing can happen in ten minutes, And now most studies
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: actually are done around sort of ten fifteen minutes, and
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: there's a widespread acceptance that it's not about the quantity,
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: it's about the frequency, the dosage, you know. So, um, yeah,
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: we've had a ton of that in the past, and
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: that was for me, that was a practice in itself
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: kind of not to be put off by that and
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: to think, Okay, actually, this is something really kind of valuable,
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: and it's away of getting out to more people and
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: and the science back to the science, what is some
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: of the most surprising data that you've learned? So I
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: think the I mean the stuff around europlasticity, So the
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: way in which our brain can actually change shape, that
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: was the biggest surprise for me. So one of the
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: monastery where I ordained at in India, um I didn't
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: know at the time, but some of the monks and
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: nuns from there were being flown to America and going
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: through FM Mara machines and they were looking at the
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: brains to see what was different in the brains of
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: monks and nuns and you know, and the rest of us.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: And they found that so through the process of meditation,
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: through the practice of mindfulness, the brain actually changes shape.
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: So the areas, the parts of the brain, the cortex
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: responsible for the focus, self restraint, for the feeling of happiness,
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: well being, that those areas receive more blood flow and
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: as a result, they get thicker and stronger, in just
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: the same way as when we go to the gym
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: and train and muscle it gets thicker and stronger. So
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: I never knew, I mean, they never knew that before
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: they started doing that research. I certainly never knew that
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: our brain had the capacity to change in that way.
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: I always thought of meditation as I don't know, as
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: the mind. You know, it's kind of intangible, but I
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: think the research has shown actually is a very tangible
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: kind of impact not only on our brain, but also
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: on the flow of harmful chemicals and hormones in our body.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: Can really kind of help regulate those things. Is there
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: at a time of day that's better than any other
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: time of day? I think everyone is different. Are you
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: do you? When do you do yours? I do mind
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: first thing in the morning, but sometimes if I also
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: like to get stand and meditate. I mean that for
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: me in the beginning, it was very helpful to calm
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: me down because I had trouble sitting still. And so
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: some times in the afternoon, if I'm stoned and I'm home,
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: I'll go out and do twenty minutes. Sometimes I do
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: it without the app. Now I just go sit. Now
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: that you've taught me all these tools, now I understand that,
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: and you have all those great little tools on it
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: to show you what you should be thinking about when
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: you're doing a body scan or what you're doing with
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: the visualization. But I do want to say with regard
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: to attention and focus, I was having trouble, like focusing
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: enough to get through a book. I was writing a book,
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: but I hadn't read a book in like three months
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: because I was writing one and I was really deep
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: into it. And once I was done with my book,
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: I was having trouble focusing. And I always love to read.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: And because of the meditation, now my attention span is
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: completely different. I don't days off in the middle of
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: conversations and start thinking about food when I'm talking to people.
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: Now I'm actually engaged and I pay attention. And I
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: used to have like a very very short attention span,
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: and I was creating that bad habit and getting more
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: cute at my lack of attention, and so it was
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: a great reversal of that. Yeah, that's the best. I
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: think often the benefits, you know, people think about the
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: benefits actually within the meditation itself, you know, kind of
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: how am I going to feel at the end of
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: the ten minutes. For me, I'm always that much happier
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: when people talk about the benefits in the rest of
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: their life, because I think that's actually where the magic happens.
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: It's it's being able to sit with another person and
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: have a conversation and be present for that other person,
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: you know, or being on the freeway here in l
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: A and something kind of crazy happening and not freaking out,
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: And I feel like those are the moments actually that
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: make a difference in the world and where the ripples
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: the benefits of meditation are really kind of felt rather
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: than necessarily just that time. But coming back to your
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: question best time of day, I think morning is the
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: best time of day. That doesn't mean it's the only
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: time of day. Any time of day is a good
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: time of day. But if we do it in the morning,
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: I think when it gets done and to you set
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: yourself up in a way where you're more likely to
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: be more mindful throughout the day. So it's kind of
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: like setting an intention for the day right exactly whereas
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: you're saying that you're using it as kind of a
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: recovery or band aids, so to speak. Like if you
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: start to commit yourself to doing it each morning, then
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: you probably won't have to do any sort of clean
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: up as often as you do. You know. Yeah, well
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: I stopped doing it at night for that reason that
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: after the impact of the day sitting there and doing it,
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: I didn't feel the benefits other than how you do
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: the sleep sessions. I do think I slept maybe more
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: peaceful but in terms of how my day went, I
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: can totally see why morning would be most impactful. Yeah,
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: what are your technology rules personally, because I know there's
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: you know, that's a big topic of conversation because technology
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: is the reason for our lack of attention, but yet
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: it gives us so many great tools. Also, it's a
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: big part. I will just say, kind of meditation has
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: been around for two and a half thousand years or so.
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: They didn't have any technology back then in the way
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: that we have it now, and people still struggled with
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: their attention. Is really clear when you go back through
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: the stuff. Don't know anyone to kind of feel like
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: it's impulse sable in this and say, like, I think
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: it just is part of being human. I think the
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: technology and the digital chatter is amplified the noise in
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: our mind and and I think it's really important to
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: set up our own boundaries. So, for example, if I
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: get a new phone or laptop or anything like that,
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: the first thing I do is take everything off it
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: that I can. So with a new phone, I take
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: off any sounds, I take off notifications. Why don't you
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: just get a rotary phone? I mark around with that
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: I've tried. It's hard to get a signal outlet exactly,
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: and some people help you out, but not everywhere. But
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: I genuinely I clear up the home screen so I
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: have the minimum number. I have only the things that
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: I consider essential on my home screen. Anything social media, email,
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: everything else is pushed off to another page and then
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: you have to make it. Sounds like small things, but
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: you then have to make the conscious intention to go
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: to it rather than its simply being there. So, in
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: that moment want of boredom, where typically you might just
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: pick up your phone and press a button, all of
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: a sudden, there's like one more step and it gives
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: you another opportunity to think, is that going to make
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: me feel good? I really want to do that. So
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: just remembering kind of the they don't own us. Sometimes
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: think we feel overwhelmed by the technology. Phones don't own us.
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: They can't tell us what to do. They just sit
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: there on the table. So it's up to us to
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: kind of define their relationship and to set it up
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: in a way that works for us and makes us
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: feel happy. Yeah, it is definitely up to like each
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: one of us to set our own kind of parameters.
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: Because even I was mindlessly you know, you find yourself
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: mindlessly scrolling down your phone or you know, in my instance,
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: on Instagram looking at things I don't care about in
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: the middle of my day, just because I have five
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: minutes to kill and much rather be reading a book,
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: and just by moving that into my social media pocket, right,
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: I can't. I have to think to go. There makes
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: a huge difference. I don't want to be on Instagram
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: two hours a day, you know, or in some cases
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: twenty seven hours a week. I mean, there are people
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: to do that mindless and it's mind numbing and then
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: say they don't have time for meditation. Yes, right, they
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: don't because they have to get up early and scroll
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: through Instagram exactly. Well, I think the issue is that
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: meditation at that point is not a habit for them,
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: whereas you so absent mindedly go like there are times
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: we're all click my email open, even I have no
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: reason to check it, just because it's a habit that
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: you get into for doing it. But it's that same
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: thing with meditation that until you actively are doing it
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: and it just becomes a habit, it's going to seem
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: like a process. Yeah, okay, well this sounds like a
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: good time to take a break. I want to know
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: how long it took you to record all of those
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: sessions because they're endless, there's a lot, and are there
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: tricks to I mean, how do you you have to
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: record every single one? It seems like because for the
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: different time periods. Yeah, in real time, So I think
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: we were to We've done about two thousand hours total
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: things about currently on the app. The first one was
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: the Big Ones A version one, so it's just back
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: in we didn't really kind of know how to do
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: it and apps when you and Rich just said to
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: me that it would be great if you could try
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: and recreate what you used to do in the clinic
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: where you see people kind of like one to one
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: and it was a course and he said maybe kind
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: of over a year. So we came up with a
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: three sixty five day course and I just went into
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: the studio with an incredibly patient and understanding sound engineer
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: and we just recorded three sixty five twenty minute long
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: meditations um and took. It was a progressive course over
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: over a year. But it's taken a long time. It's
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: taken a long time. And how how long did it
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: take before the app really took off in financial terms
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: for you guys. So we launched the first app in
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: twelve I'd say fourteen was a turning point. So we
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: just moved to America and Apple did a huge promotion
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: around us and all of a sudden, I mean at
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: the time, I think we had about ten people in
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: the team in the in England, maybe about twenty in
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: the US, and within a year or eighteen months of
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: that in the team was like a hundred and fifty
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: and things were just absolutely kind of flying it. There
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: was a big, a big change. Yeah. So what are
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: some of the feedback that you've heard that is your
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: major motivating factor? I mean, what are is a story
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: that you've heard that sticks out for you from a user? Yeah?
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: There are, I mean there was so many different ones
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: and all for different reasons. The ones that tend to
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: really kind of stick with me, they tend to be
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: they're not sad, but they're deeply kind of moving people,
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: like not knowing kind of going through you know, a
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: really difficult process. Maybe in hospital, remember a husband saying
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: he was going through his wife was dying and they
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: didn't know what to do, and they did headspace and
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: they did it together and like that was her final
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: kind of minutes for me when I never imagined ever
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: that someone would use the app in in that way.
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: So I still find those things. They yeah, they move me. Yeah. Well,
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: it's like if you can help one person, they say,
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: and with something like this, you're helping millions of people.
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: So it must be such a great feeling. It must
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: be just so fulfilling. It is. I don't it's a
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: funny thing. Well, one, it's a big team effort, right,
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: there's you know, there's three people kind of that that
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: make it make it happen. But also I don't think
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: about it. It would be I don't think I could
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: do my work and think about it in that way.
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: I don't ever sit down and think there's this many
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: kind of people listening to it. I just sit down
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: and I imagine I'm chatting with a friend and hopefully
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: kind of as as the person on the other end
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: of that kind of That's how it feels. It's like
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: it's just it's just us, and it's not that I'm
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: a teacher with some kind of amazing experience. We're just
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: friends and I have done a little bit of training,
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: I have a little bit more experience, and I can
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: kind of help maybe just you know, offer a little
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: bit of extra sort of support and guidance. That's that's
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: my I still feel like I'm learning, like I'm a student,
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: and so it's an opportunity for me to practice at
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: the same time. Yeah, it's nice for people to have
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: humility like you, especially straight white men. Everybody needs a
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: good humility. So what's your meditation practice like now? So
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: it's um. I'll describe it as since having young children,
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: as becoming a lot more flexible. So when I came
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: to l A, I was still living a bit, a
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: bit like a monkey. I was here with my wife,
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: but I'd get up at four, I'd do my meditation
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: until five, and then I go surfing and then I
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: go to the office and everything else. And then we
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: had young kids, and now I do it when I can.
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: So some mornings they sleep late and I get to
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: do my meditation in the morning. Sometimes I have to
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: do it a lunchtime. I'm lucky I have a space
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: at the office where where I can do it. To
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: meditate with your children, I've done it a little bit
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: with Harley. So the kids are five and two. The
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: two year old is definitely kind of not quite that
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: he's likely to be the he'll take to it more naturally.
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: I think the older one is. I mean, he's got
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of energy. One night I
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: did decide he wouldn't go to sleep, it was so late,
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: and my wife said, he just just trying to app
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: with him, you know, and I'm like, well, I could
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: just talk him through it, and she said he would
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: like he would like the fact that it's on. It's
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: on the phone, you know. So I put it on
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: and um, and he looked at me. He said, but
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: that's you, daddy, And I said yeah, and he said,
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: can can I listen to Pepper Pig instead? So, I
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: mean he has at this stage he has no interest
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: kind of in listening to me. I think probably now
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: we have a we have a female voice. A friend
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: of mine has recorded all of the or is in
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: the process of recording everything, and what kind of accent
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: as she has because she has a British act okay,
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: very well spoken, very well spoken, and so I'm hoping
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: that he might that he might listen to listen to
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: evens see see how that goes. Because people are very
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: noise sensitive. Yeah, you know, if you don't like somebody's accent,
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: or if you don't like the way somebody you know,
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: I think for me, I don't like when everything's too precious,
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: you know that kind of that's the whole judgment I
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: had towards that, like crunchy granola. You you know, you
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: think that it's very unrelatable to me. I like people like,
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: you know, like a cynical bitches who meditate. I want
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: to know what they're doing because that's how I feel,
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: so you enjoy No, I think. I think it's just
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: it's just showing up and being real, right, I have
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: in all of those those different places that I trained
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: where people spoke like this and they were very like
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: that is in no way real. That is not how
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: they were before they turned up to that place. There's
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: no way there's people walking around like that that's real.
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: That when I met sort of Tibetan masters who'd been
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: meditating for thirty odd years, they weren't talking like that.
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: They were they were quite boisterous. They were fun, they
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: were passionate, they were laughing, they were crying, they were
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: like real human beings. And for me that it kind
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: of emphasized the fact that it's not about trying to
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: be a particular kind of person. It's just showing up,
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: being real, being yourself, and that's okay. Yeah. I think
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: there's also a lot of self consciousness that comes with it,
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: you know, I know that I felt. It's you know,
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: if you're if you're not comfortable sitting somewhere with your
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: eyes closed, it's a level of you know, self consciousness
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: and a level of immaturity, and you you know, you
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: have to be open to to to that experience, to
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: being kind of vulnerable in a way like okay, I
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: need this. Saying that you need meditation is already kind
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: of being vulnerable and saying yes, I could be doing
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: this life thing a little bit better and a little
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: bit in a more calm way. What are your thoughts
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: about having a cultural shift right now, like a shift
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: in consciousness. Do you believe that that's happening right now?
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: I want to believe. I want to believe it. I'm not.
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: I'm not a big believer in the whole kind of
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: like Age of Ceris whatever, like you know, A R.
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: Depok Choper, any of those people. I've heard of them.
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: I don't, I don't. I haven't I haven't read them.
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: I tend to sort of as I say, I've I've
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: learned from my Tibetan teachers, and they tend to be
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: my my point of reference. But obviously those those guys
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: have been hugely impactful. In the West especially, I think
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: there is an increasing vulnerability. I think people are more
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: willing to talk about the mind and the challenges of
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: the mind, and hopefully people are more willing to sort
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: of come out of the meditation closet and say, yeah,
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: like you know, I do this. But looking around the
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: world right now, I don't see that we're moving to
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: a point of kind of a radical transformation in consciousness
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: where everybody is that much more empathetic and kind and
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: compassionate and aware. Maybe it's happening in places that I'm
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: not looking, but when I look around the world, I
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: don't see that happening. I actually think there is just
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: a constant kind of shift in in humanity that we're
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: always kind of changing, We're always evolving. We can't necessarily
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: change everything around us in the world, but we can
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: start with ourselves, and if we can make a difference
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: in our own mind, then hopefully we can make a
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: difference to the people around us who we interact with
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: in the world and in time that can kind of
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: create change. And it's also it's also been my experience
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: where it's nice start to always be kind of advertising
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: like what you're doing, rather than rather letting people see
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: that your behavior is different and that you're calmer, and
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: then people coming to you going what's going on? What
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: you know, what are you doing? Oh, I'm meditating. No way,
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: you're meditating. It's like, yeah, I'm meditating and it's working.
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: It's like a huge difference. So it's nice because I
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: always have that disease where I want to tell everybody
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: about what I just found out about, you know, without
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: sitting with it and finding out whether it's reliable or
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: you know, if it's a trend or a fad or
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: what have you. And I think, I think that's a
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: great thing to have, right, like passion and wanting to
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: share stuff. But what I what I love and what's
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: always kind of comforted me with meditation is that no
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: matter how popular it is right now or it becomes
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: right now, you can never really talk about it as
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: a fad. I mean, it's two and a half thousand
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: years old, it's like the longest fat ever. If it
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: is a fad, I just I just think it is slowly.
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: I think that noise that we talked about, that amplification
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: of noise from technology has created the conditions for more
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: and more people to look for peace of mind, and
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: meditation is just such a good place to start when
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: you're looking for peace of mind. So as your objective
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: with the company stayed the same from the inception to now,
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: is it changing? I think it's it's stayed pretty consistent.
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: You know, we the vision was to improve the health
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: and happiness of the world. Um, it's a mission accomplished.
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: There you go. I mean, you could just march off
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: into the sunset. Why don't you just go? Some days
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: I'd love to. Some days i'd love to. I think, look,
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: the world is the world is big. We haven't reached
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: that many people kind of relative to to the size
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: the size of the world. But I do think you
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: can look at it in different ways. When when we
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: get a message in from I don't a mom who's
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: at home on their own really struggling to look after
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: dad are like looking after the kids and stuff, And
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: they say what a difference it's made in their life.
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: To me, that's improving the health. Doesn't mean it's not
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: just like the numbers of people. It's like, can we
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: make a difference in a number of people's lives? That
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: was our vision then it still is. And what advice
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: do you have for people who are new to meditation,
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: who have tried it they don't feel like it's working?
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: You know? Are the things that excuses that we can
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: come up with. So I would say, first, look at
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: look at what your intention is. Why are you sitting
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: to meditate? The more clarity we have around the intention,
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: the more likely we are to do it. Find a time.
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: It doesn't matter what time of day is. Don't worry
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: about the morning thing. Just find a time in the
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: day and commit to three minutes in the same way
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: that you did just see, the most important thing is
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: just getting started. It's not about how long you do
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: it for. It's just about getting started. Create that regular habit,
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: and after a while you will find that you naturally
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: kind of want to do a bit more and probably
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: you have room in your in your day to do
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: a little bit more. And then these three things around
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: your intention and your approach. So number one, it's not
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: about stopping thoughts. It's really not about stopping thoughts. I'm
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: telling you this right now. I know that you're still
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: going to go away and probably think at some stage
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: it's about stopping thoughts and get frustrated that the thoughts
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: won't stop. It's about seeing the mind more clearly, stepping
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: back from thoughts and being able to witness them. So
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: that's number one. Number two, no amount of effort will
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: bring you relaxation, in the same way that when you
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: try and go to sleep at night, you can't force
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: yourself to go to sleep. In fact, when you do
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: it gets really frustrating and you move away from sleep.
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: You can't force your way to relaxation either. So as
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: much as possible, take your foot off the gas. It
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: is the only three minutes, five minutes, ten minutes in
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: the day when you have nothing to do and nowhere
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: to go, no one judging you or anything else, so
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: no effort required. And then the last one. If you've
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: seen you guys might have seen that the blue sky
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: animation on the on the apple, and if you have
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: or not, but just this idea that we always tend
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: to be looking for something else, somewhere else, and the
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: analogy that was given to me by my teachers, was
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: was the blue sky like the mind is like the
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: blue sky. The clouds are just the thoughts. Some days
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: it is really cloudy and we forget about the blue sky.
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: But if you get in a plane and you go
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: through the clouds, the blue sky is still there. The
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: truth is, the blue sky is always with us. The calm,
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: the clarity, the empathy that we look for in our life,
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: that is with us. It has always been with us,
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: it always will be with us. The trick is to
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: not forget that on those very cloudy days and when
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: we sit to meditate, Rather than trying to push all
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: the clouds away, instead to just wait for the weather
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: to change, wait for the clouds to kind of start
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: to dissipate, and in time you'll naturally experience more of
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: that blue. Yes. And something that you mentioned also on
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: headspace is everything is temporary. All your thoughts are ephemeral.
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: So you know when you're feeling very happy, that doesn't
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: last forever. When you're feeling really down, that also doesn't
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: last forever. And to know that these thoughts are moving
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: throughout your day and it's you're not in charge of
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: holding onto any of them that they're just shifting through you,
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: and to accept it and not resist the you know,
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: negative thoughts or self doubt. It's okay, they come and
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: then they'll go yeah, exactly that. And I think we
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: tend to get caught in these the storylines in our mind.
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: We get stuck in a groove and it's hard to
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: imagine that will lever change. But as soon as we
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: apply that awareness to it, it disappears. Okay, I think
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: we should end on a three minute meditation. We can
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: do meditation, We do that, of course we can. Let's
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: do just to introduce the people who haven't tried headspace
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: yet happy too. And then I'm going to come up
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: with my own meditation app next week. I'm just going
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: to announce this that heads up, Okay, lead us and Andy.
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: All right, So wherever you are right now, it doesn't
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: matter how you how are you sitting, Just find the
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: place it's comfortable. Doesn't matter if you have your feet
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: are on the floor, I mean that's preferable, or can sit.
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: You can sit across legged, you can. I don't recommend
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: cross legged unless you've grown up doing that, unless you
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: do a lot of yoga or something like that. Otherwise
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: it just becomes you know, just gets in the way
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: a little bit for a lot of people. But if
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: you're really comfortable doing it, then absolutely sit across, take
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: it on the floor and sit on a chair. If
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: you're sitting on a chair, ideally with your arms and
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: your legs on crossed. And if you're lying down, I'd
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: suggest just sort of bent, lying down on your back
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: and just bending your knees to take the pressure off
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: your lawer back. And then the first thing I'd like
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: you to do before you do anything else is just
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: too set a very soft focus with the eyes, so
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: you're looking directly ahead, but you're not focused on one
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: particular point. You're just taking in the entire space around
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: you and just maintaining that very soft focus. Just taking
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: two or three big deep breaths, reading in through the
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: nose and out through the mouth, so as you breathe.
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: As you breathe in, notice how the lungs expand as
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: the body fills were there. And as you breathe out
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: through the mouth, just notice how the muscles and the
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: body soften. And with the next outbreath, just closing the
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: eyes and just feeling the weight of the body pressed
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: down into the chair, the floor, the bed, wherever you are,
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: and just taking a moment to enjoy that feeling. Having paused,
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: having stopped, nothing to do, nowhere to go, So just
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: allow thoughts to come and go, and don't worry what
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: the mind's doing. Just going to focus on the body
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: for a moment. Notice how the body feels, whether there's
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: a sense of heaviness or lightness in the body right now,
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: whether there's a sense of stillness or restlessness. And as
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: you become more aware of the body, just starting to
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: notice the breath as well. Notice how the breath while
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: the body is breathing. You don't have to breathe in
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: any special way, just noticing where in the body you
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: feel that movement of breath. So for some people it's
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: a stomach, some people the chest. If you can't feel
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: that movement, just gently placing your hand on the stomach,
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: m and we're just going to stay with that movement, breath,
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: a rising and falling sensation, just for another thirty seconds.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: If any time a thought passes by, just seeing it,
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: letting it go, and coming back to the breath again. Remember,
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: nothing to do, no effort required, seeing the thought, letting
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: it go and coming back to the breath om and
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: then just coming back to that feeling of weight once again,
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: the weight of the body gainst the chair, the floor,
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: the bed, back to that feeling perhaps of the feet
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: on the floor or the hands and the arms, the
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: weight and resting on the body or by your side.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: And then in your own time, it's very gently open
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: the eyes again. Okay, good times. Thank you so much
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: for coming in and talking to us. It was really
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: nice to me. You thanks for having me. Yeah. Now
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: I can put a name to the voice. Andy, why
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: don't you say your last name so I don't suck
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: it up, Andy Petticum. There you go. Thank you, Brandon,
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Chelsea, Thank you Andy, Thanks Brandon, thank you. Okay, Brandon,
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: how did you like talking to Andy Baca? I liked
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: him to love this great and he's normal. He's not
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: like a you know what's the words, He's not like
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: over in Lighten. And he's cute, he's cured, he's cured,
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: he's married. Everybody, So don't get your panties in a twist. Okay.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: So we have some announcements to make. I'm coming in
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: October to Australia, and then I'm coming to Brisbane, Sydney
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: and Melbourne and then Auckland and those are up and announced,
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: so you can buy your tickets for that. And I
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: am about to announce a whole round of new cities
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: in America and Canada. So I am going to announce
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: in the next couple of days on my Instagram and
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: social media plat forms dates and tickets available for places
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: like Pittsburgh and Cleveland and Grand Rapids, Michigan, Vancouver, Toronto,
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: Kansas City, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Oklahoma City is a place I've
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: never been to, and uh Salt Lake City and Kansas City.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: So those announcements are coming soon. So if you're looking
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: to catch my stand up tour, life will be the
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: Death of me Um, pay attention to my social media
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: channels and I will make that announcement in the next
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: couple of days. They're just finalizing some of the routing.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: I post a lot of articles on accountable page, so
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: if you're looking for articles that are reliable and truthful
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: and there are issues you care about, you can go
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: to Chelsea Handler's action center. It's at accountable dot us.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: You always want to follow Emily's list if you're interested
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: in getting progressive females elected, which are which we all
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: are right. Yes, elect more women. We need more women.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: Men have fucked us up. Now we've all sucked us up.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: We just need more women. We need this um. We
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: need our represent endives and our government officials to reflect
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: what the actual country looks like, not old white guys. Okay, anyway,
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: we'll see you next week. Life will be the Death
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: of Me as a production of I heart Radio. For
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: favorite shows.