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292 - David Burns: Beyond Insight: The Path to Transformation · Coaches Rising

• 0:01
  [UNKNOWN]: Thank you for watching.
• 0:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: David, good to be with you and I really, really appreciate our last conversation on the podcast was quite some years ago and how are you doing these days first of all?
• 0:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: great.
• 0:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's great to be back.
• 0:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: I really enjoyed our last combo as well.
• 0:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think short answer, a very blessed season of life.
• 0:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've got to become a father earlier this year.
• 0:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so that's been front and center in my experience.
• 0:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then also actually just last weekend.
• 0:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: That was a week or two ago, got to premiere the full length version of this modern mythical musical that I've been working on for some time called Earth Song, and of course continuing my coaching practice, but yeah, a blessed kind of springtime of life right now.
• 1:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a miracle being a father isn't it?
• 1:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's hard to, I mean, it's kind of an often thing sad, isn't it?
• 1:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it's hard to grasp until it happens.
• 1:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you see this being a folding in front of your eyes.
• 1:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Incredible, yeah, every day.
• 1:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and that's like, that's something I appreciate about our last conversation was the kind of cross-paradermatic influences that you bring to your work.
• 1:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm sure we'll talk about those different things you named there.
• 1:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: But let me tell people, do you offer us the work?
• 1:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's important, isn't it?
• 1:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: So David is a transformational coach and artist, a facilitator, dedicated to helping others step into the next chapter of their lives.
• 1:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think there's something we're gonna talk about as well.
• 2:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: We spent the last decade developing a practice-based coaching methodology, a system for creating lasting change based on the principles of classical music training.
• 2:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: He also co-founded the mysteries, which he just mentioned, an artist's collective in Austin, Texas, and co-created the mythic musical earth song, which also looks really remarkable when you start to investigate that.
• 2:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: I just, just that right now, also a very happy, grateful father.
• 2:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: yeah, beautiful.
• 2:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's talk about practice and coaching because you wrote a piece recently that I really appreciated about practice, the importance of practice in coaching, you know, it's because I'm one of those coaches that believe in the potency of the coaching relationship
• 3:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: really, really appreciated the perspective you're bringing in.
• 3:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Could you just kind of give us a sense of what you are saying in that article, really?
• 3:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 3:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I want to be mindful to not accidentally disparage other schools of coaching.
• 3:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've experienced a ton of power being coached by people
• 3:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: and a client is always primating that Trump's anything else.
• 3:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: But as if the way that my current practice has evolved is
• 3:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: The idea of bringing a practice based mindset to coaching happened early on, and guided by the principles of deliberate practice, laid out by Anders Erickson and his book Peak, and in my own experience being a classical cellist from an early age.
• 3:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so with that as soon as I got into my first coach training after Red After College, and so the idea of attempting to deliberately practice the skill of coaching,
• 4:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: I immediately dove into, it was a very appealing idea to me.
• 4:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And for a while, I felt like it was giving me rapid gains in the skill of coaching, like my coaching sessions felt like they were getting better and better and better and better.
• 4:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then the thing that ended up driving me into investigating and then developing this different approach to coaching.
• 4:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I call it practice-based approach is the fact that I had
• 4:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: have more and more satisfying sessions with clients, but and this was a little bit hard to admit, but over time as I started working in longer term containers, I noticed that satisfying sessions didn't necessarily result in actual lasting change.
• 4:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so the insights I was very insight and breakthrough based, the insights and the breaks throughs that happened in coaching sessions, I felt like I started getting better and better at facilitating people to have these kind of a hard moments through these moments of emotional catharsis.
• 5:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then their lives wouldn't actually change very much.
• 5:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so reflecting on why initially I was I just need to ask better questions.
• 5:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: I show up better for the sessions.
• 5:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: But the shift that ended up happening that I've spent now about a decade pursuing is a shift in attention on my side from the sessions to the rest of the client's life.
• 5:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that might sound like a kind of nominal shift, but it's made, I think, more of a difference than anything else in terms of the creation of lasting change for my clients.
• 5:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And now I get to experience this satisfaction of working with clients, where the sessions themselves are less flashy.
• 5:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: like I produce, we produce fewer emotional breakthroughs and exciting insights during sessions, I've been coaching itself as much more boring than it used to be.
• 6:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: But the results are both reliable and profound consistently.
• 6:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I have lots more to say about it, but I'll pause there.
• 6:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, let's get into that.
• 6:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why do you think that's happening?
• 6:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: What is it about practice
• 6:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so the main idea behind it comes from the methodology of classical music training I was exposed to through cello that been cello training in particular has been around for maybe 500 years at this point for 500 and it's it's been a very well sponsored and then ultimately a very competitive discipline and so there's been many many iterations of refinement on what actually works to produce mastery.
• 6:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: And one of the principal ideas that's emerged is that the highest impact sessions that you can have one on one with a person to facilitate the deepening of mastery are sessions that are focused on what the student or client practices in between sessions are maybe more importantly how they practice.
• 7:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so their skills that are taught the refinements that are given during actual
• 7:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: But the main purpose of cell lessons, the main focus, is how exactly you're going to practice what's your focus for practice going to be on a daily basis before the next session.
• 7:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so in simple terms, this is maybe oversimplifying it, but if I'm meeting with a client for saying hour a week, then you could have potentially an hour's worth of impact.
• 7:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: But if the main focus of that hour is setting up the client to practice for even just an hour a day,
• 8:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: for the rest, then you've immediately 7x the impact that the coaching container can have.
• 8:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: And realistically, you can actually set up a practice schedule that's not just formal practice, but also situational practice, and you can get to the point where an entire life, every moment of each person's day consists of some form of deliberate practice.
• 8:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so because of that,
• 8:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: increase in the impact, the depth of change that occurs relative to what you can do in a accomplishing a single coaching session.
• 8:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I say that's a little bit simplistic because ultimately of course the work that you do in a good traditional coaching session with the client bleeds, bleeds out into other areas of life and of course you're looking at other areas but I think
• 8:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Positive change comes from behavioral change.
• 8:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Positive behavioral change is skill development.
• 9:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Positive behavioral change means skill development and skill develops through deliberate practice.
• 9:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we know what good deliberate practice looks like, partly through the example of things like classical music and martial arts and partly through the work that's been done by people like Anders Erickson.
• 9:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm excited to explore with you how we could look at practice so that it is effective.
• 9:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think you've got a lot to say about that.
• 9:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: First, I'd love to ask you about transformation itself.
• 9:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: And let me share, like, a perspective I hold, and then you could see how that reflects and relates to what you're saying.
• 9:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Wanting to practice not just a skill like learning the cello, but it's something really about their identity, and That might mean You know, they're not even fully clear.
• 10:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, like there's a sense of longing for a transition That might require
• 10:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: a new relationship to their self and that kind of transition and how do you relate to that inside of helping someone articulate practice itself so that, I mean, yeah, maybe I'll just stop there like yeah.
• 10:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, absolutely, so I love this question and I'll say first to make sure that I don't accidentally reduce transformation into something purely mechanical or a clinical, I'm a deep believer in the power of the ineffable.
• 10:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: and in deeply transformational experiences in initiatory experiences and rights of passage.
• 10:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: And a huge part of my work right now is creating transformational, mythical theater experiences.
• 10:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I very much believe in the less mechanistic approach.
• 11:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: I believe that there's an invaluable place for that in human life.
• 11:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: And for my personal coaching practice, what I've noticed is
• 11:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: lives flourishing more and more through collaborative coaching with a clear and clear distillation of these maybe lofty and somewhat amorphous longings into concrete skills.
• 11:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so an example might be let's say someone's on the threshold of a new chapter where
• 11:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: they can sense that what's called for their truest life and for their family is a new level of deeply fulfilling loving presence at home in their time with their family.
• 11:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And a presence with family is a fairly amorphous desire.
• 11:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: I got to have more quality time, quality time with family, or more fulfilling time with family.
• 12:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Very, very amorphous and
• 12:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I believe there's actually, there's a finite number of concrete skills that make that possible.
• 12:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And in that case, do you mind if I riff on this for a little bit?
• 12:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Please.
• 12:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
• 12:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, in that case,
• 12:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: You could identify the primary skill as presents that they're hoping to cultivate.
• 12:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there are systematic practices you can do to cultivate presents that we can get into.
• 12:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: But the picture is a little more complicated than that.
• 12:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Those in presence means also an absence of distraction.
• 12:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so when someone comes home from work or comes out of their office at home and starts spending time with family, their environmental skills that they'll need to develop to have more fulfilling present quality time with family.
• 12:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: The environmental skills include things like data design and scheduling that include things like technology hygiene, so developing the practices and habits around, for instance, turning off notifications or putting phone away, and going on airplane mode, there would likely for most people making that transition, there's also work relationships skills that are required like boundary communication and expectation management of most people.
• 13:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: making that kind of transition feel like they'll be letting down members of their team or collaborators or clients if suddenly they're not available and they've been always available and so getting clear on what those communications are and how to exactly how to deliver those communications in a way that deepens instead of breaks the relationships at work.
• 13:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Those are a handful of the preliminary skills that need to be developed and implemented.
• 13:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then when it comes to the actual presence with family, most people are plagued by distracting thoughts about work.
• 13:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: That transition potentially still activated or stressed, especially if something just came up a fire came up to put out right before they're supposed to be going offline.
• 14:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so with the emotional distractions, then there's this skill of trigger resolution and emotional regulation that needs to be developed.
• 14:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that those things can easily resolve.
• 14:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: And when they show up to time with their family, they're not plagued by a kind of momentum of unresolved emotional threads.
• 14:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then once they're actually there, there's presence, there's the skill of presence, which I think is two parts.
• 14:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: It has a tensional mastery, the capacity for attention to follow intention, and then depth of vantage point, depth of view.
• 14:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: And each of those can be cultivated through, in those cases, deliberate formal practice, different types of meditation practice.
• 14:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so cultivating all of the skills, some of which are one time practices, some of which are situational practices, and then the intentional mastery and up the view, you would fold into a formal practice that then translate situationally into time with family.
• 14:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Those would be some of the concrete skills that you would break down this very amorphous, I want more fulfilling quality time with my family after work into.
• 15:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Beautiful.
• 15:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that really feels satisfying because it those skills are not just you know performance skills on a mechanical level, but their identity performance skills because I was going to ask you about you know what about like someone might be encountering patterns or parts that actually show up consistently that
• 15:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: don't allow them to create boundaries or even be fully present with a family member when they're there and you're speaking into those.
• 15:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: And just another reflection is I think, um,
• 15:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, there's like a lot of time coaches can can get overly enamored with like inner healing work and disconnect as if it's disconnected from the outer world and then some people talk only about like outer world tactics without the inner and it feels like you've got both together there in a really in a really effective way.
• 16:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think they're both deeply needed.
• 16:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 16:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I've certainly during different periods of my own coaching path, fallen into one or the other extreme.
• 16:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: But, yeah, I think at the heart, the skill of distributing your attention, skillfully, the skill of balancing priorities, the Katrina's sort of the central skill of a human being generally in the leader, especially.
• 16:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so, yeah, I hold balances of value in that domain.
• 16:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: So there's many questions or directions we could go in, but I'd love to ask you, how do you, you just gave a great example there of presence.
• 16:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: How do you think about breaking something like that longing, you know, that longing to be present or
• 17:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, not a framework that I can take responsibility for having developed, but I'll say through a combination of self-study, of obsessive self-study and experimentation, a rabid pursuit of mentorship,
• 17:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: and then maybe the thing that I owe more than anything else to in terms of the various distillations of amorphous lungings into concrete skills is collaboration with clients.
• 17:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, at this point, I have a good number of translations of amorphous longings into concrete skills, but those have come through the years from working with clients collaboratively, as both dedicated to figuring out
• 17:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: not, and I think the, to digress for a second, the risk of this approach of distillation is losing the magic and turning the soul or the heart of human life and relational life into something
• 18:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: that serves to clarify and illuminate paths forward for more skillful love.
• 18:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: If it's if clarity of thought and inquiry is dedicated to service of that, I think if the ultimate aim is actually a deepening of magic fulfillment, soul, and skillful love and daily life, I think that's a useful purpose.
• 18:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: So let's say inquiry collaboration with clients and then of course there've been a number of points in my own path Where I've felt an amorphous longing for something.
• 19:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: I feel like I've identified What it is as a presence is an example.
• 19:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's there's a moment where I was like, wow, I think I would experience a much richer life if I was more present
• 19:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then realizing I actually have no idea what that means.
• 19:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
• 19:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what presence is.
• 19:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: But there are thankfully thousands of years of traditions of incredible traditions, like deeply well-developed maps of these amorphous concepts like presence and also really well-developed technologies for deepening them from things like the Buddhist literature.
• 19:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, beautiful.
• 19:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so is that then a conversation you have with clients, you know, to to kind of, they come in with a longing and then you know, then there's a conversation well what does that mean to you and and tell me how you might show up if that was there?
• 19:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Is it like a conversation where you're kind of starting to
• 20:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Clarify how that longing might actually, you know, then be translatable into specific tangible skills.
• 20:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and it's not a one-time conversation.
• 20:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: But by collaboration with clients, I mean, that at every step of the way, a collaborative exploration of how experience is actually evolving, and the discovery of like there've been a number of cases when working with clients where I think we're headed in a particular direction.
• 20:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: I feel like I know the kind of thing that they're looking for from prior experience of my own or other clients.
• 20:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: And for example, in the context of a romantic partnership.
• 20:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then discovered through the collaboration and development of
• 20:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: individualized practices that the specific thing that they were most deeply longing for, something a little bit different than I had understood, or guessed.
• 21:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: One example of this from working with the client recently is
• 21:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: There was, you know, from what a client communicated, I had a sense that what they were really longing for was a certain kind of piece.
• 21:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm just fairly amorphous, but I actually have a pretty clear map for what piece consists of in my own mind now.
• 21:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so we cultivated, we set up a number of practices, but daily practices and then break through experiences.
• 21:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: to help open up deeper levels that we could then stabilize.
• 21:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: And in the course of that process, we discovered along the way that the thing that he was actually longing for really deeply, that we had identified initially as peace, was actually something a little bit more.
• 21:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: He ended up using the word joy for it, but it was a particular kind of warm, sort of solar, paternal fulfillment.
• 22:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it was something that he ended up tasting during a practice that we were cultivating for the sake of peace.
• 22:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: But as soon as that emerged and he was like that, that's the thing that feels like my essence.
• 22:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: It feels like the thing I've been longing to cultivate more of.
• 22:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Then it was fairly simple to set up practices to cultivate that instead.
• 22:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: What I like about that example is shows how
• 22:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: because sometimes clients have particular goals and that goal may be, I mean, of course, I always want to honor like a longing a client has, but it might exclude other possibilities that feel that are equally as wholesome, generative,
• 22:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so how can we kind of, you know, hold that we want to practice certain things, but also there is, you know, there's a kind of, yeah, there can be flexibility in, and an openness to kind of surprising, but welcome insights on what one might want.
• 23:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: And let me just add like one
• 23:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because something I've spoken a lot about on the podcast since we last spoke was the difference between a self-improvement paradigm and what I would call an unfolding paradigm, which points really to a way of being with ourselves and our clients, which is to kind of very simplistically characterize the two self-improvement can be a beautiful thing
• 23:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's a sense of deficiency, I feel, and then I want to get away from it to that place where I feel better, whereas on full moon, there's an invitation into just making deeper and deeper contact with experience, and as one does,
• 24:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: one finds like a sense of wholeness and presence maybe that, and then we unfold from that place and our sense of quality of life and wholeness opens from that place.
• 24:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, I wonder what that brings for anything.
• 24:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I love that distinction and I think it also helps highlight another potential risk of what I presented is the practice-based methodology.
• 24:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like the practice-based approach can absolutely risk perpetuating that sense of deficiency and avoidance of something fundamental about the present moment.
• 24:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, I'm very glad that you brought that up.
• 24:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think you're going ahead.
• 24:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, please, yeah, if anything's there.
• 24:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: So there's a mentor that I had.
• 24:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: One of my more impactful mentors who's now passed named Dr. Robert McDonald, who had a very rigorously developed list of his fundamental presuppositions.
• 24:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he was very insistent that all of the, he was essentially kind of hypnotherapist.
• 25:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: I still utilized some methods that he taught me.
• 25:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: But he was a very ardent proponent of the foundation of coaching, good coaching, being the holding of clear and powerful presuppositions.
• 25:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's like no technique will be a substitute for that.
• 25:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there's just reminded of, when you describe the unfolding paradigm, there was a presupposition that he held that every human being
• 25:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm incomparably good and fundamentally innocent and incomparably good, meaning not good as opposed to bad, but good without comparison, there's something fundamental that's good at the human heart, and it's a presupposition that I've taken on, and that it's hard to come to terms with many of the atrocities that occur throughout the world.
• 25:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: With that presupposition, but again, another mentor of mine, Dustin DePernah, articulates a particular Buddhist view as the origin of what we see as evil action, is confusion.
• 26:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: At the center of the human heart, the human soul consists of longing for the good.
• 26:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: that a human being is made of love and it love is allowing for the good and that that love can get distorted and filtered through various layers of confusion that it does for all of us that there are life is hopefully on some level just a shedding of more and more confusion until we die.
• 26:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I was reminded of that when you describe the unfolding paradigm that there's a certain kind of self trust that's required for that.
• 26:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, oh, if I really just allow things to unfold from here, can I trust that what will unfold is going to be good for myself or other people?
• 26:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's certainly a terror that I've been seized by.
• 26:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think, yeah, the more and more that I have facilitated and coached and the more and more that I have myself relaxed into trust of the fundamental innate goodness of the human heart.
• 27:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think it's a beautiful point you make and it does take courage, I think, and maybe a dose of suffering to inspire that courage and, you know, I struck by, if you, if you hold people in the way you just describe Robert McDonald, I think you, you named, and I know
• 27:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: that that is a way of seeing, you know, it's a way of seeing the clients and holding a field of possibility for within which they can then practice these things that you're talking about, which is really beautiful and it, it, um,
• 27:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, that whole thing around presence is I think a part of our conversation we could come to.
• 27:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: But let's do with practice because I have a tendency to kind of jump into some different.
• 28:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: What do you, so then say you've worked with a client, you met them, they came in with a longing and you've, through conversation talked about what would this look like or I'm just these are my questions.
• 28:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I mean you've helped get more specificity and clarity in those,
• 28:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: practices and what role are you playing then you said on my coaching sessions I got to be look a little more at you know less exciting than the used to what are you doing with clients as you kind of journey with them towards embodying that longing.
• 28:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 28:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, primarily identifying clarifying and then sometimes teaching different practice methodologies to then incorporate into daily life.
• 28:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm almost exclusively.
• 28:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: I will occasionally because some of the mentorships and trainings that I've studied in over the years have included with Dr. Robert McDonald, for example, the very flashy coach, the very effective
• 29:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: through his kind of eyes open, hipnotherapy, therapeutic approaches.
• 29:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: You can sometimes make your way through a major block.
• 29:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think of that as a kind of sole body work, and which can serve, for example, in the context of athleticism.
• 29:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: A professional athlete has a whole team behind them, say a professional fighter, and the majority of their work is skill building.
• 29:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then there's also fundamentals of muscle building or endurance training.
• 29:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then behind the scenes, there are also things like body work and surgery.
• 29:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I do think there's a place for things like body work and surgery.
• 29:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think things like hypnotherapy or deep somatic introspection can...
• 29:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: or psychedelic therapy can serve those roles, but I think they serve those roles best in the framework of a life of practice.
• 29:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so, yeah, clarifying and helping set people up for three types of practice, primarily formal practice as the foundation.
• 30:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: So formal practice is simplified and focused time where you're working on one specific skill.
• 30:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: or depth of view, and then situational practice, which over the course of a coaching container comes to be more and more of the focus.
• 30:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like how do you integrate the skills that you're cultivating in formal practice into every moment of every day?
• 30:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then one time practices.
• 30:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the clarification of those types of practice
• 30:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: beautiful.
• 30:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe we could unpack each one of those in a little more detail and formal practice.
• 30:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: So you mentioned like, for example, building of concentration, what you see for more practice is being kind of more like ontologically oriented in that way that it's really
• 31:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: shaping, you know, use this word view like it's shaping deepening the view that you can hold, which then you bring to situational practice or one-time practices.
• 31:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think the deepening of view, I don't know how much your listeners will be accustomed to that language.
• 31:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: So maybe would you unpack what you mean by the term view a little bit?
• 31:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: So what comes to me is, for example, I mean, I think there's many models on different views.
• 31:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: And one might be a view from parts that feel as a certain problem or they have a strategy and then a view a shift and a view from presence, self which is a kind of physiologically and awareness,
• 32:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a different state of being which then one has a different way of seeing and this is kind of intimacy with experience so that will be one way of talk about view.
• 32:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, great.
• 32:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so what I would say is there are with with that usage of the term view.
• 32:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: But formal practices are not restricted to view cultivation practices.
• 32:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: And concentration is maybe the simplest example.
• 32:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think of concentration as primarily a view-based practice.
• 32:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a skill-based practice.
• 32:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Concentration is a specific skill of the capacity for attention to follow intention.
• 32:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: and in some way that at least early on developing better concentration, actually all often involves a tightening or a shrinking of view.
• 33:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: But ultimately, over time, can be integrated with greater and greater depth of view as well.
• 33:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, we can give a handful of other examples of types of daily formal practices.
• 33:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Strengthening of concentration, which I think the best map for strengthening concentration I've ever encountered, I've got from Dustin's, the elephant path.
• 33:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: which has teacher Dan Brown has developed versions to teach every age group, which is really incredible, very excited to teach Gabriel.
• 33:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: My son from an early age, how to use his mind.
• 33:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, developing of concentration, the depth of vantage point, the another type of formal practice, depth of vantage point being, where are you coming from, where are you experiencing life from, any given moment?
• 33:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: So are you experiencing it from behind your eyes?
• 34:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Are you experiencing it from your body as a whole?
• 34:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Are you experiencing it from or as a kind of spacious awareness?
• 34:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is that awareness timeless, boundless?
• 34:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is that awareness non-dual?
• 34:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is that awareness centerless?
• 34:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: So those cultivations of deeper and deeper vantage points, or you could say, the essence of the peak experiences that people have and say a flow state surfing or at the peak of a meditation retreat are during an Ayahuasca ceremony.
• 34:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: The essence of those peak states, not the peak states themselves
• 34:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: You can cultivate daily practices to stabilize.
• 34:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so it's another example of formal practice.
• 34:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: But another example of formal practice is thinking practice.
• 34:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: thinking practice or thinking time.
• 34:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: So ordinarily we go around daily life and the thinking mind tends without training to produce a lot of unhelpful patterning, a lot of unhelpful noise in consists of rumination or worry about the future, different types of distraction that don't ultimately serve, our aims of either fulfillment or skillful love.
• 35:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's go for love for others or for ourselves, and it's possible to train the thinking mind in the tools and the habits of always as long as it's active, only serving the most impactful unsolved problems in our lives, which might be creative, might be in the domain of work, and you can cultivate that as a practice, and usually in the form of writing as a daily form of practice.
• 35:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's an example of a practice that, naturally, then bleeds over into situational life where in any moment of daily life where the thinking mind comes up into the picture, the activity it's engaged in is really helpful problem-solving rather than rumination.
• 35:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: So there are three examples of types of formal practice.
• 36:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Could you, I'd love to impact those a little bit further, is there really exciting?
• 36:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Could you, how do you train the mind to do what you just said, to orient in a kind of generative way around one's life solving generating insights or a good life?
• 36:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: How do you do that?
• 36:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so there's an answer for this.
• 36:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's less technically complex than I initially thought.
• 36:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: Just after various iterations of trial and error, and I got the heart of this practice actually from a client.
• 36:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: who just mentioned this thing that he was engaged in regularly and I decided to try it and I was blown away and then ended up refining it a little bit more, but it was an example of an incredible client learning.
• 36:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: He called it thinking time.
• 36:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the the practice of fruitful thought has just a couple of different elements.
• 37:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: The first is alignment of the object of thought, alignment of focus with a genuine priority.
• 37:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, what is it?
• 37:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: What is actually important to be considering in your life?
• 37:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you're considering anything at all, like if you're deciding to engage with a thinking mind, do you want it to be a conversation that you had with a collaborator or a co-worker yesterday?
• 37:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Or do you want it to be simple on that primary bottleneck in your business?
• 37:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Or on a life design question of how to balance family time more skillfully in a more balanced way with your work?
• 37:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, whatever the question is, there are almost always some background questions in life that if you had a good answer to them, would drastically change the quality of your life in effectiveness.
• 37:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there's never go away, hopefully, because as you tackle different projects, every project has its own challenges and questions.
• 38:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, I think that the first layer of this is that
• 38:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: or to investigate them and so the clarification of what those most important questions are is the first step and so what that means is for if someone was going to take on training their thinking mind in the simplest way it would be spending a half hour every day journaling in a focused way just on the question what is the most important question in my life?
• 38:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: What is the most important
• 38:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Over time, through the asking of that question, then the orientation and the habit of the mind towards the most important questions starts to become habitual.
• 38:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there's a naturally reinforcing mechanism built into that, because
• 38:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: whatever is the most important question in your life, you want to solve that.
• 39:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: I guess, as soon as it's clear, the mind gets very delighted and excited and motivated to focus on something and wants to understand the ramifications.
• 39:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so it starts out with focusing on what's the most important question in my life.
• 39:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Once that habit is built, then the time shifts to an investigation of those questions.
• 39:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: and any time that it becomes unclear, it's just batch the question, what's the most important question in my life?
• 39:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: The second key element is focus.
• 39:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so for the duration of those containers, there are all sorts of beautiful types of journaling practice.
• 39:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: In morning pages, there's something I practice for a long time, the Julia camera and approach, where you're just completely free right, which I do think can be incredible for creativity, I did that for years.
• 39:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: But for thinking time, for the training of the thinking mind, the exact opposite approach is what's necessary.
• 39:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like no matter how tempting it is to go off in an interesting digression.
• 40:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like what you've done very beautifully in this conversation of continuing to come back with some breathing room.
• 40:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: But actually being extraordinarily disciplined around as soon as a sentence starts to deviate away from an investigation of the specific question, you bring it back, bring it back, bring it back.
• 40:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: So clarification of priority questions is one, extreme discipline and focus with continuing to come back to the question at hand as the second.
• 40:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: and then the third element for helping habituate are helping to integrate that practice of fruitful thinking into daily life is attentional mastery.
• 40:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's the development of the skill of like I've said, having attention follow intention, but in this case, it's specifically the ability to turn off or on the thinking mind, which is
• 40:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Which is I think a standard that it makes sense to hold as humans and I wish more people held.
• 40:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think the acceptance that the mind is just going to be a monkey mind in the background isn't an acceptance that makes sense like there are 100% their tools and practices that exist so that we don't ever have to experience the mind acting in a way that's misaligned with our highest aims.
• 41:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I've written a few things I'm going to kind of double click on here, that journaling practice you described.
• 41:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I can, that's like kind of self coaching in a sense, you're, you know, you're orienting towards what's most important, giving it space staying with it.
• 41:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I imagine, do you invite your clients to kind of journal in that way, like in a full-bodied way, not just with their minds, but with their emotions and body?
• 41:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Is it like not so important that?
• 41:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's just that by staying with it, they're understanding around that question begins to deepen and refine and reveal more to it.
• 41:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they kind of learn to embody, bring it into their life, solve that question.
• 42:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think those are great questions.
• 42:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: The question of how much to involve the whole body and the whole heart and an experience like that is I think a good one.
• 42:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: I believe that it's possible to have a more holistically and emotionally transformational experience journaling.
• 42:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: if you actively invite the whole self, the whole body, the whole heart, and also leave breathing room for spontaneous insights and following different threads.
• 42:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think those types of journaling practice can be extremely valuable, but
• 42:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: In my mind, what defines a formal practice is the deliberate restriction of focus to a small number of variables, to a very narrow focus.
• 42:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so for this practice of thinking time, the the heart of the practice, the totality of the practice that I give to clients is all that matters.
• 43:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: is pursuing the most important question and staying relentlessly focused on only that question.
• 43:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And because what that does is cultivate this specific skill or the specific muscle in the background, that once that's cultivated, can be a part of a much larger hole, of course, of the whole human being somatically emotionally, spiritually.
• 43:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: But one of the things that I've gotten from Chalo, I'm benefit a lot from personally, is if you're trying to focus on one specific technique, is attempting to limit your focus as much as possible to that technique, like subtracting everything else and just focusing on that so that it can then reintegrate into the whole.
• 43:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: wonderful.
• 43:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: And do you then, when you meet that client again, invite them to share what can out of the journaling?
• 43:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: How do you have them relate to it over time?
• 43:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Do they, do they start to have?
• 43:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Is it more like, don't worry about that.
• 43:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Just do the practice and you will start to see how it embeds in your, in the whole of your experience.
• 44:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes things come up, the people will share things, and I don't give thinking time to everybody as a practice, though it's for many people.
• 44:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a very valuable one.
• 44:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes things will come up over the course of people's thinking time that they've solved a major question that had to do with how they're designing their life and they'll bring that so we can collaborate into the next chapter of Life Design.
• 44:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: But as a general rule, I try to not get involved too much in the content of people's practices and as much as possible stay on the side of the refinement and the maintenance of the practices themselves, because I don't
• 44:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to be, I'm happy to be a conversation partner, of course, with people, but ultimately I would love for clients to have these skills on their own deeply built, so they can be a kind of professional athlete of their life without my presence.
• 45:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Amazing.
• 45:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, great.
• 45:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let me let me kind of keep moving through some of these because I want to make sure we get to situational on one time, but you said there about attention or mastery and you talked about views.
• 45:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you know, remember Daniel P. Brown saying like the reason I could write so many books and and then bring this body of work, you know, you brought a body of work around attachment.
• 45:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: theory and, you know, great prolific.
• 45:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: He said because I was able to work in this kind of flow state with my mind fully attuned to, you know, to one topic and create great works from that.
• 45:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, what is it for you about
• 45:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, maybe you could say a bit more about a intentional practice as it being so key.
• 45:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then the views you named, what makes those important in our daily well-being and practice itself?
• 46:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, yeah, particularly practice, yeah.
• 46:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: great.
• 46:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I think I'll answer those in reverse order and talk about view first and then talk a little bit about attentional mastery.
• 46:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, for those who weren't familiar Daniel P. Brown was he's known in some communities as really well respected and prolific scientist, researcher, teacher, I believe it Harvard, Harvard professor at the Harvard Medical School of I think psychiatry, but he did really groundbreaking work in the domain of attachment theory, wrote a textbook,
• 46:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: attachment disturbances and adults.
• 46:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then he's also known in different communities as a revolutionary teacher in bringing some of the greatest treasures from Tibetan Buddhism into the West and into America in a way that was in integrity with the traditions of teaching
• 46:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so unbelievably prolific, you know, maintained a clinical practice, actors and expert witness in trials involving traumatized children, at taught, did huge amounts of research, wrote textbooks, and then also taught meditation retreats, and translated a ton of ancient Tibetan Buddhist books into English in collaboration with lineage holders from Tibet.
• 47:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: So kind of an impossible amount and it was a dad impossible amount for a human being to do and he attributed it really simply to mind-training mind-training of two kinds one is training of attention and the second is training of view
• 47:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so that's, that was really interesting to me.
• 47:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Those, his primary student, Dustin DePernah, is now my primary meditation teacher, who I've gotten more.
• 47:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've had a few really impactful meditation teachers over the years, including Shenzhen Young, and Jeffrey Terrent.
• 47:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: But, but work with Dustin is really a clip of them all all through the generosity of Dan Brown.
• 48:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that is just a little bit of context for you.
• 48:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: I know that you're familiar and happy to find that resonance.
• 48:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: So when it comes to view, those different depths of view, or what I was calling the vantage point.
• 48:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: And say, yeah, I think most people can relate to their being certain peak moments of human life, where it might be with a loved one.
• 48:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes in nature, I have beautiful sunset, hiking, sometimes it's a flow sport.
• 48:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like mountain biking, surfing, sometimes it's in a facilitated context, like a psychedelic ceremony.
• 48:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: But there are peak moments that are unique for different people, but have certain common traits.
• 48:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And some of the commonalities among them include a deep sense of unity.
• 48:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: and deep sense of fundamental unity with everything that is.
• 48:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Another thing they often have in common is a sense of freedom from the bonds of self.
• 49:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so, no longer being confined into this little single thinking machine feeling machine, but somehow being much more boundless than that, being free from self, and others often a sense of timelessness.
• 49:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: And maybe the most important element is a sense of really deep, complete mess.
• 49:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: The sense of, oh, I'm home.
• 49:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a wholeness here.
• 49:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's nowhere to get to.
• 49:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's the fulfillment that I may be of been chasing in my daily life.
• 49:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's actually already right here.
• 49:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, for many of us, those moments arise and then they disappear.
• 49:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: But practices have been developed over thousands of years for not only deliberately opening up those
• 49:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: And what can be stabilized is not the, you know, often those experiences are accompanied by a passing, beautiful emotion, like a deeper leaf.
• 49:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: If there's a sense of freedom from self or there's upwelling of joy that rises and falls like a wave.
• 50:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: gratitude.
• 50:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, those feeling states that can accompany them, those are temporary because emotions change.
• 50:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: But there's something about the essence of those experiences, like the unity and the wholeness, that 100% can persist in every moment of every day.
• 50:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's a beautiful standard to hold.
• 50:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think for two reasons, because you asked, like, what, how does that fit into daily life?
• 50:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: And practice, I think for two reasons, one is just on the level of personal fulfillment.
• 50:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've, like, we've spent so much for a life's chasing
• 50:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: And if it was possible to, in every moment of every day, to actually be coming from that sense of wholeness or fulfillment, then we would no longer need to chase, then we could be acting from a kind of upwelling of the love that we are rather than a grasping that has the capacity to hurt.
• 50:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then the second reason is that, and this, I want to be careful with because there isn't a one-to-one correspondence here.
• 50:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think there are people who experience that kind of abiding wholeness, who still enact harm.
• 51:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe all of us, because every human is in the process of learning.
• 51:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so as long as we're alive as a human being, we can develop our capacity for skillful love more and more.
• 51:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that means that we'll accidentally hurt people, hopefully less and less.
• 51:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: But as a general rule, I would say a lot of the harm that we enact, you can say like for myself personally, a lot of the harm that I've enacted in personal relationships in the past, has come from
• 51:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: I kind of contracted and grasping vantage point, and that there's a general correlation between resting in these deeper states of abiding wholeness and the effortlessness of the best of our ability is skillful love and daily life.
• 52:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: So those are the two reasons on view, and then I can get into attention, but I'll just pause there in case you have anything to add.
• 52:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I love this because it's...
• 52:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: kind of what I was pointing to with the self-improvement versus unfolding paradigm where it's so powerful I hear you speak to.
• 52:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: We can be chasing things from a sense of dissatisfaction and incompleteness and that if we get those things then that will bring it, but it often doesn't work like that or we can be creating and living our lives from a sense of
• 52:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: unity.
• 52:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that is a very powerful place to create, to parent from, to lead from.
• 52:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I just feel really excited as I hear your name, that too.
• 52:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think it, and I think, you know, more is a bit careful to,
• 52:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: make any kind of shudts in this or, you know, big proclamations about where we're heading, but I know amongst my, in my own life and my friends that people feel really drawn to that now as, as being something that's, that's, that's fundamental and everything else can, be a kind of cherry on the cake on top of that.
• 53:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 53:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think, well, I think, do you mind if I share a couple of thoughts on that specifically?
• 53:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 53:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that.
• 53:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, I think from one perspective, it seems sort of self-evident that, of course, the foundation of everything that's worth pursuing is that fundamental wholeness that we're chasing.
• 53:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: like, um, and, and I do think that there's, uh, there's another side to life, which is maybe entwined with it, but, but I've found utility in, in, in treating with equal care, um, which is it's, it's, it's very possible to imagine a life where we just find that fundamental wholeness
• 54:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: and don't engage with the world, and maybe even rest in that sense of fundamental wholeness while experiencing a kind of disconnection from not just the world, but even around bodies, around sense of feeling.
• 54:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's something that I've fallen prey to in different periods of time is, I think, maybe putting too much value in finding those experiences and stabilizing those
• 54:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: when it's possible to find these deeper spiritual vantage points and then use those avoidantly to hide from either the pain of the world or the pain that still lives inside of our own bodies that we've currently inherited.
• 55:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so Ed Dustin has a phrase that I really love the fully free and fully feeling.
• 55:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: that paradigm as an aim to hold, you know, fully free is fully free from the bonds of self, so we're fully abiding in that fundamental wholeness, in every moment of every day, but fully feeling is also completely connected to and engaged with the embodied feeling world.
• 55:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not on their own bodies, I'm being fully present with the preciousness that's here, but also with the pain of the world of our loved ones, our children.
• 55:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, as much of the sphere of the world is happens to manifest its responsibility, and so I just wanted to add that as not a caveat, but a compliment to everything that you're sharing.
• 55:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: You've hit a kind of sweet spot for me here because and I will bring us back to practice but this has been a big subject for me on the podcast itself because I did those things you're talking about.
• 55:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean that's that was my motivation for my spiritual journey for the first like decade.
• 56:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was just suffering and I wanted to get, I wanted to not suffer and actually
• 56:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: something we've talked about on the podcast and I've really gone into deeply as there are different views in spiritual practice and there are more sutrick views and you know then you've got kind of tantric views and you've got you know I know Justin is a Mahamudra practitioner
• 56:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: They have very different views on the kind of end goal in a sense, and I had a real dark night at the salt wrestling with this, you know, because at one point my practice opened me into a kind of disembodied, disconnected.
• 56:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And actually, what I realized was it was a dead end, yeah, consciousness only kind of place, which brought up a lot of trauma, and I worked with different teachers and practitioners to come back into a embodied relational view of non-duality, you know, and one which honours.
• 57:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: So for me, it's like become more and more about becoming more deeply human, actually.
• 57:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's why I appreciate teachers like Dustin and with what you're saying because it's actually I discovered a huge topic in the spiritual online world where, you know, Sam Harris's app is massive millions of, you know, lots of people using it and some people having spiritual crises and not being aware of some of these things that you're talking to so eloquently.
• 57:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: So,
• 57:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's why I like, like, is it, am I becoming more generous, more compassionate?
• 57:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: There was a become very important for our artists to me with both of my compassion with myself and with others.
• 57:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm curious for you, so after you had that dark night of the soul, you mentioned that you worked with a number of different mentors and teachers, practitioners, was there one particular tradition or modality that ended up having an outsized impact in your journey of integration into a more embodied approach?
• 58:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a great question.
• 58:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think it was a number of
• 58:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: teachers who said, hey, hang on a minute, so it takes us down down into this idea of emptiness, as well, which is a core idea in Buddhism, and it's a huge topic, and it's a nuanced idea of helping in Buddhism, and I realized I had
• 58:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: um, reified emptiness in a sense, you know, which is the kind of exact opposite of what they're attending, but if you do that, emptiness for people listening is just kind of, in a very simplistic way this idea that everything is, uh, nothing is fixed independently existing, everything is kind of,
• 59:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: inherently empty of fixed nature, it's all kind of interwoven and coarizing.
• 59:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so, but I kind of made emptiness a real thing and then that can lead to nihilism.
• 59:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the teachers that helped me were teachers like John Prendigast who hold some more
• 59:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: and that there are life affirming paths of Buddhism where they don't start with the premise that the Buddha said it's life is suffering.
• 59:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so teachers like that, as N teacher I spoke to, and then a teacher Patrick Connor, who talked about joy and
• 59:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: even shins and young talking about, you know, two paths where one is like a wake up and transcend the world, another path is refined the self and serve the world.
• 1:00:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so those kinds of teachings brought me back down into how can you wake up?
• 1:00:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: How can you bring wake that the experience into the body itself and that non-duality is a relational
• 1:00:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Awakening which I'm still holding as a colon.
• 1:00:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, beautiful.
• 1:00:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah Beautiful.
• 1:00:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so there's a number of different teachers had a big impact
• 1:00:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly, exactly.
• 1:00:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I realize I've taken as off on a tangent here, but I think these are really powerful questions when it comes to the depth of this work and actually I'm really pleased that this knowledge is kind of proliferating more people like dust in and yourself talking about these things.
• 1:00:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: So come back to practice.
• 1:00:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sure, yeah.
• 1:00:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think what I recall leaving off was a tension, so you'd asked about how these depths of view fit into daily life.
• 1:01:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then also how mastery of attention, using Dan Brown is kind of example of both mastery of depth of view and a tension, just an example of what's possible with cultivating those.
• 1:01:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, and yeah, thank you so much for sharing some of your
• 1:01:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you could either pick up with anything that's a life for you or we could maybe look at situation or practice, you know, I think I just really love the way you speak about the importance of, you know, intention and
• 1:01:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: attention and intention.
• 1:01:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think that's just really a powerful distinction.
• 1:01:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: You could say something more about that or we could just move to situational practice and talk about why that's important and how you think about it.
• 1:01:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
• 1:01:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I guess I'll summarize everything that I have to say about concentration and attention, following intention and just say that I was aware that concentration was something like a skill that I treated more like a muscle for a long time.
• 1:02:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: But, and Shinsen is a really incredible teacher I got so much from Shinsen, but there's a real patience that Shinsen has coming from the Zen tradition and related traditions where he's okay with things taking a few decades.
• 1:02:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so with that developing concentration for a long time, I thought that means you just try to concentrate on something and then you fail and you try again and you fail and you
• 1:02:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: but Dustin introduced me to this path of the deliberate practice of the skill of concentration called the elephant path, which is from many centuries ago.
• 1:02:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I'd encourage anyone who wants to cultivate deeper concentration as a skill to go investigate the elephant path, especially Daniel Brown's, Daniel P Brown's writings on it, or any of Dustin's retreats.
• 1:03:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's
• 1:03:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: I made more gains, and I can say I've made more gains in the last three years with concentration, then the last 12 years before that by a large margin, when I shift it to falling the elephant path instead of forcing concentration.
• 1:03:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, then to situational practice.
• 1:03:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think the basic idea behind situational practice is that formal practice only matters to the extent that it helps you live your daily life.
• 1:03:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: So if an example would be
• 1:03:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: when it comes to romantic relationship.
• 1:03:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think the best developed body of work that I've encountered around formal practices for romantic partnership.
• 1:04:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the contained simple, rhythmic, ritualized practices that you can engage in with a partner to ensure a continuous, deepening, keeping of actually stoking the flame of passion
• 1:04:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: of living a deeply fulfilling and mutually evolving romantic partnership over a lifetime.
• 1:04:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: As partner is a parent, the body of work that I think is distilled that the best is by Justin Patrick Pearson, London Angel Winters, the yoga of intimacy.
• 1:04:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: Their book playing with fire is the unbelievable handbook that the end of playing with fire contains unbelievably potent formal practices for romantic partners to do.
• 1:04:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is an example of, you know, if you want to, if you want to deepen your fulfillment, the quality of romantic partnership, there are certain fundamental skills, and it makes sense to practice those skills in connection with your partner.
• 1:05:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: And if we're just like if you were a musician, you wanted to get better at music, it makes sense to, you don't just play a music, you practice music, you practice and focus away.
• 1:05:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: So,
• 1:05:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's possible, theoretically possible, you could engage in formal practices where you sit with your partner, and you practice, for example, the skill of presence, skill of devotion, the skill of polarity, you practice those things, but it's just contained.
• 1:05:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: to that one little period of time and then practice finishes and you go into your daily life and you go back to the same kind of unconscious patterns of accidentally hurting each other that you were engaged in before.
• 1:05:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's theoretically possible to do that.
• 1:05:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, if you practice formally,
• 1:05:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: anything, there's going to be a natural overflow into daily life.
• 1:05:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, if you practice, if you practice scales on the piano, when you go to play piano, you're going to play piano better.
• 1:05:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: So they can't be fully separated, but when it comes to the full integration of the fruits of formal deliberate practice,
• 1:06:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: having a clarity around situational practices, so having bridges where you're aware that specific points of the day, this is the moment where I get to integrate and execute what I've practiced in that formal period of time is incredibly helpful, and that's where formal practices are this kind of wellspring, but ultimately you want a kind of irrigation system that allows that wellspring to flow throughout the rest of life.
• 1:06:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: I could say more but I'll pause.
• 1:06:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: So you gave an example there of just in Patrick Pierce, I think.
• 1:06:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: I said, and London Angel Winter is his partner.
• 1:06:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Beautiful.
• 1:06:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: So do you, therefore, with clients, do you have a suite of, you know, best, you know, Daniel P. Brown, just in Blipona, you've named another, do you have a range of people that you're aware of?
• 1:07:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: that, hey, you know, okay, now this is about leading teams.
• 1:07:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: So there's some really great resources here where the practice has been codified.
• 1:07:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: We can use that as a way to uncover a model practices you could play with.
• 1:07:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Is that something you do or 100% 100% I mean,
• 1:07:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've studied with various mentors over the years and developed my own suite of practices, but there are a number of domains where I'm acutely aware of not being the best in the world at facilitating and teaching those kinds of practices.
• 1:07:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, with all of my clients, I ended up connecting them with other practitioners.
• 1:07:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's not a client that that has not been the case for in a long time.
• 1:07:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Interesting.
• 1:07:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, you actually collaborate with other practitioners to plug in to specific either to either collaborate or recommend and send.
• 1:08:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I sometimes I'll recommend a specific meditation retreat or a couple of retreat to somebody and then I'll collaborate in more hands on ways with with in most long term client containers.
• 1:08:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: I like to include.
• 1:08:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: For example, quarterly in person emergency.
• 1:08:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And at those in-person immersion, I always include other practitioners of some kind, for example, like a somatic therapeutic specialist or a medicine facilitator and so collaborate in more hands-on ways in those senses, but otherwise, yet, recommendation than referrals are very much the heart of my practice.
• 1:08:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's powerful for me as an idea that, yeah, to honor this, the richness of embodying certain practices, it needs that level of expertise and a kind of ecosystem of practitioners and immersion to that rhythm to be able to embed the change.
• 1:09:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think for in-person immersion, I think about a couple of different ways.
• 1:09:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: One is I would say I've had an unhealthy fixation on self-improvement and your terminology for a long time.
• 1:09:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I have developed up what I think is a more healthy relationship with it over the years, but as it's been, it's been pretty consistently obsessive of just trying different stuff, and much of it for a long time from trying to fix something.
• 1:09:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: But over the course of that, I've tried a lot of things that are mediocre, and then I've been lucky to stumble into some things that I believe are world class.
• 1:09:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so the curation of the short list of the best in class in different areas is definitely one of the central services that I provide.
• 1:09:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was my first coach training program that I stumbled into out of college turned out to be of now very notorious sex cult as an example of like if you go out into the world and just like trying personal development you will it's very unlikely that you will just stumble into the highest integrity and the most positively impactful organizations off the bat.
• 1:10:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: So trying to save people some of that time of experimentation is a big thing that I do.
• 1:10:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think there's certainly a way to approach workshops, retreats, the facilitated peak experiences that just produces a kind of hamster wheel of chasing breakthroughs, 100% and never integrating them, but I think that on a foundation of consistency and simplicity and clarity of practice,
• 1:10:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: that a short focused period of time of just a couple of days of really immersive work can produce incredible fruits that can then be integrated.
• 1:11:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, beautiful.
• 1:11:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, by the way, yeah, love what you say about this is why I like the podcast and speaking to people like yourself, there's recommendations that, you know, of people who've tried things out and you've got traction is so valuable.
• 1:11:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, um, is there any, because we've got a few minutes left, is there anything that we haven't named about practice that you think is particularly important that we talk about right now?
• 1:11:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that two things come up that I think are maybe worth touching on, one is
• 1:11:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: think the, the question of formal practice and discipline, I think is a big one.
• 1:11:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like when it comes to maintaining a practice.
• 1:11:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you're at, for simplicity's sake, let's say we have a practice that has a good chance of facilitating the stabilization of the essence of your most fulfilling peak experiences.
• 1:12:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like their practices, they can do that, and so you have that if you do them every day for enough time.
• 1:12:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Experiencing the fruits of that practice assumes that you do it every day or most days.
• 1:12:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so the question of consistency, I mean when it comes to formal practice is really central,
• 1:12:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was just in the interest of just stealing the most helpful possible things that I could share from my experience of collaborating with clients at exploring different avenues to consistency.
• 1:12:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that the most helpful supportive skill that I've seen for maintaining consistency with any practice is the skill of releasing shame.
• 1:13:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: which is an internal skill, but it's one that's supported relationally.
• 1:13:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so what I've seen, what I've experienced certainly in myself in many iterations.
• 1:13:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then what I've seen with different clients over the years is in taking on a formal practice of some kind.
• 1:13:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: You get clear on what this practice is.
• 1:13:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: You, I guess it's practicing, you give me the heart of everything that I'm really wanting.
• 1:13:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then the life gets in the way, or your way of relating to life gets in the way.
• 1:13:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you leave the practice behind.
• 1:13:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: between how quickly people get back into consistency and their skill in releasing shame.
• 1:13:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the habit of beating oneself up for falling off of consistent practice of any kind, the meditation practice, practice with your partner, physical practice.
• 1:13:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: The habit of beating yourself up is the number one thing that prolongs the gap between falling off and getting back on.
• 1:14:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, just one thing that I want to throw out from experience, from an obsession with deliberate practice, for anyone who struggled with consistency specifically is like the the most supportive skill is the skill of releasing shame.
• 1:14:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And whether or not you're working with a coach, one of the most helpful practices for releasing shame is just simple accountability without punishment, and just a simple reporting of your practice or your failure to practice to
• 1:14:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like a friend or a group of friends, without having anything at stake.
• 1:14:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Just the sharing of it.
• 1:14:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so that's one.
• 1:14:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And again, I love everything that you've been sharing here.
• 1:14:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: I wish we had longer to talk, but it's one of pause there and open it up in case you have anything to add to that before the second piece.
• 1:14:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, let's, because of time, I'd love, yeah, you'd have that time to share the second thing.
• 1:15:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think the second piece that feels really important to me when it comes to the the clarification and the commitment to a life of practice, a life where in all of the domains that are important to you,
• 1:15:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a consistency of cultivation, of skillful love, and whatever domain it is.
• 1:15:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think the...
• 1:15:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: besides struggling with consistency through the habit of shame, the next thing that for me has most gotten in the way of maintaining that kind of orientation is holding to low of a standard for what's possible for a human being.
• 1:15:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the antidote to that for me has been encountering mentors who are displaying ways of life that I just didn't think were possible.
• 1:15:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: People who are maintaining a level of conduct and compassion and service and connection to other people or output creative output that just seemed superhuman to me.
• 1:16:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: but that they treated really simply.
• 1:16:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I'll say the, you know, that longing in the heart of feeling of like, there's, I feel like there's something more that's possible, but maybe that's just my fundamental dissatisfaction and I should accept that life is limited and the monkey mind is just distracting and relationships just are hard by their sake and parenting has to involve a lot of suffering and of course I'm going to be distracted while I'm working.
• 1:16:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: None of those things
• 1:16:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: None of those things are true that human beings have an unbelievable capacity for transformation and we're living in a time where we have unprecedented access to the greatest treasures and technologies from every tradition, from every period of recorded history.
• 1:16:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we've never been better equipped and supported and privileged to be able to evolve into what we're capable of both internally and externally as humans.
• 1:17:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's a really inspiring, powerful thing to share, I think, and I just really concur.
• 1:17:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think that
• 1:17:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: even with something like what you've been naming today, like it's possible to live in a place of like fundamental well-being, that I don't think a lot of people know that that's possible.
• 1:17:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so for that to become more widely known, for that to be an exemplist of that, it's just, you know, it's like the four minute mile being broken, once it's been broken,
• 1:17:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: suddenly many people start to break it and so yeah really really beautiful and I failed in my practice today you know so I used to do the intros to these podcasts separately and I did it for years but I just don't have the space so I was gonna do the
• 1:17:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: the, you know, your bio at the beginning and I forgot, you know, so I was fortunate that I could feel a little bit of self criticism come up and then I was able to let it go.
• 1:18:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I think it's a great example.
• 1:18:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have an assistant who messages me checking.
• 1:18:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Did you do it?
• 1:18:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hey, so it's a great example.
• 1:18:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hey David, I just really, really value these conversations with you.
• 1:18:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's just wonderful to feel how you've dedicated yourself to the art of practice and human flourishing in this way and I just want to extend my gratitude for knowing you and for being on the podcast.
• 1:18:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, thank you so much for having me met at such a pleasure to connect with you.
• 1:18:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love talking with you so much.
• 1:18:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: I hope we can do it again.
• 1:18:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: me too.
• 1:18:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: And do you want to point people to your work in any way?
• 1:18:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: I do recommend people check out your sub-stack, the writing on practice.
• 1:18:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, it's upstack.
• 1:18:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've just started up to start codifying some of what I've developed over the last decade into written form, so there'll be more and more available there.
• 1:19:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, the primary resource beside Substack is just my website, DavidEdumBurns.com, or there's both writing and information about coaching, but then also information about the mysteries, which is my other core passion right now.
• 1:19:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, maybe that's pot two or pot three.
• 1:19:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
• 1:19:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks David.
• 1:19:27
  [UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
• 1:19:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here we are.
• 1:19:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're at the end of the podcast.
• 1:19:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Just a heads up again.
• 1:19:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're not on our mailing list and you want to stay in the loop about other things we create, then head to coaches rising.com.
• 1:19:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Put your name in the sign at box there.
• 1:19:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: You'll also find some of our other offerings online trainings for coaches there.
• 1:19:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: And just want to end by wishing you well, and I'll see you again next time.