Latest / Giving Pain Purpose with Lyndsay Soprano / From Crisis to Stillness

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From Crisis to Stillness · Giving Pain Purpose with Lyndsay Soprano

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This is Your Pain Game podcast where we talk about the game of living in
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and with chronic pain and trauma get into the heart of how to heal.
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I am your host, Lindsay Soprano. On the show, I plan on
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discussing with doctors, chronic pain patients, holistic practitioners, loved ones, and
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anybody that is interested in having their voice heard in the chronic pain and trauma
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world that we live in. I'm not sure how many of you guys have
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seen the movie, the Scorsese film called The Wolf of Wall Street with Leo
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DiCaprio, Darling and Jonah Hill. Right. If you have, then you
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know about the story of Jordan Belfort, who was the former stockbroker and financial
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criminal, and what he and his crew lived like in this movie was just
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in I mean, basically, they lived on booze, going to strip clubs
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and doing so much blow your mind would spin, and not to mention making
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a ton of money to support those habits, Right, how do you live
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like that without being able to bankroll it, right, to support it?
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So, and I'm no stranger to addiction, as I've talked about openly and
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honestly here, I certainly have done my fair share of debauchery. And I
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put myself into a ton of terrible places in my life, and I've gotten
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in trouble in a lot of destructive categories and in some places. I am
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very fortunate that I made it through and that I am alive. So let's
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all get up a round of applause for me on that one, right,
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And as much fun as strip clubs and blow were, I am happy that
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I turned into the women that I've become. But it wasn't necessarily all that
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easy to get here, especially when you're getting rid of all of these addictions
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and all of the anxiety and all of the pain and all these things that
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come up, especially when you don't remember half of what you were doing.
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So my guest today is going to talk with us a little bit about his
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shenanigans into that eventually ended up leading to a nervous breakdown at the age of
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twenty nine. I mean, he was on suicide Watch, guys, and
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things were pretty dark and ire. So what saved him, right, Well,
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let's talk about it. So, without further ado, I would like
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to introduce to you today to my guest Tom Corona. Hello, darling,
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great to be Thanks for reviving me a long today, look forward to this
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today. Oh yes, me too, very much so. So Tom spent
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twenty six years in finance markets elast the whole thing. In the beginning here
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he was as one of the Australia's leading bond and swap brokers. He hit
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this crisis point which we're going to talk about, and when he did,
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he found meditation. And Tom is the founder of the Stillness Project. And
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when I first looked into it and was reading about him, I was so
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nervous because I am not a still person, right, I am wild and
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crazy and sitting still is very, very scary. Meditation is very scary,
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and I want today we're going to not make us scared to do it anymore.
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Right So anyway, so the Stillness, and he'll talk about it too.
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But it's a global movement to inspire one billion people to sit and stillness
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daily. Did anybody get a little squirmy right now just thinking about that?
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Because for me, my buns want to shake and shiver a little bit.
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He is. His ongoing work in transformational leadership coaching and corporate training has seen
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him working with some of the top companies in the world like Amazon, Yay,
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Amazon, Harvard Business School, and Coca Cola, amongst many others.
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He has six books, published, a meditation app that he's launched, and
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he also wrote and produced a documentary, The Portal, which follows six people
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and a robot who transfer their lives using stillness and mindfulness. And I can't
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wait to figure out what this robot's all about. All right, So I'm
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rolling out the red carpet for you. I'd like to start by talking about
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how you were living, you know, and I guess kind of sort of
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dying at the same time too, like Belfert and DiCaprio. Then let's take
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it from there. Yeah, let's talk into that. So Jordan Bill Wolf
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of Wollstrat He started his career at the age of twenty two in nineteen eighty
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seven, and that was the year that I stumbled into finance markets. And
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it was a bit of a default thing, an accident really. I was
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just about to do a degree in journalism. Ironically, I wanted to write
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articles for Time magazine saving the world from capitalistic greed and just being backing around
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the world, listening to sus in Advantages in the Smiths and reading Jean Paul
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Sartre and Albert Camu on a train traveling through Europe. But I had a
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few months to fill. I had no money in my pocket, so I
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just applied to a bunch of jobs in the paper that was in the old
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days before we had internet, and I got accepted for one of these jobs.
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I had no idea what it was or what I was doing, but
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it was on this massive trading room floor, and then needed some young guns
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to sort of help out as the micl was just booming. It was late
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eighties and markets were kind of crazy back then, and so I just landed
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this job and next thing, I'm on a massive trading room floor, was
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given a six figure salary, corporate amics card and a sportsy, sporty fancy
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sports car and told to go out and win business. And so it was
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really exciting. And what was part of that culture was lots of drinking and
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drugs. As you'd imagine, it was kind of crazy old times, and
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nothing was really regulated or checked, and so kind of anything went, and
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you know, it was just just before long, all of your morals,
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all of your guidance systems, your north staff or how you want to live
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your life and what you want to bring to the world gets blown out the
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window because there's something in front of you that's so glamorous and glitzy and just
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pulls you down this sort of you know, this avenue of just being into
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that hedonism that was in front of you. And I didn't have the mindfulness
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or the consciousness back then to make more discerning decisions about whether this was a
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good path to take or not. You just go straight into it. So
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you're there, You're you're doing all of the things. You're doing the wolf
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right, You're in your own wolf pack there. And what happened when I
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mean, you're doing all these debaucherous things which we talked about briefly in the
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beginning here, just not unlike myself, and mine wasn't because I was on
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a trade floor. But I did make good money and I had money to
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support it. And I loved it. I loved the danger, I loved
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the scary part of it. I loved drunk drinking and driving. I loved
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these terribly just horrible behaviors. It just gave me a high to be that
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way all the time. And I lived that way hard, and I crashed
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and burned pretty hard. Too, So what happened to you when you crashed
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and burned here? Yeah, you know, it was a gradual process.
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You know. Weekdays was in the finance industry, which was lots of coke
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and drink and being out till the week hours of the morning with the sort
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of the market cowboys, and then weekends was a totally different group of people
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where I was really got deep into. It was late eighties, early nineties
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in the rave culture was just emerging out of England, which was big warehouse
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parties and going off into you know the you know, out of the inter
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rural parts of Sydney and going to raves out in paddocks and things like that,
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and so I got really into that sort of world as well. So
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there was these two kind of crazy worlds of really just getting high as you
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could and as wild and as out of it as you could. And what
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started to show up for me was just this gradual emergence of signals within my
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body that had this isn't really the best thing you could be doing with this
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vessel, this vehicle, and it would be showing up like insomnia, and
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I started getting anxiety, and I started getting big black bags under my eyes
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and really skinny, really lean, and that really pasty, sort of druggy
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look. And now you don't know that this is all happening. It's just
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gradually morphing. And you know, I look back now and I can see
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photos of me. It's like, wow, I look like a complete wreck,
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but you're just a very high functioning wreck, and you don't realize,
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yeah, yeah, this is happening. Right, So you know, you're
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just still doing all the things you're doing, but you just don't realize this
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is the deterioration of your state of wellness and health and happiness. And of
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course you just keep going down that route of more drugs, more drinking,
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more partying. And then eventually, in nineteen ninety six, this culmination of
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many years of that escalation of my body really trying to indicate to me that
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I didn't enjoy what I was doing. Then there was a full blownd nervous
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breakdown one morning in February nineteen ninety six. What happened in your nervous breakdown
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because we say that kind of lately. You know, oh, I had
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a nervous break and what does that actually mean to you? So what had
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happened was I was getting these waves of panic. Now I didn't know what
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a panic attackle was, but I'd get these episodes where I would be I
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have to race to the cubicle at work, and I just couldn't breathe,
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and I couldn't my vision would blur and I'd have a pain in my heart
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and or i'd clammy sweaty palms and you know, wanted to vomit, or
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and just have this incredible sense of dread and nausea. They would pass after
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a while, so you know, you just got back to keep functioning.
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But what had happened on this particular morning was the escalation of these episodes where
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I was actually getting ready for work and I was in the bathroom and I
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was I remember shaving, and then I had this thought in my head that
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I had this really big lunch that day with a big client. It was
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some of their senior traders at a large investment bank. And these lunches are
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like four to six hours. You know, it's like Matthew mcconnie, you
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know, Yeah, and you're in these really big fancy restaurants, long long
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lunches, and you're kind of stuck at the table, and I had this
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thought in my mind, Oh shit, what if one of those episodes come
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on? If I get stuck at the table, What if I can't get
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away? What if I get this horrible, embarrassing situation. And then what
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happened was the fear of the fear became such a tsunami. It was like
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a tidal wave. And what happened in that moment was I couldn't breathe,
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and my vision blood, my legs clapped underneath me. It felt like a
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knife had gone into my heart. I wanted to vomit, I wanted to
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go to the toilet, and I was just curled up in a ball on
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the bathroom floor. And I remember, just like in this I actually thought
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I was dying. I thought I was having a heart attack. And I
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kind of just was so over life. I was so overho I'd become.
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I was so far from my moral code and who wanted to be in life.
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Without realizing it, but at this point, just just so miserable and
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so fed up with everything that I didn't really care if that was it.
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And then what happened was my partner found me and came and picked me up
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and took me to the doctor. And we had no idea what was going
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on. It's like, you know, things are putting best up, now
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you better get to the doctor. And then they explained to me that I
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was having a nervous breakdown, kind of like pretty much in their words,
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and then I just burst into tears. I remember, I couldn't stop crying.
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It was like an uncontrollable wreck. I become almost like I felt like
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a madman, and it was like the rug that I'd been standing on had
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been pulled out from underneath me, and I just didn't have any solid ground
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under me, and I just completely lost the sense of self or who I
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was, and it was really crushing. At that time, I'd also had
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the worst chronic insomnia waves of these panic attacks and really deep depression of really
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dark sort of sense of I guess misery about life that had built and built
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over time, but it kind of escalated on this day and I become,
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I guess, in some respects really questioning whether I want to go on with
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life, a bit suicidal. And he sent me to a psychiatrists and he
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put me on pharmaceutical drugs and told me how to keep going back for these
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sessions. And that was kind of like the Western medicine approach to my healing,
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which in we can't get to it. But it didn't last too long
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because I felt there was possibly another alternative for me. That's when I come
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across meditation. Yeah, because the Western medicine thing. We talk about it
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all the time here about how we've been let down by something like I just
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as soon as you said, of course they gave you big farmer stuff.
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You know, here, take this, don't even don't deal with what's actually
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happening in your life. Let's just medicate you through it, which is what
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you were doing in the first place, just with a different type of medicine,
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right. I mean, I remember it very like it was yesterday when
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I was doing these things like oh my gosh, I had white counters in
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my kitchen I'll never forget, And it was like cocaine is white, and
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I'm like, I swear to God, that's got to be another line somewhere
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on this kitchen count you know the things you do. And my best friend
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at the time, he and I were heavy into it, and we would
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like go to home depot in the morning like it's waiting for the store to
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open because we've been up all night and we're like, we need something to
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do, and we would we would just be I mean, we're so unhealthy
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and so crazy the things that we were doing and still living and thriving and
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doing the things that normally do, and people would never guess that I was
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at my big corporate events with my clients and I was in the bathroom,
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you know, do and blow with a couple of people that I work with.
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Like it. Just I don't understand how I was able to keep maintaining
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that for as long as I did without it killing me and without me getting
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caught for starters, and also that I didn't have a ton of health issues
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that came from it. I mean, my liver has seen better days,
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But how is your health? Though? Like your organs, you know,
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exactly like you said, it surprised me how resilient the body was, you
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know, what I put it through. And the one thing with the body
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is though as well as it being quite resilient, it also is quite communicative,
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and that it's constantly trying to give us feedback about what it likes and
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what it doesn't like, and you know, things like a hangover. As
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your body saying I don't really like you putting that toxin into this body,
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and so it's really good at communicating to you, trying to give you cues
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to adapt and change. But my body was, you know, I was
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actually quite healthy in some respects. You know, I still was working out,
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and I was one of these really high functioning users at that time,
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and you know, I played sport and I went to work every day.
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I never took sick days, and you know, it was very And the
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problem with that is though, that it builds and builds and builds until there's
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a g gantuin crash and that's what I had. But you know, my
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health these days. The body is also very valuable and adaptable, so it
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can turn around and heal quite quickly. And that's one of the things that
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I do a lot of work with now with people is that you know,
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you're not unless it's like a really debilitating disease or something like that. But
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the body has quite remarkable adaptive capacity. If we give it the attention and
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the required tools to enable it to adapt and change and evolve and grow and
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heal, that it can do that really well. Yeah, and I believe,
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I believe in the power of meditation and healing. And I think that
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the word is very scary to some people because it the first thing we think
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of is like some Buddhists sitting on top of a hill and not talking for
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ten hours, you know, like, no, we don't need to do
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that. But I find that for me, my meditation for me is being
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is actually just self care. And so I created my own little morning routine
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that I do, and I have my suna, and I either I'm listening
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to guided meditation or I'm listening to music. I'm always putting like oils and
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creams and who knows what all over my body and massaging certain places in my
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body and giving myself some gentle love and some care. And if I don't
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have that in the morning, like for example, yesterday I did, my
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whole day got completely derailed. It screwed up my whole day legitimately because I
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did not do that thing for me in the morning that was so incredibly important,
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something that I have put in to my discipline of my day now.
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And when I miss it, boy, can I tell the difference. It's
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amazing. But so you got out, but you stayed in finance after you
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started, after you got healthier. Yeah, I did another sixteen years in
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the same job, in the same career. That's nuts, at the same
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place, same place, same company. Yeah, twenty sixty years one company.
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That's unbelievable. To put yourself back into a situation that got you where
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you were with the same people's that's pretty amazing for you. It's remarkable actually
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because most people are like, like, don't do that. Yeah, you
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know, And the good thing was that it's a good lesson. And why
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I do a lot of corporate work now is that we have the capacity to
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be in the world coming back to your day yesterday, when we have a
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deep, transcending meditation that gives us access to It's like going through a portal
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gives us access to a part of us that's unruffable. It gives us access
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to a part of us that actually doesn't get disturbed by situations and circumstances,
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and that you become almost economous based upon life circumstances. And now life is
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very unstable, it's very uncertain, and it will continue consistently no matter how
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deep your spiritual work is to create or you know, have circumstances that don't
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be your expectations but when you connect to this part of yourself that's deeper and
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quieter and more. It's like the tree roots. If the tree is getting
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buffered and thrown around by the weather and the elements above the surface, the
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tree roots are still stable and strong. And we all have that within us
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as a part of us that most people don't really know it's there, that
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haven't given any attention. They don't know how to access it. But when
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you do these deeper, transcending styles of meditation, what happens is you get
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to connect to a part of you that is unruffable. There's a beautiful Sanskrit
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word called to ticture, and being to ticture means to be unruffled by the
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circumstances of life. So when I went back into the industry after learning these
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deep meditation practices and incorporating them on a regular basis that's twice a day in
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my life, what happened was I had a greater capacity to be in those
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situations, to circumstances and be more discerning about what actions I take so not
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be lured into all the drug taking and the drinking. You know, I
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could actually have a very successful career and be in that environment without all of
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the shenanigans, not because I just refused point blank to not go into them.
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It's just I didn't feel called to go into them, and yet I
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could still operate in the job without having that big stress response. And so
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that's the work that I do a lot of these companies to say, you
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don't need to walk out of that job and go and live on a mountain
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somewhere in a monastery so you don't have stress. You know, you can
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be in the world and maintain that job for many years and still not have
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the stress response. And that's really what we've got to get the world to
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realize, is that it's not the circumstances that are causing the stress response,
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it's our relationship to the circumstances which determines what type of response we have to
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that situation. Yeah, that's well said, because we deal with stress here
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in our household way more than we would like to. In fact, my
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sweetie was in the hospital last week and because he thought he was having a
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heart attack, and the stress that we're both under that some of it is
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completely out of our control. It's just we're stuck in a place, in
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a particular position that he's in that is incredibly stressful. And it came down
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to the point that I'm like, I have been knocking gently tapping on your
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door and then knocking on your door, and now someone's pounding on your door,
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honey. Like you mentioned earlier about the signals and the how our body
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communicates with us and starts talking to us, and we don't listen, you
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know, we don't. We ignore that guidance system that's within us, you
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know. And it's a whisper and now it's a scream, right, and
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that happened to me too, and so now it's screaming at him, and
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it's like, I mean I laid into him. I'm like, we are
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done with this stress, Like this is done. We are completely done,
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because it's not only affecting your health, it's also affecting mine, and it's
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affecting the people that love us around us too, because we're all it's it's
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the shit rolls down, right, and we're all standing on the bottom of
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the hill, and I'm like just covered in pooh and I've just I've had
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it, you know, And we have to take an active role in making
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these changes that we need to because our response to the stress is it's terrible,
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both physical and emotional, you know how we respond to that because we
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can't eliminate like, well, I'm just going to quit my job. It's
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like you said, you can go into that same job and into that role,
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just with a different lens, you know, and a different approach and
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different tools. But if you don't even carry backpack with you with any tools
19:04
in it, then you know you're just going to be in the same down
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place again, you know. Yeah, whenever we have discomfort, it's always
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something for us to tune into. If ever there's any disease, discord discomfort,
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we have to tune in and say, there's only two options in this
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situation. I either change the outside world, so that is, stop taking
19:22
the drug, stop drinking, stop staying up late, you know, whatever
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that is that is causing some discomfort. Or if you're in a position and
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you can't or don't want to change it, so let's just say you don't
19:33
want to change your job or don't want to change the external world, we
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have to change the internal world. So it's one of those two things.
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If we've got discomfort, it's a cue. Something must adapt and change.
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Do I change the outside world. Maybe this relationship isn't working out, Maybe
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this job's not the right place. Maybe I need to change the city I'm
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living in, or I change the way I'm having a relationship with this external
19:56
world, and maybe that's where I need to adapt and change the way I'm
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relating to these things. Yeah, for sure. And I think that in
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your transition from because you stayed in your job, but then you ended up
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transitioning to becoming How did this transition from finance broker to meditation teacher play its
20:14
course, because that's like such an intriguing part about you. Yeah, you
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know, when I had that nervous breakdown, I came across meditation. It
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was a game change. It was transcendental meditation, so really deep meditation,
20:26
and it really turned my life around quickly. And so I started to do
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a lot of research and more advanced programs in meditation, spirituality, Eastern philosophy,
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and that was a very long term, gradual process. So I continued
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on for sixteen more years, but all along the way, I was going
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deeper and deeper down that rabbit hole of enlightenment spirituality, doing a lot more
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advanced studies and referring a lot of people who were seeing the changes in me
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to other meditation teachers, and a lot of people kept asking me how you
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doing this? You know what's the secret? And I had a few friends
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that were meditation teachers, so I was saying, Hey, you should go
20:59
and talk to this guy, you should go and talk to that lady.
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And eventually I went, this is crazy. I'm referring so many people to
21:04
all these teachers, I may as well just become one myself and do that
21:07
part time. And so I did that part time, and I would leave
21:11
the trading room floor at five five point thirty and then I would go and
21:15
start teaching meditation in an office that I was subleasing in the city off the
21:18
Naturopath that would finish their sessions at five five thirty and then I'd go in
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there at six o'clock and start teaching. And when I started teaching, I
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just knew that this was something that I was called to do. I had
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such a strong passion for it. And that's when I started to work out
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a model and a business sort of constructor constructive business around it, and eventually
21:38
leave finance full time to go and become a teacher. And a coach and
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a speaker. That's amazing. I love that. So how many how long
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did that take you? Well, it was a build up, but once
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I sort of determined that this is what I'm going to do, I really
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sort of allowed about eighteen months of preparation to get things into place. So
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I'm not that so much of a spontaneous person. I like to sort of
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plan things out and know that the world is a bit safer for me.
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So it's almost like I had one foot on one sort of stone and then
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had another foot on the other stone, but waiting for the other one to
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be really stable or a lot more stable. It wasn't easy. It wasn't
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like it was suddenly a walk in the park. And now I'm, you
22:18
know, a successful meditation teacher. So it's wasn't the biggest financial career move
22:25
to go from being in finance as a broker to being a meditation teacher.
22:30
It's not something that you hear often. It's right, That's why I love
22:36
you and your story because it's just like, so it's just out there,
22:38
like what does it make any sense? But I love that that you have.
22:41
Now, can you explain the difference between just like because we hear meditation
22:45
and then we hear transcend You say it transcendental, thank you, transcendental meditation.
22:53
What is the difference between those two? Yes, So there's so many
22:56
different ways you can meditate. You've got chucker cleansing and gratitude and journaling and
23:00
visualization. So most of those meditations are where we're thinking, and we're in
23:04
the idea and the awareness that there's an eye that is actually thinking, and
23:10
so we have this sense of still the construct of my own individual identity that
23:15
is thinking about things to maybe make my world better. Now in a transcending
23:19
meditation, and there's a couple of different words to describe the same technique,
23:23
which is vedic meditation or transcendental meditation. So I'm a Vedic meditation teacher,
23:29
which is a similar sort of transcending style of meditation. Now, to transcend
23:33
means to go beyond, So most meditations you don't go beyond the thinker.
23:37
You are the thinker in the meditation doing the meditation. Now when we transcend,
23:41
and this is why you'll learn through if you do this practice, there's
23:45
nothing to be afraid of, because the thing that's afraid is actually your thinker,
23:49
which is your yea. He goes afraid of that, because it's afraid
23:52
all I don't exist if you transcend. When we transcend, what we actually
23:56
find is a sweet peace. And when we transcend, there's a real beautiful,
24:06
blissful experience that prevails. So the first glimpse of that will qualify you
24:11
too and give you a sense of assurance that this is okay. Not only
24:18
is it okay, it's like freaking awesome, and people come out of their
24:22
meditations and go, my gosh, where did I go? That was amazing.
24:25
So what we transcend is we transcend the thinking mind, the feeling body
24:30
that's your emotions, which is what motivates our thinking mind, and the physicality,
24:33
which is the body that we occupy. And what causes stress in most
24:38
people's lives is the idea that they're separate their individual and they're reacting to life's
24:41
circumstances, and that's the stress that they're experiencing. But when we transcend,
24:48
the only thing that remains is deep peace, and that's a very powerful state
24:55
to put our physical body into. Our physical body drops into a very deep,
25:00
RESTful state, and that's when all the healing starts. To take place,
25:03
so the meditation didn't actually heal me. The meditation creates an environment that's
25:08
conducive for your body to heal you. Your body does the healing, and
25:12
your body is remarkable at healing you. And it's something that we can't do
25:17
whilst we're in the sympathetic nervous system that's the stress response. We need to
25:21
get the body into a deep parasympathetic nervous system state, which is the peace
25:25
response, and meditation is just one of the most effective tools to get us
25:27
at those deep transcending meditations. Well, I'm sitting here going, okay,
25:33
well I need you like twenty years ago, but I'm glad I have you
25:37
now because I'm going to use the word dabble because that's the best word to
25:42
describe my meditation journey thus far. Because I've been dabbling, I've been reading,
25:47
I've been doing, and since we've spoken, I've just been like,
25:49
oh gosh, like I need to. That's why I wanted you to explain
25:52
it, because the difference between that thinking part and the ego part versus this.
25:56
I just have this like beautiful vision in my head of where I to
26:00
end up, and here I am thinking going, Okay, this is where
26:02
my peaceful place is going to be, this is what it's gonna look like.
26:06
No, lindsay don't. And so that that part I know that's hard
26:10
for me is taking those thoughts. When I'm starting to kind of feel a
26:15
little bit piece more peaceful in my practice of what I'm doing currently, the
26:18
thoughts come in and they bombard me, and I'm working really hard on You're
26:22
not allowed to be here right now, you know, get the heck out
26:25
of here. This isn't for you, this isn't your time, this is
26:27
my time. Whatever. And now that I'm doing it with my sauna,
26:30
I open the door of my sauna when a thought comes in or somebody and
26:34
I'm like, you are not invited in here, and then I close my
26:37
door again, like something that I'm doing. But I know for me,
26:41
and I know you mentioned it too, that we both have we've both dealt
26:42
with safety issues right for for many different reasons. But for me, I'm
26:48
a little bit scared that I'm not going to be able to do it right,
26:52
or that I'm not going to hit this peaceful place where I do feel
26:56
safe that I can go and I can't transcend and I can do those things
27:00
because I'm scared all the time to maybe find something in there that scares me,
27:06
if that makes sense. Yeah, I'm tearing up, that's me.
27:08
Yeah, that's okay, it's totally fine, and that's very normal. So
27:12
we're afraid of finding something there that we don't want to see. And the
27:17
thing is that what's there is just peace and quiet. The things that we
27:22
don't want to see are actually want that. Yeah, what's that? And
27:26
what's the scary thing is actually the phreneticness about thoughts and the hyperstimulation in our
27:33
body and the cortisol and adrenaline that's in our body, and the negative thoughts
27:37
that are in our minds, and so we really want to go beyond that,
27:41
and what you'll find is and that's why the beautiful thing about this technique
27:44
is when we give you this beautiful down to repeat, it's a mantra.
27:48
You don't have to try to meditate. You don't have to try to open
27:49
that door and stop the thoughts and say you're not welcome here. Because the
27:52
mind wants to think, and the mind is obsessed about thinking, and it's
27:56
obsessed about thinking because the body is obsessed about feeling. Everything that we do
28:00
is motivated to get some feelings in our body, even if it's sad feelings,
28:03
angry feelings, scary feelings. That's what we watch Saw seventeen to get
28:08
us afraid, or go on scary rides at fum parks to get us afraid,
28:12
or to watch The Notebook and make us feel sad, or to get
28:15
a fist pumping hell yeah, when we watch Chris Rock on some comedy shows.
28:18
So we love feelings and we've become very addicted to sensations, and that's
28:23
why our world is where we are. We have a very hedonistic society now,
28:29
and we want to deliver it ourselves from that constant addiction and go beyond
28:33
that braving and start to experience a deep blissfulness and a deep joyfulness and deep
28:41
lovingness that's always inside of us. So if you've got dark, stormy clouds
28:45
in the sky and they've been there day in, day out, you wouldn't
28:49
know that behind those clouds and what the clouds are in is blue sky,
28:55
and it's always there, and that peace and bliss is always within us.
28:59
It's just that most of us don't know how to clear the clouds and So
29:03
what this meditation technique does is it's very effective and efficient at clearing the clouds
29:07
and revealing what it already is within you. So the bliss is already there,
29:11
the enlightenment is already there. We don't actually get something when we meditate.
29:15
We actually lose things. When we meditate, we lose I like that.
29:19
Yeah, And a lot is obsessed about getting things, and that's why
29:22
we have this insatiable appetite to acquire or experience. But what meditation is about
29:29
stripping away and clearing and clearing clearing. However, when we clear, we
29:36
discover, and we discover what's already there, and that's when we start to
29:41
find that deep, sweet peace that is in every one of us. So
29:45
we don't want to be afraid of what we find when we clear, We
29:49
want to be afraid of what we haven't cleared. Well yeah, yeah,
29:53
well I think that's part of it. I think that's part of the fear
29:57
is and you said to them earlier, the fear of fear, right,
30:00
and because it is, it's scary, like, oh gosh, I've got
30:03
to open up some of these cobweb like these closets. Stuff, got stuff
30:07
that I've just stuck down there, and they're just gonna stay there for as
30:10
long as I can. But I believe wholeheartedly that a lot of the reason
30:14
why I'm sick and why I have I've got this weird, rare disease thing
30:19
that I'm going to fight it and I'm going to beat it. But I
30:21
believe whole heartedly it's a lot about clearing. Like you said, I don't
30:26
believe that this is it for me, not a chance. Give me a
30:27
break. I got too many things I got to get done in this life,
30:30
you know, give me a break. So you had mentioned the word
30:33
efficiency, and so I'd like to talk about that because I think a question
30:37
that might be in people's minds it certainly is in mind, is so how
30:40
long does this take? Right? So we're working with you, for example,
30:42
right, I want to work with you. I'm not talking about length
30:45
of time till when you start feeling better, but when you're doing an actual
30:48
like you're doing a session with somebody, if that's the right terminology for it,
30:52
what does a session look like to you, to you and to me?
30:56
And how long? How long does that take? I'm just curious.
30:59
I'm like, do I have to like three hours a day to you,
31:02
I'm already working out my calendar, you know. Yeah, you know.
31:06
The beautiful thing about this is and why it's probably one of the very widely
31:10
used practices in the world. It's very efficient in that you get a lot
31:12
of bang for your buck out of the time you allocate towards it. And
31:15
it's very effective. You notice the changes very very quickly, like within just
31:21
a few sessions and certainly within a few days. And thirdly, it's very
31:23
enjoyable. It's actually not hard. It's no, my god, I've got
31:26
to try and empty my mind. I got to focus my mind. This
31:29
is really uncomfortable. I'm going to have a nervous breakdown trying to meditate.
31:32
You know, this doesn't quite work right. So it's very efficient, it's
31:37
very effective, and it's very enjoyable. And it's about fifteen to twenty minutes
31:41
for one session. Yeah, very short. And the reason why it's short
31:45
is because it's quite deep, quite quickly, and we get stress cleared out.
31:48
So the focus of this meditation practice isn't can I get my mind still?
31:52
Can I get my mind empty? We're not really interested in that as
31:56
our goal. What we're interested in is can I de excite the mind enough
32:00
to start clearing stresses, and clearing stresses like renovating a house is a little
32:04
bit of activity, a little bit of stimulation. So we can find that
32:07
a very successful, beneficial meditation can actually have been quite an uncomfortable or busy
32:13
one. It's just that we were releasing a lot of the imbalances that were
32:16
in the body. And so some meditations you go really deep, and they're
32:22
like we call them the knotties. You get this sort of head sort of
32:23
nodding down. It feels like you're asleep. You're in a deep meditation.
32:27
And some of them are very sort of busy and maybe even slightly uncomfortable,
32:31
and they're all really beneficial because our focus here or our I guess our intention
32:37
is to help release during the meditation a lot of those anomalies and stresses that
32:44
have been trapped in the body. So fifteen twenty minutes, once ideally in
32:47
the morning when you wake up, once ideally in the afternoon before the dinner
32:51
time, would be ideal to get the optimal experience. Now, a lot
32:53
of people when they learn to meditate with me, they're like and like,
32:55
I was the same I'm like, dude, seriously, like twice a day,
32:59
twenty minutes. How the heck am I going to fit that into my
33:00
day? So we are ridiculous, And so I sety minutes for myself.
33:07
Yeah, imagine that far up. So I did a lot of contemplation around
33:12
how was I going to navigate this because everything about the course and the information
33:16
that I'd acquired was so compelling that I knew it was something that I really
33:21
wanted to dedicate the time towards it. And so I realized that everything that
33:23
everyone on the planet is doing right now, whether they're listening to this podcast
33:28
or going to the gym, or cleaning the bathroom floor or going to the
33:30
tin cannery to put you know, tin can lids on tin cans, was
33:36
because they want to find fulfillment. You know, every action is motivated to
33:38
find fulfillment. And yet we're a deeply unfulfilled society, and we're a deeply
33:45
conflicted society, and a deeply addicted society, and a deeply stress society.
33:52
And so I knew that that was the case for me. So I had
33:54
to reassess my allocation of time because it's really coming down to core values compeding
34:00
preferences. I always talk with my clients about in every moment, we have
34:02
competing preferences of what you're going to allocate your time towards. And I realized
34:07
that this was really like putting the horse before the car. Now most of
34:13
the world are going into action to find fulfillment, and what the meditation does
34:17
was that it enabled me to access an internal fulfillment. And so what happens
34:22
is over time is that this gives you an inter fulfillment rather than an outer
34:25
fulfillment. And when we start to sustain and establish an inter fulfillment that is
34:31
completely independent and free from the need of the outside world. And that's partly
34:37
scientifically proven because we reduce the cortisol and adrenaline in our bloodstream when we meditate,
34:43
and we increase the serotyinin and oxytosin, the biochemicals of love and bliss
34:47
and happiness. And so I was starting to produce less cortisol, more oxytocin,
34:52
serotonents, starting to feel in a joy. And then what we have
34:58
is a really interesting phenomenon starts to happen. We have action from fulfillment,
35:02
not action for fulfillment, and action from fulfillment is a very different action motivated
35:09
very differently, and action for fulfillment, and that's how we see significant changes
35:15
in people's lives. You just like love bomb on me right now. I
35:22
feel totally love bombed, because I mean, if anybody that is listening right
35:28
now thinks that they should not be doing this, then you should probably go
35:30
to a different shell because we all, I mean, we need this,
35:34
and this is kind of where you started your Stillness project, right, so
35:37
can can we talk about the Stillness product and then also want to talk about
35:38
your film too. Yeah. When I saw the changes that happened to me,
35:43
which were quite remarkable and very rapid, yeh, I was like,
35:47
why the freaking' hell is the world not doing this? Like I was like
35:50
I was a crazy person in some respects, not crazy mentally, but like,
35:52
you know, hey, we've got to get this out to the world,
35:54
Like we're a going to say, okay, yeah, we're all a
35:57
bit crazy, right, even as meditative. I just got very passionate about
36:02
Okay, this has been around for seven thousand years, It's took the test
36:06
of time. There's a very good reason why it's still here, and that's
36:08
because it works. It's efficient, it's effective, and it's effort less and
36:12
enjoyable. So I need more people to do this. Like I didn't need
36:15
medication. I didn't need psychiatry. I didn't need psychologists, didn't need doctors.
36:19
It was just literally my body doing what it does really well, optimizing
36:22
and healing itself and giving my body the quiet rest that it deserves through a
36:27
simple meditation practice repeating a sound. And so the Stillness Project was like,
36:32
Okay, let's see what the world would be like if I got one billion
36:37
people meditating on a daily basis. And that was kind of like the vision.
36:40
I worked with some consultants and advisors around the brand, the brand name,
36:45
and the vision mission and the mission statement and all that sort of thing.
36:47
And admittedly I got very alpha male X Broker, Wolf of Wall Street.
36:53
Come on, we've got to do this, you know, very passionate
36:57
and very driven. These days after starting that twelve, I think it's eleven
37:02
years ago now, the eleven years I started in twenty twelve, I'm less
37:07
attached and less driven. These days, I'm more about what I coach my
37:10
clients into. Do what you want to do, but do it with joy
37:15
in your heart. I was a little bit too focused on the outcome and
37:17
a little bit too driven doing a lot of things I wasn't enjoying being advised
37:22
and mentored by people that were really very goal oriented. These days are more
37:27
about process orientation, which is what steadu in way you do what you do,
37:30
and if you get the outcome, that's great. If you don't get
37:32
the outcome, that's great. But what's more important is what steady win?
37:37
And how can I be a great leader if I don't anybody and live and
37:38
breathe what it is I want my clients or my students to be living and
37:43
breathing, which is to be enjoyed, to be in peace, not be
37:45
so goal oriented and obsessed like most of the world is these days. And
37:49
our world is so goal driven and oriented and goal oriented that it causes us
37:55
to do things that aren't necessarily healthy and good in the process. And so
38:00
these days I'm much more process driven and process oriented. That's awesome, because
38:07
gosh, what number are you at? By the way, I've got a
38:12
billion people? Where are we at right now? Well, someone asked me
38:15
on a podcast yesterday, I said, what do you you know? How
38:19
how are you going with that, and I said, I'm doing it right
38:21
now. I'm talking to you, me talking to you. Hopefully. Maybe
38:27
if it's not you, maybe it's someone else that says, you know what,
38:30
I think I might start to do this. And I get a lot
38:31
of people reaching out to me after hearing me on a podcast, and so
38:36
I do it through retreats. I take people in a deeper emotion on retreats.
38:40
We've got one in Bali coming up. She whould be great for you.
38:43
I think we do it through weekend workshops. We do it through online
38:45
programs. We do it through my keynote presentations in organizations. I do it
38:50
on podcasts. You know everything that I do. You know, if I
38:52
bump into someone at a school function, you know, with my kids,
38:57
you know, I'll you know, they ask what are you doing? So
38:58
I'm a meditation teacher, speaker and a coach and they're like, oh,
39:00
that's interesting, tell me more about that. And that in itself is a
39:05
dynamic exchange. So I don't really have an obsession with counting numbers because a
39:09
lot of it's how to measure more. I'm just like just keep leaving and
39:13
braiding it. And I have a time that's going to credit impact. Well,
39:17
I don't know how it can't. I mean, we all need a
39:21
little bit more enlightenment, you know on this planet. Yeah, definitely,
39:24
right gosh. And I mean, I you know, I'm sitting here here's
39:28
lindsay, I'm like beating myself up because I have been telling myself that I
39:32
needed to carve out time to start doing this what we're talking about here today,
39:37
And I don't know why I'm avoiding. I don't know why I'm like
39:42
today, is it better than any other day to get started on the things
39:45
that I that I want to do that are that put me at the top
39:49
of my list instead of at the very bottom of my list. And I
39:52
say this all the time. I always take care of everybody before I do
39:54
me, and then I end up sick and ill and tired and sleep deprived
39:59
and anxious and panicky and sweaty and whatever whatever I'm going to feel, because
40:02
I feel all of those things, you know, And it's it's I mean,
40:07
I'm a am looking at you, but I'm also looking at your website
40:09
to the left of me, and so it's in your face has been and
40:13
your voice and your message has been in my heart since we met, and
40:15
so let's meet and BALI beautiful villas and mess on. Then I'm totally and
40:29
this is I've got like a couple of these things, These retreats, these
40:32
some of these people that I've been meeting as guests on this show have legitimately
40:37
changed my life in some places and in such a short span of time.
40:42
And I don't think that you're opposite of that. I think that this is
40:45
something that is that our relationship and the relationship with meditation is going to start
40:51
right now, because or it really already did start. It's just I needed
40:54
to understand a little bit more about what you did and finding people like you.
41:00
So you know, you can google until the cows come home, but
41:01
until you actually speak authentically with somebody and really get their background and not some
41:07
woo woo marketing blah on their website, you know, I'm like, I
41:09
want the real nitty gritty. I want somebody that's going to hold me accountable
41:14
like all those kinds of things. Not that I'm not somebody that can be
41:15
held accountable, it's just in a couple of places i'm I'm not, and
41:20
I'm just like, oh, and then I go to sleep, and I
41:22
might well I go to sleep, I lay in bed and stare at the
41:23
ceiling for most of the night. But I'm there and I'm just busy brain
41:28
disorder, thinking of all the things that I should have gotten done today and
41:30
I didn't have enough time and all these, you know, and I'm just
41:32
like, oh my gosh, there's so much noise. And you've really brought
41:37
to light for me at least on how this can help get rid of some
41:42
of this stuff, you know, which is great because I like your approach
41:45
and sharing this with us, where you're not getting all this stuff. You're
41:49
getting rid of a bunch of stuff that you need to get out of your
41:51
body, which is so amazing, because I feel like I have more darn
41:54
little like worms and squirms inside of my body that I just want out of
41:59
here. I just feel uncomfortable in my body half of the time, and
42:04
a lot of that is body dysmorphic stuff that happened because of because of my
42:07
illness, I lost a ton of weight, and I'm like my body's atter
42:09
feed and I'm all skinny and I don't eat very much, and so there's
42:14
all these things that I'm this close to turning the table on one of them,
42:19
you know, And I'm like, but man, I've got like ten
42:20
things I've got to do, and this is absolutely has to be one of
42:22
them, you know, because I know that I'm going to be able to
42:25
heal myself with people like yourself in my corner, you know. I mean
42:30
that's why I'm doing the show. Yeah, absolutely, you know, there's
42:32
there's so much capacity for healing. Yeah, and yeah, it starts with
42:37
really a lot more calmness. As a beautiful analogy which we use the third
42:42
law of thermodynamics, which states that as the excitation occurs, order increases,
42:47
and as excitation occurs, disorder increases. So if you take a football stadium
42:52
with one hundred thousand people in it, they can exit that stadium very calmly
42:58
in ten minutes. But if there's a bomb, more of fire or the
43:00
gunshot and there's panemodium, then there's freneticness, there's disorder, and there's chaos
43:06
and it doesn't go smoothly. And so the bodies like that. If we
43:08
have hyperstimulation mind and body, then we have more disorder and our world has
43:14
become hyperstimulated. We're so hyperstimulated and so we've got to reclaim back that calmness
43:20
in our ecosystem, which is the body. And firstly, meditation plays an
43:23
integral role in that we can really take that to the next level. And
43:27
that's where the Barley retreats come in, is that we take people because you
43:31
can meditate twice a day and that will bring a lot more calmness to your
43:35
day, but then you're still going to be in traffic and dealing with kids
43:37
and partners and things like that. That's just the nature of our life.
43:39
And I've married with kids, and I know what it's like to run businesses
43:43
and have teenagers and all sorts of things. So we can definitely recalibrate and
43:47
reset every day. So that's a retreat to retreat yourself to that recalibration.
43:54
And when we want to put that on steroids, we go away from our
43:59
environment that is hyper stimulated too, very calm, quiet places like the jungles
44:02
in Bali rivers, flowing through pasture villa and getting daily massages and daily healings
44:08
and doing lots of meditation and eating amazing food and being in this really soothing,
44:13
nourishing, calming, resetting process for your nervous system. That's when we
44:16
see a lot of the healing take place in those more powerful experiences. Well,
44:22
I'm looking forward to I'm looking forward to being in the story that you
44:24
can tell a lot to everybody. Yeah, Neig, great testimony. And
44:30
the thing with the tree is if you look at a tree, you know,
44:31
before a tree grows up into the world, it grows down first.
44:37
And the reason why it grows down first is it needs a stability in its
44:40
deep root system, and also it needs to access the nutrients that feed its
44:45
capacity to grow up. And so as humans, we need that as well.
44:47
We need to have that daily connection to a deeper part of ourselves before
44:53
we go into the outside world and into dealing with kids and jobs and social
44:57
media and all the other things that we engage in. So yeah, that's
45:00
an important rebalancing of what is valuable and important in life. And the timing
45:07
could not be any more perfect for our world right now. So okay,
45:09
now I want to move on to the Portal film because I want to know
45:15
about the robot. No, I'd like to hear about the film because they
45:19
know we're getting close on time here, So yeah, sure. So the
45:22
film is an extension of I guess the Storms project, which is what mediums
45:25
can I use to share a message that no matter what's your background, no
45:29
matter what you've been through, you have the ability to alchemize, to transform,
45:34
to change. And we took six stories, like you said, that
45:37
have all had crisis and difficult times. They transform changed their life because they
45:42
meditated. Where does the robot come in? The robot comes in because we
45:45
found an organization that we're programming Sophia, a humanoid robot, to be unconditionally
45:52
loving, and we were contrasting that or I guess, paralleling that to our
45:59
six stories, because what had happened was the six stories had been led to
46:02
a path of process because of the conditioning of their environment, circumstances, situations
46:10
had influenced them. And that's what we're doing with AI, and we wanted
46:15
to show that the programmers of our life and the lives that we're programming.
46:21
So my children are getting programmed because they're just watching me, they're learning from
46:23
it, they're observing me, and so they're getting an indoctrination from their social
46:28
media, from their news, from their school, from their parents, from
46:30
their friends, and that sets us all up with a program that is an
46:34
operating system that we just buy into. We don't realize that we've been deeply
46:37
coded in conditioned the one thing's normal and we just do that right. And
46:40
so we showed that if you took a conscious person that had the capacity to
46:46
program AI to be unconditionally loving, then AI will be unconditionally loving. And
46:51
so if we can do that with an AI robot, then we can do
46:53
that with a human as well, because we're doing it with humans anyway.
46:57
But what we're not doing with humans is we're not conditioning on programming them to
47:00
be uncin initially loving. Just look at the world right now. We can
47:01
see that undoditionally loving right now. We can see that we don't know how
47:05
to be sovereign in our own state. We can see that we are easily
47:07
influenced by external world noise and circumstances. Yet we don't have to be We
47:14
have the capacity to not be that as well. And there's a thing we
47:16
don't know what we don't know, but we have the capacity to start to
47:21
evolve and grow and change. But the programmers of the world, which is
47:25
everyone, we need to start changing how we're programming things, and that can
47:30
only come from the state of consciousness of the programmer. So that was my
47:32
motivation in the film and the Stillness Project was to change our state that we're
47:38
in, because then we will start to change as this sort of ripple effect
47:43
the lives that we touch around us. So I've changed a lot of people's
47:45
lives in the last ten years, but that's only because I've changed my life
47:52
as well. And we become what we are and we teach what we are.
47:57
Yeah, so it's a little bit different. It's a little bit different
48:00
than coke and strippers as a slightly different world. Yeah, it's so weird,
48:05
it is, you know. As we said, I still love music
48:07
and I still love congregation. I went to burning Man just a few years
48:09
ago before COVID, and I was there for seven days in the desert,
48:14
and I loved robot Heart, I loved in a district. I love all
48:16
those experiences. And I didn't do drugs or drinking. I was doing a
48:21
lot of meditation. Actually. I found the desert really, really beautiful,
48:23
and I would ride on my bike way out into the remote regions of the
48:27
player to find peace and solitude and silence, and then from that come into
48:32
the craziness and the contrast of burning man. And so it doesn't mean you
48:37
become a monk and you don't enjoy the delights of life. You know,
48:39
it's just in Greece. We had a retreat in Greece, and you know,
48:43
there was the joy of the villages and the mountains and diving in the
48:45
ocean. So you actually become more alive and more appreciative of the beauty of
48:51
life because you have greater consciousness and clarity in your mind and senses and nervous
48:55
system to really delight in it without getting completely whacked out. Oh unconscious.
49:00
Yeah, that completely aligns with like, for example, whenever we go over
49:06
to Italy and we go to Tuscany, for example, I eat and I
49:09
don't have any stomach discomfort. I am in far less pain, I sleep,
49:16
I'm not worried about anything. But it is really unbelievable. The second
49:21
you get back and you're at lax, You're like, ah, God,
49:24
this is the worst, you know, but it does the beauty. I
49:29
mean, I remember the first time I went, I mean I was bawling.
49:31
I was crying with the beauty that was around me, and I couldn't
49:35
think of anything negative. How could you. I'm standing in the middle of
49:37
like three trillion sunflowers, Like, there's no happier place for me than that
49:44
particular moment. I have a big picture of me on it, and it's
49:45
just it's it's a happy place. It's a peaceful place. It's a safe
49:50
place. I eat, I drink, I can drink red wine over there
49:52
without feeling gross. Like I mean, it's that that place is so incredibly
49:57
sacred and special to me. But I know that I start to I started
50:00
to see things a little bit differently, and then when you come home,
50:04
you know, it's like, well, oh that's gone great. But I
50:06
like that we can create our little mini Tuscany wherever we go. Absolutely have
50:09
to. We just have to do that. Oh yeah, that wasn't too
50:13
bad, lindsay, Yeah, we're going to create our own little Tuscany.
50:16
Yes, it's within you right now. This has been absolutely wonderful, and
50:21
I know I can talk to you for a good solid two three more hours.
50:23
But is there anything that we'd like to leave our audience with, because
50:28
we've got certainly you're one more person closer to your billion all right, hip
50:35
away, just chipping away, chipping away. Look, you know, what
50:38
we have currently some very challenging times, and I expect not to scare anyone,
50:44
but I think we've got some more challenging times on the horizon things.
50:47
We're not out of the woods as far as life just being a beautiful you
50:52
know, walk through trillion sunflowers. And what we want to be able to
50:55
do is find within us a solace, a place, a sanctuary that is
51:02
always there. It's a place of love, it's a place of peace,
51:07
it's a place of serenity. And we just have to shift our gaze and
51:13
attention from the outside world, which is very magnetic right now, there's a
51:15
lot of things pulling our attention social media and news and purmoil and chaos and
51:20
things that the fascination with the abomination. But if we just redirect that attention
51:24
just for a short perint of time each day inward, and this is where
51:29
the mantra plays a part. It helps us go inward and it has this
51:31
wonderful quality to lure our attention and then we connect to that part of us
51:37
that gives us that sanctuary and that stability and that quietness to then be in
51:42
the world unless thrown around and discobopulated by circumstances, because circumstances can be pretty
51:46
intense and we don't want to feel that intensity all the time. Otherwise it's
51:50
unsustainable. We'll get sick and we want to be free from that. So
51:53
just allocate some time each day to finding a method of meditation will work for
52:00
you to give you a deep quietness. I love it. I love it
52:04
so much. I'm like in between about ready to cry and laugh at the
52:07
same time, because we do like to leave this show with a message of
52:12
hope no matter what. So to anybody that's out there that might be hurting
52:15
and need some love and some peace, go to Tom Cronin dot com t
52:21
O M c R O N I N dot com. He's also on socially,
52:24
he's not his incident, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, linked in the
52:27
whole nine yards so you can find him there. Thank you so much for
52:30
your time with us today. It's been transcendental. Well, thank you for
52:35
caring this space. You know it's people that create the space, like yourself
52:37
to enable me to do what I do. So I really appreciate the work
52:39
that you're doing and I'm the wonderful connection with that today. So thank you,
52:44
Thank you so much. You are exclusively invited to share this enlightening and
52:49
transcendental VIP pain journey together. Let's get to the heart of how to heal
52:53
with you by my side. Do you know someone who might be living in
52:57
and with chronic pain or is struggling with something in their life Some of the
53:00
things that we've talked about today addiction, pain, sadness, divorce, whatever
53:05
it is. If you do, send them our way here to the Pain
53:07
Game Podcast or to Tom. We would love to connect with you, hear
53:09
your heartfelt stories of strength and wisdom and grit, and give you as much
53:14
hope as we possibly can. And I'd love to have my community of listeners
53:17
hear your stories and help me provide any hope that I possibly can to anybody
53:22
that listens. Please follow the Pain Game Podcast wherever you digest your podcast content,
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53:35
you on the other side.